The Rhinemann Exchange: A Novel

  Strasser approached the vault. Inside were five rows of removable glass trays, top to bottom; each row had a total of one hundred trays, five hundred in all.

  The trays that were empty were marked with a white strip across the facing glass, the word Auffüllen printed clearly.

  The trays that were full were so designated by strips of black across their fronts.

  There were four and a half rows of white trays. Empty.

  Strasser looked closely, pulled open several trays, shut them and stared at the Peenemünde scientist.

  “This is the sole repository?” he asked quietly.

  “It is. We have six thousand casings completed; God knows how many will go in experimentation. Estimate for yourself how much further we can proceed.”

  Strasser held the scientist’s eyes with his own. “Do you realize what you’re saying?”

  “I do. We’ll deliver only a fraction of the required schedules. Nowhere near enough. Peenemünde is a disaster.”

  SEPTEMBER 9, 1943, THE NORTH SEA

  The fleet of B-17 bombers had aborted the primary target of Essen due to cloud cover. The squadron commander, over the objections of his fellow pilots, ordered the secondary mission into operation: the shipyards north of Bremerhaven. No one liked the Bremerhaven run; Messerschmitt and Stuka interceptor wings were devastating. They were called the Luftwaffe suicide squads, maniacal young Nazis who might as easily collide with enemy aircraft as fire at them. Not necessarily due to outrageous bravery; often it was merely inexperience or worse: poor training.

  Bremerhaven-north was a terrible secondary. When it was a primary objective, the Eighth Air Force fighter escorts took the sting out of the run; they were not there when Bremerhaven was a secondary.

  The squadron commander, however, was a hardnose. Worse, he was West Point; the secondary would not only be hit, it would be hit at an altitude that guaranteed maximum accuracy. He did not tolerate the very vocal criticism of his second-in-command aboard the flanking aircraft, who made it clear that such an altitude was barely logical with fighter escorts; without them, considering the heavy ack-ack fire, it was ridiculous. The squadron commander had replied with a terse recital of the new navigational headings and termination of radio contact.

  Once they were into the Bremerhaven corridors, the German interceptors came from all points; the antiaircraft guns were murderous. And the squadron commander took his lead plane directly down into maximum-accuracy altitude and was blown out of the sky.

  The second-in-command valued life and the price of aircraft more than his West Point superior. He ordered the squadron to scramble altitudes, telling his bombardiers to unload on anything below but for-God’s-sake-release-the-goddamn-weight so all planes could reach their maximum heights and reduce antiaircraft and interceptor fire.

  In several instances it was too late. One bomber caught fire and went into a spin; only three chutes emerged from it. Two aircraft were riddled so badly both planes began immediate descents. Pilots and crew bailed out. Most of them.

  The remainder kept climbing; the Messerschmitts climbed with them. They went higher and still higher, past the safe altitude range. Oxygen masks were ordered; not all functioned.

  But in four minutes, what was left of the squadron was in the middle of the clear midnight sky, made stunningly clearer by the substratosphere absence of air particles. The stars were extraordinary in their flickering brightness, the moon more a bombers’ moon than ever before.

  Escape was in these regions.

  “Chart man!” said the exhausted, relieved second-in-command into his radio, “give us headings! Back to Lakenheath, if you’d be so kind.”

  The reply on the radio soured the moment of relief. It came from an aerial gunner aft of navigation. “He’s dead, colonel. Nelson’s dead.”

  There was no time in the air for comment. “Take it, aircraft three. It’s your chart,” said the colonel in aircraft two.

  The headings were given. The formation grouped and, as it descended into safe altitude with cloud cover above, sped toward the North Sea.

  The minutes reached five, then seven, then twelve. Finally twenty. There was relatively little cloud cover below; the coast of England should have come into sighting range at least two minutes ago. A number of pilots were concerned. Several said so.

  “Did you give accurate headings, aircraft three?” asked the now squadron commander.

