by Iles, Greg
“That’s right, just last year. The Pimpernel was the daring English nobleman who made fools of the French during the Reign of Terror.”
“What has that to do with me?”
Hitler’s eyes flashed with wicked glee. “Everything, Rudi! You know I have always admired the English. They are fellow Aryans. They are great empire-builders, as we Germans are. But”—Hitler stabbed a stiff finger into the air—“they have allowed themselves to be deluded by Churchill. Dangerously deluded. Look what happened when I spared their pathetic Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk! I halted Guderian’s tanks, blamed the British escape on Göring and the Luftwaffe”—Hitler’s face reddened in anger—“and then Churchill had the nerve to call Dunkirk a British victory! The English people must be freed from the influence of that warmonger!”
Utterly adrift, Hess folded his arms across his broad chest. “But this Pimpernel business, my Führer. How does it relate to me?”
“Don’t you see , Rudi? You’re my Scarlet Pimpernel!”
Hess stepped back in disbelief.
Hitler nodded excitedly. “Yes! You are the exact opposite of what you appear to be! Since the war heated up, everyone has written you off as merely a loyal bureaucrat who wastes his time on Party administration. All my officers think I’ve forgotten you.” Hitler shook his head bitterly. “How can they have forgotten, Rudi? From the beginning you fought beside me, took wounds meant for me. And now, you will be the man who receives my most sacred charge, the responsibility of the most sensitive mission in the history of the Reich. Together we shall prove yet again what fools they all are!”
Hitler’s eyes went cold. “In such times as these, Rudi, we learn who our real friends are. I’m afraid that some of our oldest and most trusted comrades may have decided that the time has come to explore alternatives to the road I have chosen for Germany. They seem to think my decision to invade at Russia is a symptom of madness. Imbeciles! To imagine that I—Adolf Hitler—would invade Russia without first seizing England!”
At that Hess looked guiltily at the floor. For the past month he had subscribed to the very same heresy. Yet the Führer had obviously had his own peace plan in the works all along. Of course! It was only natural that the Führer should inspire powerful allies in England! So many questions thundered in Hess’s brain that he could not decide which to ask first.
Before he could say anything, however, Hitler transfixed him with a zealot’s stare and began to speak with quiet conviction. “Every man has his hour, Rudi, his time upon the world’s stage. Your hour has come. Some men—men like myself—play their part in public, like stars flashing across the sky. Others must play their part in shadow. It is to such a role I call you now. Take heed, old friend. There are traitors all around us. From the moment you leave this room you will be in mortal danger. But you are a soldier, Rudi, the embodiment of the true Nazi. I do not exaggerate when I say that the very future of the Reich rests upon your success!”
Hess felt his chest swell with burning pride. He did not yet understand his role in Operation Mordred, but if the Führer was ready to gamble the future of the Reich on him, he was ready to lay down his life without question. What German could do less? Hess started when, after a perfunctory knock, Reichleiter Martin Bormann marched loudly into the salon.
“General Halder has arrived, my Führer,” he announced.
As a courtesy, Hitler waited for Hess to dismiss Bormann. The thickset, unctuous Bormann was Hess’s deputy, after all. “Dismissed!” Hess barked. Bormann saluted and backed reluctantly out of the salon. Hess felt better immediately. Lately he spent most of his time in his Munich office, and he had reluctantly come to depend more and more on Bormann for satisfying the daily whims of the Führer. Bormann was an able assistant, but he possessed many traits Hess detested. He was cruel and merciless to his subordinates, yet fawning and obsequious to his superiors. No one liked him much, except Hitler—but everyone respected his proximity to the epicentre of power.
“A good man,” Hitler said with some embarrassment. “But it’s not like having you around, Rudi. Not like the old days. Remember Landsberg?”
For a moment Hess thought back to the months in Landsberg Prison, where he had edited the manuscript of Mein Kampf while Hitler dictated it. He had done his best to force the fevered ideas into intelligible progressions of words. In those days he had been the apple of the Führer’s eye. It seemed a thousand years ago now. Or it had until five minutes ago.
“I remember,” he said softly.
Hitler crossed to the fireplace, reached up to the mantel, and took down a long manila envelope. He tapped it against the palm of his left hand. “On this envelope, Rudi, is written the name of the man I have chosen to help you carry your mission.”
