Garden of Beasts (38 page)

“A car and a uniform,” Paul repeated. “I want to be an official but not a soldier. That’s what we did at the stadium and they might be anticipating it. Maybe—”

“Ach, I know! You can be an RAD leader.”

“A what?”

“National Labor Service. A Soldier of the Spade. Every young man in the country must do a stint as a laborer, probably thought up by Ernst himself as another clever way to train soldiers. They carry their shovels like guns and practice marching as much as digging. You’re too old to be in the service but you could be an officer. They have trucks to shuttle workers to job sites and parade grounds and they’re common in the countryside. No one would notice you. I know where to find you one, a nice truck. And a uniform. They’re a tasteful blue-gray. Just the color for you.”

Paul whispered, “And the rifle?”

“That will be harder. But I have some thoughts.” He finished his beer. “When do you wish to do this?”

“I should be at Waltham College by five-thirty. No later.”

Webber nodded. “Then we must move quickly to turn you into a National Socialist official.” He laughed. “Though you need no training. God knows the real ones have none.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

He heard only static at first. Then the scratchy sounds coalesced into: “Gordon?”

“We don’t use names,” the commander reminded, pressing the Bakelite phone to his ear furiously so that he could hear the words from Berlin more clearly. It was Paul Schumann, calling via radio patched through London. The time was just before 10
A.M.
on Sunday morning but Gordon was at his desk at the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C., where he’d been all night, anxiously waiting to hear whether the man had succeeded in killing Ernst. “Are you all right? What’s going on? We’ve been checking all the press, monitoring the radio broadcasts and nothing’s—”

“Be quiet,” Schumann snapped. “I don’t have time for ‘friends in the north’ and ‘friends in the south.’ Just listen.”

Gordon sat forward in his chair. “Go ahead.”

“Morgan’s dead.”

“Oh, no.” Gordon closed his eyes momentarily, feeling the loss. He hadn’t known the man personally but his information had always been solid, and any man who risks his life for his country was okay in Gordon’s book.

Then Schumann delivered a bombshell. “He was murdered by somebody named Robert Taggert, an American. You know him?”

“What? An American?”

“Do you
know
him?”

“No, never heard of him.”

“He tried to kill me too. Before I could do what you sent me for. The guy you’ve been talking to for the past couple of days was Taggert, not Morgan.”

“What was that name again?”

Schumann spelled it and told Gordon that he might have some connection with the U.S. diplomatic service but he wasn’t sure. The commander wrote the name on a slip of paper and shouted, “Yeoman Willets!”

The woman appeared in the doorway a moment later. Gordon jammed the note into her palm. “Get me everything you can find about this guy,” he said. She vanished instantly. Then into the phone: “Are you all right?”

“Were you part of it?” Despite the bad connection Gordon could feel the man’s anger.

“What?”

“It was all a setup. From the beginning. Were you part of it?”

Gordon felt the swampy July morning air of Washington, D.C., float in and out of the open window. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

After a pause Schumann told the whole story—about the murder of Morgan, Taggert’s masquerading as him and the betrayal of Schumann to the Nazis.

Gordon was genuinely shocked. “My God, no. I swear. I’d never do that to one of my men. And I consider you one of them. I honestly do.”

Another pause. “Taggert said you weren’t involved. But I wanted to hear it from you.”

“I swear….”

“Well, you’ve got a traitor somewhere on your end, Commander. You need to find out who.”

Gordon sat back, shattered at this news. He stared, numb, at the wall in front of him, on which were a number of citations, his Yale diploma and two pictures: President Roosevelt and Theodorus B.M. Mason, the solid-jawed naval lieutenant who’d been the first head of the Office of Naval Intelligence.

A traitor…

“What does this Taggert say?”

“All he said was that it was ‘interests.’ Nothing more specific. They wanted to keep the boss here happy. The overall boss, I mean.”

“Can you talk to him again, find out more?”

A hesitation. “No.”

Gordon understood the implication; Taggert was dead.

Schumann continued. “I got the pass phrases about the tram when I was on the ship. Taggert got the same phrases we did but Morgan didn’t know them. How could that happen?”

“I sent the code to my men on the ship. It also went separately to where you are now. Morgan was supposed to pick it up there.”

