“Vertical envelopment means parachutists, gliders?” Himmler asked.
“Precisely, Herr Reichsführer. In the case of the Gran Sasso, the wind conditions are such that parachute envelopment is impossible. The only way to envelop the hotel is by glider, and they will, for lack of a better term, have to be crash-landed.”
“Von Berlepsch, aren’t all glider landings, for lack of a better term, ‘crash landings’?” von Deitzberg asked.
“Yes, Herr Brigadeführer, they are. My point here is that Fallschirmjäger troops are trained in glider crash landings—necessary because, under optimum conditions, one glider landing in four is a crash landing—and I don’t think this is true of the Waffen-SS troops you envision employing.”
“I don’t think I’m following this, von Berlepsch,” Himmler said. “Let me put a question to you: Suppose it was absolutely necessary that a number—say, twenty-five—of the Friedenthal unit participate in Operation Oak. How could that be done?”
Von Berlepsch looked first at Major Moors and then at General Student for guidance.
“I asked you, von Berlepsch,” Himmler said curtly.
“If such a requirement were absolutely necessary, Herr Reichsführer—and I would hope that it would not be—I would put the SS men in the last three gliders.”
“Why the last three?” von Deitzberg asked almost angrily.
Himmler pointed an impatient finger at him to shut him up, then made a Let’s have it gesture with the same finger to von Berlepsch.
“Herr Reichsführer,” von Berlepsch said, “I of course have no idea what Hauptmann Skorzeny has planned, but in our plan—”
“The author of which is who?” Himmler asked.
“Major Moors and I drew it up for General Student’s approval, Herr Reichsführer.”
“Go on.”
“There will be a dozen gliders towed by Junkers Ju-52 aircraft, Herr Reichsführer. The aircraft will be in line, one minute’s flying distance apart. Each will be cut loose from the towing aircraft as it passes over a predetermined spot on the mountain. I can show you that point on Hauptmann Skorzeny’s maps, Herr Reichsführer . . .”
Himmler made a gesture meaning that wouldn’t be necessary.
“. . . which will cause the gliders to land at one-minute intervals on a small flat area—not much more than a lawn, actually—near the hotel.”
“That will take twelve minutes,” von Deitzberg protested. “Why can’t they land at thirty-second intervals? For that matter, fifteen-second intervals? Fifteen seconds can be a long time.” Then he began to count: “One thousand one. One thousand two. One thousand three. One thous—”
“Because a sixty-second interval is what these officers recommended to General Student,” von Wachtstein interrupted, “and what General Student approved. I think we can all defer to his judgment and experience.”
“And your reason for putting Skorzeny and his men in the last three of the gliders to land?” Himmler asked von Berlepsch.
“Because by then the Fallschirmjäger in the first gliders to land will be in a position to help the Waffen-SS troops get out of their crashed gliders,” von Berlepsch said.
“Unless they themselves have crashed, of course,” von Deitzberg said sarcastically.
“Some of them will have crashed, von Deitzberg,” Student said icily. “We expect that. What von Berlepsch has been trying to tell you is that Fallschirmtruppe are trained to deal with that inevitable contingency.”
“Well,” Himmler said, “that would seem to solve the problem, wouldn’t you agree, von Wachtstein?”
“If what you are saying is that General Student, Admiral Canaris, and you are agreed . . .”
“I’m just a visitor here, General,” Himmler said. “The agreement must be between Student and Canaris.”
Canaris thought: And the translation of that is that if this absurd operation fails—as it well may—Student and I will take the blame.
If it succeeds, Himmler and the SS will get the credit because Skorzeny was involved.
“Admiral Canaris?” von Wachtstein asked.
“If General Student is happy with this, I will defer to his expertise and judgment.”
“I will so inform the Führer,” von Wachtstein said.
“And now, if I may delicately suggest to you, Admiral, that your knowledge of the fine points of an operation like this is on a par with my own, and that neither of us is really of any value here, I wonder if we could have a few minutes alone?”
“There’s a battered desk and several chairs in my cryptographic room,” Canaris said. “Would that be all right with you, Herr Reichsführer?”