Hitler extended the envelope. Hess accepted it, and held it at belt level while he read the large blocked letters: REINHARD HEYDRICH: OBERGRUPPENFÜHRER SD. Hitler had written the words himself; Hess recognized the hand from the endless nights in Landsberg.. He also recognized the name. Heydrich was commander of the feared SD—the counter intelligence arm of the SS—and second-in-command to SS Reichsführer Himmler. Hess half-recalled an unpleasant story he had once heard about Heydrich—a man so ruthless that even the brutal SS had christened him the “blond beast”—but the Führer’s voice broke his train of thought.
“Himmler is to know nothing of this,” he said. “Heydrich keeps an office in the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, but you’re not to deliver it there.”
“Deliver it?” Hess said incredulously.
Hitler was pacing again, faster now. He spoke as if dictating to one of his secretaries. “As soon as you get back to Munich, wire Heydrich that you must see him on a matter of Reich security. Include the word Mordred. This will prevent him from informing Himmler. Heydrich spends a good deal of time at the SD offices in the Wilhelmstrasse. Deliver it there—not Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. You can log the trip as another training flight. Make some small talk for a half hour, then return to Munich.” Hitler pursed his lips. “You will have no further contact with Heydrich, Rudi. But rest assured, he will be working with you. Besides myself, he will be your only ally.” Hitler paused by the door, his fingers on the handle. “Any questions?”
Hess cleared his throat. “Only one, my Führer.”
One question was more than Hitler liked, but he forced himself to smile. “What is it?”
“When do I leave for England?”
Hitler let his hand drop and walked back to Hess. He reached up, laid a hand on the powerful shoulder, and gazed into Hess’s earnest eyes. “From the filthy trenches of France,” he said softly, “we have risen up and conquered all Europe. We have avenged the outrage of Versailles! Now we stand poised to invade Russia itself. Russia itself!” Hitler paused, his eyes burning. “Such a step is not to be taken without an awareness of destiny, Rudi. On what day did we begin our glorious westward march to the Channel?”
Mystified, Hess groped for the date. “The tenth of May, 1940?”
“Yes! And what day is our eastward invasion—Barbarossa—to begin?”
“May fifteenth,” Hess replied more confidently, recalling the date from Directive 21.
“No! Our tanks will roll on the fifteenth, but the invasion of Soviet Russia begins with your mission, Rudi! On the tenth of May! One year to the day after we marched on France! Just as before!”
Hess felt a wild thrill of foreboding, a tangible sense of destiny, as if Fate herself had materialized in the room.
“It is all preordained!” Hitler cried, flinging his arms toward the ceiling. His mesmerizing voice filled the salon, brimming with the conviction of a prophet. “On the tenth of May you will secure our western flank, and on the fifteenth we shall wipe the plague of communism from the planet! By Christmas of this year, Greater Germany will extend from the English Channel to the Ural Mountains and it will be settled by pure German stock!”
Hess’s ears roared with excitement. Only slowly did he become aware of an insistent kn
ocking at the door. It might have been going on for a full minute. He slipped the manila envelope into his coat pocket as Hitler opened the door.
It was Bormann again, but this time Hess’s deputy hesitated in the doorway. Hitter smoothed his black forelock and looked into Hess’s eyes. “You will take care of that today, Rudi?”
“Immediately.”
“Excuse me, my Führer,” Bormann interrupted, “General Halder is waiting.”
“Let him wait!” Hitler bellowed. “Escort the Deputy Führer to his car, Bormann.”
“Heil Hitler!” Bormann clicked his jackboots together, turned, and marched down the hall.
“I’m going up to change clothes, Rudi,” Hitler said softly. “I cannot let my generals see me like this. They’ll think they can run right over me in the conference.” Hitler looked embarrassed by the confidence. Hess grinned and waved him out. It had been good to see the old Hitler for a few moments, but the spring jacket and tie could not revoke the steps they had taken in the intervening years. Those steps were written in blood and fire, and they could only be erased by more of the same.
