A Gathering of Spies (32 page)

Admiral Wilhelm Canaris emerged from the backseat of the Mercedes without waiting for his door to be opened. He wore an unseasonable overcoat, brown, with a black suit underneath. As Canaris stepped out of the car, Beck caught a glimpse of a dog curled up at the base of the leather seats—brown on black, matching the overcoat and the suit—looking wistfully after its master.

Beck saluted.

“
Herr
Admiral,” he said, “welcome to Cecilienhof. We are honored to receive you.”

Canaris looked at him with undisguised distaste. “Seppl is hungry,” he said after a moment.

“I will have the cook bring some beefsteak,
Herr
Admiral. To your room …?”

“Of course,” Canaris said. He whistled sharply; the dog slipped nimbly from the backseat and came to stand beside him.

They walked into Cecilienhof, Beck in the lead, Canaris and the dog slightly behind.

“How goes the interrogation?” Canaris asked. He was opening a vial of pills as they walked.

“I am afraid it goes poorly,
Herr
Admiral.”

“In what way?”

“Winterbotham tells us little that we do not already know.”

“Is he withholding information, do you believe?”

“
Herr
Admiral, he is most definitely withholding information.”

Canaris thumbed two pills into his mouth. He dry-swallowed them, closed the vial, and returned it to his pocket. “Then coercion is called for,” he said.

“Unfortunately, he seems to be aware of standard interrogation methods,
Herr
Admiral. He took the liberty of enumerating them for me earlier this evening.”

“The
Führer
has taken a personal interest in this case,” Canaris said. “He is anxious for information on the invasion—sooner rather than later.”

“I understand,
Herr
Admiral, and await your guidance.”

“The man's wife is here?”

“She is.”

“We may be forced to use her earlier than we had wished,” Canaris said. “I had hoped to save the woman as a last resort, but we must have an answer of some kind for the
Führer
within the next few days.”

“I believe that conventional methods may still be effective,
Herr
Admiral. But since he is aware of them, they will take longer than usual.”

“That is time that we do not have. Until now,
Herr
Beck, you have maintained the illusion of civility?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And yet you are certain that the man is withholding information.”

“Quite certain,
Herr
Admiral.”

“I will consider the matter and suggest a course of action in the morning.”

The
burr
of a motorcycle caught Beck's ear. He turned his head in time to see the vehicle pass a hall window in the settling dusk. After a moment, he heard the mansion's front door open, and then the pounding of footsteps down the corridor behind them.

“
Herr
Admiral!” a man called.

The messenger reached them and saluted, breathing hard. He opened a pouch under his arm and withdrew an envelope.

Canaris accepted the envelope without a word. He and Beck began to walk again as he jimmied open the flap and removed a single sheet of paper.

“Our agent in England has managed to send us a warning,” he said after a moment. “Professor Winterbotham is still in the employ of the British.”

Beck nodded.

“She suggests an immediate execution,” Canaris said.

“I am not surprised,
Herr
Admiral. As I said, he has been less than cooperative.”

“A shame. The
Führer
was hoping for results with this one.”

“Perhaps the man can still be of use, Admiral. If we plan to execute him in any case, our hands are not tied during the interrogation. Give me permission to use my own methods and I guarantee you,
Herr
Admiral, that I will secure every bit of information the man possesses—within whatever time schedule you allow.”

Canaris looked up. “You enjoy your work,” he said after a moment, “do you not,
Herr
Beck?”

“I do,” Beck answered.

“I am sure that you are. skilled in your own fashion. But this man will not give in to the threat of pain. If he were that simple, the British would never have sent him.”

“What do you suggest,
Herr
Admiral?”

Canaris looked at the letter in his hand again. He sighed. “The wife, of course,” he said. “I suggest the wife.”

21

RASTENBURG, GERMANY

The
Wolfsschanze
, set in a gloomy, thickly wooded corner of East Prussia, did not present an inviting façade.

