The Shield: a novel

by Nachman Kataczinsky PhD

  “Any questions?” asked Amos.

  “I don’t know if historians are qualified, but I’ll ask a question anyway,” said the head of the Mossad. “How can we stop the Nazi nuclear effort, without tipping them off to what is going on?”

  The oldest historian responded. “The only thing I can advise you to do is to make the German leadership stop the project of its own volition. Shouldn’t be too difficult with their command structure – It’s hierarchical but has several competing authorities. That creates all sorts of opportunities. That’s about all I can tell you off the top of my head. We’ll do more research and I’m sure can find an opening.”

  ***

  Moshe Cohen arrived in the Brindisi compound expecting to go home. He was only slightly disappointed that he could not. It was not the first time in his career that orders changed overnight and he knew it would not be the last.

  Colonel Hirshson invited Moshe to his office. After they were both equipped with the mandatory cup of coffee, he extended a sealed envelope. “This arrived for you yesterday. I also got one, with a short notice that your team will be here in a day or two and to give you all the assistance you require, including transportation to Venice. I have no idea what this is all about and prefer not to know. Good luck with whatever it is you are going to do.”

  In his little apartment in one of the new buildings Moshe finally opened the envelope. It contained new orders and pages upon pages of information he had to memorize. According to the orders he was to take a small group of Mossad operatives and enter Germany within the week to stop their nuclear projects. The papers had information on the key personnel involved in these projects, along with fairly detailed instructions. They laid out the plan he was to follow but left room for initiative. He had the freedom to improvise.

  While waiting for his team to arrive, Moshe collected further information and made plans. He contacted the Mossad’s main office a number of times asking for documents and more information. He felt lucky that the communication satellite was operational. It gave him both a secure phone line to the Mossad and access to their databases. He also could do some research on the internet – at least the part of it that traveled back in time with Israel. Since a large part of the web had been cached on Israeli servers it was now available to Moshe. When the members of his group arrived with equipment and documents, Moshe was ready.

  ***

  Breaking into the main building of the Gottow Physics Facility was easy, especially for an experienced burglar. The alarm system was antiquated by 21st century standards and was bypassed in a couple of minutes. The three men, dressed in Wehrmacht uniforms, spent less than twenty seconds in front of the locked door – that was how long it took to bump the lock. No one noticed anything unusual – not really surprising considering the dark night and blackout. The guards outside the perimeter probably saw them enter the complex, but they were just three soldiers and attracted no special attention.

  Once they were inside, one of the privates put a long lab coat over his uniform and proceeded up a staircase. The burglar followed closely, with the officer following the other two at a distance. They walked quickly and confidently to an office on the second floor. This wing held only offices and a few night lights. The other wing containing several labs was fully lit and busy.

  In the office, the burglar found a wall safe hidden behind a picture and went to work on it. The captain and the private in the lab coat stood in the corridor, seemingly deep in conversation, but in fact looking for intruders.

  The safe was easy pickings, only slightly more difficult than the office door lock. The burglar inserted a sheaf of typed and handwritten pages into a pile of documents in the safe and relocked it.

  They were back on the street in less than twenty minutes with the alarm system reset and no one the wiser.

  Their next objective was a residential apartment building in Gottow. This is where several of the physicists working at the facility lived. Some, like Kurt Diebner, the director of the facility, and his close assistant, Walter Gerlach, kept their homes in Berlin, using their apartments in Gottow only intermittently.

  The team entered the apartment building easily, careful not to attract attention on the deserted street – someone casually looking out a window could ruin the whole operation by noticing something out of place. The almost total darkness of the blacked out town helped, as did the addition to their uniforms of military police breast plates – they could pass for a legitimate patrol. After entering the building they walked up to the fourth floor; using the elevator would have saved time, but the noise could attract unwelcome attention or be later recalled as unusual by one of the tenants. After examining the lock of apartment 4D the burglar took out a cut-down key and quickly bumped the lock. The noise made by his rubber mallet on the key was barely audible and opened the door in an instant, leaving no telltale scratch marks that normal tools could leave, especially if used in a hurry in almost full darkness.

  The burglar entered the apartment, the officer and the private stayed in the small foyer just beyond the entry doors. The burglar carefully examined the space for good concealment places – not too obvious, but not impossible to find either. Finally he settled on the desk in what was obviously a study. He took out the top right side drawer and using small office pins attached a piece of paper to the underside of the desk. He replaced the drawer and the team was gone.

  ***

  The head of the Potsdamer Gestapo was annoyed by this haughty intruder in his office but there wasn’t much he could do about it. You dismissed a full SS colonel at your own peril. Karl Maria von Tretow was not just an SS officer but also an arrogant Junker.

  “Heinrich,” the colonel addressed the Gestapo man, “you have not been doing your work very well. I always thought the Gestapo was filled with lazy bureaucrats and it seems that you may be a good example of one.”

  “Karl,” the Gestapo man tried to counter the colonel’s insulting familiarity, “I think that this is a very bad joke. Why are you here?”

  The colonel sat down, without invitation, on one of the chairs in front of Heinrich’s desk: “You will call me Colonel von Tretow, or just Colonel, Heinrich.”

