“Now here’s where we come to the crunch, Mister President. Canaris’s motives and Donati’s differ in one vital respect. The admiral wants the Nazis out in order to save Germany from Hitler’s follies and bring her back into civilized society. Donati wants Germany so weakened by internal conflict and external pressure that she’ll be forced to sue for peace. His plan is already succeeding so far as Italy is concerned. He told the Armbrecht girl that when the final act is played out in the Vatican City, Spain and Portugal will swing over to the Allies, Occupied Europe will erupt, and the German nation will be split right down the middle. An Allied invasion force will be greeted as liberators, and the New Order will be crushed with only a fraction of the bloodshed that it would otherwise cost. But this was to be for our ears alone, as soon as she received Donati’s signal to act, and in no circumstances was it to reach the ears of Canaris or the Spanish and Portuguese leadership.”
Ernle Massingberd slid the handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed it delicately about his lips. He cleared his throat. “Monsignor Donati told her there was another, and purely personal reason why his story should go on record. It was his hope, he said, that after the storm had passed he might be able to kneel and receive absolution from the Holy Father for all his sins.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt remained silent for a while after the ambassador had finished speaking. Then he asked, “And Fräulein Armbrecht—where is she now?”
“We don’t know. She accepted my invitation to stay in the Embassy and I had three of our security men drive her to a house in the old town, where she had taken a room. They waited downstairs while she packed her things. After twenty minutes or so they went up, but her room was empty.” Massingberd swallowed hard. “There were traces of fresh blood below the skylight leading to the roof.”
“I see . . . The Gestapo, or Canaris?”
“Our guess is the Gestapo.”
“So she’s now back in Germany, and talking, and the whole conspiracy—if we can swallow this story—is blown wide open?” “I’m not at all sure of that, sir. There was something about that girl—I just don’t think she’ll talk.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I
FIVE DAYS after dining with Peter Waldheim at Zum Schwarzen Ferkel, Kurt received a summons to the War Ministry on the Bendlerstrasse, where he was to report at once to Colonel Buelow of the Medical Corps. No reason was given for the 9 a.m. summons, but he assumed that it was for a routine check on his amputated arm.
The slightly built gray-haired man in his late forties who greeted Kurt in the third-floor office might well have been an army doctor in civilian clothes. In fact, he introduced himself at once as Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and invited Kurt to be seated while he made a telephone call that took all of ten seconds. (“Well? . . . I see . . . And there’s no doubt about that? . . . Right!”) He replaced the receiver slowly and sat staring at a row of rubber stamps for another few seconds before raising his eyes to meet Kurt’s.
“You must brace yourself, Major,” he said softly, “for very sad news.”
“My father . . . ?”
Canaris shook his head. He said, “Your sister, Major Armbrecht, was an incredibly brave woman.”
“Sophie—” He was up out of his chair. “What are you saying?”
“She was arrested in Madrid three days ago by the SD, on the orders of Brigadefuehrer Walter Schellenberg. Look, Major—” the admiral fumbled behind his desk—“Let me offer you a Schnapps or something.”
“No, thank you. Just—” He had to sit down. There was no strength in his legs. “What has happened to my sister, Herr Admiral?”
“She was observed entering and leaving the United States Embassy. She was flown here, to SD headquarters on the Prinz Albrecht Strasse. She—” Canaris looked away. “She died only a few minutes ago, under interrogation.”
It was a lie, of course. A monstrous, inhuman device to catch him off guard and trick him into betraying Sophie and Giovanni Donati.
“I want to see my sister, Herr Admiral—at once.”
“I understand your feelings. But you must be as true as she was to the cause for which she died. I can’t arrange for you to see her, even if I wanted to. At this moment, her arrest and death is an SD secret—or would be if I hadn’t my own Abwehr man in Prinz Albrecht Strasse. We know for a fact that she gave nothing away to those swine but stuck to her story, right to the end, that all she wanted was political asylum in the United States. Let me be quite blunt with you, Major. If you go storming over to Prinz Albrecht Strasse, you could expose my man in there, myself, and of course your own self.”
“Why did you send for me?”
“I found out only two hours ago that the girl they were interrogating was your sister. There is nothing she could tell them about me, but she could obviously have incriminated yourself and our friend Donati.”
