A Single Spy

by William Christie

  “Excuse me, Uncle, but in Russia they hate the Jews, too. But I don’t understand it as the basis of a political movement.”

  Hans Shultz gave him a wry look. “Whatever is popular succeeds politically, nephew. Jew hatred is as old as the written word in Germany. Why, even Luther wrote almost as much about hating Jews as he did about reforming the Church. But as far as National Socialism, let us look at it this way. One can say that Germany lost the Great War because it foolishly insisted on fighting the entire world, and the home front fell apart in 1918 because everyone knew we couldn’t win, was sick of war, and tired of being hungry. Or one can say that the home front fell apart in 1918 because Jewish Communists betrayed the nation and the undefeated fighting men. And that Jews caused the inflation later that made the money worthless and everyone poor.”

  “Which do you believe, Uncle?” Alexsi asked mildly.

  Hans Shultz gave him another look. “Nephew, at various times during the war I personally fought the French, Serbs, Romanians, and Italians. So give me credit for not being an idiot, please. Still, it would be more pleasant to believe in the latter, wouldn’t it? Everything that happened, happened to you. You are not at fault.” He was standing at the window, and he pushed the drape back with his hand and peered out as if he was searching for a sign of the dawn. “Now when the Jews are pushed down, the ignorant are getting rid of someone they hate. The intelligent are getting rid of a business or intellectual competitor. And the party will be gaining a great deal of money, which confidentially they were almost out of.” Now he turned back to Alexsi. “It’s hard to explain how bad things were in the twenties, nephew. Not as bad as what you’ve described to me of Russia, but bad for Germany. We couldn’t go on as we had. Democracy had failed—people were sick of it. They wanted one man to take control and give them orders. Hitler was an inevitability. Hindenburg was too old to resist him any longer. The businessmen backed him. People wanted bread and work. As far as his Jew mania, most people agreed with him. The rest didn’t care and still don’t. So you make your accommodation or get out. I am a German. And a German who is too old to start a new career.”

  Alexsi sat there silently. Germans didn’t make confessions, they made statements. And this statement just happened to be extremely important. Because, as he’d learned in Russia, you couldn’t bargain with an ideological zealot. But an opportunist was always open to negotiation.

  Then Hans Shultz said, “The main question, of course, is what happens now? I have always been a pupil of the great Bismarck, in that it is far better to try to anticipate and alter events rather than simply react to them.” He plopped himself back down in his chair and rubbed his chin. “The world will be outraged at this pogrom, of course. I see Goebbels’s hand in the excesses of it, the destruction. He was on the outs with Hitler, and this is his attempt to reingratiate himself. And it will probably work. When the reaction from abroad comes in, Hitler will feel both besieged and confirmed in his worst instincts about the rest of the world. And when Hitler feels besieged he always lashes out.” Hans Shultz looked up. “There will be war. It was always inevitable, but this will accelerate the process. Hitler will begin pushing at the world, and we shall see how much the world is willing to take. I think it would be best if you put your studies aside for the time being, nephew. And joined the army.”

  “Do you really think so, Uncle?” Alexsi asked. The Soviets at least would be pleased about it.

  Hans Shultz nodded. “If you are going into the water no matter what, it is always best to dive in rather than be pushed. At least one can control where one lands.”

  30

  1940 Berlin

  Alexsi strained his neck to look down the line of field gray uniforms arrayed along the walk on Tirpitzufer, then checked his wristwatch. His orders said to enter through Tirpitzufer 72–76, the four-story sandstone building up ahead that housed the Navy High Command. The problem was, everyone who worked there was lined up to do the same damned thing. If the queue didn’t move any faster he would be late on his first day. This would not do.

  A curious thing. He didn’t see any enlisted men. Not that he blamed them, thinking back to his days as a sergeant officer candidate. He’d have gone a kilometer out of his way to keep from having to salute this many officers. It was bad enough being a first lieutenant with all the senior officers in Berlin.

  Uncle Hans had gotten him posted to the Third Infantry Division, a Prussian Berlin unit. He’d emerged from training just in time to join it for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Which was more like a training march through Czechoslovakia, really. The Czechs surrendered so completely that the only gunfire Alexsi experienced was one night when a drunken captain shot himself trying to get his Luger back into the holster.

