by Peter Quinn
Using the small silver bell by his plate, Canaris signaled for the waiter, instructing him to take away their dishes and bring a check.
“You weren’t pleased with the food?” the waiter asked.
“I haven’t much of an appetite today, that’s all.” Canaris lit a cigarette. The intemperate monologue he’d endured from Oster that afternoon had put him in a black mood. He told Oster to lower his voice. Oster ignored him, railing against Beck’s decision to go quietly and allow the Führer to credit the resignation of his Chief of Staff to “ill health.”
Beck folded his hands and bowed his head, as though ready to pray grace after meals. “Have you heard anything from England?”
“Nothing very encouraging, I’m afraid. The attitude of the Foreign Office seems to be that any disagreements within the regime are internal squabbles of no consequence to His Majesty’s government. Their overriding desire is to reach some accommodation that will avoid another war.” Canaris turned his head to exhale the smoke away from Beck, who made no secret of his dislike for cigarettes. The door to the room was half-opened. Outside, the waiter was writing in his order book, totaling up the bill, perhaps.
“Franz Halder came and spoke with me as soon as the Führer named him successor as Chief of Staff. He’s a good soldier. He, too, is afraid of another war. He thinks that, as a new voice, he might be able to reason with the Führer.”
“He’ll learn quickly.” Canaris caught the waiter’s attention and signaled for the check.
The waiter approached with the check in both hands, as if he were about to read from it. “Pardon me, if this appears rude, but you are General Beck, are you not?”
Beck nodded. His mouth was slightly ajar.
“I was sure it was you. Admiral Canaris I have seen here many times, but I recognize you from your picture in the newspaper.” He smiled and put down the check.
Canaris examined it, pretending to make sure the addition was correct. He tried to reassure himself that the sensitive parts of his conversation with Beck had been out of the waiter’s earshot. “That will be all.” He signed the check and handed it back.
“Yes, Herr Admiral.” The waiter stuck the check in his order book but made no motion to leave. “I hope this doesn’t seem too forward or out of line, but I know that you gentlemen were talking about the situation with the Czechs.”
Beck’s mouth opened wider. He seemed about to speak but no sound came out.
“Well, you should know that among us Magyars there is a growing cadre determined to replicate the success of the Third Reich in our homeland. We are ready to stand with Germany against the Czechs, the British, and all the willing dupes of Jewish-run Bolshevist subversion and degeneracy.”
Canaris and Beck rose simultaneously. Beck walked to the door without saying anything. “Your expression of support is appreciated,” Canaris said.
“A new order is coming to Europe,” the waiter said, as Canaris followed Beck out of the room. “Those who aren’t for it are against it, and those against it are doomed!”
Gresser informed Canaris as soon as he arrived at his office that Lieutenant Colonel Piekenbrock had requested to see him. Following a cup of coffee and a glance through the morning paper, Canaris had Gresser summon Piekenbrock. When he arrived, Canaris sent Gresser on an errand and shut the door.
Canaris poured himself another cup. “Would you care for some?”
“No, thank you, and I apologize for the delay,” Piekenbrock said.
“What delay?” Canaris motioned for him to sit.
“The information on the SS agent in New York you requested.” Piekenbrock undid a button on his tunic and took from the inner breast pocket a thin sheath of papers. He unfolded it on the desk and smoothed the sheets with several strokes of his palm.
“Of course, yes. I’m afraid I’ve been distracted.”
Piekenbrock rebuttoned the tunic. “I went about my inquiries ‘discreetly,’ as you instructed. It took longer than I’d hoped, but I believe I avoided raising any suspicions, at least above what is normal. Mostly, it required drinking with my SS counterparts and listening to them brag, which takes only a modicum of encouragement. That, and the occasional bribe.”
“Wait a moment while I ask Oster to come in. He brought this to my attention.”
Oster came immediately. He spread out on the couch, arms across the tops of the leather cushions.
“Forgive any sloppiness or errors. I was allowed to look at Hausser’s SS dossier but not retain it.”
“Hausser?” Canaris said.
