Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens (2 page)

Dr. Brancos, who appeared to be unmoved as any of his military colleagues by the sight in the trench, said, “I should like to examine, with your doctors, the precise nature of the wounds in the four who were killed. It was unfortunate that you felt obliged to shoot the other two. If they had lived, it would have been even more interesting to have examined
their
injuries.”

“No doubt,” said General Runnecke curtly.

In a report which he sent that evening to the War Ministry in Berlin he said, “In this experiment we were able to make use of six Yugoslav terrorists who had been captured in plain clothes behind our lines in possession of explosives, and who were to have been executed in any event. One equivalent salvo of the new fuse killed four men and fatally injured two. This represents the quite dramatic superiority of this wireless fuse over the standard powder fuse for shrapnel, which, as every artillery officer knows, can never be guaranteed to detonate within a hundred feet of the ground, and, indeed, in half the cases buries itself in the ground and fails to detonate at all. I would recommend that Dr. Brancos be put in touch forthwith with the Army Bureau of Weapon Research—”

As he wrote these words the General paused. He knew that the all-powerful
Reichssicherheitshauptamt,
or RSHA, the co-ordinating body of the SS, had recently added to its already inflated authority, a Section VII concerned with scientific exploitation, and he suspected that they would want to grab Dr. Brancos for themselves as an important pawn in their constant struggle with the army for power and prestige. What he was wondering was whether he could arrange for his report to go to the War Ministry
without
being seen by the SS authorities.

He might have spared himself any worry. The SS
gruppenfuehrer
had already reported through his own signals troop to the RSHA who received the report a day before the War Ministry.

When Dr. Brancos arrived in Berlin, therefore, he was not met by an Army Officer but by a polite
obersturmfuehrer,
who introduced himself as Lieutenant Mailler, and whisked the doctor off to a flat at Lichterfelde outside Berlin. Here, in the days that followed, Mailler proved himself a patient and instructed listener. He had been trained in the Communications section of the SS and knew a good deal about wireless. He had to admit, however, that Dr. Brancos knew a great deal more than he did.

The doctor said, “I am, by profession, a mining engineer. Coming from a small country like Albania there were few facilities, and I was therefore, educated and trained in Italy, at Perugia, and later in Milan. I speak better Italian than German, I fear.”

Mailler said, with a smile, “You speak our language very well and clearly.”

“I am obliged. It was in the uranium mines at Marcovograd that I developed the technique of the answering fuse. Like most inventions, the idea came to me by accident. In the mines we used a type of geiger counter. You know what I mean?”

“I have heard of them.”

“They are, in essence, small receiving sets. They answer to the radio-active emissions of uranium. Once we had a very difficult explosive blast to detonate.” Dr. Brancos held out two thin brown hands. “In the mass of uranium we bury an explosive charge. The uranium emits radio signals. Could we not, I said to myself, cause those signals to bounce back and detonate the charge at any required distance? All that would be necessary would be to calculate the wavelength precisely—” The doctor brought his two hands slowly together “—and – pouf! We cause an explosion at exactly the point we require without wires or apparatus of any sort.”

“And did it work?”

“In mining, no. It was impracticable. But the seed of the idea was there. A shrapnel shell with a small and simple wireless transmitter in the head. It approaches the earth. The transmission bounces back – at whatever height you wish – the shell explodes. No more powder rings, no more fuse setting, no more guesswork. A detonation at precisely the most effective height.”

“Wonderful,” said Mailler, and meant it.

“There were difficulties. My prototype fuses were much too sensitive. They could be set off by a cloud of rain. Even a flock of birds. But I developed a system of shutters—”

Dr. Brancos seized a writing pad and pencil and started to sketch as he talked.

At the end of two hours, his brain whirling with technicalities, Lieutenant Mailler made his excuses. He spoke on the telephone to the head of his section,
Standartenfuehrer
Bach. “The man is a genius,” he said. “I’m sure of that. He lost me half a dozen times in the details, but the idea
must
be sound. It operates on the same principle as radar—”

“It is certainly effective,” said Colonel Bach. “I have received the close-up photographs of the target trench. I am only glad I saw them after lunch and not before.”