  Alexsi didn’t think there was much of interest about an infantry company garrisoning a Czech town, though Yakushev always emphasized that you never knew what would be of value. There were no NKVD to pass along information with a taynik, so he mailed the occasional report to a box in a Berlin post office covered by Soviet agents. Invisible writing between the lines of an anonymous love letter with a false return to sender. Two and a half grams of aspirin dissolved in four hundred grams of water was his ink. Aspirin was always available. It was a German invention, after all. Since one of his duties was censoring his company’s mail, the risk was negligible. His goal was to keep everyone happy with him, both Russian and German, while staying happily alive himself.

  One thing that Yakushev always hammered into him was fighting the urge to confide. Alexsi never had the urge to confide in anyone. He made friends. People liked him, and he liked them. But when he moved on he never missed anyone, and never felt the urge everyone else had to stay in touch. He always had to turn homesick soldiers over to a sympathetic sergeant because when they whined they felt he looked at them as if they were crazy.

  Upon the division’s return to Germany everyone got a campaign medal and there were rumors the Third would be turned into a mechanized unit. Before that could happen, Uncle Hans sat the new lieutenant down after dinner and made another one of his proposals. Alexsi had been prepared for the glory or death speech, but Hans surprised him by pointing out that he was the only survivor of his officer training class in the Great War, and with his languages perhaps his nephew would be happier in Abwehr, the German military intelligence service.

  It was so perfect Alexsi couldn’t help being suspicious, but the Russians were overjoyed. Hans pulled some more strings and Alexsi began his second spy school, not unhappy to have missed the invasions of Poland and France, where a great many more infantry lieutenants were killed than in Czechoslovakia.

  Now he just had to get into the building. Based on his experience enlisted men might not be smarter than officers, but they were certainly more clever. Alexsi gave up his place in line and walked briskly back down the tree-lined street, circling around behind the next building. Ah, there they all were. The enlisted going in the back door. Alexsi picked out his man, a mild-looking young sergeant wearing wire eyeglasses and the blue piping of support troops. A clerk.

  “Sergeant!” he called out.

  The sergeant whirled about and saluted. “Sergeant Dormer, sir!”

  Alexsi returned it casually and flipped open the box of Memphis cigarettes he always carried but never used.

  Surprised, the sergeant took one and Alexsi lit him up. “I’m Lieutenant Shultz. Listen, Sergeant Dormer, I need your help. I have an appointment with Admiral Canaris and with the line out front I’m going to be late. How do I get into the damned building?”

  The sergeant looked him up and down, the white infantry piping on his shoulder boards, the single pip of a first lieutenant, the Sudetenland ribbon, and the diving eagle parachutist badge he’d gotten in training. German paratroopers were air force, not army, so it marked you as Abwehr to anyone who knew what to look for. “You can’t be late for the admiral, sir. Follow me.”

  They went in a side door that was completely unguarded. Ale
xsi could just imagine trying to enter the Lubyanka that way. You’d get a hundred bullet holes in you just for knocking on the wrong door.

  It wasn’t an office building, it was a mansion that was being used as an office building. And if Sergeant Dormer hadn’t been leading him, Alexsi might have been walking the halls lost until lunch.

  Up the stairs and a few turns, and the sergeant waved him toward a massive oak door. “Here you are, sir.”

  Alexsi offered his hand. “Sergeant Dormer, if you ever need a favor, I’m at your service.”

  The sergeant returned a shy, limp handshake, then popped his heels and saluted. “Good morning, sir.”

  Alexsi just shook his head once the sergeant turned his back. Germans.

  * * *

  HE HAD been warned. Not the Hitler salute. A military one. Alexsi cracked his heels together and held the knife hand to the brim of his service cap, ignoring the snuffling sounds coming from the vicinity of his boots. “Lieutenant Shultz reporting for duty, Admiral.”