“That would be fine,” Himmler said. “Von Deitzberg, when you’re finished here, come to my office and bring me up to date.”
Von Deitzberg popped to attention and clicked his heels.
“Jawohl, Herr Reichsführer.”
Himmler gave the Nazi salute wordlessly and waited for Canaris to show him where to go.
[TWO]
“Be so good as to give the Reichsführer and me a few minutes alone in your luxurious accommodation,” Canaris said after one of his cryptographic officers had unlocked the door to a small room crowded with equipment.
“Jawohl, Herr Admiral.”
“Is there coffee?”
“A fresh pot, Herr Admiral.”
Himmler waited until the cryptographic officer had left.
“In the nature of a state secret of the highest category—in other words, not to go further than this room—I really don’t like von Deitzberg,” Himmler volunteered. “He’s very useful, but there is something about him I just don’t like.”
What’s that all about?
Whatever it is, I’m not going to react to it.
“In the nature of a state secret,” Canaris said, “the coffee I just asked about is not only full of caffeine, but was smuggled into Germany. I think you’ll like it.”
“How smuggled?”
“Usually, in one of two ways. Several of the stewards on the Lufthansa Condor flights to Buenos Aires are mine. In addition to keeping an eye on the passengers and crew for me, they bring me Brazilian coffee beans. And then, from time to time, I have to send someone to Lisbon—or go there myself—and in Lisbon, one can go into any grocery store and buy as much coffee as one can afford.”
“The Führer would be very disappointed in you if I told him that,” Himmler said. “I gave up on our Victory Coffee a year ago and went to tea. And now the tea is going the same way as the coffee did.”
“I’m coffee rich at the moment. May I offer you a half-kilo?”
“A cup I will gratefully accept. But thank you, no, about the half-kilo. If I took it, I would again become addicted, and withdrawal is just too painful.” Himmler smiled his undertaker’s smile. “Actually, what I wanted to talk to you about is a conversation I had over a cup of tea with our Führer yesterday at Wolfsschanze—after you left.”
“How was the tea?”
“Excellent. It was a gift of the Japanese ambassador.”
“And did the Führer offer you a half-kilo?”
“You know better than that, Canaris. What he did want to talk about was South America.”
“Really?”
“He said that he was just letting his imagination run, but what did I think about sending Il Duce, once he has been freed, to South America.”
“To seek asylum from the King? Victor Emmanuel?”
“He had in mind Operation Phoenix,” Himmler said evenly.
“That would be difficult without a good deal of preparation.”
“So I told the Führer. Then he said something to the effect that he was sure the mechanism of movement was in place. The statement was, of course, in fact a question.”
“‘The mechanism of movement’? He was asking about the submarine? Submarines, plural?”
Himmler nodded.
“I told the Führer that I had turned over control of U-405 to you some weeks ago a
nd that I knew you were either planning, or had already put into play, a test run of U-405 to see if there were any flaws in your scheme for transporting and secretly inserting senior officials into Argentina.”
Himmler looked at Canaris to see what his reaction to this would be.
Canaris hoped his face did not show the fury he felt.
You sonofabitch!
You never turned over control of U-405 to me.
What the hell are you up to?
He waited for Himmler to explain. Himmler waited for Canaris to say something.
Canaris reached into his inside jacket pocket and took from it a small, leather-bound notebook. He flipped through it until he found what he wanted.
“So, that’s what Kapitänleutnant von Dattenberg’s submarine was doing yesterday afternoon at South Longitude 39.91, West Latitude 43.76.”
“Is that where it is? And where is that?” Himmler asked, smiling.
“That’s where it is, Herr Reichsführer. In the South Atlantic, about eight hundred miles from the mouth of the River Plate—far enough out to avoid aerial detection by the B-24s that the Americans are flying out of Brazil.”
“I had no choice, Canaris. You know as well as I how it is with the Führer. When he asks a question, he expects an answer, and becomes . . . what shall I say? . . . excitedly disappointed when there is none.”
Canaris smiled and nodded his understanding.
