Hitler's peace

IV

AMT VI (Department 6) of the SD had its offices in the southwest part of the city, in a curvilinear, four-story modern building. Constructed in 1930, it had been a Jewish old people’s home until October 1941, when all the residents were transferred directly to the ghetto at Lodz. Surrounded by vegetable gardens and blocks of apartments, only the flagpole on top of the roof and one or two official cars parked outside the front door gave any clue that 22 Berkaerstrasse was the headquarters of the Foreign Intelligence Section of the Reich Security Office.

Schellenberg liked being well away from his masters in the Wilhelmstrasse and on Unter den Linden. Berkaerstrasse, in Wilmersdorf, on the edge of the Grunewald Forest, was a good twenty-minute drive from Kaltenbrunner’s office, and this meant that he was usually left alone to do much as he pleased. But being alone in this way was not without its own peculiar disadvantage, insofar as Schellenberg was obliged to live and work among a group of men several of whom he considered, privately at least, to be dangerous psychopaths, and he was always wary of how he enforced discipline among his subordinate officers. Indeed, he had come to regard his colleagues much as a zookeeper in the reptile house at the Berlin Zoo might have regarded a pit full of alligators and vipers. Men who had killed with such alacrity and in such numbers were not to be trifled with.

Men like Martin Sandberger, Schellenberg’s second in command, who had recently arrived back in Berlin after leading a special action commando battalion in Estonia, where, it was bruited, his unit had murdered more than 65,000 Jews. Or Karl Tschierschky, who headed up Amt VI’s Group C, dealing with Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, and who had been seconded to Schellenberg’s department with a similarly murderous background in Riga. Then there was Captain Horst Janssen, who had led a Sonderkommando in Kiev, executing 33,000 Jews. The plain fact of the matter was that Schellenberg’s department, much like any department in the SD, was thick with killers, some of whom were just as willing to kill a German as they had been to murder Jews. Albert Rapp, for example, another veteran of the special action groups and Tschierschky’s predecessor at the Turkish desk, had been killed in a hit-and-run accident. It was generally assumed Captain Reichert, another officer in Amt VI, was the driver. Reichert had become aware of a relationship between his wife and the late Albert Rapp: the baby-faced Captain Reichert did not look like a murderer, but then again, so few of them did.

Schellenberg himself had only escaped doing service in one of Heydrich’s murderous battalions by virtue of his precocious appointment as head of the SD’s Counterespionage/Inland Department in September 1939. Could he ever have murdered so many innocent people so very blithely? It was a question Schellenberg seldom asked himself, for the simple reason that he did not have an answer. Schellenberg subscribed to the view that a man did not really know what infamy he was capable of until he was actually required to do it.

Unlike most of his colleagues, Schellenberg had rarely fired a gun in anger; but concern for his own safety among so many proven murderers meant that he carried a Mauser in a shoulder holster, a C96 in his briefcase, a Schmeisser MP40 under the driver’s seat of his car, and two MP40s in his mahogany partner’s desk-one in each drawer. His precautions did not end there, however; underneath the blue stone on his gold signet ring was a cyanide capsule, while the windows of his top-floor office were sheathed in an electrically charged wire net that would sound an alarm if breached from the outside.

Waiting behind his desk for his subordinates to arrive for the meeting, Schellenberg turned to a nearby trolley table and pressed the button that activated the room’s secret microphones. Then he pressed the button that switched on the green light outside his door, signaling that it was permitted to come in. When everyone was assembled and the door light was changed to red, he outlined the bare bones of Operation Long Jump and then invited comments.

Colonel Martin Sandberger went first. He had a lawyer’s way of speaking-measured and slightly pedantic-which was not surprising, given his background as an assistant judge in the Inner Administration of Wurttemberg. It was always a source of surprise to Schellenberg how many lawyers were involved at the sharp end of genocide; that a man could be teaching the philosophy of law one week and executing Jews in Estonia the next was, Schellenberg had decided, a real clue as to the shallowness of human civilization. Even so, the thirty-three-year-old Sandberger, with his wide jaw, thick lips, broad nose, and heavy brow, looked more a thug than a lawyer.

“Yesterday,” said Sandberger, “as instructed, I drove out to the Special Section at Friedenthal, where I met SS Sturmbannfuhrer von Holten-Pflug.” Here, Sandberger nodded at a young, aristocratic-looking Waffen-SS major who was sitting opposite him.

