Yet bringing Kappler Industrie to the United States—and selling its various metal products to GM and Boeing and others for automobile and aircraft manufacturing—had not been the success that he or Dulles had anticipated. Which led Dulles then to suggest that Kappler look south, to the wealthier countries in South America that were hungry for new industry.
In almost no time, Dulles had created additional holding companies in Argentina and Uruguay, with others planned for Chile, Brazil, and Venezuela. These, however, were not like the holding companies Kappler had in North America, ones through which he simply bought shares of existing corporations. These were far superior. The South American properties contained manufacturing and import-export companies that Kappler either wholly owned or held a majority interest in.
And they quickly had begun to pay off handsomely. Even more important—especially with the Nazis squeezing any German company that they wished, from extorting them for money to outright stealing them in the name of nationalization for the Thousand-Year Reich—Kappler had wealth being generated far from Germany and Europe.
[THREE]
Allen Dulles motioned with his pipe toward the low marble table holding the humidor and bottles of Rémy Martin.
“May I interest you in a cigar? And perhaps a taste? The cigars just came in; they’re from Honduras. As for the cognac, I’m afraid that VSOP is the best I have to offer. I hope it is to your liking.”
Kappler smiled broadly.
“No to the cigar, thank you. But cognac? Of course! I thought you would never ask. And, yes, Very Superior Old Pale is indeed my personal choice. Anything more expensive is simply that—overpriced.”
“Agreed,” Dulles said, putting his pipe to his mouth.
Dulles then picked up one of the snifters so that its large bowl rested in his palm. He took the open bottle of Rémy Martin and, having tilted the large snifter so that it was almost sideways, then poured cognac till it filled to the rim. He turned the glass upright and offered it to Kappler.
“Thank you,” Kappler said, taking it and holding it up. “To old friends.”
Dulles, meeting Kappler’s eyes, touched snifters, adding, “And always new opportunities.”
Not breaking eye contact, they took healthy swallows.
Kappler exhaled dramatically.
“Superb!” he announced.
“Yes,” Dulles began, “truly nectar of the gods—”
He stopped when, from afar, there came the sudden striking of the Zeitglocke.
“Ah, and we now hear from the great Greek god of time, Chronos!” Wolfgang Kappler said dramatically.
He held up the index finger of his left hand and added, “Which reminds me . . .”
He reached into the bulging left pocket of his suit coat. With a grand gesture, he produced a small black felt clamshell box wrapped with a simple crimson cord. He presented it to Dulles.
“It would be my great honor, Allen, if you would accept this small token to commemorate our long and deep friendship.”
The look on Dulles’s face showed he was somewhat uncomfortable. While Kappler almost always came bearing a gift—at their very first meeting more than a decade earlier he had presented him with an exquisitely cut crystal ashtray—Dulles had never become accustomed to his generosity.
Dulles’s look was not lost on Kappler, who motioned gently with the box, holding it closer to Dulles.
“Please,” Kappler said with great sincerity.
Dulles looked from Kappler’s eyes to the box then back to Kappler.
Dulles smiled. “Well, if you insist, but—”
“I do insist, my dear friend,” Kappler interrupted, and smiled back. “And don’t be ridiculous. It has been through your fine efforts that I have made a handsome fortune.”
Dulles took the black felt box and slipped off the crimson cord. The clamshell hinged open, and inside, nestled on a small black silk pillow, was a yellow gold–cased Patek Philippe with a brown leather skin strap. The stylish champagne-colored face, under a high-domed crystal, had black hands for the hour, minute, and second movements, as well as two smaller dials on either side, where the numbers “3” and “9” would have been. On the right side of the case were golden push buttons, one above and one below the knurled knob used to set the time.
“It is absolutely gorgeous. And my favorite, Patek Philippe.”
“Our last visit, we spoke of timepieces,” Kappler said, nodding toward the simple but elegant Patek Philippe on Dulles’s wrist, “and I thought you would appreciate having a more sporty one with complications. It is a 1463 J Chronograph. Eighteen-karat yellow gold.”
