by Philip Kerr
Schellenberg unbuttoned the breast pocket of his tunic and took out a pillbox from which he removed a Benzedrine tablet. In the beginning he had taken Benzedrine for his hay fever, but it wasn’t very long before the drug’s effect in the prevention of sleep made itself well known. Mostly, he preferred to take Benzedrine in situations involving pleasure rather than work. In Paris, he had used it liberally. But a 210-minute speech by Himmler was something of an emergency, and, swallowing the tablet quickly with the dregs of his coffee, he went to take his seat.
At midday, a strong smell of hot food came up the stairs from the castle’s basement kitchens, arriving in the Golden Hall to torture the nostrils and stomachs of ninety-two SS troop leaders waiting for Himmler to finish. Schellenberg glanced at his wristwatch. The Reichsführer had been speaking for 150 minutes, which meant that there was still a whole hour to go. He was speaking about bravery as one of the virtues of the SS man.
“Part of bravery is composed of faith. And in this I don’t think we can be outdone by anyone in the world. It’s faith that wins battles, faith that achieves victories. We don’t want pessimists in our ranks, people who have lost their faith. It doesn’t make any difference what a man’s job is—a man who has lost the will to believe shall not live among us in our ranks. . . .”
Schellenberg glanced around, wondering how many of his fellow SS troop leaders were still possessed of the faith that could win victories. Since Stalingrad, there had been precious little reason for optimism; and with an Allied landing in Europe expected sometime in the next year, it seemed more likely that many of the generals in the Golden Hall were less concerned with victory than with avoiding the retribution of Allied military tribunals after the war was over. And yet Schellenberg couldn’t help thinking that there was still a way that victory might yet be won. If Germany could strike decisively at the Allies with the same surprise and effect that had been achieved by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, they might still turn the tide of the war. Hadn’t he been presented with just such an opportunity in agent Cicero’s information? Didn’t he already know that as of Sunday, November 21, Roosevelt and Churchill would be in Cairo for almost a week? And then in Teheran with Stalin until Saturday, December 4?
Schellenberg shook his head, puzzled. What on earth could have possessed them to pick Teheran for a conference in the first place? It seemed likely that Stalin must have insisted on the two other leaders coming to him. Doubtless he would have given them some excuse about the necessity of his being near his soldiers at the front; but all the same, Schellenberg wondered if either Churchill or Roosevelt was aware of the real reason behind Stalin’s insistence that they meet in Teheran. According to Schellenberg’s sources in the NKVD, Stalin had a morbid fear of flying and could no more have countenanced a long-distance flight to Newfoundland (which was the location favored by Churchill and Roosevelt) or even Cairo, than he could have bought himself a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. The chances were that Stalin had chosen Teheran because he could spend a large part of the journey on his armored train, making only a short flight at the end of it.
He imagined that the Big Three would never have picked Teheran if Operation Franz had ever gone into action. A joint operation of the Luftwaffe’s elite 200 Squadron and the Friedenthal Section of Amt VI, the plan had been to fly a Junkers 290 carrying one hundred men from an airfield in the Crimea and drop them by parachute near a large salt lake southeast of Teheran. With the help of local tribesmen, F Section—many of whom spoke Persian—would then have interrupted American supplies for Russia that were being carried on the Iran-Iraq railway. The plan had been delayed following damage to the Junkers and the arrest of several of those pro-German Iranian tribesmen. By the time they were ready to go again, the best of the men in F Section, commanded by Otto Skorzeny, had been ordered to try to rescue Mussolini from his Italian mountaintop prison, and Operation Franz had been scrubbed. But the more Schellenberg thought about the situation now, the more it looked like a plan. F Section, with its Persian-speaking officers and special equipment, was, as far as he was aware, still intact; and there were the Big Three, heading for the very country in which F Section had been trained to operate. And there was no reason why such a plan should be restricted to a ground attack force. Schellenberg thought a commando team in Teheran might operate in tandem with a very specialized form of attack from the air. And he resolved to speak to a man he knew was coming to Posen that evening for the Reichsführer’s speech the following day: Air Inspector General Erhard Milch.
