An Infinity of Mirrors (40 page)

At five-o-three
P
.
M
. General Blumentritt reached the Field Marshal by telephone to tell him that the Fuehrer was dead. One hour later, when von Kluge had returned to La Roche Guyon, the radio was announcing that the assassination attempt had failed, and that the Fuehrer himself would broadcast later that evening. As Kluge shifted this information from hand to hand like a hot bullet, General Beck telephoned from Berlin.

“You have the news, Kluge, that Hitler is still alive?”

“Yes. Quite a surprise.”

“Nonetheless, Kluge—” Beck's tone was grim and ominous.

“My God, Beck! I have orders pouring in from the Bendlerstrasse and from Fuehrer headquarters, and each tell different stories.”

“Listen to me. So much depends on you. So much. There is still a very good chance that we will carry the day.”

“Things are happening too fast, Beck. I need time to think.”

“You must proceed as we have agreed.”

“What is the position of the navy?”

“If you contact General Eisenhower instantly, they will come along with us. We are the leaders. What is your answer?”

“How badly hurt is Hitler, Beck?”

“Kluge, I am going to put this question to you plainly. Do you approve of what has happened here and are you ready to place yourself under my command?”

Kluge did not answer.

“Kluge! We must go forward now whatever happens! I Let us be firm at this moment. Let us be strong for Germany!”

“I am perfectly aware of all of our conversations and agreements, Beck. However, they were concerned with a situation which greatly differs from this one. The Fuehrer is still alive. That presents an unforeseen circumstance, and it calls for renewed conversations with my staff officers.”

“Renewed conversations? How much time do you think has been given to us?”

“I—I'm sorry, Beck. I will call you back in a half-hour.” Kluge put down the telephone.

It was all slipping away from them by seven
P
.
M
. Fellgiebel had failed to cut off the Fuehrer's headquarters from the outside world; other plotters had failed to take possession of the radio facilities in Berlin and other major cities; the conspirators' maps of the SS disposition in Berlin were faulty; the Panzer units on which so much reliance had been placed had not appeared; the crack Guards regiment, Wachbattallion Grossdeutschland, had been persuaded by Dr. Goebbels to begin operations to capture the conspirators' headquarters at the Bendlerstrasse, where they had not even posted a sentry to warn them against attack. The conspiracy had been corrupted by corrosive fear of the Fuehrer and of his supreme authority.

General von Stuelpnagel arrived at Kluge's headquarters at La Roche Guyon at seven twenty-eight
P
.
M
. in the company of Veelee and his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant-Colonel von Hofacker, a tall calm man who had been a hero of the resistance movement.

The three men met Kluge briefly in his office. “In such a short time everything has changed, has it not, gentlemen?” the Field Marshal said.

“It may seem that way, sir,” Stuelpnagel answered blandly, “but nothing has changed much. One man who was supposed to be dead is still alive. One man. You hold all the cards. You are the hero of this great victory.”

“Hero?” the Field Marshal said with asperity. “Victory?”

“As soon as you surrender to the enemy commanders, Hitler will fall.”

“No, no. The Fuehrer is still alive, sir. That changes everything.”

“Kluge, do you or do you not want to save the Reich and to save the army? Only you can do it. The Allies will not deal with him. They
will
deal with you. Surrender to them, Kluge. Now—tonight.”

“The attempt has failed. Everything is over. Why, if the Fuehrer knew that I—”

“You must act. You have given your word. This must be done.
It must be done
. To help you make up your mind, I should tell you, sir, that before I left Paris to meet you here I issued an order for the arrest of the SS and SD.”

Von Kluge stared at him, the jaw in his weak face dropping. He reached for the telephone and asked for General von Blumentritt, staring steadily and unseeingly at Stuelpnagel as his tongue licked his lips.

“Blumentritt? General von Stuelpnagel has just reported to me an unparalleled act of insubordination. He has ordered the arrest of the SS in Paris without consulting me. You will telephone von Linstow at once and order him, in my name, to stop the action immediately.” He hung up. He glared at Veelee and von Hofacker.