  The head of the Gestapo office in Potsdam was not a very senior member of the organization and visibly wilted at this haughty reprimand. He realized, somewhat belatedly, that if von Tretow decided to shoot him on the spot he would likely get away with it.

  “Excuse me, Colonel, I meant no disrespect. I still want to know why you are here and why you accuse me of not doing my job.”

  “Ah, my friend, I did not accuse you of not doing your job. Just of being somewhat slack about it. A case in point: are you familiar with currency transfer regulations?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But not everyone with responsibility is enforcing them as diligently as they should. And you, my friend, are one of those.”

  “Why are you accusing me? I am a patriot and do my job very well.” The Gestapo man knew what good work he was doing. And he really didn’t know much about von Tretow. In fact he knew nothing about him, except that he was here, wore a uniform and was extremely arrogant. “But before we go on, I would like to see proof that you are who you say you are”

  “Finally you are starting to think,” the colonel chided the Gestapo man. “This is a question you should have asked fifteen minutes ago. Here are my papers. Please check them out carefully. You don’t want to repeat your mistake; you may not have another chance. Remember to always check everybody’s papers – don’t assume anything.”

  The Gestapo man looked carefully through the documents. They identified SS Colonel Karl Maria von Tretow as deputy head of the Office of Racial Purity - an extremely powerful outfit, given great latitude. Not even high-ranking party members were safe from them.

  “I’ll have to telephone your office in Berlin, just to make sure.”

  “Good, good. You are beginning to redeem yourself in my eyes,” responded the colonel.
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  The Berlin office confirmed that Colonel von Tretow was indeed one of their own but refused to disclose his whereabouts. The Gestapo chief decided that it was likely they didn’t know where he was – these people were secretive even among themselves. And von Tretow was senior enough, and apparently well connected enough, to do his own thing.

  “So, Colonel, how may I help you?”

  “Heinrich, it is I who want to help you. We are conducting an investigation in Potsdam and surrounding towns, like Gottow. I need you to notify me immediately if anything unusual comes to your attention. I am relying on your professional acuity, so don’t disappoint me. This is a matter of paramount importance to the Fatherland. Please pay special attention to large financial transactions and let me know if anything interesting happens.” On that note, he marched out of the office.

  The Gestapo chief sat motionless, thinking for a couple of minutes. After deciding what to do he alerted his network of informers and settled for a long wait.

  ***

  Moshe Cohen chose the identity of Karl Maria von Tretow very carefully. The colonel was a real person, who indeed worked for the Office of Racial Purity. Moshe could pass for the colonel, if properly made up and if the examination wasn’t too close. The ID he displayed in Potsdam was a duplicate of Tretow’s actual document, preserved in the Israeli archives. They even used Tretow’s photograph. Tretow was an ideal choice: According to reliable historical records, on August 25, 1941 - the day Moshe met with the Gestapo Chief of Potsdam, Tretow was on his way to Dresden, where he had family.

  The colonel had stopped at a small inn in Luckau for refreshments. He always stopped there – the place served excellent weizen beer that Tretow liked and their food was very good. He had left his car with the inn’s filling station attendant to fill it up before continuing on towards Dresden.

  Tretow liked to drive fast, and his Mercedes coupe Kompressor delivered a lot of speed. In the middle of a sharp turn he heard a loud pop and felt the car swerve into the turn, threatening to flip. He tried to regain control but the steering did not respond – there was an oil slick on the road. He stepped on the brakes and the pedal went down to the floor with no effect. The Mercedes slammed into a tree. The resulting fire eradicated all evidence of the small radio-controlled charges attached to the front left wheel of the Mercedes and to the hydraulic line leading to the same wheel. A third charge under the fuel tank ensured a fire. The stop at the inn proved fatal for the colonel. No one could prove that he hadn’t stopped in Potsdam on his way.

  After Moshe and his two pretend body guards were done fixing Tretow’s car and causing his accident they went to Berlin. From his previous visits, many years in the future, Moshe knew Berlin quite well and the city looked familiar even in this time period. Armed with historical information and maps, the three Mossad agents drove into the Alexanderplatz district. Despite the Nazis’ efforts to clean up this notorious red light part of Berlin, it was as rundown and seedy as ever. They found the hotel they were looking for on Keibelstrasse and rented a room. These places were decrepit, but, if properly handled and slipped a couple marks, the clerk wouldn’t immediately report the new guests to the police, as required by law. Moshe knew that the team would be able to stay for only a day or two, but that should be enough for their purposes.

  His only concern was their car: a member of the team bought it from a dealer in Dresden. The dealership was chosen for its size, which made it likely that the buyer would not be clearly remembered. The late model Mercedes was registered to Johan Bock – the name on the Mossad agent’s papers, and also the name of a Dresden resident. According to German records, the real Bock, a party member since 1931, was supposed to be killed in the battle of Smolensk several weeks later. The mission’s planners knew that it was more than likely that the purchase and registration of the car and its disappearance at a later stage wouldn’t attract attention. What concerned Moshe was the car’s appearance: while it was suitable for Colonel von Tretow it stood out in the Alexanderplatz neighborhood. They did their best to muddy it and give it the appearance of neglect. The license plates they had used in Potsdam, and that carried a group of numbers and letters assigned to the SS in Berlin, were replaced with one identifying it as an unmarked vehicle of the Berlin KRIPO – Kriminalpolizei, the Police criminal investigation unit. Criminals in the know, who were the ones likely to be interested in stealing it, would not be stupid enough to touch an undercover police vehicle.

