The old Brigadier scoffed. “What are you on about? Beck’s absolutely top-drawer. A first-rate intellect. And shrewd. More than a match for that Austrian cur.”
Jaap watched Hans-Bernd with interest. “Do you know something? Has anything happened?”
Hans-Bernd shook his head. “No—and that’s the problem, isn’t it? Beck’s saying the right things; at any rate, he’s saying them to us. To Hitler he says, Give me more time. To the other generals he says, Just wait and see what happens. To the British—”
Jaap cleared his throat.
Hans-Bernd continued heedlessly: “I’m not divulging any secrets now, am I? Naturally, he’s talking to the British. Our nations aren’t at war; it’s part of his job. To the French too, of course, and the Poles, maybe the Russians—why not to everybody? Of course that’s just at an official level. No doubt he’s running some back-channel operation with you Abwehr chaps. You needn’t bother denying it, we’re not stupid. I’m only asking, What’s the point? The Brits are hardly going to lend him an SIS assassination squad to do his dirty work, are they? The French—they love nothing better than seeing the German General Staff brought down a peg. And Beck’s not the sort to want blood on his own hands.”
“The Americans,” declared the Brigadier, “that’s who he ought to be talking to. That’s who settled things the last go-round.”
Jaap gave a pained sort of smile. “We’ve tried that, actually, Herr Brigadegeneral. A couple of months ago. A special operation. We made a very substantial demonstration of good faith. But there were, well, unforeseen problems.”
“Unforeseen because nobody in the Abwehr has ever read a foreign newspaper,” said Hans-Bernd abrasively.
Jaap tightened his lips. “Not the easiest thing to get hold of these days.”
“Yet somehow the Foreign Ministry manages to. And the Propaganda Ministry, and the Economics Ministry. Even at Interior we get the occasional peek. What in God’s name is the business of an intelligence service if not to gather pertinent information overseas and disseminate—”
“Now, look here,” rumbled the old Brigadier, “you’re rather pushing it, aren’t you?”
Hans-Bernd continued unabashed: “You’ve got agents all over the globe! But apparently there’s no one who can tell you, as any reader of, say, the Washington Evening Star could, that the Nazis have friends, as they say over there, ‘from coast to coast.’ They call it neutrality. It’s practically the entire platform of the Republican Party, as well as the dominant position in the Congress. Roosevelt has got his hands tied.”
“Thank you,” Jaap said dryly. “I think we’ve learned that lesson now.”
“Better late than never,” said Hans-Bernd, “if rather beside the point. Suppose you did find somebody in Washington to talk to—somebody who wouldn’t respond with a lecture about, you know, not judging a man like Hitler by our standards here in America. What then? You whisper a few secrets, hand over a few incriminating documents—in exchange for what? Does Beck really think he can persuade the Americans, or the British, or anyone, to stand up to Hitler when he doesn’t have the courage to do it himself?”
This was too much for the Brigadier. “Now, just you look here—”
Hans-Bernd waved him off. “Or maybe…I suppose Beck might only be seeking some kind of assurance. An exchange of undertakings, as the diplomats say. We promise to get rid of the Nazis, they agree to recognize whatever government we install in their place. But who in his right mind—in any sane country in the world, let alone a band of cutthroats like the British—would sign off on something like that? With respect, gentlemen, you chaps in uniform would do better to leave off playing Bismarck and go back to what you’re so good at. Three or four divisions marching on Berlin would make short work of the Brown Plague. The problem then becomes managing popular opinion—but give me two hours in Gestapo headquarters and I’ll give you enough evidence of criminal activity to indict the lot of them. Of course, it goes without saying that the Führer must be shot.”
Cissy laughed, and there was something pure, open and honest about her laughter that dispelled the tension filling the room. “My goodness,” she exclaimed, “it’s so nice to hear people talk like this! I’ve gotten so used to whispering, and speaking in code, and never coming right out with what I mean. Thank you, gentlemen.” She raised a glass in which a dram of murky liquid swirled.