“It cannot be stopped, sir,” Stuelpnagel said silkily. “It is too late. And when I made the decision to do it, so much became clear. The revolt in Berlin was unnecessary, and so was the attempt on Hitler's life. We won the revolt, in Paris, when the order was given to arrest the SS. Kluge, I hand victory to you on a golden platter. Make the telephone call to General Eisenhower's headquarters now and you will be the savior of Germany and the German Army. Establish the liaison. Act, Kluge!”

Kluge hesitated. He gripped the desk and for an instant half turned and faced in the direction of the Wolf's Lair, his head cocked, as if he were listening to that terrible voice. His frightened face was green and silver in the half-light as he looked over at Stuelpnagel and then at Veelee.

Veelee drew himself up to his great height and put the monocle firmly in his right eye socket. His stare radiated arrogance and contempt for von Kluge. Though Veelee was fifteen years younger than either man, his silver hair and paralyzed face made him seem their contemporary. In his hereditary allegiance to the German Army he was two hundred years older than either of them, and his voice had the force of a mace. “Our major cities are all destroyed, sir,” he said to von Kluge slowly, “and all of the genius of Germany has been destroyed. And what this upstart politician has done has changed Germany from a nation of poets, builders, and thinkers into a den of murderers and hangmen. The army has never been in greater peril. Count our dead, sir, as if that could be done. One million, two million or five million—all wasted by a guttersnipe. Why did it happen, sir? It happened because of the cowardice of people like us, the opportunism of people like us. We, the German Army could have struck him down in any twenty-minute period of any hour of the clock from 1933 until this day, sir. Hear the dead! Deliver our country and our army. Pull him down, sir!”

Von Kluge's face had grown colder and colder as he had listened. “You must shoulder your own responsibility,” he said, “but I should advise the three of you to change into civilian clothes and go into hiding.”

Twenty-Two

Colonel Drayst was wearing nothing but a light silk dressing gown. He had finished the draft of his general order, and now he sat under the green reading light at the large desk in his commodious suite at the Avenue Foch headquarters, rereading what he had written and filled with resentment at Strasse for having left such an enormous job undone.

20 July, 1944

SECRET!!!!

To: IV4b

MEMORANDUM:
on the increase in arrests of Jews in France
.

1:
JEWISH PERSONALITIES TO BE ARRESTED

(a)
All persons who are Jews to be arrested without regard to nationality or other circumstances
…

At nine-twelve
P.M.
Drayst was interrupted by the ringing of his private telephone. He lifted it apprehensively.

“Colonel Drayst?” The voice was intimate and inviting, and he could not believe his ears. It was Frau General von Rhode! It was difficult for him to control his breathing, and he opened his dressing gown with his free hand. The calls he had been making to her had finally taken effect.

“But, lovely lady, how did you get this telephone number?”

She laughed deliciously. “My husband is not the Nachrichtenfuehrer for nothing, Colonel.”

“May I help you in some way, beautiful lady?”

“I want to see you.” What a feeling it was! What a feeling!

“Why?”

“You know why. You have told me why a hundred times on this telephone. Don't you … want to any more?”

“Oh, wonderful lady! But what made you change your mind?”

“My mind keeps going, and I cannot sleep. I keep making wonderful pictures of you. Of us.” All she heard was his labored breathing. “I want to see you tonight,” she pleaded.

“Yes!”

“At ten-fifteen?”

“Where?”

“Your quarters is the only place that is possible.”

“Yes, yes. Ten-fifteen.” He began to babble obscenities, but after a few minutes he realized that she had hung up.

The troops of the First Security Regiment diverted all traffic away from the Avenue Foch, but even during the day there were few French pedestrians in the sixteenth arrondissement. The troops who had been formed under the trees at the convergence of the Avenue Foch and the Boulevard Lannes were so quiet and unobtrusive that the officers and men working in the lighted windows at the SS headquarters building at No. 57 were completely unaware of them. At ten-seventeen
P.M.
General von Boineburg drove up in high spirits. In both directions he was able to see the sentries at the SS and the SD buildings. These men, called Hiwis, were the shop jokes of the SS, for they were Lithuanian volunteers who spoke German with an hilarious accent.