“Incriminate? For what, Herr Admiral?” Kurt’s agony hadn’t completely bludgeoned his wits. Donati had said nothing to him about Canaris. He was not going to be conned into giving away, out of gullibility, what his sister had— He stiffened as the delayed impact of what the admiral had told him hit him suddenly, with the sickening force of a hammer blow under the heart. His mother . . . If it were true, he would have to go to her, for the second time in six months, and find words to convey the unutterable.
Canaris’s voice, a blend of sympathy and impatience, brought him back from Munich to this aseptic geometrical limbo of an office on the Bendlerstrasse.
“You must trust me, Major Armbrecht. All the fuses are lit, and in a matter of days, now—” The Abwehr chief broke off, as if seized by sudden doubts of his own. Then: “I want you to leave Berlin at once and fly to Rome. You’re still in the clear, so far as Schellenberg is concerned, but there’s no guarantee that he won’t have second thoughts. I’m giving you an Abwehr lais-sez-passer, which, together with your Chancellery credentials, will get you into the Vatican. It’s vital that you see the Monsignor and tell him about your sister. And you must give him a message from me. Just tell him this: “The asparagus is now ready for eating.” He had taken a sheet of paper from a desk drawer while he was speaking, and now he reached for a rubber stamp, pressed it to the paper and put his signature over the impression. He stood up. “My assistant, Colonel Oster, will drive with you to your hotel and then straight to the airport, where one of our planes is standing by. Any questions, Major?”
“My sister—”
Canaris shook his head.
“The people who did it—”
“—will pay, never doubt that. Keep a tight hold on your hatred, young man. Germany will find use for it.”
After packing his things, he wrote a short note to Peter Waldheim. “Sophie is dead. What they left of her lies in the Prinz Albrecht Strasse. I shall return to Germany one day, to pay my debts. Please break this as gently as you know how to my mother.”
He gave the sealed envelope to Colonel Oster on the way to the airport. “Can you get this to Major Waldheim at the Berghof—not through the usual channels?”
“It’ll be done, Armbrecht.”
About the time Kurt was boarding the army plane at Tempelhof Flughaven, Heinrich Himmler was hurrying up the Stairway of Pius IX in response to a summons from the Fuehrer. He found Hitler pacing the floor of the exiled Pius XII’s study. Monsignor Donati was at the window, gazing at the fagade of St. Peter’s.
“There you are, Himmler! What took you so long?”
“I came at once, my Fuehrer. We’ve made our headquarters in the Casina, which is—”
“Never mind about that. There’s God’s work to be done and He is growing impatient. Now, what about those cardinals?” “The cardinals, my Fuehrer . . . ?”
“Six days, Himmler, and still no sign from them! And their insolence, refusing to answer my messages! Another thing— where are the crowds who should be out there in the piazza waiting to honor the new Pope?”
“Your instructions, my Fuehrer, were to clear the
square. All the approaches are sealed off. If it’s your wish—”
“The hour has come, Himmler! Let them in! And let in the world’s press!”
“At once, my—”
“Now listen carefully. I am not permitting the will of God to be frustrated another minute by those blind and obstinate old men perched on their thrones in the Sistine Chapel. Tell Rattenhuber to take them away! And have the signal go up at once from that chimney that a new Pope has been chosen. Where are Bormann and the rest?”
“In the Casina, my Fuehrer.”
“I want them and the heads of our missions assembled in the Sistine Chapel. And I want every German priest and prelate in this city there as well. If any refuse, pack them off with the cardinals! Now, what about the bells?”
“The bells, my Fuehrer . . . ?”
“The Basilica’s bells, Himmler! They have to ring out over the whole city when the new Pope is announced.”
“Leave it to me, my Fuehrer.”
“Good, good.” Hitler drew a long breath and turned toward Donati, who had moved away from the window and was standing with his pendant cross in his hands and his eyes cast down.
“Come, Father,” he said with extraordinary tenderness. “The time is now.”
