Heroes

by David Hagberg

  He went to the front of the car, and leaning over the broad, still warm hood, his elbows propped up, he again trained the glasses on the frontier crossing, conscious of his own heart beating and his shallow breathing. Careful, Willi, he told himself, trying to slow down. He had been having a lot of trouble with hyperventilating lately. There was a lot of pressure, and the loneliness with Erika down in Bavaria and with the children spread over Europe was great. They were out of harm’s way, and yet … The Spanish guard went back inside the hut when he was finished, and Canaris shifted his gaze to the Portuguese border hut. If there was going to be trouble, it would come there.

  At first he could see no one. Just the glassed-in hut lit by what looked like a single bulb. But then there was a movement. Both guards suddenly came into view. One of them raised a wine bottle to his lips, drank deeply, then passed it to the other.

  Major Rheinhard Whalpol came back from where he had been speaking with the men in the second car. There was a pinched, disapproving expression on his round piggish face. Typical of the new order, the thought crossed Canaris’ mind.

  “Are your people ready?”

  “Yes, but I don’t like this,” Whalpol snapped. He too appeared nervous. A tiny Brandenburger Division pin in the lapel of his dark suit glinted dully in the starlight. Against regulations on these sorts of operations, but Canaris found he no longer cared about such trivial details. Especially not this evening. Lately he found he was losing his stomach for that kind of a fight.

  “What exactly is it that you don’t like, Major?” Canaris asked.

  “It’s you, sir, with all due respect. If there’s an incident here tonight … if anything should develop, and your presence is discovered by the Guardia, there will be hell to pay.”

  Canaris smiled at the irony. “This is war, Herr Major, or had you forgotten?” The night air smelled deliciously fragrant.

  Algeciras was not far away. He wished he could just turn around, drive down there, and wait out the end.

  “I must insist that you remain out of sight until the delivery is made.” “You’re not in a position to insist,” Canaris said. Whalpol was a fool.

  “I see.”

  Canaris glanced again toward the border. He was exhausted, mentally and physically, from the rigors of his position, from the incredible tension he had been under lately (Reitlinger’s and Schellenberg’s names came immediately to mind), and from the extraordinary pressures created by the Fuhrer’s recent tactics and the Allied bombing raids.

  Curious, he told himself, to think of the last two pressures in the same vein.

  Whalpol was still coming at him, like an irritating insect.

  “I think we should withdraw, away from the border. We should meet the courier, as scheduled, in Madrid.”

  “We will intercept him here.”

  “I could pick up the film and hand-deliver it to Maybach II.”

  Canaris stared into the man’s eyes. Whalpol was almost certainly reporting to the RSHA, perhaps even to Schellenberg himself. Christ, it was becoming impossible to operate. With Oster gone and Dohnanyi all but out of the picture, he had hoped things would finally calm down. But they had not. The SD was after his blood. They wanted complete control of the Abwehr. It was only a matter of time before Whalpol and scum like him took over.

  Canaris left the binoculars on the warm hood of the car, brushed past the major, who was fuming, and got his briefcase from the back seat. He pulled out his silver flask of cognac and took a deep drink, the liquor warming a path through his insides.

  The cognac and his cigars were his only comforts now. His only companions, his dogs—Kasper and Sabine. The animals had all of man’s good qualities without possessing any of their failings.

  They were loyal, no matter what. They never told lies. And when they loved, it was open, very clear, and always honest.

  He thought too about Erika and the children. They’d come out of this all right. There’d be no taint on them. They’d all but divorced themselves from him, in any event. It was for the best.

  No comfort there, he thought, taking a second drink, then replacing the flask in his case and straightening up. But Algeciras … His thoughts were interrupted when one of the Brandenburger men watching the frontier crossing called out softly but urgently.

  “Herr Admiral!”

