Hitler's peace

Schellenberg squeezed the trigger, and a startling staccato burst of fire shattered the silence of the forest. The MP40 was considered an effective weapon at up to a hundred meters, but at less than ten meters it was positively deadly, and he could hardly have missed his primary target-the tougher-looking man with the boxer’s ear. With the impact of each 9mm Parabellum bullet that struck him in the face and torso his body jerked and a short, feral scream escaped his bloody mouth. Then he rolled over, writhing on the ground, and a second or two later, was still.

Realizing that he was still alive, the other Gestapo man, the one called Karl, began to cross himself furiously, uttering a Hail Mary.

“Better talk to me, Karl,” said Schellenberg, tightening his grip on the MP40’s plastic handle. “Or would you like me to count to three again?”

“It was the chief’s direct order.”

“Muller?”

Karl nodded. “He’s trying to find out how far these peace negotiations of Himmler’s have gone. If it’s just Dr. Kersten, or if you’re involved, too.”

“I see,” said Schellenberg.

Things were a lot clearer to him now. In August of ’42, there had been a discussion involving himself, Himmler, and Himmler’s chiropractor, Dr. Felix Kersten, concerning how a peace with the Allies might be negotiated. The discussion had stalled pending the failed attempt to remove von Ribbentrop-who was perceived to be an obstacle to a diplomatic peace-from his post as Reich foreign minister. But Schellenberg was completely unaware of any current peace negotiations.

“Do you mean to say that there are peace negotiations taking place right now?”

“Yes. Dr. Kersten is in Stockholm, talking to the Americans.”

“And is he under surveillance, too?”

“Probably. I don’t know.”

“What about Himmler?”

“We were told to follow you. I’m afraid that’s all I know.”

“From where does Muller get this information?”

“I don’t know.”

“Take a guess.”

“All right. The splash around Prinz Albrechtstrasse is that there is someone in Himmler’s own office at the Ministry of the Interior who’s been throwing his voice in our direction. But I don’t know his name. Really I don’t.”

Schellenberg nodded. “I believe you.”

“Thank God.”

His mind was racing. There would have to be an investigation into the murder of the Gestapo man, of course. Muller would welcome a chance to embarrass him, and more important, Himmler. Unless…

“Have you got a radio in your car?”

“Yes.”

“Did you radio your last position?”

“We haven’t reported anything since we stopped outside the Ka-De-We.”

There it was, then. He was in the clear. But only if he was prepared to act decisively, now and without hesitation.

Even as the logic of it presented itself clearly to Schellenberg’s mind, he squeezed the trigger. And as he machine-gunned the second Gestapo man, in cold blood, Schellenberg felt that, finally, he had a kind of answer to the question that had often haunted him in the company of his more murderous colleagues. Two bodies now lay dead on the ground in front of him. Two murders hardly compared with Sandberger’s 65,000 or Janssen’s 33,000, but it could hardly be denied that the second murder had felt easier than the first.

With shaking hands, Schellenberg lit a cigarette and smoked it greedily, giving himself up to the soothingly toxic, alkaloid effect of the nicotine in the tobacco. With nerves somewhat steadied, he walked back to his car and took a large mouthful of schnapps from a little Wilhelmine silver hip flask he kept in the glove box. Then he drove slowly back to the Berkaerstrasse.

V

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1943,

LONDON

My journey from New York to London would have left Ulysses looking for a couple of aspirin. Eight hours after leaving LaGuardia Airport at 8:00 A.M. on Tuesday the fifth, I had only traveled as far as Botwood, Newfoundland, where the U.S. Navy Coronado flying boat stopped to refuel. At 5:30 P.M., the four-engine plane was back in the air and heading east across the Atlantic like an outsized goose flying the wrong way for winter.

There were three other passengers: a British general named Turner; Joel Beinart, a USAAF colonel from Albuquerque; and John Wooldridge, a naval commander from Delaware, all three of them tight-lipped men whose demeanor seemed to indicate it wasn’t just walls that had ears but the fuselage of a transatlantic aircraft as well. Not that I was feeling very gabby myself. For much of the journey, I read the Katyn files given to me by the president, which put the kibosh on any conversation.