The Spymasters: A Men at War Novel

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

Kappler flipped back to the photograph showing the torrent of floodwater reflecting the morning sunlight.

  “Judging by how high the water is on the church steeples,” Kappler said, “the flooding stream appears to be some ten meters deep.”

  He looked up at Dulles.

  “That is the disturbing news I mentioned,” Dulles said. “To the best of our knowledge, all but two of your plants were lost.”

  “All but two? I lost five manufacturing facilities!”

  Dulles nodded solemnly.

  “Possibly others,” he said. “Krupp lost everything it had in the Ruhr, including what was previously Thyssen’s. Because, as you note, they were all closest to the dams.”

  “Everything?”

  Dulles nodded again.

  “That floodwater was powerful—more than three hundred million tons. For fifty miles downstream, it flooded mines and wiped out more than a hundred factories, a thousand houses, and rail lines, roads, bridges. Farms were washed away—crops, livestock, everything.”

  “And people?” Kappler asked, but it clearly was an obvious statement.

  Dulles nodded solemnly.

  “Ach du lieber Gott!” he again whispered.

  “It is our understanding,” Dulles said, glancing at Gisevius, “that the German reports are listing casualties of nearly thirteen hundred killed, most French and Belgian POWs and forced laborers.”

  Kappler crossed himself.

  “Sorry that you lost your sklavenarbeiter?” Gisevius said, his tone caustic.

  “Hans!” Dulles snapped.

  Dulles had heard Kappler complain about having to witness the cruelty inflicted on the slave laborers, and had written reports on them that he had sent to General Donovan, who then shared the information with President Roosevelt and others in the OSS.

  Gisevius went on: “No more exploitation of slave labor for your mines? Fear not. The SS will bring more.”

  “That’s enough!” Dulles said.

  “I do not exploit!” Kappler said, his voice rising. “One cannot be found guilty of a crime when another holds a gun to his head forcing him to cause such an act! I have no choice but to use them because the SS demands both the money I pay for them and the increased productivity they provide.” He paused, then added: “I will have you know, however, that we are, as delicately as possible, running the plants far from peak production. Delicately, because anyone even remotely suspected of intentional slowage—and especially sabotage—is dealt with immediately by the SS.”

  “And,” Dulles put in, “I can vouch that Wolfgang has seen many of the Jewish slaves smuggled out.”

  “Many?” Gisevius challenged.

  “More than a hundred in the last six months,” Dulles said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Beyond saying that the OSS has provided their false papers, I cannot tell you more at this time.”

  Gisevius grunted.

  Dulles then handed over to Kappler another series of photographs. All were mostly black with vaguely recognizable landmarks that were faintly lit by moonlight.

  “These recon shots were taken at night.”

  Kappler looked at Dulles, then asked, “The hydroelectric output from the dams—there were, I believe, a pair of five-thousand-kilowatt power plants . . .”

  “Destroyed,” Dulles said.

  “Then it is with no surprise that the valley,” Kappler said, his voice almost a whisper, “is completely without lights.”

  “And will be until the hydroelectric power returns. Also not surprising, there are of course crews already working to repair them.”

  Dulles passed another photograph. “The Eder dam also took hits.”

  “That’s the largest masonry dam in Germany,” Kappler said. “Its reservoir holds more than twice that of the Möhne.”

  Dulles nodded, then passed two more photographs.

  “And also the Sorpe and Ennepe dams.”

  As Kappler looked at them, Dulles said, “Because the overall success of the mission will be a great morale booster for the Allies, the story is going to be widely reported beginning tomorrow.” He gestured toward the Braun radio. “Landessender Beromünster, for example, will break the news in German and, using BBC reports, also in English. And it will run—with a map but not these photographs—in England’s newspapers and in every other newspaper we can get to publish it.”

  He pulled from the envelope a copy of the Berner Zeitung.

  “This is an early copy of tomorrow’s edition,” Dulles said.

  Kappler took the Berner Zeitung and glanced at the front page. The largest headline read in German: BOMBERS DESTROY STRATEGIC GERMAN DAMS.

