Bromley picked up the photographs and spread them across the desk. “Here’s Raeder’s photo, Von Lindemann’s, and all the rest of them. Learn the faces.” As Bromley looked down at the photographs, a thin, bitter smile crossed his lips. “Whatever shall we do with them, eh, Captain? All those fine German gentlemen in their pretty blue uniforms. There aren’t enough second-rate hotels in Germany to put them all to work as doormen, and most haven’t the temperament to make a good butler. Perhaps they could drive a bus or deliver the mail.” He shook his head, amused at the thought. “Personally, I like to think they’ll end up like all those penniless Russian counts after the Great War — loitering about the tea rooms in Paris and Monaco all decked out with their shiny medals and lovely brass buttons.”
Bromley stacked the photos, jammed them into the envelope, and pushed it across the table. “Well, they are your problem now. They bloody well know not to come here hat in hand. Who knows, in time you might even be able to teach them table manners. If I were you, though, I’d be sure to count the silverware afterward.” Bromley did not even try to contain his contempt. “Your Luftwaffe contact will have all the documents you’ll need to travel, not ones the Section puts together back here in London, but the real thing from their Berlin headquarters. As I said, Captain, it should be a milk run, a piece of cake. You are Bo Peep, and all you need to worry your little head about are your bleeding Jerry sheep. Pack them up and head south toward the American lines where General Patton and his Third Army will be waiting to give you a big hug and kiss.”
“That’s what? A couple of hundred miles we’ll have to drive? I’m not worried about the Luftwaffe. They haven’t many planes left now, and what they do have will be chasing bombers; but what about our own planes? Those Spitfires and Mustangs will shoot anything they see moving on the roads.”
“GHQ thought of that. They suggest you paint a red cross on the top of the trucks, and our pilots will be told not to go after any with that marking.”
“A red cross? Is it bulletproof?”
“No, and I thought that might be a bit too obvious as well. Jerry could already be disguising their own trucks and that would be too obvious. I suggest you paint a white circle up on the roofs, perhaps two of them.”
“White circles?” Scanlon looked across at him and shook his head, wondering how things had gotten this insane. “Those would make better targets, I guess.”
“No, no, as you said, our boys will be the only ones up there anyway; so they’ll know it is you and they can help keep an eye out. See how I’m trying to help, old chap? As I said, a piece of cake. However,” Bromley leaned back across the desk, his expression turning deadly serious, “when you do reach Volkenrode, if you discover this whole thing is a trap, don’t let them get away with it. Kill them. Kill the lot of them. It’ll teach the Hun that we aren’t good sports when it comes to bad jokes.”
Running through a hundred miles of Germany in an army truck? Killing civilians? That must sound incredibly easy to a man sitting behind a desk here in London.
Bromley finally relented. “You must excuse an old Londoner, Captain. No doubt, I am not being entirely fair. I’m confident all these little details have been taken into account up on high, and there is no cause for the slightest concern,” his lips formed a thin smile. “God’s in his Heaven and all’s right with the world, miracles do indeed happen, droughts are broken, plagues are cured, the mightiest of typhoons have been known to stop dead in their tracks, and a giant whale even spit out old Jonah and gave the poor bastard a second chance, just like we’re giving you.”
The Colonel pushed a button on his desk. The office door immediately swung open and Sergeant Major Rupert Carstairs stepped into the office. His eyes locked on Scanlon, hoping he was being given another shot at him, until Bromley waved him off.
“Your airplane takes off tomorrow night at Eighteen Hundred,” the Colonel said as he rose to his feet, signifying their meeting was over. “Until then, you’ll spend the night in the Park Lane, under guard, of course. So, eat, sleep, relax, and be there tomorrow as prompt and sober as the parson’s wife or I will let Carstairs play rugby with your head again. He would enjoy that immensely, but you would not. So Godspeed, Captain, and be gone. Frankly, I’ve had more than my fill of Yanks for the day.”
Scanlon stood and looked back at Bromley. For a moment, he almost felt sorry for the little shit, but that twinge of sympathy quickly passed. Scanlon brushed past Carstairs and walked through the open doorway without saying another word.
