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“I’m afraid Tiny is right,” Cohen said. “Unless we can convince the German people that Wewelsburg is more than just one more place where Nazi nastiness occurred.”
“How are you going to do that?” Cronley asked.
“I don’t know. Tying it to the smelting of all those Totenkopfrings back into gold which then went into the pocket of some senior SS officer would help, and so would finding the contents of Himmler’s empty safe. My gut tells me it was loaded with a good deal of stuff—probably tens of millions of dollars’ worth of stuff—that Himmler stole from the German people.”
“Your problem there . . . Am I permitted to comment?” Hessinger asked.
“Why not?” Cohen said.
“When Colonel Frade was in Berlin—”
“What was he doing in Berlin?” Cohen asked.
“Officially, he was there as the captain of an SAA Constellation making a routine flight to Germany. Actually, he came to help with getting Mattingly back.”
“I thought he had retired from—” Cohen said, and stopped abruptly.
He suddenly realized he’s having dinner with the NKGB, who would be fascinated to hear what he was about to say.
It’s comforting to realize that Cohen also makes mistakes.
Correction: almost makes mistakes. He stopped in time.
Which is the difference between him and me.
I almost never am smart enough to stop in time.
“You were saying, Friedrich?” Cohen said.
“I had the chance to ask him about that ransoming operation. He said he had heard and believed that while it went high up in the SS, it didn’t go as far as Himmler, that the senior SS officer involved was probably Himmler’s adjutant, SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg.”
“Am I permitted to ask what you’re talking about?” Serov asked.
“Rich Jews in the States, England, and some other places were permitted to buy their relatives’ way out of the concentration camps and be given safe passage to Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Senior SS officers made a lot of money,” Hessinger explained.
“I hadn’t heard that story,” Serov said. “Not even a rumor. It’s amazing how common criminals could rise so high in government.”
“Isn’t it?” Ostrowski asked. “And how they remain in power by continuing to be criminals.”
That was a shot at Russia. At Serov.
I understand why, of course. He’s probably thinking of some Free Polish Army buddy who made the mistake of going home to Poland, where he was promptly shot by the Russians.
But I’m going to have to tell him—order him—not to antagonize Serov.
At least until we find out what the sonofabitch is up to.
“What happened to . . . What did you say? Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg?” Cronley asked. “Do we know? Have we got him?”
“No, we don’t have him, and no, we don’t know what happened to him,” Cohen said. “But since he was already skilled in getting people out of Germany, I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t deeply involved—perhaps even running it—with Odessa. He’s high on that OSS—now DCI—list of wanted people.”
“Maybe he’s running it from Spain,” Cronley said.
“Possibly,” Cohen said. “If he is running Odessa, he’s running it from where he thinks he’s most safe. Possibly in East Berlin or East Germany.”
“You’re not suggesting we’re harboring this man?” Serov said.
“No, I’m not,” Cohen said. “You were saying, Friedrich?”