“To plain speaking,” proposed Guido.
“While it lasts,” said the Brigadier glumly. Despondent now, he stared down half-seeing at a stack of the day’s newspapers—the Baroness still took most of them, excepting only the most rabid party organs—and finally chose the Tageblatt as perhaps the least unsound.
“Barring the possibility you suggest,” Jaap said, his gaze thoughtfully directed at Hans-Bernd, “absent the Wehrmacht marching on the capital…what would you say is our best chance?” He paused for a moment, then added, “Realistically.”
“Realistically?” Hans-Bernd twined his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “Well, one hears the word setback a lot these days. Reportedly among the General Staff, and also in certain sections of the Foreign Ministry, and for some of my own colleagues it’s become a matter of faith that Hitler will eventually commit some kind of blunder. He reaches too far, he loses his balance, Germany looks foolish, the world reacts—this is what is meant by setback. And the thinking is, you see, that then we’ll have the opportunity to move against him. Then and only then. Because we’ll be able to present ourselves as acting on behalf of Germany, intervening surgically, so to speak, to avert further harm.”
“But that would still be true, wouldn’t it,” said the princess, frowning, “even if you were to act tonight? What else is there to act for, if not the sake of Germany, and to avert further harm? Why must we wait around for some…excuse, a pretext? That’s the Nazi style, isn’t it?”
“Naturally, you are correct.” Hans-Bernd’s curt little bow scarcely concealed his impatience. “And this is exactly the case I’ve tried to put forward, time and again. But to this argument, the Generaloberst and his inner circle remain completely deaf. Deaf by choice, I hazard to say. They cling to this idée fixe of the inevitable setback. Which I’m coming to think amounts to nothing more than an excuse not to act. Because no matter what happens, as long as the regime isn’t brought right to its knees, you can always say, Well, that was a stumble, but we’ll find our footing again.”
“But if something suitable could be arranged…” Guido stood twirling the tip of his mustache like a silent-film villain. “Some dreadful embarrassment for the regime. With an international dimension, if possible. A diplomatic scandal—all the talk of Paris and London, even Washington. If such a thing could be managed…well, wouldn’t the Generaloberst be forced to act? By the logic of his own setback theory? To preserve German honor, or something of the sort?”
“Why, darling, how frightful!” the princess declared, taking Guido’s arm in hers. “What kind of scandal, though? Something…geschlechtlich?”
The Brigadier grimaced. “Perhaps I’m speaking only for myself, but I’d say the public appetite for erotic scandal has been sufficiently slaked of late.”
He was referring, as everyone present understood, to the outrageous events of the past winter, when one high-ranking officer and then another became snared in a Gestapo-spun web of blackmail and innuendo. The room fell quiet again.
Jaap sighed. “It does seem as though all the setbacks recently have been to our own cause.”
“That’s because we’re sitting still,” said Hans-Bernd, “and making ourselves easy targets. They pick us off one by one.” He turned to Guido. “I think you’re exactly right, mein Herr. It’s time we engineered some scandal of our own.”
“Easy enough to say,” Jaap noted with a frown. “Have you got anything in mind?” He spoke rhetorically, scarcely expecting a reply.
It therefore came as a surprise when the old Brigadier tossed down the newspaper he’d been browsing—spun i
t deftly, so that it ended up pointing across the table at his younger colleague. “There’s something you might start with. Look right there—some Yankee bigwig. ‘Most senior member of the U.S. Congress yet to make an official visit to the Reich.’ Maybe your Amt II fellows could work with that.”
The others drew their heads closer around the table, staring down at the jowly, ebullient face of Senator Thomas D. Townsend, photographed amid an evidently admiring entourage on board a gleaming white cruise liner. Something about the image caught Jaap’s attention…an indistinct figure in the background. He sensed a drawer opening somewhere in his mental filing cabinet, but which one?
“What a horrible-looking man,” said Cissy, with a level of contempt difficult to attain without an aristocratic pedigree. “He looks like one of those sausage makers who joined the Party in ’21 and now is Gauleiter of Saxony.”
