Читать книгу: «Spandau Phoenix»

Prologue

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

—NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

10 May 1941

The North Sea lay serene, unusual for spring, but night would soon fall on a smoking, broken continent reeling from the shock of war. From the bloody dunes of Dunkirk to the bomb-shattered streets of Warsaw, from the frozen tip of Norway to the deserted beaches of the Mediterranean—Europe was enslaved. Only England, beleaguered and alone, stood against the massed armies of Hitler’s Wehrmacht, and tonight London was scheduled to die.

By fire. At 1800 hours Greenwich time the greatest single concentration of Luftwaffe bombers ever assembled would unleash their fury upon the unprotected city, and over seven hundred acres of the British capital would cease to exist. Thousands of incendiary bombs would rain down upon civilian and soldier alike, narrowly missing St. Paul’s Cathedral, gutting the Houses of Parliament. History would record that strike against London as the worst of the entire war, a holocaust. And yet …

… all this—the planning, the casualties, the goliathan destruction—was but the puff of smoke from a magician’s gloved hand. A spectacular diversion calculated to draw the eyes of the world away from a mission so daring and intricate that it would defy understanding for generations to come. The man behind this ingenious plot was Adolf Hitler, and tonight, unknown to a single member of his General Staff, he would reach out from the Berghof and undertake the most ambitious military feat of his life.

He had worked miracles before—the blitzkrieg of Poland, the penetration of the “impassable” Ardennes—but this would be the crowning achievement of his career. It would raise him at last above Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon. In one stunning blow, he would twist the balance of world power inside out, transforming his mortal foe into an ally and consigning his present ally to destruction. To succeed he would have to reach into the very heart of Britain, but not with bombs or missiles. Tonight he needed precision, and he had chosen his weapons accordingly: treachery, weakness, envy, fanaticism—the most destructive forces available to man. All were familiar tools in Hitler’s hand, and all were in place.

But such forces were unpredictable. Traitors lived in terror of discovery; agents feared capture. Fanatics exploded without warning, and weak men invited betrayal. To effectively utilize such resources, Hitler knew, someone had to be on the scene—reassuring the agent, directing the fanatic, holding the hand of the traitor and a gun to the head of the coward. But who could handle such a mission? Who could inspire both trust and fear in equal measure? Hitler knew such a man. He was a soldier, a man of forty-eight, a pilot. And he was already in the air.

Two thousand feet above Amsterdam, the Messerschmitt Bf-110 Zerstörer plowed through a low ceiling of cumulus clouds and burst into clear sky over the glittering North Sea. The afternoon sun flashed across the fighter’s silver wings, setting off the black-painted crosses that struck terror into the stoutest hearts across Europe.

Inside the cockpit, the pilot breathed a sigh of relief. For the last four hundred miles he had flown a tiring, highly restricted route, changing altitude several times to remain within the Luftwaffe’s prescribed corridors of safety. Hitler’s personal pilot had given him the coded map he carried, and, with it, a warning. Not for amusement were the safety zones changed daily, Hans Bahr had whispered; with British Spitfires regularly penetrating Hermann Göring’s “impenetrable” wall of air defense, the danger was real, precautions necessary.

The pilot smiled grimly. Enemy fighters were the least of his worries this afternoon. If he failed to execute the next step of his mission perfectly, it would be a squadron of Messerschmitts, not Spitfires, that shot him into the sea. At any moment the Luftwaffe flight controllers expected him to turn back for Germany, as he had a dozen times before, test flying the fighter lent to him personally by Willi Messerschmitt, then returning home to his wife and child, his privileged life. But this time he would not turn back.

Checking his airspeed against his watch, he estimated the point at which he would fade from the Luftwaffe radar screens based on the Dutch island of Terschelling. He’d reached the Dutch coast at 3:28 P.M. It was now 3:40. At 220 miles per hour, he should have put forty-four miles of the North Sea behind him already. German radar was no match for its British counterpart, he knew, but he would wait another three minutes just to make sure. Nothing could be left to chance tonight. Nothing.

