The Swiss Courier: A Novel

To the Reader

List of Major Characters

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Epilogue

Acknowledgments

© 2009 by Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey

Published by Revell

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.revellbooks.com

E-book edition created 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-4412-0609-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Scripture is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

This is a work of historical fiction; the appearances of certain historical figures is therefore inevitable. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

In the early afternoon of July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus Graf von Stauffenberg confidently lugged a sturdy briefcase into
Wolfsschanze
—Wolf’s Lair—the East Prussian redoubt of Adolf Hitler. Inside the black briefcase, a small but powerful bomb ticked away, counting down the minutes to
der Führer
’s demise.

Several generals involved in the assassination plot arranged to have Stauffenberg invited to a routine staff meeting with Hitler and two dozen officers. The one o’clock conference was held in the map room of Wolfsschanze’s cement-lined underground bunker.

Stauffenberg quietly entered the conference a bit tardy and managed to get close to Hitler by claiming he was hard of hearing. While poring over detailed topological maps of the Eastern Front’s war theater, the colonel unobtrusively set the briefcase underneath the heavy oak table near Hitler’s legs. After waiting for an appropriate amount of time, Stauffenberg excused himself and quietly exited the claustrophobic bunker, saying he had to place an urgent call to Berlin. When a Wehrmacht officer noticed the bulky briefcase was in his way, he inconspicuously moved it away from Hitler, placing it behind the other substantial oak support. That simple event turned the tide of history.

Moments later, a terrific explosion catapulted one officer to the ceiling, ripped off the legs of others, and killed four soldiers instantly. Although the main force of the blast was directed away from Hitler, the German leader nonetheless suffered burst eardrums, burned hair, and a wounded arm. He was in shock but still alive—and unhinged for revenge.

Stauffenberg, believing Hitler was dead, leaped into a staff car with his aide Werner von Haeften. They talked their way out of the Wolfsschanze compound and made a dash for a nearby airfield, where they flew back to Berlin in a Heinkel He 111. When news got out that Hitler had survived, Stauffenberg and three other conspirators were quickly tracked down, captured, and executed at midnight by a makeshift firing squad.

An enraged Hitler did not stop there to satisfy his blood-lust. For the next month and a half, he instigated a bloody purge, resulting in the execution of dozens of plotters and hundreds of others remotely involved in the assassination coup. The Gestapo, no doubt acting under Hitler’s orders, treated the failed attempt on the Führer’s life as a pretext for arresting 5,000 opponents of the Third Reich, many of whom were imprisoned and tortured.

What many people do not know is that Hitler’s manhunt would dramatically alter the development of a secret weapon that could turn the tide of the war for Nazi Germany—the atomic bomb.

This is that story . . .

(in order of appearance)

Jean-Pierre:
a Swiss male in his twenties who participates in underground activities in Germany and Switzerland.

Gabi Mueller:
the twenty-four-year-old daughter of an American father and Swiss mother working in the translation pool at the Basel office of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the American intelligence-gathering operation in Switzerland during World War II and the forerunner of the CIA (Central Intelligence Organization).

Ernst Mueller:
Born in New Glarus, Wisconsin, to Swiss parents, Ernst met his wife-to-be, Thea, at a missionary conference. They married and have three children: Gabi and the twins, Andreas and Willy. They live in Riehen, Switzerland, just across the border from Germany. A furniture maker by trade, he is also a part-time pastor of a “free” church in Switzerland.

Thea Mueller:
A native of Switzerland, she is Gabi’s mother and a full-time homemaker.

Dieter Baumann:
a Swiss in his late twenties who’s working for the Americans at the OSS office in Basel, where he is in charge of operations.

Allen Dulles:
the American spymaster who opened the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) bureau in neutral Switzerland in 1942 to collect information on Nazi Germany and run a spy network. He runs his nascent espionage network from Bern, the Swiss capital.

Sturmbannführer Bruno Kassler:
the fast-rising head of the Gestapo Regional Headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany, where he established a reputation as a fierce hunter of Jews.

Corporal Benjamin Becker:
the young aide-de-camp for Bruno Kassler.

Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler:
the feared chief of the Gestapo, the secret police of the Nazi regime.