  The white-haired man behind the desk had only looked up from his papers when Alexsi came marching into his office. At first with an expression of mildly annoyed surprise, as if wondering how this person had ever gotten past the two Cerberus-like secretaries who guarded his door. Since, unlike Alexsi, he was both bareheaded and wearing a civilian suit, he only nodded instead of returning the salute. After Alexsi dropped his arm he said, “You may remove your cap and take a seat, Shultz.”

  “Thank you, Admiral.” Alexsi whipped off his cap and tucked it away under his left arm before sitting down.

  After peering at him intently for a moment, the white-haired man plucked a few papers from the untidy mountain on his desk and flipped through them, pen poised for signature. Behind him on a clothes stand hung a German naval uniform so shabby that any ensign daring to wear it would have been court-martialed. The office was spartan. Apart from the desk there was a sofa, a few filing cabinets, and a neatly made cot tucked against a wall. Behind him closed glass doors indicated a balcony. On the walls were a large map of the world, inscribed photographs of no one Alexsi recognized save the Spanish dictator Franco, and a Japanese painting of what looked like some sort of devil.

  Recognizing that the silent treatment was a test of his composure, Alexsi tried to look relaxed but not bored. A light pressure on his boot caught his attention, and he looked down. Two bright-eyed dachshunds had their forepaws on his legs, staring up at him expectantly. Alexsi reached down and lifted them both up into his lap. Now they were trying to climb up his chest and lick his face. A little stroking and chest rubbing and soon they were each sitting poised on his thighs, gazing up at him with dreamy expressions while he played with their ears.

  When Alexsi turned his attention from the dogs he saw the head of the German intelligence service smiling at him. “You make me jealous, eh?” said Wilhelm Canaris. He was speaking to the dogs. At the sound of him opening a desk drawer both dachshunds stiffened up and whirled about. He held up two biscuits and they shot off Alexsi’s lap like a pair of stubby-legged blurs.

  The admiral made them beg and then gave in. “Now be good,” he told the dogs indulgently. “We have business to do.”

  He now gave Alexsi his full attention. “I don’t trust a man who doesn’t like dogs,” he said. “And I trust the judgment of mine. You would be surprised. They take one look at a man and hide under my desk.”

  Alexsi kept his face blank and nodded politely. He sensed that his mission was accomplished, and telling the admiral how wonderful his dogs were would only mark him as a sycophant.

  Canaris flipped open a file. “So, Shultz. Training completed. Honor graduate. Highest marks. Great aptitude. Well done.” He looked up at him again, blue eyes punching through incredibly bushy white eyebrows. “More to the point, I see that when you received orders to join us, your division commander, General Lichel, was absolutely furious, and tried everything possible in order to keep you. It speaks well of you. Many commanders try to gift us their unwanted officers who happen to have another language. All in all, excellent. However, your application to join Abwehr I East is denied.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Alexsi replied politely. He knew the Russians would want him in the department working against Russia.

  “I have enough Russian speakers,” Canaris stated. “But a promising young officer who speaks Persian and Turkish is another matter. You have been to the region?”

  Alexsi reminded himself to be on his toes. This scrupulously polite old grandfather had single-handedly escaped from Chile during the Great War when his cruiser was interned after the Falkland Islands battles. Including passing right through enemy Britain in order to get back home to blockaded Germany. After that even the military could appreciate that he was suited to intelligence work. “Unfortunately, no, Admiral. It has always been a dream of mine.”

  “Then it will be fulfilled. Allow me to give you some background. Our efforts in Iran to date have been admittedly spotty. Despite being the source of Britain’s petroleum, our attention has been on France and then England herself. But there are conditions that can be exploited if done properly. As in every area of British influence, local feeling runs against them. However, our intelligence officers there have been working under diplomatic cover, unfortunately to no good effect. Recently Captain Leverkuehn, posing as the German consul in Tabriz, had his identity accidentally revealed under embarrassing circumstances.”

  At that moment the admiral startled Alexsi by letting out exactly the same German exhalation of disapproval that Emma Shultz had often used back in Azerbaijan when he was a boy. “The German minister in Iran, Mr. Ettel, has risen from clerk to SS brigadier in the past eight years.”