  Dulles went on: “We also have prepared leaflets to drop in German-occupied countries reporting that the taking out of the dams has caused widespread panic. That there’s no water available for anything from drinking to fighting fires should the Allies follow up with an incendiary attack. That without the electricity generated by the dam’s power plant, homes are dark and industries idle. That there is hysteria over what little water remains being tainted and causing deadly diseases.”

  Wolfgang Kappler crossed himself again.

  He said, “When Fritz Thyssen quietly fled Germany with his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and grandson in September of 1939, the rest of us who had even considered leaving were stuck. Now, at least thank God that my wife and daughter have been staying in our Berlin home. Otherwise . . .”

  Dulles said, “What if I said we could get your wife and daughter out?”

  Kappler stared at him for a long moment, then shook his head.

  “Danke schön, meine freund,” Kappler said softly. “Let me think about that. But my first reaction is no, because that would not stop Hitler, not stop the madness. And, also, because my son—SS-Obersturmbannführer Oskar Kappler, who is second in command in Sicily—he would then be hunted down and hung by wire from a meat hook.”

  Dulles nodded.

  Kappler took a sip of cognac as he looked into the flames and considered his next thought.

  He swallowed, then inhaled deeply and exhaled audibly.

  “Well, then,” he went on, his words measured, “so I have just had one of my companies stolen from me. I have lost five plants—possibly more—to a bombing that Hitler believed was impossible. And Marty Bormann has threatened to nationalize all the rest of my properties.”

  He turned and looked for a long moment at Dulles, then continued: “And the companies you helped me set up in the Americas now are essentially useless to me.

  “As you and I have discussed time and again, Allen, I believe someone has to do something to stop the madness—the destruction of lives, of property, of our very souls—before nothing is left of Germany but rubble. Up until now, I simply had to play the good German, running my companies as required. I cannot complain about that; my family and I live a very comfortable life. But conditions have gravely changed to a point where in good conscience I cannot continue the charade.”

  “I understand,” Dulles said.

  “Do you?” Kappler challenged. “I must tell you that it took me a long time to understand, to truly understand. And because of that I stand before you”—he looked up toward the high ceiling, gesturing grandly with his right hand—“and before our Almighty God deeply ashamed.”

  He paused, then met Dulles’s eyes.

  “Now I am desperate. I am tired of being held hostage, tired of being forced to participate in an evilness that no God-fearing man should. I often feel as trapped as those pitiful sklavenarbeiter.

  “Allen, I must be that someone we discussed who does something. I must escape these invisible shackles that Hitler has put on me and bring honor and sanity back to my country.”

  Dulles nodded, then sipped his cognac.

  Kappler finished: “I am willing to devote everything I have left.”

  He looked at Gisevius and added: “Just as Thyssen and I funded the resistance that gave rise to Hitler and, as you say, his goo
ns—”

  “I also said thugs.”

  “—goons and thugs of his High Command, so shall I fund the resistance that now takes him down.”

  Dulles looked at Gisevius.

  “Well, Hans, do you still believe Wolfgang not to be our man?”

  Gisevius looked between them, grunted, then refilled his snifter.

  Kappler looked at Dulles and said, “I’ve about had enough of this man’s arrogance. I’m asking you, Allen, as a friend, what are you talking about? What is it that I’m to do beyond what I’ve offered?”

  Dulles let out a long sigh.

  “We need you to reach out to Krupp,” he began, “and convince him that he has a choice.”

  “Which is?”

  “To join those of you working to bring down Hitler.”

  “But I told you that he’s an über-Nazi! He’s not even a Krupp by blood—Hitler allowed him to change his name when he married that idiot Krupp girl. That’s how crazy this all is.”

  Dulles nodded.

  He said, “I understand the odds are indeed great—”

  “They are impossible!”

  “—but what harm is there suggesting to him that he can quietly sabotage his own facilities that are building weapons and know that they will survive the war or”—Dulles tossed the photographs of the flooded Ruhr Valley on the table—“he can do nothing and watch them be destroyed now.”

