Hitler's peace

“I was sent on this mission by Reichsfuhrer Himmler,” admitted Reichleitner. “My orders were to check in to Shepheard’s Hotel posing as a Polish officer. I speak Polish and English. Better English than I led you to believe earlier. And I’m afraid that I was planning to do exactly as you have said. To deliver the dossier to the American legation. Number twenty-four Nabatat Street, is it not? Here in Garden City.”

Deakin threw a nod in my direction. “That’s the address, all right.”

“I was to place the dossier in a parcel marked for the attention of your American minister, Alexander Kirk. I had a covering letter addressed to Mr. Kirk, but I lost that when I bailed out, along with my Polish passport.”

“Very convenient,” said Deakin.

Reichleitner shrugged. “Can you think of a better way to deliver a dossier into the hands of the Americans than simply to hand it in at the legation? I know Cairo. I was often here before the war. So why would I need a contact? A contact might only have compromised me and my mission.”

“A contact might help you to escape from Egypt,” I suggested.

“That’s not so difficult, with money.”

“He had several hundred pounds on him when we picked him up,” explained Deakin.

“A ninety-minute train ride to Alexandria,” said Reichleitner. “Then a ship to Jaffa, in Palestine. From there it’s easy enough to get passage for Syria and then Turkey. I’m often in Ankara.”

“Nevertheless, I still think we will have to try you as a spy,” said Deakin.

“What?” Reichleitner leaped off the bed and pointed to the papers he had brought from Germany. “I came to bring you information, not to spy. What kind of spy brings papers and film with him? Answer me that?”

“These might be forgeries,” said Deakin. “Disinformation designed to drive a wedge between us and our Russian allies. We call that sabotage. Same as blowing up an oil refinery or an officers’ mess.”

“Sabotage? But that’s idiotic.”

Deakin collected the Beketovka papers from the table. “These will have to be evaluated. And if they don’t check out, you could find yourself facing a firing squad.”

The German closed his eyes and groaned. “But this is preposterous,” he said.

“Major Deakin,” I said, laying my hand on the German’s papers. “I wonder if I might be allowed to speak to Major Reichleitner alone for a moment? It’s all right. I don’t think the major will try to injure me, will you, Major?”

Reichleitner sighed and shook his head.

“All right,” said Deakin. “If you’re sure.” He knocked on the door to summon the lance corporal, and a moment or two later Reichleitner and I were alone.

“I don’t feel so good,” groaned the German.

I helped myself from the packet of cigarettes I had given the major. “I can get you some medicine when I leave this cell. If you like.”

Major Reichleitner nodded. “It’s my stomach.”

“I’m told everyone gets stomach trouble in this country. So far I’ve been lucky, I guess. But then, I don’t think you can catch much from cigarettes and scotch.”

“I don’t know if it’s something I ate, or just nerves. Do you think that English idiot really means to charge me with spying?”

“I could probably persuade him not to. If you were to do me a small favor.”

It was a dangerous game I had decided to play. But now that I had met Major Reichleitner, it was a game I felt I could control. I had decided that it would be better to know what the Bride material actually contained, rather than live in fear of mere possibility. If Reichleitner did manage to decode Bride, I’d decide what to do about it afterward. Controlling a man like Reichleitner, a prisoner of war, with the aid of some cigarettes and scotch and some medicine would be a lot easier than trying to deal with an Allied officer in SOE.

“What kind of a favor?” The German frowned suspiciously. “Look here, if it’s information you want, there’s nothing I can tell you. I can’t imagine that the work of the German War Crimes Bureau is of much interest to American intelligence.”

“It’s my understanding from Deakin that before joining the bureau you were with a signals and communications battalion on the eastern front.”

“That’s right. At Heinrich East, the Regimental HQ in Smolensk. My God, it seems like a hundred years ago.”

“Why did they assign you to the Katyn Forest massacre?”

“For one thing, my languages. I speak Russian and Polish. My mother is Russo-Polish. And for another, before joining the army I was a detective in Vienna. Cryptology was always a sort of hobby of mine.”

“A few minutes ago-what you were saying about the Russians. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Deakin, but there are an awful lot of Americans who believe that Russia is the enemy, not Germany. My boss in the OSS, for one. He hates the Bolsheviks. So much so that he’s set up a secret section inside the OSS to spy on the Russians. A while ago, we started monitoring Soviet signals traffic in Washington. It seems that our ally is spying on us.”

The German shrugged. “When you lie down with dogs, you catch fleas.”