Bormann waited like a Dachshund at the end of the hall. Hess felt a new and powerful sense of purpose in his tread as he followed his deputy out of the Berghof. “How are the children, Martin?” he asked. Just now Hess could not have cared less, but since Bormann had seen fit to name his offspring after Hess and his wife, he felt obliged to ask.
“Rudi is strong as a bull,” Bormann bragged over his shoulder. “And Ilse is the very flower of German womanhood!”
Hess smiled wanly.
Outside, Bormann held open the door of Hess’s brown Mercedes. Hess sensed a kind of animal exultance in him now that he, the interloper—Hess—was leaving. Unreasonably irritated, he cranked his Mercedes and goosed the pedal a few times. The engine roared responsively.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Herr Reichminister?” Bormann asked. Hess considered ordering his deputy to call ahead and have his Messerschmitt readied, then thought better of it. He shifted into first gear, all the while looking hard into Bormann’s eyes. He could see the arrogance lurking just behind the peasant face. Bormann wore power clumsily, like all men unaccustomed to it. But the little rat was learning. By all reports, he was setting himself up as lord of Obersalzburg, strengthening his position by acting as sole conduit between Hitler and the outside world. One of Hess’s secretaries had actually heard Frau Goebbels whisper that Bormann’s star had eclipsed Hess’s in the Nazi firmament.
“I see you still haven’t finished the construction up here, Martin,” Hess said breezily. He waved his hand toward a half-finished concrete bunker.
“The Führer’s needs expand every day,” Bormann said proudly. “I can barely keep up with the demand, but I do my best.”
Hess forced a smile. “There is something you can do for me, if you get the time.” “Anything,” said Bormann, with a nod of false obeisance.
With a casual motion Hess reached out of the car and caught Bormann by the collar. One flex of his thickly muscled arm brought the shocked Reichsleiter to his knees in the snow. Hess could feel the softness in Bormann, the boorish strength dissipated by alcohol and gluttony. Bormann’s piggish eyes bulged in terror. “Never,” Hess said harshly, “never forget who you are, Bormann. You are my deputy, and as long as I live, that is all you will ever be.”
Hess roared away, leaving his stunned subordinate kneeling in the noon snowmelt. He skidded to a stop at the inner perimeter gate. “How long to call Munich?” he barked at a surprised SS private.
“We have a direct line, Herr Reichministert” Hess reeled off the number of his office telephone.
“And the message, Herr Reichminister?”
Hess said nothing. To the sentry he seemed lost in a world of his own, but the SS man was not about to rush the Deputy Führer of the Reich. Hess’s brain was spinning. All the dark misgivings of the past few months were lifting from his mind like bad dreams at the coming of dawn. The road to Moscow would soon be open, and he was the man Adolf Hitler had chosen to open it! Yet the vision Hess saw now was no epic scene of conquest, not German legions crossing their Russian Rubicon. He saw a very small section of a shadowy Munich street, in 1919. It was on that street, and a hundred others like it, that the seeds of the Nazi party had battled the communist gangs for control of postwar Germany. It was to that street that a young Rudolf Hess had returned one afternoon, to find that a communist gang had reached his local group headquarters ahead of him.
Hess had hidden and watched in horror as heavily armed Red Guard ruffians loaded twenty of his friends into a panel truck. Later that night the communists shot all of Hess’s comrades, loyal Germans to a man. A captured communist later claimed the Reds had lined the prisoners up and shot them one by one. Among all the communist crimes, Hess vowed, this was the one for which he would exact revenge in Russian blood.
“Herr Reichminister?” the sentry asked tentatively.
“What?” Hess looked up. “Oh. The message. To Karlheinz Pintsch: Have my Messerschmitt fully fuelled and ready for a round-trip flight to Berlin. I want nine-hundred-liter drop tanks fitted and filled. Got that?”
“Jawohl, Herr Reichminister!”
