The Assassination Option

PROLOGUE

Early in 1943, at a time when victory was by no means certain, Great
Britain, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the United States
of America—“the Allies”—signed what became known as “the Moscow
Declaration.” It stated that the leaders of Germany, Italy, and
Japan—“the Axis Powers”—would be held responsible for atrocities
committed during the war.

In December of that year, the Allied leaders—Prime Minister
Winston Churchill of England, General Secretary Joseph V. Stalin of
the Soviet Union, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United
States—met secretly in Tehran, Iran, under the code name Project Eureka.
The meeting later came to be known as the Tehran Conference.

At a dinner in Tehran on December 29, 1943, while discussing
the Moscow Declaration, Stalin proposed the summary execution of
fifty thousand to one hundred thousand German staff officers immediately
following the defeat of the Thousand-Year Reich. Roosevelt
thought he was joking, and asked if he would be satisfied with “the
summary execution of a lesser number, say, forty-nine thousand.”

Churchill took the Communist leader at his word, and angrily announced
he would have nothing to do with “the cold-blooded execution
of soldiers who fought for their country,” adding that he’d “rather
be taken out in the courtyard and shot myself” than partake in any
such action.

The war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945, with the unconditional
surrender of Germany.

In London, on August 8, 1945, the four Allied powers—France,
after its liberation, had by then become sort of a junior member—
signed “the Agreement for the Prosecution and Punishment of the
Major War Criminals of the European Axis Powers.”

“The London Agreement” proclaimed that the senior Nazi leaders
would be tried on behalf of the newly formed United Nations at
Nuremberg, and that lesser officials would be tried at trials to be held
in each of the four zones of occupation into which Germany was to be
divided.

The Soviet Union wanted the trials to be held in Berlin, but the
other three Allies insisted they be held in Nuremberg, in Bavaria, in
the American Zone of Occupation. Their public argument was that
not only was Nuremberg the ceremonial birthplace of Nazism, but
also that the Palace of Justice compound, which included a large
prison, had come through the war relatively untouched and was an
ideal site for the trials.

What the Western Allies—aware of the Soviet rape of Berlin and
that to get the Russians out of the American Sector of Berlin, U.S.
General I.D. White had to quite seriously threaten to shoot on sight
any armed Russian soldiers he found in the American Sector—were
not saying publicly was that they had no intention of letting the Soviet
Union dominate the trials.

They threw a face-saving bone to the Russians by agreeing that
Berlin would be the “official home” of the tribunal.

The London Agreement provided that the International Military
Tribunal (IMT) would, on behalf of the newly formed United Nations,
try the accused war criminals. It would consist of eight judges,
two named by each of the four Allied powers. One judge from each
country would preside at the trials. The others would sit as alternates.

Interpreters would translate the proceedings into French, German,
Russian, and English, and written evidence submitted by the prosecution
would be translated into the native language of each defendant.
The IMT would not be bound by Anglo-American rules of evidence,
and it would accept hearsay and other forms of evidence normally
considered unreliable in the United States and Great Britain.

The IMT was given authority to hear four counts of criminal
complaints: conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes
against humanity.

It has been argued that the Russians obliged the Western Allies by
agreeing to hold the actual trials in Nuremberg in a spirit of cooperation.
It has also been argued that there was a tit-for-tat arrangement.
If the Russians agreed to Nuremberg, the Americans and the English
would not bring up the Katyn Massacre.

What is known—provable beyond doubt—is that in 1943 the
Germans took a number of captured American officers from their
POW camp to the Katyn Forest, about twelve miles west of Smolensk,
Russia.

The American officer prisoners were a mixed bag of Medical Corps
officers, Judge Advocate General’s Corps officers, and officers of the
combat arms. In the latter group was Lieutenant Colonel John K.
Waters, an Armor officer who had been captured in Tunisia. He was
married to the former Beatrice Patton. His father-in-law was General
George S. Patton. Waters later became a four-star general.

At Katyn, there were several recently reopened mass graves. As the
Americans watched, other mass graves were reopened. They contained
the bodies of thousands of Polish officers who had surrendered in 1940
to the Red Army when the Russians invaded Poland from the East
and Germany from the West.

