Order of Battle (18 page)

“So far you’ve told us exactly nothing, Plewig!” Erik sounded angry. “What
do
you know?”

Plewig tensed. Careful! He couldn’t afford to antagonize the American. Not now.

“I know that the general received orders to move from Thürenberg into Germany and set up his HQ camp. In April. Early this month.”

“Purpose?”

“They’re supposed to start operations after being overrun by the Americans.”

“
After
they’re behind our lines? Undetected?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What sort of operations?”

Plewig hesitated. Here it was. He hadn’t wanted to reveal everything. At least nothing important. But he couldn’t stop now. Not without the Americans knowing he was concealing something. He couldn’t risk that. He was vaguely aware that his conduct by now was geared only to save himself. He didn’t know how it had happened. He pushed it out of his mind.

“Assassinations,” he said slowly, “of high-ranking Allied officers. Blowing up ammunition dumps, and equipment and gasoline depots. Especially gas and oil depots. Bombings of barracks. Murders. Things like that.”

Erik and Don glanced at one another briefly. Their faces were grim. Plewig continued. He was eager now to show them that he was really cooperating. They know everything anyway, he thought.

“They have agents out. All over. They speak English. Some of them are war wounded. They’re lining up targets for them.”

“Like you?”

Plewig nodded solemnly.

“I was supposed to be an outside agent. But I didn’t want to. Believe me, Herr Hauptmann. I’d much rather just have taken care of the general.” He was pleading now. He was convinced he was fighting for his life.

“ ‘The war is lost,’ I said to myself, ‘and I don’t want to be a Werewolf. Even if Goebbels says it’s the duty of every man and every woman.’ I do not want to kill Americans, Herr Hauptmann. Believe me. . . .”

Erik looked at the man in silence. There was a time to let them talk. Just talk. It made it easier for them to talk about the really important things later. And sometimes useful information did spill out.

“I listened to them, Herr Hauptmann. I had to. Like that important man from Berlin. He came to Thürenberg. He made a speech to us. I remember what he said.”

He started to quote, concentrating hard. Pompous, stilted words.

“ ‘It is the victor of the last battle who is the victor of the war,’ he said to us. ‘We are losing a battle now,’ he said. ‘Enemy troops are overrunning our sacred, Aryan fatherland.’ ”

Plewig hurried on. He had found something he could talk about safely.

“And he told us that two years ago, after North Africa and Stalingrad, the Führer already knew that the first battle would be lost. And he planned the next one. The decisive one. The one that would give us final victory. And he told us that the Werewolves were going to win that victory. . . . Please, Herr Hauptmann. I’ve told you a lot about them. They’re important, the Werewolves! They wouldn’t have sent someone important all the way from the Führer’s headquarters in Berlin, if they weren’t. . . .”

Some little insignificant synapse in Erik’s brain was suddenly stimulated.
Important man from Berlin.
He tensed with anticipation.

“Who was it?” he asked quickly.

Plewig looked at him with his candid blue eyes.

“Who, Herr Hauptmann?”

“That important man from Berlin.”

“Oh, him. He was a Reichsamtsleiter, Herr Hauptmann. Very important.”

“His name?”

Plewig thought for a moment.

“Von Eckdorf. Reichsamtsleiter Manfred von Eckdorf. I remember. He was very important!”

Erik felt a quickening of his pulse. He was aware that Murphy was staring at Plewig.
Von Eckdorf!

“Why was he at Thürenberg?”

Plewig suddenly looked stricken.

“I don’t know, Herr Hauptmann.”

“What did he have to do with the Werewolves?”

“Please believe me, I don’t know. He talked with the general.

And he looked everything over. He was a very important official!”

Erik looked searchingly at Plewig. The man was telling the truth. His fright at displeasing his interrogator was not faked. He had been drawn in too deep now. He’d spill everything. Erik believed him. And he was suddenly convinced that the whole Werewolf story was true as well! However fantastic. However corny and unbelievable. Von Eckdorf had been tied to the Werewolves in some way. And von Eckdorf had died by his own hand in a farmhouse only twenty miles away. Rather than be forced to talk!

Plewig was telling the truth!

