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“I would hazard the guess that Odessa was concerned that Stauffer would give him up,” Serov said.
“That scenario has run through my mind, Ivan.”
“And now?”
“Somewhat reluctantly, Colonel Fortin has agreed to help me give former Sturmführer Luther Stauffer a Christian burial.”
“What’s the point of that?” Tiny asked.
“I could lie and say I want to see if anybody interesting shows up for the funeral, but the truth is that I want to be able to tell my mother that after her nephew Luther—her last living relative—was murdered, I saw to it that he was buried next to his parents.”
“Your mother knows he was in the SS?” Serov asked.
“No. And I hope I don’t have to tell her,” Cronley said. “What happened was that when I first came to Germany and was a very junior CIC agent manning a roadblock in Marburg an der Lahn, I got a letter from my mother asking me, if possible, to put some flowers on the graves of my grandparents.
“She said they were buried in the family plot in the Sainte-Hélène Cemetery, in a little Dorf called Schiltigheim just outside Strasbourg. Until I got that letter, I had never considered that I had grandparents over here—or any grandparents at all. My father’s parents died long before I was born.
“Anyway, as soon as I could, I got a three-day pass and drove to Strasbourg. That’s a long ride in an open jeep in the winter. It took me some time to find the cemetery, and even longer to find flowers to place on my grandparents’ graves, but eventually there I was. It was—the Stauffer plot was—surprisingly well maintained. There’s a monastery nearby, and I guessed they maintained the cemetery.
“There were two fairly new graves, with tombstones. Josef and Maria Stauffer. Clever fellow that I am, from the dates I deduced this was the grave of my mother’s brother—and therefore my uncle—and his wife. I knew that when my mother married my father, her family disowned her, and I knew this bothered her. So, standing at my grandparents’ and my uncles’ and aunts’ graves, I shifted into Boy Scout mode . . .”
“Which means?” Serov asked.
“I decided to see if there were any other relatives. If I could find somebody, I would go to him or her and say, ‘I’m Wilhelmina Stauffer’s son, and your cousin, nephew, whatever, and I think it’s high time you and my mother made up.’
“So I went to the Strasbourg Police Station—”
“Why didn’t you go to the DST?” Tiny asked.
“Because I had never heard of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire. So I asked the cop, a sergeant, in German, which was probably a mistake, making him wonder about an American speaking German with a Strasbourg accent, if he could help me find any members of the Stauffer family living in Strasbourg.
“I could see that got his attention. He asked me why I wanted to locate such people. I told him my mother was from Strasbourg, and her maiden name had been Stauffer.
“He said he would make inquiries. So I stood there with my thumb up—you know where—for maybe twenty minutes until he came back. He had a French Army captain with him—starchy sonofabitch—and he demanded—not asked—for my identity card. So I flashed my CIC credentials and then he asked what was the interest of the CIC in the Stauffer family. So I went through the whole story again for him.
“He said, ‘Give me a minute and I’ll see what I can find for you.’ Twenty minutes later—maybe half an hour—he came back and said sorry, he couldn’t find any record of any living Stauffers, but if I gave him my address and phone number, he would look further and be delighted to let me know if he found anything.
“So I got back in my jeep and drove back to Marburg through a snowstorm. I never heard from him. I decided there were no more Stauffers and forgot about it.
“Then a couple of months or so later, I was at . . . a military installation not far from Munich—”
“The Pullach Compound or Kloster Grünau?” Serov asked.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Colonel Serov.”
“Then I guess you’re not going to tell me how one day you’re a second lieutenant manning an unimportant checkpoint in Hesse and three months or so later, you’re a captain—and chief, DCI-Europe—in Bavaria?” Serov asked.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Chum Ivan, but even if I did, I couldn’t talk about it because something like that would be classified Top Secret–Presidential.”
Serov laughed.
“As I was saying, when I was in this place outside Munich, I got a letter from my mother saying she had gotten a heart-wrenching letter from her nephew—my cousin Luther—who said he’d finally made it home to Strasbourg from the war but didn’t have a job, or any prospects, and practically nothing to eat, and if there was anything she could do to help . . . et cetera. She said she had made up some packages of food and had mailed them to me, and if there was any way I could get them to him, it was obviously the Christian thing for me to do.
“Four huge packages arrived a couple of days later—canned hams, chicken, coffee, sugar, you name it. They had been opened by the Army Postal Service and had ‘Evidence’ stamped all over them in large red letters.
“They were delivered not by the APO, but by a CIC agent who worked for Colonel Mattingly. He handed a memo—an interagency memorandum—to me with copies to General Seidel, the USFET provost marshal, the Munich provost marshal, and some other brass . . . including El Jefe. It said that the next time I felt it necessary to import such items from the States in connection with my duties as . . . with my duties, I do so through him.”
“He meant your duties as chief, DCI-Europe?” Serov asked.