“He could be a great asset to our section—”

“If
we get him,” said Bach. “The army want him for themselves. There is a fight going on now on a level too high for me to interfere. By the way, I assume you have checked the security clearance?”

“All the ordinary checks have been made,” said Mailler. “His papers are in order. His luggage has been thoroughly examined and contains nothing out of the way. It would, of course, be more satisfactory if we could get a positive identification.”

Bach thought about this and then said, “There is a man in the Balkan Department of Section VI. The name, I think, is Munthe. He comes from Albania or Monte Negro, or one of those goddamned holes, and he was a professor at Perugia. He should know Brancos, by name at least.”

Professor Munthe, old, grey-haired and white bearded, examined the papers which Mailler laid on his desk, and shook his head slowly. He said, “This man is a fake. Possibly a spy. I was at Perugia during all the years he states that he was there. We had not more than a handful of Albanians. There was no Brancos among them.”

“You are sure?” said Mailler anxiously. “It is most important. The reputations of some very senior officers are now involved.”

“If you doubt me, confront me with him.”

“I will be back in half an hour,” said Mailler, and was better than his word.

When Dr. Brancos came into his office, Professor Munthe rose to his feet and stared at him fixedly. The doctor stared back, then a half smile crossed his face. “It is more than ten years,” he said, “but you have not greatly changed, Herr Professor.”

The old man blinked as if he was trying to recapture an elusive memory. When Brancos would have spoken again, he held up one finger in a gesture of the classroom and said,
“Not
Brancos, Boris. Stefan Boris.”

“It is true,” said Brancos. “I had family difficulties. I found it expedient to change my name.”

“Now that you mention it, I remember being told of it. I met a mutual friend a year ago in Ravenna. Alessandro Piero—”

Lieutenant Mailler said hastily, “I can see you are old friends. You will have much to talk over. I will leave you.”

He made his way straight to his own office on a lower floor of the building, extracted a flask of brandy from a drawer in his desk and treated himself to a stiff drink.

If Brancos had been a fraud and his invention a fake and a lot of important people had made fools of themselves, he had a shrewd idea that his own head would have been one of the first to roll.

As he was finishing the drink the telephone on his desk purred. The man at the other end was so senior that the lieutenant clicked his heels and stood rigidly to attention when answering it. His end of the conversation was confined to saying “Yes” half a dozen times, and finally “At once”. And to Dr. Brancos, later that evening, he said, “The Fuehrer himself has made the decision. Your invention will go to the Eastern Front. You yourself are seconded to Army Group North with the temporary rank of major. You will be flown to Rzhev on the Volga tomorrow.”

Dr. Brancos said, “Impossible. I shall have to spend tomorrow doing some shopping.” He seemed unexcited by this dramatic turn of events.

“Shopping?”

“If I’m to be a major I shall need a uniform surely?”

“All that will be provided at Rzhev.”

All that, and a great deal more, was provided in the months that followed. Army Group North had been commanded, during the hard fighting of the previous autumn and the stalemate of that spring, by General Helmuth Busche, whose star was now so firmly in the ascendant that he was spoken of as a possible supreme commander of the Eastern Front. He was a tall, fair-haired, red-faced Saxon, nearly six and a half feet in height, and Dr. Brancos observed him from afar and learned that he was a great man; recognised as a good soldier by the hardest school of professional military opinion in the world, but managing somehow to be liked as well as admired.

The doctor himself was placed under the command of Colonel Franz Mulbach, head of the Army Communications section, and was allotted as his workshop and quarters a hut in the forest of huts which had sprung up suddenly in and around the ruins of Rzhev.

This hut, in the months that followed, became the centre of much activity, involving technicians from both the Artillery and the Signals sections of the Army. From time to time Dr. Brancos would pay visits to forward observation posts to check the accuracy of his fuses, which were now going into mass production.

“If they are to achieve maximum effect,” he said, “we must be careful not to demonstrate them too soon. When we fire them we will get them to explode at irregular heights so that they will appear to observers on the Russian side no different from the old, inefficient powder fuses. They will then take no special precautions.”

