Page 187

“I suppose I should be expected to say something like this,” General Gehlen said, “but I have had a . . . gut feeling . . . all along that you didn’t perish at Stalingrad. Did you turn, Franz, before or after General von Paulus surrendered?”

“I began to realize that the Soviets were going to win when, because of the Fuhrer’s incompetent interference with the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, we failed to take not only Stalingrad, but the oil fields . . . et cetera. So I used my contacts to—”

Cronley’s mouth went on automatic: “This is fucking surreal.”

“Excuse me, Jim?” Gehlen said.

“This conversation, this standing around, pretending you’re all gentlemen politely discussing things of mutual interest, like a bunch of fraternity guys discussing how to get laid, is . . . fucking surreal.”

“What we are, if I may, Captain Cronley,” von Dietelburg said, “are professional intelligence officers. Are we gentlemen? Yes, I would hope we fit that term, but primarily professional intelligence officers. As such, we see a situation for what it really is, rather than what we would prefer it to be.”

“And what would you prefer this situation to be?”

“What it was before Herr General and Ludwig walked in here. I was close to thinking everyone accepted me to be Major of State Security Venedikt Ulyanov. As Major Ulyanov, I could see several ways out of my then uncomfortable position.”

“What rank did the Reds give you?” Mannberg asked.

“At first the NKGB equivalent of my SS rank. I have subsequently been promoted.”

“And do you see a way out of your now changed situation?” Cronley interrupted angrily.

“Just two. One is that, after interrogation, you will dispose of me here, and maintain the polite fiction that you had no idea that Major Ulyanov was actually Commissar 2nd Rank of State Security Ulyanov.”

“You now have a Russian name?” Gehlen asked conversationally.

“Or,” von Dietelburg went on, ignoring Gehlen’s question, “you can take me to wherever you’re dealing with Ivan Serov and see who the NKGB thinks is more valuable to them, me or your Colonel Mattingly.”

“If they would take you back, Franz,” Gehlen said, “you would probably wind up in the execution cell in the basement of that building on Lubyanka Square.”

“But ‘probably,’ Herr General, I’m sure you will agree, is a more pleasant word than ‘certainly,’ which would apply to my being buried in an unmarked grave here, or spending the rest of my life in a prison cell here in Germany.”

[ NINE ]

Glienicke Bridge

Wannsee, U.S. Zone of Berlin

0855 13 February 1946

The huge Red Army truck backed onto the bridge as usual. When its doors opened, Cronley saw that Colonel Mattingly was again sitting chained to a chair.

“Go,” Cronley ordered, and Jack Hammersmith put the Ford staff car in gear and drove onto the bridge, stopping twenty feet from the white line marking the center of the bridge.

When Ivan Serov appeared, Cronley got out of the front seat of the staff car and walked to within a few feet of the white line.

Janice Johansen trotted onto the bridge with two Leica cameras hanging from her neck and started taking pictures.

“Good morning, James,” Serov said. “Presumably the Likharevs are delayed?”

“They’re not coming, Ivan,” Cronley said. “But there’s a consolation prize.”

He raised his right hand, balled in a fist, above his shoulders and moved his arm up and down. It was the standard U.S. Army hand signal for “Join me.”

Ludwig Mannberg got out of the left rear of the staff car and walked around the rear and opened the right rear door. Captain Chauncey Dunwiddie got out and then turned to help former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg out. When he was standing beside Dunwiddie, a shirt draped over but not concealing the massive bandage on von Dietelburg’s shoulder, Mannberg reached into the car and came out with a U.S. Army officer’s trench coat, which he draped around von Dietelburg’s shoulders.

Dunwiddie put a massive hand on the trench coat over von Dietelburg’s good arm and marched him to the white line.

Serov’s face showed no expression.