  “Affirmative, colonel,” was the radioed answer.

  “Any of you chart men disagree?”

  A variety of negatives was heard from the remaining aircraft.

  “No sweat on the headings, colonel,” came the voice of the captain of aircraft five. “I fault your execution, though.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You pointed two-three-niner by my reading. I figured my equipment was shot up.…”

  Suddenly there were interruptions from every pilot in the decimated squadron.

  “I read one-seven.…”

  “My heading was a goddamned two-niner-two. We took a direct hit on …”

  “Jesus! I had sixer-four.…”

  “Most of our middle took a load. I discounted my readings totally!”

  And then there was silence. All understood.

  Or understood what they could not comprehend.

  “Stay off all frequencies,” said the squadron commander. “I’ll try to reach base.”

  The cloud cover above broke; not for long, but long enough. The voice over the radio was the captain of aircraft three.

  “A quick judgment, colonel, says we’re heading due northwest.”

  Silence again.

  After a few moments, the commander spoke. “I’ll reach somebody. Do all your gauges read as mine? Fuel for roughly ten to fifteen minutes?”

  “It’s been a long haul, colonel,” said aircraft seven. “No more than that, it’s for sure.”

  “I figured we’d be circling, if we had to, five minutes ago,” said aircraft eight.

  “We’re not,” said aircraft four.

  The colonel in aircraft two raised Lakenheath on an emergency frequency.

  “As near as we can determine,” came the strained, agitated, yet controlled English voice, “and by that I mean open lines throughout the coastal defense areas—water and land—you’re approaching the Dunbar sector. That’s the Scottish border, colonel. What in blazes are you doing there?”

  “For Christ’s sake, I don’t know! Are there any fields?”

  “Not for your aircraft Certainly not a formation; perhaps one or two.…”

  “I don’t want to hear that, you son of a bitch! Give me emergency instructions!”

  “We’re really quite unprepared.…”

  “Do you read me?! I have what’s left of a very chopped-up squadron! We have less than six minutes’ fuel! Now you give!”

  The silence lasted precisely four seconds. Lakenheath conferred swiftly. With finality.

  “We believe you’ll sight the coast, probably Scotland. Put your aircraft down at sea.… We’ll do our best, lads.”

  “We’re eleven bombers, Lakenheath! We’re not a bunch of ducks!”

  “There isn’t time, squadron leader.… The logistics are insurmountable. After all, we didn’t guide you there. Put down at sea. We’ll do our best.… Godspeed.”

  PART

  1

  1

  SEPTEMBER 10, 1943, BERLIN, GERMANY

  Reichsminister of Armaments Albert Speer raced up the steps of the Air Ministry on the Tiergarten. He did not feel the harsh, diagonal sheets of rain that plummeted down from the grey sky; he did not notice that his raincoat—unbuttoned—had fallen away, exposing his tunic and shirt to the inundation of the September storm. The pitch of his fury swept everything but the immediate crisis out of his mind.

  Insanity! Sheer, unmitigated, unforgivable insanity!

  The industrial reserves of all Germany were about exhausted; but he could handle that immense proble
m. Handle it by properly utilizing the manufacturing potential of the occupied countries; reverse the unmanageable practices of importing the labor forces. Labor forces? Slaves!

  Productivity disastrous; sabotage continuous, unending.

  What did they expect?

  It was a time for sacrifice! Hitler could not continue to be all things to all people! He could not provide outsized Mercedeses and grand operas and populated restaurants; he had to provide, instead, tanks, munitions, ships, aircraft! These were the priorities!

  But the Führer could never erase the memory of the 1918 revolution.

  How totally inconsistent! The sole man whose will was shaping history, who was close to the preposterous dream of a thousand-year Reich, was petrified of a long-ago memory of unruly mobs, of unsatisfied masses.

  Speer wondered if future historians would record the fact. If they would comprehend just how weak Hitler really was when it came to his own countrymen. How he buckled in fear when consumer production fell below anticipated schedules.

