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“Frankly, I think you’re making all this up to keep from being turned over to the Russians.”
“I swear to God! I swear on the grave of my mother that I’m telling you the truth!”
Hammersmith considered that for fifteen seconds.
“Would you be willing to be interviewed by a French officer with whom the CIC has been working on Peenemünde—he has no connection with the DCI—about the Nazis you say were in Peenemünde, give him the names of the Nazis who are now in the United States?”
“If you do not hand me over to the Russians, I would be pleased to tell the whole world about these Nazis who you believe are now your friends.”
Hammersmith paused thoughtfully for a long time.
“The interview would have to be done immediately,” he said. “And it would have to be filmed. People in Washington would have to hear what you say. I can keep you from being handed over to the Russians, but I can’t have you sent to the States, at least until I know you’re telling the truth.”
“I swear to God I will tell you the truth,” Heimstadter said fervently.
“Well, let me see what I can set up,” Hammersmith said.
He then left the cell and walked down the corridor to the cell that held former SS-Standartenführer Oskar Müller and had essentially the same conversation, with the same results, with Müller.
[ EIGHT ]
Kloster Grünau
Schollbrunn, Bavaria
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0815 12 February 1946
The screen—a sheet stapled to the wall of Cronley’s office—went white as the film running through the projector ran out.
“Great job!” Cronley said. “Thanks, guys. This was really important.”
“If you want, I can make up a title board for it,” CID agent Walt “Hollywood” Thomas, of the CID photo lab, who had photographed the interviews, and then had done a rush job overnight of processing the film, said.
“Saying what?” Cronley asked.
“‘German Canaries Sing.’ Both of those bastards were really trying to stick it to the Peenemünde Krauts, weren’t they?”
He heard what he had said, and quickly went on. “No offense, General.”
“None taken, Mr. Thomas,” General Gehlen said. “I’ve heard the phrase before.”
“What did you think, General?” Cronley asked.
“I think it will splendidly serve the intended purpose,” Gehlen said.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell us what that is?” Thomas asked.
“Correct. You win the cement bicycle and an all-expenses-paid tour of downtown Pullach,” Cronley said.
“Can I ask what you are going to do with those two . . . German gentlemen?”
“Nice try, Thomas,” Ludwig Mannberg said. “But while they are German, they’re not gentlemen.”
“At 0900 tomorrow, we’re going to try to swap them with the Russians for Colonel Mattingly,” Cronley said. “And if that doesn’t work—and I don’t think it will—I’m going to turn them over to Military Government for trial at Nuremberg. If anybody deserves the hangman, those two do.”
“If you had let me interrogate them,” Konrad Bischoff said, “I’d have had them sin
