The Rhinemann Exchange (11 page)

He slid down the hard surface, his heels digging into the
earth and rocks of the steep incline until he was above the pile of branches and limbs that signified the hideout’s opening. He picked up a handful of loose dirt and threw it down into the broken foliage.

The response was as instructed: a momentary thrashing of a stick against the piled branches. The fluttering of bird’s wings, driven from the bush.

Spaulding quickly sidestepped his way to the base of the enclosure and stood by the camouflage.

“
Alles in Ordnung. Kommen Sie
,” he said quietly but firmly. “There isn’t much traveling time left.”

“
Halt!
” was the unexpected shout from the cave.

David spun around, pressed his back into the hill and raised his Colt. The voice from inside spoke again. In English.

“Are you … Lisbon?”

“For God’s sake, yes! Don’t
do
that! You’ll get your head shot off!”
Christ
, thought Spaulding, the infiltration team must have used a child, or an imbecile, or both as its runner. “Come on out.”

“I am with apologies, Lisbon,” said the voice, as the branches were separated and the pile dislodged. “We’ve had a bad time of it.”

The runner emerged. He was obviously not anyone David had trained. He was short, very muscular, no more than twenty-five or twenty-six; nervous fear was in his eyes.

“In the future,” said Spaulding, “don’t acknowledge signals, then question the signaler at the last moment. Unless you intend to kill him.
Es ist Schwarztuch-chiffre.
”

“
Was ist das?
Black …”

“Black Drape, friend. Before our time. It means … confirm and terminate. Never mind, just don’t do it again. Where are the others?”

“Inside. They are all right; very tired and very afraid, but not injured.” The runner turned and pulled off more branches. “Come out. It’s the man from Lisbon.”

The two frightened, middle-aged scientists crawled out of the cave cautiously, blinking at the hot, harsh sun. They looked gratefully at David; the taller one spoke in halting English.

“This is a … minute we have waited for. Our very much thanks.”

Spaulding smiled. “Well, we’re not out of the woods, yet.
Frei.
Both terms apply. You’re brave men. We’ll do all we can for you.”

“There was … 
nichts
 … remaining,” said the shorter laboratory man. “My friend’s socialist … 
Politik
 … was unpopular. My late wife was … 
eine Jüdin.
”

“No children?”

“
Nein
,” answered the man. “
Gott seli dank.
”

“I have one son,” said the taller scientist coldly. “
Er ist
 … 
Gestapo.
”

There was no more to be said, thought Spaulding. He turned to the runner, who was scanning the hill and the forests below. “I’ll take over now. Get back to Base Four as soon as you can. We’ve got a large contingent coming in from Koblenz in a few days. We’ll need everyone. Get some rest.”

The runner hesitated; David had seen his expression before … so often. The man was now going to travel alone. No company, pleasant or unpleasant. Just alone.

“That is not my understanding, Lisbon. I am to stay with you.…”

“Why?” interrupted Spaulding.

“My instructions.…”

“From whom?”

“From those in San Sebastián. Herr Bergeron and his men. Weren’t you informed?”

David looked at the runner. The man’s fear was making him a poor liar, thought Spaulding. Or he was something else. Something completely unexpected because it was not logical; it was not, at this point, even remotely to be considered. Unless …

David gave the runner’s frayed young nerves the benefit of the doubt. A benefit, not an exoneration. That would come later.

“No, I wasn’t told,” he said. “Come on. We’ll head to Beta camp. We’ll stay there until morning.” Spaulding gestured and they started across the foot of the slope.

“I haven’t worked this far south,” said the runner, positioning himself behind David. “Don’t you travel at night, Lisbon?”

“Sometimes,” answered Spaulding, looking back at the scientists, who were walking side by side. “Not if we can
help it. The Basques shoot indiscriminately at night. They have too many dogs off their leashes at night.”

“I see.”

“Let’s walk single file. Flank our guests,” said David to the runner.