Schellenberg regarded the major with something close to amusement-even without their names he could always tell the aristocrats. It was the tailoring that gave them away. Most officers had their uniforms made up by the SS-Bekleidungswerke, a clothing factory in a special camp where Jewish tailors were put to work; but von Holten-Pflug’s uniform looked made to measure, and Schellenberg guessed it had come from Wilhelm Holters, in Tauentzienstrasse. The quality was quite unmistakable. Schellenberg himself bought his uniforms from Holters, as did the Fuhrer.

“Sturmbannfuhrer von Holten-Pflug and I conducted a materials check,” continued Sandberger, “with a view to the present readiness for Operation Long Jump. We found that some weapons and ammunition had been requisitioned by Hauptsturmfuhrer Skorzeny for the Mussolini rescue. Apart from that, however, everything is pretty much there. SS winter uniforms, SS fall- and spring-pattern uniforms, all the usual gear. Most important of all, the special stores we put together as gifts for the local Kashgai tribesmen are still there, too. The silver-inlay K98 rifles, and the gold-plated Walther pistols.”

“It’s not stores we lack,” said von Holten-Pflug. “It’s men. Skorzeny left us very shorthanded. Fortunately, those men who remain in the section are Farsi-speakers. I myself also speak a little Gilaki, which is the language of the northern Persian tribesmen. Of course, most of their leaders have some German. But given that we’ll very likely be up against Russian troops, I’d like to make a recommendation that we use a team of Ukrainians, and base the operation at Vinnica.”

“How many men do you think you would need?” asked Schellenberg.

“About eighty to a hundred Ukrainians, and another ten or fifteen German officers and NCOs, commanded by myself.”

“And then?”

Von Holten-Pflug unfolded a map of Iran and spread it out on the table in front of him.

“I recommend that we stick to the plan from Operation Franz and fly from Vinnica. Six groups of ten men wearing Russian uniforms to parachute into the country near the holy city of Qom, and another four groups near Qazvin. Once there, we’ll rendezvous with our agents in Iran and head for the safe houses in Teheran. We can then reconnoiter the embassy areas and radio precise coordinates back to Berlin for the air strikes. After the bombing, the ground force will move in and deal with any survivors. Then we’ll make our way to Turkey, assuming that it remains a neutral country.”

Schellenberg smiled. Von Holten-Pflug made the whole operation sound as straightforward as a stroll around the Tiergarten. “Tell me more about these Ukrainians,” he said.

“They’re Zeppelin volunteers. Naturally I’ll need to go to Vinnica to sort things out. There’s a local intelligence officer I’d like to use. Fellow named Oster.”

“No relation, I hope,” said Schellenberg.

Von Holten-Pflug adjusted the monocle in his eye and regarded Schellenberg blankly.

“There was an Oster in the Abwehr,” explained Sandberger. “Until a month or two ago. A lieutenant colonel. He was dismissed and transferred to the Wehrmacht on the Russian front.”

“This Oster is a captain in the Waffen-SS.”

“I’m very glad to hear it.”

Von Holten-Pflug smiled uncertainly, and to Schellenberg it was plain to see that the major had no idea of the intense rivalry that existed between Amt VI of the SD and the Abwehr. Indeed, Schellenberg thought “rivalry” hardly strong enough to describe his relations with German military intelligence and the man who was its chief, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. For it was Schellenberg’s greatest ambition that Amt VI should absorb the largely ineffective Abwehr; and yet, for some reason Schellenberg was unable to fathom, Himmler-and perhaps also Hitler-hesitated to give Schellenberg what he wanted. In Schellenberg’s view, there were obvious economies of scale a merger of the two agencies would bring. As things now stood, resources ended up being duplicated, and sometimes operational initiatives as well. Schellenberg understood Canaris wanting to hang on to power. He would have felt the same way. But it was quite futile for Canaris to resist a change that everyone-even Himmler-saw as inevitable. It was just a question of time.

“Captain Oster speaks Ukrainian and some Russian,” said von Holten-Pflug. “He used to work for the Wannsee Institute. And he seems to know how to handle the Popovs.”

“I think we have to be careful here,” said Schellenberg. “After the Vlasov affair, the Fuhrer is not at all keen on using so-called subhuman military resources.”

