A Gathering of Spies (6 page)

Except, perhaps, from Fritz.

She thought about Fritz. He was stationed in England; she knew his address there. She had wrangled it from Hagen shortly after arriving in New York. Hagen, she knew, had bent his own rules by giving her the information; but then, Hagen had always been fond of her. He had sent the address along with an admonishment: not to contact Fritz unless she could contrive no other method of reaching her spymasters.

When she had started spying again, after taking work at the Kearny plant, she had sent her intelligence directly to Fritz so he could wire it on to Berlin. She trusted Fritz. They had trained together under Hagen, in Hamburg, so long before. They also had been lovers, but at this point that was incidental. They both were Hagen's agents, and so both had nothing to do with the incompetent
Abwehr
—that was what mattered now.

If she could get to Fritz, he could get in touch with Hamburg.

But getting to Fritz would not be easy.

Still, the thought made her feel a bit more at peace. The odds were against her, but she was not completely alone. She would find Fritz, and then they would be in this together.

She decided, eventually, that it was a great blessing, finding the letter. Yes, it might get her killed. But it would also force her to find courage. It would allow her to break the pattern she had fallen into, the safe but dull pattern of domestic life.

There had been some black days spent as Catherine Danielson Carter. Days filled with monotony, self-doubt, and—until she had put her foot down—unwanted attentions.

She had gone so deeply undercover, so suddenly, that she had not even informed her own spymasters of her plans. Hagen, she realized, would have no way of knowing about the opportunity onto which she had stumbled; and she, ironically, could not risk losing the opportunity by informing him of it—she never knew for certain that the American censors had not discovered her.

Or perhaps that was only a rationalization.

Who was to say, she'd begun to wonder with the passage of years, that she hadn't simply lost her nerve?

She'd watched the unfolding drama in Europe playing out from a safe distance, after all, in banner newspaper headlines. The coup of the Rhineland; the
Anschluss
of Austria; the invasion of Poland, and war; then Pearl Harbor and America's entrance into the conflict. When the
Abwehr
agents in New York had been rounded up and executed in 1941, Katarina had felt equal measures of regret and relief—for she, and precious few others, had been spared.

She had tried to gather her courage, to reenter the fray. She had taken the job at Kearny. But the blueprints she'd found there were of limited value, and she was no ordinary agent, no collector of trivia. She would not jeopardize herself for mere trifles.

Now she had found something worthy of her skills. The letter made the point irrefutable.

Catherine Danielson Carter was dead. But in her death, Katarina Heinrich would find life.

For a few days, anyway.

She began to think about routes; a crease of concentration appeared between her eyes. There was a fantastic distance to be covered, and they would, of course, be looking for her the moment she left. A train to New York; a boat to England. Or perhaps a boat to Lisbon, or Madrid … from there to England … to Fritz … comforting, really, to fall back into the old ways of thinking, like coming home …

When Richard Carter woke up with the sun, he was pleased to find his wife sleeping soundly.

BENDLERSTRASSE, BERLIN

Hagen was nervous.

He climbed the steps of 72-76 Tirpitz Ufer, a drab five-story building made of colorless granite situated by the similarly drab waters of the
Landwehrkanal
. He told himself, as he climbed, that there was no reason to be nervous. Canaris had nothing on him. He, on the other hand, had plenty on Canaris. Much of it was speculative, but if push came to shove he would have ammunition readily at hand.

There was no doubt in Hagen's mind that Canaris was part of the sloppy conspiracy against
der Führer
, a conspiracy made up of military men left over from the toppled Weimar Republic. These men were crippled by their loyalty to the old ways, the Christian ways, the weak ways. Their conspiracy was doomed to failure. But so far the conspirators had not made any serious mistakes. They had covered their tracks well; and since Canaris had not made any serious mistakes, few in Germany today were willing to speak out against him.

