Vienna Prelude (53 page)

Thomas listened absently to their conversation. It’s a shame, he thought, that Hitler’s grand schemes cannot be settled between nations in man-to-man combat. One champion to each state. A duel to the death. Then the bout between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling would settle the issues about which Hitler harangues day in and day out.

He drummed his fingers nervously on his knee and tried not to think about the file in his briefcase.
Jacob Stern. Inmate Dachau.
Why had Canaris told him Theo’s plane had crashed in the mountains beyond Munich? Why had he told him Theo was dead? Was the word
Dachau
synonymous with
d
eath
inside the Reich now? Of course not. He had heard stories of men who had been ransomed out every day. And some minor offenders had been released. Priests and pastors who had recanted their blasphemies against the Nazi regime had been set free on occasion. Jews were only freed on the condition that great amounts of money passed into the proper channels, however. Theo Lindheim was now definitely in that category. Under the name Jacob Stern, his freedom would come with payment. Now Thomas would act as broker with the powerful.

“Von Kleistmann.” The secretary’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Admiral Canaris will see you now.”

Canaris did not look up from his sheaf of papers as Thomas entered the room and raised his hand in salute. Neither man uttered the words “Heil Hitler.” Under the circumstances, such a salute would have been preposterous. They were alone, without witnesses, and there was no need to pretend.

“Sit down, Thomas.” The silver-haired officer sounded weary. The burden of events had aged him. The certainty of the future had robbed him of hope. “What do you want?” He was curt, but it did not alter Thomas’s determination.

“Theo Lindheim is alive,” he answered without ceremony. He opened his case and tossed the folder onto the desk of Canaris. “Read that.”

Canaris looked at the folder with scorn. “I have one just like it,” he said, shoving it back toward Thomas.

“No, sir,” Thomas corrected him. “It says that Theo Lindheim is not dead. He is an inmate in Dachau. Under the name Jacob Stern. It’s all there. He didn’t die in a plane crash.”

Canaris leaned back and pressed his fingers together. “It would have been better if he had.”

“You mean you knew this?”

Canaris nodded. “For some time.”

“But you said—”

“I said he was dead. To silence you. You ask questions that are none of your business about men who are declared criminals to the Reich.”

“But he isn’t—”

“He
is
dead, Thomas. Forget the issue.”

“How can I forget? He was like my own father. A great hero of the Fatherland.”

“You think there aren’t a thousand other just like him rotting in the concentration camps right now? We have no power. Himmler and the Gestapo have all the power with Hitler. All we have to do is involve ourselves in one escape and we will find ourselves in Dachau, or in some dark cellar with our backs flayed open. Himmler has the ear of Hitler in matters of arrest. Within the borders of Germany, Himmler is the one who decides who will live and who is an enemy of the state.” He tossed his pen onto the stack. “Here in the Abwehr, we deal with the military intelligence, as you well know.”

Thomas was not expecting a lecture. “But Lindheim was your friend!”

Canaris leaned forward in an angry whisper. “You little fool! Don’t you realize what’s at stake here? One by one Himmler is eliminating the old guard of Germany! I am most certainly on his list! And so we watch in silence as a man like Lindheim disappears, because if we help him, then we too are the enemy.” He sat up straight. His clear blue eyes were rimmed with red as he stared fiercely at Thomas. “Forget it! Hope that if we endure long enough, this evil will pass, and perhaps Theo and the other thousands will still be alive to appreciate what we try to do.”

“You are doing nothing!” Thomas was unafraid as he challenged Canaris. “You let innocent men die and do nothing!”

“You are wrong.” Canaris sighed. “I am hanging on with my teeth. There are others. You know them. We watch as the Führer foams at the mouth and slams his fists against the wall and orders the arrest and death of anyone Himmler accuses of being anti-Nazi. And we hope we will not be accused.”

Thomas stared at the file. “Then where can I go? How can I help him?”

“Go back to Paris.” Canaris picked up his pen and began to write again. “Forget about him.”

