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American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1925 23 February 1946
“I never heard anything about this,” Tom Winters said. “And now that I have, I’m having a hard time believing it.”
And I’m having a hard time believing my gut feeling that this is the first time Sergei has heard about it.
But to judge from the look on ol’ Sergei’s face, and in his eyes as we revealed the secrets of Wewelsburg Castle, it was.
Which means that ol’ Ivan was telling me the truth.
“What about you, Sergei?” Cronle
y said. “If you heard all this from me, not from Polkovnik Serov, would you believe it?”
“I would have the trouble I’m having to believe it if I heard it from Nikolayevich Merkulov.”
“Who’s he?” Winters asked, just a little thickly. He had begun sipping scotch five minutes into Serov and Cronley’s recitation.
“He’s Ivan’s NKGB boss, the commissar of State Security,” Cronley said.
“I think he’s heard something about it,” Serov said. “And dismissed it as nonsense . . .”
He didn’t challenge that, which is admitting he’s still working for Merkulov.
Is that the scotch talking? For every sip Winters took, ol’ Ivan took a healthy gulp.
On the other hand, he knows I don’t believe the scenario that he’s here in Nuremberg to protect the Soviet judges, so why keep up the pretense?
“. . . otherwise, the Soviet liaison team, which is authorized to go anywhere in the U.S. Zone, would have taken an interest in the castle. And when Colonel Cohen’s people denied them entrance, that would not only increase their curiosity but cause an incident. And a public incident would alert the people we’re looking for to our interest. So you will understand, Sergei, why the less Commissar Merkulov hears about what we’ve been discussing, the better.”
Is that to try to convince me that he’s not filing a daily After Action Report to Merkulov?
Or does he mean it?
“I understand, sir,” Sergei said.
“Who are you looking for?” Winters asked.
Serov looked at Cronley.
“I think there’s a connection between the castle and Odessa,” he said. “Would you agree, Jim?”
Cronley nodded.
“Gut feeling. But what? Who? Von Dietelburg?”
“Who else?”
“Who’s he?” Winters asked.
He’s plastered. Because of a combination of what he heard just now, and his problems with his wife. The latter, I think, more than the former, but both.
“Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg,” Cronley said. “He was Himmler’s adjutant. He sent Macher to blow up Wewelsburg Castle. And, Ivan, Cohen, and I strongly suspect, to empty Himmler’s safe and do something with those thousands of gold Totenkopfrings.”
“And I gather he’s among the missing?” Winters said.
“Yeah. Vanished into the blue. I talked to Macher today. He professed to have no idea where the contents of the safe, or the rings, are. And he told me I should know that von Dietelburg is dead. I brought the noose into the conversation, and he may eventually have a change of mind. But we can’t wait for that to happen, can we?”