The pilot shivered inside his fur-lined leather flying suit. So much depended upon his mission: the fates of England and Germany, very possibly the whole world. It was enough to make any man shiver. And Russia, that vast, barbaric land infected by the cancer of communism—his Fatherland’s ancient enemy—if he succeeded tonight, Russia would kneel beneath the swastika at last!

The pilot nudged the stick, dipping the Messerschmitt’s left wing, and looked down through the thick glass canopy. Almost time. He looked at his watch, counting. Five … four … three … two …

Now! Like a steel falcon he swooped toward the sea, hurtling downward at over four hundred miles per hour. At the last instant he jerked the stick back and leveled out, skimming the wave tops as he stormed north toward Aalborg, the main Luftwaffe fighter base in Denmark. His desperate race had begun.

Fighting through the heavy air at sea level, the Messerschmitt drank fuel like water, but the pilot’s main concern now was secrecy. And finding the landing signal, he reminded himself. Two dozen training flights had familiarized him with the aircraft, but the detour to Denmark had been unexpected. He had never flown this far north without visual references. He was not afraid, but he would feel much better once he sighted the fjords of Denmark to starboard.

It had been a long time since the pilot had killed. The battles of the Great War seemed so vague now. He had certainly fired hundreds of rounds in anger, but one was never really sure about the killing. Not until the charges came, anyway—the terrible, bloody, heroically insane assaults of flesh against steel. He had almost been killed—he remembered that clearly enough—by a bullet in the left lung, one of three wounds he’d taken while fighting in the famous List regiment. But he had survived, that was the important thing. The dead in the enemy trenches … who knew, really?

He would kill tonight. He would have no choice. Checking the two compasses strapped to his left thigh, he took a careful bearing, then quickly returned his eyes to the horizon indicator. This close to the surface of the sea, the water played tricks on the mind. Hundreds of expert pilots had plowed into the waves simply by letting their concentration falter for a few moments. Only six minutes to Aalborg, he thought nervously. Why risk it? He climbed to one thousand feet, then leveled out and craned his neck to survey the sea below. Waveless, it receded before him with the gentle curve of the earth. Except … there … dead ahead. He could see broken coastline … Denmark! He had done it!

Feeling a hot surge of adrenaline, he scanned the clouds for fighter patrols. If one spotted him, he decided, he would sit tight, hold his course and pretend to be a straggler from an early raid. The hard, empty northern land flashed beneath him. His destination was a small ancillary strip just short of Aalborg air base. But where was it? The runway … his special cargo … where?

A thousand feet below, the red flash of railway flares suddenly lit up in parallel lines to his left. The signal! A lone green flare indicated the proper direction of approach. The pilot circled wide until he had come 180 degrees, then began nursing the Messerschmitt in. The strip was short—no margin for error. Altimeter zero. With bated breath he felt tentatively for the runway. Nothing … nothing … whump!—the wheels dropped hard onto concrete. The plane shuddered from the impact but steadied fast. Cutting his engines, the pilot rolled to a stop thirty meters beyond the last two flares.

Before he could unfasten his harness, two ground crewmen slid the canopy back over his head. Silently, they helped him with his straps and pulled him from the cockpit. Their rough familiarity startled him, but he let it pass. To them he was just another pilot—on a somewhat irregular mission perhaps, operating solo from a practically deserted strip south of the base—but just a pilot, all the same. Had he removed his flying helmet and goggles, the crewmen would have exhibited quite a different attitude, and certainly would not have touched him without permission. The pilot’s face was known to every man, woman, and child in Germany—indeed to millions across Europe and the world.

Without a word, he walked a little way off the strip and unzipped his suit to relieve himself. There were only the two crewmen, he saw, and they had been well briefed. From a battered tank truck one pumped fuel into the plane while the other toiled with special fittings beneath the Messerschmitt’s left wing. The pilot scanned the small runway. There was an old sock-type wind indicator, a pile of scrap parts left from pre-war days, and, several yards down the strip, a small wooden shack that had probably once housed some Danish mechanic’s tools.

