Death at Nuremberg (Clandestine Operations 4)

“Where Odessa took him out with a cyanide capsule.”

“So where do you—we—go from here?” Serov asked.

“I don’t know about you, Chum Ivan, but I’m going to Strasbourg tomorrow to bury my beloved cousin Luther beside his parents in the Sainte-Hélène Cemetery. And right about now, I think, a Strasbourg policeman is going to visit Ingebord in her cell and tell her she’s a widow. One of Jean-Paul’s policemen, if I have to say that.

“He will tell her she will have to get Fortin’s permission to attend the interment. The idea being to see how quickly—and via whom—the word gets out that he’s dead and that there will be a funeral at Sainte-Hélène’s. Whether or not she goes, Fortin will cover the cemetery with his people to see who turns up.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” Janice asked.

Cronley considered that a moment.

“As a friend or the AP needing a ride?”

“Both.”

“Okay,” Cronley said.

“Thank you, Jim, for your candor,” Serov said.

“As I said before, Chum Ivan, the way to get me to run at the mouth is to ply me with champagne and flowers.”

[TWO]

Sainte-Hélène Cemetery

Schiltigheim, near Strasbourg, France

1605 2 March 1946

There was a small chapel Cronley hadn’t noticed during his first visit to the cemetery. The monks of the monastery were using it to perform the mass of Christian burial for Luther Stauffer.

Cronley, Janice, DCI Special Agent Max Ostrowski—who was filling in as Cronley’s bodyguard as Cezar Zielinski was in Vienna—Commandant Fortin, and Captain Pierre DuPres were standing in the shadow of a large mausoleum a hundred yards away. They had watched as the Widow Stauffer arrived in a prison van. First a wheelchair had been unloaded from the van, and then Frau Stauffer, who was dressed in a prison-gray dress. Two burly matrons had seated her in the wheelchair, then handcuffed her to it.

She had then been wheeled into the chapel past a small crowd of people—some with umbrellas against a light snowfall—gathered outside. Next, the ex-ambulance that had carried Luther Stauffer’s remains from Nuremberg rolled up. A half dozen monks took the casket from the ambulance and carried it into the chapel. They were followed by a procession of monks, and finally by perhaps the dozen remaining people who were standing outside.

“Full house,” Cronley observed.

“How long is this going to take?” Janice asked. “My tuchus is freezing.”

“Long enough, I hope,” Captain DuPres said, “for our photographers to get good pictures of the mourners.”

The mass took about forty minutes before a procession of monks preceded the casket out of the chapel. The procession headed for the burial site as the civilian mourners made their way out of the building. Finally the widow was rolled out. She was not handcuffed, but there was a matron on either side of her.

She looked around the cemetery and spotted Cronley.

Oh, shit!

She jumped out of the wheelchair, pointed at Cronley, and screamed, “Meurtrier, sonofabitch meurtrier, j’espère que vous brûlerez en enfer!”

One of the matrons grabbed her hand and shoved a hypodermic through the gray prison dress. A moment later she sagged, and the matrons settled her in the wheelchair.

“What was she yelling?” Janice asked.

“It was unpleasant, mademoiselle, not important,” Fortin said.

“Murderer, sonofabitch murderer,” Cronley softly made the translation. “I hope you burn in hell.”

“Oh, Jimmy!” Janice said.