The Germans told the Americans that the Polish officers had been
taken from the Kozelsk prisoner-of-war camp to the forest in 1940—
shortly after the surrender—by the Soviet NKVD. There, after their
hands had been wired behind them, they were executed by pistol shots
into the back of their heads.

The Germans permitted the American doctors to examine the
corpses and to remove from their brains the bullets that had killed
them. It was the opinion of the American doctors that the bodies had
in fact been so murdered and had been decomposing since 1940.

The Americans were then returned to their POW camp. The bullets
removed from the brains of the murdered Polish officers were distributed
among them.

It is now known that there was some communication, in both directions,
between the Allies and American prisoners of war in Germany.
It is credible to assume that the prisoners who had been taken to
Hammelburg managed to tell Eisenhower’s headquarters in London
what they had seen in the Katyn Forest, and possible, if by no means
certain, that they managed to get the bullets to London, as well.

Very late in the war, in March 1945, General Patton gave a very
unusual assignment to one of his very best tank officers, Lieutenant
Colonel Creighton W. Abrams, who then commanded Combat Command
B of the 4th Armored Division. Abrams had broken through
the German lines to rescue the surrounded 101st Airborne Division at
Bastogne, and was later to become chief of staff of the U.S. Army. The

U.S. Army’s main battle tank today is the Abrams.
The official story was that Patton told Abrams he feared the Germans
would execute the American POWs being held in Oflag XIII-B,
in Hammelburg, Germany, then fifty miles behind the German lines,
when it appeared they would be liberated by the Red Army.

Abrams was ordered to mount an immediate mission to get to
Hammelburg before the Russians did and to liberate the Americans.
In the late evening of March 26, 1945, Task Force Baum—a company
of medium tanks, a platoon of light tanks, and a company of
armored infantry, under Captain Abraham Baum—set out to do so.

The mission was not successful. It was mauled by the Germans.
When word of it got out, Patton was severely criticized for staging a
dangerous raid to rescue his son-in-law. He denied knowing Colonel
Waters was in Oflag XIII-B. When, shortly afterward, Oflag XIII-B
was liberated by the Red Army, Waters was not there.

It later came out that Waters and 101st Airborne Division Second
Lieutenant Lory L. McCullough (an interesting character, who
learned that he had been awarded a battlefield commission only after
he had been captured during Operation Marketgarden) had escaped
from captivity while the Germans had been marching the prisoners on
foot toward Hammelburg and had made their escape to North Africa
through the Russian port of Odessa on the Black Sea.

When this came out, there was some knowledgeable speculation
that Patton had known Waters was in Oflag XIII-B, and had been
worried, because of Waters’s knowledge of the Katyn Forest massacre,
that if the Red Army reached Hammelburg before the Americans, Waters
would have been killed by the Red Army to keep his mouth shut.

Why else, this speculation asked, would Waters have elected his
incredibly dangerous escape with McCullough rather than just stay
where they were and wait in safety to be liberated?

The Katyn Forest Massacre was not unknown in the West. The
Polish government in exile had proof of it as early as 1942. When they
requested an investigation by the International Red Cross, Russia
broke diplomatic relations with the Poles. Churchill had not wanted
to annoy his Russian ally, and Roosevelt believed it was Nazi propaganda.
The Russians wouldn’t do anything like that.

And then, at the very end of the war, Major General Reinhard
Gehlen, who had been chief of Abwehr Ost, the German military intelligence
agency dealing with the Soviet Union, added some further
light on the subject.

Gehlen had made a deal with Allen W. Dulles, who had been the
Office of Strategic Services station chief in Berne, Switzerland, to
turn over all of his assets—including agents in place in the Kremlin—
to the OSS in return for the OSS protection of his officers and men,
and their families, from the Red Army.

Among the documents turned over were some that Gehlen’s agents
had stolen from the Kremlin itself. They included photographic copies
of NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria’s proposal, dated March 5, 1940, to
execute all captured Polish officers. Gehlen also provided photographic
copies of Stalin’s personal approval of the proposal, signed by him on
behalf of the Soviet Politburo, and reports from functionaries of the
NKVD reporting in detail their execution of their orders. At least
21,768, and as many as 22,002, Poles had been murdered. Approximately
8,000 were military officers, approximately 6,000 were police
officers, and the rest were members of the intelligentsia, landowners,
factory owners, lawyers, officials, and priests.