  Wolfgang Kappler met Allen Dulles’s eyes for a long moment, then nodded.

  Dulles watched as Kappler then took the bottle of cognac that Gisevius had, refilled his snifter, and took a healthy gulp.

  Dulles wasn’t certain due to the dim lighting, but he thought that he saw Kappler’s hands shaking.

  [FOUR]

  OSS Dellys Station

  Dellys, Algeria

  1750 30 May 1943

  “Mother Roo One,” First Lieutenant Hank Darmstadter said after touching his AIR-TO-AIR microphone switch, “this is Joey.”

  “Go ahead, Joey,” the male pilot’s voice replied.

  Dick Canidy, who was hearing the radio traffic in his headset, grinned at the mother and baby kangaroo code names.

  “Mother Roo One” and “Mother Roo Two” were the olive drab C-47s at the threshold of the Dellys dirt strip. Aboard each plane were two dozen OSS agents from the Sandbox in parachute gear. “Joey” was the number three aircraft—a matte black C-47—waiting just off the dirt strip.

  Both olive drab Gooney Birds had navigation lights burning on the wings and atop the vertical stabilizer. The only lights illuminated on the dull black Gooney Bird were inside, on the control panel before the pilot, Darmstadter, and the copilot, Canidy; otherwise the aircraft was completely dark as it sat with its engines idling.

  Darmstadter keyed his microphone and said, “Ready when you are, Mother Roo One. Get us the hell out of here.”

  The pilot chuckled, then said, “Roger that, Joey.”

  The air-to-air radio frequency went quiet, and Canidy then heard the pilot’s voice of Mother Roo One transmitting on the control tower frequency.

  “Algiers Control, Sandbox Four Four Three,” he said.

  “Four Four Three, Algiers Control, go ahead,” the air traffic controller replied with a British accent.

  “Sandbox Four Four Three at Dellys, departing to the east for local flight plan. Note that we are one of two C-47 aircraft and that we will be dropping sticks. Acknowledge.”

  “Four Four Three, Algiers Control understands you are at Dellys and one of two aircraft departing to the east for paratrooper activity. There is no other air traffic in your area. You are cleared for takeoff. The sky is yours. But do remember that you are ordered to remain within your restricted airspace. Acknowledge.”

  Canidy smiled as Darmstadter gave the finger in the direction of Algiers Control.

  “Understood,” Mother Roo One replied in an annoyed tone.

  The aircraft’s bright landing lights came on and its Twin Wasp engines roared.

  “Sandbox Four Four Three rolling.”

  After a moment, Mother Roo One rumbled past the nose of Joey in a flash.

  Then Canidy heard the other pilot’s voice in his headset.

  “Algiers Control, Sandbox Niner One Two.”

  Canidy noticed that the second C-47—with its navigation lights still lit but not its landing lights—did not move forward on the threshold of the dirt strip.

  “Go, One Two,” the Brit controller replied, now sounding annoyed or bored or both.

  “We are at Dellys with Four Three.”

  “One Two cleared for takeoff. Have a nice flight. Stay in your box.”

  “Roger that. One Two rolling.”

  Canidy, expecting the second olive drab aircraft to flash past, was caught off guard when Darmstadter’s voice came over the air-to-air.

  “Mother Roo Two, Joey hopping in.”

  “Roger that, Joey.”

  Darmstadter lined up with the dirt strip. He locked the brakes, checked the magnetos, and then ran up both engines to takeoff power. The Gooney Bird began trembling. He released the brakes, and the aircraft moved in darkness down the runway, then became airborne.

  Darmstadter made turns to follow the nav lights of Mother Roo One as she made a slow circle above the airstrip. Canidy then saw below that Mother Roo Two had turned on her landing lights and was taking off.

  Five minutes later, the three aircraft had joined up. Joey was five hundred feet below and another five hundred feet behind Mother Roo One. And Mother Roo Two was five hundred feet below and behind Joey.

  Exactly ten minutes later, after hopping the ridge and passing the coastline, the three aircraft continued out over the sea for one mile.