  Major Whalpol was watching the border post through the binoculars. But Canaris could see that a small gray car, its headlights on low beam, was stopped on the Portuguese side. Two guards stood back as someone got out of the car. It looked like a large man.

  “Is it Kurt?” he asked.

  “I think so,” Whalpol said, handing over the glasses.

  Canaris raised them to his eyes, steadying himself against the hood. The man from the car was turned away, but then, as he handed over his papers, he showed his profile. He was the right size and shape. But it was hard to tell from this distance.

  “Ready your men, Major,” Canaris said without lowering the glasses.

  “Is it Kurt?”

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  Canaris could hear the men shuffling into position in the darkness behind him. Brandenburg Division troops, they were.

  There weren’t many of them left. Most of them had been bled off into the SS, and what few were left, he hated to admit, were of doubtful loyalty. It wasn’t like the old days, when a cadet’s word was his ironclad bond. The entire fate of Germany rested solidly and four-squarely upon the shoulders of the officer corps. If there hadn’t been honor, then where would they have gotten?

  The irony of that line of thinking at this moment struck him.

  The Portuguese guards were questioning the man. The two Spanish guards had become curious, and they had stepped out of their hut and walked over to the striped turnpike barrier to watch and listen.

  “Come on,” Canaris breathed. Dieter Schey had indicated by encoded number that Kurt would be bringing two film canisters across. By submarine from the coast of Maine to a deserted Portuguese beach above Aljezur. From there it would be taken to Lisbon, then back down here to cross the border. His destination, the Abwehr headquarters in Madrid. Only he was not going to get that far.

  Normally, the film would be processed at Madrid for an immediate spot analysis. It served to speed things up. But in this case that could not be allowed to happen. Whalpol had found out about the film, somehow (Canaris had his suspicions which one of his staff had leaked the information), so had insisted on coming along. There hadn’t been much Canaris could have done that would not have created too much attention.

  Now that he was here, however, Canaris found that he was becoming increasingly wary of any confrontation. The information coming over tonight, from all the indications Schey had given them, was perhaps more important than anything else they had ever gathered. At once devastating and frightening. He had not wanted to believe it was possible, but their own scientists were sure, and Schey had been providing them with enough hints over the past few months to make him a believer and to make Schey himself a national hero.

  The courier took off his hat, his well-oiled black hair glistening in the lights from the border post.

  For several long moments no one seemed to be doing much of anything, until at length the guards handed the man his papers and he got back into his car. The Portuguese barrier was lifted, and the courier drove the few yards into Spain where he stopped just short of the barrier and got out, his hat still off. Again papers were handed over for examination.

  Whalpol touched Canaris’ shoulder, and he looked up, his heart hammering like a pile driver in his chest.

  “There may be some shooting, sir,” the major said. They were out of earshot of the others.

  “Are you planning to assassinate the man?”

  “He may not stop. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Reichsfuhrer Himmler would never forgive you,” Canaris said dryly.

  “Nor would our Fiihrer,” Whalpol snapped, recovering nic
ely.

  In the next moment he stiffened. “Here he comes.”

  Canaris turned back. The near barrier had been raised and the gray car was coming up the hill toward them. The Portuguese guards had gone back into their hut, and the Spanish guards were doing the same, their backs to the highway.

  Canaris tossed the binoculars on the front seat of the car and put his right hand in his coat pocket, his fingers curling around the grip of his short-barreled Walther PPK.

  Whalpol’s men, dressed in Guardia Civil uniforms, had placed a road barrier across the highway. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their hands on the butts of their weapons.

  The car ground its way up the hill, and when its headlights flashed on the barriers and the troops, it slowed down almost to a complete halt. The driver stuck his head out the window.

  “What is it?” he shouted in Spanish, the car still moving. It was Kurt.

  Canaris raised his hand in greeting and started forward onto the road, but Whalpol leaped past him, his right arm raised, a pistol in his hand. He fired two shots before Canaris could react, at least one of them hitting Kurt. The car swerved to the opposite side of the road and down into the ditch. The engine immediately died.

