Hitler's peace

“The weapon is top secret, so you’ll understand if we don’t say too much about it. But the operation of the missile is quite simple. However, the bombardier must keep the missile in sight, and environmental conditions such as cloud, haze, or smoke could interfere with the targeting. Tracers from light AA fire could also make it difficult to pick out the missile.” Schmid paused to light a cigarette. “Of course, all that is somewhat academic. Everything really depends on your ground team’s being able to knock out the enemy radar. If they manage to have fighters up in the air waiting for us, our Condors would be easy booty for them.”

Schellenberg nodded. “I don’t think I can overstate the risks involved in this mission, gentlemen,” he said. “I believe as soon as we’ve knocked out their radar they’ll put fighters up anyway, just to be on the safe side. There’s a strong possibility that none of your air crews will get back to Germany in one piece. But I can improve their chances.”

“Before you do,” General Student interrupted, “I should like to know what happened to the signals commando that was parachuted into Iran back in March. As the first stage of Operation Franz.”

Six men, all of them veterans of Ukrainian murder squads from F Section, had been met on the ground in Iran by Frank Mayr, an SS man who had been living with Kashgai tribesmen since 1940. One of the six had died immediately from typhoid; but the others had been successful, at least insofar as establishing communications with the Havelinstitut-the SS radio center at Wannsee.

“When Operation Franz was downgraded because of Skorzeny’s Mussolini rescue,” explained Schellenberg, “they encountered a number of difficulties. They entered Teheran and survived there for almost five months, living with a group of pistachio-nut farmers and Iranian wrestlers before they were picked up by the Americans. They’re currently being held in a POW camp near Sultanabad.”

“I only asked about them,” said General Student, “because you seem very confident of knocking out the enemy radar in Teheran. Will your men be doing that by themselves, or will you have more wrestlers to help you?”

Schellenberg saw the smiles on the faces of some of the other officers and shifted uncomfortably on his chair.

“In Iran, wrestlers are regarded as men of high social status,” he said. “Rather like matadors in Spain. Being physically fit, they are frequently called upon to become policemen, bodyguards, sometimes even assassins.”

“They sound like the SS,” observed Student.

Schellenberg turned back to General Schmid and asked him if the Luftwaffe was willing to proceed with the plan to kill the Big Three, assuming Hitler himself approved it. Schmid glanced around the table and, finding no opposition to Operation Long Jump, nodded slowly.

“The Fuhrer knows that the Luftwaffe will do anything that helps to win the war,” he said.

After the meeting, Schellenberg took a taxi back to Wittenberg Platz and returned to where he had left his car near the Ka-De-We. Before the war, the store had served forty different kinds of bread and 180 kinds of cheese and fish, but choice was rather more limited in the autumn of 1943. Approaching his car, he glanced around, hoping the black Opel had gone; but it was still there, which seemed to heighten the gravity of his situation. The Gestapo were not about to let the small matter of his having given them the slip for several hours deter them from whatever it was they wanted to find out. As soon as he drove off, the Opel came after him, and he resolved to find out before the afternoon was over exactly what it was they were investigating-his supposed Jewishness, his affair with Lina Heydrich, or something else.

He drove quickly now, back the way he had come, until he reached the edge of the Grunewald Forest-the city’s green window-where, on an empty, wide, firebreak road that ran between two armies of facing trees, he pulled over. Leaving the car’s engine still running and the driver’s door open, he grabbed the Schmeisser MP40, hid it under his coat, and ran into the woods. He ran at a right angle to the road for almost thirty meters before turning and running parallel to the road for almost a hundred more in the direction from which he had just driven. Returning cautiously to the edge of the tree line near the road, he saw that he was no more than twenty meters behind the Opel, which had halted at what the driver must have considered to be a discreet distance. Crouching behind a large red oak, Schellenberg unfolded the MP40’s stock and worked the slide action slowly and quietly, to ready the weapon’s thirty-two-round magazine. Surely they wouldn’t want to lose him twice in one day. The driver’s door of his own car was wide open. At first the two Gestapo men inside the Opel would assume that he had gotten out to take a leak, but when he didn’t return, curiosity would surely overcome them. They would have to get out of the car.