"The Nazis may be
crazy, but they sure can throw a parade."
Lieutenant Commander James Mannheim
Martel, head of Naval Intelligence at the American Embassy in
Berlin, nodded silently in grudging agreement to Major Wayne
Mason, his Army counterpart, then turned back to the spectacle.
The thundering engines of the Tiger and
Panther tanks, the cheering of the crowds and the insistent beat
of the "Horst Wessel," theme song of the Nazi party
washed over him in waves. Martel hoped it wasn't his German
heritage that set his pulse to pounding in response. The thought
was deeply distasteful.
After a while the Waffen SS division
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler passed in review, flowed around
the sides of the Brandenburg Gate and down the broad Unter den
Linden thoroughfare in a dark gray torrent. These were the
heroes of the Russian front, the victors of Stalingrad, Astrakan,
and Baku. On this, the second anniversary of final victory in
Russia, they were still heroes of the present rather than aging
icons of former glory. Now more tanks, rank after rank, three
abreast, roared by. Dark clouds of exhaust fumes spewed
heavenward. The thunder nearly drowned the roar of the multitude.
Across the boulevard a thin line of
black-clad SS guards, arms interlocked, swayed back and forth in
response to the pressure of the ecstatic mob. The SS men were
friendly enough, but they were also beginning to look a little
desperate; it would never do to have some of the most
enthusiastic patriots of the Third Reich pulped beneath the
treads of a Panther - especially in front of the Führer and the
international press - something that could well happen if the
crowd broke through. The scene brought to Martel's mind the
absurd image of a cobra tenderly protecting a baby.
The last of the tanks passed by. Next
came half-tracked APCs, armored personnel carriers. Their squads
of camouflage-clad infantry sat at rigid attention, immobile as
statues, until they turned as one to salute the Führer, who
stood on the reviewing stand, right arm outstretched. "Sieg
heil!" roared the crowd. "Deutschland! Führer!"
Hitler was surrounded by his entourage -
Göring, slightly ridiculous in his robin's-egg blue uniform,
Goebbels, the gnomelike master of propaganda, Himmler, bloodless
lips pulled back in a sardonic grin as his elite armored division
rolled past, the ever-present Bormann, dressed in the brown
uniform of the Party. In a wider circle around them were the
field marshals, generals, industrialists, and party hangars on.
Victory Day was the holiest day of the Nazi liturgical calendar,
and the high priests of darkness reveled in their celebration of
all that they had done to the world.
Again Martel became uneasily aware of how
his own blood was set racing by the sense of power and glory that
drenched the entire artificial drama. It was like being aroused
by a woman one despised. No matter the revulsion, despite the
inner certainty that never would one yield, beneath all moral
rectitude there lurked a dark, compelling attraction. Again he
wondered: was it his maternal heritage that made him feel this
way? He very much hoped the attraction was at a more universal
level, and not something peculiar to his personal history.
But how his mother would have cheered.
German pride, German discipline, the Germany nation itself reborn
in victory, marching in perfect unison toward its true and
glorious destiny.
Martel shuddered slightly and interrupted
his dark musings to thank his God that he was an American like
his father before him and, again like his father, an officer in
his country's navy.
It had been when traveling as part of a
U.S. Naval delegation to the German Imperial Navy that Captain
Jefferson Lee Martel had met Katerina von Mannheim, he an
attaché to the legendary Admiral Sims, she the daughter of a
German rear admiral. After a whirlwind courtship too romantic to
be quite real, they had married. Not long after had been born
unto them a son, their only child, James Mannheim Martel.
Martel had always been fascinated by the
two so similar and yet so different traditions that he was heir
to. Had his father been the German and his mother American he
might well have been part of the crowd roaring beneath him rather
than a foreign military observer.
As things had actually transpired, in
1917 his American father had sailed into the North Sea, where he
might have been killed by Rear Admiral von Mannheim in battle.
Instead his father had returned home safe from his passage
through harm's way - while not long after taking part in the
"mutinous" scuttling of the German fleet rather than
transfer it to the Allies, his grandfather had died a suicide.
Little Jimmy Martel had been three years
old at the time of America's entry into the Great War. Yet he
would never forget how, when he walked down the street holding
his mother's hand, people he had first met in his very own house
would turn their backs on him and his mother rather than
acknowledge the existence of the Hun amongst them. His mother had
not taken it well. Among her class and nation the accordance of
dignity and consideration to a forlorn female "enemy
national" - to say nothing of the wife of an officer of the
host nation! - would have been so automatic as not to bear
comment. The naively close-minded patriotism of the American
middle class did not charm her aristocratic soul.
Initially, Katherine had been determined
to become the American wife of an American naval officer. After
America entered the fray her attitude quickly became that of an
enemy alien, a prisoner of war trapped by the existence of her
son. And while she loved him and fulfilled her duty to him as she
saw it, she did not hide her feelings. This small continuation of
the Great War lasted until 1921 when she died of diphtheria, and
the boy was sent to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to live
with his American grandparents. During the years that followed
his father spent as much time as he could with his only child,
but he was much at sea.
For the sake of her memory Jim clung
fiercely to his mother's heritage, even retaining German as his
second language through constant private reiteration and
practice. His grandfather had encouraged him in this. Being the
son of a defeated Confederate naval officer, he understood how
precious lost causes could be. There was nothing disloyal in it -
quite the contrary! - and Jim's father and grandparents had even
agreed to Jim's spending 1932, his last year of high school, in
Berlin with his mother's family. That had been the happiest year
of his life, even though he had lived it against the backdrop of
the gathering Nazi darkness that had culminated in Hitler's final
grab for power.
