disaster came in April 1943, when two senior members of the AA were arrested by the Gestapo for malfeasance, currency offenses, and undermining the war effort. It was only thanks to Himmler (and, it was strongly rumored, the Fuhrer himself) that Admiral Canaris had managed to avoid a more serious charge and to retain control of his near discredited department.
Discredited perhaps, but the AA was not without an extensive network of spies, many of them working in the Reich’s diplomatic missions abroad as well as in von Ribbentrop’s Foreign Ministry on the Wilhelmstrasse. As a result, Canaris knew all about Agent Cicero and the forthcoming Big Three Conference in Teheran, although nothing at all of Schellenberg’s Operation Long Jump. He also knew the substantive part of a secret conversation that had taken place at the Wolfschanze more than a week before between Hitler and Himmler. This morning, he had summoned to the bunker he now treated as home only those officers from the AA and the Wehrmacht whom he regarded as above suspicion. The topic was assassination.
His office was furnished and decorated in much the same fashion as the office on Tirpitz Ufer had been: a small desk, a larger table, a few chairs, a clothes locker, and a safe; on his desk stood a model of the light cruiser Dresden, on which he had served during the Great War, and a bronze trio of three wise monkeys; on the walls were a Japanese painting of a grinning demon, Conrad Hommel’s full-length portrait of the Fuhrer-the canine-minded Canaris always thought it made Hitler look like a little dog-and a picture of General Franco. Canaris was well aware that this was an odd juxtaposition of portraits: despite Franco’s fascism and Spain’s civil war debt to Germany, he and Hitler disliked each other intensely; Canaris, on the other hand, had nothing but the greatest warmth and admiration for the people of Spain and their leader, having spent a great deal of time in the country before the war.
The admiral stood holding one of the dachshunds as the meeting convened. He was a small man, just five foot three, with silver hair, and quite round shouldered, which lent him an unmilitary bearing. Wearing a naval uniform and surrounded by much younger, taller officers, Canaris looked more like a village schoolmaster waiting for his class to settle down behind their desks.
He put his dog on the floor, took a seat at the head of the table, and immediately lit a large Gildemann cigar. Last to enter the bunker with its steep A-shaped roof (so designed so that bombs would slide off) was “Benti” von Bentivegni, an equally diminutive officer who was of Italian descent, but whose monocle and stiff manner marked him out as an almost archetypal Prussian.
“Close the door, Benti,” said Canaris, who disliked the way every time someone entered the bunker the wind blew a handful of leaves in through the steel door. Dead leaves were all over the carpet and were easily mistaken for dog turds, so that Canaris was constantly thinking that Seppel and Kasper had disgraced themselves. “And come sit down.”
Von Bentivegni sat and began fixing a cigarette into an amber holder. Canaris pressed a button underneath the table to summon the orderly. The next moment the internal door to one of the connecting tunnels opened and a corporal stepped into the room, carrying a tray bearing a coffeepot and several cups and saucers.
“I don’t believe it,” said Colonel Freytag von Loringhoven, his keen nostrils already sucking in the aroma. Food at the Zossen mess was poor, consisting almost exclusively of field rations and ersatz coffee; for most of the officers around the table, who were more used to dining at the Adlon or the Cafe Kranzler, it was just another reason to hate Zossen and the Army Field HQ, code-named Zeppelin. “Coffee. Real coffee.”
“I brought it back from Madrid,” said Canaris. “As well as some other provisions which I have given to the cook. I’ve asked him to prepare a special meal for us.” Canaris liked good food and was something of a cook himself. There had been a time, before the war, when the admiral had even cooked dinner for Heydrich and his wife at his house in Dolle-Strasse.
“No one could accuse you, Herr Admiral, of not looking after your men,” said Colonel Hansen, savoring the coffee in his cup.
“Don’t tell anyone,” said Canaris. “This really is top secret.”
“And how is Madrid?” asked von Bentivegni. As head of Section III he was especially concerned with the AA’s infiltration of the Spanish intelligence service.