In the long, empty silence that followed, Bromley turned in his chair and stared out the bay window behind his desk. He watched the young American come out the front door and down the steps with an American MP at each elbow. They hopped into the back seat of an olive-green sedan and drove away. That was when Bromley realized how much he hated the young man. Not personally, of course. He did not know Scanlon well enough for that. No, he hated this American and the rest of his country as one might hate a talented but undisciplined child who had no conception of his own abilities and was simply pissing them away. He could understand and sympathize with him up to a point, but he would prefer to give him a good thrashing for general principles.
His eyes drifted into the brightly dappled flowerbeds of the small square below. It was finally spring. The park was surrounded by a decorative wrought-iron fence and its elm and maple trees were budding in the warm afternoon sun. The tulips and crocuses were peaking. Children were playing. Old women and old men sat silently on ornate wooden benches, eyes closed, savoring the warm spring sun with no fear for the first time in years. Peaceful and quiet, the scene reminded him of a long-gone and far gentler era. Is it long-gone? Yes, and perhaps never to come again, he had to admit.
He trained his eyes on the square and quickly detected the anomalies, such as an absence of healthy young men. It was like 1918 all over again. The few men he saw were in uniform, or they walked with a limp and a crutch or cane. Others had their heads and hands wrapped in white bandages, and if one peered around the corner, he could see the wreckage of bombed-out buildings just a few doors down. Two streets to the west, he knew an entire row of buildings had simply vanished. All of London was now like that, Bromley recalled sadly, part of the terrible price these islands had paid month after month for six long years. Men, property, and empire were gone in a cloud of dust and smoke. A once proud people had been reduced to paupers with little left to their names except a foolish pride and far too many problems. Overhead, even the city’s pigeons were gone. They had been scared off, no doubt by a flock of ill-bred American vultures, who were now circling up there, waiting for the right moment to swoop down and rip off yet another hunk of British flesh.
CHAPTER EIGHT
That night, two burly U. S. Military Policemen stood in the hall outside Scanlon’s hotel room to ensure he enjoyed its comforts, and nothing more. The condemned man deserved a good meal and a soft bed, Scanlon assumed. True to his word, Bromley had provided both. Nonetheless, the young American found himself staring at the ceiling unable to sleep. It was around midnight when he heard a soft knock on the door. He got up and opened it wide enough to see outside. To his surprise, the two MPs were gone. In their place stood a middle-aged man in a medium gray civilian suit, dark gray tie, and light gray topcoat.
“May I come in, Captain?” the man asked with a self-conscious smile. “My name is Allen Dulles and I think we should talk.”
They entered the sitting room of the spacious suite and sat facing each other across a round French provincial breakfast table. Dulles left the impression of someone much older. Pale, with a slight build and thinning hair, he wore wire rimmed glasses and a soft, neatly trimmed moustache. While they had never met, like most OSS field agents, Scanlon had heard about the brilliant Station Chief in Berne, Switzerland. He was the son of a Presbyterian minister, but Scanlon thought he could pass for a banker or a literature professor at some small Midwestern college.
“Did you make the guard
s disappear?” Scanlon asked.
“Disappear? Oh, no,” he smiled. “They’ll magically return after I leave,” came the self-effacing reply. “This way, they won’t have to lie about it. No one saw me come in and no one will see me go out.”
Scanlon appreciated the simple logic and immediately liked the man.
“I’ve been reading your file,” Dulles began.
“I’m honored.”
“Well, I don’t like sending a man on a mission like this without meeting him and speaking with him personally.”
“Why? Does it bother your conscience?”
Dulles seemed surprised by the question. Finally, he answered with a smile. “If anyone in this business tells you it doesn’t, they’re either a liar or a sadist, and you don’t want to work for either one. Look, Captain, I know what you’ve been through. It was rough over there, and it’s going to be even rougher this time, physically and mentally.”
