Vogel officially held the rank of captain in the Kriegsmarine, but it was only a formality designed to give him the rank necessary to operate in certain quarters. Like his mentor Canaris, he rarely wore a uniform. His wardrobe varied little: an undertaker's charcoal suit, a white shirt, a dark tie. He had iron-gray hair that looked as though he had cut it himself and the intense gaze of a coffeehouse revolutionary. His voice was like a rusty hinge; after nearly a decade of clandestine conversations in cafes, hotel rooms, and bugged offices, it rarely rose above a chapel murmur. Ulbricht, deaf in one ear, constantly struggled to hear him.
Vogel's passion for anonymity ran to the absurd. His office contained only one personal item, a portrait of his wife, Gertrude, and his twin girls. He banished them to Gertrude's mother's home in Bavaria when the bombing started and saw them infrequently. Whenever he left the office, even for a few moments, he removed the portrait from the desktop and locked it away in a drawer. Even his identification badge was a riddle. It contained no picture--he had refused to be photographed for years--and the name was false. He kept a small flat near the office, reached by a pleasant walk along the leafy banks of the Landwehr Canal, for those rare nights when he permitted himself to escape. His landlady believed he was a college professor with a lot of girlfriends.
Even inside the Abwehr little else was known of him.
Kurt Vogel was born in Dusseldorf. His father was the principal of a local school, his mother a part-time music teacher who gave up a promising career as a concert pianist to marry and raise a family. Vogel earned a doctorate of law from Leipzig University, where he studied civil and political law under two of the greatest legal minds in Germany, Herman Heller and Leo Rosenberg. He was a brilliant student--the top of his class--and his professors quietly predicted Vogel would one day sit on the Reichsgericht, Germany's supreme court.
Hitler changed all that. Hitler believed in the rule of men, not the rule of law. Within months of taking power he turned Germany's entire judicial system upside down.
Fuhrergewalt
--Fuhrer power--became the absolute law of the land, and Hitler's every maniacal whim was immediately translated into codes and regulations. Vogel remembered some of the ridiculous maxims coined by the architects of Hitler's legal overhaul of Germany:
Law is what is useful to the German people! Law must be interpreted through healthy folk emotions!
When the normal judiciary stood in their way the Nazis established their own courts--
Volksgerichtshof,
the People's Courts. In Vogel's opinion the darkest day in the history of German jurisprudence came in October 1933, when ten thousand lawyers stood on the steps of the Reichsgericht in Leipzig, arms raised in a Nazi salute, and swore to "follow the course of the Fuhrer to the end of our days." Vogel had been among them. That night he went home to the small flat he shared with Gertrude, burned his law books in the stove, and drank himself sick.
Several months later, in the winter of 1934, he was approached by a small dour man with a pair of dachshunds--Wilhelm Canaris, the new head of the Abwehr. Canaris asked Vogel if he would be willing to go to work for him. Vogel accepted on one condition--that he not be forced to join the Nazi party--and the following week he vanished into the world of German military intelligence. Officially, he served as Canaris's in-house legal counsel. Unofficially, he was given the task of preparing for the war with Britain that Canaris thought was inevitable.
Now Vogel sat at his desk, hunched over a memo, knuckles pressed to his temples. He struggled to concentrate over the noise: the rattle of the old lift as it struggled up and down the well just beyond his wall, the splatter of freezing rain against the windows, the cacophony of car horns that accompanied the Berlin evening rush. He moved his hands from his temples to his ears and pressed until there was silence.
The memo had been given to him by Canaris earlier that day, a few hours after the Old Fox returned from a meeting with Hitler at Rastenburg. Canaris thought it looked promising, and Vogel had to agree. "Hitler wants results, Kurt," Canaris had said, sitting behind his battered antique desk like an impervious old don, eyes wandering the overflowing bookshelves as though searching for a treasured but long-lost volume. "He wants proof it's Calais or Normandy. Perhaps it's time we brought your little nest of spies into the game."
Vogel had read it once quickly. Now he read it more carefully a second time. Actually it was more than promising, it was perfect--the opportunity he had been waiting for. When he finished he looked up and murmured Ulbricht's name several times as if he were speaking directly into his ear. Finally, receiving no reply, he rose and walked into the anteroom. Ulbricht was cleaning his Lugers.
"Werner, I've been calling you for five minutes," Vogel said, his voice nearly inaudible.
