The Rhinemann Exchange: A Novel

by Robert Ludlum

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  David looked at the Widerstandskämpfer and smiled. “Picking up messages.”

  “Messages?”

  “These are drops. Along our route. We establish marks for leaving off information we don’t want sent by radio. Too dangerous if intercepted.”

  They continued along a narrow path at the edge of the woods until there was a break in the Basque forest. It was a grazing field, a lower plateau centered beneath the surrounding hills. The Wissenschaftler were perspiring heavily, their breaths short, their legs aching.

  “We’ll rest here for a while,” said Spaulding, to the obvious relief of the older men. “It’s time I made contact anyway.”

  “Was ist los?” asked the young runner. “Contact?”

  “Zeroing our position,” replied David, taking out a small metal mirror from his field jacket. “The scouts can relax if they know where we are.… If you’re going to work the north country—what you call south—you’d better remember all this.”

  “I shall, I shall.”

  David caught the reflection of the sun on the mirror and beamed it up to a northern hill. He made a series of motions with his wrist, and the metal plate moved back and forth in rhythmic precision.

  Seconds later there was a reply from halfway up the highest hill in the north. Flashes of light shafted out of an infinitesimal spot in the brackish green distance. Spaulding turned to the others.

  “We’re not going to Beta,” he said. “Falangist patrols are in the area. We’ll stay here until we’re given clearance. You can relax.”

  The heavyset Basque put down the knapsack mirror. His companion still focused his binoculars on the field several miles below, where the American and his three charges were now seated on the ground.

  “He says they are being followed. We are to take up counterpositions and stay out of sight,” said the man with the metal mirror. “We go down for the scientists tomorrow night. He will signal us.”

  “What’s he going to do?”

  “I don’t know. He says to get word to Lisbon. He’s going to stay in the hills.”

  “He’s a cold one,” the Basque said.

  DECEMBER 2, 1943, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Alan Swanson sat in the back of the army car trying his best to remain calm. He looked out the window; the late morning traffic was slight. The immense Washington labor force was at its appointed destinations; machines were humming, telephones ringing, men were shouting and whispering and, in too many places, having the first drink of the day. The exhilaration that was apparent during the first hours of the working day faded as noon approached. By eleven thirty a great many people thought the war was dull and were bored by their mechanical chores, the unending duplicates, triplicates and quadruplicates. They could not understand the necessity of painstaking logistics, of disseminating information to innumerable chains of command.

  They could not understand because they could not be given whole pictures, only fragments, repetitious statistics. Of course they were bored.

  They were weary. As he had been weary fourteen hours ago in Pasadena, California.

  Everything had failed.

  Meridian Aircraft had initiated—was forced to initiate—a crash program, but the finest scientific minds in the country could not eliminate the errors inside the small box that was the guidance system. The tiny, whirling spheroid discs would not spin true at maximum altitudes. They were erratic; absolute one second, deviant the next.

  The most infinitesimal deviation could result in the midair collision of giant aircraft. And with the numbers projected for the saturation bombing prior to Overlord—scheduled to commence in less than four months—collisons would occur.

  But this morning everything was different.

  Could be different, if there was substance to what he had been told. He hadn’t been able to sleep on the plane, hardly been able to eat. Upon landing at Andrews, he had hurried to his Washington apartment, showered, shaved, changed uniforms and called his wife in Scarsdale, where she was staying with a sister. He didn’t remember the conversation between them; the usual endearments were absent, the questions perfunctory. He had no time for her.

  The army car entered the Virginia highway and accelerated. They were going to Fairfax; they’d be there in twenty minutes or so. In less than a half hour he would find out if the impossible was, conversely, entirely possible. The news had come as a last-minute stay of execution; the cavalry in the distant hills—the sounds of muted bugles signaling reprieve.

  Muted, indeed, thought Swanson as the army car veered off the highway onto a back Virginia road. In Fairfax, covering some two hundred acres in the middle of the hunt country, was a fenced-off area housing Quonset huts beside huge radar screens and radio signal towers that sprang from the ground like giant steel malformities. It was the Field Division Headquarters of Clandestine Operations; next to the underground rooms at the White House, the most sensitive processing location of the Allied Intelligence services.

  Late yesterday afternoon, FDHQ-Fairfax had received confirmation of an Intelligence probe long since abandoned as negative. It came out of Johannesburg, South Africa. It had not been proved out, but there was sufficient evidence to believe that it could be.

  High-altitude directional gyroscopes had been perfected. Their designs could be had.

  DECEMBER 2, 1943, BERLIN, GERMANY

  Altmüller sped out of Berlin on the Spandau highway toward Falkensee in the open Duesenberg. It was early in the morning and the air was cold and that was good.

  He was so exhilarated that he forgave the theatrically secretive ploys of the Nachrichtendienst, code name for a select unit of the espionage service known to only a few of the upper-echelon ministers, not to many of the High Command itself. A Gehlen specialty.

  For this reason it never held conferences within Berlin proper; always outside the city, always in some remote, secluded area or town and even then in private surroundings, away from the potentially curious.