It houses something quite different now, I’ll wager, he thought. Zipping up, he walked slowly toward the shack, alert for any sign of human occupation. The sleek black bonnet of a Daimler jutted from behind the ramshackle building, gleaming like a funeral hearse. The pilot slipped around the shack and peered through the windshield of the car. Empty. Remembering his instructions, he wound a long flying scarf around the lower half of his face. It made breathing difficult, but combined with his flying helmet, it left only his eyes visible to an observer. He entered the shack without knocking.

Darkness shrouded the interior, but the fetid air was pregnant with human presence. Someone, not the pilot, lit a lantern, and the room slowly revealed itself. A major wearing the smart black uniform of Himmler’s SS stood less than a meter from the pilot. Unlike most of his type, this representative of Himmler’s “elite corps” was quite fat. He looked more accustomed to the comforts of a soft billet like Paris than a battle zone. Behind him, a thinner man dressed in a leather flying suit sat rigidly in a straight-backed wooden chair. Like the pilot, his face was also draped by a scarf. His eyes darted nervously between the newcomer and the SS man.

“Right on time,” the SS major said, looking at his watch. “I’m Major Horst Berger.”

The pilot nodded, but offered no name.

“Drink?” A bottle appeared from the shadows. “Schnapps? Cognac?”

My God, the pilot thought. Does the fool carry a stocked bar about in his car? He shook his head emphatically, then jerked his thumb toward the half-open door. “I’ll see to the preparations.”

“Nonsense,” Major Berger replied, dismissing the idea with a flick of his bottle. “The crewmen can handle it. They’re some of the best from Aalborg. It’s a shame, really.”

It is, the pilot thought. But I don’t think you’re too upset about it. I think you’re enjoying all this. “I’m going back to the plane,” he muttered.

The man in the wooden chair stood slowly.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Major Berger barked, but the man ignored him. “Oh, all right,” Berger complained. He buttoned his collar and followed the pair out of the shack.

“They know about the drop tanks?” the pilot asked, when Berger had caught up.

“Ja.”

“The nine-hundred-liter ones?”

“Sure. Look, they’re fitting them now.”

Berger was right. On the far side of the plane, two ground crewmen attached the first of two egg-shaped auxiliary fuel containers to the Messerschmitt’s blunt-tipped wings. When they finished, they moved to the near side of the aircraft.

“Double-check the wet-points!” the pilot called.

The chief mechanic nodded, already working.

The pilot turned to Major Berger. “I had an idea,” he said. “Flying up.”

The SS man frowned. “What idea?”

“I want them to grease my guns before we take off.”

“What do you mean? Lubricate them? I assure you that the weapons are in perfect working order.”

“No, I want them to pack the barrels with grease.”

Behind Major Berger, the man in the flying suit stepped sideways and looked curiously at the pilot.

“You can’t be serious,” Berger objected. He turned around. “Tell him,” he said. But the man in the flying suit only cocked his head to one side.

“But that’s suicide!” Major Berger insisted. “One chance encounter with a British patrol and—” He shook his head. “I simply cannot allow it. If you’re shot down, my career could take a very nasty turn!”

Your career is over already, the pilot thought grimly. “Grease the guns!” he shouted to the crewmen, who, having fitted the empty drop tanks, now anxiously pumped fuel into them. The chief mechanic stood at the rear of the fuel truck, trying to decide which of the two men giving orders was really in charge. He knew Major Berger from Aalborg, but something about the tall, masked pilot hinted at a more dangerous authority.

“You can’t do that!” Major Berger protested. “Stop that there! I’m in command here!”

The chief mechanic shut off the fuel hose and stared at the three men at the edge of the runway. Slowly, with great purpose, the pilot pointed a long arm toward the crewman under the wing and shouted through his scarf: “You! Grease my guns! That’s a direct order!”

The chief mechanic recognized the sound of authority now. He climbed onto the fuel truck to get a grease gun from his tool box.

