The Proteus Operation

by James P. Hogan

  Meanwhile, the Russo-Finnish war, which in the Proteus world had gone on until June, ended "prematurely, taking the planners of the proposed Norwegian campaign by surprise. Apparently, the Stalin-Hitler pact that had been concluded in this world had freed the Russians to send more troops to Finland, which resulted in a speedier decision. Thus, the main pretext for intervening in Scandinavia had gone away. Undeterred, Churchill pressed for a decision to proceed with the Norwegian landings, anyway.

  "To hell with the Finnish business!" he growled at the next meeting of the War Cabinet. "We'll put mines in the Leads and go in when the Germans react. And if the Germans fail to react, then to hell with them, too. We'll go in anyway!" His secret reason, of course, was to forestall the German invasion expected in May. The War Cabinet was persuaded, and plans went ahead for an Anglo-French expedition to sail in early April.

  But what Churchill and his advisers didn't know about was Admiral Raeder's urging Hitler, following the Cossack incident, to move the German invasion date forward. And Hitler had accepted the proposal, for the pact with Stalin had also released extra German forces. So, finally, the German force, too, was scheduled to sail in April.

  In the large office behind high double doors on the top floor of Abwehr headquarters, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence, studied the documents that Colonel Piekenbrock had laid on his desk. Canaris's assistant, Colonel Oster, looked down from where he was standing to one side of his chief's chair, while Lt. Col. Boeckel watched respectfully from a few paces back.

  "So there's nothing positive that says they're actually in Germany yet," Canaris concluded.

  "No," Piekenbrock agreed. "The photograph of those three coming out of the British Admiralty on February 18 was the last definite lead. If that idiot in New York hadn't gone blundering in against orders and gotten himself arrested, we might know more."

  Oster grunted. "They were training in New York last June. Then a farewell ceremony, or whatever, at the White House in October. Now, London in February. . . . They're certainly getting nearer."

  "Exactly," Piekenbrock said. He gestured at some of the other papers and clippings. "Now I find myself wondering whether these other things are just coincidences. Sumner Welles, the U.S. Undersecretary of State, visits Berlin and Rome in early March; James Mooney, a vice president of General Motors, is in Germany at the same time, supposedly on a private peace-seeking mission. Just coincidences? Or were they perhaps performing some liaison function with this sabotage group, which had already entered the country?"

  "I can see your reasons for wondering," Canaris murmured. "So, what about this theory that they might be going after something connected with atomic research? Have we got any further on that?"

  Piekenbrock looked inquiringly at Boeckel. "I've been checking through the list of places we know about, sir, and if anything, that theory seems less probable now," Boeckel said. "Professor Esau's work under the Education Ministry is running on a shoestring. As for the KWI, the people I've talked to there don't believe that any worthwhile result can be expected for years yet, if ever. Heisenberg's laboratory in Leipzig is involved only with theoretical issues. Diebner's team under the Ordnance Department at Gottow is still arguing for funds. . . . He spread his hands. "You see, none of it qualifies as even worth worrying about at this stage, never mind as a serious threat. It can't justify an operation as elaborate as the one we've been picturing. That simply wouldn't make sense."

  "Gottow," Oster repeated. "There's a lot of secret work on rockets going on there. Could that be the target?"

  "A possibility," Canaris agreed. "Well, we can get the security there tightened up—it's an Army establishment. So, is there anything else to be done for the time being?" Piekenbrock and Oster shook their heads. "Very well, then—" He broke off as he saw that Boeckel wanted to say something more. "Yes?"

  "There is one more thing, sir, something that I wasn't able to follow through," Boeckel said. "The SS operate some kind of secret installation at a munitions plant at Weissenberg, near Leipzig, which is described as an atomic research facility. I did try making further inquiries, but I was met by an extremely hostile response. Whatever Himmler's people are doing there, it's something they don't want us poking our noses into."

  Piekenbrock nodded and looked back at Canaris. "Lieutenant Colonel Boeckel and I were discussing that this morning. That description could be a cover for something else.

  "But you think the Americans might believe it," Oster said.

  "Or perhaps they know something we don't," Canaris mused, half to himself. He drummed his fingertips on the desk and sat back in his chair. The whole regime was such a rats' nest of intrigues and feuds that it was a wonder anything ever got done. His own situation was no better. A former U-boat commander from the Great War, he identified strongly with the traditions of the professional officer corps. Although he maintained superficially cordial relations with the heads of the rival organizations who eyed his exclusive control of military intelligence enviously—he and Heydrich had even become neighbors in the Berlin suburbs—he had nothing but contempt for Himmler, the jumped-up chicken-farmer, with his rabid anti-Semitism and mystic visions of neo-Germanic feudalism. And Himmler for his part distrusted anyone connected with the regular armed forces, which constituted the main potential opposition to his dream of establishing an SS state under his own private army.

  So, was Canaris now supposed to make a free gift of this information to protect what was probably another of Himmler's private power-grabbing operations? It went without saying that if the information proved valuable, Canaris would receive no thanks or recognition. And anything else that might have been uncovered by Himmler's own police and intelligence networks—the Gestapo and the SD—would remain jealously guarded. There would be nothing reciprocal about it.

