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Authors: Douglas Niles,Michael Dobson

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Stalin gestured curtly with one hand, indicating that the lieutenant colonel should speak.

“May I suggest that my assignment be recorded as a military rather than a political role. I only say this because it is my impression that soldiers are more free with their opinions among their own; an appointment as commissar might make me less open to their opinions, and especially their fears.” He waited with some trepidation for Stalin’s reply; making suggestions to the great man was a risky business. But he had started with audacity and would follow that course no matter what.

Once again, Krigoff’s instincts proved right, because that blocky face brightened with a dazzling smile. Stalin might have been a proud grandfather, ready to pat his young grandson on the head for an impressive school report. “That is the kind of thinking I admire, Alexis Petrovich … . Yes, a good suggestion. An intelligence officer, of course … yes, you shall be the … let me think … ah, yes. How does Special Intelligence Adjutant to the General Staff sound?”

“Very good, Comrade Stalin, and thank you.”

The vodka’s warmth had dissipated by the time Alyosha Krigoff left the chairman’s office, but the pleasant glow of satisfaction more than made up for it. He could pack in less than an hour—and at last, he would be off to the war.

The opportunities before him suddenly seemed even more limitless than before.

31 DECEMBER 1944

LONDON, ENGLAND, 0849 HOURS GMT

The fictional 221B Baker Street was much better known than its real-life analogue at 64 Baker Street: the headquarters of the British Secret Intelligence Service, popularly known as MI-6. Going east on Marylebone Road, you turned left to reach Sherlock Holmes’ flat. If you turned right instead, you would see a nondescript row of buildings, the center of Great Britain’s far-flung intelligence operations.

Section 5 of MI-6 was responsible for all European counterintelligence, and one of its missions was liaison with the various anti-Nazi conspiracies in Germany, including the von Stauffenberg group that had successfully assassinated Adolf Hitler. It was therefore to Section 5 of MI-6 that the government turned when it was asked by the President of the United States to put together a list of candidates for a provisional post-Nazi German government. And the Chief of Section 5, Major Felix Cowgill, turned to his deputy chief, the person responsible for day-to-day operations, for his advice and counsel.

The Deputy Chief of Section 5 liked his morning walk to work. It cleared his head and helped him to establish priorities for the working day. London was foggy and damp in late December, but it was not bitterly cold. The pervasive grayness emphasized the stonework in much of the city’s construction. When there was rubble from bombs and reconstruction, it all seemed part of a seamless whole, a concrete blandness that pulled every drop of nature, of life, of color, from the souls of the poor benighted masses who trudged to their daily work, obtained money for rationed food, and ate it for the energy that allowed them to work another day. This was capitalism at its finest.

Inside some of the stone buildings the privileged went to their private clubs, where the dominant color was brown instead of gray, and servants wore black-and-white. The only hint of a wider spectrum could be found in old school ties, patterns of colored stripes that set the upper classes apart from the lower and kept the machinery of the world humming smoothly.

Umbrella properly furled, trench coat buttoned, the Deputy Chief of Section 5 was himself a model British gentleman, firmly rooted in his world, a man of power and means. His father, a noted Arabist, had been best man at the wedding of the late Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Accordingly, the son attended Cambridge University, entered the Foreign Service, and progressed rapidly in his career. He knew full well that much of his advancement
was the product of the circumstances of his birth. Although his intelligence and ability were unquestioned, he knew equally well that in the absence of proper birth, he would never have been permitted the career he currently enjoyed.

It was a subject of ironic amusement that this was true for two entirely separate reasons. The first reason led inexorably to the second. It was because of the opportunities provided by his birth that he had first been recruited as a deep-cover Soviet agent. The class system that oppressed the masses was the same class system that allowed him to be positioned for maximum results.

He was a shy man with a stammer, though comfortable with large groups. Although he was very successful with women, he preferred men. He was a brilliant man, able to play a complex role to perfection, to convince others of his absolute loyalty, and to see the innermost twists and turns in the most elaborate of puzzles. His name was Harold Adrian Russell Philby, but he was nicknamed “Kim,” after the character in Kipling.