  Insanity!

  But still he, the Reichsminister of Armaments, could control this calamitous inconsistency as long as he was convinced it was just a question of time. A few months; perhaps six at the outside.

  For there was Peenemünde.

  The rockets.

  Everything reduced itself to Peenemünde!

  Peenemünde was irresistible. Peenemünde would cause the collapse of London and Washington. Both governments would see the futility of continuing the exercise of wholesale annihilation.

  Reasonable men could then sit down and create reasonable treaties.

  Even if it meant the silencing of unreasonable men. Silencing Hitler.

  Speer knew there were others who thought that way, too. The Führer was manifestly beginning to show unhealthy signs of pressure—fatigue. He now surrounded himself with mediocrity—an ill-disguised desire to remain in the comfortable company of his intellectual equals. But it went too far when the Reich itself was affected. A wine merchant, the foreign minister! A third-rate party propagandizer, the minister of eastern affairs! An erstwhile fighter pilot, the overseer of the entire economy!

  Even himself. Even the quiet, shy architect; now the minister of armaments.

  All that would change with Peenemünde.

  Even himself. Thank God!

  But first there had to be Peenemünde. There could be no question of its operational success. For without Peenemünde, the war was lost.

  And now they were telling him there was a question. A flaw that might well be the precursor of Germany’s defeat.

  A vacuous-looking corporal opened the door of the cabinet room. Speer walked in and saw that the long conference table was about two-thirds filled, the chairs in cliquish separation, as if the groups were suspect of one another. As, indeed, they were in these times of progressively sharpened rivalries within the Reich.

  He walked to the head of the table, where—to his right—sat the only man in the room he could trust. Franz Altmüller.

  Altmüller was a forty-two-year-old cynic. Tall, blond, aristocratic; the vision of the Third Reich Aryan who did not, for a minute, subscribe to the racial nonsense proclaimed by the Third Reich. He did, however, subscribe to the theory of acquiring whatever benefits came his way by pretending to agree with anyone who might do him some good.

  In public.

  In private, among his very close associates, he told the truth.

  When that truth might also benefit him.

  Speer was not only Altmüller’s associate, he was his friend. Their families had been more than neighbors; the two fathers had often gone into joint merchandising ventures; the mothers had been school chums.

  Altmüller had taken after his father. He was an extremely capable businessman; his expertise was in production administration.

  “Good morning,” said Altmüller, flicking an imaginary thread off his tunic lapel. He wore his party uniform far more often than was necessary, preferring to err on the side of the archangel.

  “That seems unlikely,” replied Speer, sitting down rapidly. The groups—and they were groups—around the table kept talking among themselves but the voices were perceptibly quieter. Eyes kept darting over in Speer’s direction, then swiftly away; everyone was prepared for immediate silence yet none wished to appear apprehensive, guilty.

  Silence would come when either Altmüller or Speer himself rose from his chair to address the gathering. That would be the signal. Not before. To render attention before that movement might give the appearance of fear. Fear was equivalent to an admission of error. No one at the conference table could afford that.

  Altmüller opened a brown manila folder and placed it in front of Speer. It was a list of those summoned to the meeting. There were essentially three distinct factions with subdivisions within each, and each with its spokesman. Speer read the names and unobtrusively—he thought—looked up to ascertain the presence and location of the three leaders.

  At the far end of the table, resplendent in his general’s uniform, his tunic a field of decorations going back thirty years, sat Ernst Leeb, Chief of the Army Ordnance Office. He was of medium height but excessively muscular, a condition he maintained well into his sixties. He smoked his cigarette through an ivory holder which he used to cut off his various subordinates’ conversations at will. In some ways Leeb was a caricature, yet still a powerful one. Hitler liked him, as much for his imperious military bearing as for his abilities.