Hans-Bernd laughed. “He does, rather. I believe the real Gauleiter of Saxony has a firmer jaw.”
“What are you suggesting?” asked Jaap sharply.
“Why, nothing at all,” said the Brigadier, giving the younger man a pat on the arm. “Not my line of work, is it? Never had the sort of mind for it. Strictly an infantry man.”
The silence crept back in. The afternoon was growing old but the sun remained high, making a bright gash in the seam of the heavy damask drapes.
“Himmelfahrt is late this year,” said Guido, referring to Ascension Day and making it sound as though he suspected the Nazis of having rigged the calendar.
Hans-Bernd’s fingers played nervously at the top of the old globe, setting it back in motion.
Cissy put down her empty glass, her expression now something of a pout. “Where is Dodo these days?” she wondered petulantly. “What’s happened to Ricky? I haven’t seen anyone for ages.” She glanced at Jaap, as if anyone close to Canaris would know where everyone was. “And poor Stav! My goodness—what will become of us all?”
The old Brigadier smiled at her sadly. “More setbacks, I’d expect.”
BODIES ON THE SECOND FLOOR
BREMERHAVEN AND BREMEN: 23 MAY
You’d hardly have thought it was almost summer. Or have guessed there was a sun in the sky.
The “new” port at Bremerhaven—founded just over a century ago at the mouth of the Weser to provide deep-water access for the ancient Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, which languished among silt beds fifty kilometers upriver—lay motionless in fog as thick as smoke and as clammy as Oskar’s palms. The Robert Ley juddered unsteadily, nudged onward by a pair of harbor tugs whose motions were imperfectly coordinated, as if the two captains couldn’t agree on a proper speed at which to approach the wharf that stood ready—you had to take this on faith—somewhere in the netherland ahead. At intervals the ship’s great horn sounded prolonged blasts, as required by international maritime law. The noise was so tremendous that it cleared the decks except for members of the crew and a handful of Americans apparently deaf already; passengers filled the observation galleries and the second-deck promenade, crowding against the glass like so many fish gaping from their bowl and seeing nothing, or at most a blurry movement in the haze. Through the bulkheads the great horn moaned again, and again.
Oskar found it odd to think that the same law that governed ships on the high sea—a prudent and sensible one adopted, so he imagined, after long deliberation by a committee of white-bearded mariners, convened in a paneled chamber in The Hague, let’s say—held sway even in Hitler’s Reich. Or that an eagle taking flight from Great Yarmouth could plausibly soar on a favorable wind to the beach at Norden. Or that a weather report for Copenhagen would give you a fair idea of conditions in Lübeck. Such things reminded you that Germany was not, after all, a world unto itself; it was connected at every point to the greater world, and in fact the merger was often seamless. There’d been no change in the motion of the ship, no alarm, no darkening of the sky, when the Robert Ley crossed into the Reich’s territorial waters. Oskar himself had not suddenly reverted to the person he’d been a few months ago. Everything moved along exactly as before—maintaining course and speed, in the language of ships’ logbooks—with perhaps the lone exception of Lena.
She’d been jumpy all morning, this final day of the crossing. Just yesterday she’d been fine and they’d kept punctiliously to their normal shipboard routine, Oskar alert for any sign of heightened scrutiny—Was the waiter unusually attentive? Had their cabin been too scrupulously cleaned?—but seeing nothing out of the ordinary. A great relief. Though instead of sharing it, Lena seemed only to grow more restive. They’d agreed to spend the morning in the cabin—hunker down and wait for the ship to tie up—but this proved beyond her reach. Around noon, still four hours before docking, she announced that she was going to the library.
“Don’t worry.” She said this in a warning tone, before he could speak. “I know what’s expected. But who could be in the library at a time like this?”
