“The German people will never humiliate Reichsführer-SS Himmler. He is the keeper of the faith.”
“That’s what the German people thought before we showed them what the Reichsführer-SS did at Buchenwald and Dachau and Treblinka and Sachsenhausen, und so weiter. And of course show dem guten katholischen Volk of Bavaria, and dem guten evangelischen Volk of Hesse what Saint Heinrich was up to at Castle Wewelsburg. Both das evangelisch Volk and das katholische Volk regard that sort of nonsense as heresy. And if you practice, or even tolerate, heresy, both believe that gets them a one-way ticket to hell.”
“The German people will recognize it for what it is, Jewish propaganda.”
“But it’s not Jewish propaganda, Luther, and you know that. And so did all das gute Volk of the towns near the concentration camps who we forced to pick up the corpses, the thousands of decaying corpses, the SS didn’t have time to bury or burn before they fled to save their necks. Those Germans, those good Nazis, had to face the fact that the day before the Americans and English and Russians had arrived, the SS-Totenkopfverbände had been running the camps. Even we efficient Americans hadn’t had the time to round up thousands of people, move them to the camps, and then murder them. Then who else?
“Come on, Luther, use your head. You did your duty to the end. But the end is here. The Thousand-Year Reich lasted . . . what? Eleven, twelve years. You’re going to spend more time than that staring at the walls of your cell unless you give me von Dietelburg.”
“Stauffer, Luther. Sturmführer, 4848329.”
“Oh, come on, Luther!”
“Stauffer, Luther. Sturmführer, 4848329.”
“Well, I tried.”
I really did.
And I failed.
And my reaction to my failure isn’t mostly disappointment, or anger, although God knows there’s that.
What I’m really feeling most now is sympathy for my cousin Luther, the miserable stupid sonofabitch.
And for me. How the hell am I going to tell my mother that I looked into her nephew’s welfare in his cell?
Where I put him, and where he’s going to be for the next decade or so.
Cronley walked to the door of the cell and gestured to the eighteen-year-old soldier looking through the window to let him out.
[SIX]
Suite 407
The Hotel Bristol
Kaerntner Ring 1
Vienna, Austria
1930 27 February 1946
When there was a knock at the door, Cronley got off a couch and went to open it.
“Hello, Charley,” he said, and then, “Good evening, sir. Thank you for coming. Please come in.”
Colonel Carl Wasserman, who commanded the Vienna CIC, and Lieutenant Charles Spurgeon walked into the suite, shaking Cronley’s hand as they passed him.
Otto Niedermeyer and Cezar Zielinski rose from the couch. Zielinski was wearing pinks and greens, as was Cronley. Niedermeyer was wearing a superbly tailored double-breasted suit made for him by a tailor on Buenos Aires’ Avenida Florida.
“Colonel Carl Wasserman, Lieutenant Charley Spurgeon, these are DCI agents Otto Niedermeyer and Cezar Zielinski.”
The men shook hands.
“As you may have guessed from Otto’s absolutely gorgeous suit, all DCI agents are not created equal. Otto, formerly Oberst of Abwehr Ost, and formerly General Gehlen’s man in Argentina, is now working there for Cletus Frade. Cezar, formerly captain of the Free Polish Army, now has the unpleasant duty of being my bodyguard.”
“I heard you need one,” Wasserman said. “And, to judge from those violin cases, which I don’t think hold violins, you are taking appropriate precautions.”