After Germany had come four years at
Annapolis, where he graduated third in his class. Perhaps for
that reason he was chosen to spend a further two years as a
junior instructor. His senior thesis on the development of German
naval air reconnaissance during the First World War (a field his
grandfather had helped launch) also may have been a factor.
Despite his expertise in aviation however, because he could so
easily pass for a native German, his advisors at Annapolis had
tried to push him into naval intelligence - but it was naval
aviation that drew him. Perhaps that was inevitable; his father
too was a pioneer in the new discipline, having been converted to
air power as a result of the 1929 Panama fleet war games in which
the new carrier Saratoga slipped through the covering
lines of battlewagons and "destroyed" the canal locks.
The umpires of the game were later pressured into reversing their
decision but some observers, including the Japanese naval
attachés, had paid attention.
His old man, as Jim fondly recalled,
would lecture by the hour to anyone willing to listen about the
revolution to come, even after - especially after - his forcible
retirement due to a heart attack. Whatever his successes at
converting the rest of the Navy, his son was hooked. After flight
school came Jim's assignment to the Enterprise as a
fighter pilot. His tour began on December 5, 1941, two days
before Pearl Harbor. On the day that compression fractures to two
vertebrae, the result of trying to bring in a shot-up Corsair
that quit a hundred yards short of the deck, ended his flying
career, he was America's number-seven ace of the Great Pacific
War.
After several months in traction, Jim
emerged to find that the war in the Pacific was all but over, and
now that fighter aces were a drug on the market some old dark
spots on his personnel folder had come back to life. Like Billy
Mitchel and his own father, Jim believed that the US military,
including the Navy, was paying far too little attention to the next war.
By the time Jim was at Annapolis, no one had any doubt as to the
magnitude of air power's role, but to him it was obvious that far
too little attention was being paid to advanced technology. In
his superiors' view to merely vocalize such opinions was bad
enough -- and Jim had published.
The fact that he had published under his
father's name in obscure professional journals had kept him out
of the hottest water, but the true authorship was an open secret
-- his dad's iconoclasm had not extended to airborne radar
vectoring (science fiction!) nor the accelerated reaction times
carriers would require when confronted by jet-powered aircraft.
So while his discretion had left the brass merely irritated
rather than wildly outraged, still there were some in positions
of power who thought him another loud-mouthed maverick in the
Mitchell vein who was badly in need of a lesson in patience, and
why it was a good idea to keep superiors happy.
Besides, the Navy quite validly felt felt
that Jim was uniqely well postitioned to understand just exactly
what lurked in the dark underside of Nazi conquest: Europe
enslaved, concentration camps, labor camps still teeming with
Russian POWs, the blood-spattered basements of Gestapo
headquarters, and, still only whispered about, a nightmare called
"the Final Solution." Let him spend a few years out of
the way, fixed so he can learn to keep his mouth shut good and
proper, the thinking had gone. And so had come the posting to
Berlin. To Jim's way of thinking, the worst part of it was that
he couldn't keep up with the details of cutting-edge research in
the USA. On the other hand there was some pretty damned
cutting-edge stuff going on right here in --
As the last SS battalion passed by, Jim
was pulled from his reverie by a sudden high-pitched whine that
quickly rose in volume to a wailing shriek as a group of ME-262
jet fighters grouped in the shape of a swastika came roaring in,
their shadows racing them down the boulevard. Mason, who was also
a pilot, looked up at them with hostile envy. Jim shared Mason's
envy, but was more phlegmatic about it, perhaps because he knew
the plane fairly well.
Behind the 262s came a formation of less
familiar shapes, and Jim abandoned his camera for his binoculars
to get a closer look. He hoped his companion, who was snapping
away, was doing his job right. The Germans were building three
carriers, and American intelligence was still trying to figure
out which planes would be adopted for seaborne operations.
As he watched, the flight of Arado 234
twin-engine jet bombers swept by, breaking from their swastika
formation to climb almost vertically up through the scattering of
clouds. Compared to the 262s, they did not seem all that agile,
but as torpedo attack planes they would be formidable, far
different from the lumbering Avengers the Americans had flown
during three years of combat in the Pacific.
Jim still kept as a souvenir a picture of
a young American pilot, Lieutenant Goerge Bush, standing on the
wing of a splashed Avenger. He'd flown cover for the kid while he
waited for rescue. Martel smiled as he thought about him. He had
been one of the youngest flight leaders in the fleet, but by God
if you needed someone to lead a group straight into enemy flak
like they were on rails, he was your man.
After the 234s came the twin-engine
ME-510s, prop-driven ground-attack bombers, their
fifty-millimeter antitank guns looking like long ugly stingers
slung under the nose. Either plane would be well suited for
carrier-based operations, but the Germans were keeping that part
of their hand close to the chest; none of the planes flown today
had the necessary arresting gear for carrier landings.
"Here come their new heavies,"
Mason yelled as he pointed back up the street. Martel swung his
binoculars around. Below, the crowd broke into wild yet inaudible
cheers as a flight of heavy bombers thundered overhead at rooftop
level.