But in the coming months, Hagen knew, more and more people from all through the Reich would be willing to levy accusations against Canaris. The war was going badly. The Russians were pushing back German forces every day, recapturing cities with terrible speed; and when the war went badly, people looked for somebody to blame. If one had given reason to be singled out for this blame, one was in trouble. Canaris was living on borrowed time—and if Hagen knew it, then Canaris knew it, too.

So there was no reason to be nervous. Whatever questions Canaris had called him there to ask, Hagen could answer or not answer as he saw fit. The man would not dare push too hard, not at this precarious moment in his career.

And yet he
was
nervous. Canaris, all appearances to the contrary, was a devious man. He was also a capable one. He had escaped from a prison camp in Genoa, during the first war, by killing the prison chaplain, putting on his clothes, and walking out past the guards. And this, they said, had been the
second
prison Canaris had escaped from. The first had come two years earlier, in Argentina; Canaris had escaped by rowboat and horseback. He was a resourceful man, and it would not pay to underestimate him.

Hagen, who had killed his fair share of men himself, reached the top step of 72-76 Tirpitz Ufer. He took a moment to reassure himself again that there was no need to be nervous, then stepped into the shadowed foyer and received a security check from the guard in the booth on his left. The elevator was out of order. He was forced to clamber up the five flights of stairs. By the time he reached the high-ceilinged top floor, he was out of breath. He paused for a moment before proceeding through the great double doors at the end of the corridor. To be out of breath would reveal weakness.

After a few moments, he felt ready to proceed. He stood up straight, tugged the wrinkles out of his dark suit, and went to his meeting with Canaris.

Canaris, like Hagen, did not like to wear military regalia. Like Hagen, he wore an ordinary dark business suit. These men operated in a strata both above and to the side of standard military business. Like most spies, they tried to avoid calling attention to themselves.

As Hagen entered the office, Canaris stood behind his desk and offered his hand. He was a slight, short, unimpressive man who looked considerably older than his fifty-six years. His hair was thinning and gray, his shoulders narrow, his skin pasty and sagging. The only feature that betrayed his capability was his eyes. They were an incisive blue, and as Hagen reached out to shake the proffered hand, he could feel those eyes boring into him.

“
Herr
Hagen,” Canaris said. His voice was soft, almost womanly, and weak. “My thanks for coming on such short notice.”

Hagen grunted. He sat on one side of the desk while Canaris retook his seat on the other. The office around them was clean and unremarkable. One wall was covered with a map of the world. Underneath the map sat a black leather sofa, where Canaris was known to steal quick naps during his long workdays. On the wall opposite the map hung two framed pictures, one a Japanese-style portrait of the devil, the other a photograph of Canaris's favorite dog, a dachshund called Seppl. On the desk itself was the symbol of the
Abwehr
: a small statue of three monkeys covering their eyes, ears, and mouth.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

“I won't waste your time,” Canaris said briskly. “The
Führer
feels that with the continuing problems in Russia, it is time we begin to anticipate the possibility of an Allied landing on the continent. To do this effectively, I feel that we need to synchronize the efforts of our agents in the field.
All
of our agents in the field.”

He paused for a moment to let the words sink in. Benign as they had sounded, Hagen realized immediately that there were at least two startling pieces of information contained in those three sentences. First was the admission that the campaign in Russia was truly troubled. Although this had been the overriding impression during the past few months, Hagen had not yet been told it so starkly by anybody in a position to know. Goebbels and his propaganda machine went to great lengths to make the troubles on the eastern front seem like only a temporary setback.

Second, and of more personal interest to Hagen, was the part about synchronizing agents in the field—
all
the agents in the field. The implication was that Hagen and his organization—what once had been known as the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt
, the RSHA, and was now known as the SS—had agents operating about whom Canaris was not aware.