The Americans could not raise this in the face of the Soviet Union,
however, as they would have had to say where they got their information,
and when the Nuremberg trials began, the Americans were denying
any knowledge of the whereabouts of former Major General
Reinhard Gehlen.


[ ONE ]

Walter Reed Army Medical Center

Washington, D.C.

0905 22 December 1945

The MP at the gate did not attempt to stop the Packard Clipper
when it approached the gate. He had seen enough cars from the
White House pool to know one when he saw one, and this one
was also displaying a blue plate with two silver stars, indicating
that it was carrying a rear admiral (upper half ).

The MP waved the car through, saluted crisply, and then
went quickly into the guard shack—which was actually a neat
little tile-roofed brick structure, not a shack—and got on the
phone.

“White House car with an admiral,” he announced.

This caused activity at the main entrance. A Medical Corps
lieutenant colonel, who was the Medical Officer of the Day—
MOD—and a Rubenesque major of the Army Nurse Corps, who
was the NOD—Nurse Officer of the Day—rushed to the lobby
to greet the VIP admiral from the White House.

No Packard Clipper appeared.

“Where the hell did he go?” the MOD inquired finally.

“If it’s who I think it is,” the NOD said, “he’s done this before.

He went in the side door to 233. The auto accident major they
flew in from South America.”

The MOD and the NOD hurried to the stairwell and quickly
climbed it in hopes of greeting the VIP admiral from the White
House to offer him any assistance he might require.

They succeeded in doing so. They caught up with Rear Admiral
Sidney W. Souers and his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant James

L. Allred, USN, as the latter reached to push open the door to
room 233.
“Good morning, Admiral,” the MOD said. “I’m Colonel
Thrush, the Medical Officer of the day. May I be of service?”
“Just calling on a friend, Colonel,” the admiral replied. “But
thank you, nonetheless.”

He nodded to his aide to open the door.

The NOD beat him to it, and went into the room.

There was no one in the hospital bed, whose back had been
cranked nearly vertical. A bed tray to one side held a coffee thermos,
a cup, and an ashtray, in which rested a partially smoked
thick, dark brown cigar. The room was redolent of cigar smoke.

“He must be in the toilet,” the nurse announced, adding righteously,
“He’s not supposed to do that unassisted.”

Lieutenant Allred went to the toilet door, knocked, and asked,
“You okay, Major?”

“I was until you knocked at the door,” a muffled voice replied.

“Thank you for your interest, Colonel, Miss,” Admiral Souers

said.
They understood they were being dismissed, said, “Yes, sir,” in
chorus, and left the room.
“Who is he?” the MOD asked.

“You mean the admiral, or the major?”

“Both.”

“All I know about the admiral is that the word is that he’s a pal
of President Truman. And all I know about the major is that he
was medically evac’d from someplace in South America, maybe
Argentina, someplace like that, and brought here. Broken leg, broken
arm, broken ribs. And no papers. No Army papers. He told
one of the nurses he was in a car accident.”

“I wonder why here?” the MOD asked. “There are very good
hospitals in the Canal Zone, and that’s a lot closer to Argentina
than Washington.”

The NOD shrugged.

“And that admiral showed up an hour after he did,” she said.
“And shortly after that, the major’s family started coming. He has
a large family. I think they’re Puerto Ricans. They were all speaking
Spanish.”

“Interesting,” the MOD said.

Major Maxwell Ashton III, Cavalry, detail Military Intelligence,
a tall, swarthy-skinned, six-foot-three twenty-six-year-old,
tried to rise from the water closet in his toilet by using a
chromed support mounted to the wall. The support was on the
left wall. Major Ashton’s left arm was in a cast and the cast was
in a sling. Using his right arm, he managed to rise about eighteen
inches from the toilet seat before his hand slipped and he
dropped back down.

He cursed. Loudly, colorfully, obscenely, and profanely, in
Spanish, and for perhaps thirty seconds.

