Target (22 page)

Their jeep could not.

They lost him.

Audi felt it was his fault. “He said he should have let the air out of the [Horch’s] tires. I told him that he did right to stay with the jeep. We might have had to walk home if the jeep had been stolen. He promised to find Schoenstein.” Several days later, the teen reported the car and Schoenstein at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) complex in Frankfurt. It was housed in and around the I. G. Farben building, one of the few in Frankfurt untouched by bombing. Schoenstein was in the Russian section.

“I hurried to Frankfurt, parked my jeep and knocked on the huge doors of the castle headquarters and residence of General Davidov, Chief of the Russian Compound.” Waiting, “I realized how stupid I was going alone into the den of the Russian bear. Only Audi and the Jewish underground knew where I was.”

The door opened. A major checked his credentials, admitted him to a foyer, and asked him to wait. After ten minutes, he was led up a spiral staircase to a large dining room with a huge mahogany table in its center. “Across the table already seated was General Davidov,” and next to him, a young woman translator (although Skubik, who spoke Russian, did not need one). “Standing behind the general were 24 Russian officers with various rank. All had bald shaven heads, no eyebrows and tan uniforms. Apparently they were NKVD officers who disguised themselves with wigs, etc., when in the field.”

The general had a “half smile on his plastic face.” Skubik returned the smile. They small-talked until Skubik finally said he was there to arrest “a criminal, Alfred Schoenstein.” Davidov said he did not know Schoenstein. Skubik said he had good information the general did. Davidov wanted to know his sources. “You don’t really expect me to tell you,” said Skubik. Then he brought up Patton.

“I asked him to tell me if he had heard of the rumor that his NKVD was ordered to kill [General Patton]. He stared at me. How dare I ask such a question? His answer was that the question was ridiculous. ‘Why should our government be involved in murdering a fellow comrade in arms?’ I knew instinctively that I had scored well with that question. His answer was evasive but it told me that he knew of the NKVD plot because he and his dogs were all NKVD. I looked squarely at the general. He blinked. His men didn’t. Their stone faced stares were intimidating. I decided to get back to the matter of Schoenstein.”

Apparently Audi had told him Davidov wanted the Horch. “Schoenstein is a criminal, a black market thief, wanted by [my government]. I know for a fact that you are negotiating with [Schoenstein] to buy Goering’s Horch.” Davidov again denied
knowing Schoenstein. Skubik persisted. “I am sure that your superiors in Moscow would not take kindly to your negotiating to buy a car stolen from the United States Government.... Give me Schoenstein and I will give you the Horch with official papers.”

At first, writes Skubik, Davidov glared at him. Skubik did not flinch. “Is it a deal?” Davidov suddenly smiled and signaled with his hand. One of the officers behind him abruptly left and went downstairs. Shortly, he returned with a surprised and sullen Schoenstein. “Thank you General,” said Skubik. He told Davidov the Horch was his and he would receive the official transfer papers in a few days. “I was glad to get out alive.” As they drove back, “I gave Schoenstein hell,” Skubik wrote, telling Schoenstein he would kill him if he tried to escape. When they returned, he turned him in to Lieutenant Gillespie with a report of his discussions with Davidov, including what had transpired about the Patton threat.
⁵

Just who was General Davidov
and why did Skubik confront him about Patton?

Skubik does not say much more about it than what I have written. He may have had more information than he discloses. His book sometimes gives that impression. It is not well organized, often omitting connections and explanations that an inquisitive reader instantly wants to know. But Skubik was not a professional writer. He was an old-school investigator, divining often by the gut. The facts, in this case, were on his side. Davidov, it turns out, was the head Soviet in the American Zone at the time. As such, he likely would have known about, if not been in charge of, any Soviet plot regarding Patton.

Not much is known about Davidov. As Skubik notes, he basically disappears not long after Patton’s accident and death.
¹
Russian researchers I hired found no mention of the general in Soviet and Russian reference works (although, interestingly, a Horch said to have been Goering’s is reportedly now in Russia).
²
But he is
positively identified in formerly classified documents from immediate post-war Germany.

At the time Skubik met him, Major General Alexander M. Davidov (sometimes written as “Davidoff” or “Davidow”), was the chief Soviet liaison officer for repatriation, meaning he headed Stalin’s effort to return all Soviets and Soviet-dominated displaced persons (DPs) to territory under his control. But in an equally, if not more important post, he was, as Skubik wrote, also head of NKVD operations in U.S.-occupied Germany. In effect, he was the top communist there. A formerly top secret document I found at the National Archives labels him a spymaster.
³
Prior to coming to Frankfurt, it says, he participated in “cleaning action... against the White Russians in 1936.” Undoubtedly these were assassinations. The White Russians were anti-communist Tsarist loyalists whom Stalin tirelessly sought to annihilate. After early intelligence work, it continues, he joined the Soviet military in June 1944 as a colonel, and, according to an article by a Samford (Alabama) University scholar,
⁴
arrived in Frankfurt as repatriation chief in August 1945.

