Fox On The Rhine (24 page)

“And what about a German double-cross?”

“Commissar, even if you think we haven’t learned our lesson, we would establish a demilitarized zone wide enough to make it impossible for us to achieve significant surprise. We can set up an observation system to help achieve this.”

To the shock of everyone present, Molotov roared with laughter. “Young man, you astound me! I thought all initiative and creativity had been bred out of the Germans by Hitler! But perhaps it was only temporarily beaten down. You, Steengracht! Is this the outline of Himmler’s proposal?”

Steengracht was clearly stunned by Reinhardt’s presumption. He’d been kept mostly in the dark by Ribbentrop, and had not been expected to do much in the way of negotiation. But Reinhardt, Müller knew, was not privy to this sort of information either. He had simply figured it out on his own.

“Yes--yes, Commissar Molotov,” the baron said. “I believe it is.”

Molotov smiled. This time it wasn’t the genuine impressed amusement that had been directed at Reinhardt. This was a cold smile. “And it is a good thing, for Comrade Stalin was not amused at a visit from the double-crossing Germans. Frankly, had there not been a worthwhile offer, we would have taken the opportunity for some revenge on the colossal damage you and yours have given us. But this time it looks as if you will be allowed to live.”

Müller almost fainted at the words, and then he nearly fainted again as Molotov waved his hand. An aide left, and a few minutes later in came white-jacketed stewards bearing dinner on silver covered platters. “Just in case this was worthwhile,” Molotov said, “I arranged for a meal to be provided. Eat hearty, for tomorrow we fly to Moscow!”

But Müller wasn’t worried any more, for at least he would fly there on a decently full stomach.

First Army Headquarters, Normandy, France, 3 August 1944, 0910 hours GMT

Reid Sanger threw the duffel back over his shoulder and tried to straighten up. “I’m sorry about the extra cleanup,” he said to the LST crewman as he disembarked.

The grizzled petty officer grunted. “You ain’t the first, won’t be the last,” he said, tacking a “sir” onto the end after a noticeable pause. “Don’t mind my saying so, it’s a good thing you didn’t join the Navy.”

“You’re telling me,” said Sanger. He had been terribly seasick the entire Channel crossing, and the evidence would have to be cleaned up by someone else. His face was still somewhat green as he struggled his way off the boat and onto the Continent.

The port of Cherbourg wasn’t designed for the amount of shipping currently surging onto its crowded docks, but evidently disembarking here was a world of improvement over the floating docks that turned the D-Day beaches into temporary ports in the days and weeks following the invasion. A huge crowd of milling soldiers, each trying to find his official destination, kept jostling him. Several sergeants standing on crates shouted directions, trying to sort order out of the chaos with only limited success, bellowing voices swallowed in the general din. As he moved away from dockside, he found a maze of jeeps, buses, and other vehicles, and began walking along the rows, saying “First Army HQ? First Army HQ?” over and over in a strange parody of a bird’s mating call.

The bag had gotten quite heavy and his feet had grown unsteady by the time his call produced a response from a corporal standing by a jeep. “First Army HQ here, sir.” The corporal looked at a sheet on a clipboard. “And you are?”

“Sanger, G-2.”

“Oh, yes, sir. Major Sanger. Let me get that duffel, sir, and just have a seat. Got two more to collect before we roll, sir.” The corporal took his duffel, to Sanger’s relief.

There was one other man in the jeep already, a captain. “Hi. Reid Sanger, G-2 staff,” he said, sticking out his hand.

The captain grinned. “Howdy, Major. I’m Sandy Morgenthaler, supply. First time in France.”

“First time for me, too,” replied Sanger. “Funny thing, though. Looks just like a U.S. Army base.”

Morgenthaler laughed. “No shit,” he replied. “I guess we won’t sit in a cafe and sip wine while the mademoiselles walk by.”

“Well, not until we finish whipping the Nazis, anyway,” Sanger replied.

It took nearly an hour for the corporal to collect the rest of his charges, and finally the men were wedged tightly in the jeep, three uncomfortably in the back, and one next to the driver, a light colonel. It was too noisy to continue the conversation as the jeep made its way through the narrow and overcrowded streets of the town and into the countryside. Evidence of war was everywhere, from leftover pillboxes and barbed wire to shelled-out farmhouses.

