The Hour of the Cat (54 page)

“The Admiral has his moods. We all know that. I'll see to it he gets home.”

Oster removed his overcoat and put it with his briefcase in the closet behind Gresser's desk. He stepped over the threshold, into the shadowy interior of Canaris's office, treading softly in case the Admiral was asleep. The room was illuminated by ash-colored moonlight. Canaris was near where Gresser had last seen him, between the window and the desk, a one-dimensional cutout of gray and black. He looked at Oster but did not speak.

“I was on my way home when I encountered Gresser. He told me you were still here.” Oster walked over and stood beside Canaris.

“I had a meeting with the Führer today,” Canaris said softly, almost in a whisper. “I was summoned to report on the rearmament efforts of the British and French. In the middle of my presentation, he was informed the British had issued a non-negotiable guarantee of Poland's territorial integrity.”

“At last they're showing some backbone. They've learned the hard way that the man's promises are utterly worthless.” Oster was about to put a cigarette between his lips when Canaris suddenly shouted, “He's mad, Hans, mad beyond a doubt!”

Oster felt the hot, stale rush of his breath, the fine spray of his speech. The cigarette fell from Oster's mouth. He took a step back.

“I still can't take it all in!” Canaris said, his voice loud and anguished. “One minute he was talking calmly, the next ranting like the inmate of an insane asylum. He'll drown his enemies in their own blood, he said. Millions will die, but that's the price which must be paid if his destiny is to be fulfilled. He raved for so long that Ribbentrop had to fetch him a handkerchief to wipe the froth from his mouth.”

Canaris bent down and retrieved Oster's cigarette. “I didn't mean to startle you,” he said, regaining a measure of calm. “But the behavior I witnessed has left me shaken.” Fetching the lighter from his desk, Canaris flicked the wheel. Oster concentrated on putting the cigarette in the middle of the trembling flame.

“Destiny, that's the word he keeps coming back to,” Canaris said. “He believes he's its agent. The Czech crisis absolutely confirmed his belief. It's almost as if he knows that, as well as cowing the English and French, he exploded the hopes of those deluded enough to imagine they could depose him.”

He recalled to himself a phrase that Heydrich had used:
Facts are paltry things in the face of destiny.
He realized for the first time that Heydrich had been undoubtedly quoting the Führer. The resolution of the Czech crisis, it seemed, had turned that wishful aphorism into actuality. Germany was under his sway now, completely. There were no more barriers. There would be no turning back.

Above, in what had become a nightly occurrence, a formation of army transport planes lumbered toward Templehof Airport. The heavy and familiar drone of their motors rattled against the windows. “They're returning from Prague, I suppose,” Canaris said. “His supposed downfall turns out to be another bloodless triumph.”

 

 

“They'll follow him over the cliff now,” Canaris said. “They'll go wherever he wants them to go and take the rest of Europe with them.”

“That remains to be seen. Perhaps we'll all have to pay for letting him get this far. Perhaps not. For the present, it's wise to keep our own counsel and be patient. Come, Wilhelm, I'll drop you home.” Oster had thought for an instant that perhaps Canaris had fallen prey to the same outbursts as the Führer, as though his madness were contagious. It was a mistaken impression, he decided. The momentary slip of Canaris's mask, the glimpse of what lay behind his stoic, inexpressive demeanor revealed not rage, but fear, anticipation of the road ahead and where it led. The final destination. Oster went out and retrieved his coat and briefcase.

When he returned, Canaris was sitting at his desk with the lamp on. “I have work to do. I'll summon a driver to take me home.”

“Suit yourself, but you won't do your country any good by working yourself to death,” Oster said. As he turned to leave, he noticed the model of the
Dresden
on the mantel. It drew his mind to the sea, reminding him of a question he several times meant to ask but, in the confusion and despondency that followed the aborted coup, had forgotten. “Wilhelm,” he said, “that submarine Heydrich dispatched to America, what happened to it?” He left unmentioned how Piekenbrock had told him about his trip to Copenhagen and his happy sense it was intended to foil the U-boat's mission.

Canaris put on his glasses and began to examine the stack of files on his desk. “There was a storm, a tremendous blow. The American weather service failed to detect that it was headed for the coast, but the captain of the U-boat was warned by a German merchant ship that had come through and barely survived. The captain asked permission to turn back, and it was granted.”

“And those it was supposed to pick up?”

“God only knows. Either they drowned or found another escape route. If the SS knows, it's not telling.”

“Well, then,” Oster said, “there's cause for hope. The weather turned against them. Perhaps that's an omen of better days to come.”

“Or of more bad weather.”

“Always the pessimist.”

Canaris bowed his head, as if to concentrate on the document in front of him. “I've learned that one is rarely disappointed when he expects the worst.”

After a man has experienced much and learned neither to hold fast, nor to go down, nor to die, but to stretch himself, to feel, not evade things, but to stand straight, with a steadfast soul, that is something.

—ALFRED DÖBLIN,
Berlin Alexanderplatz

Somewhere on the canal, an oil barge is hit. Its contents catch fire and spill into the water, covering it with flames. A horde of rats scurries up the embankment until the street is hidden beneath a demented, heaving cover of gray-brown vermin. Fire trucks rush by, crushing them like grapes in a wine press. Their maddened squeaks and squeals grow into a single ear-splitting shriek
.

In these last minutes, he can't separate what he dreamed from what really occurred. Certainly, the air raids were no dream. Gresser and thousands of others died in them. Most of the casualties were civilians. But the rats? Did he dream them? He's not sure.

Canaris stares into the dark and waits to be summoned from his cell. Once the clock had been wound, its hands moved relentlessly and inexorably toward this moment.

 

 

The day the war begins, he knows where it will end. He tells a colleague, “This means the end of Germany.”

For the next four years, he balances himself on the wire, a master of the tightrope, loyal to his nation and to its armed forces but an opponent of the regime, believing it is possible to separate the former from the latter, to serve one as a patriot and, where possible, resist the other.

He protests the liquidation of Soviet POWs.

Keitel replies on behalf of the Führer: “These objections accord with soldierly conceptions of a chivalrous war! What matters now is the destruction of an ideology. I therefore approve and endorse these measures.”

The confirmation that Dr. Arnheim's fears were real, that mental patients are being murdered in the thousands as part of Operation T-4, no sooner arrives than an even more monstrous crime unfolds: the utter totality and finality of the solution that has been devised for the Jewish Question and is already being carried out.