The Red Eagles (8 page)

Schellenberg restrained himself and merely nodded.

“Perhaps you are wondering what this has to do with the plan,” Hitler noted calmly. “Tell me, what animal do you associate with America?”

Schellenberg’s mind did not make the association.

“You see? You’ve confirmed it for yourself,” Hitler said. “America is not a true nation, that is the point. It is a herd of disparate animals, a few eagles, a few lions, a few bears, and a host of inferior species. Herds, Walter, herds always, always, respond to the instincts of their weakest members. The German stock, the English stock will forever be at the mercy of the Jews and the Negroes because that is the law of the herd. It may be more numerous, potentially far more powerful than a single predator, but it only requires one member of the herd to take fright and there is general panic. Insecurity is the herd’s strongest emotion. Now do you see the relevance?”

Schellenberg did. “This operation will create a panic that will far transcend the actual importance of the target.”

“Exactly. Exactly. You have understood perfectly. We will put two eagles in among the herd, and the panic will spread around the world.”

The sun disappeared, slice by orange slice, into the distant horizon, its rays reflected in a thousand puddles. Major Gerd Breitner sat astride a rickety wooden fence on the outskirts of Beresino and drank in the splendour. At first he’d hated the Russian landscape, found it flat and boring, but after
eighteen months he’d come to love its subtleties, its infinite variations on the same theme. A small compensation perhaps, but better than none at all.

The last slice slid away. Breitner lit a cigarette, looked once more at the moth-eared photograph of his wife. It was more than a year now, and the pain had lost its sharpness; like everything else, it had been flattened by the war. Only the irony remained: while he had survived countless brushes with death in France, Africa, and the East, she had been buried in the rubble of their safe Stuttgart home during an Allied bombing raid.

He put the photograph away and tried to picture her face. It grew harder with each passing month. Breitner felt the tang of tears forming and jumped down from the fence, angry with himself.

He turned and stared into the east. It was quiet. It seemed to get quieter each day. Intelligence put the attack four days hence, and they weren’t often wrong these days. Four more days of sitting around, then all hell would break loose again. He wasn’t sure which was worse. “Fuck you, Adolf,” he muttered, “and all the other bastards.”

He found his friend Paul Russman sitting on the running board of the derelict staff car with Burdenski, practicing his wretched cigarette trick. Paul placed the cigarette on his palm, pointed it away from his body, and brought his other hand sharply down on the wrist. The cigarette cartwheeled through the air, missed the waiting mouth, hit him in the nose instead, and dropped into the mud.

Burdenski was unimpressed. “Where did you pick up that stupid habit?” he asked.

“Africa,” Paul replied, retrieving the sodden cigarette. “I watched an English prisoner practicing for hours in the compound at Mersa Brega. He said it helped to pass the time. He was right. And of course I couldn’t let the English prove their superiority in such a crucial field of combat.”

“I can see that,” Burdenski said wryly.

“But there’s more,” Paul said. “The Englishman promised me the war would be over before I mastered the technique, so I reckon that mastering it will probably end the war.”

“That’s why I encourage him to practice,” Breitner said.

“Clowns,” Burdenski grunted.

Paul looked up at Breitner. “I have some rather disturbing news, Gerd,” he said, lighting a dry cigarette. “We are shortly to receive an uninvited guest here at our summer residence – an SS colonel.”

“Soldier or policeman?”

“That’s the disturbing part.”

Breitner felt a slight surge of panic. Absurd. “What can they want with us?” he asked. “We do nothing but fight wars.”

“Perhaps it’s the fact that we’re losing this one,” Paul suggested with a straight face.

“Paul, I hope you don’t intend making jokes like that in his exalted presence,” Breitner said. “It’s possible that he may not share our sense of humor.”

“He certainly isn’t sharing our war,” Paul observed.

The SS colonel arrived at Beresino in the middle of the night, looking as shiny-smart as only an SS colonel could. A rather disheveled Russman and Breitner went out to greet him, and despite the lateness of the hour, Paul managed a “Heil Hitler” of such vigor that the black-uniformed officer was set back on his heels. Breitner concealed his laugh with a cough.