He then attempted to rise using the crutch he had rested
against the toilet wall. On the third try, he made it. With great
difficulty, he managed to get his pajama trousers up from the floor
and over his right leg, which was encased in plaster of paris, and to
his waist.

“Oh, you clever fucking devil, you!” he proclaimed, in English.

He unlocked the door, held it open with his forehead, and then
managed to get the crutch into his armpit, which permitted him
to escape the small room.

He was halfway to the bed when Lieutenant Allred attempted
to come to his aid.

Ashton impatiently waved him off, made it to the bed, and,
with difficulty, got in.

“You should have asked a nurse to help you,” Allred said.

“I’m sure it’s different in the Navy, but in the Cavalry, we consider
it unbecoming an officer and a gentleman to ask women
with whom we are not intimately acquainted to assist us in moving
our bowels,” Ashton said.

Admiral Souers laughed.

“I’m delighted to find you in a good mood, Max,” he said.
“How’s it going?”

“Sir, do you really want to know?”

“I really do.”

“I am torn between that proverbial rock and that hard place.
On one hand, I really want to get the hell out of here. I am told
that when I can successfully stagger to the end of the hall and
back on my crutches, I will be considered ‘ambulatory.’ I can do
that. But if I do it officially, that will mean I will pass into the
hands of my Aunt Florence, who is camped out in the Hay-Adams
extolling my many virtues to the parents of every unmarried

Cuban female in her child-bearing years—of the proper bloodline,
of course—between New York and Miami.”

“That doesn’t sound so awful to me,” Allred said.

“What you don’t understand, Jim—although I’ve told you this
before—is that unmarried Cuban females of the proper bloodline
do not fool around before marriage. And I am still in my fooling-
around years.”

“Or might be, anyway, when you get out of that cast,” Admiral
Souers said.

“Thank you, sir, for pointing that out to me,” Ashton said.

Souers chuckled, and then asked, “What do you want first, the
good news or the bad?”

“Let’s start with the bad, sir. Then I will have something to
look forward to.”

“Okay. There’s a long list of the former. Where do I start?
Okay. General Patton died yesterday in Germany.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. He always said he wanted to go out
with the last bullet fired in the last battle.”

“And a car wreck isn’t the last battle, is it?” Souers replied.

“Unless it was an opening shot in the first of a series of new
battles,” Ashton said.

“We looked into that,” Souers said. “General Greene—the European
Command CIC chief? . . .”

Ashton nodded his understanding.

“. . . was all over the accident. And he told me that’s what it
was, an accident. A truck pulled in front of Patton’s limousine. His
driver braked hard, but ran into the truck anyway. Patton slid off
the seat and it got his neck, or his spine. He was paralyzed. Greene
told me when he saw Patton in the hospital, they had him stretched
out with weights. Greene said it looked like something from the
Spanish Inquisition.”

“And what does General Gehlen have to say about it?” Ashton
asked.

“I think if he had anything to say, Cronley would have passed
it on. Why do you think it could be something other than an accident?”

Before Ashton could reply, Admiral Souers added, “Dumb
question. Sorry.”

Ashton answered it anyway.

“Well, sir, there are automobile accidents and then there are
automobile accidents.”

“Accidents happen, Max,” Souers said.

“Sir, what happened to me was no accident,” Ashton said.

“No, I don’t think it was. And Frade agrees. But accidents do
happen.”

Ashton’s face showed, Souers decided, that he thought he was
being patronized.

“For example, sort of close to home, do you know who Lieutenant
Colonel Schumann is? Or was?”

Ashton shook his head.

“He was Greene’s inspector general. I met him when I was over
there. Good man.”

Ashton said nothing, waiting for the admiral to continue.

“More than a very good IG,” Souers continued, “a good intelligence
officer. He was so curious about Kloster Grünau that
Cronley had to blow the engine out of his staff car with a machine
gun to keep him out.”

“That’s a story no one chose to share with me,” Ashton said
drily.

“Well, we didn’t issue a press release. The only reason I’m telling
you is to make my point about accidents happening. The day
Patton died, Colonel Schumann went to his quarters to lunch with
his wife. There was apparently a faulty gas water heater. It apparently
leaked gas. Schumann got home just in time for the gas to
blow up. It demolished the building.”

