A Gathering of Spies

by John Altman

  “Tomorrow I will send a man with orders for the commander of the Third Panzergrenadier Division. I will instruct him to drive into Rome with a special detail. We will arrest the entire government. We will pave the way for another coup. Italy is not lost yet.”

  Himmler nodded.

  “We must secure the Alpine passes,” Hitler said. “We cannot allow the Allies to have access to Germany’s southern flank.”

  “Yes, mein Führer.”

  “We cannot shirk our duty,” Hitler said, a bit shrilly. “Not now. The task cannot be left to another generation. The voice of history beckons us, my friend. We must rise to the challenge.”

  “We will be victorious,” Himmler said.

  Inside, however, he felt less confident. There had been a time, mere months before—was it really possible?—when Germany had seemed poised to conquer the entire world. Europe had fallen; the British had been on the verge of capitulating; the Russians had been ripe for a stab in the back. And now, within the space of a few short months, it all had gone sour. Before the disaster of Stalingrad, Germany had been engaged in a devastating, three-year offensive. Now, no matter how she tried, she could not recapture the initiative. At the start of July, five hundred thousand troops with seventeen panzer divisions had pushed against the Soviets in a last desperate effort, only to be thoroughly routed.

  Hitler, rubbing at his eyes, looked as if he bore the entire weight of his military’s failure on his own shoulders.

  “I am faced with bad news from other quarters as well,” he said after a moment. “Agent V Thirteen Fifty-three, whom your organization seems to consider of such value, failed to honor her treff. And the British traitor, even now at Cecilienhof, is offering considerably less assistance than I had hoped. He is almost certainly a double agent.”

  “Canaris is in charge of the interrogation?” Himmler asked.

  “He is. And that is the other reason I have asked you here today, Herr Reichsleiter. Your man Hagen, representing the SS in this matter, was killed in the line of duty, correct?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. He was a valued soldier of the Reich.”

  “I do not trust the good admiral to handle this matter alone.”

  “I think it likely, mein Führer, that I shall soon have the evidence we require to depose the admiral. My agents are working on the matter even as we speak.”

  Hitler nodded. “I cannot worry too much about Canaris right now; my attention is required elsewhere. The invasion, of course, is coming. But the invasion will be repelled. We will throw them back into the sea.”

  “I have no doubt of it, mein Führer.”

  “Then what will the Italians say?” Hitler demanded. “Will they abandon us then? I think not! And what will Canaris say, I wonder, when he sees that we shall be victorious after all?”

  “He will be speechless,” Himmler predicted.

  “After we have thrown them into the sea,” Hitler said, “we will attack, Herr Reichsleiter. We will smite them a blow without parallel in history. We will batter them without mercy—nothing so civilized as an invasion! We will throw death at them from across the ocean! We will have rockets! We will have bombs that split the atom! We are on the cusp, Herr Reichsleiter, on the very cusp of achieving these technologies! We will yet have victory! We will snatch it from the very jaws of defeat!”

  “It will be glorious,” Himmler said.

  “I welcome the invasion,” Hitler announced, and stood with such sudden force that his chair toppled behind him. “I welcome it,” he said, stalking around the table. “But we must know where. We must know when. The British traitor must be forced to talk.”

  “I understand.”

  “I charge you to go to Cecilienhof yourself, Herr Reichsleiter, and take control of the interrogation. The admiral does not possess sufficient mettle, nor sufficient loyalty, to conduct this type of operation.”

  “Yes, mein Führer.”

  “Whatever the man knows, you will find out and report directly to me.”

  “Yes, mein Führer”

  “I trust you, my friend, to see this most important matter to a satisfactory conclusion. I put my faith, and the future of noble Germany herself, in your hands.”

  Himmler stood and saluted, his eyes shining.

  “I shall not fail you, mein Führer,” he promised.

