“Till then,” said Nelliecoyne, “you can use my camera and printer whenever you want.”
“Me too?” asked Socra Marie.
“Sure!”
“Ma, after school can I take Patjo down to Katiesue’s house to take a pitcher of him and Johnnie Pete?”
“So long as I can come with you.”
“Me too?”
“So long as you have a good nap, Socra Marie!”
“Hokay.”
I felt I understood the problem of Baron von Frankenstein and his monster.
Dermot and I did our exercise and then sat and talked about our investigation.
“I think,” I said, “maybe we should go down to the Cathedral tomorrow morning and talk to the little bishop about Mosul and the Assyrians and the Jesuits and such things.”
“Excellent idea.”
“Maybe we could ask him whether there is a school or parish or a monastery there where he might be staying.”
“An equally excellent idea.”
“Usually, I bring one of the younger kinder along, but they could be disruptive.”
“And Socra Marie has school.”
“She does indeed.”
“Still, he hasn’t seen him since he was baptized.”
“But he can’t climb into his lap.”
“’Tis true.”
“You know what, Nuala Anne, I’m exhausted altogether.”
“What else would you expect, Dermot Michael, after all that exercise? I could use a nap too, so long as it is a nap-nap.”
“And individual showers afterwards?”
“Well, this time anyway,” I conceded the point.
I think joint showers are wonderful, prolonged luxuriant play. However, sometimes a couple needs to sleep.
So we did.
So the next morning we presented ourselves at the Cathedral. Archbishop Blackie opened the door.
“No childer?” he said.
“The little girl is in school,” I said, “and we would not dream of violating the discipline of a Catholic school.”
“Remnant that you are of a former era,” Archbishop Blackie said with a sigh, which while not as deep or as loud as my husband says mine is, nonetheless could indicate either the advent of an asthma attack or deep despair on the condition of the world.
He was wearing his current uniform of a black clerical shirt without a Roman collar, black jeans and a Chicago White Sox cap. Is that not, he had asked, the usual garb of a coadjutor Archbishop with right to succession?
“And Patjo is a little too young for a rectory office in the absence of one of your Means.”
“I now list their job description as porter persons and rectory babysitters … Actually and despite my dignity, I am answering the bell because our housekeeper is sick and the good Crystal Lane is in church praying, odd behavior for a member of a rectory staff.”
Crystal Lane, the youth minister, is also a mystic.
So we sat in the rectory counseling room, which had been gussied up to look like an American living room.
“Actually,” me husband said, “herself and I are not here in search of counsel.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
So we told him our mission and showed him our pictures of Dizzy Des.
“Fascinating,” he said, his pale blue eyes blinking rapidly behind his Coke bottle lenses.
Me husband insisted that the glasses were part of the persona and that behind them were perfectly good contact lenses.
“It is all speculative, Your Riverence.”
“Save for the airplane flight to the border of the Kurdish country.”
“His parents,” I said, “believe he’s a wastrel.”
“Oh, clearly not. He’s a wandering monk of the kind we produced in the very early Middle Ages and whom we now replace by missionaries who stay in one place.”
“Monk?” Dermot asked.
Because my poor Dermot is totally brilliant, he is less confused by Archbishop’s Blackie’s elliptical manner of speech than most other folk.
“Not necessarily one in holy vows, much less holy orders. In the early Middle Ages, before the Canon lawyers took control of the Church, such itinerant doers of good, some more honest than others, some saner than others, wandered about the land. Today, alas, they’d be arrested as vagrants or incarcerated in mental institutions, even if on occasion they worked miracles.”
“Folks like Himself?” says I.
“You have the right of it, Nuala Anne,” says he, and himself imitating the way I talk.
“Des is a Jesus figure?” me Dermot asks.
“I wouldn’t recommend that you tell his parents, but that might be a useful model to keep in mind. Such folk do come along, now and again.”
“You think we should stop looking for him?” says I.
“To search for the missing is your profession, is it not?” says he.
“I’m a wife and a mother,” says I.
“She sings occasionally,” me Dermot adds some sense to this conversation.
“As I understand your story,” Blackie began again,
“you’re wondering if there might be some Catholic organization around Mosul with which Des might have affiliated?”
“’Tis true.”
“I believe there are seven Catholic dioceses in Iraq, one of which is the Archdiocese of, you should excuse the expression, Babylon, as Baghdad is properly called. I am not acquainted with my Most Reverend brother in that see. There is also a papal nuncio who, as a canon lawyer, can hardly be concerned about itinerant monks. The Jesuits had a college there too, but I believe that the former president of the country closed down all such Catholic institutions. Might there be a small and informal Caldee monastery in the Mosul area? It is not unthinkable because the once glorious Church of the East had a strong monastic tradition, building such as far away as China.”
“So,” says I, “maybe Des finds out about such a place in one of these camera stores, establishes contact with them, and goes over there to learn some more languages and help the people and promote peace and have fun?”
“Not likely, Ms. McGrail,” says he, “not likely at all, at all. But not impossible.”
“How can we,” me Dermot wants to know, “interview the papal nuncio?”
“Dermot Michael Coyne,” says I, “you’re not going to Babylon!”
