by Philip Kerr
“Yesterday,” said Sandberger, “as instructed, I drove out to the Special Section at Friedenthal, where I met SS Sturmbannführer 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 Führer.
“Sturmbannführer 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 Hauptsturmführer 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 Führer 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 Reichsführer’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 ca
r 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 Kurfürstendamm, 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 Kurfürstenstrasse. 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 Göring 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 an
other 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.”
