A Gathering of Spies (33 page)

“It seems to me,” Canaris said presently, closing the file, “that you have not been entirely honest with us, Professor.”

“On the contrary. I have been perfectly honest.”

“No, I would not say so. You have not lied, and yet you have not told the entire truth, yes? A lie of omission, I would call it.”

“I've told you all I know. I've satisfied my end of our bargain. And now I demand to see my wife.”

“As soon as you are
truly
honest with us, Professor, you shall see your wife.”

He removed his glasses, polished them again on his sleeve, and replaced them. “This humidity,” he said.

Beck started to speak, but Canaris silenced him with a raised hand.

“Professor,” Canaris said, “allow me to be frank. You are a man of letters. Yes?”

Winterbotham nodded.

“I am no scholar, Professor. But perhaps I can recall, if I concentrate …” Canaris made a great show of concentrating. “‘Learn how not to be good,'” he quoted. “‘Learn how to use this knowledge and not to use it, according to the necessity of the case. It is well to
seem
merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so; but you must have the mind so disposed that, when it is needful to be otherwise, you may be able to change to the opposite qualities.'”

“Machiavelli,” Winterbotham said.

“Yes. Machiavelli.”

“Your point?”

“My point,” Canaris said. “I am willing, Professor, to change to the opposite qualities, according to the necessity of the case.”

He stood.

“You will not see your wife tonight,” he decided. “But if you continue to deny me my answers, Professor, you
will
see her—in a way you will not appreciate. Do you understand?”

Winterbotham gazed up at him frostily. “Threats,
Herr
Admiral?” he said. “I should have expected it.”

“The guilt will rest on your shoulders, Professor.”

“The Americans are right. You're mere gangsters—the lot of you.”

“Consider your options, Professor. Cooperate, and leave here with your wife; or continue to withhold, and suffer her blood on your conscience. Ideals are worthless, sir, if they are all that one possesses.”

“It is not ideals that keep me from speaking, Admiral. But if it were I would answer thus: ‘Not all of me is dust. Within my song, safe from the worm, my spirit will survive.'”

Canaris frowned. “Baudelaire?” he asked after a moment.

Winterbotham shook his head.

“Coleridge?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“Who?”

“Look it up,” Winterbotham said, “if
Herr
Goebbels hasn't burned the book yet.”

Canaris looked at him for another moment. He licked his lips, then turned sharply on his heel, and led his guards from the room.

Once in the hallway, Canaris smiled to himself.

It was exactly as he had hoped. The man was no traitor. He was loyal to the British … and he would have their confidence.

He tried to wipe the smirk off his face as he moved down the hall in front of his smart-stepping guards. Himmler and his men were closing in; they were everywhere. They may have been watching him at that very moment. Beck himself may even have been in their employ. It would not do to betray himself in front of the Gestapo's spies.

But the smile lingered on his lips for the better part of a minute, nevertheless.

22

POTSDAM

AUGUST 1943

Winterbotham couldn't help but wonder, as he listened at the door of his room, if Kendall had come through for him.

Wondering did little good, but he had to wonder anyway. If Kendall had failed, after all, then he also would be doomed to failure. Even if he made it out of this room, even if he found Ruth and escaped Cecilienhof and found transportation and made it safely to the sea and stole a boat and reached the coordinates; and even if he did all of these things before the fourth of August, which, he assumed, must be rapidly approaching (he could not know for sure; he did not trust the clock in his room and was no longer willing to depend on his own sense of time); even if all of these things happened, it all would be for naught if Kendall had not convinced the War Office to meet him at the coordinates he had chosen in the Baltic Sea.

He heard a tiny, slithery sound. He leaned inches away from the door, changed the angle of his head, and then pressed his ear against the wood again.

