by Ward Wagher
The gathering dawn arrived in a hush of new-fallen snow. Friedmann selected an un-obvious hide for their day’s rest. Once again, they traded off watching and sleeping. It was a matter of routine, except for a the hunters that wandered near. Friedmann assumed a couple of Poles were out looking for game to replenish their larders – or to replace food stolen by the Russians.
Major Dagobert Damm struggled with the mound of paperwork on his desk. It was not so much the content, but it was the volume. He considered himself a skilled paper-pusher, but there were limits to what any man could accomplish. As Reinhard Gehlen’s man in Warsaw, he was responsible for the gathering and dissemination of information about the Russians in Poland. Of course, following the partition of that unfortunate country, the various regions had been renamed by the victors. But everyone still referred to the area as Poland.
And Gehlen was in a panic about what the Russians were up to. Damm received daily demands for updates on the state of forces across the border. He had already lost four teams from hastily mounted missions, attempting to discover what was going on with the Russians. And some of them had been with him for years.
He had smoked the current cigarette down to a bare stub, and he lit another from its remains. He stabbed the butt into an overflowing ashtray as he gratefully inhaled the fresh tobacco smoke. He glanced at the amber colored liquid in the cut-glass tumbler on his desk and decided he had had enough for the night. The end of the English war had made genuine Scotch whiskey available again in Germany, but it was still expensive.
Damm was aware he smoked and drank too much, but that seemed endemic to the intelligence business. One needed whatever crutch that fell to hand to deliver results. And Dagobert Damm routinely delivered. He enjoyed working for Reinhard Gehlen. The Colonel was only marginally competent, but he loyally supported his people. And that loyalty was returned.
The events that had placed Gehlen in command of the nation’s intelligence operations were horrifying. Like most of his peers, he was convinced that Heinrich Schloss had saved Germany. It was hard to imagine that Admiral Canaris had been so disloyal. Even those closest to him in the Abwehr were in shocked disbelief at whatever insanity gripped him. The thought that Schloss was an imposter was ludicrous.
The events surrounding the attempted coup by the OKW back in the fall were swaddled in mystery. Damm was relieved at the unambiguous result. Schloss was more firmly confirmed as Chancellor and the public viewed the event as a brief fall storm before the sun resumed shining.
And now it was clear the Russians were up to no good, and if Gehlen was in a panic, Dagobert Damm was terrified. He was convinced the Russians would come across the border and stopping them would require a miracle.
After a quick two-knock, Corporal Ettinger opened the door. “Sir, Sergeant Friedmann has returned.”
Damm stood up. “Show him in, please.”
Friedmann was a spit and polish soldier. When returning from the field, he normally was back to something looking like a recruiting poster as soon as possible. He was still in his field gear. Damm felt his eyebrows raising in surprise.
“You are back early, Sergeant,” he said.
“Sir,” Friedmann spoke, “I needed to get this into your hands as soon as possible.”
“And what news from Bialystok, Sergeant?”
“Sir, we counted nearly 600 tanks laagered near Bialystok. And they were a new model.”
Damm swore as he stared at the sergeant. “Corporal Ettinger, get in here and bring your steno-pad. Sergeant, have a seat.”
Ettinger bustled into the office carrying a tray with a coffee pot and mugs. He carried his steno-pad under an arm, and a pencil in his teeth. He set the tray on the desk and pulled up the other chair. Damm walked back behind the desk and sat down.
“First of all,” he said, “I want you to dictate your report. I want to hear it firsthand before Ettinger types it. Then I will dictate a message to Berlin. This is something they will need to know about.”
“Of course, Major,” Friedmann said.
He cleared his throat and began his report. It was precise and carefully structured. He had pondered his report during the three-day hike from across the border and knew exactly what he needed to say. He spoke for forty-five minutes as Ettinger scribbled shorthand on his notepad. When he finished, he leaned back and folded his hands in his lap.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Damm said. “Now, let me ask you a few questions.”
For the next half-hour, Damm worked his way through the report, relying upon his own prodigious memory. He elicited details Friedmann hadn’t realized he had seen, and Friedmann was very observant. Finally, Damm dictated a message to Berlin. He was certain this was the information Gehlen was looking for. And Gehlen would not be pleased to receive it. He looked at Freidmann.
“Good work, Sergeant. Go get some rest. We will talk again tomorrow.”
§ § §
January 12, 1943; 10 AM
Reich Chancellor’s Office
Reich Chancellery
Berlin, German
Schloss stood as the three men entered his office. Goering had called an hour earlier and requested an emergency meeting. The two men accompanying the Reichsmarshall confirmed to him that the news would likely be bad. General Heinz Guderian and Colonel Reinhard Gehlen were both impeccably turned out in uniform, and each looked grim. Goering was dressed in a powder-blue uniform and his normally ebullient manner was subdued. Schloss thought the man looked haggard. Kirche slid a third chair into place across the desk, and Schloss invited his guests to be seated.
“What have we this morning, Herr Reichsmarshall?” he asked.
“Some disturbing news from the East,” Goering said. “Colonel Gehlen brought it to me this morning, and I knew you would need to see it.”