“I can’t.”

“You must. For the sake of Germany, we must not also die in Dachau. You have a job to do.” He pointed the pen at Thomas. “I order you back to your post. There you will receive your orders. The jails are full of good men, von Kleistmann. Full. Your job is to remain free in this hell. Some will have to be sacrificed. Theo Lindheim is dead, and the matter is closed.”

He did not return the file. Nor would he, Thomas knew. The matter was closed, locked away in the impenetrable vaults labeled
Sacrifice for the Fatherland.
At best it was a trade-off. Canaris had chosen to ignore the fate of guiltless men in the hope of regaining some position of power among the madmen who now conducted the policies of the Reich.

Thomas rose slowly and gazed down at the chief of Military Intelligence. “Didn’t you see this coming?” he asked quietly. “Why did we wait so long? How did it come this far?”

Canaris hung his head, passing a hand over his eyes. “How? Why? A thousand times a day I ask myself. Did we see? Perhaps. Yes. We could have stopped it. We could have.” He looked up toward Thomas. His face was haunted by the vision of Apocalypse. “But now we see so
much
more clearly! So much more horribly what will be unless . . .” His words sounded hopeless. “And now there may be no stopping, no turning back. A Jew like Theo Lindheim. Ten thousand other great men—my God, Thomas, it is only the beginning. Only the beginning. The tide is so strong the current carries us away. Hitler has surrounded himself with sycophants and lackeys who think and speak as he does!” He shook his head sadly. “Yes, we could have stopped it. Perhaps there is still hope that a few of us may still. But the machine feeds on human life. Germany is filled with men whose only duty is to arrest and interrogate. The watchers and the watched. I am watched by Himmler’s Gestapo. So are you. Do not be mistaken. We must move carefully, Thomas. And if there is even one shining fragment of hope left that we might stop him, then nothing else—no single life—matters.”

Canaris stood and walked to the window to stare at the Chancellery building. “Put the innocent to death in your heart so that you may live to see evil kick and twist slowly on the end of a rope.” He looked at Thomas over his shoulder. “Stay alive, von Kleistmann. There are so few of us left.”

Thomas shook his head and left Canaris’s office in silence. Perhaps the admiral was right, after all. Perhaps one man’s life did not matter so much if they had a chance of stopping Hitler’s madness. Theo Lindheim would consider it a fair trade—of that Thomas was certain.

Lindheim will never come out of Dachau alive, Thomas thought grimly, and I still have a chance to help put a stop to this insanity.

But that meant he would have to allow Elia to think the worst, to believe that her father was dead. He had failed. There was no appeal, no answer, no money that could buy Theo Lindheim’s freedom. It was best for her to believe he had died, to grieve, and then go on with her life—far better than imagining his torture in that hellhole called Dachau. Even more, her false hope and her insistent probing could only cause more trouble for everyone.
A small lie,
Thomas reasoned.
And one that could soon become truth. A gentle, compassionate lie to make life easier for everyone.

36

Behind the Wall

Letters of protest against Murphy’s editorials flooded the
New
York Times.

The citizens of the nation had made themselves heard! No one wanted any part in Europe’s quarrels. Let the Nazis have Austria! Let Franco have Spain! Let Italy take Abyssinia. Where was Abyssinia, anyway? What did that have to do with finding work for unemployed millions in the soup lines of America?

Murphy read his orders from the editorial department while he finished his coffee at a small café across the street from the INS office in Paris. Eddie Griffith delivered the telegram himself, shrugged and said, “Sorry, kid,” and walked off.

Murphy scanned the message like a man reading his own death sentence.

Murphy would have laughed if he hadn’t felt so disgusted. A year ago in the Adlon Hotel, Timmons had told him,
“
Nobody likes a Jeremiah.
”
That was why people avoided Winston Churchill like the black plague. Now John Murphy had the plague too! So here it was in black and white: the American people didn’t want their indigestion acting up when they read the morning papers. Murphy had touched a raw nerve. He had suggested that England and France might appreciate a little help from their big cousin across the waters. He had mentioned that together the democracies of the world might put an end to trouble before it went any further. The trouble was, Murphy had not been home in three years. He didn’t know his country anymore. America had turned inward to its own devastating problems.

