Black Ops

Near Bad Homburg

2210 26 December 2005

“Please do so,” Castillo said in response to an announcement from the information operator that, having found the number he asked for, they would for a small fee be happy to connect him directly.

Castillo was driving the Jaguar. Edgar Delchamps was in the front passenger seat. David Yung and Jack Davidson were squeezed in the backseat with Max between them. Max looked out the rear window at the Mercedes-Benz van that was following them and carrying Jack Doherty, Jake Torine, Dick Sparkman, Madchen, the puppies, two members of the Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., security staff, and their luggage.

“Europaischer Hof,” came over the speaker system of the Jaguar. “Guten Abend.”

“Here is Karl von und zu Gossinger, of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft,” Castillo replied more than a little imperiously in German.

“And how may we be of service, Herr von und zu Gossinger?”

“I will require accommodations for the next few days for two business associates. A suite with separate bedrooms would be preferable, but failing that, two of your better singles.”

“We will be honored to be of service, Herr von und zu Gossinger. When may we expect your associates?”

“In about an hour. I presume there will be no difficulty in billing this directly to the firm?”

“None whatever.”

“We will wish to eat. Will that pose a problem?”

“We will keep the restaurant open for your guests, Herr Gossinger.”

Castillo’s face wrinkled as he continued looking forward and mentally counted heads.

“There will be nine of us.”

“We look forward to serving you, Herr von und zu Gossinger.”

“Thank you very much,” Castillo said, and reached for the telephone’s OFF button on the spoke of the steering wheel.

Edgar Delchamps applauded.

“Very good, Herr von und zu Gossinger,” he said. “Just the right touch of polite arrogance. I could hear him clicking his heels.”

“Well, you know what they say, Edgar. ‘When in Rome,’ or for that matter, in Das Vaterland . . .”

“That said, don’t you think it’s about time to bring your business associates up to speed about where everybody, including you, fits into the landscape?”

Castillo was silent a long time as he considered that. Then he made a small frown that suggested, Why not?

“Okay,” he said. “Take notes. There will be a quiz. Think Stalingrad. The Red Army is firing harassing and intermittent artillery at the Germans. They get lucky and make a hit on a Kublewagon—”

“A what?” Yung asked.

“The military version of the Volkswagen Bug,” Davidson furnished. “They were selling them in the States a while back.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember,” Yung said. “Cute little car!”

“If I may be permitted to continue with the history lesson?” In the rearview mirror, he saw Yung mouth, Sorry. “Thank you. Said Kublewagon was carrying a light bird, general staff corps, on Von Paulus’s staff—”

“I remember Von Paulus,” Delchamps said. “He got on the phone to Hitler, told him they were surrounded, out of ammo, down to eating their horses, and could he please surrender? To which Der Fuhrer replied, ‘Congratulations, General, you are now a field marshal. German field marshals do not surrender. You do have, of course, the option of suicide. . . .’ ”

“Really?” Yung asked.

“And the next day, Field Marshal von Paulus surrendered,” Delchamps finished, “in effect telling Hitler, ‘Screw you, my Fuhrer.’ ”

Castillo said: “If I may continue: The light bird in the Kublewagon suffered life-threatening wounds and would have been KIA had not an eighteen-year-old Gefreite—a corporal—from Vienna dragged him into the basement of a building and applied lifesaving measures. No good deed goes unpunished, as you know. The next couple of H-and-I rounds hit the building, causing the corporal to also suffer grievous wounds.

“The next day, the medics found both of them and loaded them—my grandfather the light bird and Billy Kocian the corporal—on one of the last medical evacuation flights back to the Fatherland . . .”

“No shit!” Yung said wonderingly.

“. . . where both were put into an army hospital in Giessen, which is not far from where we’re going. Billy got out first. To keep him from being sent back to the Eastern Front, good ol’ Grandpa got him assigned as his orderly. When Grandpa got out of the hospital, they put him in charge of an officer’s POW camp in Poland. He took Gefreite Kocian with him.

“This place was the nearest officers’ POW camp to the Katyn Forest, near Smolensk, in Russia. A couple of hundred miles—”

“You’re losing me, Charley,” Jack Davidson said.

“When the Germans and Russians were pals, and they invaded Poland in 1940, the Russians took almost five thousand Polish officers who had surrendered out to the Katyn Forest. First they made them dig holes . . .”

“Okay,” Davidson said. “I’m now with you.”

“I’m so glad, Jack,” Castillo said. “After the officers had dug the holes, the Russians wired their hands behind them, shot them in the back of the head with small-caliber pistols, and dumped them in the holes, which were then covered up.”

“Nice people, the Russians,” Delchamps said. “Anybody who knows me knows I’ve always said that.”

Castillo went on: “When the Germans and the Russians were no longer pals, and the Germans invaded Russia, and they got to Smolensk, they found the graves. The Russians denied any knowledge, said if anybody shot Polish POWs, it had to be those terrible Germans.

“How to get the truth out? wondered those terrible Germans.

“One of the prisoners in my grandfather’s POW camp was Patton’s son-in-law. My grandfather was ordered to take him and a bunch of other American field-grade officers, including some doctors, to the site, and proved to them that their Russian buddies were the bad guys.

“The story didn’t come out for years, but the Americans who had been taken to Katyn knew about it, and remembered the German officer who had taken them to see the graves.

“Okay. So now the war is over. My grandfather and Billy are released from our POW camps and go home. Grandpa goes home and finds that all of his newspapers have been bombed and that most of his farmland is on the wrong side of the fence between the American and Russian zones. Meanwhile, Billy goes home to Vienna and finds that all of his family was killed the day we bombed Saint Stephen’s Cathedral and the Opera House.

“Billy then makes his way to Fulda. My grandfather had become a father figure to him. And vice versa. The two of them dig into the rubble that had been the printing plant of the Fulda Tages Zeitung and put together one Mergenthaler Linotype machine from what was left of two dozen of them.

“That machine is now on display in the lobby of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. It was used to set the type for the first postwar edition of the Tages Zeitung.

“When my grandfather had applied to the American Military Government for permission to publish, he thought he had one thing going for him. A classmate at Philipps University—an American brigadier general—was military governor of Hesse and knew my grandfather was not a Nazi.

“Actually, Grandpa had three things going for him. Second was that counterintelligence had found his name on a Gestapo hit list; he was involved in the 1944 bomb plot. The only reason he hadn’t been shot—or hung on a butcher’s hook—was that the Gestapo thought he was already dead. And, third, the officers he’d taken to Katyn