Captured by the Germans in the spring of 1942, Andrei Vlasov was a Soviet general who had been “persuaded” to create an army of Russian POWs to fight for Hitler. Schellenberg had worked hard to achieve the independence of Vlasov’s “Russian Liberation Movement”; but Hitler, infuriated by the very idea of a Slav army fighting for Germany, had ordered Vlasov returned to a POW camp and forbade any mention of the plan again.

“I haven’t given up on Vlasov and his army,” continued Schellenberg, “but at Posen, Himmler made a special mention of his being ostracized, and it would be unwise not to be mindful of that.”

The Zeppelin volunteers were not much different from Vlasov’s RLM; these were also Russian prisoners fighting for the German army, except that they had been organized into guerrilla partisan units and then parachuted deep into Soviet territory.

“I don’t think a team of Zeppelin volunteers is likely to meet with the Reichsfuhrer’s approval any more than a unit from Vlasov’s army.” Schellenberg turned to Captain Janssen. “No, we’d best try to make this an SS operation from top to bottom. Horst, you were in the Ukraine. What’s the name of the Ukrainian Waffen-SS division that’s fighting there?”

“The Galicia Division. Waffen-SS Fourteenth Grenadiers.”

“Who’s the commanding officer?”

“General Walther Schimana. I believe the enlistment of Ukrainian cadres is going on even as we speak.”

“I thought as much. Speak to this General Schimana and see if we can have our Zeps operate from within the Galicia Division. As long as I can refer to our men as Waffen-SS instead of Ukrainians, or Zeps, then I think we can make Himmler happy.

“Go back to Friedenthal,” he told von Holten-Pflug, “and take everything-men, stores, money, the lot-to the Ukraine. You and the other officers can stay at Himmler’s place in Zhitomir. It’s an old officers’ training college, about eighty kilometers north of Hitler’s Wehrwolf HQ, at Vinnica, so you’ll be quite comfortable there. I’ll clear it with Himmler myself. I doubt he’ll be needing it again. And be careful. Tell your men to stay out of the Russian villages, and to leave the women alone. Last time I was there, Himmler’s pilot got himself murdered in the most horrible circumstances by local partisans after he went chasing some local skirt. If your boys want to relax, tell them to play tennis. There’s quite a good court there, as I recall. As soon as your team is operational I want you to come back here and make your report. Use the Wehrmacht’s courier plane to Warsaw, and then by train to Berlin. Got that?”

Schellenberg concluded the meeting and left his office. He had parked his car on Hohenzollerndamm instead of his usual place outside the front door, reasoning that the walk might afford him an opportunity to see if he was being followed. He recognized most of the cars parked outside the offices of Amt VI; but further up the street, toward the taxi file on the corner of Teplitzer Strasse, he saw a black Opel Type 6 limousine with two occupants. It was parked facing north, the same direction as Schellenberg’s gray Audi. But for Arthur Nebe’s warning he would have paid it little or no attention. As soon as he got into his car, Schellenberg picked up the shortwave transmitter and called his office, asking his secretary, Christiane, to check on the license plate he read off in his rearview mirror. Then he turned the car around and drove south toward the Grunewald Forest.

He drove slowly, with one eye on his mirror. He saw the black Opel make a U-turn on Hohenzollerndamm and then come after him at the same leisurely speed. After a few minutes, Christiane came on the radio again.

“I have that Kfz-Schein,” she said. “The car is registered to Department Four, at the Reich Main Security Office, on Prinz Albrechtstrasse.”

So it was the Gestapo who were following him.

Schellenberg thanked her and switched off the radio. He could hardly let them follow him to where he was going-Himmler would never have approved of what he had arranged. But equally, he didn’t want to make it too obvious that he was trying to lose them; so long as the Gestapo were unaware that he had been tipped off about them, he had a small advantage.

He stopped at a tobacconist and bought some cigarettes, which gave him the opportunity to turn around without it looking like he’d spotted the tail. Then he drove north until he reached the Kurfurstendamm, turning east toward the city center.

