The Honor of Spies

With Canaris in the plane--a converted bomber, or more accurately one of Germany's first (1934) commercial transport aircraft, which had been converted into a bomber and then, to move senior officials around, converted back to an airliner--were two officers. One was Canaris's deputy, Fregattenkapitan Otto von und zu Waching, a small, trim, intense Swabian. The other was Oberst - leutnant Reinhard Gehlen, also trim and intense, but larger in stature than von und zu Waching. Gehlen, the senior intelligence officer of the German General Staff on the Russian front, had been in Canaris's office when Gunsche had called.

There were several reasons Canaris had brought Gehlen along on the trip to Wolfsschanze. It was entirely likely Hitler would like to talk to him, for one. For another, he hadn't had enough time to talk to him before Gunsche had called; Gehlen had returned to Berlin only late the night before. But the most important reason was that the opportunity to show Gehlen the inside of Wolfsschanze seemed to have been dumped in his lap.

Gehlen was an Operation Valkyrie conspirator. More than that, he had volunteered to give his own life if that was what it would take to remove Hitler. The only way Canaris could see to kill Der Fuhrer was to do so at Wolfsschanze, and obviously, having access to the Fuhrerhauptquartier would be necessary to accomplish that.

The compound was protected by the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Regiment of the SS. They made sure that no one who could possibly put Hitler, or any of the other members at the top of the Nazi power structure, in any danger could get near any of them.

Canaris motioned for Gehlen to come to his seat.

When Gehlen was squatting in the aisle beside him, Canaris said, "I didn't have time to ask, Gehlen, but are you acquainted with Oberstleutnant Wilhelm Frogger, late of the Afrikakorps?"

"I know who he is, Herr Admiral."

"There was an interesting message from Mexico City overnight," Canaris said. "The guards at border crossings from the United States have been alerted to look for him. He has apparently escaped from the prisoner-of-war camp in Mississippi and may be trying to get into Mexico."

It is equally possible, Canaris thought, since there have been virtually no other escapes from POW camps in the United States, that Frogger said something he should not have--or approached, tried to recruit--the wrong person in the POW camp, and, following an ad hoc, secret, middle-of-the-night court-martial, was convicted of being a traitor, executed, and buried.

Gehlen did not reply.

"I didn't know him well," Canaris went on, "but he never struck me as the sort of chap who would succeed in something like escaping from a POW cage."

"I don't know what to think, or say, Herr Admiral," Gehlen said.

"It has been my experience, Gehlen, that if you don't know what to think, it is best to think some more, and if you don't know what to say, it is best to say nothing."

Canaris turned his attention to his briefcase, and Gehlen knew he had been dismissed.

Among senior intelligence officers, there was a saying: "One should not listen to what Canaris says; one should pay attention to what he does not say."

There were four Heinkel 111s parked at the airfield. One was always kept there against the unlikely possibility that the Fuhrer might suddenly decide to go to Berlin or Berchtesgaden or Vienna. The other three aircraft suggested to Canaris that the three most powerful men in the Nazi hierarchy--Hermann Goring, Heinrich Himmler, and Martin Bormann--also had been summoned to Wolfsschanze. They were the only officers important enough to have their own aircraft kept waiting for them.

Goring had the grandest title. He was Reichsmarschall des Grossdeutschen Reiches. He was the most popular--after Hitler, of course--with the people. But he had failed to bomb England into submission, and later to protect Germany from American and British bombers. Moreover, he had become the next thing to a drug addict, and tales circulated of homosexual orgies at Carinhall, his hunting estate in the Schorfheide Forest north of Berlin, and his influence had suffered.

Canaris knew that many of the rumors about Goring's sexual proclivities and drug addiction had been, if not invented, then circulated by the man everyone agreed was the most dangerous senior Nazi, Heinrich Himmler. He had two titles: He was Reichsprotektor Himmler and Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler. And, playing on Hitler's distrust of his generals, Himmler had managed to create his own army--thirty divisions strong--called the Waffen-SS.