“So Taggert got the right message and had a different one sent to Morgan. That German-American Bund spy on board didn’t transmit anything. It wasn’t him. So who could’ve done that? Who knew the right phrase?”

Two names came immediately to Gordon’s mind. A soldier before everything else, Gordon knew that a military commander had to consider all possibilities. But young Andrew Avery was like a son to him. He knew Vincent Manielli less well yet he’d seen nothing in the young officer’s record that would make him doubt his loyalty.

As if he were a mind reader, Schumann asked, “How long have you worked with those two boys of yours?”

“It would be next to impossible.”

“‘Impossible’ has a whole goddamn different meaning lately. Who the hell else knew about the code? Daddy Warbucks?”

Gordon considered. But the moneybags, Cyrus Clayborn, only knew in general what they had planned. “He didn’t even know there
was
a pass code.”

“Then who came up with the phrase?”

“We did, together, the Senator and me.”

More static. Schumann said nothing.

But Gordon added, “No, it can’t be him.”

“Was he with you when you sent the codes?”

“No. He was in Washington.”

Gordon was thinking: The moment he hung up with me, the Senator could have sent a message to Taggert in Berlin with the right code and arranged for the wrong one to go to Morgan. “Impossible.”

“I keep hearing that word, Gordon. That doesn’t cut it with me.”

“Look, this whole thing was the Senator’s idea in the first place. He had some talks with people in the administration and he came to me.”

“All that means is he’s been planning to set me up from the beginning.” Schumann added ominously, “Along with those same ‘people.’”

Facts cascaded through Gordon’s mind. Could this be? Where could the betrayal lead?

Finally Schumann said, “Listen, you handle that situation the way you want. Are you still going to get me that plane?”

“Yes, sir. You have my absolute word on that. I’ll contact my men in Amsterdam myself. We’ll have it there in about three and a half hours.”

“No, I’ll need it later than that. About ten tonight.”

“We can’t land in the dark. The strip we’re using’s abandoned. It doesn’t have lights. But there should be enough daylight left to set down around eight-thirty. How’s that?”

“No. Then make it dawn tomorrow.”

“Why?”

There was a pause. “I’m going to get him this time.”

“Going to… ?”

“Do what I came here for,” Schumann growled.

“No, no… You can’t. It’s too dangerous now. Come on home. Get that job you were talking about. You earned it. You—”

“Commander… you listening?”

“Go on.”

“See, I’m here and you’re there, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me, so all of this jawing now’s just a waste of time. Make sure that plane’s at the field at dawn tomorrow.”

Yeoman Ruth Willets appeared in the doorway. “Hold on,” Gordon said into the phone.

“Nothing on Taggert yet, sir. Records’ll call as soon as they find something.”

“Where’s the Senator?”

“In New York.”

“Get me on any plane you can going up there now. Army, private. Whatever it takes.”

“Yessir.”

Gordon turned back to the phone. “Paul, we’ll get you your lift out of there. But please listen to reason. Everything’s changed now—you have any idea what the risks are?”

The noise on the line rose and swallowed most of Schumann’s words but it seemed to Bull Gordon that he heard what might’ve been laughter and then the button man’s voice again. Part of the phrase was something like “six to five against.”

Then he was listening to a silence that was far louder than the static had ever been.

In a warehouse in eastern Berlin (which Otto Webber called “his” despite the fact they had to break a window to get inside) they found racks of National Labor Service uniforms. Webber pulled a fancy one off a hanger. “Ach, yes, as I said, the blue-gray becomes you.”

Maybe it did, but the color was also conspicuous, especially since his shooting blind at Waltham College would be an open field or forest, as Webber had described the landscape there. The uniform was also close-fitting, bulky and hot. It would get him close to the school but he took another set of more practical clothing as well, dungarees, a dark shirt and a pair of boots, to wear for the touch-off itself.

One of Webber’s business associates had access to a motor pool of government trucks and, with the assurance that Webber would return the vehicle within one day (and not try to sell it back to the government when he did so), the key was handed over, in exchange for some Cuban cigars that had been made in Romania.

Now they needed only the rifle.

Paul had considered the pawnbroker near November 1923 Square, the one who’d supplied the Mauser. But he couldn’t be sure whether the man had been part of Taggert’s deceit or, even if not, whether the Kripo or Gestapo had traced the gun back to the shop and arrested him.