Near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, he turned south onto Tauenzienstrasse and pulled up outside the Ka-De-We department store on Wittenberg Platz. Berlin’s biggest department store was full of people, and it was a comparatively simple matter for Schellenberg to give the Gestapo the slip. Entering the store by one door, he left by another, picking up a taxi at the stand on Kurfurstenstrasse. The driver took him north, up Potsdamer Strasse toward the Tiergarten, and then dropped him close to the Brandenburg Gate. Schellenberg thought Berlin’s famous monument was looking a little scarred from the bombings. On top of the quadriga roof, the four horses drawing Eirene in her chariot seemed rather more apocalyptic than triumphal these days. Schellenberg crossed the street, glanced over his shoulder one last time to check that he was no longer being followed, and hurried through the door of the Adlon, Berlin’s best hotel. Before the war the Adlon had been known as “little Switzerland” because of all the diplomatic activity that took place there, which was probably one reason why Hitler had always avoided it; more important, however, the SS avoided the Adlon, too, preferring the Kaiserhof in Wilhelmstrasse, which was why Schellenberg always conducted his liaisons with Lina at the Adlon.

His suite was on the third floor of the hotel, with a view of Unter den Linden. Before the National Socialist Party had cut down the trees to facilitate military displays, it had been just about the nicest view in Berlin, with the possible exception of Lina Heydrich’s bare behind.

As soon as he was inside the room he picked up the telephone and ordered some champagne and a cold lunch. Despite the war, the kitchens at the Adlon still managed to turn out food that was as good as anywhere in Europe. He moved the telephone away from the bed and buried it under a heap of cushions. Schellenberg knew that the Forschungsamt, the intelligence agency established by Goring and charged with signal surveillance and wiretapping, had planted listening devices in all of the Adlon’s four hundred bedroom phones.

Schellenberg took off his jacket and settled down in an armchair with the Illustrierte Beobachter and read a highly romanticized account of life on the Russian front that seemed to suggest not only that German soldiers were holding back the enemy masses, but also that in the end German heroism would prevail.

There was a knock at the door. It was a waiter with a trolley. He started to open the champagne but Schellenberg, tipping him generously, told him to go. It was one of the bottles of Dom Perignon 1937 he had brought from Paris-a whole case he had left with the Adlon’s sommelier-and he had no intention of letting anyone but himself open what was perhaps one of the last good bottles of champagne in Berlin.

Ten minutes later the door opened a second time and a tall, blue-eyed, corn-haired woman wearing a neatly tailored brown tweed suit and a checked flannel blouse entered the suite. Lina Heydrich kissed him, a little sadly, which was always the way she kissed Schellenberg when she saw him again, before sitting down in an armchair and lighting a cigarette. He opened the champagne expertly and poured a glass, then brought it to her, sitting down on the arm of her chair and stroking her hair gently.

“How have you been?” he asked.

“Good, thank you. And you? How was Paris?”

“I brought you a present.”

“Walter,” she said, smiling, although no less sadly than before. “You shouldn’t have.”

He handed her a gift-wrapped package and watched as she unwrapped it.

“Perfume,” she said. “How clever of you to know it’s in short supply here.”

Schellenberg smiled. “I’m an intelligence officer.”

“Mais Oui, by Bourjois.” She removed the seal and the scallop-shaped stopper and dabbed some on her wrists. “It’s nice. I like it.” Her smile grew a little warmer. “You’re very good at presents, aren’t you, Walter? Very thoughtful. Reinhard was never good at presents. Not even on birthdays or anniversaries.”

“He was a busy man.”

“No, that wasn’t it. He was a womanizer, that’s what he was, Walter. Him and that awful friend of his.”

“Eichmann.”

She nodded. “Oh, I heard all the stories. What they were up to in the nightclubs. Especially the ones in Paris.”

“Paris is very different now,” said Schellenberg. “But I can’t say I ever heard anything.”

“For an intelligence chief you’re a terrible liar. I hope you’re better at lying to Hitler than you are to me. You must have heard the story of the Moulin Rouge firing squad?”

Everyone in the SD had heard the story of Heydrich and Eichmann lining up ten naked girls in the famous Paris nightclub, then bending them over so that they could fire champagne corks at their bare behinds. He shrugged. “Those stories have a habit of being exaggerated. Especially after someone has died.”

Lina gave Schellenberg a penetrating sideways look. “Sometimes I wonder what you get up to when you go to Paris.”

“Nothing so vulgar, I can assure you.”

She took his hand and kissed it affectionately.

