Moe said casually, “You were behind Operation Pastorius in 1942, I believe.”
Canaris blinked and Karl suppressed a smile. “Ja, that failure led Hitler to rebuke me. I began to look for a way out of this war.”
Karl had heard of this attempt by eight Nazi agents, sent into the United States to sabotage generating plants supplying electrical power. Groves had been sure their targets were the laboratories in Oak Ridge, but apparently the agents didn’t know what the power plants were feeding into. Suspicious local police nailed them pretty quick. Five of them were executed.
“And your comrades?” Moe swept a hand to suggest the others in uniform, neatly lined in an arc. The officers eyed the discussion carefully but said nothing.
“They came to realize the Hitler madness in their own time.” Canaris gritted his teeth. “For some, it was when Hitler commanded our Security Headquarters, our Reichssicherheitshauptamt, to retaliate against the Italians for Mussolini’s arrest by the kidnapping or murder of Pius XII and King Victor Emmanuel of Italy.” Canaris said this mildly, a simple matter of fact.
Moe let a bit of surprise show in his widened eyes. “I never heard of that.”
“It was a secret, since I and others blocked the attempt. The Gestapo concealed it with a cover story. It worked. When there are no facts to support lies, facts must be made.”
Karl leaned forward. “So all those here with you want Hitler gone, and a separate peace?” He knew he had to get specifics, to make a report on this strange incident credible. If they ever got to report it, of course, which seemed unlikely. The gray uniforms were not reassuring.
“We saw things differently. After the 1942 Soviet campaign failed, I told General Fromm there was no way Germany could win the war. Continuing it was stupidity and tragedy. Just like the first war! In 1943 I visited Spain, I made contact with British agents from Gibraltar. We were active around the British naval base of Gibraltar, watching with cameras and radar to track Allied supply ships in the western Mediterranean. It was a useful way to send messages to London about our anti-Hitler faction in the General Staff. I helped form a circle of like-minded Wehrmacht officers. We are of the Prussian tradition, not the National Socialist elements that party forced into the military profession in the 1930s. Our circle knew we could not in safety oppose the party outright.”
Moe said, “We had heard rumors of this, but no hard details.”
“We are united. Walter Model, an old friend, known in the General Staff as the Führer’s Fireman—even he has joined us now. We lost some when you annihilated our offices in Berlin with that terror bomb.”
“We were aiming for Hitler,” Karl said stiffly.
“Of course. We wish you had caught him. We have spoken much of this, since that bomb. We have been careful, and this chance visit of Heisenberg suddenly opened an opportunity. Our very lives were in peril to even discuss such treason. But we tried before, to let the British know. In 1943, in occupied France, I was conducted blindfolded in Paris to the local head of the British Intelligence Service. Their agents took me to the Convent of the Nuns of the Passion of Our Blessed Lord, 127 Rue de la Santé.”
“I know where that is,” Karl said. “But you could get in touch with the Brits in Paris? Unbelievable.”
Canaris gave them a sad, wise smile. There was a forlorn elegance about him. “Intelligence services find it useful to retain connections, even perhaps, in time, friendships. I met a man, code name Jade Amicol. By my own efforts I found later he is in reality Colonel Claude Olivier. You may check that datum with your own sources.”
“We will.” Moe leaned forward. “What was the point of this Paris meeting?”
Canaris nodded. “I wanted to know the terms for peace, if Germany got rid of Hitler. Just as I do now.”
Karl asked, “You heard back?”
“Churchill’s reply came two weeks later. It was simple: unconditional surrender.”
Moe said, “Why should it be different now?”
“This war has become even more terrible.” The words carried a weary husk.
Karl kept most of a snarl out of his voice. “Mostly due to your side.”
Canaris sighed ruefully. “You are correct. I wish to stop this insanity, prevent the Soviets from reaching my country, stop the huge losses.”
“A bit late for that,” Karl shot back.