“Safe behind the Atlantic Wall,” Murphy muttered to no one as he wadded up the telegram and tossed it onto his empty plate. He stared at it for a long time until the waiter carried it away and presented the bill.
So they aren’t impressed that the Nazis would kill their own ambassador to take over Austria. Plot to kill him, pardon me. I need to keep this accurate. To the point. Nobody cares. So why should I? Why not just pack up and head back to New York?

The only answer he could come up with this morning had something to do with a certain violinist in Vienna. He was disgusted with himself, convinced that he must subconsciously enjoy his own pain and suffering. After all, she was “just a dame,” as Johnson would say. Nothing unique about dames. They were all pretty much alike.

Murphy rubbed his head and wondered if Elisa was still in Vienna or if her shining knight had carried her off to safety. He pulled the little wooden angel out of his pocket and gazed at it, then at his watch. He could still make the morning train if he hurried. There was nothing much to keep him in Paris now. Vienna seemed to be the place where the blade of the guillotine was slowly sliding downward.

Murphy could not even find the emotional energy to care anymore. The American readership had already shown him what they thought of his writing.
John Murphy, man least likely to win the Pulitzer Prize.
Maybe somebody would take pity and send him and Winston Churchill off to an asylum for unwanted Jeremiahs. Murphy paid his bill and walked between the crowded tables toward the exit.

Near the door, he stopped and stood gawking.
The German!
The man from Cannes who had walked out of Anthony Eden’s suite. The German stared hard at Murphy, then got up and stalked back toward the kitchen. When he turned to look once more, Murphy gave him a jaunty “Heil” sign. The German simply turned away and walked through the swinging doors of the kitchen area.

“Hey!” Murphy muttered aloud. “I’m nobody, fella!” He was laughing at the irony of the fear that he had seen cross the German’s face. “I’m practically unemployed.” No one even looked up or noticed his little performance. He shrugged and left the café, determined to ask Churchill about this grim young man next time they met.

***

Not everyone in America lacked appreciation for prophets. There were a few dark souls who gazed eastward from the shores of the Atlantic and caught some glimpse of the gathering storm over Europe.

President Franklin Roosevelt sighed heavily as he let the copy of the
New York Times
fall to the floor beside his wheelchair. He had believed the prophecy even before he had read John Murphy’s editorials and articles. On his desk awas a stack of the latest intelligence reports from Europe. Publicly he had called the nonintervention policy of the League of Nations in Spain tantamount to offering support to Hitler and Mussolini. And yet the regular
Fireside Chats
broadcast to his hungry, suffering nation proclaimed the neutrality of the United States in all matters concerning Europe. Now Colonel Lindbergh had come home from his visit with Göring declaring the invincibility of the German Air Force and the German war machine! America believed Lindbergh. “There is no use quarreling with Hitler!” they cried. “If war came, so what? At least American lives would not be lost! Not like the last war!”

The president understood the mood of the nation. It took twenty years to raise a son and only one hour of war to kill him. Roosevelt had sons of his own. Hadn’t he told the people that? Hadn’t his voice crackled over radios in West Virginia and Maine and in farmhouses in Iowa and Minnesota? He had promised them. There would be no war to claim their sons. America was neutral!

He placed his palms on the wheels of his chair and turned from his desk to face the window. It was dusk. Darkness had already come in Europe. Last night he and Eleanor had watched the latest films in the basement theatre. Just as though they had gone to a movie in the Roxie, the president had watched newsreels showing Lindbergh walking with German generals. The Germans had provided the film, he heard later. And then he had seen the arrest of the Nazi terrorists in Austria and watched as Hitler raged before thousands in the Sportpalast. Later, in the movie, Cary Grant had declared, “Put Hitler on the funny page!”