Lina von Osten was thirty-one years old. She had married Heydrich in 1931 when she was just eighteen and already an enthusiastic National Socialist. It was rumored that it was she who had persuaded her new husband to join the SS. Schellenberg himself thought the rumor was probably true, for Lina was a strong woman as well as a handsome one. Not a great beauty but well made, and wholesome looking, like one of those paragons of Aryan womanhood from the Nazi Women’s League you’d see exercising in a propaganda film.

She took off her jacket to reveal a peasant-style bodice that seemed to enhance the size of her breasts; then she unpinned her golden hair so that it fell about her shoulders. Standing up, she started to undress and they began their usual game: for each question he answered truthfully about what Amt VI was doing, she would remove an article of clothing. By the time he had told her all about Agent Cicero and the documents in Sir Hughe’s safe and his plan to assassinate the Big Three at Teheran, she was naked and seated on his lap.

“What does Himmler have to say about this?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t told him yet. I’m still putting the plan together.”

“This could save us from disaster, Walter.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“A strong possibility.” Lina kissed him happily. “How clever you are, Walter.”

“We’ll see.”

“No, really, you are. It hardly matters if you kill Roosevelt, I think. After all, he’s a sick man and the vice president would replace him. But Churchill personifies the British war effort, and killing him would be a real body blow for the English. Then again, the British hardly matter, do they? Not next to the Americans and the Russians. No, it’s the Russians that would be affected the most. If Churchill personifies the British war effort, then Stalin personifies the whole Soviet system. To kill all three would be splendid. It would put the Allies in total chaos. But just to kill Stalin would end the war in Europe. There would be another revolution in Russia. You might even get that Russian general of yours to lead it.”

“Vlasov?”

“Yes, Vlasov. The Russians are more terrified of Stalin than they are of Hitler, I think. That’s what makes them fight. That’s what makes them tolerate such enormous losses and still fight on. There are only so many planes and tanks that they can make, but men seem to be in limitless supply. That’s Russian arithmetic. They think they can win because at the end, when every German is dead, they’ll still have lots of Russians left alive. But you kill Stalin and everything changes. He’s shot everyone capable of replacing him, hasn’t he? Who’s left?”

“You,” smiled Schellenberg. “I think you’d make a fine dictator. Especially the way you are now. Magnificent.”

Lina punched him playfully on the shoulder, although it still hurt. She was stronger than she thought. “I’m serious, Walter. You have to make this plan happen. For all our sakes.” She shook her head. “Otherwise, I don’t know what’s going to become of us, really I don’t. I saw Goebbels the other day and he told me that if the Russians ever get to Germany we are facing nothing less than the Bolshevization of the Reich.”

“He always says that. It’s his job to scare us with the idea of what it might be like to live as Communists.”

“That just shows you haven’t been listening, Walter. They won’t be handing out copies of Marx and Engels when they get here. We’re facing nothing less than the liquidation of our entire intelligentsia and the descent of our people into Bolshevist-Jewish slavery. And behind the terror, mass starvation and total anarchy.”

To Schellenberg’s well-informed ears this sounded like a pamphlet from the Propaganda Ministry that had come through his letterbox the previous week, but he didn’t interrupt Lina.

“What do you suppose happened to all those German soldiers who were captured at Stalingrad? They’re in forced labor battalions, of course. Working in the Siberian tundra. And all those Polish officers executed at Katyn. That’s the fate that awaits us all, Walter. My sons are in the Hitler Youth. What do you think will become of them? Or for that matter their two sisters, Silke and Marte?” Lina closed her eyes and pressed her face against Schellenberg’s chest. “I’m so afraid of what might happen.”

He folded her in his arms.

“I’ve been thinking of speaking to Himmler,” she said quietly. “Of asking his permission to get my boys out of the Hitler Youth. I’ve already given a husband to Germany. I wouldn’t want to lose a child as well.”

“Would you like me to speak to him, Lina?”

Lina smiled at him. “You’re so good to me, Walter. But, no, I’ll do it myself. Himmler always feels guilty when he talks to me. He’ll be more likely to give in to me than to you.” She kissed him, and this time she gave herself up to it and they were soon in bed, each striving to please the other and then themselves.

In the early part of the afternoon, Schellenberg left Lina in the Adlon and walked to the Air Ministry. It was housed in a squared-off, functional-looking building, and to prevent it from becoming a target for enemy bombers it displayed no flags.

