Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

Castillo's face wrinkled as he continued looking forward and mentally counted heads.

"There will be nine of us."

"We look forward to serving you, Herr von und zu Gossinger."

"Thank you very much," Castillo said, and reached for the telephone's OFF button on the spoke of the steering wheel.

Edgar Delchamps applauded.

"Very good, Herr von und zu Gossinger," he said. "Just the right touch of polite arrogance. I could hear him clicking his heels."

"Well, you know what they say, Edgar. 'When in Rome,' or for that matter, in Das Vaterland . . ."

"That said, don't you think it's about time to bring your business associates up to speed about where everybody, including you, fits into the landscape?"

Castillo was silent a long time as he considered that. Then he made a small frown that suggested, Why not?

"Okay," he said. "Take notes. There will be a quiz. Think Stalingrad. The Red Army is firing harassing and intermittent artillery at the Germans. They get lucky and make a hit on a Kublewagon--"

"A what?" Yung asked.

"The military version of the Volkswagen Bug," Davidson furnished. "They were selling them in the States a while back."

"Oh, yeah. I remember," Yung said. "Cute little car!"

"If I may be permitted to continue with the history lesson?" In the rearview mirror, he saw Yung mouth, Sorry. "Thank you. Said Kublewagon was carrying a light bird, general staff corps, on Von Paulus's staff--"

"I remember Von Paulus," Delchamps said. "He got on the phone to Hitler, told him they were surrounded, out of ammo, down to eating their horses, and could he please surrender? To which Der Fuhrer replied, 'Congratulations, General, you are now a field marshal. German field marshals do not surrender. You do have, of course, the option of suicide. . . .' "

"Really?" Yung asked.

"And the next day, Field Marshal von Paulus surrendered," Delchamps finished, "in effect telling Hitler, 'Screw you, my Fuhrer.' "

Castillo said: "If I may continue: The light bird in the Kublewagon suffered life-threatening wounds and would have been KIA had not an eighteen-year-old Gefreite--a corporal--from Vienna dragged him into the basement of a building and applied lifesaving measures. No good deed goes unpunished, as you know. The next couple of H-and-I rounds hit the building, causing the corporal to also suffer grievous w

ounds.

"The next day, the medics found both of them and loaded them--my grandfather the light bird and Billy Kocian the corporal--on one of the last medical evacuation flights back to the Fatherland . . ."

"No shit!" Yung said wonderingly.

". . . where both were put into an army hospital in Giessen, which is not far from where we're going. Billy got out first. To keep him from being sent back to the Eastern Front, good ol' Grandpa got him assigned as his orderly. When Grandpa got out of the hospital, they put him in charge of an officer's POW camp in Poland. He took Gefreite Kocian with him.

"This place was the nearest officers' POW camp to the Katyn Forest, near Smolensk, in Russia. A couple of hundred miles--"

"You're losing me, Charley," Jack Davidson said.

"When the Germans and Russians were pals, and they invaded Poland in 1940, the Russians took almost five thousand Polish officers who had surrendered out to the Katyn Forest. First they made them dig holes . . ."

"Okay," Davidson said. "I'm now with you."

"I'm so glad, Jack," Castillo said. "After the officers had dug the holes, the Russians wired their hands behind them, shot them in the back of the head with small-caliber pistols, and dumped them in the holes, which were then covered up."

"Nice people, the Russians," Delchamps said. "Anybody who knows me knows I've always said that."

Castillo went on: "When the Germans and the Russians were no longer pals, and the Germans invaded Russia, and they got to Smolensk, they found the graves. The Russians denied any knowledge, said if anybody shot Polish POWs, it had to be those terrible Germans.

"How to get the truth out? wondered those terrible Germans.