But Webber told him there were often rifles stored in a small warehouse on the Spree River, where he sometimes made deliveries of military supplies.

They drove north and, just after crossing the river at Wullenweber Street, turned west and headed through an area of low manufacturing and commercial buildings. Webber tapped Paul’s arm and he pointed to a dark building to their left.

“That’s it, my friend.”

The place appeared deserted, which they’d expected, today being Sunday. (“Even godless dung-shirts insist on a day of rest,” Webber explained.) But unfortunately the warehouse was set back behind a tall barbed-wire fence and had a spacious, now empty parking area in the front, which made it very visible from the well-traveled street.

“How do we—?”

“Relax, Mr. John Dillinger,” Webber said. “I know what I’m doing. There’s a waterside entrance for boats and barges. It’s impossible to see from the street and you can’t tell it’s a National Socialist warehouse from that side—no eagles or hooked crosses on the dock—so no one will think twice about our visit.”

They parked a half block past the warehouse and Webber led him through an alley, south, toward the water. The men stepped out onto a stone wall above the brown river, where the air was pungent with the scent of rotten fish. They walked down old stairs, carved into stone, and onto a concrete wharf. Several rowboats were tied up and Webber climbed into one. Paul joined him.

They cast off and in a few minutes had rowed their way to a similar dock beneath the back of the military warehouse.

Webber tied the boat up and climbed carefully onto the stone, slick with bird droppings. Paul followed. Looking around, he could see boats on the river, mostly pleasure craft, but Webber was right; no one was paying them any attention. They climbed a few steps to the back door and Paul took a fast look through the window. No lights were on inside and only dim sunlight filtered through several opaque skylights, but the large room appeared deserted. Webber extracted a key ring from his pocket and tried several skeleton keys until he found one that worked. Paul heard a soft click. Webber glanced at him and nodded. Paul pushed the door open.

They walked into the hot, musty room, filled with the eye-burning fumes of creosote. Paul looked around and noticed hundreds of crates. Against the wall were racks of rifles. The army or SS was using this place as an assembly station—taking the guns from the crates, ripping off the oil-paper wrapping and cleaning off the creosote, which had been smeared on to prevent rusting. They were Mausers, similar to the one that Taggert had arranged for him, though with longer barrels, which was good. This meant they were more accurate and, at Waltham, he might be quite far from Ernst. No telescopic sights. But Paul Schumann hadn’t had one on his Springfield at St. Mihiel and Argonne Woods and his marksmanship there had been deadly accurate.

He walked to the rack, picked up one, looked it over and tried the bolt. It worked smoothly, giving the satisfying click of finely machined metal. He aimed and dry-fired it a few times, getting a feel for the trigger. They located crates labeled
7.92 mm,
the caliber of ammunition for the Mauser. Inside were gray cardboard boxes, printed with swastikas and eagles. He opened one, took out five bullets, loaded the gun then chambered and ejected a round to make absolutely certain the bullets were right.

“Good, let’s get out of here,” he said, putting two boxes of the shells into his pocket. “Can we—”

His words were interrupted as the front door opened, casting a beam of fierce sunlight on them. They turned, squinting. Before Paul could lift the rifle, the young man in the doorway, wearing a black SS uniform, was pointing a pistol toward them. “You! Put that down at once. Hands up!”

Paul crouched, set the Mauser on the floor and slowly rose.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Otto Webber said gruffly, “What are you doing? We are from the Krupp Munitions Works. We were sent to make certain that the correct ammunition—”

“Quiet.”

The young guard looked around nervously to see if anyone else was here.

“There was a problem with a delivery. We got a call from—”

“It’s Sunday. Why are you working on Sunday?”

Webber laughed. “My young friend, when we deliver the wrong shipment to the SS, we will correct our error no matter what the day or the hour. My supervisor—”

“Quiet!” The young soldier spotted a telephone on a dusty workstation and moved toward it, keeping the pistol pointed toward them. When he was nearly to the table Webber lowered his hands and started walking in his direction.

“Ach, this is absurd.” He was exasperated. “I have identification.”

“You will stop right there!” He thrust the gun forward.

“I will show you the paperwork from my supervisor.” Webber kept walking.

The SS guard pulled the trigger. A short metallic bang shook the walls.