“The Spanish government is under pressure from the Americans to stop their exports to us of wolfram and to expel all German agents.”
“And what does Franco say about that?”
“I didn’t actually get to see the general,” admitted Canaris. “But I saw Vigon.” General Juan Vigon was the chief of the Spanish general staff. “And I saw the new foreign minister, Count Jordana, too. I was obliged to point out the number of occasions on which the Abwehr and the Spanish police have acted in concert against Allied and anti-Franco resistance groups.”
Canaris continued describing the diplomatic aspects of his visit, even describing the strategic importance of wolfram as a material for manufacturing bomb electrodes, until the orderly had finished serving the coffee and left the room. As soon as the door was closed, Canaris came to the main point of the meeting.
“While I was in Spain I had a chance to speak to Diego. For the benefit of our colleagues in the Wehrmacht, Diego is the name of a successful Argentinian businessman who is also our top agent in South America.”
“Our top lady-killer, too,” observed Colonel Hansen, who, as head of Section I, was responsible for radio and courier links with all the Abwehr’s agents abroad. “I’ve never known a fellow quite so successful with the ladies.”
Canaris, who had little interest in ladies these days, did not mind Hansen’s interruption; he welcomed any opportunity for levity at Zossen, where the atmosphere was becoming increasingly desperate.
“Diego?” von Loringhoven said.
“Diego is his code name,” he explained. “Since the Pastorius experience we only use code names. None of us has forgotten the executions of six good men in June. We try not to mention names in the Abwehr. No, not even the name of the man we are planning to kill in Teheran. From here on I shall only refer to him by his operational code name, Wotan.”
Canaris paused for a moment, to relight his cigar, before continuing: “Now, then. Diego was in Washington only a few days ago, where he met Harvard. Harvard is the Abwehr’s last important spy in Washington and an agent we have been using since 1940, when he was a rich man in his own right, owning a decent-sized chemical company. When an investment went badly wrong for him, the Abwehr was able to pay off his debts, refinance the company, and buy lots of defense shares in his name. I tell you this so you will understand that his loyalty is to Germany and the Abwehr, rather than National Socialism.
“At the beginning of the war we encouraged Harvard to become a member of the American Ordnance Association, a pro-defense lobby with close ties to the War Department. As a result he receives a great many War Department press releases and is well-known around Washington, with lots of friends in the Senate and Roosevelt’s cabinet. Since 1942 he has, to all intents and purposes, been the owner of a house in Acapulco, where he has often entertained senators who have been totally unaware that the place is full of hidden microphones. Harvard’s main usefulness has been in reporting Washington gossip, but occasionally he has also been able, on an informal basis, to recruit people who are sympathetic to our cause.
“One such is a man, code-named Brutus, who will be accompanying President Roosevelt on his forthcoming visits to Cairo and Teheran for the Big Three Conference. I need not remind you that this is extremely timely. Fate has presented us with an opportunity that might otherwise have taken months, perhaps years to prepare. Think of it, gentlemen. Our own man, inside Stalin’s own conference room at the Russian embassy in Teheran, and armed quite legitimately. In my opinion, the very simplicity of such a plan is its best guarantee. As you all know, I have always taken the view that a lone assassin stands the best chance of success in the killing of any head of state. With all the NKVD security apparatus that Comrade Beria will undoubtedly deploy, it seems highly unlikely that Wotan will be suspecting an assassination to come from this particular quarter.”
“Is Wotan to be shot, then?” asked Hansen.
“No, he is to be poisoned,” said Canaris. “With strychnine.”
Von Loringhoven, a Balt who had grown up in Imperial Russia and trained with the Latvian army before transferring to the Wehrmacht, shook his head. As someone who had recently served as the intelligence officer with a unit of pro-German Cossacks on the eastern front, he was quite used to seeing men so consumed with hatred that they were prepared to betray their own country and to kill their own kind. But Brutus seemed harder to understand. “So what’s in it for him?” he asked bluntly. “How do we know he will do it?”
“He’s a patriot,” replied Canaris. “A German-American, born in Danzig, who would like to see a swift end to