Major Berger laid a quivering hand on a Schmeisser machine pistol at his belt. “You have lost your mind, I believe,” he said softly. “Rescind that order immediately or I’ll put you under arrest!”

Glancing back toward the crewmen—who were now busy packing the Messerschmitt’s twenty-millimeter cannon with heavy black grease—the pilot took hold of his scarf and unwrapped it slowly from his head. When his face became visible, the SS man fell back a step, his eyes wide in shock. Behind him the man in the flying suit swallowed hard and turned away.

The pilot’s face was dark, saturnine, with eyes set deep beneath bushy black brows that almost met in the center. His imperious stare radiated command. “Remove your hand from that pistol,” he said quietly.

For several moments Major Berger stood still as stone. Then, slowly, he let his hand fall from the Schmeisser’s grip. “Jawohl, Herr … Herr Reichminister.”

“Now, Herr Major! And be about your business! Go!”

Suddenly Major Berger was all action. With a pounding heart he hurried toward the Messerschmitt, his face hot and tingling with fear. Blood roared in his ears. He had just threatened to place the Deputy Führer of the German Reich—Rudolf Hess—under arrest! In a daze he ordered the crewmen to speed their packing of the guns. While they complied, he harried them about their earlier maintenance. Were the wet-points clear? Would the wing drop tanks disengage properly when empty?

At the edge of the runway, Hess turned to the man in the flying suit. “Come closer,” he murmured.

The man took a tentative step forward and stood at attention. “You understand about the guns?” Hess asked.

Slowly the man nodded assent.

“I know it’s dangerous, but it’s dangerous for us both. Under certain circumstances it could make all the difference.”

Again the man nodded. He was a pilot also, and had in fact flown many more missions than the man who had so suddenly assumed command of this situation. He understood the logic: a plane purported to be on a mission of peace would appear much more convincing with its guns disabled. But even if he hadn’t understood, he was in no position to argue.

“It’s been a long time, Hauptmann,” Hess said, using the rank of captain in place of a name.

The captain nodded. Overhead a pair of Messerschmitts roared by from Aalborg, headed south on patrol.

“It is a great sacrifice you have made for your country, Hauptmann. You and men like you have given up all normality so that men like myself could prosecute the war in comparative safety. It’s a great burden, is it not?”

The captain thought fleetingly of his wife and child. He had not seen them for over three years; now he wondered if he ever would again. He nodded slowly.

“Once we’re in the plane,” said Hess, “I won’t be able to see your face. Let me see it now. Before.”

As the captain reached for the end of his scarf, Major Berger scurried back to tell them the plane was almost ready. The two pilots, enthralled in the strange play they found themselves acting out, heard nothing. What the SS man saw when he reached them struck him like a blow to the stomach. All his breath passed out in a single gasp, and he knew that he stood at the brink of extinction. Before him, two men with the same face stood together shaking hands! And that face! Major Berger felt as if he had stumbled into a hall of mirrors where only the dangerous people were multiplied.

The pilots gripped hands for a long moment, their eyes heavy with the knowledge that both their lives might end tonight over foreign soil in the cockpit of an unarmed fighter.

“My God,” Berger croaked.

Neither pilot acknowledged his presence. “How long has it been, Hauptmann?” Hess asked.

“Since Dessau, Herr Reichminister.”

“You look thinner.” Hess murmured, “I still can’t believe it. It’s positively unnerving.” Then sharply, “Is the plane ready, Berger?”

“I … I believe so, Herr—”

“To your work, then!”

“Jawohl, Herr Reichminister!” Major Berger turned and marched toward the crewmen, who now stood uncertainly against the fuel truck, waiting for permission to return to Aalborg. Berger unclipped his Schmeisser with one hand as he walked.

“All finished?” he called.

“Jawohl, Herr Major,” answered the chief mechanic.

“Fine, fine. Step away from the truck, please.” Berger raised the stubby barrel of his Schmeisser.

“But … Herr Major, what are you doing! What have we done?”