Himmler’s speech finally ended, but Schellenberg was too excited to have lunch. Using a borrowed office in the castle, he telephoned his deputy in Berlin, Martin Sandberger. “It’s me—Schellenberg.”
“Hello, boss. How’s Posen?”
“Never mind that now, just listen. I want you to drive over to Friedenthal and find out what state F Section is in. Specifically, whether they’re up for another shot at Operation Franz. And, Martin, if he’s there, I want you to bring that baron fellow back to Berlin.”
“Von Holten-Pflug?”
“That’s him. Then I want you to set up a department meeting for first thing on Wednesday morning. Reichert, Buchman, Janssen, Weisinger, and whoever’s running the Turkish and Iranian desk these days.”
“That would be Major Schubach. He reports to Colonel Tschierschky. Shall I ask him, too?”
“Yes.”
After the call Schellenberg went to his room and tried to sleep, but his mind was still fizzing with the mechanics of a plan he was already calling Operation Long Jump. He could see no obvious reason why the plan couldn’t work. It was daring and audacious, yes, but that was what was called for. And while he disliked Skorzeny, the man had at least proved that the apparently impossible could be pulled off. At the same time, the last person he wanted in command of such an operation was Skorzeny—that went without saying. Skorzeny was much too hard to control. And, besides, the Luftwaffe would never have agreed to Skorzeny, not after Abruzzi. Of the dozen glider pilots who had landed near Il Duce’s makeshift prison on the loftiest peak in the Italian Apennines, all had been killed or captured—not to mention the 108 SS parachutists who had accompanied Skorzeny. Just three men had flown off that mountain: Mussolini, Skorzeny, and the pilot of their light aircraft. Abruzzi might have been worth the heavy sacrifice of men and materials if something useful had been achieved. But Schellenberg thought Il Duce was finished and that rescuing him seemed pointless. The Führer might have been delighted enough to award Skorzeny the Knight’s Cross, but Schellenberg and quite a few others had regarded the whole operation as something of a disaster; and he had told Skorzeny as much on the train to Paris. Predictably, Skorzeny, a large and violent man, had been furious and would probably have attacked and possibly even tried to kill Schellenberg but for the silenced Mauser pistol the young general had produced from underneath his folded leather coat. You didn’t criticize a man like Skorzeny to his face without having something in reserve.
Schellenberg finally fell asleep, only to be awoken at eight o’clock that evening by an SS-Oberscharführer who told him Field Marshal Milch had arrived and was waiting for him in the officers’ bar.
Like everyone who worked for Hermann Göring, Erhard Milch looked rich. Thick-set, smallish, dark-haired, and balding, he offset his unremarkable appearance with a gold marshal’s baton that was a smaller version of the one Göring carried, and when he offered Schellenberg a cigarette from a gold case and a glass of champagne from the bottle of Taittinger on the table, the SD man’s keen eyes quickly took in the gold Glashütte wristwatch and the gold signet ring on Milch’s stubby little finger.
As with Heydrich, it was strongly rumored that Milch was of Jewish blood. But Schellenberg knew this for a fact, just as he also knew how, thanks to Göring, this was not a problem for the former director of the German national airline, Lufthansa. Göring had fixed everything for his ex-deputy in the Reich Air Ministry when he had persuaded Milch’s gentile mother to sign a le
gal affidavit stating that her Jewish husband was not Erhard’s true father. It was a common enough practice in the Third Reich, and in this way the authorities were able to certify Milch as an honorary Aryan. These days, however, Göring and Milch were no longer close, the latter having criticized the Luftwaffe for its poor performance on the Russian front, a criticism that Göring was not likely to forget. As a result it was also believed that Milch had transferred his allegiance to Albert Speer, the minister of armaments—a rumor that had only been fueled by their arrival together in Posen.
Over champagne, Schellenberg told Milch about Agent Cicero’s intelligence, and then came quickly to the point: “I was thinking of resurrecting Operation Franz. Only instead of disrupting supplies on the Iran-Iraq railway, F team would try to assassinate the Big Three. We could coordinate their attack with a bombing raid.”
