The Rhinemann Exchange: A Novel

  “That’s Craft’s department,” answered Oliver, drinking most of his whisky in one swallow. “Spinelli was his little guinea boy.”

  “Well?” Kendall looked at Craft.

  “Well … he sent numerous communications.” Craft leaned forward in the chair, as much to relieve the pain as to appear confidential. “I removed everything from the files,” he said softly.

  “Christ,” exploded Kendall quietly. “I don’t give a shit what you removed. He’s got copies. Dates.”

  “Well, I couldn’t say.…”

  “He didn’t type the goddamned things himself, did he? You didn’t take away the fucking secretaries, too, did you?”

  “There’s no call to be offensive.…”

  “Offensive! You’re a funny man! Maybe they’ve got fancy stripes for you in Leavenworth.” The accountant snorted and turned his attention to Howard Oliver. “Swanson’s got a case; he’ll hang you. Nobody has to be a lawyer to see that. You held back. You figured to use the existing guidance systems.”

  “Only because the new gyroscopes couldn’t be developed! Because that guinea bastard fell so far behind he couldn’t catch up!”

  “Also it saved you a couple of hundred million.… You should have primed the pumps, not cut off the water. You’re big ducks in a short gallery; a blind man could knock you off.”

  Oliver put his glass down and spoke slowly. “We don’t pay you for that kind of judgment, Walter. You’d better have something else.”

  Kendall crushed out his mutilated cigarette, his dirty fingernails covered with ash. “I do,” he said. “You need company; you’re in the middle of a very emotional issue. It’ll cost you but you don’t have a choice. You’ve got to make deals; ring in everybody. Get hold of Sperry Rand, GM, Chrysler, Lockheed, Douglas, Rolls-Royce, if you have to … every son of a bitch with an engineering laboratory. A patriotic crash program. Cross-reference your data, open up everything you’ve got.”

  “They’ll steal us blind!” roared Oliver. “Millions!”

  “Cost you more if you don’t.… I’ll prepare supplementary financial stats. I’ll pack the sheets with so much ice, it’ll take ten years to thaw. That’ll cost you, too.” Kendall smirked, baring soiled teeth.

  Howard Oliver stared at the unkempt accountant. “It’s crazy,” he said quietly. “We’ll be giving away fortunes for something that can’t be bought because it doesn’t exist.”

  “But you said it did exist. You told Swanson it existed—at least a hell of a lot more confidently than anybody else. You sold your great industrial know-how, and when you couldn’t deliver, you covered up. Swanson’s right. You’re a menace to the war effort. Maybe you should be shot.”

  Jonathan Craft watched the filthy, grinning bookkeeper with bad teeth and wanted to vomit. But he was their only hope.

  5

  SEPTEMBER 25, 1943, STUTTGART, GERMANY

  Wilhelm Zangen stood by the window overlooking Stuttgart’s Reichssieg Platz, holding a handkerchief against his inflamed, perspiring chin. This outlying section of the city had been spared the bombing; it was residential, even peaceful. The Neckar River could be seen in the distance, its waters rolling calmly, oblivious to the destruction that had been wrought on the other side of the city.

  Zangen realized he was expected to speak, to answer von Schnitzler, who spoke for all of I. G. Farben. The two other men were as anxious to hear his words as was von Schnitzler. There was no point in procrastinating. He had to carry out Altmüller’s orders.

  “The Krupp laboratories have failed. No matter what Essen says, there is no time for experimentation. The Ministry of Armaments has made that clear; Altmüller is resolute. He speaks for Speer.” Zangen turned and looked at the three men. “He holds you responsible.”

  “How can that be?” asked von Schnitzler, his guttural lisp pronounced, his voice angry. “How can we be responsible for something we know nothing about? It’s illogical. Ridiculous!”

  “Would you wish me to convey that judgment to the ministry?”

  “I’ll convey it myself, thank you,” replied von Schnitzler. “Farben is not involved.”

  “We are all involved,” said Zangen quietly.