There were no guards at Cecilienhof—or so they would have him think. In fact, Winterbotham had seen three kinds of guards during his stay in the palace. There was the staff—the maids and the cooks and the porters and the valets—who carried firearms as they went about their daily business. Then there were the men with machine guns who lurked in shadows and around corners, not quite hidden from him but taking pains not to advertise their presence. It was one of these men, he assumed, who had just made the slithery sound; all the regular staff would be in bed at this hour.

Or perhaps it had been one of the SS. This third type of guard only recently had started to appear at Cecilienhof, as if the mansion were secreting them, like sap, as the summer wore on. The SS guards, in black, did not try to conceal their presence. They stood, looking intimidating, where halls converged, in plain sight, walking circuits around the lake, at the entrance to the dining room, in the conference room, in the front hall. They favored the staff and the slithery guards with nearly as many malicious glances as they gave Winterbotham himself.

Somebody, it seemed, did not trust Canaris. Somebody was encroaching upon his territory. In a matter of short time, Winterbotham was afraid, this somebody would make his presence known more forcefully; and then he would not be able to depend on even the pretense of civility which had, until now, kept him safe.

But matters were even worse than that. It was possible that Canaris would move ahead and carry out his threats against Ruth, Winterbotham knew, if he were to delay his escape much longer.

He swallowed, tasting the sour rust of fear.

Lunacy
, he thought,
what you're about to do
.

He truly hoped that Kendall had come through for him.

The door to his room was unlocked.

He had discovered this on his third day at Cecilienhof. After making the discovery, he had spent a full hour searching his room, looking for hidden peepholes. But if they were watching him, he was unable to discover how. More likely, he thought, they were confident that his situation, his location, and the odds against him would keep him in line.

By any sane standard, they were right. Any man with half a brain in his head would never attempt what he was attempting now. He could step out of the room; but they would apprehend him within a stone's throw of his door.

He kept his ear pressed against the wood, after hearing the slithery sound, for nearly five minutes. Then he eased the door open and stepped softly into the hallway. The carpet, rich and expensive, muffled his footsteps. A strip of moonlight lay across the hall, illuminating a porcelain bust. Winterbotham put his back to the wall and moved past both moonlight and bust, holding his breath.

After achieving ten feet, he paused again, listening.

A rustle of wind. The lapping of the lake.

He kept moving.

After another five cautious minutes, he approached the grand staircase. His plan was to descend, cross to the west wing, and then try to find a door with guards posted outside. It stood to reason, he thought, that Ruth would be guarded. She would be looking for any chance to escape, unlike Winterbotham himself, who understood, in theory, that his only hope of leaving this place would be through the generosity of his hosts.

But his plan—if it could be called that—was filled with holes. What if guards were not posted outside of Ruth's room? Then he would never find her. And how was he to disable the guards once he had found them? He had no weapon, and in any case he could not risk making noise. Perhaps Ruth was not at Cecilienhof at all; perhaps it all had been a ruse. To reach the west wing he would need to cross through the mansion's spacious foyer, where his chances of being spotted by a guard were—

Stop thinking, for God's sake, and move
.

He crept another ten feet toward the staircase and then paused again, listening.

The scuff of boots on carpet.

He drew a breath and controlled himself. He began to back up, moving past rows of doors, wondering if the shadows in the hallway were deep enough to hide him. A choice needed to be made, and now. Return to his room and wait for the guard to pass; but that would be as much as admitting defeat, because he would never find Ruth if he turned tail every time he faced a guard. Hide in the shadows, then; but if the man glanced his direction, he would be lost.

There was a third choice. Open one of these doors, which he was backpedaling past, and hide in a room until the guard moved on.

And pray that whoever was in the room did not awake.

The footsteps were drawing closer. Winterbotham tried the handle of the door he was passing.

It was unlocked.

Silently, he opened the door and slipped inside.

The room's window faced away from the moon.

Winterbotham stood stock-still and took in his surroundings. A single form lay in a canopied bed, covered from head to foot with a sheet, although the air was humid and hot. He could hear thick, slightly labored breathing. He put his ear against the door, trying to tune out the sounds of the sleeper. After a moment he caught the same quiet slithering as before—the guard dragging his heels on the thick carpet. He listened until he heard the heels slither past.