  “Godspeed, Hank,” the voice of the pilot of Mother Roo One came over the air-to-air.

  “See you shortly,” Darmstadter replied.

  At a cruise speed of 160, Darmstadter had calculated that they could be back at Dellys in six or so hours, faster if he decided to burn more fuel.

  Canidy watched as Mother Roo One and Two then quickly broke off from the formation, gaining altitude as they turned back toward the coast to prepare to drop their parachutists.

  Joey, invisible under the radar, descended to six hundred feet ASL and settled in on a course of due northeast.

  Canidy switched to INTERCOM, keyed his microphone, and said, “Very clever.”

  In the dim light of the panel, he saw Hank turn to him and nod.

  “It works every time. And we reverse the process when I come back. The controllers just think they’re seeing radar echo onscreen, not a third bird. After another ten minutes, I’ll take us up to eight thousand. They won’t care at all what we are then. And this black bird will really disappear in the sky.”

  “I damn sure hope so,” Canidy said, then began unstrapping his harness. “What’s the guy’s name in back?”

  “Kauffman. Good guy.”

  “I’m sure he is. You okay here for a moment? I’m going to go back and make sure Apollo isn’t bugging Kauffman to help him repack his parachute for the tenth time and/or about to jump out the door.”

  V

  [ONE]

  Schutzstaffel Provisional Headquarters

  Messina, Sicily

  1330 30 May 1943

  “I wasn’t aware you knew anyone in the Abwehr,” SS-Standartenführer Julius Schrader said, his pious tone making the statement sound somewhat suspicious. “But then you’ve always been rather well connected, haven’t you?”

  The portly thirty-five-year-old colonel was of medium height, with pale skin and a cleanly shaved head. He was sitting in the high-back leather chair behind the polished marble-top desk that dominated the large office, and absently wiping at something on the tunic of his uniform.

  “But I didn’t personally know anyone!” SS-Obersturmbannführer Oskar Kappler snapped. “That is, beyond knowing, as you also well know, that the Abwehr has a new agent in the Trade Ministry here.”

  Kappler, a lie
utenant colonel thirty-two years old, was tall and trim and athletic. He had a strong chin, intelligent blue eyes, and a full head of closely cropped light brown hair.

  Kappler looked at Schrader a long moment and went on: “And, for the record, I don’t appreciate your inference. We’ve been friends too long for that bullshit.”

  He thought: Did I lay that on too heavy?

  Oh, to hell with him! Despite his insistence otherwise, he has always been envious of my background.

  I don’t appreciate his pious tone and his inference.

  Until this morning, I did not know anyone here in the Abwehr.

  But I sure as hell cannot tell him the truth about our meeting. . . .

  Scheisse!

  Kappler and Schrader were in the Sicherheitsdienst; the SD was the intelligence arm of the Schutzstaffel. The SD—which was to say SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmel—did not trust the German military intelligence agency—which was to say Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, under whom Himmel once had served—any more than it trusted any of the British or American intelligence agencies.

  Kappler and Schrader had served in the Messina SS office for the last eighteen months. But they had been friends far longer, going back nearly fourteen years, when they were university students in Berlin and playing on the school’s polo team.

  “He asked me down to coffee under the pretense of ‘a matter of great urgency,’” Kappler explained. “Turned out he only wanted to talk shop.”

  He waved toward the telephone on Schrader’s desk, knowing that as a matter of course they tapped all the SS office lines. “Check the tape if you do not believe me!”

  “You need to calm down, Oskar,” Schrader said as he got up from his desk. “That won’t be necessary, and you know it.”

  Kappler thought: Maybe that was over the top . . . or perhaps just right.

  He watched Schrader, hands stuffed in his pockets, casually cross the highly polished stone floor and stop at one of the half-dozen floor-to-ceiling windows with the heavy burgundy-colored drapes pulled back to either side.

  Schrader looked out at the sickle-shaped Port of Messina—which the previous night had been busy with a troopship off-loading German and Italian soldiers—and across the emerald green Strait of Messina. The toe of the boot that was mainland Italy was five kilometers away.