  “How can our company be?” asked Heinrich Krepps, Direktor of Schreibwaren, the largest printing complex in Germany. “Our work with Peenemünde has been practically nothing; and what there was, obscured to the point of foolishness. Secrecy is one thing; lying to ourselves, something else again. Do not include us, Herr Zangen.”

  “You are included.”

  “I reject your conclusion. I’ve studied our communications with Peenemünde.”

  “Perhaps you were not cleared for all the facts.”

  “Asinine!”

  “Quite possibly. Nevertheless …”

  “Such a condition would hardly apply to me, Herr Reich official,” said Johann Dietricht, the middle-aged, effeminate son of the Dietricht Fabriken empire. Dietricht’s family had contributed heavily to Hitler’s National Socialist coffers; when the father and uncle had died, Johann Dietricht was allowed to continue the management—more in name than in fact. “Nothing occurs at Dietricht of which I am unaware. We’ve had nothing to do with Peenemünde!”

  Johann Dietricht smiled, his fat lips curling, his blinking eyes betraying an excess of alcohol, his partially plucked eyebrows his sexual proclivity—excess, again. Zangen couldn’t stand Dietricht; the man—although no man—was a disgrace, his life-style an insult to German industry. Again, felt Zangen, there was no point in procrastinating. The information would come as no surprise to von Schnitzler and Krepps.

  “There are many aspects of the Dietricht Fabriken of which you know nothing. Your own laboratories have worked consistently with Peenemünde in the field of chemical detonation.”

  Dietricht blanched; Krepps interrupted.

  “What is your purpose, Herr Reich official? You call us here only to insult us? You tell us, directors, that we are not the masters of our own companies? I don’t know Herr Dietricht so well, but I can assure you that von Schnitzler and myself are not puppets.”

  Von Schnitzler had been watching Zangen closely, observing the Reich official’s use of his handkerchief. Zangen kept blotting his chin nervously. “I presume you have specific information—such as you’ve just delivered to Herr Dietricht—that will confirm your statements.”

  “I have.”

  “Then you’re saying that isolated operations—within our own factories—were withheld from us.”

  “I am.”

  “Then how can we be held responsible? These are insane accusations.”

  “They are made for practical reasons.”

  “Now you’re talking in circles!” shouted Dietricht, barely recovered from Zangen’s insult.

  “I must agree,” said Krepps, as if agreement with the obvious homosexual was distasteful, yet mandatory.

  “Come, gentlemen. Must I draw pictures? These are your companies. Farben has supplied eighty-three per cent of all chemicals for the rockets; Schreibwaren has processed every blueprint; Dietricht, the majority of detonating compounds for the casing explosives. We’re in a crisis. If we don’t overcome that crisis, no protestations of ignorance will serve you. I might go so far as to say that there are those in the ministry and elsewhere who will deny that anything was withheld. You simply buried your collective heads. I’m not even sure myself that such a judgment is in error.”

  “Lies!” screamed Dietricht.

  “Absurd!” added Krepps.

  “But obscenely practical,” concluded von Schnitzler slowly, staring at Zangen. “So this is what you’re telling us, isn’t it? What Altmüller tells us. We either employ our resources to find a solution—to come to the aid of our industrial Schwachling—or we face equilateral disposition in the eyes of the ministry.”

  “And in the eyes of the Führer; the judgment of the Reich itself.”

  “But how?” asked the frightened Johann Dietricht.

  Zangen rem
embered Altmüller’s words precisely. “Your companies have long histories that go back many years. Corporate and individual. From the Baltic to the Mediterranean, from New York to Rio de Janeiro, from Saudi Arabia to Johannesburg.”

  “And from Shanghai down through Malaysia to the ports in Australia and the Tasman Sea,” said von Schnitzler quietly.

  “They don’t concern us.”

  “I thought not.”

  “Are you suggesting, Herr Reich official, that the solution for Peenemünde lies in our past associations?” Von Schnitzler leaned forward in his chair, his hands and eyes on the table.

  “It’s a crisis. No avenues can be overlooked. Communications can be expedited.”

  “No doubt. What makes you think they’d be exchanged?” continued the head of I. G. Farben.

  “Profits,” replied Zangen.