“Jesus!”

“Literally blowing both of them away, to leave their two kids, a
boy and a girl, as orphans.”

“Jesus Christ!” Ashton said.

“Quickly changing the subject to the good news,” Souers said.
“Let’s have the box, Jim.”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Allred said, and handed the admiral a
small blue box.

Souers snapped it open and extended it to Ashton.

“Would you like me to pin these to your jammies, Colonel, or
would you rather do that yourself?”

“These are for real?” Ashton asked.

“Yes, Lieutenant Colonel Ashton, those are for real.”

“In lieu of a Purple Heart?” Ashton asked.

“Prefacing this by saying I think you well deserve the promotion,
the reason you have it is because I told the adjutant general I
desperately needed you, and that the only way you would even
consider staying in the Army would be if your services had been
rewarded with a promotion.”

Ashton didn’t reply.

“Operative words, Colonel, ‘would even consider staying.’ ”

Again, Ashton didn’t reply.

“If nothing else, you can now, for the rest of your life, legitimately
refer to yourself as ‘colonel’ when telling tales of your valiant
service in World War Two to Cuban señoritas whom you wish
to despoil before marriage.”

“Sometimes it was really rough,” Ashton said. “Either the steak
would be overcooked, or the wine improperly chilled. Once, I
even fell off my polo pony.”

“Modesty becomes you, but we both know what you did in
Argentina.”

“And once I was struck by a hit-and-run driver while getting
out of a taxi.”

“That, too.”

“I really wish, Admiral, that you meant what you said to the
adjutant general.”

“Excuse me?”

“That you desperately need me.”

“They say, and I believe, that no man is indispensable. But that
said, I really wish you weren’t—what?—‘champing at the bit’ to
hang up your uniform. With you and Frade both getting out—
and Cletus wouldn’t stay on active duty if they made him a major
general—finding someone to run Operation Ost down there is
going to be one hell of a problem.”

Ashton raised his hand over his head.

When Souers looked at him in curiosity, he said, nodding toward
the toilet, “No, sir. I am not asking permission to go back in
there.”

“This is what they call an ‘unforeseen happenstance,’” Admiral

Souers said after a moment. “You’re really willing to stay on active
duty?”

Ashton nodded.

“Yes, sir.”

“I have to ask why, Max.”

“When I thought about it, I realized I really don’t want to
spend the rest of my life making rum, or growing sugarcane,” Ashton
said. “And I really would like to get the bastards who did this
to me.”

He raised both the en-casted arm resting on his chest and his
en-casted broken leg.

“I was hoping you would say because you see it as your duty, or
that you realize how important Operation Ost is, something along
those lines.”

“Who was it who said ‘patriotism is the last refuge of the
scoundrel’?”

“Samuel Johnson said it. I’m not sure I agree with it. And I
won’t insult you, Max, by suggesting you are unaware of the importance
of Operation Ost. But I have to point out Romans
12:19.” When he saw the confusion on Ashton’s face, the admiral
went on: “ ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ Or words to that
effect.”

“The Lord can have his after I have mine,” Ashton said. “When
do you become our nation’s spymaster?”

“That title belongs to General Donovan, and always will,”
Souers said. “If you’re asking when the President will issue his
Executive Order establishing the United States Directorate of
Central Intelligence, January first.”

“Let me ask the rude question, sir,” Ashton said. “And how
does General Donovan feel about that?”

“Well, the Directorate will be pretty much what he recommended.
Starting, of course, with that it will be a separate intelligence
agency answering only to the President.”

“I meant to ask, sir, how he feels about not being named director?”

Souers considered his reply before giving it.

“Not to go outside this room, I suspect he’s deeply disappointed
and probably regrets taking on J. Edgar Hoover. My personal feeling
is that the President would have given General Donovan the
Directorate if it wasn’t for Hoover.”

“The President is afraid of Hoover?”

“The President is a very smart, arguably brilliant, politician
who has learned that it’s almost always better to avoid a bitter confrontation.
I think he may have decided that his establishing the
Directorate of Central Intelligence over Hoover’s objections was
all the bitter confrontation he could handle.”

