Page 139

“What’s that all about?”

“Between here and Rhine-Main, I will try to talk you out of your noble plan to go to prison for the rest of your life.”

Von Wachtstein then quickly got in the Chevrolet station wagon.

[ THREE ]

Glienicke Bridge

Wannsee, U.S. Zone of Berlin

0850 31 January 1946

The Air Force weather briefing had been accurate. The heavy snow had stopped, the clouds cleared, and the sun had come out.

Three Ford staff cars, the lead one bearing MP insignia and a fender-mounted chrome siren, rolled up to the bridge and stopped.

Immediately, a dozen of Tiny’s Troopers—all wearing white parkas, glossily painted helmet liners with Constabulary insignia, gleaming leather Sam Browne belts, and all armed with Thompson submachine guns and .45 ACP pistols—filed out of the two three-quarter-ton “weapons carriers” that had brought them to the bridge.

They immediately formed into two six-man squads, were called to attention, and with the Thompsons at the port arms position, marched to the bridge, six men on each side. When they were in position, Tiny Dunwiddie, also in Constabulary regalia, got out of the third staff car, marched to the men at the bridge, came to attention, and bellowed, “Sling Arms. Parade Rest!”

As Dunwiddie assumed that position, his troops slung their Thompsons from their shoulders and assumed the position.

As this was going on, two jeeps with pedestal-mounted .50 caliber Browning machine guns, and each carrying three similarly uniformed troopers, drove up and parked facing the bridge. The canvas covers were removed from the machine guns, and ammo cans put in place.

All of this was Cronley’s idea.

“I don’t want us to show up there as beggars,” he had said. “So we’ll stage a little dog and pony show for Comrade Serov.”

He had then gone on to explain the details of the dog and pony show.

He thought Mannberg and Ostrowski had agreed that it was a good idea, and he was sure Colonel Ledbetter, Jack Hammersmith, and Freddy Hessinger had not.

Ledbetter, however, did arrange for the other things Cronley thought they should have. These included the MP staff car and photographers, a motion picture cameraman and two still photographers, one with a Speed Graphic Press camera, the other with a Leica mounting an enormous lens. The photographers were standing on a platform on the roof of a Signal Corps mobile film laboratory, which was mounted on a six-by-six truck chassis.

When everyone was in place, Cronley and Mannberg got out of the MP staff car. Cronley was in Class A uniform, wearing a trench coat with his captain’s bars pinned to the epaulets and a leather-brimmed officer’s cap. Mannberg wore a fur-collared overcoat and a fur hat.

Max Ostrowski, wearing Class A’s and a trench coat, got out of the second car, as did a second man, wearing ODs. Three more men got out of the car in which Tiny Dunwiddie had been riding. All the men were CIC agents, one of them Jack Hammersmith.

Cronley and Mannberg marched up to the edge of the bridge, stopping where the metal structure of the bridge began. Ostrowski and Hammersmith marched up to six feet beside them and stopped.

Cronley could now see all the way across the bridge. He saw that the white line marking the middle was clearly visible. Someone—probably the Russian—had swept the snow from it.

There were about twenty Russians, some of them officers, on the far end of the bridge. Cronley did not see Ivan Serov among them.

I’m sure he’s here, that he’s seen the cameras and doesn’t want his picture taken.

Or doesn’t want to be seen, period.

For what seemed like a very long time, nothing happened.

Cronley made an exaggerated gesture of looking at his wristwatch. He saw that it was almost exactly nine.

“Jim,” Mannberg said softly.

Cronley looked at him. Mannberg nodded just perceptibly down the bridge.

Cronley saw that an enormous truck, with a body as large as the trailers on what he thought of as “eighteen wheeler” tractor trailers, was beginning to slowly back onto the bridge.