Unsure if Webber was hit or not, Paul scooped the Mauser up from the floor and rolled behind a high stack of rifle crates, chambering a round.

The young trooper lunged for the phone and pulled the receiver off the cradle, then ducked back. “Please, listen,” he cried into the handset. Paul rose fast. He had no view of the soldier but he fired a bullet into the phone unit, which exploded into a dozen Bakelite shards. The trooper cried out.

Paul slipped back behind cover. But not before he caught a glimpse of Otto Webber lying on the floor, writhing slowly as he gripped his belly, which was stained with blood.

No…

“You Jew!” the young trooper raged. “You will throw down your gun at once. There will soon be a hundred men here.”

Paul made his way to the front of the building, where he could cover both the front and back doors. He glanced quickly out the window and saw a lone motorcycle parked in front. He knew the young man was merely making a routine check of the warehouse and there would be no others coming. But someone might have heard the shot. And the SS man could simply stay where he was, keeping Paul pinned down, until his superior realized he hadn’t reported back and sent more troops to the warehouse.

He looked out from his end of the stack of crates. He had no idea where the soldier was. He—

Another gunshot echoed. Glass splintered the front window, nowhere near Paul.

The SS guard had fired through the glass to draw attention; he’d shot directly into the street, not caring if he hit anyone.

“You Jew pig!” the man raged. “Stand up and raise your hands or you’ll die screaming in Columbia House!” The voice came from a different place this time, closer to the front of the warehouse. He’d crawled forward to put more crates between himself and his enemy.

Another shot through the window. Outside a car horn blared.

Paul moved into the next row, swinging the gun before him, finger on the trigger. The Mauser was ungainly—good for distance, bad for this. He looked fast. The aisle was empty. He jumped as another shot shattered a window. Someone
must
have heard by now. Or seen a bullet strike a wall or house across the street. Maybe a car or passerby had been hit.

He started for the next aisle. Fast, swinging the gun before him.

A glimpse of the man’s black uniform, disappearing. The SS man had heard Paul, or anticipated him, and slipped behind another stack of crates.

Paul decided he couldn’t wait any longer. He’d have to stop the guard. There was nothing to do but charge over the center row of crates, just like he’d gone over the top of the trenches in an assault during the War, and hope he could get off a fatal shot before the man sprayed bullets at him from the semiautomatic pistol.

Okay, Paul said to himself. He took a deep breath.

Another…

Go!

He leapt to his feet and climbed onto the crate in front of him, lifting the gun. His foot just touched the second crate when he heard a sound behind him and to his right. The soldier had flanked him! But as he turned, the grimy windows shook again from a gunshot. Paul froze.

The SS soldier stepped directly in front of him, twenty feet away. Paul frantically raised the Mauser but just before he fired, the soldier coughed. Blood sprayed from his mouth, and the Luger dropped to the floor. He shook his head. He fell heavily and lay still, blood turning his uniform ruddy.

To his right, Paul could see Otto Webber on the floor. He clutched his bloody gut with one hand. In his other was a Mauser. He’d managed to crawl to a rack of guns, load one and fire. The rifle slid to the floor.

“Are you crazy?” Paul whispered angrily. “Why did you go toward him like that? Didn’t you think he’d shoot?”

“No,” the white-faced, sweating man said, laughing. “I
didn’t
think he’d do that.” The man sighed in pain. “Go see if anybody has responded to his subtle call for help.”

Paul ran to the front and noted the area was still deserted. Across the street was a tall, windowless building, a factory or warehouse, closed today. It was likely that the bullets had struck the wall unnoticed.

“It’s clear,” he said, returning to Webber, who had sat up and was looking down at the mass of blood on his belly. “Ach.”

“We have to find a doctor.” Paul slung the rifle over his shoulder. He helped Webber to his feet and they made their way out the back doorway and into the boat. Pale and sweating, the German lay back with his head against the bow as Paul rowed frantically to the dock near the truck.

“Where can I take you? For a doctor?”

“Doctor?” Webber laughed. “It’s too late for that, Mr. John Dillinger. Leave me. Go on. I can tell. It’s too late.”

“No, I’m taking you for help,” Paul repeated firmly. “Tell me where to find somebody who won’t go running to the SS or Gestapo.” He pulled the boat to the dock, tied it up and climbed out. He set the Mauser in a patch of grass nearby and turned back to help Webber out of the boat.

