Beginning a couple of years earlier, MI-6 had heard rumors of strange occurrences in northern Germany. Although Denmark was under Nazi occupation, its intelligence operations were still active, and through them, the Danes had received reports from fishermen of “flame-tailed aeroplanes” they’d seen shooting along from the western Baltic coast, usually exploding a few minutes later. Then a member of the Polish underground relayed a conversation he’d had in a Koenigsburg tavern with a drunk German soldier stationed at Peenemünde; the Nazi had bragged about his people developing a secret weapon that would win the war for Germany. Although MI-6 initially discounted these reports as fantasy—the Germans always seemed to be building one secret weapon or another—in time enough reports were received through the clandestine wireless network established between Denmark and England to convince the British that Peenemünde needed to be investigated.
To this end, MI-6 had recruited two members of the French resistance and instructed them to seek employment at Peenemünde. The British had hoped that either Callon or Latreau would be hired; as it turned out, both got jobs as janitors. Naturally, they were screened by the Gestapo, yet the resistance had already concocted “legends,” or fictional backgrounds, establishing them as Nazi sympathizers loyal to the Vichy government. So far as the German secret police was concerned, the two men were nothing more than lower-class, rather stupid Frenchmen content with pushing brooms and emptying wastebaskets.
Silver and Gold arrived in Peenemünde only a few weeks after the A-4 program was officially scrapped. During the course of the first month as janitors, they saw and heard enough to confirm that the Nazis were developing some sort of long-range missile. Although this program had been mysteriously canceled on the very eve of success, it became apparent that it was being replaced by a project that was even more ambitious.
Yet they’d been unable to learn exactly what it was. All work was being done in labs and workshops the janitors were expressly forbidden to enter, and certain areas of Peenemünde West had been placed off-limits to anyone except engineers, technicians, and senior scientists.
There was one possible loophole: Wernher von Braun’s office. Over the past few months, Silver and Gold noticed that von Braun had developed careless habits when it came to handling classified documents. Overworked and easily distracted, he’d become dependent upon his secretaries—particularly Lise Muller, on whom he obviously had a crush—to tidy up for him. So the spies made a point of visiting Haus 4 on a daily basis, keeping its hallways and restrooms spotless while watching the technical director’s office, waiting for a chance when both von Braun and Muller would become negligent.
That opportunity finally presented itself, and just in time. In two days, Silver was scheduled to return to Paris for the holidays, during which he was supposed to make a covert rendezvous with their MI-6 handler. It would be their first and possibly only opportunity to pass along any information. Aware that their mail was being opened by the Gestapo and analyzed by its cryptologists, the agents decided not to use the codes developed for them by MI-6. So it was now or never.
The office door was unlocked. Silver opened it quietly and peered over his glasses to make sure that the room was vacant, then he turned to Gold and held out his hand. Gold reached into their cart and pulled out the large horsehair brush they used to clean drapery. Taking it from him, Silver entered the office, his footsteps softened by the rubber roles of his work shoes. Gold stood watch outside, ready to accidentally drop his mop at the first sign of trouble.
The open door of the safe and the thick binder lying open on von Braun’s desk told him all he needed to know. This was a classified document, possibly the key to understanding Peenemünde’s mystery project. Carefully avoiding the windows, Silver stepped around behind the desk and, after noting the number of the page von Braun was reading before he left, closed the report. Its title confirmed his suspicions. He needed to take this to his people.
There were two concealed catches at each end of the brush’s wooden handle. Beneath Silver’s thumbs, they slid apart like the locks of a Chinese puzzle box, allowing him to pull the handle apart and reveal the hollow space within. Tucked inside the brush, padded by a rubber mold, was a Latvian-made Minox camera, its lozenge-shaped body only 7.5 centimeters long. Coiled beside it was a thin silver chain 45 centimeters in length, with a clip at one end and a small ring at the other.
Silver clipped one end of the chain to the camera, then slipped the ring around his left thumb. Bending over the desk, he placed his left hand next to the open report, then positioned himself so that the chain led directly up to the camera held in his right hand. In this way, the Minox was at the perfect distance for photographing documents. Peering through the miniature viewfinder, he took a couple of moments to adjust the focusing dial; when the typewritten print on the first page was sharp and clear, he went to work.
Silver had spent many hours in the resistance’s Paris hideaway learning how to use the Minox. The time was well spent. Again and again he pressed the tiny stud of the camera shutter, synchronizing it with the turning of each page. He didn’t read what he was photographing; every second was precious and couldn’t be used trying to comprehend material that only a scientist could fully understand. Although the Minox’s 9.5mm film cartridge held fifty exposures, the report had more than three times that many pages; afraid to miss any crucial information, Silver jumped ahead a few pages to snap pictures of bar graphs and tables that seemed important.
Then he came across a diagram that caused him to stop what he was doing. Staring at the cutaway drawing of a strange-looking aircraft, he suddenly realized that Wa Pruf 11 had moved far beyond mere rocketry.
This was not a missile. This was something else entirely.