For the final two years of the war
England had slowly increased the pressure of night bombing with
their fleets of Lancasters. Though the destruction had never
seriously hindered the German war effort, Hitler had not been
amused - and Göring had sworn to his Führer that never again
would Germany lack the means to retaliate in kind. Next time, Jim
thought sourly, both sides could dedicate massive portions
of their industrial capacity to the indiscriminate slaughter of
civilians.
The ME-290s were massive, far bigger than
the American B-29s they resembled, with their oversized tail
assemblies and glassed-over forward canopies. Unlike the American
plane, however, these were a curious mix of four prop and two jet
engines. Mason was again busy with his sixteen-millimeter camera.
Like any hunter, he had focused in on a single member of the herd
and was clicking away.
Though fully briefed on the specs, Martel
watched in silent awe as the fast and deadly behemoths passed
overhead. Earlier wisdom had been that Germany would not build a
bomber fleet capable of reaching New York. The Germans, analysts
had argued, simply could not afford the fuel consumption: Five
hundred bombers flying five missions a month would devour one
sixth of all avgas produced in the Reich. In a classic example of
the perils of depending on narrow-gauge experts for strategic
decision-making, the capture of Russia's Baku oilfields had
changed all that. Still, it could have been worse; Intel believed
that only a few 290s had been built. So far they had been pretty
competent at that sort of analysis, thanks to code breaking and
in-country agents - and anyway, the conclusion seemed reasonable
to Martel. German air doctrine remained focused on tactical
support, not strategic bombing. Furthermore, they had enough
Arados and older twin-engine stuff to keep England quietly in her
place.
As the last of the 290s passed, another
even higher-pitched whine made itself heard in rapidly increasing
intensity. Suddenly, gone almost in a blink, bat-like forms shot
across the avenue at right angles to the thoroughfare. A few
oddly empty minutes in which the loudest noise was the chatter of
the crowd followed. Then, "There they are!" Mason
shouted excitedly.
Martel looked up past the Brandenburg
Gate where Mason was pointing. A few miles away the formation
that had just passed overhead was swooping around in an
impossibly tight turn to come racing up the boulevard in precise
single file, literally below rooftop level. He had seen the early
intelligence specs and had been specifically instructed to
photograph the Gothas if they appeared. Though he would have
vastly preferred to continue direct visual observation, Martel
dutifully picked up his own camera and started to mimic Mason's
efforts, snapping off shots and trying to keep a single plane
centered in the viewfinder as they passed.
To Jim the Gothas looked utterly bizarre,
and very, very threatening. Based on a flying-wing design, they
had no fuselage, and in place of a tail showed only two tiny
vertical stabilizers mounted on the outside trailing edges.
Except for their exhaust outlets the plane's twin engines were
invisible.
Their boomerang shape, Jim thought, would
be entirely at home in a Flash Gordon serial. Scary as they
looked though, he knew that the Germans had discovered some
serious flaws inherent in the flying-wing concept; if the Luftwaffe
had, as rumored, really achieved supersonic velocities, they
hadn't done so with flying wings. But subsonic or not the Gothas
were fast, highly maneuverable, and presented a razor-thin target
silhouette when approached from astern. Martel found the mere
thought of going up against them in a Corsair or Bearcat
chilling.
Not that the U.S. had entirely ceased
weapons development since Martel had missed the deck of the Saratoga.
The Navy's new Panthers could go head to head with any German jet
yet in production - but so far only a few were actually aboard
the carriers. As for designs not in production, part of his job
today was to write up a detailed analysis of any new German craft
glimpsed during the parade. One thing he already knew would go in
that report: any prop plane the Navy flew would be in for a rough
time if it stumbled on one of these jet-propelled monsters; it
was time and more than time to move on to the next generation of
aircraft.
A carrier fleet depended for its life on
its ability to knock out enemy ship killers before they got in
range. With Gothas to protect them even the older bombers became
a major threat. As for the Arados, if the German admiralty could
arrange for Gothas to arrive in the neighborhood simultaneously
with that winged annihilation . . . with Gothas flying in
support, Arados might as well have been custom-made carrier
killers.
As the last of the bat-shapes swept past,
Martel swung his camera around to the main reviewing stand and
snapped off a final human-interest shot of the fat man waving at
the planes and laughing with childlike delight as he pointed out
his latest toy to his Führer.
Hitler himself grinned hugely as the last
of the planes whisked past, then gave a final salute to the
adoring multitude lining the streets. A sea of upraised arms
answered his, and the avenue echoed with chanted Sieg heils
as the most successful mass murderer in the history of the human
race turned and disappeared down a covered exit way, his
entourage scrambling for position to follow.
"Quite a spectacle," Mason
reiterated, as he put away his equipment.
"Nothing succeeds like
success," Jim replied while packing his own camera bag.
"If the ghouls up on that stand had lost, that mob would be
spitting on their memory. Perhaps one day they will anyway."
Martel knew in his half-German bones that along with the sort of
thoughtless jingoists so well represented out in the street this
day, there were scores of millions of Germans who were secretly
repulsed by all that the Nazis represented.
Mason raised his eyebrows. "Lose?
The Russians were finished the day it started. It just took a
little longer than expected, that's all."
Martel shrugged and started down the
steps of the reviewing stand to join the crowd which had swarmed
into the middle of the boulevard, delighting in the beautifully
clear autumn afternoon, when the SS security guards finally
released their armlocks.