  POTSDAM

  Winterbotham was surprised to see that the vaunted Wilhelm Canaris—the head of Hitler’s Abwehr, one of the most senior officers in the Nazi organization, and the archenemy of Taylor and his superiors at Operation Double Cross—stood a mere five foot five inches tall.

  His hair was gray and thinning, his face sallow, his posture stooped. He wore a dark business suit that emphasized his weak, rounded shoulders. His eyes, which may once have been sharp, now possessed the haze that comes with too much dependence on chemicals, or alcohol, or both. And he smelled, rather strongly, of dog.

  But Beck leapt to his feet when the little admiral entered the conference room, and saluted energetically.

  “Herr Admiral Canaris!” he cried. “Heil Hitler!”

  The Admiral seemed momentarily taken aback. Then he nodded, and waved Beck back into his chair. He came more fully into the room. Two guards, carbines in hand, entered behind him. One immediately slapped at a mosquito on his neck.

  Winterbotham, sitting beside Beck at the conference table, half stood when Canaris had entered the room. Now he sat again, without waiting for permission.

  “Professor Winterbotham,” Canaris said. His English, although good, was far less polished than Beck’s. “It is an honor to make your acquaintance.”

  Winterbotham, looking at him evenly, said nothing.

  Canaris frowned. After a moment, he approached the conference table and sat, somewhat prissily. He removed a pair of spectacles from his breast pocket, polished them on his sleeve, and set them on the bridge of his nose.

  “You are distressed, no doubt, by the continuing failure of your wife to arrive,” Canaris said. “I cannot blame you for that. But I have the pleasure of informing you, sir, that she is now at Cecilienhof.”

  “My wife is here?”

  “She arrived today.”

  “I demand to see her immediately.”

  “Yes, so I expected,” Canaris said. “Yes …”

  Beck pushed a thin sheaf of papers across the table. Canaris reached for his breast pocket again before realizing that he was already wearing his spectacles. He began to flip through the file, his eyebrows climbing higher on his forehead as he read.

  “Hm,” he said. “Yes. Hm.”

  Winterbotham watched, waiting.

  “It seems to me,” Canaris said presently, closing the file, “that you have not been entirely honest with us, Professor.”

  “On the contrary. I have been perfectly honest.”

  “No, I would not say so. You have not lied, and yet you have not told the entire truth, yes? A lie of omission, I would call it.”

  “I’ve told you all I know. I’ve satisfied my end of our bargain. And now I demand to see my wife.”

  “As soon as you are truly honest with us, Professor, you shall see your wife.”

  He removed his glasses, polished them again on his sleeve, and replaced them. “This humidity,” he said.

  Beck started to speak, but Canaris silenced him with a raised hand.

  “Professor,” Canaris said, “allow me to be frank. You are a man of letters. Yes?”

  Winterbotham nodded.

  “I am no scholar, Professor. But perhaps I can recall, if I concentrate …” Canaris made a great show of concentrating. “‘Learn how not to be good,’” he quoted. “‘Learn how to use this knowledge and not to use it, according to the necessity of the case. It is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so; but you must have the mind so disposed that, when it is needful to be otherwise, you may be able to change to the opposite qualities.’”

  “Machiavelli,” Winterbotham
said.

  “Yes. Machiavelli.”

  “Your point?”

  “My point,” Canaris said. “I am willing, Professor, to change to the opposite qualities, according to the necessity of the case.”

  He stood.

  “You will not see your wife tonight,” he decided. “But if you continue to deny me my answers, Professor, you will see her—in a way you will not appreciate. Do you understand?”

  Winterbotham gazed up at him frostily. “Threats, Herr Admiral?” he said. “I should have expected it.”

  “The guilt will rest on your shoulders, Professor.”

  “The Americans are right. You’re mere gangsters—the lot of you.”

  “Consider your options, Professor. Cooperate, and leave here with your wife; or continue to withhold, and suffer her blood on your conscience. Ideals are worthless, sir, if they are all that one possesses.”

