An Infinity of Mirrors (35 page)

As always, the arrival date was fixed and canceled many times, but finally a definite date of March 13th was announced.

On the morning of that day Tresckow told von Kluge of their plan. As the Fuehrer left the plane, Major General von Rhode would drive an armored car, all weapons firing into the Fuehrer's guard. Kluge vacillated over the plan and at last only twenty-five minutes before the Fuehrer's arrival, the Field Marshal said that he could not countenance such an act and that no armored car would be made available to the plotters. Thus, they were forced back upon the second plan.

After tireless experimenting, the use of German-made bombs for the alternate assassination plot had been discarded because of the noise of the fuses. The Abwehr was able to secure small British bombs, of the sort used to kill General Heydrich, which had been dropped by enemy planes for underground use. Two of these small bombs were imbedded in a package wrapped to look like two bottles of brandy, and the package was to be planted in the Fuehrer's plane on its return flight to Rastenburg. Veelee was enraged at being cheated out of his right to kill the Fuehrer, but von Tresckow took the cooler view that the second plan was probably better. An exploded plane would look like an accident, and even the semblance of one would avoid the political disadvantages of a murder which could provoke strong SS resistance.

Outwardly Veelee seemed to be in icy control of himself, but within he was consumed. For days he had been chewing combat-fatigue pills. These brought on weeping spells, but he was able to explain this to von Tresckow, who immediately understood. He had wept as he worked over the mechanisms of the small bombs; at the same time he felt great pride that soon he would be able to return to Paule and tell her that they could all rest in peace, because the job was done.

After the Fuehrer's party arrived, there was a gala reception at which Veelee shamelessly flattered the General Army Staff's Colonel Brandt, who was traveling with the Fuehrer's party. Later, over a second cognac, Veelee asked Colonel Brandt if he would be kind enough to take back a little gift of two bottles of brandy to General Stieff, at Rastenburg. Colonel Brandt said he would be delighted. The following morning, Veelee accompanied Brandt to the airfield and entertained him with stories about Keitel in the First World War and, from an imagination he did not know he had, about the lissomeness of the women of Paris. As Brandt boarded the plane, Veelee started the mechanism of the bomb by pulling a piece of string apparently holding the wrapping paper together and gave the package to Brandt with thanks and wishes for a successful journey.

The bomb had no clockwork to advertise itself. A button broke a glass vial, which released a chemical, which melted a wire, which held back a spring, which moved a striker, which hit a detonator, which exploded the bomb. The plane was due to crack over Minsk in thirty minutes. Berlin was notified that the operation had begun. Undoubtedly the first word of the explosion would be radioed in by one of the fighter-plane escorts.

An hour went by, then another half-hour, and there was no word. Two hours and eleven minutes after the bomb's button had been pulled, a routine message brought the news that the Fuehrer's plane had landed safely at Rastenburg. The bomb had never exploded.

At seven-o-five
P.M.
, while von Tresckow watched, listened, and sweated with him, Veelee telephoned Colonel Brandt. “Brandt? Rhode here. I hope you had a delightful trip.”

“It was a good trip, thank you, sir.”

“I really do hate troubling you like this, Brandt, but I wondered if you'd had the opportunity to give that brandy to Stieff?”

“Well, not actually, old boy, you see—”

“You haven't?” He looked at von Tresckow, who sighed heavily, expelling air like a sea lion. “Oh, marvelous! Twenty minutes after you'd left, a shipment of some perfectly marvelous cognac—I mean the real thing arrived from my wife in Paris, and I do want Stieff to have the best.”

“Stieff? What about Brandt?”

“Nothing but the best for Brandt as well. Two of the finest and they'll be yours in the morning. Von Tresckow's aide-decamp has business at your place and he says he'll be glad to take some packages along.”

With fantastic courage, Lieutenant Fabian von Schlabren-dorff, aide-de-camp to General von Tresckow and a lawyer in civilian life who had become a lion of the resistance, flew to the Fuehrer's headquarters, calmly exchanged packages, caught a night train to Berlin and dismantled the bomb in his berth. The mechanism had worked almost perfectly; every component had performed exactly as planned except that the detonator had been defective.