“That worthy would hardly talk to one as lowly as a coadjutor Archbishop, but he would respond immediately to a Cardinal Prince, even one who is so infirm that he needs a coadjutor.”
Cardinal Sean of course is not infirm at all, at all. He has a coadjutor, he claims, to be sure that the Vatican does not assign Blackie anywhere west of the Des Plaines River, “Beyond which my very survival would become problematic.”
“So we hire Cardinal Sean?” says I.
“I’m not sure you could afford his hourly rate. However, since ’tis yourself that wants the information, he’ll probably do the research gratis.”
I removed from me purse the two most recent photographs of me brood, the four kids and the two doggies. Poor Poraig is at the center of the picture with a huge grin as he accepts the worship of everyone else.
“Well, Your Riverence, here’s his stipend and a fee for yourself as his agent.”
“Fascinating!”
“A pleasure to do business with you!”
We stood up to leave.
“You might also visit Father Ibrahim Ibrahim at St. Ibrahim’s Church. That is the local parish for the Assyrians. He doubtless has some informal communications with those remaining in Iraq. I shall warn him of your advent. He is one of the few priests in the Archdiocese who takes seriously my dignity.”
“Ask Cardinal Sean if this monastery in Mosul has e-mail connections with the rest of the world.”
“Nuala Anne,” me husband says to me as we drive back to our cottage in his car (and meself driving), “do you realize how high the odds against our finding him in a monastery or even finding a
monastery
“’Tis all we have, Dermot love … Now let’s get home and see what mayhem our eldest has caused with her new camera.”
16
In February of 1943, the remnants of the German Sixth Army surrendered at Stalingrad. Almost a million Germans had died. Of the ninety thousand who had laid down their arms, less than five percent survived. It was the worst military defeat in the history of Germany, a disaster that should have been avoided. A Russian counteroffensive had swept around the Sixth Army’s siege of Stalingrad and besieged the besiegers. Hitler had lost interest in Moscow and Leningrad. He had decided to drive across the Volga River and wheel south into the oil fields of the Caucasus and then across to the Caspian Sea. He was, as Claus suggested, in his “Alexander” mode as opposed to his previous “Bonaparte” mode. The General Staff had argued against the offensive. The Sixth Army was powerful, but it would extend its communications and logistics network beyond all sensible limits. Despite Hitler’s argument that the Red Army had been destroyed in the summer’s battle, it was still capable of huge winter counteroffensives. If the Sixth Army should be stalled at Stalingrad, it would be at grave risk of falling victim to a massive counterattack on its flanks.
Hitler would accept none of this. The time for the German army to end the war in Russia was now—before the Americans became fully involved. Through August and September Army Group South (in which Claus had served) pushed across the steppes of southern Russia with ease. Hitler was pleased with his brilliant strategy and sent half of the group into the Caucasus to the oil fields—which Hitler bragged would solve the German oil shortage. In early August the Sixth Army was on the outskirts of Stalingrad. Hitler proclaimed that victory was at hand. However, the Red Army poured reinforcements into the city. Behind the Russian front lines stood other soldiers with orders to shoot anyone who ran. House by house, block by block, the Germans fought to the banks of the Volga in early November. The General Staff realized that the inferior Hungarian and Romanian armies, which protected the flanks of the Sixth Army, invited a Russian encirclement. They begged Hitler to send troops to throw back any Russian counteroffensive. He was not interested in the flanks, but only in the city itself. In mid-November the Russians launched two massive attacks on both German flanks and surrounded the Sixth Army. General von Manstein, who had withdrawn his troops from the Caucasus to escape a trap there, was ordered to break through to relieve the Sixth Army. At a decisive meeting with his generals, Hitler almost ordered the Sixth Army to launch an attack to break out of the siege. The generals argued that they could no longer provide supplies for the Sixth Army. Then Goering promised, “My Führer, the Luftwaffe will easily supply Stalingrad.” Hitler went into a tantrum. “German soldiers do not retreat!” he screamed.
That moment, according to my chess partner, determined the outcome of the war.
“We lost ten percent of our army in Stalingrad, Timothy, a million men.”
Hitler fired his chief of staff, General Halder, a great supporter of Claus, and appointed a puppet. Now the Führer was the only voice at headquarters in East Prussia. His “no retreat” policy slowly reduced the size of the German army so that it was not able to prevent the march to Berlin two years later.
The German people knew nothing of this story. Hitler forbade any reports of the scope of the disaster, though Goebbels, as always the shrewd analyst of public opinion, urged that the government should tell the truth. Listening to the BBC every night, I had some notion of what was happening. Nonetheless, I was shocked.
“What is to be done?” I asked.
An ambassador tends to identify with the people of the country to which he is assigned—at least if he is a good ambassador. Images of the Red Army destroying Berlin frightened me.
The admiral puffed on his pipe.
“We must make peace with the English and the Americans. Everyone who knows what has happened—Goering, Himmler, von Ribbentrop—will immediately rush to betray Hitler. The General Staff will support Claus’s little movement. Perhaps it will succeed.”
“What will Stalin do if the West makes a separate peace?”