“How does Hoover feel about you?”

“He would have preferred—would really have preferred—to
have one of his own appointed director. Once the President told
him that there would be a Directorate of Central Intelligence despite
his objections to it, Hoover seriously proposed Clyde Tolson,
his deputy, for the job. But even J. Edgar doesn’t get everything he
wants.”

“That wasn’t my question, sir.”

“He’s hoping he will be able to control me.”

“What’s General Donovan going to do now?”

“You know he’s a lawyer? A very good one?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, the President, citing that, asked him to go to Nuremberg
as Number Two to Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson,
who’s going to be the chief American prosecutor.”

“He threw him a bone, in other words?”

“Now that you’re a lieutenant colonel, Colonel, you’re going to
have to learn to control your tendency to ask out loud questions
that should not be asked out loud.”

“Admiral, you have a meeting with the President at ten forty-
five,” Allred said.

Souers walked to the bed, extending his hand.

“I’ll be in touch, Max,” he said. “Get yourself declared ambulatory.
The sooner I can get you back to Argentina, the better.”

“I was thinking, sir, that I would go to Germany first, to have
a look at the Pullach compound, and get with Colonel Mattingly
and Lieutenant Cronley, before I go back to Buenos Aires.”

“I think that’s a very good idea, if you think you’re up to all
that travel,” he said.

“I’m up to it, sir.”

“I hadn’t planned to get into this with you. That was before
you agreed to stay on. But now . . .”

“Yes, sir?”

“Now that you’re going to have to have a commander-subordinate
relationship with Captain . . . Captain . . . Cronley . . .”

“Sorry, sir. I knew that the President had promoted Cronley for
grabbing the uranium oxide in Argentina.”

“And for his behavior—all right, his ‘valor above and beyond
the call of duty.’”

“Yes, sir.”

“Prefacing this by saying I think he fully deserved the promotion,
and the Distinguished Service Medal that went with it, and
that I personally happen to like him very much, I have to tell you
what happened after he returned to Germany.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Admiral,” Lieutenant Allred said, as he tapped his wristwatch,
“the President . . .”

“The world won’t end if I’m ten minutes late,” Admiral Souers
said. “And if it looks as if we’ll be late, get on the radio to the
White House and tell them we’re stuck in traffic.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know about those Negro troops who have been guarding
Kloster Grünau? Under that enormous first sergeant they call
‘Tiny’? First Sergeant Dunwiddie?”

“Cronley talked about him. He said he comes from an Army
family that goes way back. That they were Indian fighters, that
two of his grandfathers beat Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill in
Cuba during the Spanish American War.”

“Did he mention that he almost graduated from Norwich?
That his father was a Norwich classmate of Major General I.D.
White, who commanded the Second Armored Division?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, when Cronley returned to Germany, to Kloster Grünau,
he learned that those black soldiers—the ones he calls ‘Tiny’s
Troopers’—had grabbed a man as he attempted to pass through—
going outward—the barbed wire around Kloster Grünau. He had
documents on him identifying him as Major Konstantin Orlovsky
of the Soviet Liaison Mission. They have authority to be in the
American Zone.

“On his person were three rosters. One of them was a complete
roster of all of General Gehlen’s men then inside Kloster Grünau.
The second was a complete roster of all of Gehlen’s men whom
we have transported to Argentina, and the third was a listing of
where in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, et cetera, that Gehlen
believed his men who had not managed to get out were.

“It was clear that Orlovsky was an NKGB agent. It was equally
clear there was at least one of Gehlen’s men—and very likely more
than one—whom the NKGB had turned and who had provided
Orlovsky with the rosters.

“When he was told of this man, Colonel Mattingly did what I
would have done. He ordered Dunwiddie to turn the man over to
Gehlen. Gehlen—or one or more of his officers—would interrogate
Orlovsky to see if he’d give them the names of Gehlen’s traitors.

“Do I have to tell you what would happen to them if the interrogation
was successful?”

“They would ‘go missing.’ ”

“As would Major Orlovsky. As cold-blooded as that sounds, it
was the only solution that Mattingly could see, and he ordered it
carried out. And, to repeat, I would have given the same order had
I been in his shoes.

