“Now, there are several problems with bringing this situation to the Supreme Commander’s attention. One of these is the hour. It’s almost midnight. I’m sure the Supreme Commander, wherever he is, is sound asleep.”
“Wherever he is?”
Mattingly went on: “SHAEF is in the process of moving here from France, which is another problem. No telling where ol’ Ike has laid his head tonight. But the real problem is that you have arrived at a most unfortunate time. We are in the midst of solving a rather difficult problem . . .”
“What kind of a problem?”
“I’m afraid I can’t get into that with you. Suffice it to say, we are acting at the direct order of the Supreme Commander and the action he has ordered cannot be delayed by something like this.
“So, what I’m going to do, Mr. Stevenson, is get the provost marshal over here. What I’m going to tell him is that you—all the Secret Service people—are to be held incommunicado on the base here until seventeen hundred tomorrow. Your aircraft will not be available to you until that hour.”
“You can’t do that! You don’t have the authority.”
“Believe me, Mr. Stevenson, I do.”
He immediately proved that by picking up the telephone and dialing Operator.
“Colonel,” Mattingly said to the Rhein-Main Air Base provost marshal, “if I told you that these two gentlemen and everybody else who arrived with them on that Constellation have to be held incommunicado on the base until either someone from SHAEF comes to deal with them or until seventeen hundred hours tomorrow—whichever happens first—how would you do that?”
“Well, the simplest solution would be to put them in the stockade. Get the others out of the transient officers’ quarters and put them with these two in the stockade.”
“What, exactly, is the stockade?”
“The Krauts had sort of a police station, a police precinct. It wasn’t damaged much, and I took it over. There’s enough cells for all these people.”
Stevenson spoke up: “Colonel, what if I told you that I’m a supervisory special agent of the United States Secret Service?”
The provost marshal looked at Mattingly. “Is he?”
Mattingly nodded.
“And this man,” Stevenson went on, “has no authority whatever to detain us in any way.”
The arrogance of Stevenson’s tone was not lost on the provost marshal.
“To answer your first question,” the provost marshal told Stevenson, “I’d tell you that I don’t give a damn. If Colonel Mattingly wants you held incommunicado, you get held incommunicado.”
“But we are federal agents!” Stevenson protested.
“I really would rather not put them in cells,” Mattingly said. “What about just holding them in the transient officers’ quarters?”
“I could put MPs on the BOQ, I suppose.”
“And if you took everybody’s shoes and socks, trousers and underpants . . .” Frade suggested helpfully.
“I think just the shoes and trousers, Colonel Frade,” Mattingly said. “We don’t want to embarrass them any more than they already are for having been caught with Secretary Morgenthau’s hand in the cookie jar.”
“Then just shoes and trousers,” the provost marshal said.
“Mr. Dunwiddie,” Mattingly said. “Would you go with the provost marshal while he escorts these gentlemen to their quarters, please?”
“Yes, sir.”
With a casual skill that could have come only with a good deal of practice, Dunwiddie shrugged his shoulder, which caused the strap of the Thompson to slide off. Without looking at the submachine gun, he caught it with one hand in midair, then cradled it across his chest as a hunter would a shotgun.
“After you, gentlemen,” Dunwiddie said.
“You haven’t heard the end of this, Colonel,” Stevenson said.
“One more sign of lack of cooperation on your part and you lose your drawers,” Mattingly said.
It was only when they were sure the departing party was out of earshot that anyone even chuckled. But then the chuckles turned to giggles, and then—when Frade mocked Stevenson modestly covering his private parts with his hands—became outright laughter.
Mattingly sobered first.
“I can’t think of a better solution for the moment to these Secret Service people than the one we just reached,” he said. “But did you ever hear ‘He who laughs last laughs best’? I think this is probably going to come around and bite us on the gluteus maximus.”
Frade then remembered where he had heard the phrase most recently: when Colonel Richmond C. Flowers had given him the halfmillion dollars in Buenos Aires.
Mattingly then said: “With the Russians having stopped our convoy at Helmstedt, we now turn to Plan B. I think the best thing to do is get our show on the road as early as possible tomorrow morning. Dooley, I want you and your P-38s ready to escort the C-54 at first light. Any problem with you being in the air then?”
“No, sir.”
“Know that we do have a communications problem. We have no landlines to Tempelhof. I told the people at Helmstedt to set up the mobile control tower. What I’m hoping is that it will be able to communicate with Dooley’s aircraft, and that Dooley and his people can relay to both Rhein-Main and Tempelhof and with the C-54, and—if we get that far with Plan B—with the SAA Connie. We won’t know if this will work until we try it, which means there is now a Plan C.
“If things go well, I will depart Rhein-Main—from over Rhein-Main, not takeoff—in the C-54 at oh-seven-forty-five. That should put us on the ground at Tempelhof by oh-nine-hundred. While Dooley’s aircraft circle overhead, we will get the mobile control tower that the C-54 will have aboard up and running. I’m told they can do so in thirty minutes; all they need to do is erect some antennae. I’m going to give them an hour. The moment it’s up, the C-54 will be cleared to Rhein-Main.
“That should get us back through the Russian zone forty minutes later. The minute that word gets to Rhein-Main, the SAA Connie—which will have been, since ten-thirty hours, circling Rhein-Main at altitude—will then be cleared for departure to Tempelhof, and should arrive at Tempelhof in time for lunch. Got that, Clete?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I think we’re going to be able to pull this off,” Mattingly said. “If not, I’ll see you in Siberia, the other side of the Pearly Gates, or, if Supervisory Special Agent Stevenson has any input, at Prisoner Reception at the Fort Leaven worth Prison.”
There was laughter, some of it a little strained.
“I will now see Colonel Stevens—the SHAEF military government guy—and tell him to have the diplomats out here to board the SAA Connie . . . when, Clete?”
“Well, if we’re going to have to be at ten thousand feet over Rhein-Main by ten-thirty, that means we’ll have to take off at, say, ten-fifteen. Tell him to have the diplomats out here ready to go no later than oh-five-thirty.”
Von Wachtstein laughed.
“Delgano is right, Cletus. You’re evil.”
IX
[ONE]
Aboard Ciudad de Rosario Above Rhein-Main Air Base Frankfurt am Main, Germany 1025 20 May 1945
“We’re indicating ten thousand, Hansel,” Frade announced. “Commence three-minute three-sixty turn.”
“Commencing three-minute circle,” von Wachtstein replied.
“And here comes Dooley,” Clete said as a P-38 pulled alongside. “Hello there, Little Brother!”
“Why don’t you knock that Little Brother shit off, wiseass?”
“Aircraft with your wingtip in my pilot’s ear,” Frade replied mock-seriously, “be advised you are scaring our passengers.”