“To change the subject, where are you going to start?” Jackson asked.
“Specifically?”
Jackson nodded.
“You remember when Colonel Cohen said that if Odessa was behind the break, he thought they were trying to free somebody besides von Dietelburg and Burgdorf?”
“I do.”
“Well, I think I know who they were after.”
“Who?”
“Standartenführer Oskar Müller and SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter. I’m going to start with them.”
“Who are they?” Ginger asked.
Cronley flashed her an impatient look.
Jackson picked up on it.
“Get used to that, Cronley. If we’re going to hide Ginger in plain sight, the more she knows about everything, the better. I suggest you take that to heart.”
Ginger looked very pleased.
Cronley had a look of resignation, then nodded.
“Toward the end of the war, my love,” he said, “when it looked as if the German rocket facility at Peenemünde was about to be captur
ed by either the Russians or the Americans—we ultimately took it—Brigadeführer Heimstadter and Standartenführer Müller decided the best way to make sure that the thousand-odd slave workers there didn’t tell either the Reds or the Amis what Wernher von Braun and his friends had been up to was to kill them. First, they made the slave workers dig an enormous hole—a mass grave. Then, until the bullets ran out, the Germans lined them up at the edge of the grave and shot them in the back of the head. They fell into the hole. When bullets ran out, the Germans pushed them into the grave alive, then buried them with a bulldozer.”
“My God!” Ginger said.
“Really bad Nazis. Presuming the break was staged by Odessa, what Cohen thinks—and I agree—is that Odessa wanted Heimstadter and Müller but then learned that von Dietelburg and Burgdorf were in the prison and sprung those two bastards instead. Which confirms that von Dietelburg and Burgdorf are more important to Odessa than just about anyone else.”
Cronley looked around the table, then added, “This afternoon, I’m going to the prison and shake up Heimstadter and Müller a little before I really start talking to them, which I will do immediately on my return from Strasbourg tomorrow.”
“You’re going where?” Ginger asked.
“We are going to Strasbourg to see what Colonel Jean-Paul Fortin knows, or has heard, or can find out for me, about the prison break. We’ll take Father McGrath and, of course, the baby and the nurse.”
“And bodyguards?” Jackson asked.
“Yes, sir. We’ll need another car. Everyone won’t fit in the Horch. Max Ostrowski will drive the other car. That’s enough security.”
“Okay,” Jackson said. “Let me know what Fortin comes up with. And now I’m going to have to leave you.”
[TWO]
Farber Palast
Stein, near Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1505 15 April 1946
There were three U.S. Army staff cars parked in a line at the stairs to the palace when Cronley drove up in the Horch convertible sedan.
Ginger Moriarty, who was holding Baby Bruce, stood on the steps with Father J-for-Jack McGrath and Tiny Dunwiddie.