Citadel (7 page)

“Professor, you speak as if you had a seat in the
OKW general officers' mess.”

“In a sense he does. The professor mentioned
the little machines he builds, how they are able to
try millions of possibilities and come up with solutions
to the German code combinations and
produce reasonable decryptions. Thus we have indeed
been able to read Jerry's mail. Frankly, I know
far more about German plans than about what is
happening two doors down in my own agency,
what the Americans are doing, or who the Russians
have sent to Cambridge. But it's a gift that
must be used sagely. If it's used sloppily, it will give
up the game and Jerry will change everything. So
we just use a bit of it now and then. This is one of
those nows or thens. Go on, Professor.”

“I defer to a strategic authority.”

“General Cavendish?”

Cavendish, the army general, had a face that
showed emotions from A all the way to A–. It was
a mask of meat shaped in an oval and built bluntly
around two ball bearings, empty of light, wisdom,
empathy, or kindness, registering only force. He
had about a pound of nose in the center of it and
a pound of medals on his tunic.

“Operation Citadel,” he delivered as rote fact,
not interpretation, “is envisioned as the Götterdämmarung
of the war in the East, the last titanic
breakthrough that will destroy the Russian warmaking
effort and bring the Soviets to the German
table, hats in hand. At the very least, if it's successful,
as most think it will be, it'll prolong the war by
another year or two. We had hoped to see the fighting
stop in 1945; now it may last well into 1947,
and many more millions of men may die, and I
should point out that a good number of those additional
millions will be German. So we are trying
to win—yes, indeed—but we are trying to do so
swiftly, so that the dying can stop. That is what is
at stake, you see.”

“And that is why you cannot crush this little
Cambridge rat's ass under a lorry. All right, I see
that, I suppose, annoyed at it though I remain.”

“Citadel, slated for May, probably cannot happen
until July or August, given the logistics. It is to
take place in southwest Russia, several hundred
miles to the west of Stalingrad. At that point,
around a city called Kursk, the Russians find themselves
with a bulge in their lines—a salient, if you
will. Secretly the Germans have begun massing
matériel both above and beneath the bulge. When
they believe they have overwhelming superiority,
they will strike. They will drive north from below
and south from above, behind walls of Tigers,
flocks of Stukas, and thousands of artillery pieces.
The infantry will advance behind the tanks. When
the encirclement is complete, they will turn and
kill the 300,000 men in the center and destroy the
50,000 tanks. The morale of the Red Army will be
shattered, the losses so overwhelming that all the
American aid in the world cannot keep up with it,
and the Russians will fall back, back, back to the
Urals. Leningrad will fall, then Moscow. The war
will go on and on and on.”

“I'm no genius,” said Basil, “but even I can figure
it out. You must tell Stalin. Tell him to fortify
and resupply that bulge. Then when the Germans
attack, they will fail, and it is they who will be on
the run, the war will end in 1945, and those millions
of lives will have been saved. Plus I can then
drink myself to death uninterrupted, as I desire.”

“Again, sir,” said the admiral, who was turning
out to be Basil's most ardent admirer, “he has seen
the gist of it straight through.”

“There is only one thing, Basil,” said Sir Colin.
“We have told Stalin. He doesn't believe us.”

The Third Day

“Jasta 3 at Vraignes. Late 1916,” said Macht. “Albatros,
a barge to fly.”

“He was an ace,” said Abel. “Drop a hat and he'll
tell you about it.”

“Old comrade,” said Oberst Gunther Scholl,
“yes. I was Jasta 7 at Roulers. That was in 1917.
God, so long ago.”

“Old chaps,” said Abel, “now the nostalgia is finished,
so perhaps we can get on with our real task,
which is staying out of Russia.”

“Walter will never go to Russia,” said Macht.
“Family connections. He'll stay in Paris, and when
the Americans come, he'll join up with them. He'll
finish the war a lieutenant-colonel in the American
army. But he does have a point.”

“Didi, that's the first compliment you ever gave
me. If only you meant it, but one can't have everything.”

