“It’s called Operation Citadel,” said Professor Turing. “The German staff has been working on it for some time now. Even though we would like to think that the mess they engineered on themselves at Stalingrad ended it for them, that is mere wishful dreaming. They are wounded but still immensely powerful.”
“Professor, you speak as if you had a seat in the OKW general officers’ mess.”
“In a sense he does. The professor mentioned the little machines he builds, how they are able to try millions of possibilities and come up with solutions to the German code combinations and produce reasonable decryptions. Thus we have indeed been able to read Jerry’s mail. Frankly, I know far more about German plans than about what is happening two doors down in my own agency, what the Americans are doing, or who the Russians have sent to Cambridge. But it’s a gift that must be used sagely. If it’s used sloppily, it will give up the game and Jerry will change everything. So we just use a bit of it now and then. This is one of those nows or thens. Go on, Professor.”
“I defer to a strategic authority.”
“General Cavendish?”
Cavendish, the army general, had a face that showed emotions from A all the way to A—. It was a mask of meat shaped in an oval and built bluntly around two ball bearings, empty of light, wisdom, empathy, or kindness, registering only force. He had about a pound of nose in the center of it and a pound of medals on his tunic.
“Operation Citadel,” he delivered as rote fact, not interpretation, “is envisioned as the Götterdämmarung of the war in the East, the last titanic breakthrough that will destroy the Russian warmaking effort and bring the Soviets to the German table, hats in hand. At the very least, if it’s successful, as most think it will be, it’ll prolong the war by another year or two. We had hoped to see the fighting stop in 1945; now it may last well into 1947, and many more millions of men may die, and I should point out that a good number of those additional millions will be German. So we are trying to win — yes, indeed — but we are trying to do so swiftly, so that the dying can stop. That is what is at stake, you see.”
“And that is why you cannot crush this little Cambridge rat’s ass under a lorry. All right, I see that, I suppose, annoyed at it though I remain.”
“Citadel, slated for May, probably cannot happen until July or August, given the logistics. It is to take place in southwest Russia, several hundred miles to the west of Stalingrad. At that point, around a city called Kursk, the Russians find themselves with a bulge in their lines — a salient, if you will. Secretly the Germans have begun massing matériel both above and beneath the bulge. When they believe they have overwhelming superiority, they will strike. They will drive north from below and south from above, behind walls of Tigers, flocks of Stukas, and thousands of artillery pieces. The infantry will advance behind the tanks. When the encirclement is complete, they will turn and kill the 300,000 men in the center and destroy the 50,000 tanks. The morale of the Red Army will be shattered, the losses so overwhelming that all the American aid in the world cannot keep up with it, and the Russians will fall back, back, back to the Urals. Leningrad will fall, then Moscow. The war will go on and on and on.”
“I’m no genius,” said Basil, “but even I can figure it out. You must tell Stalin. Tell him to fortify and resupply that bulge. Then when the Germans attack, they will fail, and it is they who will be on the run, the war will end in 1945, and those millions of lives will have been saved. Plus I can then drink myself to death uninterrupted, as I desire.”
“Again, sir,” said the admiral, who was turning out to be Basil’s most ardent admirer, “he has seen the gist of it straight through.”
“There is only one thing, Basil,” said Sir Colin. “We have told Stalin. He doesn’t believe us.”
“Jasta 3 at Vraignes. Late 1916,” said Macht. “Albatros, a barge to fly.”
“He was an ace,” said Abel. “Drop a hat and he’ll tell you about it.”
“Old comrade,” said Oberst Gunther Scholl, “yes. I was Jasta 7 at Roulers. That was in 1917. God, so long ago.”
“Old chaps,” said Abel, “now the nostalgia is finished, so perhaps we can get on with our real task, which is staying out of Russia.”
“Walter will never go to Russia,” said Macht. “Family connections. He’ll stay in Paris, and when the Americans come, he’ll join up with them. He’ll finish the war a lieutenant-colonel in the American army. But he does have a point.”
“Didi, that’s the first compliment you ever gave me. If only you meant it, but one can’t have everything.”
“So let’s go through this again, Herr Oberst,” said Macht to Colonel Scholl. “Walter reminds us that there’s a very annoyed SS officer stomping around out there and he would like to send you to the Russian front. He would also like to send all of us to the Russian front, except Walter. So it is now imperative that we catch the fellow you sat next to for six hours, and you must do better at remembering.”
The hour was late, or early, depending. Oberst Scholl had imagined himself dancing the night away at Maxim’s with Hilda, then retiring to a dawn of love at the Ritz. Instead he was in a dingy room on the rue Guy de Maupassant, being grilled by gumshoes from the slums of Germany in an atmosphere seething with desperation, sour smoke, and cold coffee.
“Hauptmann Macht, believe me, I wish to avoid the Russian front at all costs. Bricquebec is no prize, and command of a night fighter squadron does not suggest, I realize, that I am expected to do big things in the Luftwaffe. But I am happy to fight my war there and surrender when the Americans arrive. I have told you everything.”
“This I do not understand,” said Leutnant Abel. “You had previously met Monsieur Piens and you thought this fellow was he. Yet the photography shows a face quite different from the one I saw at the Montparnasse station.”
“Still, they are close,” explained the colonel somewhat testily. “I had met Piens at a reception put together by the Vichy mayor of Bricquebec, between senior German officers and prominent, sympathetic businessmen. This fellow owned two restaurants and a hotel, was a power behind the throne, so to speak, and we had a brief but pleasant conversation. I cannot say I memorized his face, as why would I? When I got to the station, I glanced at the registration of French travelers and saw Piens’s name and thus looked for him. I suppose I could say it was my duty to amuse our French sympathizers, but the truth is, I thought I could charm my way into a significant discount at his restaurants or pick up a bottle of wine as a gift. That is why I looked for him. He did seem different, but I ascribed that to the fact that he now had no moustache. I teased him about it and he gave me a story about his wife’s dry skin.”
The two policemen waited for more, but there wasn’t any “more.”
“I tell you, he spoke French perfectly, no trace of an accent, and was utterly calm and collected. In fact, that probably was a giveaway I missed. Most French are nervous in German presence, but this fellow was quite wonderful.”
“What did you talk about for six hours?”
“I run on about myself, I know. And so, with a captive audience, that is what I did. My wife kicks me when I do so inappropriately, but unfortunately she was not there.”