The small company that was assembled in the Sistine Chapel an hour later included Goering, Bormann, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Feldmarschall Keitel, Gestapo Mueller, Doctor Otto Dietrich, SS Oberfuehrer Rattenhuber, the German ambassador to the Holy See, the heads of all service and economic missions and the two German Monsignors attached to the Vatican administration. Benito Mussolini wasn’t there—or, indeed, anywhere else in Rome, having last been seen in a fast-moving convoy of army trucks heading south for Naples.
It was a curiously still and mutually uncommunicative assembly, as if each of the men present was an island to himself, wrapped in his own private fears and misgivings. All of them knew that behind the closed doors leading to the sacristy of the Sistine Chapel the ultimate sacrilege was being enacted. All eyes were trained either on those doors or on the sedia gestatoria—the papal throne—which now stood on the altar platform, facing them. The sacristy doors opened slowly, and one of Hitler’s SS orderlies, dressed in cassock and surplice, took a few paces into the presbyterium and sank to his knees. The bizarre congregation, led by Hermann Georing, did likewise.
Donati made his slow solemn entrance, resplendent in a full-length ferraiolone and purple moiré skull cap. A few paces behind him came Adolf Hitler, arms crossed upward against his chest. Except for the red stole and socks marked with the cross, he was clad entirely in white, from his silk slippers, up through his cassock and cloak to the white papal skull cap on the back of his bowed head.
In the nave of the chapel, immediately behind Joachim von Ribbentrop, one of the German Monsignors uttered a sharp cutoff cry and crumpled sideways into the aisle in a dead faint.
Before the horrified eyes of his stunned colleagues and minions, Hitler ascended the throne, settled himself, and then held out his right hand for the kneeling Donati to place upon it the Fisherman’s ring. The archbishop kissed the ring and remained kneeling as another orderly emerged from the sacristy and made his way toward the throne, bearing a cardinal’s red silk hat across the palms of his hands. The orderly knelt beside the throne. Hitler took the flat hat, stood up, and addressed the gaping assembly briefly.
“We rejoice, in this Our first act as Bishop of Rome and Vicar of Jesus Christ, in appointing Our dearly beloved brother, Archbishop Giovanni Donati, a Cardinal of the Holy Church.” He made a slow sign of the cross over Donati’s head before lowering the red hat in place and resuming his seat on the throne. Donati bent low to kiss one of Hitler’s white slippers and then the Fisherman’s Ring. He rose to his feet and made a sign to the orderly standing by the opening in the balustrade across the nave.
Martin Bormann was the first to walk through the balustrade, kneel at the throne, kiss the papal ring and receive a blessing. Goering and Ribbentrop followed suit, returning to their seats in an obvious state of shock. Others of the small congregation held back as Himmler, peaked SS cap tucked under his left arm, stepped through the balustrade, came to a halt a few paces short of the altar platform and suddenly stiffened. His right arm shot out and the cry “Heil Hitler!” reverberated around the chapel.
Hitler’s hand, half-extended for Himmler’s lips, bunched itself into a tight fist and he started to rise from the throne, eyes glaring, lips twisting into a snarl. With an obvious effort, he controlled himself, sank back in the throne and waved the trembling Reichsfuehrer away. The rest of the assembly took turns doing obeisance, with the exception of the still-conscious of the two German Monsignors, who remained kneeling beside his colleague, massaging his hands and intoning prayers in a low and doleful voice.
When the ring-kissing was finished, Hitler stood up and nodded to Donati. “Our flock is awaiting Us, Your Eminence. Lead Us to the balcony of the Basilica.”
An orderly carrying the papal cross led the slow procession out of the chapel and on through the Hall of the Benedictines to the lofty windows opening on the second story loggia above the entry to St. Peter’s and reserved for pontifical blessings. Donati went ahead of Hitler onto the balcony and looked down at the broad forecourt beyond the six steps leading up to the portico. About a hundred journalists, hastily rounded up by Dietrich’s staff from the Italian newspapers and the Foreign Press Club, stared up at him. He raised his eyes to look out over the vast Bernini square, to its central Egyptian obelisk brought to Rome by the mad emperor Caligula, to the 104 evenly spaced statues of saints looking down from above the piazza’s encircling colonnade. Except for the clusters, here and there, of black-uniformed Leibstandarte troops, the square was entirely empty.
