An Infinity of Mirrors (34 page)

Riding back from the cemetery in the huge black Mercedes, while Veelee earnestly explained his simple solution, she had said to him in a very reasonable tone of voice, “I think you should all kill each other. That is your way, after all. Soon your army will want to kill all Germans as the only way to retain their honor. The Germans must be killed, your army will reason, because they voted for Hitler and gave him the power which has destroyed the Fatherland. And the SS will like that too. After all, they are engaged in the supreme task of murdering all Germans anyway, and it is their chance to die themselves in defending their Fuehrer and their loot. And every other German who is not in the Wehrmacht or in the SS knows his duty. Half of them should be lined up on the east of Germany and half on the west in long lines facing each other; then, at a signal from your Fuehrer, who will be seated upon a heap of decomposing children on the ground between them, they will all kill each other. Your Fuehrer will be very proud. It is the final solution for all of you, Veelee.”

He had been staring blankly out the window as she spoke. “Yes,” he answered. “You are right. I must kill the Fuehrer.”

For many months whenever Paule thought of Veelee, she heard the jackboots of the storm troopers who had paraded so many years ago along the platform of the Friedrichstrasse Station calling for the death of all Jews. Over and over again she felt the freezing fear she had felt then, and she could see that across all of those years she had been pulling that fear toward her, hand over hand, until she had found out what had been weighting the awful end of it—her son's corpse. Paul-Alain was gone, forever gone. Dead because he was a Jew—incredibly, incomprehensibly dead because he had been a Jew.

After a long while she was able to concern herself with the happiest days of life, the days when she had been the daughter of the greatest actor in all of France, one of the four greatest actors of the world, most certainly including England. She sat in the study with the thousands of pages of newspaper cuttings and theatre programs and citations and letters and notes and began to write her father's biography, as he had always intended that she do. She stopped bothering to dress. She would get out of bed at odd hours, not knowing the time because she had not wound the clocks nor opened the shutters, and walk to the study to begin her work. In a short time her hair grew gray and she became very thin because she did not think about eating. Clotilde brought her food on a tray but Paule ignored it.

She did not place as much blame upon Clotilde as she did upon José Zorra de Miral because she knew that Clotilde's heart was breaking too, but she could not help thinking that there must have been some way for Clotilde to have found her after Paul-Alain had been taken away. Clotilde had known that they were using a Luftwaffe staff car, and she should have known that it was necessary for the driver to inform the Luftwaffe transportation officer where the car was taking them. She refused to believe that Clotilde was unable to get into the Hôtel Majestic or to reach General von Stuelpnagel in any way. She had not really tried; she was just another servant; they were all alike. Paule had dismissed Mme. Citron and all of the others on the day of the funeral, and when Mme. Citron had tried to object she had slapped her sharply across the face and told her to be out of the house within one hour. Maître Gitlin would give her all necessary information about her pension. It was too much for her to have to see this gabby old woman who had babbled to the police that Paul-Alain lived there. Everyone knew that when police came to one's door in wartime one should deny everything. The police might have gone away and they could have hidden Paul-Alain until she returned to save him, to cherish him, to keep him.

In the spring, Clotilde had gone away. She had remained six months longer than any of the others, but she was deeply ashamed and bitter that Frau General von Rhode accused her, more and more each day, with the same eloquent eyes as her father's. For two months Paule was alone in the huge flat, but she was almost unaware of it. In the summer, Clotilde suddenly reappeared, her chin outthrust, her eyes determined slits. She rang the doorbell again and again but when Paule did not answer it Clotilde waited outside the front door all day. In the evening she heard Paule's slippers sliding across the marble floor and then she had pounded on the door with all her might. When Paule opened the door they stared at one another, and then Frau General von Rhode crumpled forward into Clotilde's arms, sobbing like a child and saying over and over again how happy she was that Clotilde had returned.

Sixteen

On the evening after his talk with General von Stuelpnagel, Veelee was briefed at the Hôtel Lutetia Paris headquarters of Abwehr, the Wehrmacht's military intelligence organization commanded by Admiral Canaris, whose sympathies provided the plotters with an excellent cover.