"Hey, I want you to meet this
guy," Mason whispered as he grabbed Jim's arm and guided him
over to a knot of SS officers he had apparently just noticed. One
of them, the tallest, nodded towards the descending Americans,
and the rest of the group slowed and looked up. The one who had
nodded was nearly six and a half feet tall, and had a build from
a football fullback's nightmare. His pale blond hair was
close-cropped, almost shaved, and his face was slashed with
several dueling scars.
The scarified giant smiled at Mason's
approach and, unlike his compatriots, saluted in the traditional
military way rather than like a Nazi. Jim returned the gesture.
"Good afternoon, Major! Did you enjoy our little show?"
Though he spoke to Mason, his cold snake-like eyes had fixed on
Martel, who stared straight back.
"Colonel Otto Skorzeny, I'd like to
introduce Lieutenant Commander Jim Martel." Skorzeny
extended his hand. Taking it, Jim was startled and annoyed by the
vise-like grip that was meant to embarrass and almost did, before
Jim bore down in turn.
As Skorzeny released with a faint look of
disappointment, Jim briefly examined his companions. All three
wore SS uniforms with paratroop insignia, and looked nearly as
hard, competent, and well trained as their boss. The one standing
just behind Skorzeny had a face marked by dueling scars as well.
Another, with ghostly white hair, was scarless but had the
mashed-in nose and puffy features of a battered prizefighter. The
four of them might have been taken for professional athletes in
the peak of training were it not for their indefinable aura of
deadliness. Jim had killed more than a few in the Pacific War,
and sometimes spent ghost-ridden nights because of it, but these
were killers in a far different league.
"So what did you think of our
display today?" Skorzeny asked the Americans, as he flexed
his fingers just a little.
Mason let Jim respond. "A lot of new
designs, hugely expensive ones, I should think. I thought by now
you'd be easing off a bit on the armaments."
"Peace through strength,"
Skorzeny replied. "If we stay strong, there will be no
future problems. Remember, Russia is still waiting on the other
side of the Volga."
Peace through murder and conquest, more
likely, Jim thought to himself. "I doubt they'll be a
problem," he finally said aloud. "Stalin's too busy
fighting resistance groups out in Siberia to want a return
match."
Skorzeny laughed. "Not immediately,
in any event. But in ten years? You Americans have no idea of the
service we have done the world. Without us, it would be you
squandering your lives and wealth fighting the Red Menace.
Without us, your forces in China right now would be facing a
Communist tidal wave, rather than helping the Nationalists mop up
the remnant of the Maoists. The suppression of Marxism is an
accomplishment for all of civilized humanity, one for which
Germany deserves the highest recognition."
He looked back at his comrades, who
nodded their approval, and went on. "Poland had to go before
we could come to grips with the real foe. If Churchill had only
understood that, our differences with England never would have
occurred. Be very sure that if the Russians try again, we will be
ready."
When Jim still did not seem to feel the
need for any reply beyond a slight shrug the officer with the
battered face interjected coldly, "The Russians are not like
the Japanese you so easily squashed. You Americans think that
when a war is over your Johnnies can just come marching home to
glory. Yours is a fool's paradise!"
Another chimed in: "You had a
romp in the Pacific. We know war."
"Lieutenant Commander Martel made
twenty-three kills," Mason interjected, "and Japanese
pilots were every bit as good as those in your Luftwaffe."
"No air force is or was equal
to ours," the battered officer replied heatedly. "And I
would like to see your Martel's performance against the RAF. There
was an enemy to be proud of."
"Hans, Hans, let us not bandy
insults with our guests," Skorzeny said with an ironic grin.
"Besides, some of the American pilots are quite good."
The way he said it made the unspoken "but not good
enough" almost audible.
Having made his point Skorzeny reverted
to host mode. Casually gesturing at the wings and Navy Cross
ribbon on Martel's uniform, he said, "I am a pilot too, you
know. In that at least we can understand each other."
"Perhaps," Jim replied with a
smile of his own.
"Yes, 'perhaps,' " Skorzeny
replied softly.
There was a tense moment of silence, and
then Skorzeny smiled again. "Well, we had best be going. I
look forward to a time when we can meet again, perhaps under less
. . . constrained circumstances."
Martel devoutly hoped that any such
unconstrained meeting between him and this human attack dog took
place at about 20,000 feet. He was ashamed to realize that under
those circumstances he would go out of his way to give the German
his wish. An old and painful image rose in his mind, only this
time it was this tall SS officer rather than a Japanese naval
pilot batting at himself as he tumbled out of his aircraft and
began the long, long fall, drenched with burning gasoline.
Skorzeny, it seemed, brought out the killer instinct in others as
well. . . .
Almost as if reading Jim's mind, the SS
colonel nodded drolly as he and his companions turned and merged
with the crowd.
As they departed, Mason snatched his
camera out of its case and snapped off a quick shot. "That
is one scary son of a bitch," he said quietly. "He's
head of the SS's number-one commando team."
Feeling himself begin to unwind, Martel
realized he'd been in an adrenal state appropriate for combat.
"The guys who snatched Koniev out of Leningrad?"
"The same. Runs his operations
exactly the way he sees fit, answers directly to Hitler. Even
field marshals have to step aside if Skorzeny wants
something." Mason paused for a second. "That wasn't his
only coup, either. He pulled half a dozen other ops in Russia in
the last months of the war. As a matter of fact I saw a report
that he was planning to 'drop in' on Stalin if the armistice
talks fell through." Mason smiled and shook his head.