The four traveled several miles east. Spaulding kept up a rapid pace; the middle-aged scientists did not complain but they obviously found the going difficult. A number of times David told the others to remain where they were while he entered the woods at various sections of the forest and returned minutes later. Each time he did so, the older men rested, grateful for the pauses. The runner did not. He appeared frightened—as if the American might not come back. Spaulding did not encourage conversation, but after one such disappearance, the young German could not restrain himself.

“What are you
doing?
” he asked.

David looked at the
Widerstandskämpfer
and smiled. “Picking up messages.”

“Messages?”

“These are drops. Along our route. We establish marks for leaving off information we don’t want sent by radio. Too dangerous if intercepted.”

They continued along a narrow path at the edge of the woods until there was a break in the Basque forest. It was a grazing field, a lower plateau centered beneath the surrounding hills. The
Wissenschaftler
were perspiring heavily, their breaths short, their legs aching.

“We’ll rest here for a while,” said Spaulding, to the obvious relief of the older men. “It’s time I made contact anyway.”

“
Was ist los?
” asked the young runner. “Contact?”

“Zeroing our position,” replied David, taking out a small metal mirror from his field jacket. “The scouts can relax if they know where we are.… If you’re going to work the north country—what you call south—you’d better remember all this.”

“I shall, I shall.”

David caught the reflection of the sun on the mirror and beamed it up to a northern hill. He made a series of motions with his wrist, and the metal plate moved back and forth in rhythmic precision.

Seconds later there was a reply from halfway up the
highest hill in the north. Flashes of light shafted out of an infinitesimal spot in the brackish green distance. Spaulding turned to the others.

“We’re not going to Beta,” he said. “Falangist patrols are in the area. We’ll stay here until we’re given clearance. You can relax.”

The heavyset Basque put down the knapsack mirror. His companion still focused his binoculars on the field several miles below, where the American and his three charges were now seated on the ground.

“He says they are being followed. We are to take up counterpositions and stay out of sight,” said the man with the metal mirror. “We go down for the scientists tomorrow night. He will signal us.”

“What’s
he
going to do?”

“I don’t know. He says to get word to Lisbon. He’s going to stay in the hills.”

“He’s a cold one,” the Basque said.

Alan Swanson sat in the back of the army car trying his best to remain calm. He looked out the window; the late morning traffic was slight. The immense Washington labor force was at its appointed destinations; machines were humming, telephones ringing, men were shouting and whispering and, in too many places, having the first drink of the day. The exhilaration that was apparent during the first hours of the working day faded as noon approached. By eleven thirty a great many people thought the war was dull and were bored by their mechanical chores, the unending duplicates, triplicates and quadruplicates. They could not understand the necessity of painstaking logistics, of disseminating information to innumerable chains of command.

They could not understand because they could not be given whole pictures, only fragments, repetitious statistics. Of course they were bored.

They were weary. As he had been weary fourteen hours ago in Pasadena, California.

Everything had failed.

Meridian Aircraft had initiated—was
forced
to initiate—a
crash program, but the finest scientific minds in the country could not eliminate the errors inside the small box that was the guidance system. The tiny, whirling spheroid discs would not spin true at maximum altitudes. They were erratic; absolute one second, deviant the next.

The most infinitesimal deviation could result in the midair collision of giant aircraft. And with the numbers projected for the saturation bombing prior to Overlord—scheduled to commence in less than four months—collisons
would
occur.

But this morning everything was different.

Could
be different, if there was substance to what he had been told. He hadn’t been able to sleep on the plane, hardly been able to eat. Upon landing at Andrews, he had hurried to his Washington apartment, showered, shaved, changed uniforms and called his wife in Scarsdale, where she was staying with a sister. He didn’t remember the conversation between them; the usual endearments were absent, the questions perfunctory. He had no time for her.

The army car entered the Virginia highway and accelerated. They were going to Fairfax; they’d be there in twenty minutes or so. In less than a half hour he would find out if the impossible was, conversely, entirely possible. The news had come as a last-minute stay of execution; the cavalry in the distant hills—the sounds of muted bugles signaling reprieve.