When the briefing was over, Veelee asked the officer who had come from Berlin for the meetings with Canaris and von Stuelpnagel to take a walk so that he could give him a message for Berlin. As they circled the Hôtel Lutetia, Veelee explained that it must be conveyed to the leaders of the army's resistance that assassination was the only solution. Because this could not be done without involving so many conspirators of so many shades, he alone, Wilhelm von Rhode, must be chosen to carry out any attempts to be made on the Fuehrer's life. To talk to his shorter companion Veelee bent his head downward and his monocle glittered sinisterly in the purple summer dusk as the two men walked through the tree-lined streets. He spoke rapidly of several methods he had in mind to remove the Fuehrer. Why waste a whole man? Furthermore, he pointed out, he had the rank to gain him entry anywhere.

In 1942 the objectives of the army resistance were based upon “isolated action”; that is, the marshals of the Eastern front would refuse to accept orders from the Fuehrer in his role as Commander in Chief. This nicety would allow them to believe that they were not violating their oath to Hitler, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, but were only refusing to recognize him as Commander in Chief of the army. At that moment, the Home Army under General Beck would seize control of Germany, dissolve the Nazi States, depose Hitler and restore the independence of the army. Thereafter, all officers of the German armed forces could consider themselves honorably released from their oath of allegiance to the Fuehrer, and the true Germany would then be re-established. Unfortunately, the plan began and ended with the marshals in the east, and none of them were having any part of it.

By mid-1943 the leadership of the army resistance had fallen by default to junior officers. The powerful leaders of the army had been eliminated or had eliminated themselves: Colonel-General Hoepner had been publicly cashiered; Guderian had been removed from active command; Reichenau had died; von Witzleben had developed hemorrhoids and had immediately been retired; Beck was on the inactive list; Hammerstein and Franz Heller had rank but no troops. Von Rundstedt had replaced Witzleben as commander in the west, and while he was aware of the conspirators' plans and might even have been sympathetic, he said he was far too old to become involved in such games.

In the east the marshals vacillated for various reasons. Paulus was servile, and von Kuechler was completely deaf to all arguments. Von Bock despised the Fuehrer, but he would not risk his marshal's baton, and Manstein said that he was far too engrossed in the military problem of taking Sebastopol.

The weakest and most opportunistic commander in the east was Field Marshal von Kluge. He was a Hamlet-imitator, Major General Henning von Tresckow, his Chief of Staff, explained to Veelee. Von Tresckow was a Pomeranian; a boyhood friend and neighbor of Veelee's who, like Veelee, had at first embraced the military promises of the Fuehrer enthusiastically. Unlike Veelee and many others, however, von Tresckow had seen his mistake and had moved into opposition, and then into resistance. The atrocities of the Polish campaign had shocked him into awareness of the crime he had been abetting, but he was one of the few who had translated shame into action.

“For two years I have been battling for von Kluge's soul,” Tresckow told Veelee. “I dominate him now, but only in a personal way. The moment he is out of my sight he lapses into doglike obedience to the Fuehrer. You can't imagine such vacillating. I tell you, Rhode, each time that I have him nailed to a definite plan of action, when I am absolutely sure I have him, he fades away like smoke in your fist at the most critical moment.

“We have blackmailed him. Oh, yes, I swear to you. As you know, field marshals are paid thirty-six thousand reichsmarks a year, plus an allowance—which is all right for people who want money, but it cannot compare with what has been stolen by Germans who really worship money. So the Fuehrer hands out tips—little gratuities—the way you might give a coin to a men's-room attendant. Yes, look shocked, my dear Rhode, but it is true. And he will say, no income tax on this little tip. Yes! He gave Kluge two hundred and fifty thousand reichsmarks on his birthday—
plus
a permit to spend yet another handsome tip on improvements for Kluge's estate, with a copy of a letter to Speer, the minister in charge of buildings. When I saw that letter I said, ‘At last we have the son-of-a-bitch.' I went and waved it in von Kluge's face. I told him I would broadcast the bribe to every man in the Officer Corps of the German Army, and he knew I meant it. But he wasn't in the least embarrassed or humiliated, you know—not at all. He adopted the air of a man who thinks he should at least
pretend
to be embarrassed in the event that I did broadcast it, so he agreed to a meeting with Goerdeler, the civilian politician of the movement. It was a tricky business to get Goerdeler admitted to the area, believe me. We could never have done it without Canaris and Oster.