Dulles caught himself grinning, and heard himself say, “I think my life has plenty of complications without purposefully adding more.”
Kappler now dutifully smiled.
“Yes. I understand. As do we all. But of course I refer to the complications—the mechanical functions beyond the hands showing hour, minute, and second—that make watches more desirable to the connoisseurs.”
“This is really too nice to wear,” Dulles said.
“And did you notice the strap?” Kappler smiled appreciatively. “Hand-sewn hide of crocodile.”
Dulles looked at Kappler. “I do not know what to say, except that you shouldn’t—”
“You must see something else,” Kappler interrupted, ignoring the comment and reaching into the box.
He pulled the wristwatch free of the black silk pillow, then turned it so that the back of the case was visible. A clear crystal there showed all the intricate movements therein—tiny golden gears turning and silver wheels spinning in an orchestrated fashion that was pure precision.
Dulles puffed on his pipe, then said, “I feel compelled to repeat myself: It is absolutely gorgeous. Truly a work of art.”
“Yes. And I knew that you would appreciate it. I understand that they make one with twenty complications—one dial showing the date of Easter, another a celestial chart with more than two thousand stars.”
Where is he going with all this? Dulles thought.
Dulles looked at Kappler as he replaced the watch on the tiny pillow, then put both into the box.
“Amazing,” Dulles said. “I cannot begin to imagine so many options. Nor, for that matter, what one would do with such a magnificent instrument. It must keep perfect time.”
“True. Magnificent, it is.” He met and held Dulles’s eyes. “And, as we all well know, my old friend, life is all about timing.”
Dulles, puffing his pipe, thought: Why do I suspect, Wolffy, my old friend, that that is a reference to something far larger than a fancy wristwatch?
Kappler went on: “I was pleased to be able to personally select your watch this afternoon, following a very lengthy meeting with Franz Messner and Ernst Schröder that I thought would never end.”
Dulles had dossiers thick with intelligence on the forty-seven-year-old Messner, an anti-Nazi who was the general director of Semperit, the century-old international rubber manufacturer based in Vienna, and on Schröder, a confidant of Hitler in his sixties who represented the Reichsbank in its transactions with the Switzerland National Bank.
“More gold laundering?” Dulles asked, but it was more of a statement.
The Allies were well aware—and extremely pissed—that SNB for at least a year had been buying at discount more than one hundred million francs’ worth of gold every three months from Germany. Lately it had been foreign-minted gold coins.
The Allies had applied diplomatic pressure, and Switzerland had made the appropriate responses that made it appear it would comply—accounts were closed, fines levied—yet the transactions, too lucrative to turn down, continued.
Kappler nodded. “Before arriving here yesterday, Messner and I spent two weeks in Lisbon arranging for new funds to be channeled as escudos through Banco de Portugal deposit accounts set up under Portuguese subsidiaries of Semperit and Kappler industries.”
Dulles grunted.
More money for bu
ying raw materials for Germany’s war machine, he thought.
“You know that I am not proud of that,” Kappler said, as if reading his mind. “But we are being watched, and if I did not do that which is expected . . .”
Dulles thought he detected an odd tone in Kappler’s voice.
Dulles looked at his snifter, swirled the cognac, then took a big sip.
What the hell could that be about?
Well, one way to find out.
He looked back at Kappler and said, “Okay, Wolffy. We have, as you say, been friends a long time—”
“Absolutely,” he said, stone-faced.
“—long enough that you can tell me exactly what is on your mind.”
They locked eyes for a long moment. Kappler remained stone-faced. Then his eyes glistened, and he suddenly sighed, and his face turned soft.
He took a deep sip of his cognac, then replied, “Allen, I do not want to wind up like Fritz.”
“What do you mean? Wind up how?”
“Marty Bormann . . .” Kappler began, then had to clear his throat.