"What glory, if he'd succeeded. I think he was disappointed
that he didn't get the chance."
Skorzeny was nearly out of sight when he
turned back to cast that same ironic smile - and was gone. 'The
Cheshire Commando,' Jim thought, without the least bit of
amusement.
As Wayne Mason continued to rattle off
his information, Jim found that the professional in him
grudgingly admired Skorzeny. He was the ultimate soldier, but
lost without the scent of battle to follow; to men like him, the
cause for which one was fighting became nothing compared to the
pure flaming joy of combat. Skorzeny was most likely in his own
private hell right now. Too long without a war and he might well
go mad. Jim thought about that as he said good-bye to Mason and
turned to drift with the crowds, on his way to his real task of
the day.
There had been a taunting challenge in
Skorzeny, the self-confident arrogance of a player on a winning
team who had just verbally scrimmaged with someone he would meet
and surely defeat come next Saturday afternoon. It was an
interesting datum, something that he would note in the contact
report. Strange that it had felt so personal. . . .
* * *
After leaving Mason, Jim continued
down the boulevard, passing several of the new temples to the
Nazi Reich. The central section of Berlin had been hit hard by
the RAF in the closing months of the war, but the rubble had long
since been cleared, and now Hitler's neo-classical monstrosities
were beginning to dominate the skyline. To his right just ahead,
the new party headquarters, with the beginning of what would one
day be a thousand-foot dome, was just starting to rise up out of
the ground. Supposedly it would take another fifteen years to
bring the hideous thing to completion. Next, also on his right,
the new museum for the Volkische Kunst for "Aryan Peoples'
Art" had just opened. Nearly all its displays leaned heavily
toward the new German heroic style, which in practice seemed to
mean a superfluity of iron-jawed young Teutonic knights battling
the hordes of darkness, alternating with saccharine scenes of
buxom peasant girls tending hearth and farm.
Craftwise enough to assume he was being
tailed, Martel moved casually, taking in the sights. As he
strolled down the middle of the boulevard a line of young boys
dressed in the brown shirts and red neckerchiefs of the Hitler
Youth marched past him. They were singing the latest popular hit
about the heroes of the Eastern Front. It had been given great
prominence on the airwaves in preparation for Victory Day. The
main point of it was that the gods must love dead Slavs because
they had helped the Reich make so many of them. Theirs was the
kind of religion, Martel thought dryly, that gave atheism a good
name. As they marched, the boys waved their Nazi flags in time to
the song's catchy beat. It looked as if venomous red, white and
black butterflies swarmed over their heads.
As they marched by, several of the
children looked up at him, wide-eyed at the sight of an American
uniform. He smiled at them until one flung a comment about
American Jews. How his Jews were next on the list. Shocked
and angered, he turned away lest he strike the little monster and
create an international incident.
"Jim! Good to see you!"
A German army officer had come around the
corner and bumped into him, as if by accident.
"Willi! Good to see you!" Jim
extended his hand, grabbing hold of the German major's in a grasp
of genuine affection.
Major Wilhelm von Metz, adjutant to Major
General Hans von Oster of Admiral Canaris's Abwehr, the center
for Military Intelligence and Counter Intelligence patted Jim on
the shoulder.
As it happened, Willi was Jim's cousin.
Indeed the two of them might easily be taken for brothers, though
Willi had the typical pale blue eyes, high cheek bones, and
aquiline nose of the Mannheim family line, while Jim, whose nose
was equally aquiline and cheekbones equally high and planed, had
the dark hair and gray eyes of his father. During his high school
year in Germany he had lived as a fully accepted member of
Wilhelm's family. Willie's mother was Jim's aunt, and he had
rather adored her.
It was a relationship the Navy had known
about and wanted Martel to cultivate; the Navy had reason to hope
that both Wilhelm and his superior Canaris hated the Nazis and
might be willing to do something about it. Jim was able to
confirm this; while living with the von Metz family he had
witnessed their horror at the rise of Nazism, and had often heard
his aunt privately denounce the "Nazi thugs." The
Mannheims were German patriots and Junkers of the old school, and
the von Metz's too were fiercely patriotic, and just as proud of
their military heritage, which they traced back to the army of
Frederick the Great. To such as they the Nazis were gutter
sweepings that in an obscene twist of fate had seized control of
the Fatherland. In Willie's case, this hatred was compounded on a
personal level by the loss of two older brothers who never
returned from Russia.
But huge as the stakes might be, and dark
the backdrop against which their little drama was played,
balancing against each other the intelligence jobs their
respective countries had handed them was an amusing game in some
ways. Willie had let Jim know early on that he had been given the
task of playing upon Jim's German heritage and family
relationships in order to turn him into an asset of German
Intelligence.
To string the other side along, Jim would
occasionally be cleared to "let slip" a minor detail
about naval equipment or designs, and very occasionally,
to keep the contact hot, something major that Navy Intelligence
knew was already compromised. But in von Metz's case the turning
was genuine.
"I was supposed to meet Lori here
after the parade," von Metz said loudly enough that he could
easily be overhead. "Have you seen her? I think we must have
got our directions crossed."
Directions crossed. They were
definitely being followed.
Jim looked around as if to help out.
"Well, I'm pretty sure she hasn't
passed me, so she probably went this way," Jim replied,
pointing down the street, and the two set off as if in pursuit,
pushing their way through the crowd, forcing their tail, whoever
he was, to fall behind.
