“You were just as sure when you went up against von Ribbentrop, weren’t you?” objected Bormann. “And yet you failed to deliver his head.”
“True. But it was Himmler who saved his neck. The only person who could save Himmler’s neck is Hitler.”
“Go on.”
“For a while now it has seemed to me that by offering to seize power from the Fuhrer and negotiate a peace, and in exchange for their approval to continue the war against the Soviet Union, Himmler entertains hopes of some kind of personal absolution from Britain and America.”
“And what is you own opinion of that, Walter? Of continuing the war against the Soviet Union?”
“Insanity. At all costs we must make peace with the Russians. My own intelligence sources suggest that Stalin’s greatest fear is that the Red Army will mutiny because of the appalling casualties it is sustaining. If we make peace with the Russians before next spring, we will have nothing to fear from the Americans and the British. They would hardly risk a second front if Russia was out of the war. Himmler’s plan shows no understanding of the political practicalities here, Martin. Next year is an election year for Roosevelt. It would be suicide for him to go into an election while the United States Army incurs the kind of casualties now being received by the Red Army in order to liberate Europe. Which they would if Russia were no longer a belligerent.”
Martin Bormann was still nodding, but he had stopped writing, and his reaction had hardly been what Schellenberg had expected. Bormann hated Himmler, and Schellenberg thought he ought to have looked more obviously pleased at having just been handed the means of destroying his greatest enemy.
NO LESS PUZZLING to Schellenberg was Hitler’s own demeanor. Over dinner that night, Hitler seemed in such excellent spirits that Schellenberg was quite certain Bormann could not have told him of Himmler’s treachery. When Hitler left the table for coffee in his drawing room, Bormann slipped outside for a quick cigarette, and Schellenberg followed.
“Have you told him?”
“Yes,” said Bormann. “I told him.”
“Are you sure?”
“What kind of idiot do you take me for? Of course I’m sure.”
“Then I don’t understand. I still remember the Fuhrer’s reaction six months ago, in Vinnica, when there was news about a heavy bombing raid in Nuremberg. How angry he was with Goring.”
Bormann laughed. “Yes, I remember that, too. It was great to watch, wasn’t it? The fat bastard’s been a bad smell around here ever since.”
“Then why isn’t Hitler angry? After twenty years of friendship. Why isn’t he furious with Himmler?”
Bormann shrugged.
“Unless.” Schellenberg threw his own cigarette onto the ground and stamped on it. “Of course. It’s the only possible explanation. The Fuhrer has had a reply to at least one of those letters I took to Stockholm. That’s why Himmler’s not been arrested, isn’t it? Because the Fuhrer doesn’t want anything to interfere with these secret peace negotiations. And because Himmler now has the perfect alibi for what he’s been doing all these months.”
Bormann looked up at the freezing black Prussian sky and blew out a long column of cigarette smoke, as if trying to blot out the moon. For a moment or two he said nothing; then, stamping his feet against the cold, he nodded.
“You’re a clever man, Walter. But there are things happening right now to which you can’t be a party. Secret things. On the diplomatic front. Himmler and von Ribbentrop are in the driver’s seat, for the moment at least. The time will inevitably come when Himmler will have to be dealt with. The Fuhrer recognizes this. And until then, your loyalty has been noted.” Bormann took a last drag from his cigarette and flicked the butt into the trees. “Besides, you’re our ace in the hole, remember? You and your team of cutthroats and murderers in Iran. If Hitler’s peace comes to nothing, then we are going to have need of your Operation Long Jump after all.”
“I see,” said Schellenberg gloomily.
“I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. If things work out, then the war will be over by Christmas. And if they don’t, well, that’s good, too. I mean, the Big Three, they’ll hardly be expecting us to try to kill them while we’re still exchanging love letters, will they?”
“No, I suppose not.”
They returned to the dinner table, where they found themselves jeered by Hitler.
“Here they are. The nicotine addicts. You know something?” Hitler had turned to address his other dinner guests, who included some of the General Staff and a couple of stenographers. “As soon as peace has returned I’m going to abolish the soldier’s tobacco ration. We can make better use of our foreign currency than squandering it on imports of poison. I’ve a good mind even to make smoking illegal in our public buildings. So many men I’ve known have died of excessive use of tobacco. My father, first of all. Eckhart. Troost. It will be your turn, Schellenberg, if you don’t quit soon. Not many people know it, but I’m ashamed to confess that I used to be a smoker myself. This was thirty years ago, mind you, when I was living in Vienna. I was living on milk, dry bread, and forty cigarettes a day. Can you imagine it? Forty. Well, one day I worked out that I was spending as much as thirty kreuzers a day on cigarettes, but that for just five kreuzers I could have some butter on my bread.” Hitler chuckled at the memory of his time in Vienna. “Well, as soon as I had worked that out I threw my cigarettes into the Danube, and ever since that day I’ve never smoked again.”
Schellenberg stifled a yawn and glanced, surreptitiously, at his watch as Hitler complained about all the cigarette burns he had found in the carpets and on the furniture at the Reich Chancellery. Then Hitler abruptly returned to the subject of peace, or at least his own peculiar idea of peace.
“As I see it, we have two goals from any peace that is negotiated,” he said. “First, we must avoid paying any war indemnities. Each country must bear its own costs. With this achieved, we can reduce our war debt from two trillion to a hundred billion marks a year. I want us to become the only belligerent of this war to be free of our war debts within ten years and to be in a position to concentrate on rebuilding our armed forces. Because, as a general principle, a peace that lasts more than twenty-five years is harmful to a nation. Peoples, like individuals, sometimes need regenerating by a little bloodletting.
“My second goal is that we leave our successors some problems to solve. If we don’t, then they’ll have nothing to do but sleep. That’s why we must resist disarmament at all costs. So we can leave our successors with the means to solve their problems. But peace can only result from a natural order. And the condition of this order is that there is a hierarchy among nations. Any peace that doesn’t recognize this is doomed to failure.
“Of course, it’s Jewry that always destroys this order. It’s the Jew who would try to destroy these negotiations, but for the fact that we still hold the fate of about three million Jews in our hands. Roosevelt, who is in thrall to the Jewish vote in America, will not risk the destruction of what remains of Europe’s Jewry. I tell you this: that race of criminals will be wiped out in Europe if the Allies don’t make a peace. They know it. And I know it. If for some reason they don’t make peace, it will only be because they recognize the truth of what I have always said: that the discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revelations that has taken place in the twentieth century. Yes, the world will only regain its strength and health by eliminating the Jew.
“If the Allies fail to make a peace with us, it will only be because they want to see the removal of this Jewish problem as much as we do. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens.”
XIX
The Headquarters of SOE-British military intelligence in Cairo-was a supposedly secret location on Rostom Street that every taxi driver and street waif in the city seemed to know as “the secret building,” much to the irritation of those who worked there. Since the battle of El Alamein, it was the most important military building in
