Authors: Michael Ridpath
‘Quite certain. Our friends haven’t had a chance to chat with their hosts much, but it’s likely they will eventually. The shopping list was found.’
‘I see. What about the beer?’
Conrad smiled at Van’s reference to the beer hall bomb. ‘No idea who spilled it.’ He thought a moment. ‘My old friend thinks it was the publican, but that’s just speculation.’
‘The publican? I think I know to whom you refer. It sounds odd. You are suggesting they spilled it on purpose?’
‘That’s what my old friend guesses.’ Conrad thought he had done a pretty good job of conveying Theo’s answers to Van.
‘You are flying home today, are you not? Come and see me straight from the airport and you can brief me directly.’
‘That might be difficult,’ said Conrad. ‘The thing is, I need to go to Paris this afternoon.’
‘Paris? For what purpose?’
‘Something my old friend told me. Difficult to discuss over the telephone. But I can explain everything when I get back to London.’
It was unlikely that concern over Conrad’s absence from his unit was high on Van’s list of priorities.
It wasn’t. ‘All right,’ Van said. ‘How long will you be?’
‘Not sure,’ said Conrad. ‘Two or three days.’
‘Be sure to report back here when you return.’ With that Van hung up to turn to more important matters of state.
Berlin
There was a spring in Theo’s step as he made his way down the Kurfürstendamm. The moon peeked out behind clouds, giving the street a dim, blue, illicit glow. In the blackout, the Ku’damm had lost its bright lights and its glitter, but the pavement was crowded and there was an air of tense excitement, of danger, of pleasure snatched in wartime, which Theo found exhilarating.
He needed cheering up. He had flown in to Tempelhof from Schiphol and delivered Lord Oakford’s message directly to Colonel Oster. There he had learned that the offensive on the western front had been postponed, and as a result General Halder had ordered all plans for the coup to be burned. A wave of disappointment had washed over Theo. He had known it all along: the general was a damned coward. All the generals were cowards.
But tonight Theo was going to enjoy himself.
He grinned at the image of the familiar cockatoo, drunk but happy on its sign above the doorway, and descended some steps. Inside, the Kakadu was doing great business. The trademark barmaids – brunettes alternating with blondes – were having trouble keeping to their pattern behind the bar. Theo winked at Mitzi, one of the Kakadu’s
Eintanzers
, wearing a typically absurd dress that laid bare her smooth pale flesh in all kinds of unexpected places. Heinie got him a table, not too far from the floor, and he ordered a bottle of ersatz champagne, a kind of fizzy alcoholic apple juice.
Theo lit a cigarette and examined the crowd. Plenty of uniforms: the grey-green of the Wehrmacht, like his own, the blue of the Luftwaffe and the occasional black of the SS. And there were girls. Lots of beautiful girls, doing their bit to encourage their fighting men.
He could feel her coming. There was a lull in the conversation, men’s eyes flicked to follow her, women’s eyebrows knitted a millimetre or two. She was tall, she was blonde and she was cool, so cool. She wore bright red lipstick, her high cheekbones were accentuated by clever use of make-up, and she never smiled. Ever.
Hedda didn’t need to smile to get what she wanted.
And what she wanted, Theo was pretty sure, was him. At least for that night.
He stood, pulled out a chair for her, poured her a glass of bubbles and lit her cigarette. ‘I’m glad you could make it,’ he said.
‘Günter is away for a couple of days. On exercise. A couple of nights.’
She didn’t smile, but there was something in the way she examined him that made him feel taller, stronger, more virile. They had met on the street during an air-raid scare in Berlin in September. They had both ignored the sirens and stared upwards at the searchlights and the flashes of anti-aircraft guns seeking out phantom British bombers. Theo had offered her his umbrella, to protect her from the bombs. She hadn’t laughed at this rather feeble joke as he had hoped she would, but she had coolly looked him up and down and then accepted it. Theo knew she was married, but it was only after their third night together that he had learned her husband was a Sturmbannführer in the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. It made her even more alluring.
‘So where have you been, Lieutenant von Hertenberg?’
‘You know I couldn’t possibly tell you that,’ Theo said.
‘Is it a secret?’
