The Second Objective

22

Supreme Allied Headquarters, Versailles

DECEMBER 18, 1:00 P.M.

The news from Karl Schmidt’s interrogation finally arrived by telex as General Eisenhower finished his strategy meeting in the Map Room. His chief of Counter Intelligence hurried in the dispatch after confirming the contents twice with First Army. Eisenhower scanned the report, that as many as eighty German commandos in American uniform targeting him for assassination might be in Paris, with characteristic calm.

“Just another crazy-ass rumor,” he said, handing the pages back.

He was the only officer at Allied Headquarters who reacted that way. Over Eisenhower’s protests, his chief of security ordered that the general’s quarters be relocated immediately from a comfortable nearby villa into the Grand Trianon Palace in the Versailles compound. Ike relished what little privacy he had, and when he was off the clock, wanted to be left alone. His staff believed the reason for that was Ike’s ongoing affair with his British aide-de-camp, a WAC lieutenant and former fashion model named Kay Summersby. When Eisenhower refused to make the move, his chief of staff told him that when his safety was involved, he had to follow orders like any other soldier. By the end of the day, America’s only five-star general, commander of the entire Allied theater of war in Europe, had become, in effect, a prisoner of his own forces.

Within twenty-four hours, the Trianon Palace was transformed into a fortress. Two walls of thick barbed wire went up around the perimeter. Tanks and machine gun emplacements were installed at hundred-yard intervals around the compound. Roadblocks were set up for miles in every direction, and an elaborate new pass system was installed overnight. A platoon of MPs was added to the general’s personal security detail, and he would be driven in an armored sedan with tinted windows, never using the same route twice. Accustomed to taking long, solitary walks through the gardens of Versailles, Eisenhower was confined to the building with the drapes closed, in case snipers had worked their way within range, while soldiers patrolled the grounds. Ike’s protests that these men could better serve the war effort on the front lines were ignored.

“This must be what it feels like to be president,” grumbled Eisenhower to a member of his staff.

By nightfall plainclothes Army Counter Intelligence officers in Paris had staked out the Café de le Paix, the restaurant Schmidt had identified as the assassins’ rallying point. Machine guns were nested in nearby alleys. Otto Skorzeny’s photograph was plastered to walls and lampposts throughout the city. Neighborhood watches organized patrols looking for disguised German agents. Any suspicious-looking GI who wandered into the area was detained and questioned.

Security officers tried using human bait to draw the killers into the open. One of Eisenhower’s staff officers, Lieutenant Colonel Baldwin Smith, who bore a striking resemblance to his balding commander, volunteered to move into Eisenhower’s vacated villa. For the next few days he dressed in one of the general’s uniforms and was driven back and forth in the general’s Cadillac along his normal travel routes. Eisenhower himself was neither asked nor told about the substitution.

The fallout from Lieutenant Schmidt’s confession affected Allied soldiers all along the chain of command. Although he gave the correct password at a checkpoint, American General Bruce Clarke spent six hours in custody when an overeager MP decided that the general’s placing of the Chicago Cubs in the American League constituted proof he was a German spy. Driving back to his own headquarters, General Omar Bradley was stopped half a dozen times and grilled on Midwestern geography, the Notre Dame football team, and the infield of the St. Louis Cardinals.

British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, just arriving in Belgium from Holland, was waved down at an American roadblock near Malmédy. As a security precaution, all rank and insignia had been removed from his jeep, which aroused suspicion. Furious at having his authority questioned, particularly by an American, the imperious Montgomery ordered his chauffeur to drive on in the middle of the conversation. MPs responded by shooting out his tires, giving chase, and relieving Montgomery of his sidearm. They held the war’s highest-ranking British officer in custody for three hours, until a Canadian colonel identified the apoplectic Montgomery. Exasperated by Monty’s habitual grandstanding, Eisenhower reportedly relished hearing about his ordeal in detail.

Soldiers manning the checkpoints were no longer satisfied with passwords, and as the days wore on, their interrogations grew increasingly elaborate. Queries about sports, comic strips, and current Hollywood gossip supplied the most frequent stumpers. Some inventive MPs tried to trip up the putative assassins by demanding they recite poems filled with r’s or w’s, notoriously difficult for native Germans. “Round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran” was a favorite.