"We won't be seeing each other again
for some time," Wilhelm whispered.
"Why, are we under suspicion?"
"Not 'we.' It's you. Certain people
are more interested in you than they should be. Apparently
there's something in the works to damage you. That's all I
know."
"Me? Just me? You're my only
contact!"
"I don't have any details and we
don't have time to go into it," Wilhelm replied quickly.
"Just be careful."
"Careful about what?"
"I don't know. Some kind of set-up
maybe."
Clearly Willie was worried for him, which
added weight to his next words: "But that's minor compared
to the other. Something big is up. We don't know what, but
security has been tightened. Also, training schedules for units
inside Russia have gone to a wartime footing, and secret
amphibious and airborne assaults are being rehearsed on the shore
of the Black Sea."
He slowed down for a moment, turning
around as if looking for his fiancé and then took off again,
with Jim following. "Even Canaris is in the dark on
this," he whispered. "Internal security is higher than
it was before Operation Barbarossa." Barbarossa had been the
code name for the launch phase of the Reich's attack on the
Soviet Union in '41. "Expect some major code changes at the
highest levels in the near future, also some - what's the English
phrase? False . . . herrings?"
Despite the tension, Martel couldn't help
his smile.
"Don't trust anything you hear - and
not just you personally. Your entire intelligence system can
expect to be the target of major spoofing.
"Oh. And one more thing. The entire
operation, whatever it is, is code-named 'Arminius.' "
"It's definitely aimed toward
us?"
"We think so, but we're not sure.
Jim, this is our last contact for a long time. Canaris ordered me
to break off with you now so that he won't be questioned later
about my part in the failed effort to turn you."
Jim nodded, smiling as if the two were
exchanging a casual pleasantry.
Wilhelm looked past Jim, as if seeing
something else.
"I think that's Lori over
there," he announced, and he started to move away. Wilhelm
paused and looked back, his blue eyes filled with a distant
melancholy. "If you should ever get a message from me
inquiring about your father, it's a clear warning that the show's
about to start. Remember that, and . . . take care, my
cousin." He reached out, squeezed Jim's hand, and
disappeared into the crowd.
Jim made a studied effort to appear as if
nothing at all had transpired between him and his cousin other
than a friendly chat while looking for a misplaced girlfriend.
Slinging his camera bag over his shoulder, he continued down the
thoroughfare, pausing for a moment to look in a shop window where
the new television sets were on display.
Berlin had opened the world's first
full-time television station the month before, and a crowd was
gathered around the window watching an old propaganda film about
the start of the war with Russia four years ago. The image was
grainy, and the picture tube no more than a hand's span across,
but even so it held a certain hypnotic quality.
After a minute or two he turned and
continued on, pausing here and there to look in shop windows that
were again filled with goods. Gasoline, rubber products, and
anything that required copper, brass, or aluminum were still
impossible for ordinary folk to find, but the food markets
overflowed with loot: Russian sausages, bread, and vodka (which
had become the cheap hard liquor of Germany); fruit from the
Black Sea region; French wines and the latest Parisian fashions.
Even silk stockings were coming back, though they generally sold
out in a few hours.
Sadly, Jim had noted that hemlines were
dropping again. To his mind the effect on hemlines of the tight
rationing of cloth had been one of the few real wartime benefits,
both in Europe and America.
But despite the lowering hemlines the
people around him seemed relaxed and happy; clearly they were
enjoying the fruits of German victory - even though, Martel
supposed, they could not help noticing that there were far more
female celebrants than male.
Other social changes the war had created
were evident as well. Under Speer's wartime economy program,
rushed into effect within days of Hitler's accident, German women
had filled the factories. Germany had still been playing a
guns-and-butter game up until then, but instantly when given the
opportunity, Speer had changed that. Within eighteen months, the
most essential military production was up three hundred percent,
and the majority of the labor force was female, something
previously unthinkable.
Women controlled the money now and spent
it as they pleased. Jim wondered how, if Germany ever did
demobilize, these women would react when the former masters of
the house came back home and tried to reassert control.
As he passed a beer garden, loud and
boisterous singing rioted through the open doors from an interior
packed with soldiers in a happy mood after the parade. He
continued on with the flow of the crowd, sensing from them the
same self-satisfied contentment that emanated from crowds going
home after Fourth of July and Labor Day picnics.
Martel wondered how that could be. How
could they not know of the horrors being perpetrated in their
name all over the Reich and in the conquered territories? Slave
labor starved in the East while working to fill Berlin shops.
Tens of thousands were dying of overwork, malnourishment and
exposure as they labored like the captives of Pharaoh on the new autobahn
extensions that were pushing deeper and deeper into the Ukraine
and Occupied Russia. And worst of all, the camps. On the other
hand, in a climate where no one dared speak "sedition"
except to their closest, oldest friends, information flow would
be very slow. Especially if people did not want to know. But
sooner or later murder would out, the atrocities become common
knowledge. What of German pride then?
Coming to the corner that housed his
destination, Martel turned from the boulevard and its obscene
canopy of swastikas to the American flag floating above the
American Embassy. As ever, he felt a certain relief at the
transition to American soil, symbolic though it was. Going
through the outer doors, he returned as crisply as they were
proferred the salutes of the Marine guards, stepped into the main
corridor, and turned to sign in at the receptionist's desk, where
to his surprise Betty was waiting to meet him.
