by James Lepore
Chapter 15
Paris, September 1, 1939, 9:00 a.m.
The Boulevard de Sébastopol was more crowded with auto and pedestrian traffic than usual, though Karl did not know this. He was used to Berlin, and this seemed much the same as any weekday morning there. It struck him, as he weaved in and out of traffic, keeping an eye on the shiny black car with German Embassy license plates affixed to its boot, that the population of Paris, after waking to the news of the outbreak of war, had simply went ahead with its collective business. What else could they do? he asked himself, one of a series in a new category of questions—philosophical, existential questions—that had arisen in his young mind since his father put him and Conrad on the train twenty-four hours ago. Cupped in his right hand, its blade tucked under the sleeve of his soiled shirt, was the handle of a Whustof boning knife. Slightly curved, razor sharp, it would cut just about anything with the slightest of pressure. Like my wrist, he thought, noticing that the black car had stopped at a traffic light with three cars in between him and it. He lifted himself on the bike’s pedals and saw that a policeman in a fancy uniform and white hat and white gloves was standing in the middle of the intersection on a pedestal that looked like a wedding cake with a small filigreed railing around it. Not here, Karl.
At the next intersection there was no policemen, but the light was green. Keeping two or three cars behind, Karl saw ahead a sign indicating to bear right for Gare De L’Est, which the black car did. He followed, picking up speed. At the next intersection there was another traffic light and another gendarme. Beyond it, he could see the ornate front of the train station. Merde, he said to himself, amazed at how quickly he had slipped into using his schoolboy French. He was next to the passenger side of the German car as they both stopped at the light. There were cars in each of the three lanes ahead of them on the wide boulevard. Peering sideways, trying to appear nonchalant, Karl could see that there were two men in suits in the front seat, and Conrad, looking miserable, in the back. The gendarme was facing to their left, directing traffic coming from that direction, forcing them all to continue straight across. Non Gauche! he shouted to one or two who had slowed down and signaled left with an extended arm. Non, he shouted, waving them through with a sharp, abrupt hinging of his right arm, his white-gloved hands dancing in the morning sunlight. Then one of these hopeful left-turners, a man in a small truck with panels of sheet glass loaded on its flanks, stopped and began gesticulating to the policeman. He wanted to go left. Non, the gendarme shouted. Non!
On the second non, Karl jumped from the bike, slipped the knife from his sleeve, crouched and, moving with the lithe, effortless quickness of a cat, slashed both of the tires on the right side of the black car. In an instant, he was back on the bike, which had fallen to the pavement, but was only there for ten seconds or so. He looked around, slipping the knife under his jacket in the basket. The light was now green, but all traffic, foot and automobile, was stopped watching the argument between the gendarme and the truck driver. When the policeman, exasperated, finally said, Allez! and the driver turned left, everyone cheered. Then life returned to normal, and the cars ahead and around Karl and the Germans started up. But not Karl. He backed up slightly, to be even with Conrad in the rear seat. Nor the Germans, who jerked forward a few feet and then stopped abruptly. They tried again, but this time moved only a foot or so. Karl stayed in place. The two Germans, one young and blond, the other middle-aged and dark, emerged from the car and met on Karl’s side. He watched, smiling a friendly smile, as they looked down and muttered. They did not look at him.
Traffic flowed around them, and the gendarme was now walking over. The middle-aged German went to meet him, while the young one went to the boot and lifted its door. Karl, the kind of delivery boy to be seen every day on the streets of Paris, continued to go unnoticed. Quietly, trying to be invisible, he got off the bike, rested it on its kickstand, reached over and tried Conrad’s door. It was locked. The gendarme and the dark German were talking at the front of the car. The blond was rummaging around the open boot. Karl leaned over and rapped on Conrad’s window with his knuckles. When Conrad looked at him, he gestured for him to come out, which, to Karl’s great relief, he did.