Springing from the couch, Oster reached over and took the papers Piekenbrock had placed on the desk. “Yes, if you recall our conversation of several weeks ago, that’s the agent’s name.” After a quick examination, he abruptly handed them to Canaris, ignoring the latter’s visible irritation at their interception.
Canaris put on his glasses. The handwriting was small, cramped, difficult to read. He gave the papers back to Piekenbrock. “What’s the gist?”
“The SS wants to take over the Abwehr.” The scorn in Oster’s voice was undisguised. He lifted the lighter from the desk, thumbed the flint, and leaned the cigarette in his mouth into the flame. “That’s become the gist of about everything around here.”
Although annoyed at Oster’s obtrusion and impertinence, Canaris acted as if unaffected. “In outline, what have you discovered?”
“Gregor Hausser is an American,” Piekenbrock said. “At least he was born there, in the city of Hoboken, in 1901. His parents were East Prussians, from Königsberg. His father, a chemist, brought the family back to Germany shortly after the outbreak of the war and served with distinction on the Western Front. He was killed at the Somme in 1917. Hausser left school in 1918, at the war’s end, and joined a Freikorps unit in Berlin. He settled there, working as a butcher’s apprentice, until 1925, when he returned to America. There, he worked in a meat-packing plant in Chicago, until 1929, when he lost his job and returned once more to Germany.”
Oster went back to the couch. “The fellow’s a regular gypsy.”
Fumbling for a moment, Piekenbrock marked the place he was looking for with his forefinger. “Here’s the gist, I suppose: he joined the Nazi Party in 1930; the SS in ’31. He assisted in the purge of Röhm and the SA in 1934 and was assigned as an aide to Eicke, at Dachau. On Eicke’s recommendation, Hausser was sent to the SS Officers Academy at Bad Tolz and was subsequently appointed to its training staff.”
“The American background explains why he was judged suitable for a mission to the United States,” Canaris said. “But what’s the purpose of the mission?”
“There was no hint in his file, but there are facts I discovered not in the official documents. You should know that these cost me—or, more accurately, the Abwehr—a case of fine cognac and a pair of the best English riding boots.”
“That’s all?” Oster pretended to be disappointed. “If it were worth anything to those bloodsuckers in the SS, they’d have charged you a hundred times that.”
“Let’s find out what it is before we worry whether we underpaid.” Canaris no longer felt peeved at Oster’s behavior. He knew it was rooted in frustration with the manner of General Beck’s resignation and the wobbling resolve to mount a coup if and when war broke out. He merely wished for his sake and everyone else’s that Oster would try to do a better job of hiding it.
“Hausser has a police record,” Piekenbrock again shuffled the papers until he’d pinpointed a paragraph with his finger. He read aloud: “Arrested in Munich, in 1934, for the near fatal beating of a prostitute. Charges quashed by order of the State Minister of Police. Repeat arrests in 1935 and ’36, same charges, same outcomes. Detained in the stabbing, strangulation death of a prostitute in Berlin, June 1937. Further prosecution of the case was stopped by order of Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Security Services.”
“Even by SS standards, an odd choice for a secret agent, wouldn’t you say?” Oster lit a new cigarette with the burn
ed-down remnant of the old.
“There’s more. When Hausser served with the Death’s Head Unit at Dachau, he earned the nickname ‘The King of Spades’ for on-the-spot executions of prisoners in his work detail with a sharpened shovel. They were recorded as ‘accidental deaths.’ It’s all here.” Piekenbrock handed the sheet he’d been reading from to Canaris.
“Have you made any inquiries with our Abwehr agents in New York?”
“Yes, Admiral, they already knew of Hausser, who’s hardly kept a low profile. He’s hung around the Bund in New York and been a loudmouth participant in some of their rallies. He bragged to fellow Bundists of a personal acquaintance with General Heydrich. Our agents figured him for either an FBI plant or a hollow-headed braggart.”
“The incurable arrogance of the SS. They all suffer from it. Worse, it’s highly contagious.” Oster was on his feet again, pacing back and forth in front of the door.
