The Spymasters: A Men at War Novel

by Griffin, W. E. B. ; Butterworth IV, William E.

  Kappler did not reply.

  He thought: Did he get all this information from being at the Reichsbank—or from the Abwehr?

  “. . . All this while,” Gisevius went on, puffing heavily on his cigar, “you and Thyssen were becoming buddies with Bormann and his goon squad. Bormann named his firstborn after Hitler, his second son after Hess, and his third after Heinrich Himmler. All of whom were godfathers to their namesakes. Hitler also served as witness to Bormann’s wedding to the daughter of a Nazi party official. And Hermann Göring’s five-year-old is Hitler’s goddaughter.”

  He paused to let that sink in, glanced at Dulles, then looked back at Kappler and added in an unpleasant tone, “So, such is the dirty little secret of Herr Kappler being long connected with those goons who now make up Hitler’s High Command.”

  Gisevius, turning and staring at the fireplace, took a deep sip of his cognac, the light from the flames reflecting on his snifter. He puffed his cigar, then turned to Dulles.

  “Allen,” he said, “I’m afraid that this was not a good idea. I do not believe Herr Kappler is the proper candidate. If that indeed was your intention . . .”

  “Proper candidate?” Kappler blurted, his tone clearly indicating that he was offended. “For what?”

  He turned to Dulles and repeated, “Candidate for what?”

  [TWO]

  OSS Dellys Station

  Dellys, Algeria

  1145 30 May 1943

  By the time Dick Canidy and John Craig van der Ploeg jumped to the ground from the Stinson, the guard had it chocked and tied down. Then, with a casual wave of greeting, he had headed back to his seat in the jeep.

  They started walking toward the Nissen hut—an inverted “U” of corrugated steel from War One with wooden walls at each end and a single wooden screened door—that was being used as a combination guard shack and base ops building.

  The wooden door swung open, and a tall, skinny twenty-two-year-old American with a round friendly face came out.

  “Welcome back, Dick!” First Lieutenant Henry Darmstadter, USAAF, called out as the spring on the door slammed it shut behind him. “Stan said you were on the way.”

  Canidy went to Darmstadter and wrapped his arms around him.

  “Damn good to see you, Hank!” Canidy said.

  “Yeah,” Darmstadter said, trying to wiggle free of the grip, “but not quite that much.”

  John Craig chuckled.

  Canidy then put his hands on either side of Darmstadter’s head and kissed him wetly in the middle of his forehead.

  “Jesus Christ, Dick!” Darmstadter said, wiping at his forehead with his sleeve. But he was grinning.

  Canidy looked at John Craig and said, “This man saved my ass in Hungary, and I will never forget it.”

  “Really?”

  Van der Ploeg then looked at Darmstadter.

  “How they hanging, John Craig?” Darmstadter said, dodging the question. “You need another ride over to the Sandbox?”

  John Craig van der Ploeg caught Dick Canidy’s questioning look.

  As John Craig shook Darmstadter’s hand, he said to Canidy: “Remember? I told you I’ve been out here almost every day.”

  Canidy nodded. “Right. Going through throat-cutting school.”

  “I hear he’s been doing a helluva job,” Hank offered, and motioned at the Gooney Bird. “You made three jumps last week, right?”

  “Four,” John Craig said, “including the night jump. That gives me twenty total. But tell me about saving Dick.”

  Darmstadter sighed. “Look, the truth of it is I did nothing that Dick wouldn’t have done for me.”

  “But the fact of it is you did it,” Canidy said, then looked at John Craig. “Very simply, I was trapped in Hungary, without a single hope in hell of not being captured and either shot on sight or strung up in a cold damp dungeon to slowly die. Then Hank here came flying in on his great white steed—”

  “It was a Gooney Bird just like this one,” Hank interrupted, shaking his head and gesturing toward the olive drab C-47.

  John Craig’s head turned to Darmstadter . . .

  “—his great olive drab steed that was filled up to here”—Canidy went on, holding his hand flat, palm down, index finger touching his forehead—“with enough extra fuel to blow us all to kingdom come—”

  John Craig turned to Canidy . . .