Sturmbannführer Rademacher was a man of few words. He declined schnapps, coffee, food, and small talk, all to the evident but unvoiced disgust of his escort. He simply withdrew two documents from his shiny briefcase and handed them to Breitner and announced that they should be on the funeral train leaving Baranovichi at ten that
morning. The colonel then performed his own, more austere salute and climbed back into the motorcycle sidecar. His driver shrugged sympathetically at the two officers and opened the throttle.

“We must be neglecting our personal hygiene,” Paul said.

“It’s Russians he smells,” Breitner muttered, glancing through the documents. One was a release signed by Pan-zergruppe Command. The other was a summons to Berlin, to the office of Obergruppenführer Schellenberg, head of Amt VI, the external security section of the Reich Intelligence Services.

Paul was reading them over his shoulder. “How did nice girls like us get mixed up with a man like that?” he asked.

Breitner flung the empty vodka bottle out the train window and into the Polish night. “Goddamnit, Paul, there must be English-speaking apes in the Waffen SS.”

Paul shook his head vigorously. Both men were drunk, having chanced upon an enterprising Polish peasant selling homemade vodka in the middle of nowhere. Presumably the peasant had seen trains stop at the same place before, and the same type of train at that. He’d been disappointed but not surprised to learn that all his other potential customers were dead.

“There are no apes in the Waffen SS,” Paul enunciated carefully. “Their hair is the wrong color.” He pried the cork free from another bottle. “But to answer your question with the seriousness it deserves, I can only suggest our excellent record in the service of the Führer. Whatever they want done we’ll have already done it on some continent or other.”

Breitner smiled ruefully. “We’ve even survived a trip home in a funeral train. Unfortunately,” he said, taking another swig from the bottle, “we have enough intelligence – not that it requires much – to know that this particular war is lost. Dying in a Russian ditch may not be everyone’s idea
of destiny, but it was one I was becoming almost fond of. Dying for the goddamn SS is something else entirely. It’s—”

“It’s not who that worries me, it’s what. For all we know, they may have decided to kidnap the King of England.”

“That’s tame. I was thinking of Stalin.”

“Easy. What about recapturing Marlene Dietrich?”

“I volunteer.”

The train was drawing slowly to a halt, clanking over points. The lights of a city could be seen outside. “Where the hell are we?” Breitner asked.

“Posen, I think. Christ, look at this.” Both men stared out on a panorama of ruin, pillars of masonry sticking into the night sky, empty streets choked with rubble. As the train chugged slowly forward they saw the body of an old woman lying beside the track, one arm rigidly extended upward, the light of the yard lamps reflecting off her spectacles.

“Who the hell would be bombing Posen? It’s too far east for the Americans.”

“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” Paul murmured, suddenly feeling sober. He sat down heavily. “You know, sometimes I can’t see how this war will end. It’s just bitten too deep. There’s more to forgive than there is forgiveness.”

“They said that after the last war,” Breitner said, pulling himself away from the window. “They’ll probably say it after the next one.”

Paul laughed. “You’re an optimistic bastard, aren’t you?”

“No. You know what really depresses me?”

“I’m not sure I want to.”

“If we were winning, we wouldn’t care.”

Schellenberg stared through the peephole at the two officers waiting in the anteroom. Major Breitner, Hauptmann Russman. They looked younger than he’d expected; perhaps he was too accustomed to being around the old and the wounded who made up his staff. He went back to their
dossiers on his desk. Breitner was thirty-five, Russman thirty-four. Well, perhaps the excitement of war had kept them young. He looked at his watch. It was time to let his two eagles in.

“Gentlemen,” he said, still smiling as they seated themselves, “the Reich has a new need for your talents. An operation is being mounted by the external section of the Reichssicherheitshauptampt at the express instructions of the Führer himself. It has the highest security classification imaginable – only three men in the Reich are aware of its existence. When—”

“With great respect, Obergruppenführer,” Breitner interrupted, “but before we are made privy to the nature of this operation, I would appreciate some clarification regarding our position. Are we still under the jurisdiction of the Wehrmacht or have we been officially transferred to your authority?”