“I knew we were led by a madman in 1942. After the staff review of the eastern front, with you Americans in the war due to the stupid Japanese, Hitler seized me by the lapels, demanding to know whether I was insinuating that Germany would lose the war. No one pulled him off me. I said no, of course.” A long, weary smile creased his face.
Karl noticed some movement among the other officers, and pure fear spiked in him. The creepy unease he had felt now became impossible to suppress. He stood up, looked for a way to leave, run, escape—
“I believe your airplane is ready,” Canaris said, standing. “Please, take some of these delights with you. And—” A flourish of a manila envelope, delivered by an assistant. “I have written in my own hand our proposal. Please take this to those who need it.”
Karl said, “Who do you represent?”
“Many. Perhaps the most important to you, von Rundstedt and Rommel. They are of our armée centrale.”
Karl blinked; these two were commanders in France.
“They want to parley?” Moe asked.
“A cease-fire, to allow some moments for thought.”
“In the west alone?”
Canaris sighed. “We have no avenues to speak to the Soviets, who are at the edge of Poland. So much happens now, so schnell—so fast. My old friend von Rundstedt, he feels that had he been able to move the armored divisions he had behind the coast—countermanded by that amateur Hitler—your invasion would not have succeeded.”
“Von Rundstedt is your commander in the west,” Moe said, disbelief plain in the skeptical tilt of his mouth. “You’re sure he backs you?”
“He is frustrated by continued interference from higher levels, especially with the disposition of his inadequate forces.”
“And Rommel?”
“He is our most popular general, by far—and a complex case. Rommel opposes assassinating Hitler. He believes an assassination attempt would spark civil war in Germany and Austria, making Hitler a martyr for a cause that would then outlast him. Instead Rommel insists that Hitler be arrested and brought to trial for his crimes. He feels we of the older army, the Prussians, must come to the rescue of Germany, as he puts it.”
Karl could not restrain himself, though he knew he should let Moe carry this. “And our atomic bombing Berlin—how did that change things?”
Canaris allowed himself a thin smile. “We realized that hope of a stalemate, as your armies approached, was now impossible. It broke the morale of much of our populace—which the earlier bombing had not. The drama was immediate.”
Moe said, “You Prussians, why do you turn against the rest of the army?”
“There was always opposition to Hitler in conservative circles. Remember, his National Socialist Workers’ Party, as the name suggests, came from the left. Their principal opponents in the 1920s were the Communists. He beat them in the streets, wiped them from the country. Hitler’s dazzling successes in 1938 to 1941 stifled army opposition. After the Soviet campaign failed, we start to whisper among ourselves. Now we are desperate—but the Nazis control much of the army through their SS units. Hitler imposed his views on the military chain of command—disaster! We despair always of the Nazi incompetence and crimes. In 1943 we planned a coup against the entire Nazi regime. Many Nazi officials we would accuse for known crimes. Hitler would be arrested as an insane person. We would base this diagnosis in high court on his exposure to mustard gas in the first war. We carefully, quietly assembled a secret dossier detailing many of the crimes committed in eastern Europe by the Nazis: the Zossen documents.” Canaris brightened, eyebrows raised, voice lofting from its stern drone to a cheer
ful note. “But then your Berlin bomb came to our aid. You can now find Hitler and . . .” He smiled, eyes narrowed.
A long silence.
Moe nodded. “I will convey your message.”
Everyone stood, and Canaris made a ritual of shaking hands with Moe and Karl. All officers were at rigid attention.
Moe looked Canaris in the eye. “Can I trust what you’re not saying?”
A brisk nod. “Every word.”
PART XIII
* * *
GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG
It is not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It is because we dare not venture that they are difficult.
—Seneca
1.
September 16, 1944
It took many days to process what had happened.
Somehow, during their fast trip back, Karl thought not of the war raging beneath the wings of the light bomber, but of the sole performance he had heard of Wagner’s opera Götterdämmerung. That was what this war had become now.
