“They actually skinned people alive?” Clete asked incredulously.
“SS officers and members of the nobility,” Mattingly said. “I’ve seen—what?—maybe twenty confirmed reports.”
“And my father’s remains, Herr General? What can you tell me?” von Wachtstein asked evenly.
“The best information I have, Herr Graf, is that they were taken to the Invalidenfriedhof cemetery and placed in an unmarked pit. They were then burned, some caustic added to speed decomposition, and then, when there were perhaps a hundred corpses in the pit, it was closed. The reasoning of the SS was that the more corpses in the grave, the harder it would be to identify any individual body if there was later an attempt at exhumation.”
After a long moment, von Wachtstein softly said, “Thank you, Herr General.”
There was silence in the room. People stared straight ahead, at their hands, at the ceiling, anywhere but at von Wachtstein.
Suddenly, Peter got to his feet and marched to the bar. He stood over it, supporting himself on both arms, his head lowered.
Frade got up and went toward him. Before he reached the bar, Dooley got up and followed him.
The three stood side by side at the bar, Dooley and Frade erect, von Wachtstein still leaning on it.
After a very long moment, von Wachtstein said, without looking at either Frade or Dooley, or even raising his head, “I would really like to have a drink. But if we are flying to Berlin in the morning, I suppose that’s not a very good idea.”
“Colonel Dooley,” Frade said, “if you would be good enough to set brandy snifters on the bar, I will pour that Rémy Martin I see.”
Frade poured three-quarters of an inch of cognac into each glass.
“Hansel,” Frade said, and after a moment when von Wachtstein raised his head to look at him, Frade held up his glass and proclaimed, “To a fellow warrior I never had the privilege to know: Generalleutnant Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein.”
Von Wachtstein pushed himself erect and looked first at Clete and then at Dooley. Then he picked up his brandy snifter and lifted it.
“And since we get only one of these,” Frade said, “I suppose we better include your pal von Stauffenberg in those warriors we never got to know.”
“Yeah,” Dooley said.
“My father would have liked both of you,” von Wachtstein said. “But I’m not so sure about Claus. He was a Swabian, and they’re even stuffier than Prussians. I always had the feeling Claus thought fighter pilots should be kept with the other animals in the stables.”
He touched the rim of his glass to theirs, and then—simultaneously, as if someone had barked the command Drink!—all three raised their glasses to their mouths and drained them.
When they started to return to the table, they saw that everyone at it was standing at attention.
[THREE]
Transient Officers’ Quarters Rhein-Main Air Base Frankfurt am Main, Germany 2305 19 May 1945
Colonel Mattingly, saying that he wanted to check on what had happened at the Russian roadblock at Helmstedt on the autobahn, dropped Frade, von Wachtstein, Stein, Boltitz, and Enrico at the door to the transient officers’ quarters, then got behind the wheel of the Horch.
Accustomed to the low-range gears, he pressed heavily on the accelerator as he let out the clutch. The huge Horch, its tires squealing, jumped into motion.
There was a small foyer in the building. There was a window in one wall—now closed by a roll-down metal curtain—behind which a desk clerk had once presided. The room was now sparsely furnished with a small table—on which sat a telephone—and two small wooden armchairs.
Both chairs were occupied by men who rose to their feet when Frade and the others walked in.
They were wearing U.S. Army officer Class A uniforms, a green tunic and pink trousers. Clete first noticed there was no insignia of rank on the epaulets, and that the lapels held only the gold letters U.S. but no branch insignia below that.
Something about those gold letters triggered curiosity in Clete’s brain. Mattingly, saying they would need them in Berlin, had furnished everybody—from an astonishingly full supply room—with “Officer equivalent civilian employee uniforms” just before they had left Schlosshotel Kronberg. The green tunics had small embroidered insignia—the letters U.S. within a triangle within a square sewn to the lapels, and a larger version of that insignia sewn to the right shoulder. They were all stuffed into a U.S. Army duffel bag, which Enrico now carried hanging from his shoulder.
Why do I think the Secret Service has appeared?
“Which one of you is Cletus H. Frade?” one of the men demanded.
Whatever response he expected, he didn’t get it. Instead, he found himself looking at the muzzle of Enrico’s Remington Model 11 twelve-gauge riot gun and then listening to the metallic chunk the weapon made as a double-ought buckshot shotgun shell was chambered.
“Secret Service! Secret Service!” the man said excitedly.
“What?”
“We are special agents of the United States Secret Service!”
“Can you prove it?”
“I have credentials in my pocket.”
“Get them. Slowly,” Frade ordered, and then pointed at the second man. “And while he’s doing that, you drop to your knees and then lock your hands behind your head.”
The man, mingled concern and disbelief on his face, hesitated.
Frade snapped, “Are you deaf?”
The man dropped to his knees. The first man carefully took a small leather folder from his breast pocket and slowly offered it to Frade.
Frade examined it carefully, then tossed it to Stein.
“Secret Service, huh? What the hell are you doing in Germany? I thought what you people did was chase counterfeiters.”
“We are on a special mission for Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau,” the first special agent said.
“Looking for German counterfeiters?” Frade asked incredulously.
“Looking for German Nazis,” the man said.
“Well, they shouldn’t be hard to find,” Frade said. “There’s a bunch of them in Germany.”
“These credentials appear bona fide, Commander,” Stein said.
“Show them to von Wachtstein,” Clete ordered.
“Commander?” the man on his knees asked.
“I don’t recall giving you permission to ask questions,” Frade said, and then asked, “Are you armed?”
“Yes, of course we’re armed,” the first special agent said.
“Well, then, very slowly, take whatever you’re carrying from its holster, lay it on the floor, and then step away.”
“For God’s sake, Colonel Frade, I just showed you proof that we’re special agents of the United States Secret Service!” the first man said.
He had regained some—but by no means all—of his composure.
“Weapons on the ground, please,” Frade ordered. “When you’ve done that, we’ll see if we can make some sense of this.”
Each special agent produced a Smith & Wesson revolver and laid it on the floor, then backed away from it. The special agent on his knees did so with more than a little difficulty—it is difficult to back up when one is on one’s knees—but finally managed to put six feet between him and his pistol.
Frade then made an imperial gesture, allowing him to stand.
“Pick up their weapons, Stein,” Frade ordered, and then, in Spanish, ordered Enrico to take the Secret Service men to his room.