Intelligence offices tended to be open around the clock. The door guards recognized him, but nevertheless he showed them his identification pass. They said, “Good morning, Mr. Philby,” as if they did not know his name until they saw it on his pass, and he acknowledged them with a class-appropriate nod as he passed into the building. Others said “Good morning, Mr. Philby” to him without demanding his identification in advance, and he nodded or replied to each depending on their position in the organizational hierarchy.

His secretary stood as he entered—a product of military training rather than merely class roles in this instance—and Philby said, “Good morning. P-Please inform M-Major Cowgill that I’ll see him in about an hour. J-Just have a few more files to r-review.” As his secretary turned to the telephone, he entered his office, hung his rumpled trench coat and hat on the rack, and slid his furled umbrella into its holder. His secretary brought him tea on a silver tray and made a space for it on his crowded desk. The desk was heaped with files on all the characters in the conspiracy, those who had brought the situation to its current crisis point.

For most of the war, his primary mission had been to sabotage any hint of a pro-West and anti-Communist dialogue between the Germans and the British. Stalin rightly feared that this would quickly reduce Germany to a single-front war, and that would be extremely bad for the Soviet Union. Although von Stauffenberg’s success was Philby’s failure, at least the result had been an SS takeover of Germany. Nothing fundamental had changed.

That is, until the shock of the new Soviet-German armistice pact. Philby had only a few days’ notice that it was coming, and it took him that amount of time to get himself under control. The earlier Soviet-German pact was, he understood perfectly, a matter of convenience, and so, he came to understand,
was this also. Norway and Greece were great prizes: a year-round Atlantic port and a warm-water Mediterranean port. He could understand their value. Still, his own job was made far more complicated now that the Soviet Union was again an enemy, not an ally, of Great Britain.

But it was all forward movement for the cause. That is, until the second shock, that of Rommel’s surrender. A brilliant move, Philby realized at once. It reminded him of a chess master sacrificing a queen to uncover a hidden checkmate. And Roosevelt, that master manipulator, now planned to build a new German government around Rommel’s army.

Philby and his Soviet colleagues were determined to undermine the new German government, but he would have to proceed delicately indeed. It was not worth risking his position for a goal that small. And there would be many other opportunities to hamper his enemies. This day, therefore, his work would be what his MI-6 superiors wished it to be. As a double agent, he always found it interesting when he had to choose the work of his official job over the secret role he played. Mirror after mirror, chess move after chess move, each day required a thousand new calculations.

He loved his life.

Rustling through the file folders, he began to classify them. Politicians: Dr. Carl Goerdeler, ex-mayor of Leipzig. If Rommel was not to be the acting chancellor, Goerdeler was the likely choice. He went underground in the aftermath of the assassination and nearly was captured several times, but made it to safety in France. The folder went in the first pile.

Dr. Julius Leber. The conspirators’ choice for vice-chancellor. He’d been imprisoned at the time of the assassination, killed in Himmler’s replay of the Night of the Long Knives last September. Leber’s file went into the next stack. Wilhelm Leuchner, labor leader. Also dead. Too bad. He was associated with the proletariat, and might have proved useful. Count Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin. Conservative anti-Nazi, pro-Brit. Alive, worse luck. First stack.

On to the foreign ministry. Ernst von Weizsaecker. Currently ambassador to the Vatican and very much alive. Ambassador Ulrich von Hassel. Arrested and killed. Second stack.

Hans-Bernd von Haeften. His brother had been von Stauffenberg’s aide and had died with the old soldier. Went out fighting, too, Philby mused. The older brother was a raging firebrand, wanted to go back on the attack immediately. He had been smuggled into France and to safety. A hothead. Philby might be able to do something with him. First stack.