  "Prepare a full report for submission to OKW," he said, referring to the supreme command of the German armed forces. That was what he was paid for, after all. "We'll forward it to Keitel, and he can initiate whatever action he sees fit."

  "You don't intend bringing it to Himmler's attention directly?" Piekenbrock checked.

  "I'll be damned if I will," Canaris replied. "We're working for the Wehrmacht, not Himmler. He has enough minions already. And besides, hasn't one of our officers attempted an approach in that direction already and been rebuffed? No, Hans, we'll stick to official channels and let Keitel take it to the Führer if he chooses. Then the Führer can bring it to Himmler's notice if he deems it appropriate to do so. That, gentlemen, is his prerogative, after all."

  Three more days had gone by with no sign of Major Warren and Paddy Ryan. As tends to happen with men brought physically and mentally to a peak of readiness and then left to idle, the troops were getting restless.

  "Right now we've got a clear run in," Cassidy fumed, stamping back and forth in the hayloft of the barn at the disused farm. With four of them needing to stay in touch to compare notes and finalize plans, he and Ferracini now spent most of their time there. They didn't want to expose the Knackes to the risks of too many strangers being seen around the house.

  We've been in Germany almost three weeks, Harry. How much more time do you want? Every day we lose increases the odds that something somewhere will screw up. Sooner or later you reach a point where you have to assume they're written off. Well, I say we've reached it. I say we go now."

  Ferracini, who was sitting behind hay bales in the shadows a few feet back from an opening, keeping an eye on the approaches, shook his head. Until Warren showed up, Ferracini's seniority put him in command of the mission. "When the objective's this crucial, it's worth waiting a little longer if it means a third of our force. We give them one more full week."

  "A week! Oh, Christ."

  "It could be worse," Ed Payne said, sitting cross-legged, buddhalike among kit and blankets as he watched a pot of water heating on a kerosene stove. "I thought you said that last time you and Harry were here in '71, you lived rough out in the woods
for a month."

  "It was two weeks," Ferracini said. "The plant was into testing nerve gases by then. We wanted a sample for some department back in the States that was interested in the stuff, but our contact hadn't shown up."

  Payne raised his eyebrows. "What, the same plant, you mean—Weissenberg?"

  "That's right. We found out later that one of his messengers had been a Gestapo plant and turned him in. They roasted his feet with a welding torch, but he didn't talk. The informer wound up in the river with his head blown off."

  "Yes, but that time was different," Cassidy said. "There was that chick who lived in that place down by the river. Do you remember her, Harry—the number with the red hair and green cat's-eyes? Lived with her brother, the guy who'd quit the Army after what he saw in Africa and was living under a new name?"

  "You mean the lockkeeper?"

  "Right, that's him."

  Ferracini shook his head despairingly. "You asshole, Cassidy. I knew you were fooling around with his sister. Jeez, some guys just never learn."

  "Man's gotta pass the time somehow," Cassidy grumbled.

  "Go on over there, why not?" Payne suggested. "Maybe she's still around."

  "She wouldn't be much good to him in 1940," Ferracini said. He sniggered. "Unless there's something about you that you haven't told us, Cassidy."

  Payne lowered a bag of ground coffee into his pot. "You know," he said, changing the subject, "I was thinking about the work Gustav does at the plant on those gas masks and things. I think I've figured out another way we could have done the job, even if the stuff from England hadn't shown up. With all the—"

  "Shh!" Ferracini tensed and craned forward as a movement among the trees beyond the farm buildings caught his eye. Then he relaxed. "Okay. It's only Floyd."

  "Ah, food," Payne said. He reached behind him for the condiments and other items to begin preparations, while Cassidy lowered the ladder from the loft. Lamson came up a minute or so later and put down the sack he had been carrying. Payne opened it and pulled out two rabbits, a pheasant, and some potatoes, onions, and carrots. "Tonight, stew a la rustic," he announced.

  "So, what's the verdict?" Lamson inquired. "Did we decide anything?"

  "We give them another week," Ferracini told him.

  Lamson nodded phlegmatically and drew a long, double-edged knife from under his coat. "Well, I hope you guys like rabbit," he drawled as he squatted down to begin work on his bag.

  CHAPTER 40

  "SOMETIMES," WINSLADE SAID, "I think life is just a process of discovering as you get older that you're not as clever as you thought you were when you were younger." He leaned back in the swivel chair with a sigh and contemplated the two gray-uniformed security guards standing impassively inside the doorway at the far end of the room. A copy of the February 1940 issue of Reader's Digest, which he had read on the plane from England to New York, had been found in his jacket pocket. Several of the articles had referred to Hitler, the Nazis, and the war in Europe, exploding the nonsense that he and Anna had been fabricating to make time for Scholder. Now Kahleb and the others had retired to confer among themselves and await the arrival of somebody of higher authority who was supposed to be on the way.

