The Unlikely Spy(12)

"What on earth are they doing there?"

"Trying to crack German ciphers."

Vicary made a brief show of thought. "I suppose I accept."

"Good." Churchill thumped his fist on the side of the tub. "You're to report first thing Monday to Brigadier Sir Basil Boothby. He is the head of the division to which you will be assigned. He is also the complete English ass. He'd thwart me if he could, but he's too stupid for that. Man could f*ck up a steel ball."

"Sounds charming."

"He knows you and I are friends and therefore he will oppose you. Don't allow yourself to be bullied by him. Understood?"

"Yes, Prime Minister."

"I need someone I can trust inside that department. It's time to put the intelligence back in Military Intelligence. Besides, this will be good for you, Alfred. It's time you emerged from your dusty library and rejoined the living."

Vicary was caught off guard by Churchill's sudden intimacy. He thought of the previous evening, of his walk home, of staring into Helen's passing car.

"Yes, Prime Minister, I believe it is time. Just what will I do for Military Intelligence?"

But Churchill had vanished below the waterline.





4


RASTENBURG, GERMANY: JANUARY 1944





Rear Admiral Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a small, nervous man who spoke with a slight lisp and possessed a sarcastic wit on those rare occasions when he chose to display it. White-haired, with piercing blue eyes, he was seated in the back of a staff Mercedes as it rumbled from the Rastenburg airfield to Hitler's secret bunker nine miles away. Usually, Canaris shunned uniforms and martial trappings of any kind, preferring a dark business suit instead. But since he was about to meet with Adolf Hitler and the most senior military officers in Germany, he was wearing his Kriegsmarine uniform beneath his formal greatcoat.

Known as the Old Fox by friends and detractors alike, Canaris's detached, aloof personality suited him perfectly to the ruthless world of espionage. He cared more about his two dachshunds--sleeping now on the floor at his feet--than anyone except his wife, Erika, and his daughters. When work mandated overnight travel, he booked a separate room with double beds so the dogs could sleep in comfort. When it was necessary to leave them behind in Berlin, Canaris checked in with his aides constantly to make certain the animals had eaten and had proper bowel movements. Abwehr staff who dared to speak ill of the dogs faced the very real threat of having their careers destroyed if word of their treachery ever reached Canaris's ears.

Raised in a walled villa in the Dortmund suburb of Aplerbeck as a member of the German elite so detested by Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Canaris was the son of a chimney baron and descendant of Italians who emigrated to Germany in the sixteenth century. He spoke the languages of Germany's friends as well as her enemies--Italian, Spanish, English, French, and Russian--and regularly presided over recitals of chamber music in the salon of his stately Berlin home. In 1933 he was serving as commander of a naval depot on the Baltic Sea at Swinemunde when Hitler unexpectedly chose him to head the Abwehr, the intelligence and counterespionage service. Hitler commanded his new spymaster to create a secret service on the British model--"an order, doing its work with passion"--and Canaris formally took control of the spy agency on New Year's Day 1934, his forty-seventh birthday.

The decision would prove to be one of Hitler's worst. Since taking command of the Abwehr, Wilhelm Canaris had been engaged in an extraordinary high-wire act--providing the German General Staff with the intelligence it needed to conquer most of Europe while at the same time using the service as a tool to rid Germany of Hitler. He was a leader of the resistance movement dubbed the Black Orchestra--Schwarze Kapelle--by the Gestapo. A tightly knit group of German military officers, government officials, and civic leaders, the Black Orchestra had tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the Fuhrer and negotiate a peace settlement with the Allies. Canaris had engaged in other treasonous activities as well. In 1939, after learning of Hitler's plans to invade Poland, he warned the British in a futile attempt to spur them into action. He did the same in 1940 when Hitler announced plans to invade the Low Countries and France.

Canaris turned and peered out the window, watching as the forest swept past--dark, silent, heavily wooded, like the setting of a fairy tale by the brothers Grimm. Lost in the quiet of the snow-covered trees, he thought of the most recent attempt on the Fuhrer's life. Two months earlier, in November, a young captain named Axel von dem Bussche volunteered to assassinate Hitler during an inspection of a new Wehrmacht greatcoat. Bussche planned to conceal several grenades beneath the coat, then detonate them during the demonstration, killing himself and the Fuhrer. But one day before the assassination attempt, Allied bombers destroyed the building where the coats were housed. The demonstration was canceled, never to be rescheduled.

Canaris knew there would be more attempts--more brave Germans willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to rid Germany of Hitler--but he also knew time was running out. The Anglo-American invasion of Europe was a certainty. Roosevelt had made it clear he would accept nothing short of unconditional surrender. Germany would be destroyed, just as Canaris feared back in 1933 when Hitler's messianic ambitions became clear to him. He also realized his tenuous grip on the Abwehr was growing weaker by the day. Several members of Canaris's executive staff at Abwehr headquarters in Berlin had been arrested by the Gestapo and charged with treason. His enemies were plotting to seize control of the spy agency and put his neck in a noose of piano wire. He understood his days were numbered--that his long and dangerous high-wire act was nearing an end.