“A great service to your Fatherland,” the SS man said. “Now—step away from the truck!”

The crewmen looked at each other, frozen like terrified game. Finally it dawned on them why Major Berger was hesitating. He obviously knew something about the volatility of aircraft fuel vapor. Backing closer to the truck, the chief mechanic clasped his greasy hands together in supplication. “Please, Herr Major, I have a family—”

The dance was over. Major Berger took three steps backward and fired a sustained burst from the Schmeisser. Hess screamed a warning, but it was too late. Used with skill, the Schmeisser could be a precise weapon, but Major Berger’s skill was limited. Of a twelve-round burst, only four rounds struck the crewmen. The remainder tore through the rusted shell of the fuel truck like it was paper.

The explosion knocked Major Berger a dozen feet from where he stood. Hess and the captain had instinctively dived for the concrete. Now they lay prone, shielding their eyes from the flash. When Hess finally looked up, he saw Major Berger silhouetted against the flames, stumbling proudly toward them through a pall of black smoke.

“How about that!” the SS man cried, looking back at the inferno. “No evidence now!”

“Idiot!” Hess shouted. “They’ll have a patrol from Aalborg here in five minutes to investigate!”

Berger grinned. “Let me take care of them, Herr Reichminister! The SS knows how to handle the Luftwaffe!”

Hess felt relieved; Berger was making it easy. Stupidity was something he had no patience with. “I’m sorry, Major,” he said, looking hard into the SS man’s face. “I cannot allow that.”

Like a cobra hypnotizing a bird, Hess transfixed Berger with his dark, deep-set eyes. Quite naturally, he drew a Walther automatic from the forepouch of his flight suit and pulled back the slide. The fat SS man’s mouth opened slowly; his hands hung limp at his sides, the Schmeisser clipped uselessly to his belt.

“But why?” he asked quietly. “Why me?”

“Something to do with Reinhard Heydrich, I believe.”

Berger’s eyes grew wide; then they closed. His head sagged onto his tunic.

“For the Fatherland,” Hess said quietly. He pulled the trigger.

The captain jumped at the report of the Walther. Major Berger’s body jerked twice on the ground, then lay still.

“Take his Schmeisser and any ammunition you can find,” Hess ordered. “Check the Daimler.”

“Jawohl, Herr Reichminister!”

The next few minutes were a blur of action that both men would try to remember clearly for the rest of their lives—plundering the corpse for ammunition, searching the car, double-checking the drop tanks of the aircraft, donning their parachutes, firing the twin Daimler-Benz engines, turning the plane on the old cracked concrete—both men instinctively carrying out tasks they had rehearsed a thousand times in their heads, the tension compounded by the knowledge that an armed patrol might arrive from Aalborg at any moment.

Before boarding the plane, they exchanged personal effects. Hess quickly but carefully removed the validating items that had been agreed upon: three compasses, a Leica camera, his wristwatch, some photographs, a box of strange and varied drugs, and finally the fine gold identification chain worn by all members of Hitler’s inner circle. He handed them to the captain with a short word of explanation for each: “Mine, my wife’s, mine, my wife and son …” The man receiving these items already knew their history, but he kept silent. Perhaps, he thought, the Reichminister speaks in farewell to all the familiar things he might lose tonight. The captain understood that feeling well.

Even this strange and poignant ceremony merged into the mind-numbing rush of fear and adrenaline that accompanied takeoff, and neither man spoke again until they found themselves forty miles over the North Sea, arrowing toward their target. As the plan dictated, Hess had yielded the controls to the captain. Hess now sat in the radio operator’s seat, facing the twin tail fins of the fighter. The two men used no names—only ranks—and limited their conversation to the mechanics of the mission.

“Range?” the captain asked, tilting his head back toward the rear-facing seat.

“Twelve hundred and fifty miles with the nine-hundred-liter tanks,” Hess replied.

“I meant range to target.”

“The island or the castle?”

“The island.”

“Six hundred and seventy miles.”