Schellenberg was shown to a large conference room on the fourth floor, where he was quickly joined by a number of senior officers: General Schmid, General Korten, General Koller, General Student, General Galland, and a lieutenant named Welter who took notes. It was General Schmid, better known to the Luftwaffe as “Beppo,” who spoke first.

“On the basis of what Milch told us, we’ve examined the feasibility of using a squadron of four Focke Wulf 200s. It is, as you have already worked out for yourself, the best aeroplane for the job. It has a service ceiling of almost six thousand meters and, carrying extra fuel, a range of forty-four hundred kilometers. However, to facilitate targeting, we would recommend not carrying a bomb load, but rather two Henschel HS293 radio-controlled missiles. The Henschel acts like a small aircraft, with a motor to boost it to its maximum-level speed, after which a radio controller on the plane guides it to its target.”

“Radio-controlled?” Schellenberg was impressed. “How does that work?”

“The weapon is top secret, so you’ll understand if we don’t say too much about it. But the operation of the missile is quite simple. However, the bombardier must keep the missile in sight, and environmental conditions such as cloud, haze, or smoke could interfere with the targeting. Tracers from light AA fire could also make it difficult to pick out the missile.” Schmid paused to light a cigarette. “Of course, all that is somewhat academic. Everything really depends on your ground team’s being able to knock out the enemy radar. If they manage to have fighters up in the air waiting for us, our Condors would be easy booty for them.”

Schellenberg nodded. “I don’t think I can overstate the risks involved in this mission, gentlemen,” he said. “I believe as soon as we’ve knocked out their radar they’ll put fighters up anyway, just to be on the safe side. There’s a strong possibility that none of your air crews will get back to Germany in one piece. But I can improve their chances.”

“Before you do,” General Student interrupted, “I should like to know what happened to the signals commando that was parachuted into Iran back in March. As the first stage of Operation Franz.”

Six men, all of them veterans of Ukrainian murder squads from F Section, had been met on the ground in Iran by Frank Mayr, an SS man who had been living with Kashgai tribesmen since 1940. One of the six had died immediately from typhoid; but the others had been successful, at least insofar as establishing communications with the Havelinstitut-the SS radio center at Wannsee.

“When Operation Franz was downgraded because of Skorzeny’s Mussolini rescue,” explained Schellenberg, “they encountered a number of difficulties. They entered Teheran and survived there for almost five months, living with a group of pistachio-nut farmers and Iranian wrestlers before they were picked up by the Americans. They’re currently being held in a POW camp near Sultanabad.”

“I only asked about them,” said General Student, “because you seem very confident of knocking out the enemy radar in Teheran. Will your men be doing that by themselves, or will you have more wrestlers to help you?”

Schellenberg saw the smiles on the faces of some of the other officers and shifted uncomfortably on his chair.

“In Iran, wrestlers are regarded as men of high social status,” he said. “Rather like matadors in Spain. Being physically fit, they are frequently called upon to become policemen, bodyguards, sometimes even assassins.”

“They sound like the SS,” observed Student.

Schellenberg turned back to General Schmid and asked him if the Luftwaffe was willing to proceed with the plan to kill the Big Three, assuming Hitler himself approved it. Schmid glanced around the table and, finding no opposition to Operation Long Jump, nodded slowly.

“The Fuhrer knows that the Luftwaffe will do anything that helps to win the war,” he said.

After the meeting, Schellenberg took a taxi back to Wittenberg Platz and returned to where he had left his car near the Ka-De-We. Before the war, the store had served forty different kinds of bread and 180 kinds of cheese and fish, but choice was rather more limited in the autumn of 1943. Approaching his car, he glanced around, hoping the black Opel had gone; but it was still there, which seemed to heighten the gravity of his situation. The Gestapo were not about to let the small matter of his having given them the slip for several hours deter them from whatever it was they wanted to find out. As soon as he drove off, the Opel came after him, and he resolved to find out before the afternoon was over exactly what it was they were investigating-his supposed Jewishness, his affair with Lina Heydrich, or something else.