Theo looked straight into her cool blue eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘Are you some kind of spy?’
Theo’s brain tumbled. Was she joking? How the hell did she know that? He had never talked about any of his work. Perhaps that was how she knew; he wasn’t full of the usual soldier’s gripes.
He kept his face frozen. ‘Are you?’
She held his gaze and then blinked. Once. ‘Let’s dance.’
Hedda wasn’t exactly a great dancer. She didn’t have much of a sense of rhythm, but she did know how and when to press her body into her partner’s. Theo delighted in the surreptitious glances of the other men on the dance floor as they looked away from their own partners towards his.
He was horny. She was horny. This was going to be a good night. Theo deserved a good night after what he had been going through.
And then suddenly Theo thought of Millie, of her dress wrapping itself around her legs in the wind on the beach at Scheveningen, of her cheek as it turned away from his lips. The music jarred, Hedda’s legs knocked into his knee, his hand on her back felt the stickiness of sweat. Was it hers or his?
She sensed something. Hedda could always sense something. She had somehow sensed he was a spy. What the hell was he doing with the wife of a Sturmbannführer in a nightclub full of SS officers? He tried to imagine Millie in the Kakadu and he couldn’t.
She stepped back. One long, exquisitely plucked eyebrow arched inquisitively. ‘Theo?’
He pulled himself together. He couldn’t allow sentiment to spoil his evening. ‘I think we need some more champagne, don’t you?’
Zossen, Germany, 13 November
It had been a long, hard night with Hedda and Theo was feeling the fatigue. He could barely keep his eyes open as he drove the thirty kilometres south of Berlin to Zossen, which was the wartime command centre for the Wehrmacht. He had passed through the high-wire perimeter, two checkpoints and walked along boards laid over marshland to a large A-framed building, inside which he had taken a lift down to underground concrete corridors. There, in a tiny office, he had found Major Liss.
Major Liss woke him up.
Liss was an officer in the Foreign Armies West Intelligence Directorate. He was an artilleryman from Mecklenburg, so not one of the aristocratic Prussians from whom many of the general-staff officers were drawn, but he was a prize-winning horseman, and in the Wehrmacht that earned you respect. He was also highly intelligent and spoke English, French, Spanish and Italian.
‘Thank you for coming out here, Hertenberg. And for all the intelligence you have been providing us with over the last few weeks. As you will see, it has been very valuable.’
‘I am very glad to hear that, Herr Major.’
Theo had never met Liss before. He had passed on the information Bedaux had been giving him to Colonel Oster, who then passed it to people at Armies West Intelligence to analyse. People like Major Liss.
‘Now, what I am going to tell you, what I am going to show you, is highly confidential,’ Liss said. ‘Colonel Oster has vouched for you. I have something for you to ask your contact. To ask it properly, and to understand the answer, you need to understand the question.’
‘Yes, Herr Major.’
‘Come with me.’
Theo followed Liss through the warren. The tunnels were lined with concrete to protect them from Allied bombs, and telephone and electricity cables ran along the ceiling. They came to a large room in the middle of which was a table with a relief map of northern France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany.
‘We call this “the cowhide”,’ said Liss. ‘As you can see, we have marked the deployment of the French and British Armies, much of it with information given to us by you.’
Theo looked at the map. Liss pointed out the French fortifications on the Maginot Line, then the French 2
nd
Army along the Meuse around Sedan, then the other French armies lined up along the Belgian border, and finally the British Expeditionary Force at the Channel coast near Calais and Dunkirk.
‘You are familiar with Case Yellow?’ Liss said.
‘Of course,’ said Theo. ‘It’s the plan for an offensive in the west. But I don’t know the current details. I assume it involves invading through Belgium and Holland.’
‘It does. Last week we played a war game in this room, trying out Case Yellow. I played the part of General Gamelin, the French commander-in-chief.’
‘What happened?’
‘You see these two armies here?’ Liss pointed to two concentrations of units on the German border with Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. The northern one, Army Group B, was much larger than the southern one, Army Group A.
‘Yes.’
