“Colonel, we have a very big problem.”
FIVE
“Fools! Idiots!” His face white with rage and his temples bulging, Karl Blacksturm pounded the conference table as he stormed at the others seated, eyes cast down, around it. “Fifty years of planning, fifty years of quiet building, fifty years of infuriating waiting, and now all is in jeopardy!” His eyes darted from bowed head to bowed head. Finding no answers, his rage grew. Panting between clenched teeth, Blacksturm stood, kicking his chair over on the way up.
“How could they have known?”
No answer.
His eyes flamed as they swept over the room. Then suddenly, like the dead quiet before an execution, he was icy calm.
“Gentlemen, no other explanation will suffice. We have a spy somewhere among us.” He turned to his chief of internal security.
“Hemmler, I want to know who the traitor is. I want to know soon, and if you cannot determine who it is, I will find someone who can!”
Colonel Hemmler nodded. His twelve years advising the Romanian Securitate had taught him much about tracking down leaks — or finding scapegoats. He would keep his position and General Blacksturm would have his traitor.
Blacksturm sat down and thought. The Americans reacted as he might have. They had somehow, through some leak in his organization, divined his plan and then attempted to react. They had first sounded the alert at Baumflecken and attempted to cut off the raid party, then they had attempted a counterambush at the parkplatz. When those attempts failed, they alerted the Kriegspiel Depot. None of that could be coincidence, and only their poor execution had kept them from checking his moves. The plan is laid out for a period of several weeks, he reasoned, but the Americans, even when I stop this leak, will learn. Once stung, Americans learn fast. No, whoever it is will be ready for those moves; I must move faster, must do the unexpected. Bold steps, thought Blacksturm, like the Leader’s steps into Poland and France and Russia. He smiled, seeing himself superior to the man who had pushed Germany to within a short step of world domination. You would not have done this, he thought, but I shall. Some steps by force, others by subterfuge; the right combination, that is the answer. But I must move quickly.
He dismissed the bulk of the group and kept only his inner circle.
“We must take advantage of circumstances,” Blacksturm said. “Therefore, we will accelerate, and not abandon, the plan.” He rose and outlined the next steps as he paced.
“Hemmler, immediately emplace those agents necessary to carry out the political-action phase. Hohl, do likewise to secure the reliability of all the armed forces. If an individual is even so much as questionable, remove him. Goebbels, to strike directly at Kriegspiel now, while they are alerted, would be suicide.”
“Herr General, a few men and a hundred or so women are no match for my troops!”
“Perhaps not, but then again…” In midsentence it came to him. He turned to the man on his left. “Let your women of Kriegspiel do their washing today.” He motioned to Hohl and Hemmler. “It is already 7:00. You two go; you have much to accomplish. If all goes well, tomorrow will see the beginning of a new order. Dismissed.”
Alone with Goebbels, Blacksturm righted his chair and pulled it close. “If not by force, then by cunning. Now, tonight, just before the sun sets, this is what I want you to do…”
“Captain Cooper, what’s the latest from headquarters?”
“Just the same stuff, Sir. Restrict all personnel, cancel all training exercises, continue to acknowledge routine communications checks.”
“Do they fully understand what happened here?”
“Yes, Sir. Even though the codebooks are set up for one-way transmission from them to us, I figured out a way to send them the info.”
Although a great part of Alex Stern found it unbelievable that his superiors would tell him to stand still and do nothing, such orders were understandable. With all the decision makers out of commission, the seconds in command would naturally be hesitant. Though the information clearly pointed to a coup by someone in the German military establishment, such evidence was at best inconclusive. Then, too, there would be the question of what they should, and could, do about it. The U.S. Army in Europe, drawn down to less than an undermanned corps’ worth of ground forces, was no more than a hollow trip wire. Lying low and letting this internal political tempest blow over might well be the best course of action.
It was as if Cooper could read his mind. “That’s what they want, Sir.”
“Huh?”
“Sir, I tried calling my buddy up at corps G2 for the inside info. I got disconnected after ten seconds. The same thing happened when I tried to use the civilian phone.” He took a roll of printouts from under his arm and stopped, as if gathering his courage. “Somebody wants us off the net.”
“But the messages from headquarters?”
“They’re completely correct, Sir. Correct down to the minutest detail. They took less than two minutes to respond to my gerryrigged message, and previous and subsequent commo checks and transmissions are precisely on time, right to the second.”
“So?”
“They’re too perfect, sir. After a couple of years of pulling duty officer and processing classified traffic, you get a feel for the guys on the other end, even if you never meet them. They have quirks, they make mistakes, like anybody else. Over time, those quirks and mistakes become patterns. If you keep track of those patterns they form a wave function, and if you plug that function into a graphing program…”
“The bottom line, Captain?”
“A 217.37 percent variance.”
“In English?”
“Whoever it is we’re talking to on the emergency message system, they’re not members of the U.S. Army.”
Stern dismissed Cooper, found another cup of coffee, and sat down to think.
Every battalion commander had been killed in the club; captains now commanded those brigade units. Dean and Johnson, key players in Hagan’s celebration, had attended so they could personally supervise its execution, just as good staff officers should. They died for their efforts. With Hagan dead, Stern took charge of the brigade, Griffin moved up to second in command, Middletown became the brigade operations officer in title as well as in fact, and two captains who had assisted Dean and Johnson took their places on the staff. Stern had put Griffin’s new duties into a language that Griffin could understand. (“Think of the staff as a Special Forces team, all specialists: one in personnel, one in logistics, Cooper in intel, Middletown in ops, but all required to have a common background and mission. You’re just an A Team leader on a bigger scale, which means you have to know something about all of them. But make them be the experts, make them come up with the answers. Then you tie them all together to accomplish the mission.”) After that, Griffin quickly became an able deputy commander — a staff coordinator, a manager, and an ass kicker, par excellence.
Stern had taken the actions the manuals told him to take after an attack. He had re-established the chain of command, secured the unit, and attempted to contact higher headquarters. The only action he couldn’t take was to continue the mission, for he was unsure of what his mission was. With the lines out he couldn’t talk to anyone — even a call from the civilian phones to higher or to the embassy was out, because the line shut down almost as soon as he was connected. Stern wanted his hands on those responsible. But brigades are part of larger units, and larger units have commanders. Stern’s bosses three levels up all perished in the slaughter at the banquet. Given Cooper’s analysis, it appeared the enemy had disconnected them from the rest of the army. He had no boss, no orders, and no allies.