And you knew, you slimy bastard, that there was virtually no chance of me going to the Bavarian corporal and saying, “Reichsführer Himmler never turned U-405 over to me; he’s lying.”
Having someone say anything against anyone in the inner circle really “excites” the Führer. He reserves that privilege to himself.
“Let us say, Admiral, that U-405 leaves its current position the day after tomorrow, to meet with a submarine which would depart the pens at Saint-Nazaire at about the same time. How much time would it take it to make the rendezvous, take on the senior person to be smuggled into Argentina, and then sail to wherever it is in Argentina where that would happen?”
“If you’re looking for an answer to give the Führer, Herr Reichsführer, I can give you a rough one off the top of my head, and in ten minutes I can have von und zu Waching come up with estimates accurate within an hour or so.”
“Off the top of your head?”
“Saint-Nazaire is—off the top of my head—about 6,000 nautical miles from Buenos Aires. Von Dattenberg and the U-405 are about 500 nautical miles from Buenos Aires. So we’re talking about splitting 5,500 nautical miles. Presuming fuel consumption is not a problem, and it can sail on the surface, a U-405-class U-boat can make fifteen knots in ordinary seas.
“Fifty-five hundred miles divided by fifteen is right at 370 hours. Say, two weeks, and a day or two to make the rendezvous. And that much, plus the extra 500 miles, back. Say thirty-two, thirty-three days from the order to go to put your imaginary very important officer on the beach.”
“Buenos Aires is that far?” Himmler asked incredulously.
“That far, Herr Reichsführer. As I said, von und zu Waching in ten minutes or so could come up with a more precise estimate.”
“I wonder if von Deitzberg will like his ocean voyage,” Himmler said, smiling.
This time Canaris did not—perhaps could not—suppress the look of surprise that crossed his face.
“Yes, von Deitzberg will make this voyage,” Himmler said. “For several reasons: One, I can report that to the Führer. I had hoped to be able to tell him ‘SS-Brigadeführer von Deitzberg has tested the transport mechanism,’ but now I suppose it will be, ‘My Führer, as we speak SS-Brigadeführer von Deitzberg is personally testing the transport mechanism.’
“The second reason is that once von Deitzberg has been smuggled into Argentina, he can straighten out the mess we both know exists there. We have to eliminate both the Froggers and that American OSS agent who’s causing us all the trouble. What’s his name?”
“Frade, Herr Reichsführer. Cletus Frade.”
“Yes, I’d forgotten. Frade has to be eliminated, and von Deitzberg is the man to do it, since no one else seems to be capable of doing it.”
“You’re absolutely right, Herr Reichsführer,” Canaris said. “More coffee?”
“I shouldn’t. What is it they say, Canaris? ‘The greatest pleasure is indulging one’s nasty habits’?”
“I’ve heard that, Herr Reichsführer. When do you plan to put this into action?”
“I’ll tell von Deitzberg when he comes to the office. Give him a day to pack, settle things, and another day to get to Saint-Nazaire. You can deal with the navy, can’t you, Canaris? I’d really hate to involve Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz in this unless I have to.”
“I can deal with the navy, Herr Reichsführer.”
Himmler nodded.
“And now, before you corrupt me completely with your smuggled coffee, I’d better get back to work. Don’t say anything to von Deitzberg, please. I want to see the look on his face when I tell him.”
[THREE]
The Embassy of the German Reich
Avenida Córdoba
Buenos Aires, Argentina
0910 25 August 1943
“Herr Cranz is here, Excellency,” Fräulein Ingeborg Hässell announced from the door.
“Ask him to come in, please,” Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger said, not quite finishing the sentence before Karl Cranz shouldered past Fräulein Hässell into the room.
“Heil Hitler!” he announced conversationally. “You wanted to see me, Herr Ambassador?”
Von Lutzenberger barely acknowledged Cranz’s presence.
“No visitors, no calls, please, Ingeborg,” he said, and then he rummaged in a desk drawer as his secretary left the room and closed the door. Finally, he found what he was looking for—a box of matches—and lit one of them, and then a cigarette.
As he extinguished the match by waving it rapidly, he pointed to a sheet of paper on his desk with his other hand.