The blond had found the tire changing tools and was closing the boot. The dark German had turned to look their way. Hurry, Karl said to Conrad, pointing to the basket and pushing him at it, Get in. Conrad froze for a second and then, shaking his head, a stunned look on his face, leaped into the basket, managing to get his butt and one leg in before Karl jumped on and pedaled away. Both Germans stopped what they were doing and gave chase, but Karl was young and strong and soon outdistanced them. He was heading north on a boulevard and in a city unknown to him. He did not know where he was going, except that it would not be back to Germany, and that, wherever it was, Conrad was going with him. Young Nazi though his traveling companion was—fool, idiot though he was—he would not lose Conrad again.
2
Berlin/Paris, April 19—June 13, 1940
Chapter 1
Berlin, April 19, 1940, 9:00 p.m.
“Admiral.”
“Yes, mein Fuhrer?”
Two men, one tall, blond and handsome—Admiral Wilhelm Canaris—the other short, dark, and gnome-like—Adolph Hitler—stood side by side in a corner of a large, chandelier-lit banquet room in the Reich Chancellery. Canaris was wearing his dark blue full dress uniform with the double-breasted jacket and gold-trimmed cuffs. His only decorations were the gold Kreigsmarine Wound Medal and the Iron Cross. Hitler, who had moved to this spot when he saw the second tranche of gifts being brought in by valets and placed on a stage that had been built in the room’s center, was wearing his gray Fuhrer’s jacket with the red, white and black swastika armband on his left bicep. Alone for a brief moment, surveying the room, he had spotted Canaris and beckoned to him.
“Your gift is not the one I was hoping for,” Hitler replied.
“Yes, mein Fuhrer. The Friedeman formula. I am sorry, we have not—”
“It has been eight months,” Adolph Hitler, his voice soft but very sharp and thin, like the sound of a scythe cutting through young wheat, interrupted his subordinate.
Although he felt it, Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, Germany’s military intelligence agency, kept the fear from his eyes as he looked at his leader, searching his face for the signs that he knew preceded an eruption of his temper. He was not disappointed. Adolph Hitler’s thin lips had compressed into a mere slash, and his dark eyes were focused directly on Canaris’ light blue, Aryan-perfect orbs.
“Mein Fuhrer…”
“We are about to commence Case Yellow,” Hitler interrupted Canaris again, his voice still sharp and hissing. “It could still be avoided. Are you close at least?”
Canaris took a breath and answered: “One of our agents in Paris has infiltrated a group called the International Agency For Refugees and Orphans. They are a front assisting Jews to escape Germany and Poland through France. The group is approached regularly by people for this purpose. Last month we cleaned out a nest that had sent six girls through to England. We believed they were financed by the Rothschilds.”
“And?”
The admiral was hoping that Hitler would be placated by this news. A nest of Jews, or Jew lovers, killed; an arrogant Jewish banking house exposed. But he had no such luck. The great Fuhrer was shaking his head in the staccato way that the German public seemed to adore, clearly not impressed.
“The pace has picked up,” Canaris replied. “The front group is now being approached by French Jews. They know that occupation is inevitable.”
“They know, but Daladier does not?” the Fuhrer said. “The Jews should be running the French government.”
Canaris risked a wary smile. His leader had made something of a joke.
“Who is approaching them?” Hitler asked.
“Wealthy Jews, likely, orphanages run by the Church, foreign meddlers.”
“You are keeping a list, I presum
e?”
“A list, mein Fuhrer?”
“For when we occupy France,” Hitler replied, with not the least remnant of humor in his voice. “We will pry them from their rat’s nests.”
“It is usually done by intermediaries, mein Fuhrer. Very careful intermediaries.”
“Are you following them?”
“Yes, mein Fuhrer.”
“Gut. And our young Conrad and his Jew friend?”
“Our agent is deep inside the front group. She works in the office and has befriended the head of the organization. He trusts her and has recently put her in a position to know every time an approach is made. There are ten agents in her cell. They are now following every intermediary. We hope one of them will lead us to the boys.”
“How long?” The Fuhrer’s voice was terse now.
