“Hans was telling me that you were married just before you came to Switzerland,” said Patrizia. “That you hadn’t even managed to go on your honeymoon.”
I glanced at Eggen and gave him my best blue eyes.
“That’s right, Frau Meyer.”
“Tell me about her? Is she very pretty?”
“Her name is Kirsten and yes, she’s pretty. She’s younger than me. Her father owns a small hotel in Dachau. Which is where she’s from, originally. But she’s a schoolteacher at a girls’ school in Berlin.”
“Was it a sudden thing?” she asked.
“It was rather.”
“Well, I wish you all the luck in the world.”
“Thanks, but we won’t need that much. Besides, I think the general is going to need quite a bit of luck himself if he’s going to pull off this plan he was talking about. I’d like to hear some more about that, if I may.”
Schellenberg nodded. “Yes, I think you deserve that.” He shrugged. “The deals done by the Nordhav Foundation with the Swiss Wood Company weren’t just designed to provide Switzerland with much-needed foreign currency, and to demonstrate my good faith to Swiss Army intelligence. They were also meant as a useful cover for me. So that I could work on Operation Noah with Paul without attracting too much suspicion. Although it doesn’t seem to have worked where you were concerned, Gunther.”
I nodded, but I was just beginning to understand the complexity of Schellenberg’s existence and how carefully he was obliged to tread. By contrast my own life seemed almost carefree, not to say somewhat feckless. While the little general had been devoting himself to ensuring Switzerland’s continued neutrality so that peace negotiations between the Allies and the Axis might finally get under way, I had been dallying with a beautiful actress. And it seemed the least I could do was offer him the respect he deserved.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry about that. I can see that now.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow, for Berlin and then Rastenburg,” he said. “With Mussolini’s overthrow imminent, I’m afraid there’s not a moment to lose. While Paul is in Bern, presenting these genuine plans to his masters in Swiss Army intelligence, I’m going to be at the Wolf’s Lair, giving these fake ones to mine. Quite possibly to Hitler himself. Whatever people say about him, Hitler always listens to his generals. Even me, I have to confess. And being so much younger than the others, I am allowed a certain licence to speak freely.”
“Is Hitler a monster?” asked Patrizia. “One always imagines that he must be.”
“To be honest with you, Patrizia, he is the most extraordinary man I have ever met,” said Schellenberg. “Had he died in 1940 he would have been the greatest German who ever lived. If only he had been more interested in diplomacy he might have been better served diplomatically and we could have avoided war altogether. It doesn’t help that von Ribbentrop was Germany’s foreign minister. The man is a fool. Not that this ever mattered much to Hitler, who always seems to prefer military solutions to almost every problem. That’s what you have to remember about Hitler. He favors getting what he wants by violent means. Which means that speaking to him — giving him advice — is a prospect that always makes me nervous. I feel a little like that fellow Franz Reichelt, who jumped off the Eiffel Tower to demonstrate his new invention: a parachute. It didn’t work, unfortunately for him, and he was killed. I can still remember as a small boy seeing the newsreel footage of Parisian newspapermen using a ruler to measure the depth of the hole in the ground made by his body.”
“Please be careful,” said Patrizia, touching his hand. “We’ve grown very fond of you, Schelli. And you, Hans. Haven’t we, Paul?”
Meyer nodded. “Absolutely. Considering he’s my enemy, he’s also one of my best friends.”
“Thank you, Paul.”
“Before you throw yourself off the Eiffel Tower, General, I’d like to hear some more of these fake plans,” I said.
“Good idea,” said Eggen. “I think a healthy degree of Berlin skepticism is just what we need around here.”
“That sounds like you’re not convinced this plan will work, sir,” I said. “Are you? Do you think it will work?”
“If anyone can make it work, it’s Schelli,” said Eggen. “In my experience there’s no one better than him at the practice of maskirovka.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Schellenberg. “I think Captain Gunther himself does quite a job of concealing what he really is.”
“That’s not what I asked, sir,” I told Eggen. “I asked you if you think his plan will work.”
“Then let me say this. I think Hitler and his generals will believe the plans, yes. I think the Operation Noah plans are quite plausible. What Paul and Schelli have done is create a rather brilliant scenario in which it would seem like folly and madness to invade this country at all. The trouble is that folly and madness rule right now. The folly and madness of continuing this war for another week is there for all to see in the person of our leader, Adolf Hitler. Hitler doesn’t live in the real world. He has an absurd faith in the German Army. He still believes that the impossible can be achieved. That’s the real problem with these plans. Not that they are wrong or inadequate or even too far-fetched, but that Hitler is wrong and inadequate. He might think the destruction of this country is a price worth paying for its daring to oppose his will in the first place. I’ve an awful feeling that he has something similar in mind for Germany if we dare to let him down.”
“Nevertheless,” I said, “I would like to hear more about Operation Noah. I’m still just a little sheepish that I didn’t have more faith in you, General.”
“Faith has never been your strong suit, has it, Gunther?”
“Faith is for people who believe in something. I don’t believe in anything very much. Not anymore. After all, look where belief has got us now.”
Schellenberg and Meyer looked at each other. “Do you want to tell him?” asked the Swiss.
“You’re the storyteller, Paul,” said Schellenberg. “You tell him.”
“All right. Well, as Napoleon himself observed—”
Schellenberg grinned. “Paul is a great student of Bonaparte.”
“He said that nature had destined Switzerland to become a league of states and that no wise man would attempt to conquer it.”
“That lets Hitler out, then,” said Eggen. “He hasn’t acted like a wise man since the summer of 1940.”
“We’ve always had the largest percentage of soldiers in the world compared to overall population — six hundred thousand soldiers out of a population of just four million. Quite possibly we could mobilize the entire population in our defense. Everyone in this country knows how to shoot. Hitler knows to his cost just how stubborn the people of Russia have been in their country’s defense. Switzerland has always maintained that we would be no less stubborn. You can see this demonstrated in the way that we have set up the defenses of our country’s key mountain passes: Sargans in the east, Gotthard in the south, and Saint-Maurice in the west. Each area has a series of huge fortifications stretching across some of the most rugged and impassable mountain terrain in Europe. Any invader would be greeted by heavy artillery fire over many kilometers. In short, this is not panzer country. No more are these defenses vulnerable to Luftwaffe attacks. And as if all this were not enough, there is also the threat that we would blow up these mountain passes to deny them to the enemy. In other words, the very thing that makes this country worth invading — namely, as an easy route to Italy — would be rendered useless. Germany’s would be a Pyrrhic victory of epic proportions. And having sacrificed many thousands of troops to secure Switzerland, the German Army would find itself landlocked with nowhere to go. And not just landlocked, but quite literally bogged down. You see, all of the land you can see between here and Lake Constance was once swampland and a system of canals was constructed to drain it. But these same canals can release all of that water back onto the floodplain. Three years ago — and much to the irritation of local farmers, myself included — this was actually tried as an experiment by the Swiss Army. It was very successful, too. It became clear that an invading German army would soon find itself unable to move.