After a short conference with his chief of staff, General Brehmer, and with General von Rhode and the regimental commander, Colonel von Kraewel, General von Boineburg gave the order to advance at ten twenty-nine
P
.
M
. At a single whistle blast the men ran out from under the trees and into the waiting trucks. The trucks peeled off in two directions, those going to the left making a short run into the Boulevard Lannes and those to the right grinding up the fifteen-hundred-yard incline of the Avenue Foch toward SD headquarters.

As the trucks came abreast of SS headquarters there was another whistle blast and the troops hit the street, officers with drawn revolvers and men with machine rifles. The sentries offered no resistance, and in a few minutes all the SS troops had been mustered out into the yard, searched, and loaded into trucks. All files were secured and removed and the armories were emptied. With pistols to their heads, SS officers sat at telephones and sent out the standard SS emergency call which would bring in all officers and men not on the post. Female employees were taken into custody in separate trucks. An SS Sturmbannfuehrer asked a sergeant-major if he had thought of the consequences of such an outrage; the sergeant-major replied that if there was any thinking to be done it would be by the Sturmbannfuehrer, for he was going to be fined up with the others and shot the next morning at Fresnes. General Brehmer arrested the astonished General Koltrastt, who was chatting on the telephone in his shirtsleeves with Otto Abetz, the German political commissar.

The fearful SS, which had pledged to fight to the last man, fell with only one shot fired—a rifle that went off when one of the Hiwi sentries did his comical best to cut a smart salute for General Brehmer.

The other group of trucks rolled to a halt in front of 72–84 Avenue Foch, and at the whistle the troops piled out and raced into the building, the first men in actually taking a Hiwi sentry salute. General von Rhode led the way, directly ahead of the lieutenant in command of the battalion of troops. They separated at the main floor. Veelee grabbed the rifle of an astonished SS guard already in custody, and took the lift to the fifth floor.

Paule was waiting for him in the corridor, her eyes burning, her face bloodless. She carried a suitcase. They stood there together quietly for an instant, and Veelee kissed her cheek. Then she led the way to the large double door at the end of the hall and knocked on it softly.

“Come in, lovely lady, come in,” Drayst's voice said, and the door began to open. As Veelee crossed the threshold Drayst was smiling. Veelee drove the butt of the rifle directly into Drayst's mouth with all the force of his single powerful arm. Teeth scattered on the floor and Drayst was driven backward almost fifteen feet before he fell unconscious on the floor. Veelee moved forward and stood over him, holding the rifle over the body like a pile driver. As Paule shut the door and entered the room, he drove the rifle butt downward, then lifted it, and struck the gaping, bleeding mouth again. Paule moaned and spun away, turning her back on the gaping face. The rifle butt removed every one of Drayst's teeth as Veelee turned the head with his boot to reach all of them. When he tossed the rifle on the bed Paule turned around, but she could not look at the body on the floor or at Veelee. She swayed for a moment, and then she lifted the suitcase and crossed the room with it to Drayst. Kneeling beside him and forcing herself to look down at his broken toothless face, she began to sob. She poured styptic collodion over him, turning his head to one side so that neither the astringent nor the blood could choke him. Her tears fell on him as she handled him tenderly. Then she opened a can of penicillin powder and sprinkled it liberally into what had once been the shape of a human mouth. An extraordinary swelling of the tongue, gums, and lips had started. Drayst would not have been able to talk comprehensively for many weeks even if he was going to live that long, and his face was no longer recognizable.

Paule took a large roll of bandage from the suitcase and, sitting on the carpet beside Drayst's head, began to bandage him carefully, attaching gauze tampons to the bandage so that they would absorb the blood. While she bandaged, Veelee struggled with his one arm to put the civilian clothes on Drayst: a bright pink shirt and a clip-on bow tie, socks and yellow shoes, a loudly checked suit with padded shoulders, and a checked cloth cap. When Paule finished bandaging she took over, and in a few minutes the disguise was complete. Together they lifted Drayst to his feet. His legs would not support him, so they dragged him to the door, Paule carrying the suitcase, down the corridor and into the lift.