  Canaris seemed to feel this was explanation enough. “I propose to send a man into Iran under commercial cover, specifically as the representative of a Swiss textile firm we have a hidden controlling interest in. Persian carpets, you understand.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Alexsi replied. This was like being briefed for a mission by Beria himself. Impossible in the Soviet Union. But he had already heard that Canaris did not like to delegate anything. Officers in Abwehr complained that it was chaos whenever he forgot an order he had given, or failed to file the papers.

  “This man’s mission,” Canaris went on, “will be to take possession of a radio that will be cached by the German embassy. But otherwise to remain aloof from the embassy. And begin establishing agent networks. With a secondary mission of preparing sabotage actions. Do you follow me?”

  From his training Alexsi knew that German army officers were focused on how to defeat the enemy on the hill in front of them. Rather than how to win the war, which was not necessarily the same thing. And German intelligence was a military service. Because of this they regarded spying as sending an officer out in a tweed jacket with a camera and a Michelin guide to see if the roads would bear the weight of tanks, or counting how many aircraft were on an airfield and how many troops were massed in a given sector. Or blowing up an ammunition dump, an arms factory, or a bridge. Not so much developing spies who would report on the enemy’s counsels from within his own camp. With that in mind, he decided to take a risk. “No, Admiral,” he replied.

  Now Canaris looked surprised. “No? How have I lost you, Shultz?”

  “Sabotage what, Admiral?”

  Canaris seemed to give him a second glance full of new appreciation. “You keep your countenance well, Shultz. I don’t think you are stupid, so I think you invite me to say more than I wish. Instead, why don’t you ask me questions?”

  At that moment the intercom buzzed. Canaris punched down the button. “No disturbances.” Then, “Go ahead, Shultz.”

  “My question was about the mission, Admiral. What exactly will I prepare to sabotage, and why? The British oil operation in southern Iran? Iranian military installations? Transportation?”

  “You will not sabotage the British petroleum wells, pipelines, or particularly the Abadan refinery without specific or
ders,” Canaris stated. “Or the Trans-Iranian railway network.”

  Alexsi sat silently.

  “Good,” said Canaris, tapping his mouth with both index fingers. “What does this tell you?”

  Now he reminded Alexsi of no one so much as his old professor Yakushev. “That we intend to take them,” he said. “Though I don’t see how.”

  “You don’t? Rommel has been consistently victorious in the desert.”

  “If Afrika Korps takes Egypt,” said Alexsi, “they still have to cross the Suez Canal. Then Sinai, Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq. Even with heavy reinforcement our supply lines will grow longer, and the British will be able to move forces by sea from India and Africa. An attack from the Levant? The mountains are not tank country, and a defensive infantry fight there is to the British advantage. Will the Vichy French in Syria fight for us, and if they do, will the same soldiers who lost France make any difference? A revolt in Iraq? A revolt in Iran?” He only raised an eyebrow at that. “You did not ask me to prepare the ground in Iran for a revolt against the Shah.”

  “I didn’t, did I? Excellent, Shultz. It seems these days our officer schools are teaching a strategic appreciation our generals seem to lack. So allow me to turn the tables and ask you a question now. What do you see as Germany’s next strategic move in this war?”

  “Invade Britain. Finish them off. If the British Empire falls, then the Middle East all the way to India is ours without a fight; the Far East to India will belong to Japan. If America ever enters the war, it would be impossible for them to invade Europe from across the Atlantic.”

  “I confide in you with no small regret that the Führer has no confidence in the ability of the German navy to move the army across the English Channel. There will be no invasion of England.”

  Alexsi went cold. After crushing Poland in less than a month, and France in just a little while longer, they weren’t going to try to cross the thirty-four kilometers of water that would leave them masters of half the world? Then Hitler was going to gamble on the two-front war that had doomed Germany the last time. Like Napoleon he was going to invade Russia. Stalin had sat on his hands and made it possible for Hitler to win all those victories, to take Europe. And Alexsi knew why. It was pure Marxism-Leninism: let the capitalist world bleed itself. But now Hitler saw Stalin as the old crocodile waiting beneath the water with just its eyes visible, regarding him coldly for the right moment. And Hitler intended to strike first. “I understand, Admiral.”