  Whalpol and the others scrambled across the road and down into the ditch, where they yanked Kurt’s body out of the car.

  Canaris glanced down toward the frontier crossing, his breath constricting in his throat. The customs men had to have heard the two shots. But no one had stepped out to investigate.

  He looked again at the car. Whalpol had shot Kurt in cold blood. But why? What had he hoped to gain by such a senseless killing of a mere courier?

  His fingers still curled around the grip of the Walther in his pocket, he hurried across the road to where Whalpol’s men were searching Kurt’s body and his luggage in the back seat. One of them was looking under the hood; the other had opened the trunk.

  The major was hopping from one foot to the other. He was very agitated.

  “It’s not here,” he shouted. “It has to be!”

  “Why did you do this?” Canaris asked, trying to keep his voice even.

  Whalpol just looked at him.

  “Orders, Herr Major? From Colonel Hansen? Or perhaps even Brigadier Schellenberg?”

  Still Whalpol held his silence, although Canaris could see that the man wanted to blurt out something.

  Canaris walked around the car, watching what the men were doing. Whalpol had gone back up to the road to look down at the ; border posts. At the rear of the car, out of Whalpol’s sight for just a moment, Canaris got down stiffly on one knee and with his left ; hand groped up beneath the fender, his fingers searching a small area at the top of the wheel well. He found a section of thick tape, which he pulled aside and opened a small hole into the well, giving access to a dead space in the body. There were two film canisters wired to a short cross member. He quickly undid the wire, withdrew the canisters, and pocketed them as he stood ‘

  up-Whalpol was there above him. “You found them, Herr ‘, Admiral,” he said. He still had his Luger in his right hand. Although it was pointed down, the threat was unmistakable. ]

  “Yes,” Canaris said. His throat was dry. He wondered how much of his inner turmoil was showing on his expression. “We have to get away from here now, before the real Guardia shows ‘ up.” ‘.

  “If you will just give me the film, I will make sure it gets to the laboratory for processing.” ‘

  The men had stopped what they were doing, and they all watched the drama. Twenty years ago creatures such as Whalpol would never have advanced this far. And for his actions this evening, against a superior officer, he would have been shot.

  Canaris considered it, but he was not a murderer. And although Schellenberg was a reasonable man at times, there were others who were not. He was skating on very thin, very delicate ice at this moment. Except for the killing, he had expected Whalpol to act the way he had this evening, and he had come prepared.

  He stepped away from the car. “Take the man’s money, watch, and ring,” he said to the men. “We’ll make it look like a highway robbery.” He turned back to Whalpol, pulled out a pair of film canisters from his pocket, and handed them over. “I want these developed by IG’s chief himself.” He stepped up to the road and hurried across to the car, Whalpol coming after him, a huge grin on his face as he strutted across the road.

  It was very cold in Berlin by contrast to southern Spain, and a wind-driven snow stung Canaris’ cheeks as he climbed down from the Junkers at Gatow Luftwaffe Base and trudged across the tarmac to his waiting car. The Allies had come through again last night on a bombing raid. From the air this morning he had seen hundreds of fires below. What the Luftwaffe had done to London months ago, they were powerless to prevent now … not only here in Berlin, but elsewhere. Hamburg, Kaiserslautem, Dresden, a dozen cities. Disasters on every front.

  Until recently, however, most Germans had held up well.

  But the latest humor going around was different: “What’s the shortest joke in the world?”

  “I don’t know, what is it?”

  “We’re winning!”

  Treason, but the gallows humor tended in a small measure to alleviate the helpless frustration they all were feeling. When Canaris had heard the joke, he had thrown back his head and roared to keep from crying.

  Major Whalpol and his troops got off the aircraft and hurried away in the opposite direction; the troops climbed into a waiting truck, and Whalpol into his own Mercedes.