‘All right. Army Group B thrusts through the flat country of Holland and Belgium, through Brussels and on into Flanders. The idea is to break through around Lille and Amiens and swing south to Paris. Army Group A moves west through the Ardennes forest to the Meuse near Sedan, and pins down the French armies there, protecting Army Group B’s flank.’
‘I see,’ said Theo. ‘And you say you fought this battle last week?’
‘We did,’ said Liss.
‘I have to ask the question,’ said Theo. ‘Who won?’
‘Army Group B broke through the Belgian army’s forward defences along the Albert Canal, and took Brussels. But then the French 7
th
Army moved north into Belgium, and met our forces here.’ Liss pointed to a gap between the River Dyle and the River Meuse near Namur. ‘As you have pointed out, the 7
th
Army is France’s strongest. So this is where the key battle is. Their tanks against our tanks.’
‘And we win?’
‘Not necessarily. They have as many tanks as we do. And their SOMUA S35 is as powerful as our Panzer Mark III. Coming up behind the 7
th
Army is the BEF. We get bogged down. We all get bogged down. It’s 1914 all over again. Or 1915.’
‘Oh,’ said Theo.
‘Yes. Of course there is some disagreement among the general staff as to what will happen. I think it’s fair to say that the Führer is more optimistic than General Halder.’
‘And your view?’ Theo asked.
‘My view is we get bogged down.’
A return to the trench fighting of the last war was every German soldier’s nightmare. Probably every French soldier’s as well. ‘I thought our tanks would avoid that,’ said Theo. ‘A blitzkrieg, like Poland.’
‘The French have more tanks than the Poles, a lot more. And they are better tanks.’
Theo examined the map. The little markers, each one a division, represented thousands of men soon to be propelled headlong at each other in Flanders. ‘So what is your request?’
‘I told you I played the role of General Gamelin?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a difficult task,’ Liss said. ‘The difficulty isn’t working out what the French
should
do, but rather what they
will
do.’
‘Shouldn’t you just assume they pursue the best strategy?’ Theo asked.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because that’s not what the French do.’ Liss smiled. ‘When we invaded Poland we left only thirty-five divisions of reservists along our western border. The French had seventy-five divisions facing us and three thousand two hundred tanks. We had none. Not one. If the French had ordered an immediate armoured offensive, they would have smashed through the Siegfried Line within a fortnight. We would have lost the war.’
It sounded extraordinary, but Theo believed Liss. He knew the results of a similar war game held in 1938, just before the impending invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Czechs held up the German army long enough for the French armour to roll through the Rhineland. Germany lost the war within months. That was why General Beck and the others had been so desperate to topple Hitler back then.
‘So why didn’t the French generals just do that in September?’
‘It would never have entered their heads. More importantly, it would never enter the heads of the French politicians. Or the British. They have their Maginot Line, and their plans are to sit there and wait for us to attack them. I don’t think they realize even now how they could have won the war.’
‘All right,’ said Theo.
‘So what I need to know’, said Liss, ‘is what the French plan to do if and when we invade Belgium. We can see from their dispositions it’s clearly something they are expecting. In particular, what will the 7
th
Army do? That’s what I want you to find out. Then, next time we play this war game I can play Gamelin’s role more accurately. Can you do that?’
‘I can try,’ said Theo.
‘Thank you, Hertenberg,’ said Liss.
Theo was about to leave, when he paused. ‘What about here?’ he said, pointing to the French border with Belgium along the Meuse. ‘The information I received was that the 2
nd
Army guarding this section is very weak.’
Liss smiled. ‘Yes. Of course the hills and forests of the Ardennes would slow up any armoured assault. But that is something we discussed. The Führer was particularly intrigued.’
Despite himself, Theo couldn’t help feeling a surge of pride that the Führer himself was interested in the information he had provided.
As he drove back to Berlin, Theo marvelled at his own inconsistency. On the one hand he prayed for Hitler to be removed. He dreaded a German victory over France and Britain, almost as much as the stalemate that Liss was predicting. On the other, he was helping Liss and the general staff craft a strategy that would smash the Allied armies. Both attitudes made sense. It was his bounden duty as an army officer to do all he could to help his country win a battle. It was also his duty as a good German and patriot to stop an evil madman destroying his country.