“Most think that he will continue the war. Personally I doubt it. If there is anyone who fears the Red Army as much as we do, it is Stalin himself. He worries that they will come back to Moscow and destroy him. He will probably pause at the Vistula to see what happens. He knows that his General Staff is as eager to kill him as ours is to kill Hitler. He is already seeking terms for peace in Sweden, negotiating with Ribbentrop and Goering. Himmler also has contacts in Berne and Stockholm.”
“Rats on a sinking ship,” I said, citing a cliché which was particularly appropriate for these men.
That night I sent a minute to Dublin, describing as obscurely as I could what some well-informed people in Germany were thinking.
“Winston,” I murmured, “I hope you are still sharp enough to read between these lines.”
I did not worry about our Minister for External Affairs. He would certainly understand.
Claus was not in Berlin when Field Marshal von Paulus surrendered. His friends and admirers in the OKW were uneasy about his rhetoric. Such comments as, “Is there no one on his staff who will not shoot that man … If not, I will!” were dangerous, though they indicated the kind of courage which would be needed to lead an anti-Hitler Putsch.
So, at Halder’s suggestion, he was transferred to the Tenth Panzer Division in the Afrika Korps, a place to keep him out of trouble for a time.
We had dinner at the Adlon Hotel by the Brandenburger Tor before he left.
His easy charm did not fail him, it never would. However, he was angry.
“You know that they are planning to kill all the Jews and the Gypsies and the degenerates and I think all the priests?”
“The Brits tried that in Ireland and it didn’t work.”
“I have seen with my own eyes what they do in Russia. The Slavs are treated just as Himmler treats the Jews. They are Untermench, they have no right to live. We will pay a terrible price for that in years to come. I was in Kiev when the Wehrmacht rounded up a hundred and fifty random people on the street and hung them on the lampposts. One twisted head I will never forget. A young woman, perhaps Annalise’s age when you first met her, she was wearing a new blue sweater set. She must have dressed in it for the first time before she went out that day, expecting people to admire it. No idea it would be her shroud. We will be punished for that.”
“God will punish us?”
“I leave that to God. Our enemies will do the same thing to our young women, only worse.”
“Not the Brits or the Yanks.”
“They will not capture Berlin. The Russians will … I welcome Africa. I will die there perhaps. Then I will not have to kill Hitler. Or the Americans will capture me. They do not hate us enough to kill us, not yet.”
“The Afrika Korps seems to be in trouble.”
He waved that problem away.
“Rommel is the best general we have, a Swabian by the way. He will fight the Americans and then turn on Montgomery who, as they say, is always a day late, and defeat him again. We will live to fight another day. The allies will crush us eventually of course, and drive us into the sea. As gallant as the Afrika Korps and Rommel are, they—we, I should say perhaps—are a waste of manpower.”
“You will survive and wear proudly your Afrika Korps medallion to a ripe old age!”
I didn’t believe that, not for a minute.
“We still must eliminate Hitler.”
Then his mood changed again.
“At least in Africa we do not massacre civilians as a matter of policy. All war is dirty, but in Africa it is less dirty than in Russia … Have you seen Annalise yet?”
“No, I am following your counsel that I should wait for her to take the initiative.”
“Yes, but she has been a widow now for a long time, two years?”
“Three.”
“I see her occasionally in Bamberg. She is as beau
tiful as ever. She does not smile … Nina says that her problem is now despair more than grief.”
We shook hands as we left the table.
“God go with you, Claus.”
“Include me in the Rosary you say every night.”
“I have ever since our Easter together.”
“We will be young again.” He smiled, filling the whole dining room of the Adlon with joy.
He was wrong, I told myself. We would never be young again.
Rommel had pulled off another miracle in Tunisia. He had chased away an inexperienced American division attacking at Kasserine Pass and then turned on the British Eighth Army and stopped them cold in their tracks. Even the BBC admitted a “setback” at the hands of the Desert Fox.
It was all playacting. The Germans would soon be fighting a three-front war. There could be no doubt about the outcome, no matter how brave the German soldier was and how wily the occasional German general was when he was free from Hitler’s supervision.
On a lovely day in early May as I was preparing a minute for the Ministry, the phone rang in my office.
“Ridgewood.”
Silence for a moment.
“It is Frau von Richthofen who now speaks.”
“Annalise,” I said, as calmly as I could. Her English was much more stilted than it had been eight years ago.
“It is necessary that I tell you some unfortunate news …”
Claus!
“Herr Oberstleutnant von Stauffenberg suffered serious wounds in Tunisia. He is gravely injured. He has lost one of his eyes and his right arm and two fingers on his left hand. He is in the hospital in Tunis.”
“Annalise,” I said again.
“It is most unfortunate. Frau von Stauffenberg, who now expects their fifth child, and all the children pray fervently. They ask for your prayers. I pray that he will be captured by the Americans …”
“A wise prayer.”
“It is proper for me to bid you farewell now.”
“May I take you to supper some night?”
“It would not be correct. Farewell, Herr Ridgewood.”
I was angry at myself. I had blown it all.
The phone rang again.
“Ridgewood.”
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