  Anna Kharkiovitch smiled faintly from the far side of a low, circular table at which they were sitting. "Well, perhaps the encouraging thing is that we flourish in spite of all our mistakes and imperfections," she said. "What a fragile, hopeless species we'd be if everything depended on our never slipping up or doing a thing wrong. We'd have been extinct long ago."

  "That's one way of looking at it, I suppose. My word, Anna, I never realized you were so much of a philosopher."

  "Didn't you?" Anna gave him a pointed look. Her tone conveyed more than the words alone said.

  "I gather I'm supposed to ask what that means." Winslade said.

  "I don't think there's very much about any member of the team that you don't know, Claud," she told him. "Oh, I know that everyone had to be carefully selected for a mission like this, that the least hint of an incompatibility problem would have been an automatic disqualifier, and that kind of thing. . . . But I'm talking about something else."

  Winslade nodded. He didn't seem oversurprised. "Go on."

  "Oh, lot's of things, Claud . . ." Anna waved a hand vaguely in the air. "The composition of the team, for example, especially the inclusion of Harvey Warren's military group. It was just too well matched to the needs of the situation that developed—Ryan a diver, Payne a chemist, all of them with operational experience in that area . . . as if you knew beforehand that Gatehouse would hit problems and we wouldn't get any backup. Then there was the way you left Arthur in England, trying to get Eden sent to Moscow in place of Strang, as if you already knew JFK's people weren't going to intervene in time. See what I mean, Claud? It's all too much of a coincidence. And just now, when you distracted everyone away from Kurt and Keith Adamson with that video, you knew what you were doing. I know it was only a standard directory or something that came up on the screen, but the point is you knew how to call it. You see, Claud, I've been wondering for a long time just how you come to—" She stopped speaking as a commotion of voices sounded from the far side of the door and grew rapidly louder.

  The door burst open, and a knot of people led by two determined-looking men in dark suits marched into the room, brushing aside the guards who had been posted outside.

  One of the two guards inside the room moved as if to un-sling his weapon, then wavered. "Sir, I'm sorry, but—"

  "Get out of the way," the taller of the two men in suits ordered without slackening pace.

  "But our instructions—"

  "Have been countermanded." The guards were too confounded to react, and within seconds the room was filled with people.

  Kurt Scholder emerged from the throng with Adamson close behind and made for Winslade and Anna, who were on their feet. "You're all right. Good."

  "Of course," Winslade said.

  "These are the two people?" one of the men asked, looking at Scholder.

  "Yes."

  "My name is Pfanzer," the man said. "I head one of the project groups. Jorgassen here is an assistant director. Look, I don't know what to make of this story we've heard, but in case it's correct, we're getting you out of here until someone arrives from the proper authorities to investigate. We'll have to go to the Message Center before we can get in touch with them. Communications out of this place are restricted because of the secrecy of the work here. When we get there I suggest that—"

  The sound of more tumult came from beyond the open door. Raised voices sounded from just outside, and then Kahleb appeared with a half dozen of his people. He was tight-lipped and angry. "You were ordered to let no one in!" he told the guards. "Who overrode me? What's going on?"

  "I did," Jorgassen said, barring the way. "And exactly what's going on is something that we would very much like to know, too."

  Kahleb caught sight of Scholder and Adamson. "Those are the fugitives." He waved a hand at the guards. "Detain them."

  The guards looked uncertain. Before they could respond, T'ung-Sen and another man moved in front of them. "You're not under his orders," T'ung-Sen told them.

  "You obey me," Kahleb said to the guards. "These people have no authority in this area."

  "We are taking charge until some questions have been answered," Pfanzer declared, closing up alongside Sen. "Something highly irregular has been going on, and we mean to find out what."

  "Don't be preposterous. Now, would you mind getting out of here and back to your own work?"

  "Not until somebody explains where he came from," Eddie said, indicating Scholder with a nod of his head. "A full analog of Kurt Scholder here, but over thirty years older."

  "Pah, you can't seriously believe that story!" Kahleb exclaimed contemptuously. "It's an elaborate hoax, for God's sake. They're from some kind of espionage ring, and they got in here illegally. That's what we were trying to find out more about. Why else do you thi
nk we were holding them?"

  He looked sure of himself and sounded convincing enough to sow doubt. And his story was certainly less fantastic than the previous one. The mood of the room cooled. Some of the group that had crashed in exchanged uneasy glances. "Can you substantiate that?" Pfanzer challenged. He sounded uneasy now. Behind him the chorus of vigilante indignation was subsiding.

  Kahleb pressed his advantage. "Substantiate it? I have no obligation to justify myself to you people, any of you. And even if I had, what would be the point of attempting to explain anything in the face of this kind of witch-hunting hysteria? I've told you—these people were apprehended after entering the facility illegally, and they have failed to give a satisfactory account of themselves. They are being questioned before the matter is handed over to the appropriate department. Now, would you kindly leave this to the people whose responsibility it is, and return to your own work, please?"

  A swarthy, stocky man who was with Kahleb raised both hands and swung from side to side to address the whole room. "Okay, everybody, it's over—that's it. We appreciate your bringing in the other two, but let's all get back to work now and leave it at that. Come on, people, the fun's over."