  “Difficult to spend facing a firing squad.” Von Schnitzler shifted his large bulk and looked up at the window, his expression pensive.

  “You assume the commission of specific transactions. I refer more to acts of omission.”

  “Clarify that, please,” Krepps’s eyes remained on the tabletop.

  “There are perhaps twenty-five acceptable sources for the bortz and carbonado diamonds—acceptable in the sense that sufficient quantities can be obtained in a single purchase. Africa and South America; one or two locations in Central America. These mines are run by companies under fiat security conditions: British, American, Free French, Belgian … you know them. Shipments are controlled, destinations cleared.… We are suggesting that shipments can be sidetracked, destinations altered in neutral territories. By the expedient of omitting normal security precautions. Acts of incompetence, if you will; human error, not betrayal.”

  “Extraordinarily profitable mistakes,” summed up von Schnitzler.

  “Precisely,” said Wilhelm Zangen.

  “Where do you find such men?” asked Johann Dietricht in his high-pitched voice.

  “Everywhere,” replied Heinrich Krepps.

  Zangen blotted his chin with his handkerchief.

  6

  NOVEMBER 29, 1943, BASQUE COUNTRY, SPAIN

  Spaulding raced across the foot of the hill until he saw the converging limbs of the two trees. They were the mark. He turned right and started up the steep incline, counting off an approximate 125 yards; the second mark. He turned left and walked slowly around to the west slope, his body low, his eyes darting constantly in all directions; he gripped his pistol firmly.

  On the west slope he looked for a single rock—one among so many on the rock-strewn Galician hill—that had been chipped on its downward side. Chipped carefully with three indentations. It was the third and final mark.

  He found it, spotting first the bent reeds of the stiff hill grass. He knelt down and looked at his watch: two forty-five.

  He was fifteen minutes early, as he had planned to be. In fifteen minutes he would walk down the west slope, directly in front of the chipped rock. There he would find a pile of branches. Underneath the branches would be a short-walled cave; in that cave—if all went as planned—would be three men. One was a member of an infiltration team. The other two were Wissenschaftler—German scientists who had been attached to the Kindorf laboratories in the Ruhr Valley. Their defections—escape—had been an objective of long planning.

  The obstacles were always the same.

  Gestapo.

  The Gestapo had broken an underground agent and was on to the Wissenschaftler. But, typical of the SS elite, it kept its knowledge to itself, looking for bigger game than two disaffected laboratory men. Gestapo Agenten had given the scientists wide latitude; surveillance dismissed, laboratory patrols relaxed to the point of inefficiency, routine interrogation disregarded.

  Contradictions.

  The Gestapo was neither inefficient nor careless. The SS was setting a trap.

  Spaulding’s instructions to the underground had been terse, simple: let the trap be sprung. With no quarry in its net.

  Word was leaked that the scientists, granted a weekend leave to Stuttgart, were in reality heading due north through underground routing to Bremerhaven. There contact was being made with a high-ranking defecting German naval officer who had commandeered a small craft and would make a dramatic run to the Allies. It was common knowledge that the German navy was rife with unrest. It was a recruiting ground for the anti-Hitler factions springing up throughout the Reich.

  The word would give everyone something to think about, reasoned Spaulding. And the Gestapo would be following two men it assumed were the Wissenschaftler from Kindorf, when actually they were two middle-aged Wehrmacht security patrols sent on a false surveillance.

  Games and countergames.

  So much, so alien. The expanded interests of the man in Lisbon.

  This afternoon was a concession. Demanded by the German underground. He was to make the final contact alone. The underground claimed the man in Lisbon had created too many complications; there was too much room for error and counterinfiltration. There wasn’t, thought David, but if a solo run would calm the nervous stomachs of the anti-Reichists, it was little enough to grant them.

  He had his own Valdero team a half mile away in the upper hills. Two shots and they would come to his help on the fastest horses Castilian money could buy.

  It was time. He could start toward the cave for the final contact.

  He slid down the hard surface, his heels digging into the earth and rocks of the steep incline until he was above the pile of branches and limbs that signified the hideout’s opening. He picked up a handful of loose dirt and threw it down into the broken foliage.

