gruesome descriptions of how officers and men of the Soviet NKVD had shot the 4,500 men-in the back of the head, some with their hands tied, some with sawdust stuffed into their mouths to prevent them from crying out-before burying them in a mass grave.
Finishing the report a little after midnight, I found it impossible not to agree with O’Malley’s conclusion that, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the Soviets were guilty. O’Malley’s warning to Winston Churchill that the murders in the Katyn Forest would have long-lasting “moral repercussions” seemed understated. But following my talk with the president, I reckoned that any conclusions I formed from my own investigations would have to take second place to a perception I had already formed of the president’s desire for more cordial relations between himself and the murderous, Pole-hating Joseph Stalin.
Any report on the massacre that I myself compiled could be nothing more than a formality, a way for Roosevelt to cover his ass. I might even have viewed my presidential commission as something of a bore had it not been for the fact that I had managed to talk myself into a trip to London. London would be fun, and after months of inaction in one of the four redbrick buildings that comprised the “Campus”-the local nickname for the OSS and its predominantly academic staff-I was desperate for some excitement. A week in London might be just what the doctor ordered, especially now that Diana had started to make digs about my staying out of the line of fire.
I got up and went to the window. Looking out at the street, I tried to imagine all those murdered Polish officers lying in a mass grave somewhere near Smolensk. I drained the last of the whiskey from my glass. In the moonlight the lawn in front of my house was the color of blood and the restless silver sky had a spectral look, as if death itself had its great white whale of an eye upon me. Not that it mattered much who killed you. The Germans or the Russians, the British or the Americans, your own side or the enemy. Once you were dead you were dead, and nothing, not even a presidential inquiry, could change that fact. But I was one of the lucky ones, and upstairs, life’s affirmative act beckoned my attendance.
I switched off the lights and went to find Diana.
II
Standing up, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, came around his huge marble-topped desk and crossed the thickly carpeted room to face the two men seated on an ornate Biedermeier salon set upholstered in striped green-and-white silk. On the table in front of them lay a pile of curling photographs, each the size of a magazine, each the facsimile of a document that had been removed, covertly, from the safe of the British ambassador in Ankara, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen. Von Ribbentrop sat down, and, trying to ignore the stalactite of rainwater dripping off the Maria Theresa crystal chandelier and collecting, noisily, in a metal bucket, he studied each picture, and then the swarthy-looking thug who had brought them to Berlin, with a show of weary disdain.
“It all looks too good to be true,” he said.
“That is, of course, possible, Herr Reichsminister.”
“People don’t suddenly become spies, for no good reason, Herr Moyzisch,” said von Ribbentrop. “Especially the valets of English gentlemen.”
“Bazna wanted money.”
“And it sounds as if he has had it. How much did you say that Schellenberg has given him?”
“Twenty thousand pounds, so far.”
Von Ribbentrop tossed the photographs back onto the table and one of them slipped to the floor. It was retrieved by Rudolf Linkus, his closest associate in the Foreign Ministry.
“And who trained him to use a camera with such apparent expertise?” said von Ribbentrop. “The British? Has it occurred to you that this might be disinformation?”
Ludwig Moyzisch endured the Reichsminister’s cold stare, wishing he were back in Ankara, and wondering why, of all the people who had examined these documents provided by his agent Bazna (code-named Cicero), von Ribbentrop was the only one to doubt their authenticity. Even Kaltenbrunner, the chief of the Reich Security Service and Walter Schellenberg’s boss, had been convinced the information was accurate. Thinking to make the case for Cicero’s material, Moyzisch said that Kaltenbrunner himself now held the opinion that the documents were probably genuine.
“Kaltenbrunner is ill, is he not?” Von Ribbentrop’s contempt for the SD chief was well known inside the Foreign Ministry. “Phlebitis, I heard. Doubtless his mind, what there is of it, has been much affected by his condition. Besides, I yield to no man, least of all a drunken, sadistic moron, in my knowledge of the British. When I was German ambassador to the Court of St. James, I got to know some of them quite well, and I tell you that this is a trick dreamt up by the English spymasters. Disinformation calculated to divert our so-called intelligence service from their proper tasks.” With one of his watery blue eyes half-closed, he faced his subordinate.
Ludwig Moyzisch nodded with what he hoped looked like proper deference. As the SD’s man in Ankara, he reported to General Schellenberg; but his position was complicated by the fact that his cover as the German commercial attache to Turkey meant that he also answered to von Ribbentrop. Which was how he found himself justifying Cicero’s work to both the SD and the Reich Foreign Ministry. It was a situation that was enough to make any man nervous, since von Ribbentrop was no less vindictive than Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Von Ribbentrop may have looked weak and artificial, but Moyzisch knew it would be a mistake to underestimate him. The days of von Ribbentrop’s diplomatic triumphs might be behind him, but he was still a general in the SS and a friend of Himmler’s.
“Yes, sir,” said Moyzisch. “I am sure you’re right to question this, Herr Minister.”
“I think we are finished here.” Von Ribbentrop stood up abruptly.
Moyzisch rose quickly to his feet but, in his anxiety to be out of the Reichsminister’s presence, knocked over his chair. “I’m sorry, Herr Reichsminister,” he said, picking it up again.
“Don’t bother.” Von Ribbentrop waved his hand at the dripping ceiling. “As you can see, we are not yet recovered from the last visit of the RAF. The top floor of the ministry is gone, as are many of the windows on this floor. There is no heat, of course, but we prefer to stay on in Berlin rather than hide ourselves away at Rastenburg or the Berchtesgaden.”
Von Ribbentrop escorted Linkus and Moyzisch to the door of his office. To Moyzisch’s surprise, the Reichsminister seemed quite courteous now, almost as if there might be something he wanted from him. There was even the faintest hint of a smile playing on his face.
“Might I ask what you will be telling General Schellenberg about this meeting?” With one hand tucked into the pocket of his Savile Row suit, he was clinking a bunch of keys nervously.
“I will tell him what the Reichsminister himself has told me,” said Moyzisch. “That this is disinformation. A crude trick perpetrated by British intelligence.”
“Exactly,” von Ribbentrop said, as if agreeing with an opinion Moyzisch had first voiced himself. “Tell Schellenberg he’s wasting his money. To act on this information would be folly. Don’t you agree?”
“Unquestionably, Herr Reichsminister.”
“Have a safe trip back to Turkey, Herr Moyzisch.” And, turning to Linkus, he said, “Show Herr Moyzisch out and then tell Fritz to bring the car around to the front door. We leave for the railway station in five minutes.”
Von Ribbentrop closed the door and returned to the Biedermeier table, where he gathered up Cicero’s photographs and placed them carefully in his saddle-leather briefcase. He thought Moyzsich was almost certainly right, that the documents were perfectly genuine, but he had no wish to lend any support to them in Schellenberg’s eyes, lest the SD general be prompted to try to take advantage of this new and important information with some stupid, theatrical military stunt. The last thing he wanted was the SD pulling off another “special mission” like the one a month before, when Otto Skorzeny and a team of 108 SS men had parachuted onto a mountaintop in Abruzzi and rescued Mussolini from the traitorous Badoglio faction that had tried to surrender Italy to the Allies. Rescuing Mussolini was one thing; but knowing what to do with him afterward was quite another. It fell to him to deal with