Generals Olbricht and Oster, and young Colonel von Stauffenberg invited Veelee to dinner at the Zeuhaus after the assassination attempt failed, and General Olbricht thanked him for the extraordinary dedication he had shown. Then he explained carefully that they were going to have to make further plans, which would necessitate some delays, and under the circumstances perhaps—

“Delays? No, no!” Veelee shouted. “There must be no delays. My wife is waiting. The Fuehrer must be killed. My son. We must finish all of this. I want to start over again with her before it is too late. I did it wrong, all wrong, General. You are young, Stauffenberg, you know what I mean. We haven't had days like that, not since Charlottenburg and Wuensdorf. No, no, before that, even. No delays, absolutely no delays, gentlemen. Let us make new plans here and now, but there must be no talk of delays.”

Stauffenberg seemed to take charge. “I do understand, General von Rhode. Not delays in that way—of course not. We were speaking of delays only in that the Fuehrer, as you know, moves so unpredictably. We have had explicit information that he is about to change the base of his operations to the west in order to prepare for the Allied landings.”

“To the west?” Veelee examined their expressionless faces. “Yes, yes! He would want to be in the west. That would be his post when the invasion comes.”

“Therefore, General,” Stauffenberg, himself lacking one eye and most of two hands, said in a firm but gentle voice, “we consider that you would be most useful if you would consent to return to Paris to await the next assignment.”

Relief filled Veelee's face. “Thank you, and forgive my stupidity. I should have anticipated such a move. I am so sorry. You know”—and he made a horrible attempt to smile—“I had forgotten about the war, I think. When you spoke of landings I almost had to reconsider, but it is better that I give all my thought to killing the Fuehrer. There are many others to fight the other war. We have this one job and it is my job, only my job.” He got up so hastily that he knocked his chair over, but he did not hear it fall. “Thank you and good night. I must not lose any time. You will want me to be there, prepared. It was a lovely dinner. Good luck, gentlemen, and good night.” He fixed his monocle in his right eye socket, clicked his heels, bowed and left the room.

The three men sat silently for some time. Finally Olbricht spoke. “He was a great officer.”

“He is Germany,” Stauffenberg answered. “Broken by tyranny and unable to understand what has happened to him.”

Seventeen

Colonel-General Karl Heinrich von Stuelpnagel was a compactly built, kind man and an austere soldier of the old school. Since 1933 he had been anti-Hitler and anti-Nazi, and he and General Beck had stood back-to-back in opposition to the new Germany from its first official days. In November, 1943, he was fifty-seven years old; on August 30, 1944, he was strangled to death by piano wire, suspended naked from a meat hook in front of turning motion-picture cameras in the Ploetzensee, Berlin, prison after confessing to complicity in the attempt on the Fuehrer's life on July 20, 1944. The motion-picture films of his execution were projected that evening at Rastenburg for the pleasure of the Fuehrer.

Despite his Prussian name, von Stuelpnagel was not of the aristocracy. Through his mother, he was the grandson of a renowned Bavarian General von der Tann, distinguished in the Franco-Prussian War. He had not been educated at a Kadettenanstalt, but after passing his matriculation examinations at the Lessinggymnasium in Frankfurt, and attending the University of Geneva, he suddenly decided to enter the Hessische Leibregiment 115. He despised military jargon and military comportment with his subordinates. He was an easygoing, considerate gentleman who enjoyed the theatre, books, music, and good conversation.

At the end of World War I Stuelpnagel had been a captain of the General Staff, where he was professionally befriended by Veelee's father, Colonel-General Klaus von Rhode, who was one of the most perceptive “talent scouts” the General Staff had ever had. Under this sponsorship von Stuelpnagel was marked to be moved forward. In February, 1938, he became Quartermaster General of the General Staff from which he joined the Zossen Conspiracy, which sought to remove Hitler from office in Autumn of 1939, just after the Polish campaign. In May, 1940, he was given command of the Second Army Corps.