  “It is not ideals that keep me from speaking, Admiral. But if it were I would answer thus: ‘Not all of me is dust. Within my song, safe from the worm, my spirit will survive.’”

  Canaris frowned. “Baudelaire?” he asked after a moment.

  Winterbotham shook his head.

  “Coleridge?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Who?”

  “Look it up,” Winterbotham said, “if Herr Goebbels hasn’t burned the book yet.”

  Canaris looked at him for another moment. He licked his lips, then turned sharply on his heel, and led his guards from the room.

  Once in the hallway, Canaris smiled to himself.

  It was exactly as he had hoped. The man was no traitor. He was loyal to the British … and he would have their confidence.

  He tried to wipe the smirk off his face as he moved down the hall in front of his smart-stepping guards. Himmler and his men were closing in; they were everywhere. They may have been watching him at that very moment. Beck himself may even have been in their employ. It would not do to betray himself in front of the Gestapo’s spies.

  But the smile lingered on his lips for the better part of a minute, nevertheless.

  22

  POTSDAM

  AUGUST 1943

  Winterbotham couldn’t help but wonder, as he listened at the door of his room, if Kendall had come through for him.

  Wondering did little good, but he had to wonder anyway. If Kendall had failed, after all, then he also would be doomed to failure. Even if he made it out of this room, even if he found Ruth and escaped Cecilienhof and found transportation and made it safely to the sea and stole a boat and reached the coordinates; and even if he did all of these things before the fourth of August, which, he assumed, must be rapidly approaching (he could not know for sure; he did not trust the clock in his room and was no longer willing to depend on his own sense of time); even if all of these things happened, it all would be for naught if Kendall had not convinced the War Office to meet him at the coordinates he had chosen in the Baltic Sea.

  He heard a tiny, slithery sound. He leaned inches away from the door, changed the angle of his head, and then pressed his ear against the wood again.

  There were no guards at Cecilienhof—or so they would have him think. In fact, Winterbotham had seen three kinds of guards during his stay in the palace. There was the staff—the maids and the cooks and the porters and the valets—who carried firearms as they went about their daily business. Then there were the men with machine guns who lurked in shadows and around corners, not quite hidden from him but taking pains not to advertise their presence. It was one of these men, he assumed, who had just made the slithery sound; all the regular staff would be in bed at this hour.

  Or perhaps it had been one of the SS. This third type of guard only recently had started to appear at Cecilienhof, as if the mansion were secreting them, like sap, as the summer wore on. The SS guards, in black, did not try to conceal their presence. They stood, looking intimidating, where halls converged, in plain sight, walking circuits around the lake, at the entrance to the dining room, in the conference room, in the front hall. They favored the staff and the slithery guards with nearly as many malicious glances as they gave Winterbotham himself.

  Somebody, it seemed, did not trust Canaris. Somebody was encroaching upon his territory. In a matter of short time, Winterbotham was afraid, this somebody would make his presence known more forcefully; and then he would not be able to depend on even the pretense of civility which had, until now, kept him safe.

  But matters were even worse than that. It was possible that Canaris would move ahead and carry out his threats against Ruth, Winterbotham knew, if he were to delay his escape much longer.

  He swallowed, tasting the sour rust of fear.

  Lunacy, he thought, what you’re about to do.

  He truly hoped that Kendall had come through for him.

  The door to his room was unlocked.

  He had discovered this on his third day at Cecilienhof. After making the discovery, he had spent a full hour searching his room, looking for hidden peepholes. But if they were watching him, he was unable to discover how. More likely, he thought, they were confident that his situation, his location, and the odds against him would keep him in line.

  By any sane standard, they were right. Any man with half a brain in his head would never attempt what he was attempting now. He could step out of the room; but they would apprehend him within a stone’s throw of his door.

  He kept his ear pressed against the wood, after hearing the slithery sound, for nearly five minutes. Then he eased the door open and stepped softly into the hallway. The carpet, rich and expensive, muffled his footsteps. A strip of moonlight lay across the hall, illuminating a porcelain bust. Winterbotham put his back to the wall and moved past both moonlight and bust, holding his breath.