The captain asked no more questions for the next hour. He stared down at the steadily darkening sea and thought of his family. Hess studied a sheaf of papers in his lap: maps, photographs, and mini-biographies secretly copied from SS files in the basement of the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. Ceaselessly, he went over each detail, visualizing the contingencies he could face upon landing. A hundred miles off the English coast, he began drilling the pilot in his duties.

“How much did they tell you, Hauptmann?”

“A lot. Too much, I think.”

“You see the extra radio to your right?”

“Yes.”

“You can operate it?”

“Yes.”

“If all goes well, you have only a few things to remember. First, the drop tanks. Whatever happens, you ditch them into the sea. Same with the extra radio. After my time is up, of course. Forty minutes is the time limit, remember that. Forty minutes.”

“Forty minutes I wait.”

“If you have not received my message within that time, the mission has failed. In that case—”

There was a sharp intake of breath from the pilot, quiet but audible. Hess knew what caused that sound—the unbanishable fear of death. He felt it too. But for him it was different. He knew the stakes of the mission, the inestimable strategic gain that dwarfed the possible loss of two human lives. Like the man in the pilot’s seat, Hess too had a family—a wife and young son. But for a man in his position—a man so close to the Führer—such things were luxuries one knew might be lost at any moment. For him death was simply an obstacle to success that must be avoided at all costs. But for the man in the pilot’s chair …

“Hauptmann?” Hess said, almost gently.

“Sir?”

“I know what frightens you now. I really do. But there are worse things than death. Do you understand me? Far worse.”

The pilot’s reply was a hoarse, hollow gurgle. Hearing it, Hess decided that empathy was not the proper motivator for this man. When he next spoke, his voice brimmed with confidence. “Dwelling on that is of no use whatsoever, Hauptmann. The plan is flawless. The important thing is, have you been studying?”

“Have I been studying!” The captain was obviously relieved to be talking about something else. “My God, some iron-assed SS Brigadeführer grilled me for two days straight.”

“Probably Schellenberg.”

“Who?”

“Never mind, Hauptmann. Better that you don’t know.”

Silence filled the cockpit as the pilot’s mind drifted back to the fate that awaited him should his special passenger fail. “Herr Reichminister?” he asked at length.

“Yes?”

“How do you rate your chances of success?”

“It’s not in my hands, Hauptmann, so I would be foolish to guess. It’s up to the British now.” My advice is to prepare for the worst, Hess thought bitterly. The Führer’s bankers have been since January. “Just concentrate on your part of the mission,” he said. “And for God’s sake, be sure to jump from a high enough altitude to destroy the plane. It’s nothing the British haven’t seen before, but there’s no need to make them a present of it. Once you’ve gotten my message, just jump and wait until I can get you released. It shouldn’t take more than a few days. If you don’t get the message—”

Verdammt! Hess cursed silently. There’s just no avoiding it. His next words cut with the brittle edge of command. “If you don’t get my message, Hauptmann, you know what must be done.”

“Jawohl,” the pilot murmured, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. He was sickeningly aware of the small, sticky cyanide capsule taped against his chest. He wondered if he could possibly go through with this thing that everyone but him seemed to consider simply business as usual.

“Listen to me, Hauptmann,” Hess said earnestly. “You know why your participation is necessary. British Intelligence knows I am coming to England …”

Hess kept talking, trying to fill the emptiness that would give the pilot too much time to think. Up here, with Germany falling far behind, the concept of duty seemed much more abstract than it did when one was surrounded by the reinforcing order of the army and the SS. The captain seemed sound—and Heydrich had vouched for him—but given enough time to consider his position, he might do anything. After all, what sane man wanted to die?

“Cut your speed!” Hess ordered, his voice quickening. “Hold at 180.”

The miles had melted away before the Messerschmitt’s nose. They were a mere sixty miles off the Scottish coast. On a clear evening like this, the RAF radar stations would begin to pick up reflections from the fighter at any moment. Hess tightened his parachute harness, then set aside his maps and leaned backward.