Hess kicked the Mercedes into gear and raced down winding mountain road as fast as the snow would allow. I am God! he thought with exhilaration—I am the one who will seal the peace with England … and open the road to Moscow! With Reinhard Heydrich’s help, Hess remembered uneasily. He touched the envelope in his coat pocket. With a shiver he suddenly recalled the story he had heard about Heydrich. Apparently the “blond beast”—after an exhausting night of drinking and whoring—had caught sight of his own reflection in a lavatory mirror. Wild-eyed and sweating, “Scum!” He had screamed, “At last I’ve got you!” then whipped out his pistol and emptied it through the glass. Hess felt a cold chill of presentiment, but he quickly shook it off. One could not pick one’s allies in the war against the Bolshevik and the Jew. Sometimes it took a beast to slay a beast. If the Führer trusted Heydrich, there was nothing more to be said. Hess had other things to worry about. A night flight to Britain, for example.
Englishmen who had survived the hell of Hermann Göring’s terror bombing would not mince words if Hess landed alone and unprotected in their country. They would do their talking with bullets. And that’s fine, Hess thought. I’ve faced bullets before; I can do it again. The mere thought of his destination brought a strange quickening to his blood. England!
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
January 7, 1941, The Bavarian Alps
Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, Reich Commissar for the Consolidation of German Stock and chief of the SD, landed at Ainring Airport near Berchtesgaden just two hours after Rudolf Hess delivered Hitler’s unexpected message to Berlin. Like Hess, Heydrich piloted himself, and upon landing he commandeered a convertible Porsche from a local Gestapo sergeant. The sergeant professed great pleasure at being able to help the Obergruppenführer, but inside he felt only despair. He knew that even if the beautiful car were returned a burned-out wreck, he could say nothing. Men who angered Reinhard Heydrich had been known to disappear without a trace.
The open Porsche rocketed along the blacked-out highway, half-sliding around curves made deadly by a sudden winter shower. Heydrich drove stonefaced despite the brittle drops that stung his skin and eyes. The frigid wind would have driven any normal man to groan in pain, but the young Obergruppenführer prided himself on his ability to control his human weaknesses. The fact that he was quite mad aided him considerably in this task. Unlike most of Hitler’s chieftains, Heydrich seemed the incarnation of the mythical Aryan superman. Tall and blond, blue-eyed, spare and muscular of frame, he carried himself with the self-assurance of a crown prince.
A jarring amalgam of opposites, Heydrich put every man he met off balance. A world-class fencer, he had been asked to join the German Olympic team, yet tales of his homosexual conquests were whispered in SS barracks throug
hout the Reich. He was an accomplished violinist who not only brought tears to the eyes of his audiences, but sometimes cried himself during particularly beautiful passages. Yet his sadistic rampages through Eastern Europe would eventually cause Czech partisans to christen him the “Butcher of Prague,” and British intelligence to order his assassination. And the most telling paradox of all: Reinhard Heydrich—the man who had vowed to “eliminate the stain” of Jewry from the world—had Jewish blood flowing through his veins.
At the outer gate of Obersalzburg, the SS guards eyed the approaching Porsche with suspicion. When they recognized its driver, however, they snapped to attention and waved Heydrich through. The sentries at the inner gate displayed the same deference, and he soon reached the summit of the mountain. The Berghof appeared to be under siege. Most of the High Command had arrived during the afternoon; long black staff cars overflowed the parking lot and encircled the rear of the house. Heydrich picked a path through the cars, made his way around to the front of the house, and opened the door without knocking.
An SS sergeant of the Liebstandarte had been posted in the entry hall to meet him. After a curt salute, the sergeant whisked Heydrich up the stairs to the bedrooms and indicated the door he wished the SD chief to enter. “You’re to wait here, Herr Obergruppenführer. By order of the Führer.”
Heydrich looked mystified. “Am I not to attend the conference downstairs?”
“Nein, Herr Obergruppenführer. Reichsleiter Bormann instructed me to have you meet the Führer in the teahouse, but I just received word that he won’t have time for the walk.”
“We could drive,” Heydrich suggested.
“The Führer never drives to the teahouse.”
The sergeant seemed to think this explanation sufficient.
Heydrich dismissed him and reached for the bedroom door handle, then paused as another door opened farther down the hall. A blond woman leaned furtively out; Heydrich registered an ample bosom beneath a rather plain face before she ducked back inside. Only after entering the small bedroom designated for his meeting with the Führer did he realize that the woman he had just seen must be Eva Braun. With an extreme sense of discomfort Heydrich put the incident out of his mind. The Führer in a carnal entanglement with a peasant girl? Preposterous!