“The only person who’s seen that is Schneider,” von Lutzenberger said. “He had it waiting for me when I came in this morning.”
Consular Officer Johann Schneider, a twenty-three-year-old Bavarian, was actually an SS-untersturmführer, the equivalent of second lieutenant. He was the first of his lineage ever to achieve officer status, and the first to receive education beyond that offered by the parochial school in his village.
He gave full credit for his success to Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and the tenets of National Socialism. He believed he had been selected for his assignment to Buenos Aires—instead of being posted to one of the SS-regiments on his graduation from officer candidate school at Bad Tölz—because his superiors recognized in him a dedicated officer of great potential.
He was never disabused of this notion by any of his superiors in Germany or Buenos Aires. But the truth was that he had been sent to Argentina because he was a splendid typist. The then-senior SS officer in Buenos Aires, Karl-Heinz Grüner—ostensibly the military attaché, who wore the uniform of a Wehrmacht oberst but was actually an SS-standartenführer—had confessed to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler that he had had quite enough of menopausal females and needed a classified files clerk who could type as well as any woman and could be told to work all night, every night, without breaking into tears.
A sympathetic Himmler had ordered an underling to see what was available for Oberst Grüner at Bad Tölz, and four days later newly commissioned SS-Untersturmführer Schneider had boarded a Lufthansa Condor in Berlin. Thirty-eight hours later, he reported to Grüner in Buenos Aires.
To keep his new typist/classified file clerk happy—Schneider had immediately made it clear that he believed his Argentine assignment was to assist Grüner in high-level intelligence activities—Grüner had permitted Schneider to think of himself as an unofficial member—or perhaps a probationary member—of the SS-Sicherheitsdienst, or Secret Service.
Whenever he saw Schneider chafing
at the bit over his clerical functions, Grüner ordered him to secretly surveille certain members of the embassy staff, most of them unimportant except for First Secretary Anton von Gradny-Sawz.
This was because Grüner neither liked von Gradny-Sawz nor fully trusted him. He didn’t think men who had changed sides could ever be fully trusted.
Von Gradny-Sawz’s primary—if not official—function around the embassy was what Grüner and Ambassador von Lutzenberger thought of as “handling the canapés”; neither was willing to trust von Gradny-Sawz with anything important, but he was good with the canapés.
As von Gradny-Sawz was fond of saying, his family had been serving the diplomatic needs of “the state” for hundreds of years. The implication was the German state. The actuality was that von Gradny-Sawz had been in the diplomatic service of the German state only since 1938.
Before then—before the Anschluss had incorporated Austria into the German Reich as Ostmark—von Gradny-Sawz had been in the Austrian Foreign Service. The ancestors he so proudly spoke of had served the Austro-Hungarian Empire for hundreds of years.
Having seen the handwriting on the wall before 1938, von Gradny-Sawz had become a devout Nazi, made some contribution to the Anschluss itself, and been taken into the Foreign Service of the German Reich.
Ambassador von Lutzenberger, who understood how sacred the canapé-and-cocktails circuit was to the diplomatic corps, had arranged for von Gradny-Sawz’s assignment as his first secretary. Von Gradny-Sawz could charm the diplomatic corps while he attended to business.
The secret reports on von Gradny-Sawz that Schneider gave to Grüner showed that the first secretary divided his off-duty time about equally between two different sets of friends. The largest group was of deposed titled Eastern European blue bloods, a surprising number of whom had made it to Argentina with not only their lives but most of their crown jewels. The second, smaller group consisted of young, long-legged Argentine beauties whom von Gradny-Sawz squired around town, either unaware or not caring that he looked more than a little ridiculous.
SS-Oberst Grüner was now gone, lying in what Schneider thought of as a hero’s grave in Germany beside his deputy, SS-Standartenführer Josef Luther Goltz. They had been laid to eternal rest with all the panoply the SS could muster, after they had given their lives for the Führer and the Fatherland on the beach of Samborombón Bay while trying to secretly bring ashore a “special shipment” from a Spanish-registered ship in the service of the Reich.
The Honor of Spies Page 20