It was, of course, true. Since the early 1930s there had been an ongoing feud between Canaris's
Abwehr
and Himmler's SS. Both had seen themselves as the primary security agents of the Nazi Reich after the blood purge of June 1934 had smashed the SA, and both had engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse with each other as well as with the enemy. As time had passed, the two organizations had found ways to live with each other, however reluctantly. But Himmler had never given up hope that his organization would become the one true security organ of the Third Reich, the primary force responsible for “safeguarding the embodiment of the National Socialist ideal.” Recently, in fact, Himmler had begun to keep even more secrets from Canaris. How else, except by maintaining his own cadre of loyal snoopers, could he prove that Canaris was involved with the conspiracy and remove him from his seat at the head of the
Abwehr
?

Hagen leaned back in his chair, keeping his face neutral.

“
Herr
Admiral,” he said blandly, “I do not believe that I have any knowledge of agents in the field which you do not possess yourself.”

Canaris smiled thinly. He nodded. Then he reached into his desk drawer, removed a file, and slid it across to Hagen. Hagen leaned forward and lifted the file open just enough to see the heading on the first page.

“I believe you trained this woman personally,” Canaris said, “many years ago.”

Hagen let the file fall closed again, frowning. The agent, who went by the code number V.1353, represented something of a sore spot for him. She had been one of the best he had ever trained, if not the very best, and he'd had high hopes for her. But then something had gone terribly wrong.

It had been back in the halcyon days of the Nazi party, when Hitler's star was rising faster than anybody would have thought possible and the future was filled with promise—the promise of acquiring unlimited
lebensraum
for future German generations; the promise of racial purity and the rightful return of Austria and the Sudetenland to Germany; the promise of not only shaking off the shackles of Versailles but of avenging them. Caught up by the optimism, and already conscious of the need to produce greater results than such competing agencies as the
Abwehr
and the SA, Himmler had sanctioned the training of several special agents. The agents would infiltrate Britain, America, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, and Holland. They were symbolic of how far the Third Reich would eventually reach, and they had been the best young Germans Himmler could find. They would not be dependent on anything except themselves. They would be able to operate with any weapon, to memorize intelligence at a glance, to improvise their way out of any situation.

And to train these agents, the best of the best, he had chosen Hagen personally.

Agent V.1353 had distinguished herself even among this impressive company. She excelled at the physical side of the game, learning how to kill with any blade, how to change identities when it was required, how to improvise complex strategies with little notice. Improvisation was her greatest strength; in her hands no natural opportunity, no matter how small, was wasted. She was also possessed of a great natural beauty and a way with people. In addition, she was very young—so young, to Hagen's way of thinking, that she was above suspicion.

They had planted her in America under her real name, but with a false background: the daughter of German Jews who would want nothing to do with Hitler's rising National Socialist party. She had found work with a naval architecture firm, and for eight months had sent back solid, if unremarkable, intelligence.

Then, abruptly, she had vanished.

It was easy to figure out what had happened. She had become scared. She had felt too much affinity for her adopted country. Perhaps she had fallen in love. She was only human, after all.

Hagen had sometimes allowed himself, over the years, to speculate that perhaps the appearance of this case was misleading. It was always possible that Katarina had stumbled onto some opportunity too tempting to resist that had required her to go deep undercover. If that was the case, she might not have dared to inform her own spymasters of her plans. If that was the case, it was always possible that she might someday reappear.…

More likely, however, she had simply lost her nerve.

Since Katarina's disappearance, the FBI had cracked down—visibly—on
Abwehr
agents in America. In 1941 they had rounded up every agent Canaris had placed there, tried them publicly, and hanged them. For the few RSHA agents who had remained at liberty, the message was clear enough. They scrambled home at the first opportunity. Since then Germany had enjoyed little success in penetrating America. They had agents in Mexico, but their effectiveness was limited by their distance. Canaris had sent a few more stragglers into New York, but they were frightened, unorganized, and clumsy, like everybody trained by the
Abwehr
. The only
truly
valuable agent still in America—agent V.1353—was no longer on the job.