“He did. Then Hitler ordered Luftwaffe General Kurt Student, the commander of Fallschirmjäger—paratroops—to stage an operation to rescue him. They landed twelve D230 gliders on a small patch of clear land and seized the hotel without firing a shot.
“Then Skorzeny flew in in a Fieseler Storch—”
“A great little airplane,” Cronley interjected.
“So you have led me to believe,” Cohen said. “May I continue?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And flew Mussolini out in the Storch. To Rome. Then he took him by train to Vienna. He was promoted to major and given the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. Goebbels put his propaganda machinery in high gear and soon Skorzeny was famous.”
“You said he was a protégé of Kaltenbrunner?” Cronley asked.
“At first. Later they became quite chummy. Both enormous men. Skorzeny was—is—also over six feet tall and bears Brüderschaft dueling scars. I think Kaltenbrunner both liked him and was aware that some of Skorzeny’s hero publicity sort of shined on him.”
“I’d like to see this guy,” Ziegler said. “Is he in the slam here?”
“No, he’s in Darmstadt in a POW enclosure. But let’s take things in sequence.”
“Sorry.”
“And remember, there will be a quiz, so pay attention,” Cronley quipped.
Cohen’s face showed he was not amused.
“In October 1944, if I may continue—”
“Aren’t we going off at a tangent?” Cronley interrupted.
“No,” Cohen said simply, and then went on: “In October 1944, as the Russians got close to Hungary, it looked to Hitler as if Admiral Miklós Horthy, Hungary’s regent, was about to strike a deal with them. So he formed Operation Panzerfaust under Skorzeny to keep that from happening.
“Skorzeny took a team of SS men to Budapest, kidnapped Horthy’s son, and sent him to Germany as a hostage. Horthy then resigned, which meant no deal with the Russians.
“Hitler promoted Skorzeny to lieutenant colonel. And then he and Kaltenbrunner came up with another idea, Operation Griffin.”
“Which was?”
“Part of what the Germans called Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein and we called the Battle of the Bulge—”
“During which, for your edification, Augie,” Cronley interrupted, “Captain Dunwiddie rose from corporal to first sergeant and acting CO of Company C, 203rd Tank Destroyer Battalion because all the officers and non-coms were hors de combat, which means dead or wounded.”
“No shit?” Ziegler asked.
“Who is Captain Dunwiddie?” Cohen asked.
“And Sergeant Finney—you’ll love this, Colonel—a CIC agent who had been sent undercover to Company ‘C’ to look for Communist agitators, finally confessed to Tiny he was a CIC agent after getting a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star and promotion to corporal.”
“At the risk of repeating myself, who is Captain Dunwiddie?” Cohen said.
“He was my deputy when I was chief of DCI-Europe. Interesting guy. He’s old Army. His father is a classmate of General White at Norwich. White is Tiny’s—”
“‘Tiny’s’?” Cohen interrupted.
“Great big black guy, six-four-plus, two hundred and fifty pounds plus. He’s General White’s godson. He resigned from Norwich in his senior year and enlisted because he was afraid the war would be over before he got into it.”
“Did I hear you say a moment ago something about going off at a tangent?” Cohen asked.
“Sorry.”