Colonel Mulbach, a jovial barrel of a man, agreed with this. He had walked over, as he sometimes did, late at night, to sit beside the stove in Dr. Brancos’ hut, smoke a cigar and talk about the war.

“As you will have seen,” he said, “from your visits to the front – you must not, incidentally, expose yourself unnecessarily; to lose you now would be a fatal blow to the Reich – we are up against a hard line of interlocked defensive positions. The Russians have had all the winter to deepen and strengthen their trenches. When our offensive starts, the neutralisation of these trenches will be the most important feature.”

“Has a date been fixed?”

“It will depend a little on the weather. This cursed Russian winter is slow to relax its grip, but the last week of April or the first week of May is spoken of, and it is then that we may expect a most important visitor.”

“You mean—?”

“I mean our Fuehrer himself. He will come in person to confer with our commanders, to lay down the general lines of strategy and to wish us good fortune. I understand that he has expressed a personal interest in the work that you are doing here. It may even be possible to introduce you to him.”

As Dr. Brancos moved his head, the red light from the stove shone on his glasses. He said, “It would be an indescribable honour.”

It was a week after this conversation, in the early evening, that Colonel Mulbach arrived to find Dr. Brancos at work on his blueprints. The colonel had brought his car and was in full uniform. He said, “I am to take you to see General Busche. He wishes to speak to you.”

“About what?” said Dr. Brancos. He seemed irritated by the interruption of his work.

“That we shall see,” said the colonel.

During the drive into the centre of Rzhev, he was more silent than usual. They dismounted at the side door of the big square seminary which formed the personal headquarters of the general, walked along an endless and echoing corridor without meeting a soul, climbed flights of stairs and traversed further passageways, their footsteps deadened now by strips of matting laid on the floor. At the end of this corridor they came to double doors which opened on to an ante-room.

Here there were two desks set at angles and positioned to guard an inner door. Cards on the desks identified the men behind them as Major Nachtigal and Captain Heimroth. The captain rose to his feet, shook hands with Colonel Mulbach, cast a critical look at Dr. Brancos’ creased and ill-fitting uniform, went over to the inner door, knocked and went inside.

There was a murmur of conversation, the door reopened and the captain reappeared and beckoned the visitors in. It was a comfortable room. A fire of logs was blazing in the open stove and in front of it, tall, erect and strikingly impressive in the undress uniform of the Prussian Guards Regiment, stood General Helmuth Busche.

The General waited until the door had clicked shut and then turned to Colonel Mulbach and said in German, “So! This is the little English spy who has been sent to help us kill the Fuehrer.” And then, in laboured but understandable English, “How do you do, Mr. Bairentz?”

Back in the Brancos hut, with the door safely bolted, Colonel Mulbach said, “I hope you will forgive my reticence of the last few months. It was necessary to make certain checks first.”

“I was beginning to wonder,” said Mr. Behrens, “if I was on a wild-goose chase. All we knew in London was that a plot was being hatched by a group of officers on the Eastern Front to kill Hitler and end the war by negotiation, and that they needed technical assistance. We thought that if I played my cards right I should be sent here and that the plotters would make contact with me. That’s really all I knew.”

“I must confess,” said the colonel, “that I am surprised you have penetrated as far as you have.”

“Part of it was calculation, part luck. The calculation consisted in giving away the new VT fuse. We reckoned that your scientists would arrive at it sooner or later. What we were presenting them with was eighteen months of our own research.”

“A tempting bait. And the luck?”

“We happened to have a contact in your RSHA with exactly the necessary knowledge to check my credentials. In fact, my story was carefully tailored to fit in with his. So it was pretty certain that a confrontation between us would eventually be arranged.”

“Even so,” said the colonel, “Lady Fortune must have smiled on you. You can have little idea of the thoroughness of our security machine. Everyone – certainly every official in the Reich from the village postmaster to Commanding General – has a dossier in that giant card-index of the section known as
Amt IV (a) 6(a)
–harmless-sounding initials for an unparalleled instrument of tyranny!