Nazi Party Minister Martin Bormann was an average-looking Prussian of forty-three—pasty-faced, cold dark eyes, his thinning black-dyed hair slicked back against his skull. He came from an average background—the son of a postman—but had risen to a position that was anything but average. Having earned Adolf Hitler’s trust, beginning by managing with great success the party’s finances and then Hitler’s personal finances, the Nazi leader had appointed Bormann as his personal secretary. And thus Bormann, to the great displeasure of those in Hitler’s High Command, came to control who had access to the Nazi leader and to personally implement Hitler’s wishes.
Kappler drained his cognac snifter.
“What about Bormann?” Dulles pursued.
“At the direct order of Hitler, Bormann had Fritz Thyssen and his wife locked up in a Berlin asylum . . .”
What? They’re in a loony bin?
Last we heard Thyssen was living in Cannes, making plans to head for Buenos Aires.
“. . . and now Bormann has told me that Göring is planning on sending them to be interned in a konzentrationslager.” He crossed himself. “May God save them . . .”
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring—the close-to-obese, hot-tempered fifty-year-old head of the Luftwaffe and chief of all Wehrmacht commanders who Hitler had designated as his successor—also wielded an almost unquestioned authority in the German High Command. Which of course caused a constant friction between him and Bormann and all others therein.
“What do you think is the purpose of that?” Dulles said.
“I do not have to think what it is. Bormann told me.”
“And?”
“Money, gold, artwork. Anything and everything. Göring has been trying to get Thyssen to reveal where he hid assets that the Nazis haven’t gotten their hands on. Which is why, after the French turned over the Thyssens to the SS and Bormann locked them up, Göring made an effort to ensure that their accommodations were comfortable. But now Bormann says that Göring has lost patience and is turning the screws, pressuring Fritz to talk by sending them to the KL.”
Dulles studied Kappler as he poured him more cognac.
This was not the first time that he had shared stories of Hermann Göring using his position to build a personal fortune. That had happened as Dulles had been helping Kappler hide his own assets: “Bormann told me that when the Nazis first occupied Paris, Göring sent a message to Hitler in which he gloated: ‘My sweetest dream is of looting and looting completely.’ And he did. When the Nazis took over Baron Rothschild’s palace, as an example, Göring swept the place clean. He then presented Hitler with a pair of paintings by Pablo Picasso—and kept for himself almost fifty works by Braque, Matisse, and Renoir to add to his looted collection at his country estate, Carinhall. Göring, whose appetite appears insatiable, gets what he wants.”
Dulles now put his pipe to his lips as he met Kappler’s eyes.
“And if they know about Thyssen,” Dulles said softly between puffs, “then they must suspect you have assets beyond Germany, too.”
Kappler, his face somber, nodded.
With his usually strong voice on the verge of breaking, he then finished: “It has already happened. They nationalized my Chemische Fabrik Frankfurt last week.”
“They seized Chemische Fabrik Frankfurt?”
Kappler nodded again.
“Last week,” he repeated, his voice almost a monotone, “while we were in Portugal. It’s as if they sent me there so I would be far away when it happened.”
“Only it,” Dulles said, “or other companies, too?”
“Only it. So far. But it is only a matter of time before they find an excuse—or create one—to do to all my companies what they have done to all of Fritz’s. Bormann even made it a point to inform me that after taking over Thyssen’s companies, they had had no trouble running them without him. . . .”
Dulles nodded. After a long moment, he suddenly said, “Could Klaus Schwartz run it?”
He saw Kappler stiffen at the mention of the name.
“Schwartz used to run your company, yes?” Dulles went on. “What can you tell me about him?”
“Herr Doktor Schwartz?” Kappler then said bitterly. “Or SS-Sturmbannführer Schwartz?”
“Are they not one and the same?” Dulles said, more or less rhetorically.
Kappler’s eyes narrowed as he shook his head.
“When Himmler gave Klaus that SS rank, he no longer was the man I’d known and worked alongside for almost a decade. The Nazis poisoned his mind. He started wearing that outrageous uniform all the time, barking ‘Heil Hitler!’ and throwing out his arm every time he entered a new room.” Kappler took a sip of cognac, then said, “I was not sorry to have him leave my company.”
