“That she was made ready for sea elsewhere,” Pelosi offered, “and went to Norway to pick up something?”
“Yes, except not ‘something.’ Rather, ‘someone.’”
“Who?” Clete Frade said.
“What fevered imaginations have come up with is that U-977 went to Norway to pick up Adolf Hitler and his new wife, to transport them to safety in Argentina.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Jerry O’Sullivan blurted. “Everybody knows they committed suicide. Hitler married her, then shot her, then bit on a cyanide capsule.”
“On May one,” Dulles said, “Grand Admiral Doenitz went on the radio and announced that Hitler had met a hero’s death on the battlefield.”
“Oh, bullshit,” Tony Pelosi said.
“That suggests,” Dulles went on, “that Hitler died—or that Admiral Doenitz wants us to believe he died—on April thirtieth, or even earlier. We’ve heard he took his life on April twenty-eighth. Timewise, there would have been plenty of time for him to fly to Norway and get aboard U-977.”
“Presuming he wasn’t dead,” O’Sullivan said with some sarcasm.
“According to Zhukov,” Dulles said, “he isn’t dead, and neither are Frau Hitler, Martin Bormann, Herr Doktor Goebbels, and a half dozen other important Nazis. Suggesting, if true of course, that Operation Phoenix was indeed known all the way to the top.”
“According to who did you say, Mr. Dulles?” Clete asked.
“Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov,” Dulles said. “The victor of the Battle for Berlin. Eisenhower’s counterpart.”
“He actually said that?” Peter von Wachtstein asked.
“His interpreter told Ike he said just that, and that most of them, including Mr. and Mrs. Hitler, are on their way to a safe haven in Argentina. If nothing else, this bit of what my gut tells me is disinformation is a classic example of why our having Gehlen’s intel about the Russians is absolutely critical. They are not to be trusted.”
“Jesus!” Frade said. “It’s incredible. Ike can’t believe him, can he?”
“Ike thinks it has something to do with General I. D. White,” Dulles said.
“Who’s he?”
“The commanding general of our Second Armored Division. General White not only moved into what will be the American sector of Berlin without asking Ike, but he also ignored Zhukov’s order that he was required to wait for permission. The rape of Berlin—which has been ghastly—bothered General White. He ordered the Russians out of the American sector. When they refused to go, he issued a proclamation stating that anyone but Americans found with a weapon in the American sector would be presumed to be Germans refusing to obey the surrender order and would be shot on sight. As would rapists, armed or not.”
“Good man!” Ashton said, raising his glass in salute. “Here’s to General White.” He took a sip, then looked at Frade and added, “Colonel, no disrespect intended, but can I go work for him when we’re disbanded?”
That earned him a couple chuckles and at least one grunt of agreement.
Dulles went on: “White could have started World War Three right there, but after a half dozen of Zhukov’s troops had in fact been shot, the Russian caved in and ordered all his troops out of the American zone. Eisenhower believes, not with a great deal of conviction, that what Zhukov is up to, in case there is anything to the inevitable rumors that Hitler did not commit suicide and escaped Berlin, is to blame it on General White. In any event, Eisenhower has ordered the OSS to look into it as a high priority, and David Bruce is doing just that.”
“The OSS guy in London?” Frade asked.
Dulles nodded.
“I’m surprised Bruce didn’t turn that wild-goose chase over to you,” Frade said.
“It was the other way around, Clete. Unfortunately for poor David, he takes his orders from me.”
“I’m afraid to open this can of worms,” Schultz said, “but how the hell was Hitler supposed to get out of Berlin? It was surrounded, right?”
“Yes, it was, Jefe,” Dulles said. “But we’ve heard that Hanna Reitsch flew into Berlin on April twenty-eighth, just before Hitler’s suicide, and then supposedly flew out with the newly appointed chief of the Luftwaffe, General Robert Ritter von Greim, a day or two later.”
“I thought,” Ashton said, “that we had total air superiority over Berlin. How did this Hanna Reitsch manage to do that?”
“The story is that a Fieseler Storch landed on the Unter den Linden,” Dulles said. “Is that possible? Who do I ask, von Wachtstein or Frade, if that’s possible?”
“It’s possible,” von Wachtstein immediately replied. “No problem whatsoever.”
“What’s the Unter den Linden?” Clete asked.
“A wide boulevard near the Reichschancellery,” von Wachtstein explained. “It used to be lined with linden trees. You could get in and out of there in a Storch without much trouble at all.”
“Presuming,” Dulles said, “that there were not perhaps fifty or so Russian fighters in the area supporting the Red Army who would welcome the opportunity to shoot down such an airplane.”
“Who’s this Hanna Reitsch flying the Storch?” Frade said. “How good a pilot is he?”
Von Wachtstein laughed.
He then explained: “Hanna Reitsch is a woman, Clete. And she’s a much better pilot than you or me.”
Clete raised his eyebrows and nodded. After a moment’s thought, he offered: “And Russian fighters wouldn’t be a problem for the Storch if the pilot knew what she was doing.”
“What?” Ashton challenged. “You think a fighter couldn’t shoot down that little observation plane.”
“Once upon a time, Bacardi,” Clete said by way of explanation, “on an island far, far away called Guadalcanal, a Marine pilot was flying around over the jungle in a Piper Cub that he ‘borrowed’ from the Army. He was directing artillery fire and suddenly became aware of a string of tracers coming his way. He looked over his shoulder and saw that he had two Zeros on his tail. Not knowing what to do, he made a sharp right turn and went down on the deck. The Zeros made a three-sixty and had another go at him.
“The Marine went even lower in his humble Cub, then made another right turn. The first Zero flew over him, and the second tried to make a right turn and flew into the trees. The first Zero made two more passes at the little Piper Cub and then gave up. I tried to claim the Zero that went into the trees as a kill, but they said no dice. For one thing, you can’t claim a kill if the enemy plane went down because of pilot error, and for another, you can’t claim a kill if you are flying a Piper Cub stolen from the U.S. Army.
“So, to answer your question, Major Ashton, a female who is a better pilot than Hansel or me, flying a Storch—which stalls at about thirty miles an hour—would have no trouble avoiding Russian fighters.”
Dulles said, “You’re agreed that it’s possible that Hanna Reitsch could have flown Hitler—for that matter, any two people—from Berlin to Norway. Is that so, Peter?”
“Yes, sir. It’s possible,” von Wachtstein replied. “I submit, however, that the real question is: Is it plausible?”
Dulles looked at him a long moment. He said: “We have to proceed on that possibility. The mission obviously is to locate U-997. How nice it would be if we could capture her. And even if the outrageous tale proves to be exactly that—the Hitlers and others are not aboard—then she most certainly will be carrying other valuables.”
“How the hell can we possibly do that?” Frade said. “Definitely not with SAA’s aircraft or certainly not Peter’s Storch. We’d need heavily armed military assets in order to actually capture a sub—and certainly to sink one, if it came to that.”