When traveling across Germany in 1936, he had avoided the overt signs of the Nazis, who were pervading the culture more and more. There was much to admire in German society, particularly the science, and he visited Berlin and Heidelberg with joy in his step. Conversations in his halting German with physicists and chemists were stimulating. He had bought tickets to the Ring Cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus and sat through the Wagnerian version of an Old Norse term, Ragnarok. The legend was about a gigantic war among various beings and gods that ultimately led to the burning, drowning, and renewal of the world.
Now, eight years later, a grand and terrible opera like that played out with real deaths, far below them as they flew. Moe had somehow fetched by radio a light bomber, that met them immediately after their landing in Rome. They were the sole passengers as the airplane skirted around the French war zone and landed at the very airfield where the A-bomb team worked. No big reception this time, because nobody in England knew what Moe was carrying in a plain manila folder.
Within two hours of landing, they were in central London, deep within the Admiralty Citadel. The brutally functional operations center for the Admiralty and RAF now had jammed corridors, constant talk barking down the halls, an air of incessant tension. From offhand remarks, Karl gathered that apparently the French campaign was not going well against the continual death-dust raids. Details were secret. Speculation ran amok.
Yet as he and Moe entered an inconspicuous, medium-size conference room, quiet prevailed. They were in their seats against the wall, facing the long table, when suddenly there came one of those double-take moments. Karl saw General Eisenhower at the table. His uniform jacket was hooked on his chair back and his shirt showed sweat crescents at the armpits, wrinkles, even a coffee stain. Eisenhower frowned, conferring with other officers both British and American. They were murmuring as they read, together, the manuscript from the manila folder. Their presence and concentration were a shock, even for the ever-prepared Moe, who for the first time ever seemed nervous. “Wow,” was all he said.
Eisenhower the man looked much as Karl recalled from newsreels. But today his face seemed lined, compared to the confident, smiling general who’d talked in those newsreels to the troops in full battle gear, the day before Normandy. His eyes were heavy-lidded and his smile was gone. Karl had gathered some news about the slowing of the Allied advance in France. Apparently the tactical battle plan was not working in the face of the death dust. As the meeting assembled, Eisenhower frowned deeper. “This is the high brass, all right,” Moe whispered. “I recognize maybe ten. Don’t know why we’re here.”
The answer came soon. Eisenhower glanced at a page and said, “The agent concerned, the courier . . . Moe Berg? The baseball player?” He raised skeptical eyebrows and glanced around the room, puzzled, as Moe rose. “Sit here.” Eisenhower gestured to an empty seat at the table.
As Moe sat at the center table, Eisenhower said in clipped tones, “I want to hear straight from you what happened with Canaris.” Eisenhower’s piercing eyes silenced every murmur in the room.
Moe went through the entire incident in meticulous detail. He brought up observations Karl had not even noticed, such as the decorations General Wilhelm Canaris wore, an Iron Cross and the German Cross in silver. Moe went through the Canaris revelations in a steady, studious way, often using Canaris’s exact phrasing. Karl knew he could not have done anything like it. Moe had perfect recall, apparently without effort. No wonder he was so good in Norway, eastern Europe, the rest of his rumored exploits. The examination took over half an hour, and then Eisenhower pointed at the manuscript. Karl could see it was handwritten.
“You read this?”
“No, sir.”
“Excellent. Without going into details, I can inform everyone here that it proposes a ‘separate agreement’ between us and the German General Staff. This will come, Canaris assumes, after Hitler is dead.”
“As accomplished by us, yes.” Moe kept his face without any hint of emotion. Karl realized that he could not have done that, either.
Eisenhower twisted his mouth into a suspicious grimace. “And you gave us the coordinates of his Wolf’s Lair hideout in East Prussia? Got them from this Heisenberg guy?”
“Yes, sir. He just handed them to us at the very end of our talk in Lausanne.”
“Why did he do it?”
“I think he wants Hitler out and the war over. He also told my colleague, Karl Cohen, several details about their atomic bomb program.”