“So let's go through this again, Herr Oberst,”
said Macht to Colonel Scholl. “Walter reminds us
that there's a very annoyed SS officer stomping
around out there and he would like to send you to
the Russian front. He would also like to send all of
us to the Russian front, except Walter. So it is now
imperative that we catch the fellow you sat next to
for six hours, and you must do better at remembering.”

The hour was late, or early, depending. Oberst
Scholl had imagined himself dancing the night
away at Maxim's with Hilda, then retiring to a
dawn of love at the Ritz. Instead he was in a dingy
room on the rue Guy de Maupassant, being grilled
by gumshoes from the slums of Germany in an atmosphere
seething with desperation, sour smoke,
and cold coffee.

“Hauptmann Macht, believe me, I wish to
avoid the Russian front at all costs. Bricquebec is
no prize, and command of a night fighter
squadron does not suggest, I realize, that I am expected
to do big things in the Luftwaffe. But I am
happy to fight my war there and surrender when
the Americans arrive. I have told you everything.”

“This I do not understand,” said Leutnant Abel.
“You had previously met Monsieur Piens and you
thought this fellow was he. Yet the photography
shows a face quite different from the one I saw at
the Montparnasse station.”

“Still, they are close,” explained the colonel
somewhat testily. “I had met Piens at a reception
put together by the Vichy mayor of Bricquebec, between
senior German officers and prominent,
sympathetic businessmen. This fellow owned two
restaurants and a hotel, was a power behind the
throne, so to speak, and we had a brief but pleasant
conversation. I cannot say I memorized his face, as
why would I? When I got to the station, I glanced
at the registration of French travelers and saw
Piens's name and thus looked for him. I suppose I
could say it was my duty to amuse our French
sympathizers, but the truth is, I thought I could
charm my way into a significant discount at his
restaurants or pick up a bottle of wine as a gift.
That is why I looked for him. He did seem different,
but I ascribed that to the fact that he now had
no moustache. I teased him about it and he gave
me a story about his wife's dry skin.”

The two policemen waited for more, but there
wasn't any “more.”

“I tell you, he spoke French perfectly, no trace
of an accent, and was utterly calm and collected.
In fact, that probably was a giveaway I missed.
Most French are nervous in German presence, but
this fellow was quite wonderful.”

“What did you talk about for six hours?”

“I run on about myself, I know. And so, with a
captive audience, that is what I did. My wife kicks
me when I do so inappropriately, but unfortunately
she was not there.”

“So he knows all about you but we know nothing
about him.”

“That is so,” said the Oberst. “Unfortunately.”

“I hope you speak Russian as well as French,”
said Abel. “Because I have to write a report, and
I'm certainly not going to put the blame on myself.”

“All right,” said Scholl. “Here is one little present.
Small, I know, but perhaps just enough to keep
me out of a Stuka cockpit.”

“We're all ears.”

“As I have told you, many times, he rode in the
cab to the Ritz, and when we arrived I left and he
stayed in the cab. I don't know where he took it.
But I do remember the cabbie's name. They must
display their licenses on the dashboard. It was
Philippe Armoire. Does that help?”

It did.

That afternoon Macht stood before a squad room
filled with about fifty men, a third his own, a third
from Feldpolizei Battalion 11, and a third from Boch's SS detachment, all in plain clothes. Along
with Abel, the
feldpolizei
sergeant, and Hauptsturmführer
Boch, he sat at the front of the room.
Behind was a large map of Paris. Even Boch had
dressed down for the occasion, though to him
“down” was a bespoke pin-striped, double-breasted
black suit.

“All right,” he said. “Long night ahead, boys,
best get used to it now. We think we have a British
agent hiding somewhere here,” and he pointed at
the fifth arrondissement, the Left Bank, the absolute
heart of cultural and intellectual Paris. “That
is the area where a cabdriver left him early this
morning, and I believe Hauptsturmführer Boch's
interrogators can speak to the truthfulness of the
cabdriver.”

Boch nodded, knowing that his interrogation
techniques were not widely approved of.
“The Louvre and Notre Dame are right across
the river, the Institut de France dominates the skyline
on this side, and on the hundreds of streets are
small hotels and restaurants, cafés, various retail
outlets, apartment buildings, and so forth and so
on. It is a catacomb of possibilities, entirely too immense
for a dragnet or a mass cordon and search
effort.