The drive took several hours, passing through alternately pastoral and hellish landscapes. Sanger was touched by the sight of French children who extended stiff-armed gestures reminiscent of the Nazi salute--until they separated their fingers into the famous “V” for victory. One shouted
“Vive I’Amerique,”
and the cheer seemed to echo in his ears for a long time.

Finally they passed a small crossroads named Isigny, and it seemed appropriate that artillery bellowed in the near distance as they drove up to Bradley’s First Army Headquarters, which had commandeered several buildings. Sanger started with the personnel office to get his billet, then tried to report to his superior officer, but had to settle for an adjutant. That was okay. He finally made it to his assigned sleeping quarters, considered briefly whether he wanted to find a mess hall, but the thought roiled his stomach enough that he gave up that idea immediately, then finally decided to call it a day and was asleep in minutes.

The next morning it took him a few minutes to remember where he was. Then he was up and dressing, ready to consider the possibility that a bite of breakfast might actually stay where it was supposed to. Breakfast was hot, if not good. Still, after months of what the British laughingly referred to as breakfast--cold toast, fatty sausage, and a rubbery egg topped with an absurd slice of cherry tomato--his taste buds were inured. He knew he shouldn’t complain; he was doing a lot better than the civilians.

Nobody particularly had time for him when he returned to the office area; he got a quick minute with General Tony Flynn, the G-2, then he relied on one of the sergeants to show him around, help him commandeer an empty desk, and shoulder a load of reports requiring analysis and assessment. He already knew that the intelligence officers had been enormously embarrassed by their failure to realize the nature of the Normandy hedgerows and their consequence for military operations from the overhead photographs available to them, so when he saw a stack of photos and maps, he decided that would be a good place for him to start. He bent the desk lamp over to give him good illumination, picked up a magnifying glass, and began to review.

Much of the photo recon information was from the bombing campaign. The photos reminded Sanger of pictures of the lunar surface he’d seen in an astronomy book from his adolescence. He started counting dead German tanks, one after another. It was hard to believe they had anything left.

He looked up, suddenly aware of another presence perched on the edge of his desk. “Hi--you must be the new guy. I’m Eades.” Major Eades was tall and thin, with a shock of black hair falling over his eyes.

“Hi--Reid Sanger,” he said, introducing himself in return. “Going over the intel photos?”

“Yep.”

“We pounded the hell out of them.”

“Looks like it. I’ve counted four hundred dead tanks so far, and there are a lot of photos I haven’t gotten to yet. I’m trying to put together some estimates.”

“Good. The general wants us to put together an evaluation and a report. I’ve been putting together a first draft. Want to hear?”

“Sure. Let’s have it.” Sanger leaned back in his chair.

‘“The battles of Operation Cobra have done it, and the enemy in the west has had it. The end of the war in Europe is within sight.’ What do you think?”

Sanger considered it for a minute. “I dunno. I’ve always preferred to err on the side of caution.”

Eades looked disgusted. “See those pictures? Take a good look. We can do it again if we have to. There’s no way they can make a stand. In fact, my bet is on early surrender. What can they do? What on earth can they do to even make this a game any more?”

Sanger was still wincing over the humiliation he’d gotten for proposing that Himmler would make a move toward a separate peace with the Soviets, so he decided to keep that theory to himself, at least for the time being. “I don’t know,” he said. “But they’re working right now to figure out something.”

“Good luck,” Eades snorted. “Mark my words, it’s all over but the shouting.”

Lager-Lechfeld Airbase, South of Augsburg, Germany, 7 August 1944,1120 hours GMT

The roar of the Me-262 engines was a sound unlike anything Paul Krueger had ever heard before. He watched, slack-jawed, as the sleek airplane rocketed over the airfield in a blur of speed. Twin gouts of flame blasted from the jet engines, a shrieking whine that was music to the veteran fighter pilot’s ears.

“How fast can it fly?” he asked General Galland, who grinned at him around his big black cigar.

“Seven hundred kilometers per hour or more,” replied the new commander of the Luftwaffe. “I get the feeling we still haven’t seen this aircraft’s full potential.”

‘‘‘'Schwalbe... she is aptly named. The Swallow is surely the quickest of birds.”