  After achieving ten feet, he paused again, listening.

  A rustle of wind. The lapping of the lake.

  He kept moving.

  After another five cautious minutes, he approached the grand staircase. His plan was to descend, cross to the west wing, and then try to find a door with guards posted outside. It stood to reason, he thought, that Ruth would be guarded. She would be looking for any chance to escape, unlike Winterbotham himself, who understood, in theory, that his only hope of leaving this place would be through the generosity of his hosts.

  But his plan—if it could be called that—was filled with holes. What if guards were not posted outside of Ruth’s room? Then he would never find her. And how was he to disable the guards once he had found them? He had no weapon, and in any case he could not risk making noise. Perhaps Ruth was not at Cecilienhof at all; perhaps it all had been a ruse. To reach the west wing he would need to cross through the mansion’s spacious foyer, where his chances of being spotted by a guard were—

  Stop thinking, for God’s sake, and move.

  He crept another ten feet toward the staircase and then paused again, listening.

  The scuff of boots on carpet.

  He drew a breath and controlled himself. He began to back up, moving past rows of doors, wondering if the shadows in the hallway were deep enough to hide him. A choice needed to be made, and now. Return to his room and wait for the guard to pass; but that would be as much as admitting defeat, because he would never find Ruth if he turned tail every time he faced a guard. Hide in the shadows, then; but if the man glanced his direction, he would be lost.

  There was a third choice. Open one of these doors, which he was backpedaling past, and hide in a room until the guard moved on.

  And pray that whoever was in the room did not awake.

  The footsteps were drawing closer. Winterbotham tried the handle of the door he was passing.

  It was unlocked.

  Silently, he opened the door and slipped inside.

  The room’s window faced away from the moon.

  Winterbotham stood stock-still and took in his surroundings. A single form lay in a canopied bed, covered from head to foot with a sheet, although the air was humid
and hot. He could hear thick, slightly labored breathing. He put his ear against the door, trying to tune out the sounds of the sleeper. After a moment he caught the same quiet slithering as before—the guard dragging his heels on the thick carpet. He listened until he heard the heels slither past.

  There would be little room for error. When the guard reached the end of the hall, he would turn around and return past this door.

  Winterbotham counted to five, held his breath, opened the door, and stepped back into the hallway.

  He moved quickly to the landing that overlooked the mansion’s foyer. He paused, letting his eyes wander. The grand staircase before him swept down in a graceful curve, swept across a vast marble floor, and flowed into another staircase heading up, west, amid rococo columns, climbing putti and scrollwork, and minutely detailed coats of arms. Moonlight trickling in through high arched windows showed baroque ceiling reliefs, elaborately carved sculpture, and decorative delftware.

  He would need to descend the close flight of stairs, cross the empty chamber—in plain view—and ascend to the western wing.

  He went.

  He reached the bottom of the staircase, hesitated for a fraction of an instant, and then struck out across the empty stretch of floor. His terror was thin and acrid. What fate lay in store if he was caught? Nothing worse, surely, than the fate that lay in store anyway.

  He stepped onto an Oriental carpet, moved across a scatter of light-blue faïence tiles; then he had reached the far staircase.

  That much closer to Ruth.

  He began to climb.

  There was a guard at the top of the staircase—SS. Winterbotham could see the lugubrious tip of one coal-black boot peeking out from behind the wood paneling. He put a hand on the banister to steady himself; kept climbing. What were his chances of reaching the top of the stairs without being seen?

  He reached the top of the stairs.

  The man was standing inches away, just around the corner.

  Winterbotham reached for him.

  He put one hand over the man’s mouth and his other arm around the man’s throat. He lifted, almost gently, and bent the man’s back over his knee. He pushed, pulled, applied pressure in every way imaginable, willing the man’s neck to break, or …