Three concentric rings of minefields, pillboxes, and electrified barbed-wire fencing surrounded a dun-colored cluster of reinforced barracks. On this particular evening at the end of July, the sky and the forest had attained matching shades of gray.

Reichsleiter
Heinrich Himmler passed through the multiple perimeters, passed through three separate security checks, left his car, and was escorted down a damp concrete staircase to the steel-banded door of an underground bunker. He surrendered his firearm, listened as he was announced, and walked through the door.

“
Mein Führer
,” he said. “
Heil
Hitler!”

Adolf Hitler looked up from one end of a black marble table, where he had been bent over a map. He straightened, gesturing that Himmler should enter.

“My friend,” he said. “Come in. I have news.”

Himmler selected a chair at the end of the table, near Hitler. Both men sat. The
Führer
, Himmler thought, looked fatigued. His skin was pale, nearly translucent, and tinted a strange shade of yellow. His eyes were murky and half-lidded above dark smudges of exhaustion.

He smiled wearily. “Il Duce has resigned,” he said. “Badoglio, our most bitter enemy, has taken over the government.”

Himmler stared at him.

“I cannot believe it,” he said after a moment.

“No?”

“It is not possible.”

“No? I could not believe it myself. And yet it is true.”

They sat in silence, then, as Himmler absorbed what he had been told. Mussolini had been forced from power; and so Italy would soon throw its lot in with the Allies. Militarily, of course, the significance would be negligible. The Italians were cowards and incompetents, and if they helped the Allies as much as they had helped the Germans, there would be no cause for concern. But politically—psychologically—if the Italians could lose patience with fascism, if their citizens could rise up and depose their leader and demand an end to the war, then could not the Germans do the same? Might this not presage a collapse of the Third Reich from within, even as its every flank was besieged from without?

Hitler, following his own dark line of thought, stared down at the glistening black marble before him. At length, he stirred and said: “It is not as bad as it may seem.”

“No,” Himmler agreed eagerly, and waited to be told why.

“Tomorrow I will send a man with orders for the commander of the Third Panzergrenadier Division. I will instruct him to drive into Rome with a special detail. We will arrest the entire government. We will pave the way for another coup. Italy is not lost yet.”

Himmler nodded.

“We must secure the Alpine passes,” Hitler said. “We cannot allow the Allies to have access to Germany's southern flank.”

“Yes,
mein Führer
.”

“We cannot shirk our duty,” Hitler said, a bit shrilly. “Not now. The task cannot be left to another generation. The voice of history beckons us, my friend. We must rise to the challenge.”

“We will be victorious,” Himmler said.

Inside, however, he felt less confident. There had been a time, mere months before—was it really possible?—when Germany had seemed poised to conquer the entire world. Europe had fallen; the British had been on the verge of capitulating; the Russians had been ripe for a stab in the back. And now, within the space of a few short months, it all had gone sour. Before the disaster of Stalingrad, Germany had been engaged in a devastating, three-year offensive. Now, no matter how she tried, she could not recapture the initiative. At the start of July, five hundred thousand troops with seventeen panzer divisions had pushed against the Soviets in a last desperate effort, only to be thoroughly routed.

Hitler, rubbing at his eyes, looked as if he bore the entire weight of his military's failure on his own shoulders.

“I am faced with bad news from other quarters as well,” he said after a moment. “Agent V Thirteen Fifty-three, whom your organization seems to consider of such value, failed to honor her
treff
. And the British traitor, even now at Cecilienhof, is offering considerably less assistance than I had hoped. He is almost certainly a double agent.”

“Canaris is in charge of the interrogation?” Himmler asked.

“He is. And that is the other reason I have asked you here today,
Herr Reichsleiter
. Your man Hagen, representing the SS in this matter, was killed in the line of duty, correct?”

“Unfortunately, yes. He was a valued soldier of the Reich.”

“I do not trust the good admiral to handle this matter alone.”

