“Schelli and I simply decided to take those plans a stage further. What we’ve done is create some fictitious but entirely feasible and convincing plans — code-named Operation Noah — which amount to nothing less than a Swiss doomsday scenario that is based on the dynamiting of Switzerland’s biggest glacier lakes, including Geneva, Zurich, Neuchâtel, Maggiore, Lucerne, Lugano, and Constance. The idea is that by destroying the terminal moraines of all these glacier lakes, we would turn Switzerland’s only major natural resource — water — into a weapon that would devastate the whole country, in much the same way that the RAF achieved a few months ago when they bombed and breached your Möhne and Edersee dams, causing catastrophic flooding of the Ruhr valley. A moraine is a sort of glacial bath plug that keeps all the water in the lake. There are over fifty Swiss lakes occupying an area of more than one square kilometer. We estimate that if the terminal moraine of just the biggest lake — Geneva — were destroyed, then almost ninety cubic kilometers of water would be released over the surrounding area. If the moraines of the largest ten lakes were blown at the same time as the major passes, then we could turn Switzerland into one vast European sea. No army on earth could deal with something on that kind of scale.”
“The trick,” added Schellenberg, “will be to convince Hitler that the Swiss really would go through with a plan like this. I don’t think there’s any doubt that the generals in Berlin believe that the Swiss would go ahead and blow up the passes, which is why Operation Province-in-Waiting was shelved. But with Mussolini gone, it’s clear to me that we’re going to need something else to dissuade them more finally — something even more determined that will convince them that any kind of lake-landing by German seaplanes would be suicide, not just for them, but for the Swiss, too. So, I shall simply tell Hitler and the generals that my bravest and most resourceful agent — code-named Tschudi — who is employed in the Technical War Unit of the Swiss General Staff, in Bern — has stolen these plans from the office of Colonel von Wattenwyl. Plans that could make the whole Russian campaign look like a stroll in the Tiergarten.”
“We have compiled a feasibility study of Operation Noah,” said Meyer, “as if written by Colonel von Wattenwyl himself. I’ve met this man. He’s a member of one of Switzerland’s most distinguished families; he’s also a very highly gifted military tactician. We also have a memorandum from the chief of the Swiss General Staff, General Henri Guisan, which describes this operation as part of the National Redoubt or mountain fortress concept that he outlined in an address to the Swiss Officer Corps in 1940. We even have fake reports from the army’s maritime branch on Lake Zurich which purport to indicate the underwater mining of the lake’s terminal moraine at Zurich and plans for the partial evacuation of the city, which would of course be inundated. The report describes the previous effect of the breach of the moraine that runs between Pfäffikon and Rapperswil and which can be seen in the shallow upper part — the Obersee — and the lower part — the Untersee.”
“We certainly hope we’ve thought of absolutely everything,” said Schellenberg. “If we haven’t, then I’ve a feeling that they won’t need a ruler to measure the depth of the hole in the ground I make in the forest at Rastenburg. That swine Ernst Kaltenbrunner will dig my grave himself.”
Thirty-eight
The next day Schellenberg and Eggen returned to Germany. Meyer and I drove them to a small private jetty in an extensive pear orchard on Meyer’s estate. A Swiss Army motorboat was waiting to take them quietly back across Lake Constance to the island of Reichenau, where an SS staff car was ready to drive the general to an airfield in Konstanz. From Konstanz, Eggen was going by road to Stuttgart to catch a train back to Berlin, while the general had arranged to fly straight to the Wolf’s Lair at Rastenburg. I didn’t envy Schellenberg that journey. Quite apart from my fear of flying, which had been hardly helped by the severe electrical storm we had encountered on my trip back from Zagreb, deceiving Hitler and all his staff generals was a task that would have given any ordinary man considerable pause. Deceiving Dalia’s husband, Stefan Obrenovic, felt like something I was much more equal to. Him, and perhaps the minister of Propaganda, for whom, of course, I was still working; otherwise I might have chosen to accompany Eggen back to Germany. After the events at Uetliberg, I’d had enough of Switzerland. But there was still the matter of Dalia’s future to consider, for, although she seemed to have given me a definitive answer to the question of her own return to Germany, I knew it was a question that I was obliged to put to her again, if only because of who my client was. Goebbels wasn’t the kind of man who would have allowed me to take Dalia at her word. I could almost hear his brittle sarcasm now, wiping the floor with me like a rag in that mocking Westfalish accent of his, for not even trying to talk her out of it.
“What are your plans now, Bernie?” asked Meyer.
“I can’t go back to Zurich. Not after what that stupid cop from police headquarters told me. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do now. It all depends on a telephone call I need to make. I have my own rather more mundane mission to complete.”
“You’re very welcome to use our telephone. And to stay here at Wolfsberg. For as long as you want.”
“Believe me, you and your wife wouldn’t want me for that long.”
“Schelli spoke very highly of you to me last night, after you’d gone to bed. He says he thinks you’d be a good man to have around in a tight spot.”
“Maybe. But of late the spots seem to be getting tighter.”
“I’d really like you to stay so that I could ask you a few more questions about your old cases. You know? For my next book. I’m thinking of a story of a Swiss cop with a Berlin connection. Before the war, of course.”
“Of course. When there was still some real crime about.” I smiled thinly. Somehow the idea of helping Meyer with his book appealed a lot less to me than the possibility of seeing Dalia again. “And some real detectives, too.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s kind of you, Paul, but I can’t. I thought I’d motor down to Rapperswil and send Goebbels a telegram, then wait for further instructions. I really can’t leave Switzerland until that’s happened. I’ve heard Rapperswil is very pretty. With a castle and everything.”
“Oh, it is. Very picturesque. But you know, I could drive you down there myself. It so happens that there’s an unsolved murder that took place in Rapperswil. The local police inspector is a friend of mine. Perhaps you might even remember me mentioning it when I was in Berlin last year.”
I didn’t, and of course I certainly wasn’t remotely interested in some old murder case but it occurred to me that if I did go to Rapperswil it might be useful to have a Swiss police inspector on my side, especially if I was going to be meeting in secret with the wife of a prominent local businessman. Besides, with the OSS probably still convinced that I was Walter Schellenberg, it couldn’t do any harm to have a cop to help me out if they again tried to kidnap me, or worse.