The German was alarmed. He didn’t know how to interpret his interrogator’s intense scowl.

“Please, Herr Hauptmann,” he implored, “believe me! I was
not
going back to them. I was going home. I really was! To the Rhineland. I’ve told you all I know! I—”

Erik interrupted.

“When were you last in contact with the Werewolves?”

“Five days ago. On the twenty-fourth.”

“And they’re supposed to become active
after
we have overrun their positions?”

“Yes.”

“What is their first target?”

“I don’t know but—”

The “but” flew out without thought. Plewig stopped suddenly. He looked trapped. Scared. Erik stood up. He faced the German squarely.

“Well? Out with it!”

Plewig swallowed. It seemed difficult. He said:

“I do not know their first target, Herr Hauptmann.”

Erik glared at him.

“
But . . .
” he said significantly.

He had no choice. He cursed himself. He’d let his own damned mouth run away with him. So easy. And now he
had
to give them the last piece of important information he knew.

“But the
Führungsstab
—General Krueger’s command group”— he spoke slowly—“Sonderkampfgruppe Karl—has standing orders. One priority mission . . .”

He hesitated.

“Come on! What’s this ‘priority mission’?” Erik’s voice was harsh.

Plewig wet his lips.

“To . . . to kill . . . An assassination . . .”

“
Who?
”

“Your—Supreme Commander.”

“
Eisenhower,
” Don exclaimed. Somehow it became a whisper.

For a moment there was stunned silence in the room; then Erik resolutely strode to the big wall map behind the desk. Briskly he turned to Plewig.

“Plewig! Over here! Show me the position of Krueger’s camp.”

Plewig went to the map. He studied it. The symbols and markings were unfamiliar, but he oriented himself easily. He turned to Erik apologetically.

“I do not know their exact location, Herr Hauptmann, but it is somewhere in this little forest—here.”

He planted a blunt finger on the map.

Erik looked. At the desk Don exclaimed:

“Holy shit! It’s—”

He stopped short. Erik turned to him. He looked grave.

“I think we’d better take a ride. Right now!”

0832 hrs

They hustled Plewig from the building. They’d decided to take their informant along to Corps Forward CP—as a sort of ace in the hole, just in case they had trouble convincing the brass that his story was true; and there’d be time to get more information out of him on the way. They realized that the case was too big for them to handle by themselves. They had to have tactical aid. A lot of tactical aid!

Murphy had brought the jeep to the front, and they hurried Plewig through the little crowd of people already gathering at the jail.

Krauss, the workman repairing the bomb damage to the building, was mixing cement on a scarred and gritty board on the sidewalk. He doffed his leather cap when he saw the two CIC agents come from the door. He started to put it back on, when he saw Plewig. For a split second he froze; then he turned his face away, a face that suddenly had gone dark and ugly.

Don took the wheel and Plewig sat next to him, his right hand locked to the handle on the jeep’s side with a pair of handcuffs. Erik sat directly behind him.

As the jeep took off down the street, Krauss stared after it. Slowly he replaced his soiled leather cap on his head. He kicked the cement mixing board into the gutter—and walked rapidly away.

Reims, France

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces

0835 hrs

The French city of Reims was far more than just another checkpoint on the “Red Ball Express.” It was the site of SHAEF. Headquarters of General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

On a back street near the railway station stood a plain three-story building, the
College Moderne et Technique,
solidly built of red brick, its four sides surrounding an inner courtyard. A former technical school, with 1,500 boys pursuing an education, it used to teem with activity. It still did. But the constant hectic activity in the building, known to the staff officers as “the little red school-house,” was of a far more urgent and far-reaching nature and of far greater consequence than the wildest dreams of the wildest boys ever imagined.

The time was eight thirty-five on the morning of April 29, 1945. Vital policy conclusions were being reached, critical decisions were being made which would drastically affect the direction of the war effort.