  The next day after dark the three drove to the Karl Wilhelm Institute on Boltzmannstrasse in Berlin. It was on the other side of the city from their lodgings, but Moshe figured that if they use the car with falsified KRIPO plates, they should be able to move around Berlin safely – just blend into the not too thick night traffic. It took them about fifteen minutes to break into the building through a back door, go to the second floor, and deposit thin packs of typed and handwritten pages in two safes.

  The next day, the team left Berlin by train. They dumped the car into a lake next to the Wannsee district of Berlin, with no license plates attached. Car theft was not unknown and would raise no particular suspicions. They used a pair of pocket sheet metal shears to cut the false plates into small strips and distributed them among Berlin’s numerous canals. The team had a set of documents identifying them as Wehrmacht soldiers returning to their units in Slovenia. They changed into civilian clothing at Lubliana and, with a set of Italian documents, traveled to Trieste where they boarded a fishing boat waiting to take them back to the Brindisi base.

  ***

  Several days after the Mossad team left Germany a sum of a 150,000 Reich marks was transferred from a Swiss bank to the account of Dr. Walter Gerlach at the Gottow branch of the Dresdner Bank. If it wasn’t for the Gestapo being on the lookout for something unusual, the transfer might not have been noticed. From time to time Dr. Gerlach received large amounts of money as consulting fees. Though 150,000 was twice as much as he had ever received, it wouldn’t have attracted attention. As it happened, the bank routinely reported the foreign currency transaction to the Gestapo and the report ended up on the Potsdam chief’s desk the next day.

  The chief of the Gestapo in Potsdam followed von Tretow’s instructions: he called the office in Berlin and asked to speak to the colonel. After proper identification he was transferred to an assistant. This was the first time the Gestapo man heard that von Tretow had died in a car accident just hours after their encounter. He told the assistant that he called for personal reasons and hung up.

  The chief of the Gestapo in Potsdam was ambitious and decided that the colonel’s demise might have created a great opportunity.

  His next move was to ask the International section of the Gestapo to investigate the bank in Switzerland and find out who owned the account from which the money originated. In the meantime there was no time to lose: if Gerlach became aware of the investigation he might flee or destroy evidence. He decided to act carefully, hopefully without endangering his career. Not being a fool, the chief of the Potsdam office realized that arresting Gerlach for receiving money from Switzerland might be risky – if he was deemed important enough and if there was a legitimate reason for the money transfer. This would mean no promotion or maybe even a demotion for the chief.

  When the Potsdam Gestapo team arrived at the facility in Gottow they were, at first, refused entry. The Wehrmacht was guarding the complex and allowed only people with special passes inside. It took several calls to Berlin and the angry intervention of Mueller, the head of the Gestapo, to get them inside. Mueller intervened just on the principle that the Wehrmacht should not tell the Gestapo what to do and where not to go.

  Heinrich decided to start by searching Gerlach’s office. He might find something useful and if he didn’t, no harm would be done to his career.

  At first Walter Gerlach refused to open his safe: “The contents are secret and highly sensitive Army research. I can open it only on the orders of the director of the Institute, Dr. Kurt Diebner.” />
  Diebner agreed to the search – he, at least, was a loyal Nazi. He did order that nothing from the safe leave the building. They had to read the documents in Gerlach’s office.

  After almost three hours the Gestapo technical expert examining the documents called his chief: “Sir, I have found a couple of very strange documents. I need you to come here and read them.” He refused to say anything else, which the Gestapo chief knew was a sign of the information being explosive. He was not disappointed. Apparently Dr. Gerlach was in contact with a foreign intelligence service, probably British, and was acting on their behalf. The documents indicated that the whole pretense of making uranium weapons was a British idea to force the Reich to waste precious resources. Gerlach wrote, in his own hand, that the uranium weapon idea was far-fetched and, if at all possible, would result in a weapon after many years and many millions of marks in research. Other documents showed that Diebner, though a supporter of the Party, had agreed to go along with this fraud in exchange for a significant amount of money deposited in a Swiss bank account.

  The information was so important that Heinrich, the Potsdam Gestapo chief, called Berlin to make an urgent appointment with the boss himself. While he was on his way to meet the head of the Gestapo, his team searched Diebner’s safe and the Gottow apartments of both scientists. Diebner’s apartment yielded a piece of paper that was almost overlooked in a superficial search – it was pinned above the top drawer under his desk. The only thing on it was a number and several capital letters.

  This information was relayed to the chief via telephone while he was waiting in Gestapo Chief Mueller’s office. It did not take the Gestapo foreign department very long to identify a small bank in Geneva – the initials of its name were on the paper found in Diebner’s desk. The bank admitted to having a numbered account, but would not give out any details without the appropriate code.