“You instructed our agents to keep a watch on him, I trust,” Canaris said.
“I planned to, but before I could, I was informed he’d disappeared.”
“Disappeared? You mean, recalled to Germany?”
“It’s unclear. I’m still receiving information from New York. It seems he’s been working as a chauffeur, and his employer died in a fire.”
“Is Hausser suspected in it?”
“It doesn’t appear so. But our agents in New York tell us that he’s vanished from sight.”
“What do your SS contacts tell you?”
“They’re being untypically tight-lipped. Either they don’t know or won’t divulge. I don’t want to do anything that would indicate too deep an interest on my part.”
Canaris smiled, slightly. “Perhaps, he’s gone underground and joined up with the gangsters who run New York.”
“In New York, the gangsters rule the underground.” Oster shot a fulgurous glance at Canaris. “But in Berlin they run the government.”
September 1938
8
The Jew, as seen through the eyes of the ordinary non-Jew, is a study in contradictions. He is at once communist subversive and capitalist exploiter. He is an unhealthy creature, lax in matters of personal hygiene and poorly conditioned, yet an extraordinary seducer of wholesome, attractive gentile girls. He is the modernist par excellence, the enemy of tradition, but a stubborn adherent to the practices of his ancient faith. He controls the newspapers and the movies but the little attention paid him in these venues is often in the form of disparaging stereotypes. The Jew is a peddler and small businessman, a scrounger and a scavenger; and he is plutocrat and millionaire, overlord of the factories and department stores that drive the peddler and small businessman out of business. He is a coward and a pacifist, afraid of war because it often results in pogroms directed against himself and his tribe, and he is a scheming warmonger eager for the profits that war will bring. Attempts to reconcile these opposing perceptions of the Jew will invariably fail unless one understands that they have little to do with the perceived—i.e., the Jew—and everything to do with the perceiver, the non-Jew. Perhaps the best way to think of it is to imagine the Jew as a movie screen, a blank surface, upon which society projects its submerged fears, resentments and lusts, allowing them to flicker through the filter of everyday perceptions. Pity the poor Jew, if you wish. But beware the projectionist, you must.
—MANFRED STERN, Landscapes of the Imagination
THE RIVER CLUB, EAST 52ND STREET, NEW YORK
DONOVAN LOWERED THE newspaper. The account of the reopening of the Grillo case had absorbed him so thoroughly that he hadn’t noticed that most of the other breakfasters in the River Club had finished and left. A waiter poured him another cup of coffee. He lifted it—a silent, solo toast. Here’s to Dunne. He’d come through.
Donovan almost congratulated himself on never doubting that he would; but he knew there’d been moments when he had. How couldn’t there have been when he’d stuck out his neck on such little evidence?
“What’s got you looking so happy?” Jim Forrestal stood on the other side of the table, hat at his side. He was smiling, or what passed for a smile with Forrestal, one corner of his mouth turned up at a wry, sarcastic angle. “Every time I read the papers, I want to puke.”
Donovan pointed at the headline. “This murder case that’s being re-opened, and the exposé of the crooked cops who were involved.”
“What about it?”
“An acquaintance of mine is responsible, Fintan Dunne, an ex-cop and private investigator. He served with me in the 69th.”
“Catch one rat today. Tomorrow another brood is born. That’s the way of the world.” Forrestal put his hat on the table and pulled up a chair. “Mind if I sit?” He sat before Donovan could say anything, looked around for a waiter and snapped his fingers at one he spotted in the corner. “Bring me a cup of tea.”
“I thought you’d still be out on the North Shore,” Donovan said.
“I’d rather die from heat then boredom.” Forrestal brushed his finger beneath his flat and slightly tilted nose, a reminder of a knockout blow he’d taken in his days as a college boxer. He turned in his chair. “Where’s that tea?”