  At the midpoint of the table, on the left, sat Albert Vögler, the sharp, aggressive general manager of Reich’s Industry. Vögler was a stout man, the image of a burgomaster; the soft flesh of his face constantly creased into a questioning scowl. He laughed a great deal, but his laughter was hard; a device, not an enjoyment. He was well suited to his position. Vögler liked nothing better than hammering out negotiations between industrial adversaries. He was a superb mediator because all parties were usually frightened of him.

  Across from Vögler and slightly to the right, toward Altmüller and Speer, was Wilhelm Zangen, the Reich official of the German Industrial Association. Zangen was thin-lipped, painfully slender, humorless; a fleshed-out skeleton happiest over his charts and graphs. A precise man who was given to perspiring at the edge of his receding hairline and below the nostrils and on his chin when nervous. He was perspiring now, and continuously brought his handkerchief up to blot the embarrassing moisture. Somewhat in contradiction to his appearance, however, Zangen was a persuasive debater. For he never argued without the facts.

  They were all persuasive, thought Speer. And if it were not for his anger, he knew such men could—probably would—intimidate him. Albert Speer was honest in self-assessment; he realized that he had no substantial sense of authority. He found it difficult to express his thoughts forthrightly among such potentially hostile men. But now the potentially hostile men were in a defensive position. He could not allow his anger to cause them to panic, to seek only absolution for themselves.

  They needed a remedy. Germany needed a remedy.

  Peenemünde had to be saved.

  “How would you suggest we begin?” Speer asked Altmüller, shading his voice so no one else at the table could hear him.

  “I don’t think it makes a particle of difference. It will take an hour of very loud, very boring, very obtuse explanations before we reach anything concrete.”

  “I’m not interested in explanations.…”

  “Excuses, then.”

  “Least of all, excuses. I want a solution.”

  “If it’s to be found at this table—which, frankly, I doubt—you’ll have to sit through the excess verbiage. Perhaps something will come of it. Again, I doubt it.”

  “Would you care to explain that?”

  Altmüller looked directly into Speer’s eyes. “Ultimately, I’m not sure there is a solution. But if there is, I don’t think it’s at this table.… Perhaps I’m wrong. Why don’t we listen first?”

  “All right. Would y
ou please open with the summary you prepared? I’m afraid I’d lose my temper midway through.”

  “May I suggest,” Altmüller whispered, “that it will be necessary for you to lose your temper at some point during this meeting. I don’t see how you can avoid it.”

  “I understand.”

  Altmüller pushed back his chair and stood up. Grouping by grouping the voices trailed off around the table.

  “Gentlemen. This emergency session was called for reasons of which we assume you are aware. At least you should be aware of them. Apparently it is only the Reichsminister of Armaments and his staff who were not informed; a fact which the Reichsminister and his staff find appalling.… In short words, the Peenemünde operation faces a crisis of unparalleled severity. In spite of the millions poured into this most vital weaponry development, in spite of the assurances consistently offered by your respective departments, we now learn that production may be brought to a complete halt within a matter of weeks. Several months prior to the agreed-upon date for the first operational rockets. That date has never been questioned. It has been the keystone for whole military strategies; entire armies have been maneuvered to coordinate with it. Germany’s victory is predicated on it.… But now Peenemünde is threatened; Germany is threatened.… If the projections the Reichsminister’s staff have compiled—unearthed and compiled—are valid, the Peenemünde complex will exhaust its supply of industrial diamonds in less than ninety days. Without industrial diamonds the precision tooling in Peenemünde cannot continue.”

  The babble of voices—excited, guttural, vying for attention—erupted the second Altmüller sat down. General Leeb’s cigarette holder slashed the air in front of him as though it were a saber; Albert Vögler scowled and wrinkled his flesh-puffed eyes, placed his bulky hands on the table and spoke harshly in a loud monotone; Wilhelm Zangen’s handkerchief was working furiously around his face and his neck, his high-pitched voice in conflict with the more masculine tones around him.