  The response was as instructed: a momentary thrashing of a stick against the piled branches. The fluttering of bird’s wings, driven from the bush.

  Spaulding quickly sidestepped his way to the base of the enclosure and stood by the camouflage.

  “Alles in Ordnung. Kommen Sie,” he said quietly but firmly. “There isn’t much traveling time left.”

  “Halt!” was the unexpected shout from the cave.

  David spun around, pressed his back into the hill and raised his Colt. The voice from inside spoke again. In English.

  “Are you … Lisbon?”

  “For God’s sake, yes! Don’t do that! You’ll get your head shot off!” Christ, thought Spaulding, the infiltration team must have used a child, or an imbecile, or both as its runner. “Come on out.”

  “I am with apologies, Lisbon,” said the voice, as the branches were separated and the pile dislodged. “We’ve had a bad time of it.”

  The runner emerged. He was obviously not anyone David had trained. He was short, very muscular, no more than twenty-five or twenty-six; nervous fear was in his eyes.

  “In the future,” said Spaulding, “don’t acknowledge signals, then question the signaler at the last moment. Unless you intend to kill him. Es ist Schwarztuch-chiffre.”

  “Was ist das? Black …”

  “Black Drape, friend. Before our time. It means … confirm and terminate. Never mind, just don’t do it again. Where are the others?”

  “Inside. They are all right; very tired and very afraid, but not injured.” The runner turned and pulled off more branches. “Come out. It’s the man from Lisbon.”

  The two frightened, middle-aged scientists crawled out of the cave cautiously, blinking at the hot, harsh sun. They looked gratefully at David; the taller one spoke in halting English.

  “This is a … minute we have waited for. Our very much thanks.”

  Spaulding smiled. “Well, we’re not out of the woods, yet. Frei. Both terms apply. You’re brave men. We’ll do all we can for you.”

  “There was … nichts … remaining,” said the shorter laboratory man. “My friend’s socialist … Politik … was unpopular. My late wife was … eine Jüdin.”

  “No children?”

  “Nein,” answered the man. “Gott seli dank.”

  “I have one son,” said the taller scientist
coldly. “Er ist … Gestapo.”

  There was no more to be said, thought Spaulding. He turned to the runner, who was scanning the hill and the forests below. “I’ll take over now. Get back to Base Four as soon as you can. We’ve got a large contingent coming in from Koblenz in a few days. We’ll need everyone. Get some rest.”

  The runner hesitated; David had seen his expression before … so often. The man was now going to travel alone. No company, pleasant or unpleasant. Just alone.

  “That is not my understanding, Lisbon. I am to stay with you.…”

  “Why?” interrupted Spaulding.

  “My instructions.…”

  “From whom?”

  “From those in San Sebastián. Herr Bergeron and his men. Weren’t you informed?”

  David looked at the runner. The man’s fear was making him a poor liar, thought Spaulding. Or he was something else. Something completely unexpected because it was not logical; it was not, at this point, even remotely to be considered. Unless …

  David gave the runner’s frayed young nerves the benefit of the doubt. A benefit, not an exoneration. That would come later.

  “No, I wasn’t told,” he said. “Come on. We’ll head to Beta camp. We’ll stay there until morning.” Spaulding gestured and they started across the foot of the slope.

  “I haven’t worked this far south,” said the runner, positioning himself behind David. “Don’t you travel at night, Lisbon?”

  “Sometimes,” answered Spaulding, looking back at the scientists, who were walking side by side. “Not if we can help it. The Basques shoot indiscriminately at night. They have too many dogs off their leashes at night.”

  “I see.”

  “Let’s walk single file. Flank our guests,” said David to the runner.

  The four traveled several miles east. Spaulding kept up a rapid pace; the middle-aged scientists did not complain but they obviously found the going difficult. A number of times David told the others to remain where they were while he entered the woods at various sections of the forest and returned minutes later. Each time he did so, the older men rested, grateful for the pauses. The runner did not. He appeared frightened—as if the American might not come back. Spaulding did not encourage conversation, but after one such disappearance, the young German could not restrain himself.