"Hi, Betts. What are you doing out
here?" Normally at this time of day Betty would be busy
keeping the intelligence section of the embassy running. She was
one of those incredible private secretaries who wind up running
the show. "Sharon sick again?"
"They asked me to sit out here, so
here's where I'm sitting. How was the parade, Commander?"
"The usual," he replied as he
leaned forward to scribble his name. "Lots of brass bands
and marching around." Much more quietly he added, "Wait
till you see the pics. If this doesn't wake people up, I don't
know what could." Jim was being mildly out of line
talking with her even in such vague terms, not because she
shouldn't know but because they were arguably in a public place,
deserted though it was.
Betty Kulowski looked up at him with a
smile. "Hey, Lover, one lieutenant commander, even one as
gorgeous as you, can't take the whole weight of national defense
policiy on his shoulders."
When he hardly smiled in return, nor
reminded her that though they might have an understanding they
were not lovers, and by the way why not? she too turned serious.
"You and I have gone over the specs for those planes, Honey.
As far as our side is concerned we wrote the book on
German jets. You've even drawn schematics. Surely just seeing
them in flight didn't add that much?"
"Seeing them made it real.
Betty, I'm telling you. We're in trouble, and if we don't wake up
to that fact and do something about it, we could wind up
fighting a war in the continental USA."
"Jim, it's not that bad."
"Not quite. Not yet."
For a moment Betty seemed at a loss for
words, as if she wanted to reassure him, but not falsely. She
understood too well the profound implications behind Jim's
concern, and suspected that the vision of Nazi air power he had
just experienced would have had a similar effect on her.
"Nothing much we can do here, though, except stay on top of
developments and do our jobs," she finally ventured.
"Betts, I think my dad might soon be
moved to write another article, and this one not for Defense
Analysis Quarterly."
Betty's face fell. "Jim, don't.
They're mad enough at you already."
Jim shrugged. Frankly, he wasn't sure an
article such as he had in mind would have any desireable effect,
while he was pretty sure it would permanently blight his career.
Also he realized that he would have to be awfully damned careful
to avoid references to anything he had learned as a matter of
performing his duties as an intelligence officer . . . which
would include about everything that would give such an article
credibility. "Oh, hell, you're as right as you usually are.
I'd just cancel myself out of the equation without doing any
good." He smiled lopsidedly. "When they assigned me to
intel they really muzzled me good, didn't they? Good thing I have
you. . . ."
"Me too." Betty smiled
sympathetically, then turned impish: "And I have my sights
set on an admiral of the fleet, my boy -- an
admiral who has done it all, up close and personal. I don't
have my sights set on a defrocked flyboy history teacher stuck in
some out-of-the way school because he resigned under a
cloud!" Despite her attempted humor, clearly Betty shared
his frustration over the way so many in high places would rather
stick their heads in the sand than admit error, or even admit a
failure in their own omniscience.
Looking at her, feeling both her
emotional support for him personally, and her shared concern for
their country, Jim regretted more than ever embassy policy on
liaisons between staffers. He and Betty would be seeing a lot of
each other as soon as they both were out of this place, and it
was very damned irritating that in public they had to settle for
a friendly bonhomie, while aside from a couple of carefully
coordinated vacations their "private" times were
limited to working over intelligence files. Once they had accidentally met
on a Berlin street and had impulsively ducked into a shop for a
cup of tea -- and were asked about it the next day, with a strong
hint that a repetition, even an accidental repetition,
would be frowned on very darkly indeed. As if it wouldn't be
better for staffers to spend some lonely hours together rather
than to be constantly subjected to temptation by the local
talent, some of which was quite gorgeous. Not that the locals
weren't equally forbidden, but still, the -
"Jim, could I see you for a
minute?"
Jim's musings flash-evaporated as he
looked over his shoulder at Steve Acres, the head of military
intelligence. Supposedly Steve was a mid-level State Department
functionary and came complete with the usual (though in his case
phony) Yale credentials. In fact, in other times and places he
would again wear the single star of a brigadier general of the US
Army.
Something was wrong. Before Jim could
respond to his request, Acres had turned away from him and was
walking back to his office. As he followed Acres through the
double doors into the heart of the embassy, Jim felt his hackles
begin to rise. When (crossing the small reception area that held
Betty's desk to do so) they had entered Acres's office and Jim
saw that there were two others in the room, they rose even more.
One of them, Harriman, his name was, Jim
vaguely recognized as an intelligence agent with the OSS. He
wasn't around much, and didn't mingle when he was. The other was
a complete stranger, though he seemed to recognize Martel - and
looked at him as if he were a piece of rancid meat.
Without benefit of introductory niceties
the stranger stated baldly, "You met with von Metz this
afternoon." As he made this announcement he pointed
peremptorily to a chair set in the middle of the room.
Jim looked over at Steve.
"Jim, this is Mr. Grierson. He's
here to ask you some questions."
Jim sat, but otherwise ignored Grierson.
"Steve, what the hell is going on here?"
"Lieutenant Commander Martel, I
asked you a question," Grierson said grimly. "You would
be well advised to answer it."
Still ignoring his interrogator, Jim
continued to gaze levelly at his boss.
"Jim, you are to answer Mr.
Grierson's question without hesitation."
Jim turned in his chair to face Grierson.
"Sure. I met with von Metz. If you check the contact report
that I turned in yesterday you'll see that I already had the
meeting arranged."
"What did you discuss with
him?"