Werner Heisenberg:
A winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize for his discoveries in quantum physics, Dr. Heisenberg was in charge of the research program behind the construction of an atomic bomb at the University of Heidelberg.

Joseph Engel:
a twenty-seven-year-old physicist working under Professor Heisenberg at the University of Heidelberg.

Eric Hofstadler:
a Swiss dairy farmer in his mid-twenties who’s in love with Gabi Mueller.

Captain Bill Palmer:
a U.S. Army Air Corps pilot who managed to land his damaged B-24 Liberator in Switzerland instead of being shot down over Germany. He is being interned with other American and British pilots in Davos, away from the population centers and high up in the Alps.

Andreas and Willy Mueller:
the younger twin brothers of Gabi and guards at the internment camp for American and British pilots in Davos because of their fluency in English.

He hoped his accent wouldn’t give him away.

The young Swiss kept his head down as he sauntered beneath the frescoed archways that ringed the town square of Waldshut, an attractive border town in the foothills of the southern Schwarzwald. He hopped over a foot-wide, water-filled trench that ran through the middle of the cobblestone square and furtively glanced behind to see if anyone had detected his presence.

Even though Switzerland lay just a kilometer or two away across the Rhine River, the youthful operative realized he no longer breathed free air. Though he felt horribly exposed—as if he were marching down Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm screaming anti-Nazi slogans—he willed himself to remain confident. His part was a small but vital piece of the larger war effort. Yes, he risked his life, but he was not alone in his passion.

A day’s drive away, American tanks drove for the heart of Paris—and quickened French hearts for
libération
. Far closer, Nazi reprisals thinned the ranks of his fellow resisters. The young man shuddered at the thought of being captured, lined up against a wall, and hearing the
click-click
of a safety being unlatched from a Nazi machine gun. Still, his legs propelled him on.

Earlier that morning, he’d introduced himself as Jean-Pierre to members of an underground cell. The French Resistance had recently stepped up their acts of sabotage after the Allies broke out of the Normandy beachhead two weeks earlier, and they’d all taken
nom de guerres
in their honor.

Inside the pocket of his leather jacket, Jean-Pierre’s right hand formed a claw around a Mauser C96 semiautomatic pistol. His grip tightened, as if squeezing the gun’s metallic profile would reduce the tension building in his chest. The last few minutes before an operation always came to this.

His senses peaked as he took in the sights and sounds around him. At one end of the town square, a pair of disheveled older women complained to a local farmer about the fingerling size of the potato crop. A horse-drawn carriage, transporting four galvanized tin milk containers, rumbled by while a young newsboy screamed out,
“Nachrichten!”

The boy’s right hand waved day-old copies of the
Badische
Zeitung
from Freiburg, eighty kilometers to the northwest. Jean-Pierre didn’t need to read the newspaper to know that more men and women were losing their lives by the minute due to the reprisals of a madman.

Though the planned mission had been analyzed from every angle, there were always uncertain factors that would affect not only the outcome of the mission but who among them would live. Or die.

Their task was to rescue a half-dozen men arrested by local authorities following the assassination attempt on Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler. If things went as Jean-Pierre hoped, the men would soon be free from the Nazis’ clutches. If not, the captives’ fate included an overnight trip to Berlin, via a cattle car, where they would be transported to Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8. The men would be questioned—tortured if they weren’t immediately forthcoming— until names, dates, and places gushed as freely as the blood spilling upon the cold, unyielding concrete floor.

Not that revealing any secrets would save their lives. When the last bit of information had been wrung from their minds, they’d be marched against a blood-spattered wall or to the gallows equipped with well-stretched hemp rope.
May God
have mercy on their souls.

Jean-Pierre willed himself to stop thinking pessimistically. He glanced at his watch—a pricey Hanhart favored by Luftwaffe pilots. His own Swiss-made Breitling had been tucked inside a wooden box on his nightstand back home, where he had also left a handwritten letter. A love note, actually, to a woman who had captured his heart—just in case he never returned. But this was a time for war, not love. And he had to keep reminding himself of that.

Jean-Pierre slowed his gait as he left the town square and approached the town’s major intersection. As he had been advised, a uniformed woman—her left arm ringed with a red armband and black swastika—directed traffic with a whistle and an attitude.