“Enter James D. Cronley Junior, who had by then been a captain
for seventy-two hours. When Dunwiddie told him what had
happened, he went to see the Russian. He disapproved of the psychological
techniques Gehlen’s interrogator was using. Admittedly,
they were nasty. They had confined him naked in a windowless
cell under the Kloster Grünau chapel, no lights, suffering time disorientation
and forced to smell the contents of a never-emptied
canvas bucket which he was forced to use as a toilet.

“Cronley announced he was taking over the interrogation, and
ordered Tiny’s Troopers to clean the cell, empty the canvas bucket,
and to keep any of Gehlen’s men from having any contact whatsoever
with Orlovsky.”

“What did Gehlen do about that? Mattingly?”

Souers did not answer the question.

“Cronley and Dunwiddie then began their own interrogation
of Major Orlovsky. As Colonel Mattingly pointed out to me later,
Orlovsky was the first Russian that either Dunwiddie or Cronley
had ever seen.”

“Sir, when did Colonel Mattingly learn about this? Did General
Gehlen go to him?”

After a just perceptible hesitation, Souers answered the question.

“Colonel Mattingly didn’t learn what Captain Cronley was up
to until after Orlovsky was in Argentina.”

“What?” Ashton asked, shocked.

“Cronley got on the SIGABA and convinced Colonel Frade
that if he got Orlovsky to Argentina, he was convinced he would
be a very valuable intelligence asset in the future.”

“And Cletus agreed with this wild hair?”

“Colonel Frade sent Father Welner, at Cronley’s request, to
Germany to try to convince Orlovsky that Cronley was telling the
truth when he said they would not only set him up in a new life in
Argentina, but that General Gehlen would make every effort to
get Orlovsky’s family out of the Soviet Union and to Argentina.”

“Gehlen went along with this?”

“The officer whom many of his peers believe is a better intelligence
officer than his former boss, Admiral Canaris, ever was, was
in agreement with our Captain Cronley from the moment Cronley
told him what he was thinking.”

“So this Russian is now in Argentina?”

“Where he will become your responsibility once you get there.
At the moment, he’s in the Argerich military hospital in Buenos
Aires, under the protection of the Argentine Bureau of Internal
Security, recovering from injuries he received shortly after he arrived
in Argentina.”

“Injuries?”

“The car in which he was riding was attacked shortly after it
left the airport by parties unknown. They used machine guns and
Panzerfausts—”

“What?”

“German rocket-propelled grenades.”

“Then they were Germans?”

“The BIS—and Cletus Frade—believes they were Paraguayan
criminals hired by the Russians. So does Colonel Sergei Likharev
of the NKGB.”

“Who?”

“When Major Orlovsky realized that the NKGB was trying to
kill him, and probably would do something very unpleasant to his
wife and kids if General Gehlen could not get them out of the
Soviet Union, he fessed up that his name is really Likharev and
that he is—or was—an NKGB colonel. And gave up the names of
Gehlen’s traitors.”

“What happened to them?”

“You don’t want to know, Colonel Ashton.”

“So Cronley did the right thing.”

“I don’t think that Colonel Mattingly would agree that the
ends justify the means.”

“But you do?”

“On one hand, it is inexcusable that Cronley went around
Mattingly. On the other hand, we now have Colonel Likharev
singing like that proverbial canary. And on the same side of that
scale, General Gehlen has gone out of his way to let me know in
what high regard he holds Cronley and Dunwiddie. But let me
finish this.”

“Yes, sir.”

“After Frade informed me that he believed Likharev had truly
seen the benefits of turning, and that he believed he would be of
enormous value to us in the future, I was willing to overlook
Cronley’s unorthodoxy. Then Cronley got on the SIGABA and
sent me a long message stating that he considered it absolutely essential
that when he is transferred to the DCI that he have another
commissioned officer to back him up, and that he wanted First
Sergeant Dunwiddie commissioned as a captain—he said no one
pays any attention to lieutenants—to fill that role.

“My first reaction to the message, frankly, was ‘Just who the
hell does he think he is?’ I decided that it probably would be unwise
to leave him in command of the Pullach compound. I then
telephoned General Gehlen, to ask how he would feel about Major
Harold Wallace—do you know who I mean?”