  The location this morning was Falkensee, twenty-odd miles northwest of Berlin. The meeting was to take place in a guest house on the estate belonging to Gregor Strasser.

  Altmüller would have flown to Stalingrad itself if what he’d been led to believe was true.

  The Nachrichtendienst had found the solution for Peenemünde!

  The solution was true; it was up to others to expedite it.

  The solution that had eluded teams of “negotiators” sent to all parts of the world to explore—unearth—prewar “relationships.” Capetown, Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires.…

  Failure.

  No company, no individual would touch German negotiations. Germany was in the beginning of a death struggle. It would go down to defeat.

  That was the opinion in Zürich. And what Zürich held to be true, international business did not debate.

  But the Nachrichtendienst had found another truth.

  So he was told.

  The Duesenberg’s powerful engine hummed; the car reached high speed; the passing autumn foliage blurred.

  The stone gates of Strasser’s estate came into view on the left, Wehrmacht eagles in bronze above each post. He swung into the long, winding drive and stopped at the gate guarded by two soldiers and snarling shepherd dogs. Altmüller thrust his papers at the first guard, who obviously expected him.

  “Good morning, Herr Unterstaatssekretär. Please follow the drive to the right beyond the main house.”

  “Have the others arrived?”

  “They are waiting, sir.”

  Altmüller maneuvered the car past the main house, reached the sloping drive and slowed down. Beyond the wooded bend was the guest cottage; it looked more like a hunting lodge than a residence. Heavy dark-brown beams everywhere; a part of the forest.

  In the graveled area were four limousines. He parked and got out, pulling his tunic down, checking his lapels for lint. He stood erect and started toward the path to the door.

&n
bsp; No names were ever used during a Nachrichtendienst conference; if identities were known—and certainly they had to be—they were never referred to in a meeting. One simply addressed his peer by looking at him, the group by gesture.

  There was no long conference table as Altmüller had expected; no formal seating arrangement by some hidden protocol. Instead, a half dozen informally dressed men in their fifties and sixties were standing around the small room with the high Bavarian ceiling, chatting calmly, drinking coffee. Altmüller was welcomed as “Herr Unterstaatssekretär” and told that the morning’s conference would be short. It would begin with the arrival of the final expected member.

  Altmüller accepted a cup of coffee and tried to fall into the casual atmosphere. He was unable to do so; he wanted to roar his disapproval and demand immediate and serious talk. Couldn’t they understand?

  But this was the Nachrichtendienst. One didn’t yell; one didn’t demand.

  Finally, after what seemed an eternity to his churning stomach, Altmüller heard an automobile outside the lodge. A few moments later the door opened; he nearly dropped his cup of coffee. The man who entered was known to him from the few times he had accompanied Speer to Berchtesgaden. He was the Führer’s valet, but he had no subservient look of a valet now.

  Without announcement, the men fell silent. Several sat in armchairs, others leaned against walls or stayed by the coffee table. An elderly man in a heavy tweed jacket stood in front of the fireplace and spoke. He looked at Franz, who remained by himself behind a leather couch.

  “There is no reason for lengthy discussions. We believe we have the information you seek. I say ‘believe,’ for we gather information, we do not act upon it. The ministry may not care to act.”

  “That would seem inconceivable to me,” said Altmüller.

  “Very well. Several questions then. So there is no conflict, no misrepresentation.” The old man paused and lit a thick meerschaum pipe. “You have exhausted all normal Intelligence channels? Through Zürich and Lisbon?”

  “We have. And in numerous other locations—occupied, enemy and neutral.”

  “I was referring to the acknowledged conduits, Swiss, Scandinavian and Portuguese, primarily.”

  “We made no concentrated efforts in the Scandinavian countries. Herr Zangen did not think …”

  “No names, please. Except in the area of Intelligence confrontation or public knowledge. Use governmental descriptions, if you like. Not individuals.”

  “The Reichsamt of Industry—which has continuous dealings in the Baltic areas—was convinced there was nothing to be gained there. I assume the reasons were geographical. There are no diamonds in the Baltic.”

  “Or they’ve been burnt too often,” said a nondescript middle-aged man below Altmüller on the leather sofa. “If you want London and Washington to know what you’re doing before you do it, deal with the Scandinavians.”

  “An accurate analysis,” concurred another member of the Nachrichtendienst, this one standing by the coffee table, cup in hand. “I returned from Stockholm last week. We can’t trust even those who publicly endorse us.”

  “Those least of all,” said the old man in front of the fireplace, smiling and returning his eyes to Franz. “We gather you’ve made substantial offers? In Swiss currency, of course.”

  “Substantial is a modest term for the figures we’ve spoken of,” replied Altmüller. “I’ll be frank. No one will touch us. Those who could, subscribe to Zürich’s judgment that we shall be defeated. They fear retribution; they even speak of postwar bank deposit reclamations.”

  “If such whispers reach the High Command there’ll be a panic.” The statement was made humorously by the Führer’s valet, sitting in an armchair. The spokesman by the fireplace continued.

  “So you must eliminate money as an incentive … even extraordinary sums of money.”

  “The negotiating teams were not successful. You know that.” Altmüller had to suppress his irritation. Why didn’t they get to the point?