  “It was just an auxiliary fuel cell,” Darmstadter said.

  . . . then back to Darmstadter . . .

  “—and Hank landed this fuel-packed flying bomb on a piece of real estate that was this big”—he put his index finger and thumb a hair-width apart—“and surrounded by ancient thick forest—”

  . . . back to Canidy . . .

  “Dick had actually taken down some trees with Primacord.”

  . . . to Darmstadter . . .

  “And then with everyone finally onboard, Hank managed to get his now overloaded olive drab steed airborne, its props actually trimming the treetops as the bird strained to gain altitude.”

  . . . then, finally, John Craig looked to Darmstadter for his response.

  Darmstadter shrugged.

  “It was nothing,” he said. “You just do what you have to do.”

  “I’d never heard that story,” John Craig said.

  “And you wouldn’t from Hank,” Canidy said. “He’s what they call ‘modest.’ And to think that Hank here almost never made it as a pilot. But that’s another story.”

  “What?” John Craig said.

  “It was nothing,” Darmstadter said again. “I just had to learn to get over a queasy stomach during aerobatic maneuvers.”

  “It was more than nothing,” Canidy said. “The Elimination Board had him on probation, and he was about to get thrown out for throwing up and becoming disoriented in rough air.”

  Canidy saw a look of recognition in John Craig’s eyes.

  He’s thinking he’s not the first guy to have some obstacle to overcome.

  Canidy went on: “Getting booted would’ve meant that he’d never gotten his wings, which would’ve meant that he’d never made it into our merry little band of spies”—he paused, after a moment cleared his throat, then finished—“which would’ve meant that he’d never plucked my sorry ass out of Hungary.

  “But,” Canidy finished, “he overcame it. And he now is one of the finest pilots I am privileged to know. And a kiss on the forehead is my reminder I have not forgotten my deep debt.”

  Darmstadter appeared embarrassed.

  “So,” Canidy said, changing the subject, “what the hell is going on out here?”

  After a moment, Hank nodded at the guard and said, more than a little angrily, “For starters, spending far too much time keeping our aircraft from being requisitioned for Husky by anyone at AFHQ who can even spell ‘OSS.’”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I guess they figure if they can take our birds, we can’t get into trouble. Everything we’re doing is being tightly controlled. We have been assigned a limited airspace for practicing our jumps. And our aircraft now are not allowed to fly more than a mile out to sea.”

  “What the hell?”

  “It’s about AFHQ making sure we don’t go anywhere that might reveal Husky. Last week, we had a Gooney Bird accidentally stray outside the one-mile limit—the pilot was distracted when he dropped his cigar—and next thing he knew when he looked up, puffing away, there were two Lightnings along his nose. They’d been on coast patrol and sent out to escort him back to base.”

  “Jesus! Ike really is serious about putting the clamps on things.”

  Darmstadter shrugged.

  “Yeah, but it has actually become a game for us.”

  “A game?” John Craig said.

  “A challenge. You went through Dick’s school—our job requires us to figure out how to sneak around obstacles. Eisenhower doesn’t know it, but he’s actually helping us practice our skills.”

  Canidy laughed out loud.

/>   “Well, that really answers one of my next questions.”

  “Which is?”

  Canidy glanced at the Gooney Bird, then looked at Darmstadter.

  “First things first,” he said. “Can you sneak around Ike’s obstacles with this to drop a couple agents in Sicily?”

  “When?”

  Canidy mimed looking at his watch. “Yesterday.”

  “Who’s going in?”

  “Who might you think?”

  Darmstadter looked between Canidy and van der Ploeg.

  “Should I ask?”

  Canidy shook his head. “Best not to. That way—”

  “I can honestly say I don’t know,” Darmstadter finished.

  “You must have been going to my school, too,” he said with a smile.

  “I can take you,” Darmstadter then said. “But not with this bird.”

  “Why not?” Canidy asked.

  Darmstadter smiled.

