Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

“None taken, sir. Barbara—my wife, Commandant—is an Army brat. She knows the rules. And I tell her as little as possible. I’ll talk to Moriarty.”

“What’s OLIN?” Fortin asked. “Who’s Bonehead?”

“It’s short for the Officers’ Ladies Intelligence Network,” Cronley explained.

Fortin laughed, and then asked, “And Moriarty is Bonehead? Meaning not too bright?”

“Quite the opposite,” Cronley said. “He got that name in our first year in college.”

“That would be Texas A&M, correct?” Fortin said. “The military school?”

How the hell did he find that out?

“That’s right. Anyway, after his haircut was found unsatisfactory, Private Moriarty shaved his head.”

“And, if I may ask, where did you go to university, Lieutenant?”

“The U.S. Military Academy, sir,” Winters said. “West Point?”

“I’m sure Captain Cronley has told you how important it is that it not get out that we’re—how should I phrase this?—intensifying our interest in Odessa.”

“Yes, sir, he has.”

“But on that subject, Jean-Paul,” Cronley said, “the night before last an attempt was made to kidnap two of my people.”

“And?”

“It failed. My administrative officer killed three of them with head shots from a pistol she carries in her brassiere. And she wounded a fourth man. We are now interrogating him. Odds are they’re NKGB but we don’t know that.”

“This woman . . .”

“Claudette Colbert, like the movie star. You’ll be dealing with her.”

“. . . killed three of these people? With a pistol she carries in her brassiere? Did I understand you to say that?”

Cronley nodded.

“Formidable!” Fortin said admiringly.

“Yes, she is.”

“Let me know what you find out about an NKGB connection.”

“Absolutely,” Cronley said, and then went on: “You were telling us how Odessa was started here in Strasbourg.”

“It wasn’t called Odessa then,” Fortin said. “What was formed here was called ‘the Spider.’ Odessa—Organisation der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen—former members of the SS—wasn’t formed until after the German capitulation.

“What happened was that after Operation Overlord—the Normandy landing—was successful, and the Soviet advance from the East couldn’t be stopped, it became obvious to just about everybody but Hitler himself that the war was lost.

“The upper level of German industrialists and bankers, who were the opposite of stupid, had heard of SS plans to escape the wrath of the Russians by going to South America. And they had figured out that senior SS officers were interested only in getting themselves out and didn’t care about German businessmen. So they set up a secret meeting here. At the Maison Rouge.”

“Who were ‘they’?” Cronley asked.

“There were about thirty participants. I can give you a complete list, but I would be surprised if there’s not already one in General Greene’s material. The important ones were Kurt von Schröder, the banker; Emil Kirdorf, who either owned outright or controlled Germany’s coal mines; Georg von Schnitzler of IG Farben; Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach—Herr Krupp himself; and Fritz Thyssen, who owned just about all of the steel mills.

“There were also a number of Roman Catholic clergy at the meeting. The Vatican has always been good at keeping secrets, and we don’t know much about them. They are identified in the minutes of the meeting, which we think we have intact, as Father G. and Bishop M., and the like. The tentative identifications I have made of the Vatican contingent I will give you, although I suspect General Greene already has them.”

“It might be interesting to compare your list with Greene’s,” Cronley said.