Goering nodded to Gehlen, who produced a red-striped envelope, which he handed across the desk to Schloss. The chancellor took his penknife and sliced the end of the envelope. He slid the think sheaf of papers out and looked at them. He looked up at Gehlen.
“Okay, in a nutshell, what am I looking at, here?”
“Herr Reich Chancellor,” Gehlen began, “we had a team operating in Russian Polish territory near Bialystok and discovered a tank park with nearly 600 tanks. New model Russian tanks.”
Okay, Hennie, you are outside of the history you knew back in that other Berlin. What do you do now?
Schloss quickly scanned through the document and looked at his guests. “Do we have any other corroborating information?”
“The Luftwaffe radio operators are catching snatches of Russian air traffic. It seems to be increasing in volume,” Goering said. “Luftwaffe intelligence thinks they have moved a lot of their inventory closer to the border.”
“Have you shared this with Gehlen?” Schloss asked.
“Of course, Herr Reich Chancellor,” Goering replied with a hurt look on his face.
And I really do not need to get Hermann’s panties in an uproar.
“Very well. Gentlemen, thank you for bringing this to my attention.” He looked at his secretary. “Willem, is everybody in town today?”
“Yes, Herr Reich Chancellor.”
“Very well, call a meeting of the governing council for this afternoon. Please courier a copy of this document to each of them, and make sure they know this is an emergency.”
“At once, Herr Reich Chancellor.”
He looked at his guests. “Was there anything else?”
Goering nodded at Guderian. “I have instructed the OKW to raise the alert level. It sounds like we may not have a lot of time.”
“That is my thought as well,” Schloss said. “Can you have a readiness report on the armed forces for me tomorrow morning?”
Guderian looked surprised. “Herr Reich Chancellor, we will have a report ready for you tomorrow morning.”
Schloss made a note on a piece of paper in front of him. “Very well, we will meet at nine in the morning, you three. And General,” he
said, pointing to Guderian, “I think you should be in attendance at the meeting this afternoon.”
“Of course, Herr Reich Chancellor.”
After the three men left, Schloss sat at his desk and tapped his pencil on the blotter as he read the report. He felt physically sick to his stomach. He wondered if the forces that shaped history in the parallel universes were trying to snap this place back into conformity with his homeworld. Would Russian boots tramp the streets of Berlin in spite of his best efforts?
The weariness caught up with him again and concluded he had never felt so exhausted. It seemed as though one thing after another threatened his nation. He would no sooner deal with one issue and another would crop up. Why could he not get in front of this? And if the Russians marched into Berlin, what would become of Gisela and the children? His gut twisted again as the fear settled into his soul.
He looked up to see Kirche standing in front of his desk.
“Sir, the council meeting is arranged.”
“Thank you, Willem. I asked these three,” he pointed to the chairs, “to return tomorrow at nine in the morning.”
“You remember you were scheduled to fly to Hamburg tomorrow morning, Herr Reich Chancellor?”
“Yes, and you’ll have to send my apologies.”
“Of course. I understand completely,” the secretary said.
“And also, Willem, see if you can get Peter and Karl over here for lunch. I want to talk to them before the meeting this afternoon.”
“Frau Schloss was planning on lunch with you and the children, Sir.”
Schloss stood up. “I am going to see Frau Schloss right now.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
January 12, 1943; Noon
Reich Chancellor’s Private Dining Room
Reich Chancellery
Berlin, Germany
Schloss rarely used what was once the Fuhrer’s Private Dining Room. It was just down the hallway from the government council meeting room. When Schloss was in the building, he preferred to take his meals in his private apartment with Gisela. Her presence was always soothing, especially compared to the type of people who usually came hat-in-hand.
But he needed a private meeting with what he considered the inner circle of the government, and this was the only available time. At a few minutes before twelve, Kirche informed him that his guests had arrived. He tossed his pencil down on the document he was studying and made his way to the dining room.
“The trouble seems to find us as usual, Hennie,” Peter Schreiber said. “It just never seems to stop.”
Schloss touched him on the shoulder and then turned to shake hands with Karl Rainer.
“That report was just unbelievable,” Rainer stated. “How reliable is it?”
“A very good question,” Schloss replied. “Let’s sit down and eat. It’s going to be a long afternoon, I’m afraid.”
The stewards placed salads in front of them as they sat at the head of the long table in the room.
“This room is as bad as the Council Chamber,” Peter commented.
Schloss nodded. “It is what it is, however.”
“So, do you think this is as serious as it seems?” Rainer asked.
“I know you don’t have a lot of confidence in Gehlen, Karl,” Schloss said. “But this is playing in his arena. The team that went in reports directly to his Warsaw chief. And that man has a reputation for ironclad information. So, yes, I think it’s serious.”
Rainer was thoughtful as he began working on his salad. Schreiber stirred his salad around.
“I know that there will be a lot of discussion and suggestions this afternoon,” he said. “I just wish there is some way we could convince Stalin he would be sticking his hand into a hornets’ nest.”