“Instead, each of you will patrol a block or so.
You are on the lookout for a man of medium
height, reddish to brownish hair, squarish face.
More recognizably, he is a man of what one might
call charisma. Not beauty per se, but a kind of
inner glow that attracts people to him, allowing
him to manipulate them. He speaks French perfectly,
possibly German as well. He may be in any
wardrobe, from shabby French clerk to priest, even
to a woman's dress. If confronted he will offer wellthought-
out words, be charming, agreeable, and
slippery. His papers don't mean much. He seems
to have a sneak thief 's skills at picking pockets, so
he may have traded off several identities by the
time you get to him. The best tip I can give you is,
if you see a man and think what a great friend he'd
be, he's probably the spy. His charm is his armor
and his principle weapon. He is very clever, very
dedicated, very intent on his mission. Probably
armed and dangerous as well, but please be forewarned.
Taken alive, he will be a treasure trove.
Dead, he's just another Brit body.”

“Sir, are we to check hotels for new registrations?”

“No. Uniformed officers have that task. This fellow,
however, is way too clever for that. He'll go to
ground in some anonymous way, and we'll never
find him by knocking on hotel room doors. Our
best chance is when he is out on the street. Tomorrow
will be better, as a courier is bringing the real
Monsieur Piens's photo up from Bricquebec and
our artist will remove the moustache and thin the
face, so we should have a fair likeness. At the same
time, I and all my detectives will work our phone
contacts and listen for any gossip, rumors, and reports
of minor incidents that might reveal the fellow's
presence. We will have radio cars stationed
every few blocks, so you can run to them and reach
us if necessary and thus we can get reinforcements
to you quickly if that need develops. We can do no
more. We are the cat, he is the mouse. He must
come out for his cheese.”

“If I may speak,” said Hauptsturmführer Boch.

Who could stop him?

And thus he delivered a thirty-minute tirade
that seemed modeled after Hitler's speech at
Nuremberg, full of threats and exotic metaphors
and fueled by pulsing anger at the world for its injustices,
perhaps mainly in not recognizing the genius
of Boch, all of it well punctuated by the
regrettable fact that those who gave him evidence
of shirking or laziness could easily end up on that
cold antitank gun in Russia, facing the Mongol
hordes.

It was not well received.

Of course Basil was too foxy to bumble into a
hotel. Instead, his first act on being deposited on
the Left Bank well after midnight was to retreat to
the alleyways of more prosperous blocks and look
for padlocked doors to the garages. It was his belief
that if a garage was padlocked, it meant the owners
of the house had fled for more hospitable climes
and he could safely use such a place for his hideout.
He did this rather easily, picking the padlock and
slipping into a large vault of a room occupied by a
Rolls-Royce Phantom on blocks, clear evidence
that its wealthy owners were now rusticating safely
in Beverly Hills in the United States. His first order
of the day was rest: he had, after all, been going full
steam for forty-eight hours now, including his
parachute arrival in France, his exhausting ordeal
by Luftwaffe Oberst on the long train ride, and his
miraculous escape from Montparnasse station,
also courtesy of the Luftwaffe Oberst, whose name
he did not even know.

The limousine was open; he crawled into a back
seat that had once sustained the arsses of a prominent
industrialist, a department store magnate, the
owner of a chain of jewelry stores, a famous whore,
whatever, and quickly went to sleep.

He awoke at three in the afternoon and had a
moment of confusion. Where was he? In a car?
Why? Oh, yes, on a mission. What was that mission?
Funny, it seemed so important at one time;
now he could not remember it. Oh, yes,
The Path
to Jesus
.

There seemed no point in going out by day, so
he examined the house from the garage, determined
that it was deserted, and slipped into it, entering
easily enough. It was a ghostly museum of
the aristocratic du Clercs, who'd left their furniture
under sheets and their larder empty, and by now
dust had accumulated everywhere. He amused
himself with a little prowl, not bothering to go
through drawers, for he was a thief only in the
name of duty. He did borrow a book from the library
and spent the evening in the cellar, reading
it by candlelight. It was Tolstoy's great
War and
Peace
, and he got more than three hundred pages
into it.