Donati filled his lungs and let his voice ring out over the twenty loudspeakers installed around the piazza.
“Habemus Papam!”
In place of the answering roar from twenty thousand Italian throats there came the clatter of a camera falling to the stones from the excited hands of a press photographer.
“Adolfum—”
The corporate gasp that went up from the journalists carried clearly into the lofty chamber where Hitler stood with his back to the loose semicircle of Nazi chiefs. Goering, alone, wore a relishing smile, as if he had personally stage-managed this sensational piece of theater and would realize 50 percent of the box-office take. Martin Bormann looked dazed; Ribbentrop seemed to be fighting hard not to vomit; Himmler’s pale mask of a face was twitching spasmodically. Wilhelm Keitel’s expression was a study in imbecile soldierly abstraction. The great bells of the Basilica began to ring out and, at a gesture from Donati, Hitler stepped out onto the balcony. His light-blue eyes, blinded from within, ranged the empty piazza and suddenly took fire.
“Magnificent” he breathed. “The Nuremberg of God’s anointed!”
He began to speak, deaf to the bells reverberating above him and totally inaudible to the journalists below. Those in the room behind him, straining their ears, caught only snatches of his Bavarian-accented German.
“. . . a new era . . . the rebirth of Christ’s mission on . . . like Julius the Second, wielding his mace in one hand . . . and with the scourge of Judaism and Bolshevik atheism . . . and everlasting peace on earth to all. . . .”
As the bells suddenly stopped ringing, Hitler broke off in mid-sentence and blinked around at Donati, as if jolted from a dream. The newly appointed cardinal made a covert motion with his right hand and Hitler nodded and turned again toward the piazza, his own hand moving through the sign of the cross.
II
BUT FOR the Leibstandarte transport unit now operating at Ciampino airport, Kurt would have had to walk into Rome. All public transport had come to a halt, and any unguarded vehicle belonging to a German or an Italian Fascist was being set on fire by marauding gangs of young Romans, many of them led by army deserters.
His Chancellery and Abwehr documents got him past the road block in
the Via della Conciliazione and as far as the Bronze Doors of the Vatican Palace. Here he was informed by the officer of the guard that Pope Adolf I and Cardinal Donati had retired to the papal apartments and were “indefinitely inaccessible.”
Kurt had heard the day’s staggering news immediately on touchdown at Ciampino. And, hard on the shock, had come a sense of awe at the genius of Giovanni Donati. He said, “Reichsleiter Bormann, then?”
“With the rest of the Fuehrung, up there in the Borgia apartments. If the matter is of great urgency, I could have a message taken to him.”
“It’s vital that I should speak to the Cardinal.”
The officer shook his head. “Out of the question. It’s precisely what Reichsleiter Bormann, Reichsmarschall Goering and everyone else wants to do. I can only suggest that you try again tomorrow.”
Kurt walked back to where his SS driver had parked the car. “I’ll need a bed for the night, Sturmann. Any suggestions?”
“The regimental billeting officer, Herr Major. You’ll find him just back there in the Palazzo Ceci.”
Fifteen minutes later, Kurt was being ushered into a pleasant attic room in the palazzo itself by an attentive and respectful SS Oberscharjuehrer.
“What a day for Germany, Herr Major! What a brilliant coup by the Fuehrer!”
“Are you a Catholic, Oberscharjuehrer?”
“Not yet. But I’m applying for membership, first chance I get!”
When he was alone, he unpacked his bag, took out the photographs of Sophie hugging her father at Munich airport and lowered himself to the edge of the bed.
“Kleines—”
He let go then, and sobbed out his heart. . . .
There were no Roman newspapers in the morning, but the Vatican Radio, now taken over by Doctor Dietrich, was putting out quarter-hourly bulletins, sandwiched between bravura selections from Tannhäuser. The bulletins called on the Italians to do homage to their new Pope in St. Peter’s Square and promised them that under this, the first non-Italian pontiff for four-and-a-half centuries, the spiritual supremacy of the Holy Roman Church throughout the world would be assured for the next thousand years. As he listened to one of the bulletins over a cup of coffee in the Palazzo Ceci’s commissary, Kurt decided on his next move.
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