Shaking his head, Ashton said, “No, sir.”

“He was Mattingly’s deputy in OSS Forward . . .”

“Now I do, sir.”

“And is now commanding the Twenty-seventh CIC, which is
the cover for the Twenty-third CIC, to which Cronley and Dun
widdie are assigned. You are familiar with all this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I asked General Gehlen how he would feel if I arranged for
Major Wallace to take over command of the Pullach compound.
He replied by asking if he could speak freely. I told him he could.
He said that in the best of all possible worlds, he would prefer that
Colonel Mattingly and Major Wallace have as little to do with
Pullach as possible. When I asked why, he said that he regarded
the greatest threat to the Pullach compound operation, in other
words, to Operation Ost, was not the Russians but the U.S. Army
bureaucracy.

“In case you don’t know, the Pentagon—the deputy chief of
staff for intelligence—has assigned two officers, a lieutenant colonel
named Parsons and a major named Ashley—to liaise with Operation
Ost at Pullach.”

“Frade told me that, but not the names.”

“DCS-G2 thinks they should be running Operation Ost. Both
Parsons and Ashley outrank Captain Cronley. See the problem?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought it could be dealt with, since Mattingly, in the Farben
Building, is a full colonel and could handle Parsons, and further
that Wallace could better stand up to Parsons and Ashley
than Cronley could.”

Ashton nodded his understanding.

“General Gehlen disagreed. He told me something I didn’t
know, that First Sergeant Dunwiddie’s godfather is General
White, and that in private Dunwiddie refers to General White as
‘Uncle Isaac.’ And he reminded me of something I already knew:
The President of the United States looks fondly upon Captain
Cronley.”

“How did Gehlen know that?”

“I don’t know, but I have already learned not to underestimate
General Reinhard Gehlen. Gehlen put it to me that he felt Parsons
was under orders to somehow take control of Pullach, that Mat-
tingly, who is interested in being taken into the Regular Army, is
not going to defy the general staff of the U.S. Army.

“Gehlen put it to me that DCS-G2 taking over Operation Ost
would be a disaster—reaching as far up as the President—inevitably
about to happen. And I knew he was right.”

“Jesus!”

“And he said he felt that because both Dunwiddie and Cronley
had friends in high places, they would be the best people to defend
Operation Ost from being swallowed by DCS-G2. And I realized
Gehlen was right about that, too.

“General White is about to return to Germany from Fort Riley
to assume command of the Army of Occupation police force, the

U.S. Constabulary. I flew out to Fort Riley on Tuesday and talked
this situation over with him. He’s on board.
“On January second, the day after the Directorate of Central
Intelligence is activated, certain military officers—you, for example,
and Captains Cronley and Dunwiddie—”

“Captain Dunwiddie, sir?” Ashton interrupted.

“Sometime this week, First Sergeant Dunwiddie will be discharged
for the convenience of the government for the purpose of
accepting a commission as Captain, Cavalry, detail to Military Intelligence.


“As I was saying, Cronley and Dunwiddie—and now you—
will be transferred to the Directorate. Colonel Mattingly and
Major Wallace will remain assigned to Counterintelligence Corps
duties. I told General Greene that Colonel Frade suggested that for
the time being they would be of greater use in the CIC and that I
agreed with him.”

When it looked as if Ashton was going to reply, Admiral Souers
said, “Were you listening, Colonel, when I told you you’re going to
have to learn to control your tendency to ask questions out loud
that should not be asked out loud?”

“Yes, sir. But may I ask a question?”

Souers nodded.

“It looks to me as if the effect of all this is that in addition to
all the problems Cronley’s going to have with Operation Ost, he’s
going to have to deal with Colonel Parsons—the Pentagon G2—
and Colonel Mattingly, and maybe this CIC general, Greene, all
of whom are going to try to cut him off at the knees.”

Souers did not reply either directly or immediately, but finally
he said, “I hope what you have learned in our conversation will be
useful both when you go to Germany and later in Buenos Aires.”

“Yes, sir. It will be.”

Souers met Ashton’s eye for a long moment, then smiled and
turned and started to walk out of the room.