Heroes

by David Hagberg

  Schlechter kissed the older woman on the cheek and smiled at the other. “You’re looking lovely this evening, Katrina,” he said to her. “I’ve brought someone to meet you.”

  The girl nearly jumped out of her skin, and Deland realized with a sinking feeling exactly what it was Schlechter had in mind. A couple of weeks ago they had talked over lunch at the mess hall on station about Deland’s love life, which was zero.

  Schlechter had pried. This was the result.

  “This is Edmund Dorfman, who works out at the station with me. He is not nearly as serious as he seems at this moment, but I think the poor boy is frightened.” He laughed; the older woman tittered. “Dorfman, I’d like you to meet Katrina Mueller. She works in Kwe/3 in town.”

  “Herr Dorfman,” she said politely. She had a gently enchanting voice.

  Deland nodded, flustered.

  “This is Maria Quelle,” Schlechter said, introducing the other woman. “We’ve been friends since Berlin.”

  The woman smiled. “We go back too far,” she said. “I’m pleased to meet you, Herr Dorfman. Rudy has told me so much about you.”

  Schlechter shoved Deland down next to Katrina, and Maria got to her feet and collected her handbag.

  “Sorry we have to run like this, Katy, but I’ll see you in the morning,” Maria said.

  “You’ll like the sauerbraten here,” Schlechter said, and before Deland could do a thing, or even remember about his bicycle, Rudy and Maria had turned and were threading their way toward the front door. They stopped to talk with the big, burly woman behind the bar, and then they were gone.

  Deland turned back and Katrina jumped again. She had been studying his profile.

  He smiled. “I’m sorry.”

  “About what, Herr Dorfman?” she asked timidly.

  “Please,” he said. “My name is Edmund.”

  She hesitated a moment, but he smiled. “Edmund,” she finally said.

  “I didn’t realize that Rudy was going to pull something like this.”

  “Neither did I suspect it of Maria,” she said. She reached for her purse and started to get up.

  “Where are you going?”

  She looked down into his eyes. “Home,” she said matter-of factly.

  Deland’s heart was pounding. He felt like a complete fool.

  “Please don’t. We’re here together now. Have supper with me?”

  Again she hesitated.

  “Please?”

  She smiled. It was warm. “They did go through a lot of trouble,” she said, sitting down.

  The barmaid brought him a beer and Katrina another glass of wine. They both ordered the sauerbraten.

  “I’m not sure I know what Kwe/3 is,” Deland said when they were alone again.

  “Kriegswerke Erwerbungen. It is the war plant acquisitions office. I’m in section three. Nothing very important, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re being modest.”

  She laughed; the sound was like music, and it went right through him. He shivered. “No,” she said. “We purchase soap and towels and bed sheets, those sorts of things.” She lowered her eyes. “And you?”

  “I’m a mathematician.”

  Her eyes widened. “You must be brilliant, then, like Maria’s Rudy.”

  Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of Amt/Ausland Abwehr, hesitated a moment on the top step of his private railway car before stepping down to trackside, as an extraordinary thought crossed his mind. There was no one—not one single person here in Germany—whom he could completely trust.

  He and his wife Erika had never been close. Which in a way was good; when it all ended, his taint would not reflect on her.

  His adjutant, Lieutenant Colonel Jenke, was a fool. He was a reasonably capable administrator, but he had no vision, no creativity, and he certainly was not one to be relied on.

  Hansen in Abteilung I, who had taken over from old Piekenbrock, was a raging Nazi, as were Loringhoven and Jacobsen.

  There was no one. It gave him an odd feeling at the moment to realize it, almost a sense of freedom.

  They had stopped outside Hamburg, near the tiny suburb of Reinbek, but even this far out the destruction from the Allied bombing raids was awesome. The air smelled of plaster dust and burned wood.

  Several large staff cars were parked on the road behind the burned-out shell of a station. Two officers and a half-dozen men were waiting as Canaris stepped down.

  They all saluted.

  “So good of you to meet me here with a car,” Canaris said.