Silver snapped a picture of the diagram, then turned a couple of pages and found another that appeared interesting, a global map with a squiggly line curving up and down across the outer surface, like something hopping across Earth’s atmosphere. He’d just finished photographing it when Gold’s mop fell to the hallway floor.
Silver glanced up, saw the other spy through the open door. Gold pointed to his ear, then down the hall toward the stairs. Someone was coming up.
The Minox’s frame counter told Silver that he had seven exposures left, but there was no time to use them. Under no circumstances could he let himself get caught in Dr. von Braun’s office. Silver hastily turned the report’s pages back to where the technical director had left them, then detached the measurement chain from the camera. He stuffed the chain in his pocket and slipped the Minox back into the brush handle. One last look to make sure that everything was the way he’d found it, then in four quick steps he was out of the office.
Silver had just retrieved his broom from where he’d left it against the wall when Lise Muller emerged from the stairway. Even before he saw von Braun’s secretary, Silver knew that it was her; when she walked, the low heels of her patent leather shoes made a distinctive tap-tap-tap sound with which he and Gold had become familiar. He still had the horsehair brush in his hand; stepping past Gold, whose back was to the approaching woman, he reached out to put the brush back in the janitor cart.
Then its cover fell off and the Minox dropped onto the floor.
In an instant, Silver realized what had happened. In his haste to get out of the office, he’d neglected to close the two catches that locked the brush’s hidden compartment. Fortunately, Gold was standing between the camera and the approaching secretary, but even as Silver squatted down to pick up the Minox, he knew that in another second she’d see . . .
“So what do you think of Fraülein Muller’s ass?” Gold said casually, speaking to Silver as if she weren’t there. “Wouldn’t you like to get your hands on that?”
Silver heard the secretary’s footsteps come to an abrupt halt. Glancing up to peer between Gold’s legs, he saw that Lise had half turned away, hands raised to her face to hide her embarrassme
nt. Silver snatched up the Minox and stuffed it down the front of his coveralls. It had disappeared by the time Lise recovered enough of her dignity to face the two janitors again and clear her throat.
“Oh . . . hello, Fraülein.” Gold was the picture of deferential servitude as he looked around, seemingly noticing her for the first time. “Nice day, isn’t it?”
The secretary said nothing as she marched the rest of the way down the hall, her expression stony but her face bright red. She didn’t even glance at Silver as she stormed past them; he’d already picked up his brush and, surreptitiously replacing the handle cover, returned it to the cart. Lise’s shoes stamped against the bare wooden floor as she entered von Braun’s office. The door slammed shut behind her, and Gold started to let out his breath in relief, but Silver quickly raised a hand. Listening intently, he heard what he’d hoped to hear: the soft, metallic clank of the wall safe’s being shut.
The two men traded looks: Gold, an accusatory glare, Silver, an apologetic upward roll of his eyes. Once they were sure the hall was clear, Silver returned both the camera and the measuring chain to their hiding place. In moments, the brush was back where it belonged, and the two men returned to what they’d been doing.
Nonetheless, the blood had drained from Silver’s face, and not just because of the close call. What he’d seen in the classified document on Wernher von Braun’s office frightened him deeply.
The Minox film couldn’t get to England fast enough.
RENDEZVOUS IN PARIS
DECEMBER 24, 1941
Sometime during the morning, a Gestapo agent had taken up a position in the doorway of a café across the street from Yves Callon’s apartment. Callon spotted him almost as soon he got out of bed and looked out his kitchen window. Even from three floors up, it was impossible not to tell that the man in the charcoal overcoat, black scarf, and dark grey hat belonged to the secret police; he looked like a giant crow that had come to roost upon the sidewalk.
Callon wasn’t surprised. He’d half expected to be kept under surveillance once he returned to Paris for the holidays. The Nazis weren’t likely to take any chances with a French janitor who worked at one of their most secret research facilities, so it only made sense that they would dispatch a Gestapo agent to keep an eye on him. It was little comfort that he appeared to be bored and cold. Even if he wasn’t alert, he could be a serious impediment to the task that lay ahead.
As Yves puttered around his small, two-room apartment—washing his face and shaving, getting dressed, having a meager breakfast of coffee and a croissant—he wondered whether it might be wise to cancel the drop. If he waited another day or two, the Gestapo might give up and leave him alone. But he’d arrived in Paris by train early yesterday evening, and he was due to catch another train back to Germany the day after tomorrow. Waiting until tomorrow to make the drop would be problematic if the Gestapo was still watching him by then; some of his actions might seem peculiar if done on Christmas Day. And if he waited until the day after Christmas and tried to make the drop before going to the rail station, his contact might be at risk if he’d been followed, and the Gestapo noticed him going to the same place at the same time three days in a row.
So Yves had no choice. He had to make the drop today, despite the danger. He simply needed to be careful, for the slightest mistake could be fatal.
Callon kept an eye on the clock above his fireplace as he washed his breakfast dishes and put them away. At ten minutes to nine, he got ready to go. He avoided looking out the window as he pulled on his dark brown overcoat, woolen muffler, and cap. The Minox film cartridge—two small black cylinders joined by a crosspiece, a little more than six centimeters long—went in his inside coat pocket, then he carefully put his identification papers on top of it. If he were stopped and searched, he hoped the folded papers would pad the cartridge enough to escape being detected by a brisk patdown. There were other places he could hide the cartridge, of course, but he had to be able to get to it as quickly and unobtrusively as possible.