Schellenberg’s smile faded slightly at the edges. “Officially, this operation does not exist. To answer your unspoken question – I require volunteers, not conscripts. Though I must in all fairness add that if you decline this assignment, you may have to be temporarily detained. For security reasons, of course. There would be no imputation of disloyalty: you have both served the Reich with distinction in the past.”

Breitner nodded and said nothing. Christ Almighty, he thought.

“I hope, however,” Schellenberg continued, “that this operation will appeal to both your sense of duty and your spirit of adventure. This is no ordinary operation. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the fate of the Reich may rest on its success. You have been selected, after exhaustive inquiries, because you are not ordinary officers. You both speak excellent English, you work well together, and you, Major Breitner, have professional scientific experience. Above all, you have both lived in America.”

The two men glanced at each other in astonishment. Science? America? What crazy scheme was this?

“As I said,” Schellenberg continued smoothly, “this is not an ordinary operation. It is, however, a relatively straightforward one. You would be transported across the Atlantic to the state of Georgia by U-boat. You would then carry out a single, simple military operation of a kind you have performed in the past. You would then be transported back.”

“And the objective?” Breitner asked.

“Ah, the objective. First I must fill in the background.” Schellenberg explained the development of the new bomb, the state of German progress in the same direction, the significance of Uranium-235, the train itself, traveling through “thousands of miles of virtually empty countryside.” He described the “wholly inadequate” American security precautions. “The Americans may not be stupid,” he concluded, “but they are overconfident to the point of stupidity. To them the war is elsewhere. It would never occur to them that German officers might suddenly turn up in their own country. It would be a complete surprise.”

Yes, Paul thought. That at least rang true. Perhaps this operation was less insane than it sounded.

“When?” Breitner asked.

“One thing we lack is time. The U-boat must sail from France, and regrettably the French ports may have to be sacrificed in the not too distant future. So we must aim for the August 4 train, which means a departure from La Pallice within the next three days. This of course will prevent any detailed advance planning. Our agents in America will have to brief you fully when you arrive.”

There was a silence. Breitner looked at Paul and then turned back to Schellenberg. “We would like a few minutes to discuss the matter, Obergruppenführer.”

“You may have the use of my office.”

“We’d prefer to stretch our legs,” Breitner said. “We’ve
been on a train for the last thirty-six hours, and those gardens look most inviting.”

“Very well.”

Once outside the two men walked about fifty yards in silence. “Why did we have to come out here?” Paul asked eventually. “That was the most comfortable chair I’ve sat in for years.”

Breitner lit a cigarette. “Christ, you’re so naive sometimes. That office must be knee-deep in microphones.”

“You think the garden isn’t?”

Breitner laughed. “You’re probably right. Okay, give me and the microphones a good reason for saying yes to this mad scheme.”

Paul lit his own cigarette. “I’ll give you three. One, if we say no, we’ll at best end up back in the East.”

“Good, but not very positive.”

“Two, how does duty strike you?”

“Like the song says: My comrades and my sense of duty, they died together in the snow.”

“Three, it’s not such a mad scheme.”

“Yes, you have to admire the nerve. Train holdups in America! In 1944!”

“And I’ll give you a fourth. We’re going, whatever we say. Like the man said, the U-boat leaves in less than three days, so they’ve decided it’s us. And we’ve both still got living relatives.”

Paul looked at him sharply. “You think they’d go that far?”

“Yes.”

They walked in silence for a while. Paul was remembering another Atlantic crossing many years before, his first sight of her face across the smoky room, their first embrace on the promenade deck, surrounded by ocean and stars. Breitner was thinking that it had been American bombs that had killed his wife and son, and wondering why he felt no thirst for revenge.

He shook his head. “I don’t suppose it’ll be much different from holding up trains anywhere else.”

“Gerd, what is this stuff? Uranium-235?”

“God knows. Atomic physics was taboo in my time. ‘Jewish physics’ they called it. Now there’s an irony to savor.” He ground out his cigarette. “I expect they’ll enlighten us further before we go.”