“You want to know if I can handle it, or if I’ll shatter like a plate glass window, right?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“I think I’m okay now. My hands have stopped shaking, or at least the right one has; I don’t dive flat onto the sidewalk whenever I hear a car backfire; I’m starting to get a few hours of sleep at night, and I haven’t punched anyone since this afternoon.” At least no one who didn’t deserve it, he thought, remembering Carstairs. “All in all, I’d say I’m almost back to my old, adorable self. How about you?”
“Me? It sounds like you’re doing better than I am,” Dulles laughed.
“Then I pass?”
“It wasn’t a test. Things are very unstable in Germany right now,” Dulles warned, choosing his words carefully, all too aware of the fragile state of the young man’s emotions. “Alliances are shifting and many things are now in motion. That makes for strange bedfellows at times, so the best advice I can give you is don’t trust anyone. As I said, I read your file. You’re smart, you think on your feet, and you have good instincts. If you use your wits and rely on your experience, you should do fine.”
Scanlon was watching his eyes, trying to figure him out without much success. He was either a good actor or completely sincere, which in this business would be a novelty.
“Patton’s Third Army is advancing rapidly on a broad front from France and Luxembourg through Stuttgart to Munich and on to Vienna, bypassing Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, and most of Saxony,” he said as he rolled out a map on the small table and began pointing out various routes with his finger. “When you leave Volkenrode, so long as you head southwest toward Bavaria, you can’t miss them. If you get there first, hole up in the mountains about here, south of Bad Tolz, and watch the roads. That isn’t necessarily the plan Colonel Bromley will give you, but this is the one I suggest you use,” he smiled. “Sooner or later, an American unit will come by. Nevertheless, be careful. Our infantry can get a bit edgy with strangers. Once you make contact, ask them to radio Colonel Haggarty at Patton’s Headquarters. That is Haggarty, Vincent T. He is Patton’s G-2. Every company commander in that area will have his name tattooed on the back of his hand and be on alert for you, so use it. As your entre, ask him how many points he scored in the 1915 Princeton-Yale game. He’ll answer that he scored all seven, and then he will tell you they didn’t matter, because we lost the game and he wasn’t counting. If all else fails, I am at 23 Herrengasse in Berne. Cable, phone me, or bike on in, I don’t care how you do it.”
Scanlon nodded.
“Good. I was told you have a photographic memory.”
“Princeton football?” Scanlon paused. “What position did you play? Tackle?”
“No, clipboard. I was the team manager,” Dulles answered with the same self-deprecating smile. “So, tell me, Captain; you know better than anyone how tough it’s going to be on the ground. After what happened the last time, why did you agree to go?”
Scanlon didn’t answer.
“Is it the woman — the Steiner woman?”
Scanlon still did not answer.
“I need you focused on the job, Eddy — if I may call you that — not focused somewhere else,” Dulles said, sounding concerned for him, sounding sincere.
“I said I’d do it,” Scanlon answered sharply. “And you don’t need to warn me about trusting people. I don’t trust anyone now, not the Germans, not the damned British, not even you, Mister Dulles.”
“Good.” Dulles almost sounded relieved. “I know your Colonel Bromley and the rest of the British MI-6 crowd think this will be a simple milk run, but they are wrong. It could be the most important and demanding mission of the war.”
Scanlon looked at him with a blank stare. Like any veteran, the distinction between a big mission and a small one was utterly irrelevant. When you are on the ground crawling through the mud and being shot at, they all look about the same.
“The Germans are truly amazing,” Dulles leaned back in the chair and shook his head. “Their science is years ahead of ours. Did you know they are working on a rocket that could hit New York City? New York City — Manhattan! Moreover, they could fire it from Germany, for God’s sake. They have new submarines in design that can go halfway around the world underwater, completely undetected, without coming up for air. Imagine! You already know about the jet fighters, but they’re also working on new air-to-air rockets, a jet bomber that can fly across the Atlantic and back again, huge hundred-ton tanks, new armor-piercing shells, and long-distance radar. The list of their technological brilliance goes on and on, but they chose to waste it all on things that destroy.”
“They’re just a fun-loving bunch, aren’t they?”