Muted, indeed, thought Swanson as the army car veered off the highway onto a back Virginia road. In Fairfax, covering some two hundred acres in the middle of the hunt country, was a fenced-off area housing Quonset huts beside huge radar screens and radio signal towers that sprang from the ground like giant steel malformities. It was the Field Division Headquarters of Clandestine Operations; next to the underground rooms at the White House, the most sensitive processing location of the Allied Intelligence services.

Late yesterday afternoon, FDHQ-Fairfax had received confirmation of an Intelligence probe long since abandoned as negative. It came out of Johannesburg, South Africa. It had not been proved out, but there was sufficient evidence to believe that it could be.

High-altitude directional gyroscopes had been perfected. Their designs could be had.

Altmüller sped out of Berlin on the Spandau highway toward Falkensee in the open Duesenberg. It was early in the morning and the air was cold and that was good.

He was so exhilarated that he forgave the theatrically secretive ploys of the Nachrichtendienst, code name for a select unit of the espionage service known to only a few of the upper-echelon ministers, not to many of the High Command itself. A Gehlen specialty.

For this reason it never held conferences within Berlin proper; always outside the city, always in some remote, secluded area or town and even then in private surroundings, away from the potentially curious.

The location this morning was Falkensee, twenty-odd miles northwest of Berlin. The meeting was to take place in a guest house on the estate belonging to Gregor Strasser.

Altmüller would have flown to Stalingrad itself if what he’d been led to believe was true.

The Nachrichtendienst had found the solution for Peenemünde!

The solution
was true
; it was up to others to expedite it.

The solution that had eluded teams of “negotiators” sent to all parts of the world to explore—unearth—prewar “relationships.” Capetown, Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires.…

Failure.

No company, no individual would touch German negotiations. Germany was in the beginning of a death struggle. It would go down to defeat.

That was the opinion in Zürich. And what Zürich held to be true, international business did not debate.

But the Nachrichtendienst had found another truth.

So he was told.

The Duesenberg’s powerful engine hummed; the car reached high speed; the passing autumn foliage blurred.

The stone gates of Strasser’s estate came into view on the left, Wehrmacht eagles in bronze above each post. He swung into the long, winding drive and stopped at the
gate guarded by two soldiers and snarling shepherd dogs. Altmüller thrust his papers at the first guard, who obviously expected him.

“Good morning, Herr Unterstaatssekretär. Please follow the drive to the right beyond the main house.”

“Have the others arrived?”

“They are waiting, sir.”

Altmüller maneuvered the car past the main house, reached the sloping drive and slowed down. Beyond the wooded bend was the guest cottage; it looked more like a hunting lodge than a residence. Heavy dark-brown beams everywhere; a part of the forest.

In the graveled area were four limousines. He parked and got out, pulling his tunic down, checking his lapels for lint. He stood erect and started toward the path to the door.

No names were ever used during a Nachrichtendienst conference; if identities were known—and certainly they had to be—they were never referred to in a meeting. One simply addressed his peer by looking at him, the group by gesture.

There was no long conference table as Altmüller had expected; no formal seating arrangement by some hidden protocol. Instead, a half dozen informally dressed men in their fifties and sixties were standing around the small room with the high Bavarian ceiling, chatting calmly, drinking coffee. Altmüller was welcomed as “Herr Unterstaatssekretär” and told that the morning’s conference would be short. It would begin with the arrival of the final expected member.

Altmüller accepted a cup of coffee and tried to fall into the casual atmosphere. He was unable to do so; he wanted to roar his disapproval and demand immediate and serious talk. Couldn’t they
understand?

But this was the Nachrichtendienst. One didn’t yell; one didn’t demand.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity to his churning stomach, Altmüller heard an automobile outside the lodge. A few moments later the door opened; he nearly dropped his cup of coffee. The man who entered was known to him from the few times he had accompanied Speer to Berchtesgaden. He was the Führer’s valet, but he had no subservient look of a valet now.