"I'm sorry, Captain. I didn't hear you."
"I want to see Muller first thing in the morning. Make me an appointment."
"Yes, sir."
"And Werner, do something about your damned ears. I was shouting at the top of my lungs in there."
The bombers came at midnight as Vogel dozed fitfully in his office on a stiff camp bed. He swung his legs to the floor, rose, and walked to the window as the aircraft droned overhead. Berlin shuddered as the first fires erupted in the districts of Pankow and Weissensee. Vogel wondered how much more punishment the city could absorb. Vast sections of the capital of the thousand-year Reich had already been reduced to rubble. Many of the city's most famous neighborhoods resembled canyons of crushed brick and twisted steel. The lime trees of the Unter den Linden had been scorched, as had many of the once-glittering shops and banks lining the broad boulevard. The renowned clock at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church had been stilled at seven thirty since November, when Allied bombers laid waste to one thousand acres of Berlin on a single night.
The memo ran around in his head while he watched the night raid.
ABWEHR/BERLIN XFU0465848261
TO: CANARIS
FROM: MULLER
DATE: 2 NOV 43
ON 21 OCTOBER CAPTAIN DIETRICH OF ASCUNCION STATION DEBRIEFED AMERICAN ASSET SCORPIO IN PANAMA CITY. AS YOU KNOW SCORPIO IS ONE OF OUR MOST IMPORTANT AGENTS IN AMERICA. HE IS HIGHLY PLACED IN NEW YORK FINANCIAL CIRCLES AND IS WELL CONNECTED IN WASHINGTON. HE IS PERSONAL FRIENDS WITH MANY SENIOR OFFICERS AT BOTH THE DEPARTMENTS OF WAR AND STATE. HE HAS MET PERSONALLY WITH ROOSEVELT. THROUGHOUT THE WAR HIS INFORMATION HAS BEEN TIMELY AND HIGHLY ACCURATE. I REMIND YOU ABOUT THE INTELLIGENCE HE SUPPLIED TO US ON THE AMERICAN ARMS SHIPMENTS TO THE BRITISH.
ACCORDING TO SCORPIO, A RENOWNED AMERICAN ENGINEER NAMED PETER JORDAN WAS RECRUITED BY THE AMERICAN NAVY LAST MONTH AND DISPATCHED TO LONDON TO WORK ON A HIGHLY SECRET CONSTRUCTION PROJECT. JORDAN HAS NO PREVIOUS MILITARY EXPERIENCE. SCORPIO KNOWS JORDAN PERSONALLY AND SPOKE WITH HIM BEFORE HIS DEPARTURE FOR LONDON. SCORPIO SAYS THE PROJECT IS DEFINITELY CONNECTED TO THE ENEMY'S PLAN TO INVADE FRANCE.
JORDAN IS RESPECTED FOR HIS WORK ON SEVERAL MAJOR AMERICAN BRIDGE PROJECTS. JORDAN IS A WIDOWER. HIS WIFE, THE DAUGHTER OF AMERICAN BANKER BRATTON LAUTERBACH, WAS KILLED IN AN AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT IN AUGUST 1939. SCORPIO BELIEVES JORDAN IS HIGHLY VULNERABLE TO APPROACH BY A FEMALE ASSET.
JORDAN IS NOW LIVING ALONE IN THE SECTION OF LONDON KNOWN AS KENSINGTON. SCORPIO HAS PROVIDED THE ADDRESS OF THE HOUSE AS WELL AS THE COMBINATION OF THE SAFE INSIDE THE STUDY.
SUGGEST ACTION.
Vogel noticed a wedge of light from the doorway and heard the scrape of Ulbricht's wooden leg against the floor. The bombing disturbed Ulbricht in a way he could not put into words and Vogel could never understand. Vogel removed his key ring from the desk drawer and went to one of the steel cabinets. The file was inside an unmarked black folder. Returning to his desk, he poured himself a large cognac and opened the cover. It was all there: the photographs, the background material, the performance reports. He didn't need to read it. He had written it himself and, like the subject, he had the curse of a flawless memory.
He turned a few more pages and found the notes he had made after their first meeting in Paris. Beneath it was a copy of the cable sent to him by the man who discovered her--Emilio Romero, a wealthy Spanish landowner, a Fascist, a talent spotter for the Abwehr.