Donovan laughed at Forrestal’s impatience. He’d never been put off by Forrestal’s abruptness, which others found unmannerly and abrasive. He considered it part of the sales pitch by the brokerage house of Dillion, Read, a firm headed by arrivistes like Clarence Dillon (born Lapowski, he’d done a nuptial reverse and taken his wife’s maiden name) and Jim Forrestal, who, though he did his damnedest to avoid any reference to it, had never entirely erased the taint of his Irish working-class origin up the Hudson River, in Beacon, New York. Outsiders perceived Dillon, Read as part of the Street’s blue-blood club. Insiders knew that Dillon and Forrestal had climbed up from below and snickered among themselves at Hymie and Paddy’s efforts to pass as Anglo-Saxons. Yet they were often more likely to trust their money to men who were born without it and knew its true value than to those fed from a silver porridge bowl with a silver spoon.
The waiter brought Forrestal a cup, saucer, and pot of tea. “Do you wish me to pour, sir? Or do you prefer to let it steep?”
Forrestal didn’t look at him. “Steep.”
“How was your trip to Washington?” Donovan didn’t expect that Forrestal would resent being questioned about his invitation to the White House. It was common knowledge that, after six years of unremitting animosity, F.D.R. was trying to repair his relationship with the financial community and had summoned men he perceived might be sympathetic, Forrestal among them.
“You think it’s hot here? Washington is a hell hole.”
“Did it go well?”
“My trip?”
“Your meeting with the President.”
“Fine.” Forrestal poured himself a cup of tea.
“Did he cast the famous Roosevelt spell over you?”
The corner of Forrestal’s mouth angled up in a sardonic smile. “He said I had a reputation as a tough, short-tempered son of a bitch.”
“I suppose that’s better than being ‘a malefactor of great wealth.’ The government doesn’t hound every son of a bitch over his income taxes.”
“He meant it as a compliment. He said he was looking for men who know how to get things done, especially how to organize and finance large-scale industrial enterprises.”
“Too bad he didn’t think of that six years ago, before he plunged the country into a failed experiment with socialism. He’s only got two years before his time is up.”
Forrestal shrugged. “He’s thinking about the country’s defenses. The threats from overseas are becoming too powerful to ignore. He said he wants to bring the whole country behind an effort to make sure we’re armed and ready for whatever comes.”
“Come on, Jim. The man will say whatever he thinks will bring you over to the Democrats. If ever there was a living embodiment of Dr. Johnson’s dictum that ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,’ it’s F.D.R. He’s failed
to end the Depression, and he and his party know the political tide is turning against them.”
“I like him.”
“That’s not the issue. The fact is, you can’t trust him.”
“Trust?” Forrestal poured himself a cup of tea, blew on it, and took a gulp. “Who said anything about trust? I think he’ll do whatever’s necessary to ensure we don’t end up at the mercy of our enemies.”
“You’re about half right, Jim. He’ll do whatever is necessary to ensure he can outfox his political adversaries. War is about the last card he has to play.”
“He asked about you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. Apparently, he knows we’re neighbors on Beekman Place.”
“And cut from the same green cloth. He knows the Irish in the country are overwhelmingly opposed to bailing out the British a second time.”
Forrestal ignored Donovan’s reference to their shared Irish Catholic background. “He asked if I ever saw you, and when I said we often bumped into each other, he said to send his regards.”
Donovan ignored the message from the president. “This time it’s not just the Irish who are opposed. The vast majority of Americans are against sending our boys overseas again.”
“It’s different this time,” Forrestal said.
“Yes, this time instead of an insufferable moralist like Woodrow Wilson for our president, who couldn’t accept any fact that didn’t fit his ideals, we have Franklin Roosevelt, a thoroughbred opportunist who has no ideals other than ensuring his own political survival. Did he reminisce with you about the time he and I spent together at Columbia and our mutual love of football?”
“No. All he said was that Bill Donovan is a patriot. ‘When the time comes,’ he said, ‘I know I’ll be able to count on him.’”
“Now that he’s got that rogue Joe Kennedy as ambassador to London, he’ll try to add a few more Irish names to his administration to keep the Paddy vote loyal in case he decides to try for a third term. He’s a shameless politician.”