  “Because I have something better,” he said, and gestured to the far end of the dirt strip.

  “What’s down there?”

  “You’ll see,” he said. “C’mon.”

  * * *

  Darmstadter, having booted the guard from the jeep, drove them down the dirt strip. As they neared the runway’s far eastern end, Canidy could begin to make out that a pocket had been carved into the side of the hill and covered in desert camouflage netting.

  It’s a revetment.

  With something big inside.

  Somethings, plural.

  Darmstadter stopped the jeep to one side of the revetment, then hopped out and waved for Canidy and van der Ploeg to follow.

  As they stepped closer, Canidy said, “You’re hiding aircraft?”

  Darmstadter smiled and said, “Yep. Here. Give me a hand.”

  He untied two lengths of rope, and the three of them began rolling back the netting. Canidy then saw two identical C-47s, both unlike any he had seen.

  A version of the Douglas DC-3 airliner, the twin-engine C-47 was an Army Air Forces workhorse, reliably transporting everything from troops to cargo to towing gliders. The Douglas manufacturing plants were producing them by the thousands, nearly one every half hour.

  Canidy knew that the C-47’s fuel-efficient twelve-hundred-horsepower Twin Wasp radial piston engines gave the aircraft a cruise speed of 160 miles per hour and a top speed of 224. With a range of more than two thousand miles, it could without adding an auxiliary fuel cell—as Hank had done for the Save Canidy’s Ass Mission in Hungary—easily make the Dellys-Sicily round-trip.

  Assuming, of course, it wasn’t shot down.

  Darmstadter’s Gooney Birds were painted a flat black. And while, like conventional C-47s, they had USAAF insignia—a star in a circle over a bar—under each wing and on either side of the rear of the fuselage, the insignia was painted a matte gray, as were the tail numbers on the vertical stabilizer, just ahead of the rudder.

  “I don’t know much about airplanes,” van der Ploeg said, “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any like that.”

  “What the hell, Hank?” Canidy said. “What’s the story?”

  “Aren’t they beautiful? I got the idea from the 492nd Bombardment Group at Eighth Air Force.”

  “At Harrington Airfield.”

  “That’s it. Outside London. After they’re done fixing up a bunch of shot-up B-24s they’ve salvaged—patching the bullet holes, removing ball turrets—their plan is to drop our OSS guys behind the lines in France. They’re painting the Liberators this same dull black so that they deflect light from the ack-ack’s search beams. The black makes them damn-near invisible in the dark of night.”

  Canidy looked back at the Gooney Birds. “And so you had these painted, too. Interesting. Anything else?”

  “Flame dampeners on the engine exhaust. And . . .”

  Darmstadter started walking toward the tail of the one on the right.

  He stopped near the rear of the left side of the fuselage, at the troop doorway. The door had been removed. He pointed inside.

  Canidy followed him and looked.

  “Jesus!” he said. “A Browning?”

  “Yeah, I wanted a fifty-cal but could only get my hands on the thirty-cal,” Hank said. “It’s a modified M1919.”

  “Who modified it?”

  “Who do you think? I added a heavier barrel for full-auto—that’s five hundred rounds a minute. And I mounted it on this quick-release track, so it’s easy to move out of the way for jumps, then move it back in place. There’s a second Browning onboard as backup.”

  As they walked out of the revetment, Canidy surveyed the aircraft and nodded appreciatively. “That is one helluva special bird.”

  They pulled the netting back in place.

  “No one beyond Stan Fine knows that I have them. I brought them in after midnight, and only take them up after oh-dark-hundred.”

  “How do you avoid not getting picked up on radar? You don’t—”

  “Stay on the deck? Sure. Sometimes. Why not? But I’ve got another trick.”

  Darmstadter got in behind the wheel of the jeep.

  “Which is?” Canidy said, as he and van der Ploeg hopped in.

  Darmstadter engaged the starter and the engine ground to life.

  “You’ll see tonight. Your bags are packed, right?”

  Canidy nodded. “Just waiting on you.”