He drove quickly now, back the way he had come, until he reached the edge of the Grunewald Forest-the city’s green window-where, on an empty, wide, firebreak road that ran between two armies of facing trees, he pulled over. Leaving the car’s engine still running and the driver’s door open, he grabbed the Schmeisser MP40, hid it under his coat, and ran into the woods. He ran at a right angle to the road for almost thirty meters before turning and running parallel to the road for almost a hundred more in the direction from which he had just driven. Returning cautiously to the edge of the tree line near the road, he saw that he was no more than twenty meters behind the Opel, which had halted at what the driver must have considered to be a discreet distance. Crouching behind a large red oak, Schellenberg unfolded the MP40’s stock and worked the slide action slowly and quietly, to ready the weapon’s thirty-two-round magazine. Surely they wouldn’t want to lose him twice in one day. The driver’s door of his own car was wide open. At first the two Gestapo men inside the Opel would assume that he had gotten out to take a leak, but when he didn’t return, curiosity would surely overcome them. They would have to get out of the car.

Ten minutes passed with no sign of movement in the Opel. And then the driver’s door opened and a man wearing a black leather coat and a dark-green Austrian-style hat got out and fetched a pair of binoculars from the trunk, which was Schellenberg’s cue to step out of the trees and walk quickly up to the Opel.

“Tell your friend to get out of the car with his hands empty.”

“Jurgen,” said the man with the binoculars. “Come here, please. He’s here and he has a machine pistol. So please be careful.”

The second Gestapo man stepped slowly out of the car with his hands raised. Taller than his colleague, with a broken nose and a boxer’s ear, he was wearing a dark pinstripe suit and sensible Birkenstock shoes. Neither was more than thirty and both wore the cynical smiles of men who were used to being feared and who knew that nothing could ever happen to them. Schellenberg jerked the gun toward the trees.

“Move,” he said.

The two men walked through the line of trees with Schellenberg following at a distance of three or four meters until, at a small clearing about forty meters from the road, he ordered them to stop.

“You’re making a serious mistake,” said the smaller one, who was still holding the binoculars. “We’re Gestapo.”

“I know that,” said Schellenberg. “On your knees, gentlemen. With your hands on your heads, please.”

When they were kneeling, he told them to throw their guns as far as they could and then show him some kind of identification. Reluctantly the two men obeyed, each tossing away a Mauser automatic and showing him the small steel warrant disc that all Gestapo men were obliged to carry.

“Why were you following me?”

“We weren’t following you,” said the man with the boxer’s ear, still holding out the warrant disc in the palm of his hand like a beggar who had just received alms. “There’s been a mistake. We thought you were someone else, that’s all.”

“You’ve been following me all day,” said Schellenberg. “You were outside my office on Berkaerstrasse this morning, and you were outside the Ka-De-We this afternoon.”

Neither man replied.

“Which section of the Gestapo are you in?”

“Section A,” said the one with the binoculars, which were now lying on the ground in front of him.

“Come on,” snapped Schellenberg. “Don’t waste my time. Section A what? ”

“Section A3.”

Schellenberg frowned. “But that’s the section that deals with matters of malicious opposition to the government. What on earth are you following me for?”

“As I said, there must have been a mistake. We’ve been tailing the wrong man, that’s all. Happens sometimes.”

“Don’t move until I tell you to move,” said Schellenberg. “So I’m not who you thought I was, eh?”

“We were tailing a suspected saboteur.”

“Does he have a name, this saboteur?”

“I’m not at liberty to disclose that.”

“How do you know that I’m not an associate of this saboteur of yours? If I was, I might shoot you. Perhaps I’ll shoot you anyway.”

“You won’t shoot us.”

“Don’t be so sure. I don’t like people following me.”

“This is Germany. We’re at war. People get followed all the time. It’s normal.”

“Then maybe I’ll shoot you both to get you off my ass.”

“I don’t think so. You don’t look like the type.”

“If I don’t look like the type, then why were you following me?”

“We weren’t following you, we were following your car,” said the other man.

“My car?” Schellenberg smiled. “Why, then you must know who I am. You’ve had plenty of time to get a Kfz-Schein on my car. That would easily have told you who and what I am.” He shook his head. “I think I’ll shoot you after all, just for being such bad liars.”

“You won’t shoot us.”

“Why not? Do you think anyone’s going to miss an ugly bastard like you?”

“We’re on the same side, that’s why,” said the one with the binoculars.

“But you still haven’t said how you know that. I’m not wearing a uniform, and I’m pointing a gun at you. I know you’re in the Gestapo. And the plain fact is that I’m a British spy.”