“No!” Paul whispered.

Webber had untied the rope and with his remaining strength pushed off from the dock. The dinghy was now ten feet away, drifting into the current.

“Otto! No!”

“As I say, too late,” Webber called, gasping. Then he gave a sour laugh. “Look at me, a Viking’s funeral! Ach, when you return home play some John Philip Sousa and think of me…. Though I still say he’s English. You Americans take credit for far too much. Now, go on, Mr. John Dillinger. Do what you have come here for.”

The last glimpse Paul Schumann had of his friend were the man’s eyes closing as he slumped to the bottom of the boat, which gathered speed, drawn into the murky water of the Spree.

A dozen of them, all young men, who had chosen life and freedom over honor. Was it cowardice or intelligence that had motivated them to do this?

Kurt Fischer wondered if he was the only one among them plagued by this question.

They were being driven through the countryside northwest of Berlin in the same sort of bus that used to take them on outings as young students. The round driver piloted his vehicle smoothly over the winding road and tried, unsuccessfully, to get them to sing hunting and hiking songs.

Kurt sat next to his brother, as they shared stories with the others. Little by little he learned something about them. Mostly Aryan, all from middle-class families, all with degrees, attending universities or planning to do so after their Labor Service. Half were, like Kurt and Hans, marginally anti-Party for political and intellectual reasons: Socialists, pacifists, protestors. The other half were “swing kids,” richer, rebellious too but not as political; their main complaint with the National Socialists was cultural: the censoring of movies, dance and music.

There were no Jews, Slavs or Roma gypsies among this crowd, of course. Nor any Kosis, either. Despite Colonel Ernst’s enlightenment, Kurt knew that it would be many years before such ethnic and political groups would find a home in the military or German officialdom. Kurt’s personal belief was that it would never happen as long as the triumvirate of Hitler, Göring and Goebbels was in power.

So here they were, he was thinking, these young men, brought together by the predicament of having to choose between a concentration camp and possible death or an organization they found morally wrong.

Am I a coward, Kurt wondered again, choosing as I did? He remembered Goebbels’s call for the nationwide boycott of Jewish stores in April of ’33. The National Socialists thought it would receive an overwhelming show of support. In fact, the event went badly for the Party, with many Germans—his parents among them—openly defying the boycott. Thousands, in fact, sought out stores they hadn’t previously been to, just to show support for their Jewish fellow citizens.

That
was courage. Did he not have this bravery within him?

“Kurt?”

He looked up. His brother had been speaking to him. “You’re not listening.”

“What did you say?”

“When will we eat supper? I’m hungry.”

“I don’t have any clue. How would I know?”

“Is army food any good? I heard you eat well. I suppose it depends, though. If you’re in the field, it’ll be different than at a base. I wonder what it’s like.”

“What, the food?”

“No. Being in the trenches. Being—”

“We won’t be in the trenches. There won’t be another war. And if there is, you heard Colonel Ernst, we won’t have to fight. We’ll be given different duties.”

His brother didn’t look convinced. And more troubling, he didn’t look that upset that he might be seeing combat. Why, he even seemed intrigued by the thought. This was a very new, and disturbing, side to his brother.

I wonder what it’s like….

Conversation in the bus continued—about sports, about the scenery, about the Olympics, about American movies. And girls, of course.

Finally they arrived, turning off the highway and easing down a long maple-lined drive that led to the campus of Waltham Military College.

What their pacifist parents would think to see them in such a place!

The bus squealed to a halt in front of one of the school’s red-brick buildings. Kurt was struck by the incongruity: an institution devoted to the philosophy and practice of warfare, yet set in an idyllic vale with a rich carpet of grass, fluttering ivy crawling up the ancient buildings, forests and hills behind, which formed a gentle frame for the scene.

The boys gathered their rucksacks and climbed off the bus. A young soldier not much older than they identified himself as their recruitment officer and shook their hands, welcoming them. He explained that Doctor-professor Keitel would be with them shortly. He held up a football that he and another soldier had been kicking around and he tapped it toward Hans, who expertly sent it on its way to another of the recruits.

And, as always happens when young men and a ball end up together on a grassy field, it was only a matter of minutes before two teams had formed and a game begun.