  Canaris smiled tiredly as he climbed into the backseat of his car. The ruse would not last very long, so he was going to have to work rather quickly.

  Sergeant Brunner, his driver for the past three years, looked wan and tired. He managed a smile, nevertheless. “Did you have a good flight back, Herr Admiral?” His voice was guttural.

  “Tolerable. Looks as if you didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “No, sir. The bastards were at it until just before dawn when the front moved in and clouded us over.” Sergeant Brunner pulled away from the lee of the hangar where he had waited.

  “Home, Herr Admiral, or back out to Zossen?”

  “Is Captain Meitner working out?”

  “Yes, sir,” the driver said. He looked into the rearview mirror. “A good man, sir.”

  “Take me to the office,” Canaris said, sitting back in his seat.

  He pulled a cigar from his inside pocket, lit it, and then stuffed his left hand in his coat pocket, reassuring himself once again that the film canisters he had taken from beneath the courier’s car were still there. The film in the canisters he had passed to Major Whalpol was blank, as if it had been accidentally exposed to light after the photos had been snapped.

  Of course, some of the blame would fall on the major’s shoulders, and Canaris’ would be the most strident. But it would not take the SD lab long to put things together.

  He closed his eyes against the bomb damage. Senseless, he thought. On the very morning they had crossed into Poland—it seemed a century ago, but incredibly it had only been a few short years ago—he had foreseen this end. Yet the Fuhrer had been so certain, so assured of victory, of the Thousand Year Reich. God in heaven, where would it all lead? And what had happened to his own resolve so many times before when he had decided to go along with Oster and the others, to get rid of Hitler?

  The memories were painful to him, and frightening. There were still too many loose ends. If and when Schellenberg and the Gestapo ever got hold of even one of those threads, they’d follow it until the entire spider web was exposed. At the center of any of those investigations, of course, was the Abwehr. Admiral Wilhelm Franz Canaris. Fifty-eight. Sick to death of the destruction.

  Frightened of what he was seeing around him, and even more frightened by what Schey’s report indicated would be in the photographs.

  “We are being followed, Herr Admiral,” Sergeant Brunner said, breaking into Canaris’ thoughts.

  Canar
is opened his eyes, but he did not sit up and turn around.

  “What kind of a car?”

  “A Mercedes, sir.”

  “How many men?”

  “A driver, a passenger.”

  “No one in the back seat?”

  “No, sir,” Sergeant Brunner said. This had been happening with increasing frequency over the past few months. They had not followed him to Spain, but of course they had had Whalpol to do their work for them.

  “Recognize either of them?”

  “No, sir. Haven’t seen either of them before. But they are Gestapo.”

  “Oh?” Canaris said. “How can you tell, Karl?”

  “Their license plate. I have a friend in Abteilung III. She looked up the Gestapo’s special numbers for me.”

  “A very dangerous game.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Brunner said glumly. “But what do the Schweinhunds want with you? What in Christ’s name do they expect from you that you haven’t already given them or done for them?”

  His sergeant’s loyalty touched him, yet Canaris could not help but make a quip. “Probably walk on water, Karl. I haven’t done that yet.”

  Canaris’ office was in Maybach II at Zossen, which was an outer ring of steeply pitched A-frame buildings built of thick slabs of reinforced concrete to withstand bomb blasts. Army headquarters had been moved out of Berlin last year, in the spring, and most of the Abwehr’s functions had followed soon after.

  The building was dark, very closed-in, and cold—like a tomb, Canaris thought, fingering the thick cardboard envelope on the desk in front of him.

  Someone knocked at the door and he looked up as his aide, Captain Meitner, poked his head in.

  “There is an Obergruppenfuhrer here to see you, Herr Admiral,” Meitner said softly.

  Canaris got to his feet, his mouth suddenly dry. “From the SD?”

  “No, sir. He is from the Reichs Chancellery. Reitlinger.”