  His voice was very soft, and he spoke with a slight lisp. He was a small man, five feet three, slight of stature, with white hair, bushy eyebrows, and an air of fatigue about him, as if he had not been getting enough sleep. His uniform was on the shabby side.

  The Iron Cross on his tunic was just visible beneath his unbuttoned overcoat.

  “Major Loetz, sir,” the senior Hamburg officer introduced himself. He was the new man up here, and Canaris strongly suspected he was reporting to Department VI of the RSHA.

  They shook hands.

  “We only just found out you were coming, Herr Admiral.”

  “The tracks still have not been repaired through the city?”

  “No, sir,” Loetz said. He turned and introduced the other officer. “Captain Hans Meitner.”

  Canaris looked at him. “Chief of Communications Branch?”

  They knew each other, but Loetz wasn’t aware of it.

  “Yes, sir,” the captain, a thick-wasted older man, said. He was from the old school. Canaris liked him.

  “Nothing further from our friend in Oak Ridge?”

  “No, sir.”

  . “Or from Lieutenant Voster?”

  “No, sir. But if the boat has gotten away, and everything was as it should be, we were not due to hear from them until today in any event.” “What’s this?” Loetz asked impatiently.

  They could not hide anything from the man, so between them, Canaris and Meitner had decided to handle the affair as a routine matter. Dangerous, but it was the only way.

  “It’s nothing,” Canaris said. “Let’s go out to the communications center.” He marched across the tracks and climbed into one of the staff cars. Loetz and Meitner got in with him, while the soldiers piled into the other vehicles, and they headed away from the station.

  Dear God, he was tired. Sick to death of the senseless destruction. It was horrible in Berlin, but this was even worse.

  He felt a constriction in his chest as they passed block after block of knocked-down buildings, burned-out hulks of homes, piles of rubble that had once been thriving factories.

  “I hadn’t realized the destruction was so complete,” he said half to himself. Reading the daily reports was one thing; seeing the damage first hand was something else.

  “It will be a happy day when New York and Washington are reduced to this,” Loetz said.

  Canaris looked sharply at him. “Good God. man, isn’t this enough?”

  Loetz bridled. “I only meant, sir … that is, we can’t leave this unrevenged.”

  “Can’t revenge take another form?”

  “I … don’t know what to say, sir,” Loetz stammered, embarrassed. Captain Meitner was looking the other way, out the window.

  “Do you actually think we’re going to win this war, Hen Major?” Canaris said. He knew that he was going too far, but he could not help himself. He was worried, at the moment, about Dieter Schey. Deeply worried about the information he was sending over. If Schey’s early transmissions had not been exaggerated and if their other intelligence units had been on the button, then the Americans would very soon have the new bomb.

  Germany might have it, too. Oster and Dohnanyi had both agreed that such a possibility would be totally unthinkable. It would have to be blocked at all costs.

  “I’d pull the trigger on Hitler myself before I allowed such a monster weapon into the Luftwaffe’s hands,” Oster had cried.

  Canaris ran a hand across h
is eyes. “I’m sorry, Major Loetz. I’m just very tired.”

  “I understand, Herr Admiral,” Loetz said coldly.

  They passed the ruined outskirts of Hamburg to the north, toward Ahrensberg, where the highway turned down a narrow country lane that ended a few kilometers later at the house, as it was called, that housed the Abwehr’s Hamburg radio station. The two-story stucco house, with an odd-looking turret at the rear, was one of the few things in Hamburg that Schellenberg and the RSHA had not yet taken over. They had snatched many of the intelligence-gathering functions from the Abwehr, and even the cream of the Brandenburg Division, but for the moment at least, the Abwehr’s link with her agents around the world was still secure despite Loetz.

  Inside, they went immediately upstairs to the radio rooms themselves, which occupied the entire second floor. Tiny tables equipped with radios and notepads were stuck everywhere, even in back closets. Power cables had been strung beneath the floorboards, but the connections to the antennae, which bristled in the trees outside, came through cable runs across the ceiling.