The door to a former classroom on the second floor opened. A major appeared, a sheet of paper in his hand. He was just about to close the door, when a second officer stopped him. In low voices they discussed the paper. In the room behind them a briefing session was in progress. The voice of an officer came drifting through the half-open door:

“. . . all intelligence reports still point to it, sir. Last-stand German resistance is planned for the
Alpenfestung
—the National Redoubt area—here. If the Germans are allowed to consolidate their forces around some kind of Nazi nucleus, some rallying force, they could hold out for as long as two years! With a heavy toll of American lives. I would like to point out, sir, that it is this kind of overwhelming mountain terrain that has kept little Switzerland a mighty fortress through the centuries, free from attack, so that now she can remain neutral. . . . Munich may well be the key to the Redoubt. I strongly recommend we drive for that city as fast and in as great a strength as possible!”

Paramount issues. Command decisions. The war was in its eleventh hour.

But the final battle was yet to be fought.

On the pockmarked road to Iceberg Forward, three hundred miles to the east as the crow flies, across two war-ravaged nations, a U.S. Army jeep was speeding along.

Manacled to it was a minute cog in the Nazi war machine.

The Road to Iceberg Forward

0917 hrs

The village had been fire-bombed. Every house, every building gutted. Yawning, scorched shells casting their long, empty-eyed shadows over the uneven cobblestone street. Dead livestock sprawling grotesquely near still smoldering barns. The blackened crater of a disintegrated WH ammo dump . . .

A military convoy was passing through, the grinding noise of the heavy trucks echoing among the hollow brick carcasses.

Don thread-needled his jeep through the traffic. He stopped before an MP directing the flow of vehicles.

“Hey, buddy,” he shouted. “Iceberg Forward still in Schwartzenfeld?”

“Moved to Viechtach—0500,” the MP shouted back. He pointed. “Straight ahead. Couple of miles outa town you cross a bridge, then turn left. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks!” Don turned to Erik. “Dammit! That’s another fifty miles!”

It was a small stone bridge over a stream lined with trees and brush. It was blocked by an MP weapons carrier and an ambulance. Don brought the jeep to a halt. An MP came over.

“Sorry, sir,” he said. “It’ll be just a few minutes.”

“What’s up?” Don asked.

“Couple of guys.” He nodded back toward the stream. “In the river.”

Erik jumped out of the jeep.

“I’ll take a look,” he said.

A small group of silent GIs stood on the bank of the river. Erik joined them. Two MPs had waded into the stream. They were carrying the half-submerged body of a man toward the bank. One shoulder bobbed up out of the water. The sun glinted briefly on a pair of silver bars.

The MPs dragged the body onto the bank. An MP sergeant bent to examine it. The man’s throat had been cut. The raw wound in the pale, bloodless flesh gaped angrily. Erik walked over to the sergeant. The noncom looked up at him. His eyes were savage.

“Throat slit,” he said bitterly. “Clean as a stuck pig!”

He nodded toward a form on the ground covered with a blanket.

“The other one. Shot. In the belly.”

Erik looked away. The face of death is not to be stared at. The MP sergeant stood up. Erik turned to him. He fished out his ID.

“Sergeant, We’ve got to get to Iceberg Forward. Fast!”

“Yes, sir!” The sergeant shouted to an MP on the bridge.

“Hey, Wilson! Move the three-quarter-ton! Let that jeep through!”

Erik climbed back into the jeep. He averted his eyes from Plewig. He couldn’t look at him. Not now.

“GIs?” Don asked.

“Two of them.” Erik’s voice was grim. “Butchered!”

He forced himself to look at Plewig. The German sat stiffly. Ashen-faced, he stared straight ahead.

He knows, Erik thought savagely. The little bastard knows it’s the handiwork of his goddamned playmates!

“Let’s get out of here,” he snapped. His voice was harsh.

Don slammed the jeep into gear. The little vehicle leaped forward and careened across the cleared bridge. . . .

Viechtach

1029 hrs

The organized chaos surrounding the two plain three-story buildings on the outskirts of the little Bavarian town of Viechtach was most certainly a source of secret contempt for the few watching German civilians, used to the order and regimentation of the Third Reich. XII Corps Forward CP—Iceberg Forward—was in the final stages of moving in and setting up shop. The empty lot between the two buildings was crammed with trucks in the process of being unloaded, the grass churned up by the massive tires. Signs were going up identifying units; communication wires were being strung; GIs were milling everywhere. Incredibly, everything was accomplished in record time, and without losing a beat in the momentum of advance.