Death at Nuremberg (Clandestine Operations 4)

As they had left Farber Castle, Cronley had seen a table in the lobby with a sign on it reading “Help Yourself.” It was cluttered with all sorts of information about the Nuremberg trials and the city of Nuremberg that might be of use to the press corps.

“Casey,” Cronley ordered, “take one of each. Two of the road map, which will, God willing and if the creek don’t rise, guide us to the Palace of Justice.”

“Yes, sir.”

Casey scooped up an armful of the material and followed Cronley, Ziegler, and Ostrowski out of the building and to the staff car. Everyone was now wearing pinks and greens with civilian triangles on the lapels.

Cron

ley was slightly hungover. There had been at least two too many Hemingways in the bar, as Janice had successfully convinced a half dozen of her very skeptical peers that her story about Mattingly and Ulyanov was all there was to the first story that Mattingly had been kidnapped. She had introduced CIC Special Agent Cronley and then named him as her source.

Afterward, surprising him not at all, he and Janice had carnal knowledge of one another in the bed—which really was large enough for six people—in the Duchess Suite. He didn’t really understand his relationship with her. The simple answer, that she liked to screw without any strings attached, which solved his problem in that regard, seemed too good to be true. He genuinely liked her, but as a buddy, with no more romantic involvement than he had with, say, Max Ostrowski or Augie Ziegler.

All he could do was hope the relationship would continue on its present terms, which seemed unlikely. Cronley was a devout believer in the theory that good situations never last long.

—

Finding the Palace of Justice wasn’t as difficult as he thought it would be. Directional signs had been put up at the major crossroads of the city, which, like most German cities, had been reduced to a sea of rubble by a thousand plane bombing raids, one after the other.

Somehow, the Palace of Justice, like the I.G. Farben Building in Frankfurt—now housing USFET headquarters—had apparently escaped destruction. Cronley had heard that the Farben Building had been spared on purpose. He had also heard that Marburg an der Lahn, where he had been briefly stationed as a CIC second lieutenant, had been spared because an Air Corps general had threatened the colonel leading a raid on Marburg’s railroad yards with castration if one of his bombs came anywhere near Philipp University, from which he had graduated.

When they reached the Palace of Justice, it turned out to be a four-story building with a two-floor red-roofed attic that didn’t look at all like the castles on picture postcards.

It was surrounded by fences topped with concertina barbed wire, and guarded by soldiers wearing the shoulder insignia of the 1st Infantry Division. Their web belts and the leather pistol holsters attached to them were white, and they wore highly polished combat boots, into which their trousers had been “bloused,” and plastic helmet liners also painted white.

They were passed into what was now obviously a compound without trouble after Casey Wagner, who was driving, flashed his CIC credentials at the sergeant in charge of the striped pole across the road.

And they found the building that housed the Office of the Chief United States Prosecutor without trouble. Getting into the building required that they each show identification. Once inside the building, the trouble began.

A 1st Division captain and a sergeant sat behind a counter.

Cronley extended his CIC credentials and announced that he was there to see Justice Jackson.

“That’s Mr. Justice Jackson,” the captain said.

He consulted a loose-leaf notebook and then announced, “You don’t seem to be on the appointments schedule, Mr. Cronley.”

“I don’t have an appointment,” Cronley replied. “But I’m expected.”

“If you were expected, you would be on the appointments schedule,” the captain said.

“Tell you what,” Cronley said, “why don’t you call Mr. Justice Jackson’s office and tell them I’m here?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Cronley took out his DCI credentials and showed them to the captain.

“Get on the goddamn phone, and now!”

—

They were marched, escorted by two 1st Division sergeants, down a long corridor and passed through a door under a sign reading CHIEF UNITED STATES PROSECUTOR.

There a man in his late twenties wearing pinks and greens with triangles on the lapels sat behind a desk.

“What’s this all about?” he asked. “Who are you?”

“My name is Cronley, and I was led to believe Mr. Justice Jackson expects me.”