Davidov, according to written sources, ruled with an iron hand. A top secret report on “Operation Bingo,” a U.S. intelligence surveillance of Davidov and his men, says an informer was so intimidated by him, he skipped a meeting Davidov ordered him by phone to attend for fear he had been found out and Davidov would kill him.
⁵
One of his top aides and operatives, a “Colonel Gavriloff,” according to a CIC report,
⁶
got drunk at a U.S.-Soviet gathering November 30—roughly two weeks before Patton’s fatal accident—and began threatening that the USSR was soon to defeat the U.S. in war. “What do you think I am over here for?” the report quotes him as saying, “Just the repatriation of Russian DPs? No. I have a much more important and bigger job than that... I
am a Secret Intelligence Investigator.” To prove it, he ripped open his shirt to show a Russian Eagle tattooed on his chest—“the insignia of the Russian Intelligence Corps.” Grabbing a Seventh Army cavalry captain (one of two signing the report), he said, “in a rather venomous way,” that should the captain “work against Russia, or be in his way, he would eliminate him.”

At this particular time, it was not the captain who was threatening Russia, but General Patton.

Interestingly—or suspiciously—according to two Soviet officer surveillance reports, the same Gavriloff and his boss, General Davidov, received authorization—and thus vital traveling papers—from USFET (United States Forces European Theater) to be in the Mannheim-Heidelberg area for unspecified purposes “between 9 and 19 December 1945.” Patton was injured on December 9 in Mannheim and died in Heidelberg on December 21. The report says, “Gen. Davidow [apparently a mistake in the U.S. agent’s spelling of Davidov] visited Col. Gavriloff 12 December 1945 at Heidelberg. On the same date both... departed for an unknown destination.”
⁷
Mannheim and Heidelberg, according to the reports, were “centers or cells of [Soviet] political and Secret Service activities.”

Coincidence?

Were they involved in Patton’s accident or death? Was Gavriloff, or even Davidov, Bazata’s “Pole”?

It is, of course, impossible to tell from such circumstantial evidence. But in concert with other apparent coincidences and enigmas surrounding Patton’s death, it is suspicious enough to warrant further investigation. Unfortunately, given the buried, if not hidden, status of documents which might shed further light, especially their probable dispersion in largely inaccessible Russian archives, such investigation led to a dead end.

On February 22, 1946, according to more documents
⁸
—two months after Patton’s death—a group of Davidov’s spies was arrested in the American Zone disguised as U.S. Army soldiers. They had fake identification and a stolen U.S. jeep. One of the arrested was, as Bazata calls his nefarious associate, a Pole. Shortly thereafter, a second such group was also arrested. The group contained two Polish spies—the point being that Poles—such as the one Bazata says was with him at Patton’s accident and the pilot who attacked Patton—were definitely working with and for the Russians who now had complete control of Poland. Davidov complained vigorously about the detentions of these agents, a brazen move on his part given the fact that they had been caught redhanded and were compounding the problem with lies and at least one escape attempt, according to the records. But Davidov persisted, eventually enlarging the dispute to include his anger over refusals by American officials to repatriate disputed displaced persons—one of the charges against Patton—and “dissemination of rumors about the inevitability of the Western Power-USSR war,” another of the things Patton, while he was alive, had been saying. The Russians pretended to be shocked but Davidov’s own Colonel Gavriloff had spouted the same thing—to the horror of his comrades—when drunk.

The dispute, according to the documents, went all the way to Washington. Officials there, incredible as it seems, sided not with their own men in the field, but with Davidov. The documents given to me were missing redacted pages and were sent badly copied with words and lines cut off so there may be more to the story than I have been able to extract. But what they indicate is that rulings unfavorable to Davidov by local officers were overturned at the highest levels, and U.S. occupation officials were given a stern warning to stop the rumors—at least from the American
side. “The dissemination of rumors as to the inevitability of the Western Powers [word or words missing] war are of deep concern,” the document states. “Such actions are prejudicial to the good relations [word or words missing] between our two countries. Steps will be undertaken to take countermeasures [word or words missing].”
⁹
Davidov, it appears, was being catered to by a servile Washington that, in the interests of keeping peace with the Soviets at all costs, did not want him riled.

However, the most interesting information about Davidov was in a declassified file bearing Skubik’s name recently sent over to the archives from Ft. Meade, Maryland, one of the main CIC repositories.
¹⁰
Ft. Meade had repeatedly responded to my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for any documents regarding Skubik by saying they had conducted a thorough search and could find nothing. Now, in their handovers to the archives, a Skubik document suddenly appears? So much for public access, as FOIA supposedly guarantees. And what a quizzical document the file is—some twelve pages designated “NW26959” by the archives but with only five pages of any substance. The rest of the pages had been replaced with what was labeled a “Top Secret Document Replacement Sheet.” The sheet contained long numbers and dates and other indecipherable (at least to me) information presumably with which those authorized could maybe find what had been removed—if it still existed.

The few pages with any substance were meager. But one, dated 29 Dec. 1945, discusses Davidov’s interest in acquiring a Horch—this one ironically in Bad Nauheim, Patton’s last residence. It confirms at least Davidov’s interest in rare cars.
^ag
Another page is an undated CIC letter discussing Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian
nationalist who was the first to tell Skubik about the Patton plot. It says while most think Bandera is working for the Soviets, this should not be believed. But the most intriguing aspect of this newly declassified file is the fact that several of the removed top secret pages clearly involve Skubik, who is named in the retrieval information. And at least one of the lifted pages includes Davidov’s name with Skubik’s. The two are linked. Nowhere have I been able to find reports Skubik claims to have made, both verbally and in writing, on what Bandera, Smal-Stocki, and General Shandruk told him, let alone his confrontation with Davidov. Like the reports on Patton’s accident, Skubik’s reports about Patton have disappeared. Could these removed pages be those reports? Could they be pages even more explosive?