“The meeting was held in the Smolensk forest and I was there, Rhode. Kluge at last agreed that he would lead a mutiny of the armies in the east at the moment word came from Berlin. Goerdeler was in such high spirits that I thought he'd break out singing. Before Goerdeler could get back to Berlin—you hear me?—
before
Goerdeler got back to Berlin, Kluge sent a letter to Beck, taking it all back, withdrawing, changing his watery mind again.”

After the Kluge disappointment Beck appealed personally to Paulus, who was surrounded in Stalingrad, his quarter of a million men condemned to death by the Fuehrer's shrill tantrums for victory at any price. Beck asked Paulus to broadcast an appeal to all the German armies, but though he was far out of the Fuehrer's vengeful reach Paulus' only reaction was a glub of radio messages singing devotion to his Fuehrer.

In all, there were three major resistance groups. The first group, consisting almost exclusively of army men, urged their Fuehrer's arrest, trial, and legal execution. The second group, mainly civilian, wished only to discuss what should be done in the certain event that Germany lost the war, thus eliminating the Fuehrer automatically. The third group, led by junior army officers, pressed for the Fuehrer's earliest assassination. All three groups wished fervently for a “just” peace for Germany, and with the exception of the third group, they were hesitant about ridding Germany of Hitler until they were assured of this.

Veelee shuttled back and forth between von Stuelpnagel's headquarters in Paris and Berlin until the British and American troops landed in North Africa on November 7, 1943. On November 11th, the German Army swept across the Vichy line in France to take up positions on the Mediterranean coast. All of Veelee's time was engaged in extending military communications across France to connect operations with Paris headquarters, through which the Fuehrer, the Bendlerstrasse, and all others concerned could remain in contact. Not until late in February, 1943, did he become available again to the resistance movement.

In the interim, his duty to the army and his sworn duty to the memory of Paul-Alain never left his mind, and always he thought of Paule waiting for him at Cours Albert I to tell her that the Fuehrer was dead and his son had been avenged. The thought of revenge hounded and exhausted him, and the fatigue affected his already unstable mind. He kept telling himself that he should not be worrying about communications: he should be in Germany getting ready for the chance that had to come. Only his reflexes and his thirty-five years of army training, which enabled him to meet implacable demands, kept him going. But he was forever looking over his shoulder toward the time and place where he had to be. When he tried to sleep he dreamed of Paule pleading with him to avenge their son. Some nights she would curse him and on others she would weep inconsolably, begging him to tell her how the boy could rest unless his father found his honor and killed the Fuehrer. Sometimes in the dreams she was his wife, but mostly she was his mother, tall and fragrant, whom he could not remember having seen after the morning when he had been taken off to enter the army—at the age of nine.

At last, in February, 1943, Veelee was sent again to the Bendlerstrasse to see General Olbricht, chief of the General Army Office and deputy to General Fromm, commander of the Replacement Army. It was planned that the revolt which would secure all German garrisons on the day when the Fuehrer was struck down would spread from this building and insure the seizure of power in Berlin, Cologne, Munich, and Vienna. Beck and Goerdeler, the military and civilian leaders respectively, still counted on Field Marshal von Kluge to assume command of the Eastern front as soon as the Fuehrer's death had been confirmed. Only then could the Field Marshal free himself from his oath to the Fuehrer and of his paralyzing fear of him. After von Kluge had committed himself it was only a matter of hours before all other field commanders, on all fronts, followed his lead.

Veelee was accepted as an invaluable weapon. The setting of the assassination was to be at von Kluge's and Tresckow's headquarters at Army Group Center in Smolensk. Tresckow was in command of the plot and Veelee was to be the executioner. However, provisions were made for a second executioner, because there was an excellent chance that the first would not be at the right spot at the right time because of the shiftiness of the Fuehrer's itinerary. He would be expected on a Monday and arrive on the Friday before or after, and the problem of luring him and his entourage from Rastenburg to Smolensk was formidable. Tresckow had been able to arrange the visit through General Schmundt, the Fuehrer's adjutant, who was innocent of the plot, but with whom Tresckow was on familiar terms.