“Yes, and we can thank God that most of those things are coming too late to change the outcome. Six more months and it could have been another story. Those weapons in any quantity would have turned the tide in their favor and revolutionized warfare. That’s why we can’t allow them to fall into Stalin’s hands,” Dulles warned. “There are some who think the Russians are too incompetent and primitive to make any use of it, but I’m not one of them. People forget the excellent workmanship that went into the T-34 tank, the Sturmovik fighter plane, and the Kalashnikov rifle. They may be very simple designs and nowhere near the sophistication of the German equipment that they defeated; but to a soldier on the front line, the Russian weapons are things of beauty. That is why we made pacts with the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine, and all the rest — admittedly, pacts with the devil — but we do indeed fear the Russians. We would have a difficult enough time stopping the Red Army today. In two years or three, after we have demobilized, our odds become infinitely worse. The Germans know that, too, and they know where the next war would be fought — right through what is left of Germany. That is why they’re giving us their plans, their engineers, mathematicians, their test data, and all the rest. It is called Operation Paperclip, and you are now a key part of it.”
Scanlon shifted uncomfortably in his chair and looked across the table. “Doesn’t say much for wartime alliances, does it.”
“No, that spirit died several months ago at Yalta, I’m sorry to say. The Red Army is installing puppet regimes in every country they have overrun, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and Yugoslavia — they are completely freezing us out.”
“Can you blame them? Every western army from Napoleon to Hitler has attacked Russia right across the central European plain and on through Poland.”
“Neutral buffers we can accept, but these are puppets controlled by Moscow. None of the multi-party governments-in-exile can even take part, only the Communists.”
Scanlon looked across at Dulles, reading the other man’s eyes. “If you have something you want to ask me, why don’t you go ahead and ask.”
Dulles smiled. “All right, Eddy. You worked with the Red underground in Leipzig for four months…”
“And you want to know if any of it rubbed off?” Scanlon finished the question himself. “I’m sure some thin
gs did. After all, we fought side by side and they saved my life several times. They are dedicated, and they are hard as nails. If I’d been through what they’d been through, I’d probably be one too; but I’m not.”
“Good, I’m counting on that. We’ve had a few of our people in the Balkans get a little too close and ‘go native’ as they say, which is why I asked.”
Scanlon said nothing more.
“I need you, Eddy. I need you to make this happen,” he said as his eyes locked on the young American. “If there’s another war in Europe, with the Russians next time, we’re going to need those jet airplanes and all the rest. That is why you must remain completely focused. Go get them for us, Eddie, get them any way you can.”
CHAPTER NINE
Chequers, outside London
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was not an early riser. As was his custom, he awoke just after 9:00 a.m. Dressed in a silk robe and slippers, he leaned back against a pile of feather pillows, feeling fit and rested for the first time in weeks. At 71 years of age, that was nothing to sneer at, not by him anyway. The previous evening he left London for a quiet, badly needed Easter weekend at the Prime Minister’s official country estate at Chequers in the lovely Buckinghamshire countryside forty miles west of the city.
His preference was to work late into the evening, rise late, and spend the morning reclining in his large four-poster bed with a fresh cigar clenched between his teeth. Before he turned to the stack of official reports and correspondence, which an aide had placed on the side table, he reached for the morning newspapers. There had been another attack of German V-2 rockets on London the previous day. After six years of war, the city’s people had put up with the Blitz, the threat of invasion, food and gasoline rationing, and every other sort of privation. However, the V-1 and now V-2 weapons were another matter entirely. During the Blitz, a typical night might include an early trip to an underground station, where tens of thousands of people hid. Up above, whistles, sirens, and anti-aircraft guns would shatter the quiet London night as the wave of German Heinkel bombers finally reached the city, followed by the dull Crump, Crump, Crump of aerial bombs. Not so with a V-2 rocket. Over thirteen hundred of them had now struck London, and just one could blow a crater twenty meters wide and six meters deep, powerful enough to take out half a city block. Since the Germans fired them day or night and they flew faster than sound, there was no warning. They were fired from the Dutch low country near the coast, and the only defense against them was to push the German launch sites far enough back to put London out of their range.
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