Jim looked back at Acres.
"Sir, is there a problem here?"
"Martel, I'm asking you a
question," Gierson snarled, "so stop looking to General
Acres for help like you're Charlie McCarthy sitting on his
knee."
Jim swung around and stood up.
"Listen buddy, back off."
"Jim!"
Jim turned and looked back at Acres.
"You've been accused of a breech in
security," Acres said. "Grierson came in this morning
from the States to check it out. Just answer the questions."
Stunned, Jim looked back at Gierson, who
now pointedly ignored him as he spoke to Harriman. "You
followed Martel today?" Grierson asked.
Harriman nodded.
"After the parade he met von Metz.
The two suddenly took off through the crowd and I fell behind.
They talked for several minutes and then parted company."
"So? We should stand motionless,
talking in loud clear voices? He had sensitive information. That
was the point of the meeting!"
"And what was that information,
Jim?" General Acres asked, holding his hand up for Grierson
to be silent.
"Something is starting to move.
Willi's not sure what. Training schedules for troops inside of
Russia have been stepped up. Amphibious assault rehearsals on the
Black Sea coast. Internal security is tightening up, the same way
it did before they went into Russia. Their coding system is
scheduled for a major overhaul. Even Canaris is being kept in the
dark. One hard fact: The code name for this operation is
'Arminius.'"
"Arminius," Acres repeated,
looking back quizzically at Jim.
"You probably remember it from your
Academy days. The German leader during the reign of Augustus.
Annihilated Varus's legions in the Teutoburger Forest."
"What's the target?"
"Maybe us. Probably us. Von Metz
wasn't sure."
Grierson laughed sarcastically.
"That's it?"
Jim started to report on von Metz's
personal warning, then decided to omit that for the moment. If he
was suspected of a leak, then a leak there almost certainly was -
somewhere. If word of a personal warning got back to German
intel, it might be just what they needed to nail his cousin.
"That's about it."
"Martel, we've been filtering
reports like that since the war ended. Why should we take this
one seriously? Hell, we're the last thing the Germans want to
take on."
"What about this amphib
report?" Acres asked the civilian. "Do the British know
about this? With Churchill back in office the Germans might be
having preemptive thoughts about England."
"We've been getting those reports as
well," Grierson replied disdainfully. "Our assessment
is that they're prepping a move into Kazakhstan for more oil. The
amphib's for moving some divisions directly across the Caspian
Sea; training in the Black Sea would be the obvious place."
Grierson turned and looked back at Jim.
"What did you and your German
relative really talk about?"
"I told you."
"Nothing else?"
"Nothing. I was doing my job."
"I've already looked at the initial
contact report for today," Grierson said, casually revealing
that he had access to General Acres's files.
Acres barely flinched.
Grierson looked over at Harriman and
nodded a dismissal. Harriman stood without comment and exited. As
he watched him go, Jim felt as though he were watching something
wet that crawled in the dark. The worst part of it was knowing
that if the tables had been turned - as they easily could have
been - he would have been the one doing the tailing and
reporting. Suddenly he was hip deep in the filthy reality that
underlay all the cloak and dagger games. He didn't like it, or
himself, much just then. He longed to be a pilot again.
As the door closed on Harriman, Grierson
burst rudely in on Jim's thoughts. "Martel, are you familiar
with recent developments in radar equipment used for spotting
submarine periscopes and snorkels?"
"Yes."
"How and why?"
"I was briefed on it four months
ago. One of my assignments was to find out if the Germans knew
about our design, the frequencies we were using, and whether they
had developed radar-detection gear for their submarines."
"What about acoustically guided
torpedoes?"
"I wasn't briefed on that, but I was
supposed to find out if they were developing submarine noise
makers. That made it pretty obvious that we or the Brits were
working on acoustical guidance."
"Why?"
Acres interjected. "Jim, we've
gotten feedback from other sources --"
"General!"
"Mr. Grierson. Aside from the
fact that he's the best operative I've got, I've known this boy
and his family for twenty years. I know him. This whole
thing is a bunch of crap. Chances are the Nazis got the
information Stateside. Since the Pacific War ended it's become a
damn sieve back there. This whole thing is most likely an FBI
screw-up."
So Grierson was FBI. Very high-up FBI. No
wonder Acres had hesitated to cross him.
"The leak originated here.
That points to one person. Him."
"Am I being charged with
something?" Jim asked sharply. "If so I have a right to
know - or are you picking up a few tricks from the Gestapo?"
He regretted the words almost immediately, and not just because
of what came next. He knew very well the difference between even
a hardnose like Grierson and a genuine secret-police thug.
"Lieutenant Commander James Martel,
under the Espionage Act of 1941 you are hereby charged with
delivering classified information to a foreign power. You are
under arrest. You will be escorted back to the United States
where you will face a military court martial. Prior to that court
martial some people in my division want to have a long, long talk
with you. A plane is waiting at Templehof." Grierson went to
the back door of Acres's office and, with a bit of flourish,
knocked on it. The door opened and two more men in civilian garb
stepped in.
"Martel, these two men will escort
us to the plane and back to the States. They have been ordered to
kill you rather than let you escape, and believe me, should the
occasion arise they will happily carry out that
order."
Stunned, Jim looked back at Acres.
"Just cooperate, Jim. I'll get
things moving on my end. You'll be cleared of this within a week,
maybe two." In the long months to come James Martel would
often recall that empty promise.