In July, 1940, Stuelpnagel was assigned to head the German-French committee, which was concerned with resolving questions of the Armistice, when he received a cable from Keitel demanding that he stop aiding and abetting the interests of the French. The Reichsmarschall also accused him of being a captive of the French and demanded that a German Embassy be established in Paris to deal with several acquisitive matters within the interest of the Reichsmarschall. Von Stuelpnagel's labors in directing the committee brought about a most considerable reduction in the payments of four hundred million francs a day which France was forced to pay for the upkeep of the German occupation forces.

In January, 1941, he was transferred to prepare to take over the command of the Seventeenth Army in Russia. When the Russian campaign started, the Seventeenth Army belonged to the Southern Army Group, under the command of Field Marshal von Rundstedt. Working with Kleist's Panzergruppe, Stuelpnagel's Seventeenth Army conquered the Ukraine and captured six hundred and sixty-five thousand Russian prisoners in the Battle of Kiev, on September 10th. After capturing Kharkhov on October 25th, Stuelpnagel began to pass back steady advices to Brauchitsch and the Fuehrer against any attempt at further advances, throwing the Fuehrer into insensate rages. The Russian counter-offensive began at the end of November when the Southern Army Group in general, and Stuelpnagel's Seventeenth Army in particular, began the retreat from their positions.

The Fuehrer relieved von Rundstedt on November 30th and replaced him with Reichenau, and almost at once Reichenau's reports spoke of “this touchy and highly pessimistic intellectual Stuelpnagel.” This reached the Fuehrer on the same day as a letter from Stuelpnagel, which seemed unbearable in its irresponsibility, blaming the retreat on slipshod planning which provided no winter clothing and other startling inefficiencies. The Fuehrer wanted to have him cashiered on a parade ground, as an example to the whole decadent Officer Corps, but Rundstedt and Halder pleaded that von Stuelpnagel was the most experienced man in the army for the command of France and the Fuehrer said he would agree to anything if “this irresponsible lunatic is banished from my sight.”

Colonel-General Karl Heinrich von Stuelpnagel was Military Governor of France from February, 1942, until the early morning hours of July 21, 1944.

Paule was looking over the clippings covering her father's visit to New York in 1928 with his own classical repertory company, and of his simultaneous liaisons with a visiting European queen and a channel swimmer when she heard the door behind her open. Thinking that it was Clotilde, she said impatiently, “No, no, Clotilde, I'm busy.”

“It is I, Stuelpnagel,” a voice said. Paule spun around in her chair, her first thought was that her hair was a rats' nest and that all she was wearing was a nightgown and a negligee. Then her mind took its next step, and she gripped her throat with her hands. “Veelee is dead,” she whispered.

“No, no, he is not dead,” the General answered. “May I sit down?” She nodded, and he seated himself, his face expressionless; had he smiled, even in greeting, she would have been convinced that he was laughing at the way she looked.

Paule pulled the bell rope. “We must have some champagne,” she said, feeling foolish even as she spoke, because it could not have been after eleven o'clock in the morning. But almost before she had finished the sentence, Clotilde came through the door with a bottle of champagne and two tall, tulip-shaped glasses.

“What a marvelous idea,” the General murmured as Clotilde poured and then left at once. “To the future,” he said gravely, lifting his glass.

Paule dipped her glass at him and wondered how to answer. “I have been writing my father's biography,” she said apologetically.

“No life could have been more refreshing than his,” the General said. He smiled at her with such warmth that she felt open and at ease with him instantly. “I remember him well, you know. One day in the mid-twenties, I traveled almost two hundred miles to see him. What a wonderful actor he was.”

“Oh, yes! That is to say, thank you.”

“I suppose it is unnecessary to say that I am surprised to see you, General.” She had not left the apartment for sixteen months and she had seen no one but Clotilde. Then all of a sudden the Military Commander for France strolled into her room at eleven
A
.
M
. and began to drink champagne, and she felt no more strange than if he had been her lover and she had been used to receiving him every morning. She marveled more when she realized that the last time they had met had been across Paul-Alain's grave, and still she did not reject him.

“I feel badly about that, but I feared that if I telephoned I would not be permitted to talk with you, and after all, I could not pull my rank because this is a most unofficial call.”

“About Veelee.”

“Yes.”