Oskar wasn’t going to argue. What must it be like, he wondered, to escape the Reich and then, out of some mysterious conviction, come back again? For himself, his army training had left him quite capable of savoring these last few hours at sea. He stretched out on the warm bunk and, one final time, ran through every detail of his cover biography: the facts of Stefan Sinclair’s life as far as he knew them and the alterations he’d made so as to bring that curriculum vitae into closer alignment with his own. The effort soon tired him, and he drifted into a dream-free nap.
Lena didn’t return until much later, when the low, dun-green swells of the Frisian Islands stood off the starboard bow, windswept and stark yet strangely beautiful, a first glimpse of home. From the cabin window, the fog bank shrouding the mainland seemed an ominous, drifting mass. Lena was hugging herself, shivering—perhaps she’d ventured outside after all. Oskar let it go. She gave him a quick embrace, then slipped away before he could return it.
“I ran into Clairborne,” she said, avoiding his eye.
“We agreed—”
“Oh, we agreed, did we? Look, it’s just—when I got to the library, he was there.”
“Waiting for you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He was making a scene over The Saturday Evening Post, why hadn’t they got it, what kind of library is this—in terrible German, of course. Then he asked for Tintin. J’adore Tintin! As it happens, Clair speaks a beautiful French. I wanted to tell the poor librarian, Don’t you see, he’s just playing, he doesn’t really want any Tintin, he’s only looking for attention.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Well. It was rather funny. By the end he was asking for Death in Venice. That’s banned, you know. I thought I should get him out of there before she called someone.”
“So you’ve spent all this time babysitting Clair? Where was his minder?”
“Who knows? Not in the library, thank God. After that, we hid for a while under a lifeboat. Listen, let’s not argue, all right? We had an interesting talk—maybe even useful, I don’t know.”
Oskar waited.
She glanced around the cabin. “Maybe we should go up on deck,” she said. “It’s nice, the view. Lonely but nice.”
This was something he’d taught her: always safer to talk outdoors. He plucked his jacket off the hook and they stepped into the passageway. The upper decks were still crowded—the foghorn hadn’t yet started to blow—but they found a spot on the port quarter, which was empty as there was nothing to see from there, aside from a few gulls swooping optimistically in the vessel’s wake.
“It’s about that man who was staring at you.”
“Toby Lugan.”
“Right. When I was talking to Clair, I happened to ask who that fellow was I’d seen his father with, the one who looked like an old prizefighter. Clair knew exactly who I meant. He rolled his eyes and he said, ‘That’s the worst man in the world. He represents everything I despise about Washington.’ ”
Oskar allowed himself a very faint smile.
“Then he sa
id he’d begged his father not to let him tag along. But he said, ‘Are you kidding? Toby’s the genius behind this whole boondoggle.’ ”
“What did he mean by that?”
“You’re rushing me. I didn’t understand, so I asked him to explain. He told me how his father, the senator, was fixated on the idea of enrolling him in some Nazi summer camp. They’re running a special program this year for the children of foreign VIPs, though evidently the senator wasn’t important enough. He was mad about that and started calling people, writing letters, having German diplomats over for dinner—all with no results. Then one night Lugan showed up and handed him an envelope, saying something to the effect that there’s more where this came from.”
“He did?” Oskar’s heart thumped almost audibly. “Does he know what was in it?”
“No, it was just an ordinary envelope. Clair wasn’t close enough to get a good look—he was spying from the hall. But he says that after Lugan left, his father gave it to a man called Viereck. Clair doesn’t know who he is, exactly, only that he’s German and quite creepy and shows up anywhere there’s a party. But not long after that, the official invitations arrived—Clair’s to the camp, the senator on this fact-finding tour. So he blames Lugan—he hates him—but it sounds to me like it’s this other man, Viereck, who’s really responsible. We should find out who he is. We should—”
Oskar held a hand up, needing quiet and time to think. This envelope had to be the one Erwin Kaspar had passed to Toby Lugan, then Lugan to Townsend, then Townsend to some creepy German called Viereck. The next morning, quite early, another envelope had been given to Kaspar by the embassy mailroom, a request for a rendezvous on a bridge. Where he was met by three men, probably German and decidedly creepy.
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