How long? Is he a fool? An idiot political savant? Canaris asked himself these questions not for the first time since he was appointed head of the Abwhehr in 1935 and began having regular contact with the former painter of watercolors who was now the absolute ruler of eighty million Germans.
“Soon,” he replied, lying.
“I do not want to wait until my next birthday for the formula, Herr Admiral.”
“We will have it soon, mein Fuhrer.”
Hitler was now gazing about the spacious room, nodding and smiling. Was the conversation over? If so, it had not gone as badly as the admiral thought it would when his leader, looking like a fancy doorman in his dazzling uniform, gestured to him to approach. He used the pause to look himself at the glittering array of guests gathered for the Fuhrer’s fifty-first birthday, the men in tuxedoes or full dress service uniform, the women in gowns, lustrously coiffed. Many of them, men and women, military and civilian, were looking his way, trying, unsuccessfully, not to stare. Canaris has the Fuhrer’s ear. What state secrets are they discussing?
Canaris now saw that Heinrich Himmler and Reindardt Heydrich, the head of the Gestapo—the SS’s secret police—had spotted them and were heading their way. The crowd separated for them as if they were gods from Mount Olympus walking through the rabble in a local market. Several of them bowed slightly at the waist as they moved aside.
“Ah,” said Hitler, “I see Himmler and Heydrich want my attention.”
“Yes, mein Fuhrer.”
“Have you kept Himmler informed?”
“Yes, mein Fuhrer.”
“Leave us.”
Canaris sieg heiled Hitler and moved away.
From across the crowded room, Admiral Canaris discretely watched the sycophantic display being put on by Himmler and Heydrich, who, in unison, nodded when the watercolorist nodded and smiled when he smiled. Both were in their best, deep black SS uniforms, their jackboots gleaming like black ice, their left breasts covered with medals and decorations, mostly unearned. Hitler’s last birthday celebration, his fiftieth, had been held on a scale to rival a Roman circus. Tens of thousands of marching soldiers, fireworks in every city and town, and a national cry of joy at midnight. This year’s celebration was quieter. The French and the British would not talk of the ceding of Belgium or Holland. Their sniveling days were over. They would fight. There would be war.
Chapter 2
Berlin, May 27, 1940, 4:00 p.m.
“So your agent needs orders?” said Heinrich Himmler.
“Yes,” Admiral Wilhelm Canaris replied.
“Are you sure this is the school?”
“No. We think so, but we need to go in to verify.”
“What do we know?”
“Our agent befriended a teacher. Showed him photographs of the boys. He thought they looked like two boys who were admitted in September. He wasn’t positive. The photographs were taken a few years ago.”
“Befriended?”
“Bedded.”
Canaris hid his contempt. If there was sex involved, Himmler wanted to know about it, especially exotic, that is to say, perverse, sex. Were the rumors true? Will he pursue this?
“I see,” said Himmler. “What was her story?”
Not interested in the heterosexual, Canaris thought, then answered, “She was looking for her nephews, German boys, runaways from their school in Strasbourg.”
“Why can’t she go in?”
“She eliminated the teacher when he became suspicious. She has been out in public with the him. If she was seen…we cannot take the chance.”
“What is the name of the school? Where is it?”
“The Petit Collège Sainte-Thérèse de l’ Enfant-Jésus. Near Fontainebleau. Locally it is known as Le Petit Collège d’Avon. Avon and Fontainebleau are basically one small town.”
Himmler grimaced at the papist nomenclature. “Who is the headmaster?” he asked.
“A Jesuit priest. Father Jacques. Born Lucien Bunel.”
“A troublemaker, no doubt,” said Himmler. “They are all subversives, the Jesuits. What do we know about him?”
“He has recently hired a Jew as a teacher. This man previously worked at a refugee organization in Paris. We believe there are students at the school under assumed names.”
“How do you know this?”
“The dead teacher was not a Jew lover. He said some of the students did not participate at mass, did not know their catechism. He spoke his mind to our agent.”