  [THREE]

  OSS Bern Station

  Herrengasse 23

  Bern, Switzerland

  2345 27 May 1943

  Wolfgang Kappler, uncharacteristically, raised his voice: “I asked, Allen, a proper candidate for what?”

  Allen Dulles made a dismissive motion with his hand in the direction of Gisevius.

  He said, “Before we get into that . . .” and took the manila envelope stamped TOP SECRET from the round marble table. He pinched its brass clasp, then opened the flap.

  “My old friend,” Dulles then said, “the reason I asked you here tonight was to share some important, but possibly upsetting, information.”

  “What upsetting information?” Kappler said.

  Dulles pulled out a stack of black-and-white eight-by-ten-inch photographs and handed the top few to Kappler.

  “And these are?” Kappler said as he looked down.

  “Photographs shot only days ago, before and after Operation Chastise. We received them this afternoon. The ones you hold were taken by a photo-recon Spitfire aircraft at first light two days before the mission.”

  Kappler noted that the first photograph had a time stamp in the lower right-hand corner. It read: 0715 14 MAY 43. The photograph showed the bold rays of the early morning sun painting the bucolic valley in warm tones. The low angle of the sun cast long, dramatic shadows from the tall trees and church steeples.

  “Yes, the Ruhr is wonderfully peaceful at that hour,” Kappler said. “Before the war, it was among my favorite times, simply sitting and enjoying my strudel und kaffee mit crème as the day came to life. I very much miss it.”

  Dulles then handed him another few photographs.

  “These were taken three days later,” he said simply.

  Kappler looked, quickly turned them toward the light for a better look—and caught himself in a gasp.

  “Ach du lieber Gott!” he whispered.

  Under the layer of industrial haze, what looked like a blanket of morning fog, with only the treetops and steeples rising above, was actually the morning sunlight reflecting on a torrent of floodwaters.

  “The western Ruhr Valley, it is flooded!”

  “Yes. The dams were bombed.”

  “How is this true? How did they get past the German defenses? And past the underwater torpedo netting that protects the dam itself?” He paused, then added, “And why have I not heard about this?”

  Gisevius answered: “The British used a new ‘bouncing bomb’ dropped from specially modified Lancaster Mark III aircraft.”

  “‘Bouncing bomb’? How do you know of this?�
�

  Gisevius, with a flip of his hand, gestured for Dulles to answer.

  Dulles explained: “As I understand it, somewhere around twenty Royal Air Force bombers descended almost to the surface of the reservoirs, and then released these new bouncing bombs, after first spinning them backward, so that they skipped stone-like across the surface until they hit the dams. The Lancasters managed to get in and out of German airspace by flying at treetop level to avoid being picked up by radar or spotted by antiaircraft. Which of course was extremely hazardous; at least one aircraft crashed after striking power lines. Three of the Lancasters in the first wave of eight either were shot down or crashed.”

  “It is unbelievable,” Kappler said.

  “That is what the Nazis want everyone to think,” Dulles said. “But, as you see, the mission was highly successful.”

  “And,” Gisevius said, “that is why you have not heard about it. It is a black eye for Hitler that they want kept quiet.”

  Dulles added, “Beyond the success of bombing of such critical German assets—once considered untouchable—this act also keeps Hitler on the defensive, holding back troops that could be put, for example, on the offensive in Russia.”

  And on the French coast, Dulles thought but would never mention, in anticipation of a cross-channel invasion.

  Kappler nodded, then turned to the next photograph.

  He made a face and shook his head in shock. The picture showed the 112-foot-tall limestone Möhne dam—and the enormous jagged gap in its middle. The three-thousand-acre lake, surrounded by gnarled oak and ash trees, looked to be at least half-drained. Water still cascaded over the lip of the hole.

  “This breach in the Möhne,” Kappler said softly, “it looks to be about eighty meters wide and at least that deep.”

  Kappler rapidly flipped through the stack.

  “Do you have any information on my properties?” he said as he scanned each image. “Thyssen and Krupp had their steel plants closest to the dams.”

  Here it comes, Dulles thought.