“No, you’re not, you’re in the same line of work we are.”

“Shut up, Karl,” said the man with the boxer’s ear.

“And what line of work would that be?”

“You know.”

“Shut up, Karl. Don’t you see what he’s trying to do?”

“I’m your enemy, Karl. And I’m going to kill you.”

“You can’t.”

“Yes, I can.”

“You can’t, because you’re Reich Security Office, just like us, that’s why.”

Schellenberg smiled. “There, now. That wasn’t so very difficult. Since you’ve admitted you know who I am, then you’ll understand why I’m anxious to find out why you should want to follow me, an SD general.”

“Guilty conscience, is it?” said the man with the ear.

“Tell you what, Karl. I’m going to count to three, and if you don’t tell me what this is all about, I’m going to execute you both. Right here. Right now. One.”

“Tell him, Jurgen.”

“He won’t shoot us, Karl.”

“Two.”

“Keep your mouth shut, Karl. He won’t do it. He’s just bluffing.”

“Three.”

Schellenberg squeezed the trigger, and a startling staccato burst of fire shattered the silence of the forest. The MP40 was considered an effective weapon at up to a hundred meters, but at less than ten meters it was positively deadly, and he could hardly have missed his primary target-the tougher-looking man with the boxer’s ear. With the impact of each 9mm Parabellum bullet that struck him in the face and torso his body jerked and a short, feral scream escaped his bloody mouth. Then he rolled over, writhing on the ground, and a second or two later, was still.

Realizing that he was still alive, the other Gestapo man, the one called Karl, began to cross himself furiously, uttering a Hail Mary.

“Better talk to me, Karl,” said Schellenberg, tightening his grip on the MP40’s plastic handle. “Or would you like me to count to three again?”

“It was the chief’s direct order.”

“Muller?”

Karl nodded. “He’s trying to find out how far these peace negotiations of Himmler’s have gone. If it’s just Dr. Kersten, or if you’re involved, too.”

“I see,” said Schellenberg.

Things were a lot clearer to him now. In August of ’42, there had been a discussion involving himself, Himmler, and Himmler’s chiropractor, Dr. Felix Kersten, concerning how a peace with the Allies might be negotiated. The discussion had stalled pending the failed attempt to remove von Ribbentrop-who was perceived to be an obstacle to a diplomatic peace-from his post as Reich foreign minister. But Schellenberg was completely unaware of any current peace negotiations.

“Do you mean to say that there are peace negotiations taking place right now?”

“Yes. Dr. Kersten is in Stockholm, talking to the Americans.”

“And is he under surveillance, too?”

“Probably. I don’t know.”

“What about Himmler?”

“We were told to follow you. I’m afraid that’s all I know.”

“From where does Muller get this information?”

“I don’t know.”

“Take a guess.”

“All right. The splash around Prinz Albrechtstrasse is that there is someone in Himmler’s own office at the Ministry of the Interior who’s been throwing his voice in our direction. But I don’t know his name. Really I don’t.”

Schellenberg nodded. “I believe you.”

“Thank God.”

His mind was racing. There would have to be an investigation into the murder of the Gestapo man, of course. Muller would welcome a chance to embarrass him, and more important, Himmler. Unless…

“Have you got a radio in your car?”

“Yes.”

“Did you radio your last position?”

“We haven’t reported anything since we stopped outside the Ka-De-We.”

There it was, then. He was in the clear. But only if he was prepared to act decisively, now and without hesitation.

Even as the logic of it presented itself clearly to Schellenberg’s mind, he squeezed the trigger. And as he machine-gunned the second Gestapo man, in cold blood, Schellenberg felt that, finally, he had a kind of answer to the question that had often haunted him in the company of his more murderous colleagues. Two bodies now lay dead on the ground in front of him. Two murders hardly compared with Sandberger’s 65,000 or Janssen’s 33,000, but it could hardly be denied that the second murder had felt easier than the first.

With shaking hands, Schellenberg lit a cigarette and smoked it greedily, giving himself up to the soothingly toxic, alkaloid effect of the nicotine in the tobacco. With nerves somewhat steadied, he walked back to his car and took a large mouthful of schnapps from a little Wilhelmine silver hip flask he kept in the glove box. Then he drove slowly back to the Berkaerstrasse.