Leaving the apartment, Callon made his way down the narrow stairs. He’d just reached the second-floor landing when a door opened, and one of his neighbors started to come out. A young woman whose name he could never recall, she stopped the moment she saw him. Her eyes narrowed, and a disgusted frown curled an attractive mouth; she immediately stepped back into her apartment and slammed the door. But just before she disappeared, Callon heard her mutter, “Maudit traitre.”
Damned traitor. This was what his role as an MI-6 operative had cost him: his reputation. Almost no one knew that he belonged to the resistance, and only a couple of people in his cell were aware that he was spying for the British. So far as everyone else was concerned, Yves Callon was a Vichy collaborator, someone willing to work for the Nazis just to gain a job and luxuries like the coffee he’d just had with breakfast. He could only hope that, once the war was over and France was liberated, his true role would be revealed and he would be exonerated. Until then, he had few friends in his native city. Not even his own family would speak to him anymore.
Rue de la Huchette was a cobblestone street in the Latin Quarter, so narrow that only pedestrians and bicyclists could use it . . . not that there were many automobiles on the streets of Paris these days. Before the war, its sidewalk cafés would have been open, even on Christmas Eve, with gypsies sitting on the curb out front, playing guitars or flutes, hats turned upside down before them. But the restaurants were now closed four days a week, and the Romany had either fled or been rounded up and sent to concentration camps, so there was almost no one in sight except the Gestapo agent in the doorway, smoking a cigarette as he pretended not to notice Callon.
Yves pretended not to see him either. Closing the front door behind them, he stepped out into the street, turning right to head toward the cathedral. He didn’t have to glance at the shop windows he passed to know from the footsteps behind him that the crow had left the doorway and was walking along behind him. Yet the Gestapo man was being careful not to follow so closely as to be obvious; Yves could no longer hear him by the time he reached the end of the block although he had little doubt that the secret policeman was still there.
Two blocks ahead was Rue Saint-Jacques, a wider street. Yves turned left and followed it toward the river. Notre Dame came in sight, a grand edifice of granite and stained glass towering above the Seine. Even Christmas Eve, there was little traffic on the broad avenue running alongside the river; the Nazis had claimed all the petrol for their own vehicles, leaving Parisians with nothing but horses, bicycles, and the strange-looking velo-taxis made from cutting a motorcar in half and hooking up the passenger end to a bicycle.
Yves dodged one of those as he crossed the Quai de Montebello to the Petit Pont, and the Gestapo agent was only ten meters back when he strolled across the bridge to the broad plaza in front of Notre Dame. Morning services had just ended, and worshippers were emerging from beneath the ornate arches above the cathedral’s massive oak doors. They tried to avoid eye contact with the German soldiers who patrolled the plaza, M-40 submachine guns dangling from straps beneath their arms.
As he crossed the plaza, Yves stole a glance at his wristwatch. His timing was perfect; it was exactly ten after nine. His steps took him toward the statue of Charlemagne, which stood to the right of the cathedral.
A white-bearded old man sat on a bench beneath the king, coat collar turned up against the cold as he tossed corn kernels to the pigeons strutting and pecking around him. He didn’t look up as Yves approached the bench or show the slightest interest as he walked past, yet Yves knew the old man had spotted him. And probably the Gestapo tail as well.
If Yves hadn’t been followed, the rendezvous would have been simple. He would have brought a newspaper on his way to Notre Dame, tucked the cartridge inside, and sat down on the bench beside the old man. A few minutes later, he would’ve stood up and walked away, leaving the newspaper behind. The paper and th
e hidden cartridge would have gone with the old man. That was now out of the question; the Gestapo agent would have seen through that in an instant. So Yves was forced to resort to a backup plan, albeit one that was much more complicated.
He walked the rest of the way across the plaza and entered Notre Dame. He didn’t have to look back to know that the crow was still behind him. Removing his cap and shoving it in his coat pocket, he paused in the foyer to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, then took a novena candle, dropping a half franc into the offering box. A brief nod to the robed priest at the door, then he quietly walked into the sanctuary.
Notre Dame rose around him as an enormous cavern, one that seemed more like the creation of God than man. Even in midmorning, the cathedral was dark and quiet. The giant pipe organ near the altar had ceased playing the sacred music that filled every corner of the vast sanctuary, and the only light came from the candelabra on the massive stone columns and the intricate panes of the great stained-glass windows. Although the morning service was concluded, a few worshippers still lingered in the oak pews, heads bowed in meditation.
Yves walked slowly down the center aisle toward the nave. He paused within sight of the altar to cross himself and take a quick bow, then he found a seat in the third row. He sat there for a while, hands clasped together, head lowered as if in prayer, then he stood up again and quietly walked toward the small, grottolike chapels that stood in a row along the sanctuary’s right wall.
V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History Page 6