“He was only at Chemische Fabrik Frankfurt?”
“Yes. He was educated as a chemist, and was in charge of my research and development department. He served me very, very well. That is, until that ridiculous SS persona took over. Now I understand that he is working with that rocket scientist?”
“Wernher von Braun,” Dulles provided.
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“Before he left your company, was Schwartz working on anything unusual?”
Kappler thought that over for a long moment, then said, “Nothing that I’m aware of, but then I was not aware my company was about to be nationalized, either.” He met Dulles’s eyes. “Why do you ask about Schwartz?”
“We found out that he was working with von Braun, as I said, and we are trying to determine what exactly is the nature of that work. And if there is any connection with the work and Chemische Fabrik Frankfurt.”
Kappler nodded thoughtfully, then said with more than a little sarcasm, “While they have nationalized my company, the SS still graciously permits me to run it. At least, I suppose, until such time that Bormann decides otherwise.” He paused, then added, “I will make discreet inquiries.”
Dulles puffed on his pipe, then exhaled the smoke. He glanced at the manila envelope stamped TOP SECRET.
Jesus! he thought. And I was worried about his reaction to the bombings?
He looked back at Kappler, who was staring into the fire.
And that of course is what you’re thinking, Wolffy.
You’re wondering what the hell Hitler plans to do with the Thyssens in a concentration camp. Make them slave laborers? Or just gas them, too? Or maybe both—especially if Göring squeezes Fritz enough to cough up his hidden assets.
And you’re convinced you’re about to be sent to share a tent in a concentration camp with Herr und Frau Thyssen—“Bormann decides otherwise” being a euphemism for “internment.”
He then glanced at the Patek Philippe in the clamshell box in his hand and snapped it shut. The sound caused Kappler to twitch his snifter.
What did he say—“Life is all about timing”?
Talk about real complications . . .
2435 27 May 1943
Allen Dulles, standing by the fireplace with his back to the crackling fire, reached for the open bottle of Rémy Martin—which was beside where he’d placed the black felt box containing the Patek Philippe chronometer—and refilled Wolfgang Kappler’s snifter and then his own.
Kappler took a sip and then, having recovered some of his strong voice, said: “I so far have been allowed to travel freely—anywhere, anytime—for two very basic reasons: First, with the obvious exception of Chemische Fabrik Frankfurt, my companies have been best run by me—and thus best meet the needs of the war effort. Hitler and Bormann and Göring have agreed with this. Second, my family, particularly my wife and teenage daughter, is constantly kept under close watch by the Gestapo wherever they go.
“That gottverdammt Bormann has made it perfectly clear to me that should I seek any sanctuary or exile, then”—he paused, obviously struggling as he sought the right word—“then great harm will come to my family. The bastard of course had the arrogance to add, ‘I would say that I’m very sorry but you must appreciate that it is in the best interests of the Führer and the Fatherland.’”
He paused, looked at the fire for a moment, then met Dulles’s eyes.
Kappler went on: “As you well know, having helped me with the endeavor, I have significant investment in Chemische Fabrik Frankfurt A.G. here, with loose ties to Farben, and in Compania Química Limitada in Buenos Aires and Montevideo—”
“I do well know,” Dulles interrupted, and thought: Because I set that up. I saw to it that the Argentine and Uruguayan companies were identical to the Frankfurt one—yet completely separate of Farben.
And the separation was even more important because every single one of Farben’s manufacturing plants is on a list to receive a visit from a squadron of Allied bombers.
Now that Chemische Fabrik has been nationalized, I guess that distinction is what we lawyers call moot.
I. G. Farbenindustrie A.G. was a conglomerate that before the war controlled a majority share of the world chemical manufacturing market. Farben now worked around the clock supplying matériel for the Axis war effort. Dulles remembered how difficult it had been keeping the process of setting up Kappler in North and South America secret from I.G. Farben’s powerful executives, the vast majority of whom became devoted members of the Nazi party.
The Spymasters: A Men at War Novel Page 11
