“Yeah,” Cronley said, nodding. “But what the hell is this?”
He pushed aside the stacks of banknotes. In the middle sat a sack made of crimson velour that Cronley thought could pass as the same material as heavy drapery. It had red-and-black drawstrings with tassels that could be drapery cording. He tugged the sack upright and was surprised at its bulk. He figured that the contents had to weigh at least ten pounds.
He then pulled at the edge of the velour fabric, loosening the drawstrings. The sack slowly opened.
Inside, he found smaller flapped pouches of a black velour, at least twenty of them, each clearly containing an object more or less thumb-sized.
He picked up one, held it over his open palm, and shook the pouch until the flap opened.
“I’ll be damned.”
“What is it?” Major Lomax said, looking at the heavy ring of gold Cronley rolled in his palm. “A skull ring? What’s the significance of that?”
* * *
—
A pair of M8 light armored cars moved into position—one to lead, one to bring up the rear—as Cronley lifted the last of the four black duffel bags into the back of the jeep that Father McKenna had brought.
“I’ll drive,” Cronley said as he moved in behind the steering wheel.
He signaled the driver of the lead M8 to move out. The trooper at the .50 caliber Browning braced himself as the six-wheeled armored car began rolling.
Serov nimbly jumped up on the jeep’s rear bumper and hopped in back with the duffels. Father McKenna stepped into the front passenger seat just as Cronley revved the engine and dumped the clutch. The jeep lurched forward.
“Where to?” the priest said, his voice raised to be heard over the whine of the engine.
“First, the Nazis who worked for Wynne on the farm. Then maybe—probably—Burgdorf and von Dietelburg. They had the briefcases of cash when we caught them. They have to know what happened to the rest of the goddamn death’s-head rings, if you’ll pardon my French, padre.” He paused, then added, “Or they don’t. Or won’t say. Only thing I know right damn now—and this is not to be disseminated—is that I don’t know. But I want the others to come looking. And when they do, we’ll be waiting. Our work is not done.”
SIX MONTHS LATER
[TWO]
The International Military Tribunal
Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
23 October 1946
Captain James D. Cronley Jr., Directorate of Central Intelligence, entered the gymnasium through its main double steel doors. The overhead lighting of the enormous space, where only a week earlier the prison guards played basketball games on a regular basis, was significantly less bright than usual.
Ahead, in the middle of the wooden floor, stood three gallows—two for continuous operation, the third as a backup—that had been hastily erected. Their ominous silhouettes in the dimmed light stood spare and stark: wooden scaffolds painted black, each with thirteen steps leading up to a platform. Above the platform, suspended by a pair of posts, was a crossbeam dangling a thick rope with a four-coil “cowboy” noose fashioned at its end. The gallows were designed for a five-foot drop through a trapdoor in the platform floor. Wood panels painted black covered the front three sides below the platform, shielding the drop area from view, and a dark canvas curtain covered the fourth on the back side.
* * *
—
Cronley quickly started across the gymnasium floor, coming to a stop at the rear of more than twenty people, standing somber and silent, before the gallows.
“Sorry I’m late, Colonel,” he said, softly.
“Sergeant Woods, with his usual efficiency, was about to start without you,” Colonel Mortimer Cohen, U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps, said drily.
Even in silhouette, Cronley could easily recognize the hangman, U.S. Army Master Sergeant John C. Woods. The thirty-five-year-old Kansas native was damn-near infamous. He always wore a dirty and wrinkled uniform, its master sergeant stripes barely attached with a single thread stitch at the corners. He shaved irregulary and never shined his scuffed boots. Cronley, once in passing, had what he considered the misfortune of being introduced to him—the moment made all the more memorable by Woods’s crooked yellow teeth and a halitosis that almost triggered Cronley’s gag reflex.
Woods bragged that he got away with flaunting anything he wanted because, he said with a foul grin, “I’m the only hangman in the European Theater.”
Colonel Cohen told Cronley, “But you haven’t missed the grand finale, for want of a better expression. Or perhaps that one is fitting. Burgdorf and von Dietelberg are scheduled as the last two today.”