White looked at McMullen, who furnished, “Standartenführer Oskar Müller.”
“. . . Müller are high on the list of people Fortin doesn’t like.”
“I’ll certainly bring it up to him when I see him, sir.”
“It would mean you would have to pass on a late luncheon with the ladies, but you could have Tom Winters fly you to Strasbourg now.”
“Fortin’s not in Strasbourg, General. I was going to see him while the exhumation was going on and called to make sure he would be there. His sergeant told me he won’t be back until the day after tomorrow.”
“Did he say where he was?” McMullen asked.
“The Spanish border. He wouldn’t say—and I asked, pressed—why, which makes me suspect he’s looking for my cousin Luther.”
“He could be looking for Heimstadter and Müller,” McMullen said. “We’re starting to think the Odessa route, or at least one of them, is Germany-France-Spain and then to Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, wherever.”
“So we’re back to two days from now until you can see Fortin,” White said.
“Three, sir,” Cronley said. “I want to hand Serov—or have Tiny hand him—pictures of me burying the Russians.”
“That’s important?”
“I have a gut feeling that it is, sir.”
“So three days until you can see Fortin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So, sorry, it looks like luncheon with the ladies,” White said. “No offense, Miss Johansen.”
“None taken, darling.”
“Would you be offended if I say you’ve been remarkably quiet during all this? Most reporters, I think, would have been asking all kinds of questions.”
“Most reporters, darling, don’t know how to listen. I’m getting the picture. But now that you mention it, I do have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“I know why Jim wants these two Krauts. But I don’t know why you and McMullen are so hot to get them. Same reason?”
“I don’t know why Mr. Cronley wants to get them,” McMullen said.
“Why do you?” Cronley asked.
“Do you know Major General Harmon, Mr. Cronley?”
“No, sir.”
“He commanded Hell on Wheels—2nd Armored Division—before he turned it over to General White. He now commands the Constabulary, which will be turned over to General White.”
“I said I didn’t know him. I do know who he is,” Cronley said.
“He was at Peenemünde when we found the mass graves in which Heimstadter and Müller had buried . . . Actually, more accurately where they had forced the slave laborers to dig a mass grave and then lined up the slaves and mowed them down with Schmeissers, and dumped them into it.
“It was a scene straight from hell. Some of them still had been alive when the grave was closed. About a third were women. General Harmon turned to me—I was then G-2 of 2nd Armored—and told me, ‘McMullen, from this moment on your priority is to find the bastards who did this, so we can hang them.’ I’ve been looking for them since.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“When I assumed command of Hell on Wheels,” White said softly, “one of the reasons I wanted to get to Berlin quickly was that McMullen had heard that Heimstadter and Müller were there. I learned that they had been. What we thought then was that Russians had them. The Reds wanted to know what they knew of Peenemünde. The Russians accused us of having them, which was predictable, I suppose. Now McMullen has learned that they’re still on the loose.”