For all the disruption they caused, these precautions were about to pay tangible dividends.

The French Border

DECEMBER 18, 9:00 P.M.

After driving all afternoon, Earl Grannit and Ole Carlson entered France at a heavily guarded crossing just north of the town of Givet. Grannit identified himself to MPs running the post and made sure they’d received the bulletin about Skorzeny’s commandos. They showed him that it had been widely circulated and that more stringent controls had been imposed. Traffic was backed up on the Belgian side of the border for a quarter of a mile.

Before pushing on for Reims, Grannit and Carlson were shown to the mess hall next door for a quick meal. Waiting for their food, they drank coffee by a window looking out on the post’s supply depot on the French side of the line.

“You got a wife, Earl?”

“What do you want to know for?”

“I don’t know, I just never asked you.”

“I had one,” said Grannit.

Carlson waited. “That’s it?”

“Yup.”

“What did your dad do?”

“He owned a gas station,” said Grannit.

“Any brothers or sisters?”

“What is this, the third degree?”

“I’m just making conversation.”

“I had a sister.” Grannit spotted something out the window. “You got your binoculars with you?”

Carlson handed them over. Grannit focused them on an American jeep at a gas pump in the supply depot a quarter of a mile away. Two MPs stood near the jeep, one of them dispensing gas into the tank. From this distance and angle he couldn’t make out any unit numbers on the jeep.

“Go ask at the post if a couple of MPs came across in the last hour.”

“You got it.”

Carlson immediately went next door to the border command office.

Grannit watched the MPs at the gas pump. He scanned the vehicle, looking for details that reminded him of Schmidt’s jeep. Nothing jumped out. Carlson returned a few moments later.

“They came through about twenty minutes ago,” said Carlson. “They had the password and SHAEF passes-”

“Did they check the spelling?”

“He said they had that detail from our bulletin, and that ‘headquarters’ was spelled correctly. They said they were from SHAEF, working security on the Skorzeny case.”

“So they knew about it, mentioned it before they were asked.”

“That’s what he said.”

Grannit saw a third MP returning to join the others at the jeep in the yard. “Anyway, there’s three of them.”

“You thought it might be our guys?”

“No, Ole, I thought it was Eleanor Roosevelt,” said Grannit, lowering the glasses.

“You would’ve noticed her teeth,” said Carlson. “Even at this distance.”

Something caught Grannit’s eye just as the binoculars came down, and he drew them back up. A fourth MP came out of a side building and climbed into the jeep.

“Hang on, shit, there’s four of them.”

“But their passes were good.”

“Hold ’em up at the gate, we’ll check ourselves. Go now.”

Carlson hurried back to the post. Grannit hustled out the back of the mess hall into the yard and saw the jeep pull away from the gas pumps. It headed for the nearest exit, an open gate in a chain-link fence a hundred yards away. Heading after them, Grannit broke into a trot.

“Hurry up, Ole,” he said.

As the jeep approached the gate, Grannit saw an MP in the guard house pick up a phone. He stepped outside and rolled the gate shut as the jeep got close. The MP leaned over to say something to the men inside.

The jeep slammed into reverse, spun around, and headed back across the yard toward another exit, quickly reaching top speed. The MP ran after it. Grannit pulled his pistol.

“Hey! Hey!”

The jeep careened straight at Grannit. He lowered the pistol, and emptied the clip. Shots cracked the windscreen and side mirror, but the jeep steered away from him. Ole and MPs from the border post ran out of the main building with guns drawn and angled toward the gate across the yard. A machine gun on top of the post opened up, chasing the jeep with bullets across the yard but not connecting.

With no time to close the rolling gate at the far exit, two guards threw down a line of necklace mines across the opening. The jeep accelerated as it reached the open gate and hit the mines at fifty miles an hour. The mines detonated, blowing off the front tires. The full, oversized gas tank ignited in a fireball, flipping the jeep into the air. It landed upside down, enveloped in flames.

All four men aboard, including their squad leader SS Unterstürmführer Gerhard Bremer, died instantly.