Von Trott. Dead. Dr. Theodor Kordt. Ambassador to Switzerland, alive. Philby knew him because he had been the German ambassador to Great Britain just before he war. First stack. Count Helmuth von Moltke. Dead. Count Peter von Wartenburg, Stauffenberg’s cousin. Dead. Dr. Eugen
Gerstenmaier, a clergyman. Arrested, tortured, still alive. This started a third stack. Some of these people might be liberated later.

Dr. Hans Gisevius. Alive and in Switzerland. Admiral Canaris. Philby shook his head. He had done everything in his power to have Special Operations assassinate Canaris, who was the mole inside Hitler’s own secret police. Canaris was Hitler’s Philby, he thought with a slight smile. Except not nearly so successful. Currently in Berlin under house arrest. Perhaps able to be rescued, but probably as good as dead. Second stack. General Oster. Dead. Colonel Alexander Hansen. Current Abwehr chief. Alive, but vulnerable.

Philby knew that Himmler had a long-range goal of dismantling the Abwehr altogether as soon as he could get enough evidence. The only thing that had stopped him thus far was his agreement with the Wehrmacht to let them run the military part of the war without interference. That agreement, Philby was sure, would last up until the moment Himmler had the power to do away with it, and not a moment longer.

Dr. Hans von Dohnanyi, brother-in-law of the famous theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Currently in Sachsenhausen concentration camp for his role in Operation U-7 to get the Abwehr in the business of saving Jews from the death camps. Philby shook his head. Awful business, the matter of the Jews, and Philby was no sentimentalist. When that story came out, it would be enough to finish off any would-be German government. That would give the Soviet Union more room to claim for itself the role of liberator. Philby paused, glanced out the window to collect his thoughts. That was an idea worth exploring for its propaganda aspects. He would have to suggest this to his NKVD handler.

There was the man known as “X,” who was really Dr. Joseph Mueller. Agent “X” had tried mightily to get British intelligence to agree to a temporary cease-fire in case of a coup. Philby smiled. Frustrating “X” had been fun. The good doctor was currently in prison, and could stay there for all Philby cared.

Popitz. Dead. Hjalmar Schact, Reichsbank president. Probably finance minister in the new government. Unimportant for now. First pile. Von Helldorf and his Berlin police allies. All dead. Lots of military leaders, from Beck on down. Most of them dead. Besides, Rommel will almost certainly push his own military candidates, like his chief of staff, Speidel.

As for Rommel himself … Philby thought about the man. He didn’t know him well, but other German military leaders thought he was a show-off, a commander who owed his success to kissing Hitler’s ass. The man normally went around with his own motion-picture team filming him, for God’s sake! Although he hadn’t done so lately, since his wounding. Vanity, Philby assumed.

Well, many of the more dangerous candidates were safely dead or prisoners of the Nazis. The Germans could easily form a government out of the remainder, but this late in the war they would have a hard time reversing their military
losses and mounting a successful single-front offensive back into the Soviet Union. At best, they would be able to stalemate further Soviet gains, and that only with active support from the Western Allies. And the Western Allies had little stomach for continued fighting. Wrap it up and go home—that was the goal of most of them right now. The Americans, no doubt, were looking forward to wrapping themselves in their little fantasy world inside their own borders, convinced the rest of the planet could successfully be ignored. Soon enough, their day would come, and the Communist movement would take that nation, too.

Philby thought briefly about putting together notes to brief Major Cowgill, but he knew the players well enough through years of work. He slid the files he needed into his briefcase and called his secretary in to refile the rest, then headed off to the briefing.

NEAR PESSOUX, BELGIUM, 0927 HOURS GMT

“I
will
check on my patients,” snapped Dr. Schlüter, “and you
will
get the hell out of my way.
Now!
”

The SS hauptscharführer was nonplussed at the doctor’s rage. “But sir, I can’t let you in the trucks without proper authorization.”