“I think it likely,
mein Führer
, that I shall soon have the evidence we require to depose the admiral. My agents are working on the matter even as we speak.”

Hitler nodded. “I cannot worry too much about Canaris right now; my attention is required elsewhere. The invasion, of course, is coming. But the invasion will be repelled. We will throw them back into the sea.”

“I have no doubt of it,
mein Führer
.”

“
Then
what will the Italians say?” Hitler demanded. “Will they abandon us
then
? I think not! And what will Canaris say, I wonder, when he sees that we shall be victorious after all?”

“He will be speechless,” Himmler predicted.

“After we have thrown them into the sea,” Hitler said, “we will attack,
Herr Reichsleiter
. We will smite them a blow without parallel in history. We will batter them without mercy—nothing so civilized as an invasion! We will throw death at them from across the ocean! We will have rockets! We will have bombs that split the atom! We are on the cusp,
Herr Reichsleiter
, on the
very cusp
of achieving these technologies! We will yet have victory! We will snatch it from the very jaws of defeat!”

“It will be glorious,” Himmler said.

“I welcome the invasion,” Hitler announced, and stood with such sudden force that his chair toppled behind him. “I welcome it,” he said, stalking around the table. “But we must know
where
. We must know
when
. The British traitor must be forced to talk.”

“I understand.”

“I charge you to go to Cecilienhof yourself,
Herr Reichsleiter
, and take control of the interrogation. The admiral does not possess sufficient mettle, nor sufficient loyalty, to conduct this type of operation.”

“Yes,
mein Führer
.”

“Whatever the man knows, you will find out and report directly to me.”

“Yes,
mein Führer
”

“I trust you, my friend, to see this most important matter to a satisfactory conclusion. I put my faith, and the future of noble Germany herself, in your hands.”

Himmler stood and saluted, his eyes shining.

“I shall not fail you,
mein Führer
,” he promised.

POTSDAM

Winterbotham was surprised to see that the vaunted Wilhelm Canaris—the head of Hitler's
Abwehr
, one of the most senior officers in the Nazi organization, and the archenemy of Taylor and his superiors at Operation Double Cross—stood a mere five foot five inches tall.

His hair was gray and thinning, his face sallow, his posture stooped. He wore a dark business suit that emphasized his weak, rounded shoulders. His eyes, which may once have been sharp, now possessed the haze that comes with too much dependence on chemicals, or alcohol, or both. And he smelled, rather strongly, of dog.

But Beck leapt to his feet when the little admiral entered the conference room, and saluted energetically.

“
Herr
Admiral Canaris!” he cried. “
Heil
Hitler!”

The Admiral seemed momentarily taken aback. Then he nodded, and waved Beck back into his chair. He came more fully into the room. Two guards, carbines in hand, entered behind him. One immediately slapped at a mosquito on his neck.

Winterbotham, sitting beside Beck at the conference table, half stood when Canaris had entered the room. Now he sat again, without waiting for permission.

“Professor Winterbotham,” Canaris said. His English, although good, was far less polished than Beck's. “It is an honor to make your acquaintance.”

Winterbotham, looking at him evenly, said nothing.

Canaris frowned. After a moment, he approached the conference table and sat, somewhat prissily. He removed a pair of spectacles from his breast pocket, polished them on his sleeve, and set them on the bridge of his nose.

“You are distressed, no doubt, by the continuing failure of your wife to arrive,” Canaris said. “I cannot blame you for that. But I have the pleasure of informing you, sir, that she is now at Cecilienhof.”

“My wife is here?”

“She arrived today.”

“I demand to see her immediately.”

“Yes, so I expected,” Canaris said. “Yes …”

Beck pushed a thin sheaf of papers across the table. Canaris reached for his breast pocket again before realizing that he was already wearing his spectacles. He began to flip through the file, his eyebrows climbing higher on his forehead as he read.

“Hm,” he said. “Yes. Hm.”

Winterbotham watched, waiting.