—
“Welcome back,” Tiny Dunwiddie said. “How was Strasbourg?”
“Believe it or not, Fortin actually bought us dinner,” Cronley said.
“Will wonders ever cease?”
Cronley looked at Wagner.
“Casey, are you up to speed on the escape?”
“Yes, sir. As soon as I got here, Mr. Justice Jackson sent for Captain Dunwiddie and me and let us read that message—the report of the Prison Escape Committee—that he sent to President Truman.”
Cronley nodded. “So, what happens next is, we start talking to people. Starting with SS-Brigadeführer Heimstadter and Standartenführer Müller. I have a gut feeling they’re the ones who staged the escape originally planned to get out. And, in that regard, I got one of my famously brilliant ideas as I walked in here just now.”
“Uh-oh,” Dunwiddie said.
“Thank you for that expression of confidence, Captain Dunwiddie. But hear me out so you can stop shaking your head in resignation. I’m betting that one of them, probably both, were frequent guests of the Gauleiter here in the Mansion. It might be helpful to have one of them, Brigadeführer Heimstadter, see for himself how things have changed since the glorious days of the Thousand-Year Reich.”
“You mean bring them here?” Wagner said.
“I think if the brigadier was taken from his cell without warning by several of our ugliest Polish agents—ones speaking nothing but Polish or maybe Russian—then brought here and installed in my windowless bedroom overnight, all that might serve as an inducement for him to talk to us tomorrow morning.”
“You’d have to take all of your furniture out of there,” Wagner said after a moment’s thought, “and put in a GI bed—a cot would be better—and nothing else, except a bucket for a toilet. Maybe strip him naked and give him a blanket to wear.”
“And that is why some people call him Super Spook Junior,” Dunwiddie said, drily. “Casey not only agrees with Jim’s wild ideas, he’s also full of ideas of his own on how to improve them.”
“So, what the hell is wrong with my—and Casey’s—ideas?”
“Well, for one thing, what makes you think Colonel Cohen is going to let you take Heimstadter out of prison?”
“He didn’t become chief of U.S. Counterintelligence for the Tribunal by not recognizing a clever idea when he hears one,” Cronley said. “And if he doesn’t give me Heimstadter, I’ll go to Jackson.”
“Who is going to say, especially after he hears Cohen has turned you down, ‘No way.’”
“There’s one way to find out,” Cronley said. “Let’s go. You, too, Tiny. I have a task for you that will require all your wisdom and expertise.”
“Really? What might that be?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
[TWO]
Office of Colonel Mortimer Cohen
International Tribunal Compound
Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1355 18 April 1946
“Inasmuch as Justice Jackson would be subject to criticism if it came out that he had known Colonel Rasberry and myself had permitted Super Spook to take Brigadeführer Heimstadter
out of the Compound,” Colonel Cohen announced after some thought, “I think we have to invoke the Hotshot Billy Principle regarding this problem.”
“Two questions, Mort,” Colonel Rasberry said, glancing at Captain Cronley before turning to Cohen. “One, do you really think this is a good idea?”
“I’m fresh out of other ideas. How about you?”