  There was a lot of activity this afternoon. Messages came and went from the radio operators, via copy boys, to the message center behind a large window in one of the back bedrooms. From there, after decoding, the plain German texts were sent downstairs, where they were typed on message forms and sent to the addressees by various means, depending upon the urgency of the message.

  A young lieutenant in the message center jumped up from his desk when he saw Canaris and the others coming up the stairs.

  He rushed across the room to them and saluted. He was excited. “It came, Heir Kapitan. We have word from U293.”

  He held out a yellow message form to Meitner, who passed it on to Canaris. It had not yet been sent downstairs for typing, but it had been decoded.

  PACKAGE SECURED HAVE CLEARED 158-277 ETA 001-358 30.1.44

  REGARDS VOSTER Double-o one, was Portugal; 358, somewhere along its coast.

  It would take nearly a month for the submarine to make the crossing, if all went well, and another couple of days for the Lisbon messenger to meet Voster, pick up the film canisters Schey had radioed he was sending over, and then make it across the border into Spain.

  Four weeks. Canaris hoped he could hold out that long. It was going to be difficult.

  Loetz wasn’t the least bit interested in the message, assuming it was nothing more than routine traffic. Canaris often meddled in the day-to-day routine of his outstations. This was no different.

  “You needn’t make copies,” Canaris said softly.

  The young lieutenant was startled. “Sir?” he said. But Meitner nodded, and the lieutenant saluted and went back to his desk.

  “We’ll have to log it, Herr Admiral,” Meitner said, taking him aside. Loetz had gone across the room to check on something.

  “As a routine transmission from one of our coast watchers,” Canaris said.

  Meitner managed a slight smile. “Of course, sir; it was nothing more.”

  Loetz came back. He was rubbing his hands together. “And now, Herr Admiral, we are ready for your inspection.”

  Canaris had pocketed the message, and he reached out and patted Loetz on the shoulder. “That is not why I came up here today.”

  “Herr Admiral?” the major said. He was suspicious.

  Canaris looked around at the radio operators and the equipment.

  The house was warm. It smelted of electrical apparatus and human bodies. It would be much worse for them in the bunkers at Zossen, outside Berlin. But it couldn’t be helped if the SD was to be thrown off.

  “The bulk of operations here are to be immediately suspended.”

  It was a bombshell. Even Captain Meitner, who for the past seven months had acted as Canaris’ eyes and ears for the entire Hamburg station, was stunned.

  “The A and B circuits, of course, will be moved first. Specific written orders have been cut. They’ll be here very soon.”

  “Are we to join you at Maybach II, sir?” Meitner asked.

  “Yes. The technical staff has already begun attending to your electrical needs. But Captain Unterman will be liaison. He’ll handle the details.” Canaris looked down the corridor past the message center to the radio operator positions in one of the front bedrooms. Three of the operators, their earphones shoved down around their necks, were looking this way. When Canaris caught their eye, they turned back to their radios.

  “This comes as a great surprise to me, Herr Admiral.” Loetz was clearly unhappy. In Berlin he would not have as much autonomy as he enjoyed here.

  “You mean Brigadier Schellenberg has not informed you?”

  Canaris snapped sarcastically.

  “No, Herr Admiral … I mean …” Loetz blustered.

  “Then you may so inform Department VI, if you wish, Herr Major,” Canaris said harshly. He turned to Meitner. “You are hereby detached to Headquarters Berlin, Amt/Ausland.”

  “My position, sir?” Meitner said, obviously pleased.

  “My aide-de-camp,” Canaris snapped. He softened. “That is, if you wish to accept such a dangerous assignment.”

  “With pleasure, sir, with pleasure,” Meitner said, clicking his heels.

  “Now,” Canaris said, turning back to Loetz. “There are certain details that you will have to attend to. I will be much too busy over the next few weeks to do it myself. But I’m sure you will do. a fine job.”

  It would tie Loetz up for weeks.