There would be little room for error. When the guard reached the end of the hall, he would turn around and return past this door.

Winterbotham counted to five, held his breath, opened the door, and stepped back into the hallway.

He moved quickly to the landing that overlooked the mansion's foyer. He paused, letting his eyes wander. The grand staircase before him swept down in a graceful curve, swept across a vast marble floor, and flowed into another staircase heading up, west, amid rococo columns, climbing putti and scrollwork, and minutely detailed coats of arms. Moonlight trickling in through high arched windows showed baroque ceiling reliefs, elaborately carved sculpture, and decorative delftware.

He would need to descend the close flight of stairs, cross the empty chamber—in plain view—and ascend to the western wing.

He went.

He reached the bottom of the staircase, hesitated for a fraction of an instant, and then struck out across the empty stretch of floor. His terror was thin and acrid. What fate lay in store if he was caught? Nothing worse, surely, than the fate that lay in store anyway.

He stepped onto an Oriental carpet, moved across a scatter of light-blue faïence tiles; then he had reached the far staircase.

That much closer to Ruth.

He began to climb.

There was a guard at the top of the staircase—SS. Winterbotham could see the lugubrious tip of one coal-black boot peeking out from behind the wood paneling. He put a hand on the banister to steady himself; kept climbing. What were his chances of reaching the top of the stairs without being seen?

He reached the top of the stairs.

The man was standing inches away, just around the corner.

Winterbotham reached for him.

He put one hand over the man's mouth and his other arm around the man's throat. He lifted, almost gently, and bent the man's back over his knee. He pushed, pulled, applied pressure in every way imaginable, willing the man's neck to break, or …

The man was struggling. Breathing hard, whistling through his nose.

Winterbotham covered the man's nose as well as his mouth.

The man kept struggling.

Winterbotham kept pressing.

The man kicked. He kicked again. Hit Winterbotham's shin; it stung. He tried to elbow Winterbotham in the gut, and Winterbotham let him, absorbing it.

Now he was struggling more weakly.

Winterbotham kept on.

When it was finished, he set the man down on the top riser.

He peered around the corner, down the hall.

One guard at the far end, lighting a cigarette, feathering smoke out of his nostrils.

Two more halfway down the corridor, standing outside a door.

His heart trip-hammered in his chest.

Ruth
, he thought.

He bent down and frisked the man at his feet, found a gun, thumbed off the safety, and stepped into the hallway. He began to stride forward, keeping the gun held slightly behind his back.

One of the guards turned to look at him.

“
Wor ist
—”

Winterbotham gunned him down.

Put the gun on the second guard.

Gunned him down.

He fired at the third; the man ducked, vanished.

He covered the remaining distance between himself and the door with three large steps. He put his foot against the door, just below the handle, and the wood splintered. He put his foot against it again, and then the door was no longer there.

He stepped into the room.

Another guard, inside, firing—hitting him this time, somewhere in the thick part of his leg—he returned fire—missed—dark in here—he fired again—a window blew out—Winterbotham reached forward, found the man's head, and slammed it into a wall.

A noise from the corridor.

He turned, aimed at the wall to the right of the door, pulled the trigger twice. A suspended moment; then he heard a body fall.

Winterbotham turned around again, dropping the empty gun.

Shot
, he thought.
Shot in the leg
.

In the corner, on a bed, huddled, quaking—

“Ruth?”

“Oh, my God.” She sobbed. “
Harry
?”

He went to her.

She was too thin, much too thin—all ribs, each rib standing out in sharp relief, her vertebrae like pebbles wrapped in cloth—but he squeezed with all his strength anyway, conscious that he must be hurting her, unable to stop himself. She squeezed back, pressing her face into the hollow of his throat, heaving but not actually crying, her tear ducts dead, dry, dead, digging her fingernails into his back …