“A bombing raid?” Milch laughed. “Even our longest-range bomber would barely make it there and back. And even if a few bombers did get there, enemy fighters would shoot them down before they could do any damage. No, I’m afraid you’d better think again on that one, Walter.”
“There is a plane that could do the job. The Focke Wulf FW 200 Condor.”
“That’s not a bomber, it’s a reconnaissance plane.”
“A long-range reconnaissance plane. I was thinking of four of them, each armed with two thousand-kilogram bombs. My team on the ground would knock out the enemy radar to give them a chance. Come on, Erhard, what do you say?”
Milch was shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
“They wouldn’t have to fly from Germany, but from German-held territory in the Ukraine. Vinnica. I’ve worked it out. From Vinnica it’s eighteen hundred kilometers to Teheran. There and back is just within the 200’s standard fuel range.”
“Actually it’s just outside, by forty-four kilometers,” said Milch. “The published figures on the 200’s range were inflated. Wrongly.”
“So they throw something out to save a bit of fuel.”
“One of the pilots, perhaps.”
“If necessary, yes. Or one of the pilots could take the place of the navigator.”
“Actually, I suppose that with overload fuel it might be possible to extend the range,” admitted Milch. “With a light bomb load, such as you describe, maybe. Perhaps.”
“Erhard, if we manage to kill the Big Three, we could force the Allies to the negotiating table. Think of it. Like Pearl Harbor. A decisive strike that completely changes the course of the war. Isn’t that what you said? And you’re right, of course. If we kill the Big Three there won’t be an Allied landing in Europe in ’44. Perhaps not at all. It’s that simple.”
“You know, things are not so good between myself and Göring right now, Walter.”
“I’d heard something.”
“He won’t be so easy to persuade.”
“What would you suggest?”
“That perhaps we should work around him. I’ll speak to Schmid at the Kurfürst.” Milch was referring to the intelligence arm of the Luftwaffe. “And to General Student in airborne.”
Schellenberg nodded: it was Student who had helped Skorzeny plan the air assault on the Hotel Campo Imperatore on the Gran Sasso in the Apennines.
“Then let’s drink to our plan,” said Milch and ordered another bottle of champagne.
“With your agreement, Erhard, I propose to call this plan of ours Operation Long Jump.”
“I like that. It has an appropriately athletic ring. Only this will have to be a world record, Walter. As if it were that black fellow from the last Olympiad in Berlin doing the long jumping.”
“Jesse Owens.”
“That’s the one. Marvelous athlete. When were you thinking of carrying out this operation of ours?”
Schellenberg unbuttoned his tunic pocket and took out his SS pocket diary. “This is the best part of the plan,” he grinned. “The part I haven’t yet told you about. Look here. I want to do this exactly eight weeks from tomorrow. On Tuesday, November thirtieth. At precisely nine P.M.”
“You’re very precise. I like that. But why that day in particular? And at that time?”
“Because on that day not only do I know that Winston Churchill will be in Teheran, I also happen to know that he’ll be hosting his own birthday party that night, at the British embassy in Teheran.”
“Was that also in agent Cicero’s information?”
“No. You see it’s obvious just from the location of this conference that the Americans are out to accommodate the Russians in whatever way they can. Why else would a president who is also a cripple be prepared to fly all that way? Now, that will discomfort the British, who, as the weakest of the three powers, will be looking for ways to try to control the situation. What better way to do it than to host a birthday party? To remind everyone that Churchill is the oldest of the three. And the longest-serving war leader. So the British will give a party. And everyone will drink to Churchill’s health and tell him what a great war leader he has been. And then a bomb from one of your airplanes will land on the embassy. Hopefully more than one bomb. And, if there is anyone left alive after that, my Waffen-SS team will finish them off.”
A waiter arrived with a second bottle of champagne, and as soon as it was open, Milch poured two glasses and raised his to Schellenberg. “Happy birthday, Mr. Churchill.”
IV
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1943,
BERLIN
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 Württemberg. 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.
