“This is a lot to consider, out of the blue,” she said.
“I need a yes or no, please. Time is of the essence.”
“Okay,” she said after a moment. “I mean, yes.”
“Thank you,” Jackson said, and made eye contact with Cronley. “You have any problems with any of this, Jim?”
“No, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Okay. Hand the baby to Father Jack. Then eat your breakfast. Quickly.”
Jackson looked at his wristwatch.
“A car will be at the door in eighteen minutes. Let’s go, Ken.”
[SIX]
Justizpalast
Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0735 15 April 1946
The Palace of Justice, which housed the War Crimes Tribunal, didn’t look at all like the palaces on picture postcards. It was a collection of plain four-story stucco buildings with two-story-high red-roofed attics.
The Compound was surrounded by fences topped with concertina barbed wire and guarded by soldiers wearing shoulder insignias of the 1st Infantry Division. The guards’ web belts and the leather pistol holsters attached to them were white. They wore white plastic helmet liners and highly polished combat boots, into which their trousers were “bloused.”
Cronley’s car was passed into the Compound without trouble after Max Ostrowski, who was driving, flashed his credentials at the sergeant in charge of the striped-pole barrier across the road.
And then they reached the building that housed the Office of the Chief United States Prosecutor. Getting into the building required that they each show identification. There, the trouble began.
Ginger had no identification besides her passport. She had thrown her Military Dependent identification card atop her husband’s casket as it was lowered into the ground.
After a good fifteen minutes, Kenneth Brewster marched out of the building. Following him was a motherly looking woman in her thirties, a nurse, upon whose uniform gleamed the silver oak leaves of a lieutenant colonel.
“What’s the holdup?” Brewster demanded, somewhat imperiously, and then without waiting for a reply gestured for the nurse to go to Ginger, who now was holding the baby.
She handed over Baby Bruce more than a little reluctantly, then everyone walked into the building, where they found Justice Jackson waiting for them.
Jackson led them to his conference room door, then said, “Ken, put someone on your desk to make sure we’re not disturbed for any, repeat, any reason.”
“Yes, Mr. Justice.”
* * *
—
“Pencil sharpened, Mrs. Rogers?” Jackson asked.
Mrs. Lorraine Rogers, a widow in her early fifties, wore a conservative gray sweater and dark woolen skirt. Her shoulder-length red hair, brushed tight against the scalp, had been pulled into a ponytail.
“Yes, Mr. Justice,” she said as she uncovered her Stenotype machine.
“Okay, let’s get started. This meeting of the Tribunal Prison Escape Committee is convened as of seven forty-five on the morning of April fifteenth, 1946, in the office of the U.S. Prosecutor in the International Tribunal Compound in Nuremberg, Germany. All proceedings, including the transcript of proceedings, will be classified Top Secret–Presidential.
“Present are the undersigned: Mr. Kenneth Brewster of my office; Colonel Mortimer S. Cohen, chief of U.S. Counterintelligence for the Tribunal; Colonel James T. Rasberry, commanding officer of the Twenty-sixth Infantry Regiment; and Captains James D. Cronley Jr., Thomas Winters, and Chauncey Dunwiddie of the Directorate of Central Intelligence. Also present are: Father Jack McGrath, Max Ostrowski of the DCI, Mrs. Virginia Moriarty, and others selected by Captain Cronley to assist in the recapture of the escaped prisoners—to wit, former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg and SS-Generalmajor Wilhelm Burgdorf.
“Colonel Cohen, will you please recount what happened here on or about April fifth of this year?”