SHE IS EVERYTHING YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. I'D LIKE TO KEEP HER FOR MYSELF BUT BECAUSE I AM A FRIEND I WILL GIVE HER TO YOU. AT A REASONABLE PRICE OF COURSE.
The room felt suddenly bone-chillingly cold. He lay down on his army cot and covered himself in a blanket.
Hitler wants results, Kurt. Perhaps it's time we brought your little nest of spies into the game.
Sometimes he imagined leaving her in place until it was all over, then finding some way of getting her out. But she was perfect for it, of course. She was beautiful, she was intelligent, and her English and her knowledge of British society were faultless. He turned and looked at the photograph of Gertrude and the children. To think that he fantasized giving them up for her. He had been such a fool. He switched off the light. The air raid had ended. The night was a symphony of sirens. He tried to sleep but it was no good. She was under his skin again.
Poor Vogel. I've made a shambles of your heart, haven't I?
The eyes in the photograph of his family were boring into him. It was obscene, looking at them, remembering her. He stood up, went to his desk, and locked the picture away in his drawer.
"For God's sake, Kurt!" Muller exclaimed as Vogel entered his office the following morning. "Who's cutting your hair these days, my friend? Let me give you the name of the woman who does mine. Maybe she can help you."
Vogel, exhausted from a night of little sleep, sat down and silently regarded the figure before him. Paul Muller was in charge of the Abwehr's intelligence networks in the United States. He was short, tubby, and impeccably dressed in a shiny French suit. His thin hair was oiled and combed straight back from his cherubic face. His tiny mouth was sumptuous and red, like that of a child who has just eaten cherry candy.
"Imagine this, the great Kurt Vogel, here in my office," Muller said through a smirk. "To what do I owe this privilege?"
Vogel was used to the professional jealousy of the other senior staff. Because of the special status of his V-Chain network, he was given more money and assets than the other case officers. He was also allowed to poke his nose into their affairs, which made him extremely unpopular within the agency.
Vogel removed his copy of Muller's memo from the breast pocket of his jacket and waved it in front of him. "Tell me about Scorpio," he said.
"So the Old Man finally circulated my note. Look at the date on the goddamned thing. I gave it to him two months ago. It's been sitting on his desk gathering dust. That information is like gold. But it goes into the Fox's Lair and never comes out again." Muller paused, lit a cigarette, and blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. "You know, Kurt, sometimes I wonder whose side Canaris is on."
The remark was not unusual these days. Since the arrest of several members of the Abwehr's executive staff on charges of treason, morale at Tirpitz Ufer had sunk to a new low. Vogel sensed that Germany's military intelligence agency was dangerously adrift. He had heard rumors that Canaris had fallen out of favor with Hitler. There were even rumors among the staff that Himmler was plotting to bring down Canaris and place the Abwehr under the control of the SS.
"Tell me about Scorpio," Vogel repeated.
"I had dinner with him at the home of an American diplomat." Muller threw back his round head and stared at the ceiling. "Before the war, 1937 I believe it was. I'll check his file to make certain. The fellow's German was better than mine. Thought the Nazis were a wonderful bunch of fellows doing great things for Germany. Only thing he hated worse than the Jews was the Bolsheviks. It was like an audition. I recruited him myself the next day. Easiest snare of my career."
"What's his background?"
Muller smiled. "Investment banking. Ivy League, good contacts in industry, friends with half of Washington. His information on war production has been excellent."
Vogel was folding the memo and putting it back in his pocket. "His name?"
"Come on, Kurt. He's one of my best agents."
"I want his name."
"This place is like a sieve, you know that. I tell you, everybody knows."
"I want a copy of his file on my desk in an hour," Vogel said, his underpowered voice barely a whisper. "And I want everything you have on the engineer."
"You can have the information on Jordan."
"I want it all, and if I have to go to Canaris I'll do it."
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Kurt. You're not going to go running to Uncle Willy, are you?"
Vogel stood and buttoned his jacket. "I want his name and I want his file." He turned and walked out of the office.
"Kurt, come back here," Muller called out. "Let's work this out. Jesus Christ."
"If you want to talk, I'll be in the Old Man's office," Vogel said as he walked down the narrow hallway.
"All right, you win." Muller's doughy hands were digging in a cabinet. "Here's the fucking file. You don't have to run to Uncle Willy again. Jesus Christ, you're worse than the fucking Nazis sometimes."