“Cohen?” Eisenhower looked around the room. Karl felt a dash of panic, opened his mouth, then stood. “Ah, you. What did you deduce from that talk?”
Karl opened his mouth, but words did not come out. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “Ah . . . ah . . . I think he was saying, though indirectly, that they do not have a bomb program. They have started building a reactor, but haven’t gotten far.”
A quizzical look. “We’ve done that? Some kind of reactor?” Clearly Eisenhower knew little about what came before the bomb. Maybe he didn’t need to.
“We successfully took our reactor in Chicago to criticality in December of 1942.”
Eisenhower studied Karl intently. “And we took another year and a half to get a bomb.”
“Right. The reactor was useful, sure. Taught us a lot. But getting the right kind of uranium, called U-235, separated out . . . That took time. And a lot of people, building centrifuges—”
“So the Germans aren’t close to a bomb at all. Great! Groves—” Eisenhower turned, lifting his eyebrows. Karl saw he had completely missed recognizing Leslie Groves, somehow less visible here among all the brass, sitting halfway down the table, facing Eisenhower’s side and so away from Karl. “Groves, looks like your worries were wrong. Good!” He turned to Karl. “This dust they’re using is from that program, though?”
Groves said carefully, “It must be. They’re throwing it away to stop us on the ground in France.” He was in his usual bulging uniform, but now with what was called an Eisenhower jacket, deftly tailored to his body in olive drab, brass highly polished.
Eisenhower looked pensively around the silent room. “If we were in the jam they are, we might do the same.”
“I don’t think so,” Karl said. He knew it would be smart to hold his tongue, but here was the only chance he would get. “We’re already hearing the Germans say we’re using terror against them—obliterating cities with one bomb. I don’t think we’d use that dust as they do. It comes damned close to the Geneva Protocol’s prohibition of gas warfare, doesn’t it?”
Dead quiet. Eisenhower stared at him and then stood, replaced his chair, paced a bit. A good way to dominate a room, Karl thought, instead of just sitting. The general said, very slowly in his flat, Midwestern accent, “This is all a new kind of warfare. We haven’t thought about it much. The bomb, the V-2s, the dust, those jets— The lawyers yak it up a lot, but we don’t need them to tell us our business. Not now. Not when we’ve got men dying by the hu
ndreds, the thousands, every damn day.”
Through the men grouped around the table and in the wall seats an odd ripple ran, a discomfort without a voice, not a murmur but a slow rustling as bodies shifted uneasily in hard seats. They had gotten the drift without reading any documents.
Eisenhower studied the handwritten sheets in silence. Others at the table were reading copiesthem as well. After some whispered consultations, two aides left the room. Eisenhower looked at Moe again.
Eisenhower riveted Moe with a hard stare. “There are records here, in your summary, of German messages sent through to British intelligence over the last few years. I’m pretty sure they never made it. What more did you gather of what Canaris knew?”
Moe said, “He thought the British gave the German staff locations of Soviet bases and units in 1939. You see—”
As Moe explained further, Karl saw a British colonel nod. Eisenhower noticed that. “Plus,” Moe continued, “Canaris said explicitly that his faction sent word through British agents in France, to Churchill.”
Eisenhower raised his eyebrows. “I heard of this. Some funny kind of contact, Churchill was amused. Someone called it the Hail Mary pass.”
Karl was still standing. He said, “Canaris met the English agent at the Convent of the Nuns of the Passion of Our Blessed Lord, 127 Rue de la Santé.”
Eisenhower blinked, perhaps at the detail. “It’s our policy to keep a united front. Churchill said so, in reply to that overture. That’s getting harder to do.”
An officer nearby asked, “Why, sir?”
“The French”—he nodded to a French officer at the end of the table—“are irritated at the dust pollution of their prime farmland, highways, some towns. Nobody knows how long that radioactive stuff will take to go away, not be harmful. That strikes a chord.”
The Berlin Project Page 37