  “And there are no ideologically motivated defectors on the horizon. Certainly none who have access to industrial diamonds.”

  “Obviously, mein Herr.”

  “So you must look for another motive. Another incentive.”

  “I fail to see the point of this. I was told …”

  “You will,” interrupted the old man, tapping his pipe on the mantel. “You see, we’ve uncovered a panic as great as yours.… The enemy’s panic. We’ve found the most logical motive for all concerned. Each side possesses the other’s solution.”

  Franz Altmüller was suddenly afraid. He could not be sure he fully understood the spokesman’s implications. “What are you saying?”

  “Peenemünde has perfected a high-altitude directional guidance system, is this correct?”

  “Certainly. Indigenous to the basic operation of the rockets.”

  “But there’ll be no rockets—or at best, a pitiful few—without shipments of industrial diamonds.”

  “Obviously.”

  “There are business interests in the United States who face insurmountable …,” the old man paused for precisely one second and continued, “insurmountable problems that can only be resolved by the acquisition of functional high-altitude gyroscopes.”

  “Are you suggesting …”

  “The Nachrichtendienst does not suggest, Herr Unterstaatssekretär. We say what is.” The spokesman removed the meerschaum from his lips. “When the occasion warrants, we transmit concrete information to diverse recipients. Again, only what is. We did so in Johannesburg. When the man I. G. Farben sent in to purchase diamonds from the Koening mines met with failure, we stepped in and confirmed a long-standing Intelligence probe we knew would be carried back to Washington. Our agents in California had apprised us of the crisis in the aircraft industry. We believe the timing was propitious.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.…”

  “Unless we’re mistaken, an attempt will be made to reestablish contact with one of the Farben men. We assume contingencies were made for such possibilities.”

  “Of course. Geneva. The acknowledged conduits.”

  “Then our business with you is concluded, sir. May we wish you a pleasant drive back to Berlin.”

  DECEMBER 2, 1943, FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA

  The interior of the Quonset belied its stark outside. To begin with, it was five times larger than the usual Quonset structure, and its metal casing was insulated with a sound-absorbing material that swept seamless down from the high ceiling. The appearance was not so much that of an airplane hangar—as it should have been—as of a huge, windowless shell with substantial walls. All around the immense room were banks of complicated high-frequency radio panels; opposite each panel were glass-enclosed casings with dozens of detailed maps, changeable by the push of a button. Suspended above the maps were delicate, thin steel arms—markers, not unlike polygraph needles—that were manipulated by the radio operators, observed by men holding clipboards. The entire staff was military, army, none below the rank of first lieutenant.

  Three-quarters into the building was a floor-to-ceiling wall that obviously was not the end of the structure. There was a single door, centered and closed. The door was made of heavy steel.

  Swanson had never been inside this particular building. He had driven down to Field Division, Fairfax, many times—to get briefed on highly classified Intelligence findings, to observe the training of particular insurgence or espionage teams—but for all his brigadier’s rank and regardless of the secrets he carried around in his head, he had not been cleared for this particular building. Those who were, remained within the two-hundred-acre compound for weeks, months at a time; leaves were rare and taken only in emergency and with escort.

  It was fascinating, thought Swanson, who honestly believed he had lost all sense of awe. No elevators, no back staircases, no windows; he could see a washroom door in the left wall and without going inside, knew it was machine-ventilated. And there was only a
single entrance. Once inside there was no place for a person to conceal himself for any length of time, or to exit without being checked out and scrutinized. Personal items were left at the entrance; no briefcases, envelopes, papers or materials were removed from the building without signed authorization by Colonel Edmund Pace and with the colonel personally at the side of the individual in question.

  If there was ever total security, it was here.

  Swanson approached the steel door; his lieutenant escort pushed a button. A small red light flashed above a wall intercom, and the lieutenant spoke.

  “General Swanson, colonel.”

  “Thank you, lieutenant,” were the words that came from the webbed circle below the light. There was a click in the door’s lock and the lieutenant reached for the knob.

  Inside, Pace’s office looked like any other Intelligence headquarters—huge maps on the walls, sharp lighting on the maps, lights and maps changeable by pushbuttons on the desk. Teletype machines were equidistant from one another below printed signs designating theaters of operation—all the usual furnishings. Except the furniture itself. It was simple to the point of primitiveness. No easy chairs, no sofas, nothing comfortable. Just plain metal straight-backed chairs, a desk that was more a table than a desk, and a rugless hardwood floor. It was a room for concentrated activity; a man did not relax in such a room.

  Edmund Pace, Commander of Field Division, Fairfax, got up from his chair, came around his table and saluted Alan Swanson.

  There was one other man in the room, a civilian. Frederic Vandamm, Undersecretary of State.

  “General. Good to see you again. The last time was at Mr. Vandamm’s house, if I remember.”

  “Yes, it was. How are things here?”

  “A little isolated.”

  “I’m sure.” Swanson turned to Vandamm. “Mr. Undersecretary? I got back here as soon as I could. I don’t have to tell you how anxious I am. It’s been a difficult month.”