As he spoke the jet screamed upward, vanishing into the heights like a rocket. Krueger felt a powerful envy for the pilot at the Swallow’s controls. This was surely a machine that could make a difference!

“When can I take it up?” Krueger asked the next question with a sense of heart-pounding urgency.

“Right now, if you want.” Galland pointed to a nearby hangar, where another one of the jets was being wheeled out, towed by a grunting Kettenkraftgrad, the ubiquitous tractor of the Luftwaffe.

“I do!” Krueger grinned with a sense of elation that he thought was gone forever.

Certainly, when he had left the airbase in Poland, flying to Berlin with the knowledge of Hitler’s murder still a fresh wound in his psyche, he had felt as though all hope of victory, or even of a pretense of real fighting, was gone. When he had seen the damaged inflicted by Allied bombers upon the capital city of his Vaterland, his heart had nearly broken. How many buildings blasted, good German people killed, by the savage and barbaric onslaught from the skies?

And the train ride to Augsburg had provided further evidence of his country’s shame. They had traveled at night, and he had learned that this was because the Allied aircraft had gained almost full control of the skies over Germany. Every city they passed had suffered some horrible damage from the air, and the big Messerschmidt factory in Augsburg--his final destination--looked as though it had been smashed beyond repair. He had been astonished, though not consoled, to learn that not only was the plant operational, but that it was producing aircraft at better than the prewar rate.

But the aircraft he had seen there had been Me-109s, capable fighters to be sure, but not machines that could have any lasting impact on the conduct of the war. He vividly remembered the performance of the Kingcobras he had fought over Poland, and of the tales he’d heard of the American P-51 Mustang. In the hands of well-trained pilots, the Mustang was supposedly as good as anything the Luftwaffe could put into the air. And that plane, though single-engined, reportedly had enough range to accompany the American bombers deep into Germany.

Even when a surprisingly cheerful Galland had met Krueger at the factory and brought him here by car, the veteran pilot had been unable to shake his sense of seething rage mixed with grim despair. He had looked at the rolling hills and green woods of Bavaria and had only pictured the cloud of war that was hanging over this area, the birthplace of Hitler’s dream. Like the man, that dream of impeccable Aryan ascendancy had to all appearances died with the leader who had given it shape, form, and substance.

But then had come the sight of this beautiful airplane, and the bleak mood had vanished in the instant of this stunning demonstration, in his view of a machine that could far exceed the speed of anything else in the sky. He already could picture tactics: the Swallow could climb away from a battle that its pilot wished to avoid, and streak into a force of bombers at a speed that rendered useless the machine guns bristling from the vaunted Flying Fortresses and Liberators of the American bomber fleet.

A few minutes later Krueger was climbing into the cramped cockpit. The instruments were remarkably similar to the gauges in any other fighter. As the full bubble canopy was lowered, he was impressed by the excellent visibility in all directions. He watched as the maintenance crews worked at each of the two engines, strangely lacking in propellers, hanging sleek and smooth beneath the wings. Those wings were sheared back daringly, in a configuration that screamed raw speed.

It felt odd to be looking straight out the front of the fighter while it was sitting flat on the ground. The tricycle landing gear was unique to the Swallow among all German fighter aircraft. Galland had explained that the nose wheel greatly improved the safety of takeoffs--the original design had included just a wheel beneath each wing, but the craft had been tail heavy and hard to control. Furthermore, it had shown a disturbing tendency to plant the nose into the runway.

The general had provided a few other pointers, and now he ran over them in his mind ... Don’t change the throttle too quickly, either increase or decrease. The Jumo engines, for all their power and speed, are delicate, and a sudden infusion of fuel could cause them to flame out... while a decrease in the throttle would very likely cause a stall. Let them push me along... and they will carry me to the heavens.

He was startled by the loud rattle of a small gasoline engine on his right wing, even though Galland had told him that the two-cycle starter motor was needed in order to bring the powerful jet turbine up to speed. He listened to the sputtering of the little engine, then noticed that it was swiftly overwhelmed by the rising whine of the powerful turbine. Soon the port engine was powered up as well, and he was standing on the brakes, feeling the shuddering desire of this airplane to break away from the flight line and make its way into the sky.