“That is what I would like very much to do,” Schloss said. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to come up with a solution, and no one else has either.”
“Guderian has the best idea,” Rainer said. “Pull everything back from the border twenty kilometers, and then slam the back door on them when they come through.”
“That is probably what we should do,” Schloss agreed. “However, I really do not want it to get to that point. Once a state of war exists, there will be a lot of things we won’t be able to do; and a lot of things that will be out of our control. We will have to put the economy back on a war footing. Fortunately, we don’t have the English to worry about.”
“Maybe we need to talk Stalin into attacking Japan,” Peter suggested. “That would focus his attention elsewhere and allow us to get on with our lives.”
“That’s a good idea, Peter,” Schloss said. “How do you propose to make that happen?”
Peter grinned ruefully. “I have not the foggiest idea, Hennie.”
“It would be an easier war for them,” Rainer said. “The Japanese are not going to march all the way across Siberia.”
“Mein Gott, I do not want to have to march all the way to Moscow,” Schloss said, thinking about how badly that had gone for Germany in his former world. “I don’t think we could do it either.”
“So, you don’t think Russia will just collapse?”
“We’ve talked about this enough, Peter. If that was the case, I don’t think Stalin would be lining up tanks over the frontier in Poland. They would be in the cities killing Russians.”
“There is that,” Schreiber said softly.
“So how would you like us to approach this during the afternoon meeting?” Rainer asked.
Schloss and Schreiber had each taken several bites of the salad and pushed it out of the way. The stewards appeared again and slid a plate with prime rib and boiled potatoes in front of them.
“Mainly, I don’t want anyone to have an excuse to get into a fight with anybody else. You know how Ribbentrop brings out the worst in Goering. Guderian will be there, and I don’t think he likes Gehlen. We need to keep everyone focused on problem-solving.”
“I think if there was a solution,” Peter said, “we would have thought of it by now.”
“When someone decides on war, there’s not a lot the other team can do about it,” Rainer commented. “Witness the Pacific war.”
“True,” Schloss said. “But truth be told, the Americans largely drove the Japanese to start that war. They had cut off the flow of raw materials, and the Japanese economy was getting strained.”
“Yes, but those sanctions were the result of the Japanese actions in China,” Schreiber said.
“I didn’t say the sanctions were unjustified, Peter,” Schloss replied. “But the Japanese were not backing away from what they felt was their manifest destiny. If the Americans thought they could avoid a war under those conditions, they were a bit naive.”
Rainer had sawed a piece of the beef and taken a bit. “This is good, Herr Schloss. The beef we get over at my office is like shoe leather.”
“The providers like me better, Karl,” Schloss snarked.
“Thank you very much.”
“I wonder if we could find an intermediary to talk to Stalin?” Schreiber asked. “I might ask Ambassador Smoke to see if the Americans have any leverage with the Russians.”
“I am having some backchannel conversations with the Americans,” Rainer said. “They were unaware of how serious things are getting.”
“Fraulein Simpson’s conduit to OSS Director Donovan,” Peter said with a grin. “I think it is fortunate that you two are so close.”
Rainer blushed slightly. “It is a bit of an exaggeration to say that we are close, Peter.”
“Nevertheless, the woman likes to bestow information upon you.”
“I do not suppose I can dispute that.”
Schloss looked at Rainer’s discomfort and smiled. He wondered if events would ever allow them to develop a normal relationship. Gisela’s presence in his life was like a golden summer afternoon and he wished Karl could find something like that.
“Are you well, Hennie?” Schreiber asked suddenly.
“I m
ust confess to being very tired, Peter. I believe it is a characteristic of the job.”
“Perhaps you could take a few days rest. If events are moving as we fear, you might not have another chance for a while.”
“Thank you, Peter. But I should be all right.”
The three men continued the conversation through lunch, although they reached no conclusions. Germany was getting backed into a bad situation, and none of them knew what to do about it.
§ § §
January 12, 1943; 8 AM
Sinclair Inlet
Bremerton, Washington, USA
“Looks like we’ve completely blown our security, Sir,” Captain Lloyd commented laconically.
Admiral Jack Fletcher gazed across the water at the crowds of people lining the shores of the sound.
“It’s a little hard to hide two carriers and an assorted task force riding past Seattle and Bremerton, Norm. I’d say the president blew our security with his announcement about the raid, and I’d hardly blame him.”
Across the water, they could hear the distant cheers of the people. They had handed the American people the first unambiguous victory of the war. And everyone was excited about it. Their hasty retreat eastward from Japanese waters had been uneventful.
“I guess you’re right, Sir. I worry about the liberty parties, once we port. I expect our sailors will be on the receiving end of all the free beer they can drink.”
Fletcher leaned against the rail and looked across the water. Lloyd was a solid skipper and a superior tactician. But he was also a prick. The United States Navy was good at culling the incompetent and dangerous officers. But it seemed many of the best fighters were a little quirky.
“Tell you what, Norm. Let the sailors have their evening in the bars. I’ll deal with the fallout. Admiral Nimitz will have us out to sea soon enough. And some of those boys won’t live to see their next birthday.”