“Am I a German officer, or am I a prisoner of war? If I’m a German officer, get the hell out of my way and say ‘sir’ while you’re doing it. If I’m a prisoner of war, then I demand official notification and I demand to see my patients under the Geneva goddamn Convention. Either way, you will get the
hell
out of my way.
Now!”
His volume steadily rose alongside his temper. Fists clenched, face turning red, he stepped toward the towering SS sergeant, a man nearly twice his size. Such was the force of his rage that the man stepped backward without realizing what he was doing.

“You are a German officer, of course, and entitled to all the respect due to your rank and profession,” interjected a smooth voice. “As are our other guests whom we have rescued from becoming prisoners of war of the Americans. When we reach the safety of Saint-Vith, you all will return to normal service for our fatherland.”

Schlüter swiveled around, still furious. It was Peiper himself, his uniform still surprisingly neat and crisp, though he had worn it for nearly twenty-four hours straight, his hair properly slicked on one side, but covered on the other by the bandages that still swathed nearly half his face. Schlüter’s medical eye surveyed his work. “Then I will attend to my patients. Afterward, I’ll see you. Those bandages need changing. And it doesn’t help if you keep picking at them. It likely itches now, and will itch even more as the healing gets under way. You will simply have to control yourself. Is that clear?”

Peiper was a man clearly unused to being ordered about in such a way, especially by a mere major. He stiffened reflexively, then forced his body to
relax. Calmly, he replied. “Of course, Herr Doktor Major. We must continue moving at once, however. Please take a quick look in each of the trucks for any medical emergencies. Then you can work on those as we continue to move. As soon as we reach Saint-Vith, I will be quite pleased to have you change my bandages. In the meantime, I will attempt not to scratch. Is that satisfactory?”

Peiper’s reasonableness took the wind out of Schlüter’s sails. “Yes. Quite satisfactory. Thank you.” He glared at the hauptscharführer, who stepped back again, now fully intimidated by the ferocious doctor, and headed for the first truck.

In spite of the savagery of the brief raid, the patients were unharmed. Here one had torn loose a bandage, here another had moved in a way that tore a suture, but these were minor indeed and could be fixed as the column moved forward. With some annoyance, he noticed that one of the trucks had contained hospital supplies and some of his own staff. If they were going to rescue people, it would have been a lot better to rescue patients rather than steal supplies that he could put to good use, he groused to himself. Of course, they could hardly be expected to check truck contents in the middle of the night. Still, that didn’t help him.

In the fourth truck, he found Carl-Heinz Clausen, Rommel’s driver. Clausen had the constitution of an ox, and it was clear he would return to good health quickly in spite of a belly wound. Next to Clausen, his eyes widened slightly as he recognized one of the American patients, wrapped in a Wehrmacht jacket that didn’t fit—Clausen’s, he presumed.

“And you look in good shape,” he said to Clausen in a slightly louder voice, for the benefit of any listeners. “And you,” he looked at the American. “Your voice is still damaged, so no talking. Not a word! Only sign language, Understand?” He grabbed his throat with his hand, hoping the American would figure out the gesture.

Clausen turned toward the American and winked broadly, then nodded his head slowly. The American got the idea, and touched his own throat in reply. The doctor nodded again. “Ill get you some more lozenges, if I can find some. Rest your voice for a few more days at least.”

He withdrew from the truck rapidly, shaking his head in surprise at Clausen’s temerity.
He could get us all killed
was his immediate thought.

Peiper strode down the long column until he reached the Tiger tanks bringing up the rear. “I expect the utmost alertness, the utmost focus, and the utmost drive, from all of you. We are the Fatherland’s elite, and in every way and at every moment, each of us must do his duty to the fullest degree. If you cannot, then may God have mercy on you because I will have none. Is that clear?”

A ragged chorus of subdued “Yes, sir”s made him angrier. “What was that?” he demanded.

“Yes, sir,” came a chant of more satisfying strength.

“Let’s get moving,” Peiper ordered. As he turned, he reached up to scratch his face through his bandages, but arrested his hand just in time.

BOOK: Fox at the Front (Fox on the Rhine)

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