  “I see,” he said. “Will you leave me Captain Meitner to help?”

  “No,” Canaris said. “I’m taking him with me this afternoon.

  I have several pressing jobs for him to start on immediately.”

  By morning they had reached the Rhein-Main Luftwaffe Base at Frankfurt, where Canaris sent his railway car back to Berlin and commandeered a Dornier Do 17F reconnaissance aircraft with little difficulty. He still was chief of Amt/Ausland Abwehr, no matter what Walter Schellenberg and his SD were doing behind his back. They had to stop to refuel and to repair a minor problem with a fuel pump at the Luftwaffe Depot in Lyon, France, and then continued over the Pyrenees into Spain, finally coming in for a landing in Seville that afternoon.

  “The situation is difficult here in Spain at the moment,” Canaris explained as he and Meitner changed into civilian clothing.

  “Franco has become touchy.”

  “Why are we here, sir?” Meitner asked. He was uneasy.

  “Our Fiihrer has his Berghof, Himmler and the others their Bavarian retreats, while I have Spain. Leave me do the talking if any is necessary.”

  But there was no trouble. The crew of the Dornier, in uniform, were required to remain within the confines of the airport, and Canaris and Meitner were both given handbills prepared by the Guardia, in Spanish, German, and English, that activities of any sort that could be construed as having even the remotest connection with any phase of the war were expressly and strictly forbidden.

  They each signed a document that testified they had read and understood the handbill, and would comply; their bags were then stamped by the customs people without being opened, and they were waved through.

  “Have a pleasant and safe trip, Senor Guillermo,” the official said.

  They hired a car, Meitner totally mystified now, and they headed south toward the seacoast. When they had cleared the airport and the city of Seville, Meitner asked Canaris about their reception.

  Canaris smiled tiredly. “I was here years ago as a young lieutenant. We were looking for supply depots for our submarine operations in the Mediterranean.”

  “And you went by the name Guillermo?”

  “f>fn Canaris nodded, the memories coming back in full force now.

  Those had been the very best of days.

  “They still remember you?”

  Canaris shrugged. “I have been a friend of Spain.”

  Meitner shook his head. Everyone knew that the Admiral was an amazing man. In the past twenty-four hours he was coming to le
arn just how true that was.

  They skirted north of Cadiz before they headed south along the coast through Chiclana and later Tarifa, which was directly on the Strait of Gibraltar. The view was magnificent, and Canaris felt almost as if he was coming to his ancestral home after a very long absence.

  It was only a few kilometers farther when they rounded a curve in the road and came down the long hill around the western shores of Algeciras Bay; they drove into the resort town itself as the sun was setting. And it was like coming home for Canaris.

  He had worked here; he had played here; he had loved here since before the War to End All Wars, as it had been called. Every time he came back like this, he had to ask himself why he had ever left.

  Meitner read at least part of that on his face. “What is this place, sir?” he asked.

  “Algeciras.”

  “I know, sir. I meant, have you friends here?”

  “Yes,” Canaris said, his voice barely audible. Was it a lost youth, he had to ask himself? Or was it something else? Something even more fundamental that brought him back here time after time?

  He directed their driver to drop them off in town at the Hotel Reina Maria Cristina, but Canaris did not go in. Instead, he instructed Meitner to register for them.

  “Tell them it is Senor Guillermo, and I would like the little house next door if it is available.”

  “And you, sir?” Meitner asked, looking around the square. It was getting dark now, and there were a lot of people here.

  Tourists escaping the winter and the war. The climate was perfect; it was warm with a light breeze up from the sea, and dominating the eastern shore of the bay was Gibraltar, the huge key to the Mediterranean.

  “I’m going to church,” Canaris said, and he turned and walked away, leaving Meitner standing there openmouthed.

  He crossed the square, waited for traffic, then went around the corner past a small row of shops: a tobacconist, a leather goods store, a silversmith, and the tiny rental library, where he ducked through a courtyard, out a rear gate, and across a narrow avenue into the Church of the Little Saints.