“What do you suggest?” Himmler asked.
“We could wait until we take Paris and then remove the boys, by force if necessary. It won’t be long. A week or two.”
“The Fuhrer wants the formula now,” said the bespectacled Himmler. “We are about to take Reims. He is concerned the boys will run. He is waiting for me to report our plan to him.”
Himmler looked pointedly at the telephone on his desk.
“I can send in another agent,” Canaris said. “We have a reporter at Le Monde. He can say he is doing a story on the school. It is in the old palace at Fontainebleau. It has historical significance.”
“And this Jesuit who is harboring students under assumed names, probably Jews, do you think he will cooperate?”
Canaris cringed inwardly at Himmler’s sarcasm. His agent in Paris had killed the teacher at three p.m. and reported to him at 3:15. He had relayed her report to the SS chief at 3:16. He took no chances when it came to Hitler, Himmler and the Friedeman formula. He had immediately been summoned here, where he was introduced to the woman sitting next to him, SS intelligence agent Marlene Jaeger. They sat facing the SS chief in his throne-like leather chair behind his massive, glass-topped desk.
“I—” said Canaris.
“Marlene?” said Himmler, interrupting, and turning to Marlene Jaeger.
“When was the last time the boys were seen?” said Marlene. This question she directed to Canaris, a naval hero of the first war and, she knew, a man of high courage and intelligence. And also pride, she said to herself, as she watched his reaction to her, a lowly SS field agent, putting a question directly to him, the head of the Abwehr.
“Yesterday,” Canaris replied, his eyes narrowing as they focused on Jaeger.
“What do you suggest?” Himmler asked Jaeger.
The lovely and innocent looking Marlene Jaeger had advanced in the SS on the strength of two things: her beauty and her contacts with a certain underground Berlin community, from which she supplied Himmler with sexual playthings. In return, he gave her special assignments, like spying on the scientists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and searching the Friedeman apartment in Dahlem immediately after the explosion on the morning of August 31. There she had found, in plain sight on Conrad Friedeman’s desk, the first two stanzas of a poem of some sort, written in a bizarre language, with certain words circled and translated on the adjacent margin into German. Those words included uranium, heavy water, and hexafloride. Marlene, now a favorite of both Himmler and Hitler, had been credited, rightly, with discovering that Conrad had taken his father’s acceleration formula, written in code, with him to Paris and then disappeared. Until now.
“I should
go,” she replied. “I will tell the priest I am from a small but well-funded refugee organization. Can he help me place German Jewish children? Also, I am looking for certain runaways. We would like to move them out of France, reunite them with their families in England and America. We are happy to make a donation to the school. Money is no object.”
Jaeger, in evening dress, had been having a drink with an American journalist at the bar at one of Berlin’s grand hotels when the head waiter told her she was wanted on the phone. Fifteen minutes later, here she was. She looked from Himmler to Canaris. Canaris, a Prussian aristocrat as well as a war hero, was very powerful. But Himmler was a god, with power second only to Hitler in the Nazi pantheon. He could have her killed or elevated to goddesshood with the snap of a finger and with or without a reason, whereas Canaris could do neither without some verifiable justification.
“I agree,” said Canaris.
Marlene thanked him with one of her most dazzling smiles.
“Good,” said Himmler, whose prim, cramped smile was not so dazzling. “You will leave tonight. And you will take Herr Professor Deibner with you. Do you know him?”
“No.”
“He is a nuclear physicist who works for me. Perhaps you will be his wife or his mistress. I will leave that to you spies to decide. Herr Deibner will know if what you get from the Friedeman boy is genuine.”
“And the boys?” asked Marlene. “Once we have the formula, what do we do with them?”
“They are garbage,” replied Himmler. “A Jew and a traitor. Dispose of them.”
Chapter 3
Paris, May 28, 1940, 1:00 a.m.
“Open city, merde,” said Rickie de la Croix, the bartender at Maxim’s; disbelief, shock, anger, sadness—all of these things registering in swift succession in his soft brown eyes.