Thanks to his soft voice, his reasonable manner, his smooth ways, his two fucking Iron Crosses and dozens of other decorations, Ernst was currently in Wolf’s favor (because it made him feel close to the Leader, Göring liked to use the nickname women sometimes referred to Hitler by, though the minister, of course, uttered the intimacy only in his thoughts).
Why, look at how the colonel had attacked Göring yesterday on the issue of the Me 109 fighter at the Olympics! The air minister had lain awake half the night, enraged over that exchange, picturing again and again Wolf turning his blue eyes to Ernst and agreeing!
Another burst of rage swept through him. “God in heaven!” Göring swept the spaghetti dish to the floor. It shattered.
One of his orderlies, a veteran of the War, came running, stiff on his game leg.
“Sir?”
“Clean that up!”
“I’ll get a pail-”
“I didn’t say mop the floor. Just pick up the pieces. They’ll mop this evening.” Then the huge man glanced at his blousy shirt and saw tomato stains on it. His anger doubled. “I want a clean shirt,” he snapped. “The china is too small for the portions. Tell the cook to find bigger. The Leader has that Meissen set, the green and white. I want plates like those.”
“Yes, sir.” The man was bending down to the shards.
“No, my shirt first.”
“Yes, Air Minister.” The man scurried off. He returned a moment later, bearing a dark green shirt on a hanger.
“Not that one. I told you when you brought it to me last month that it makes me look like Mussolini.”
“That was the black one, sir. Which I’ve discarded. This is green.”
“Well, I want white. Get me a white shirt! A silk one!”
The man left then came back once more, with the correct color.
A moment later one of Göring’s senior aides stepped inside.
The minister took the shirt and set it aside; he was self-conscious of his weight and would never think of undressing in front of a subordinate. He felt another flash of rage, this time at Ernst’s slim physique. As the orderly picked up the shards of china, the senior aide said, “Air Minister, I think we have good news.”
“What?”
“Our agents in Hamburg have found some letters about Mrs. Kleinfeldt. They suggest that she is a Jew.”
“‘Suggest’?”
“ Prove, Mr. Minister. They prove it.”
“Pure?”
“No. A half-breed. But from the mother’s side. So it’s indisputable.”
The Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race, enacted last year, removed Jews’ German citizenship and made them “subjects,” as well as criminalized marriage or sex between Jews and Aryans. The law also defined exactly who was a Jew in the case of ancestral intermarriage. With two Jewish and two non-Jewish grandparents, Mrs. Kleinfeldt was a half-breed.
This was not as damning as it could be but the discovery delighted Göring because of the man who was Mrs. Kleinfeldt’s grandson: Doctor-professor Ludwig Keitel, Reinhard Ernst’s partner in the Waltham Study. Göring still didn’t know what this mysterious study was all about. But the facts were sufficiently damning: Ernst was working with a man descended from Jews and they were using the writings of the Jew mind-doctor Freud. And, most searing of all, Ernst had kept the study secret from the two most important people in the government, himself and Wolf.
Göring was surprised that Ernst had underestimated him. The colonel had assumed that the air minister wasn’t monitoring telephones in the cafés around Wilhelm Street. Didn’t the plenipotentiary know that in this paranoia-soaked district those were the very phones that yielded the most gold? He’d gotten the transcript of the call Ernst had made to Doctor-professor Keitel this morning, urgently requesting a meeting.
What happened in that meeting wasn’t important. What was critical was that Göring had learned the good professor’s name and had now found out that he had Yid blood in his veins. The consequences of all this? That largely depended on what Göring wished those consequences to be. Keitel, a part-Jew intellectual, would be sent to the camp at Oranienburg. There was no doubt about that. But Ernst? Göring decided it would be better to keep him visible. He’d be ousted from the top ranks of government but retained in some lackey position. Yes, by next week the man would be lucky to be employed scurrying after Defense Minister von Blomberg, carting the bald man’s briefcase.
Ebullient now, Göring took several more painkillers, shouted for another plate of spaghetti and rewarded himself for his successful intriguing by turning his attention back to his Olympic party. Wondering: Should he appear in the costume of a German hunter, an Arab sheik, or Robin Hood, complete with a quiver and a bow on his shoulder?
Sometimes it was next to impossible to make up one’s mind.
Reggie Morgan was troubled. “I don’t have the authority to approve a thousand dollars. Jesus Lord. A thousand? ”
They were walking through the Tiergarten, past a Stormtrooper on a soapbox sweating fiercely as he hoarsely lectured a small group of people. Some clearly wished to be elsewhere, some looked back with disdain in their eyes. But some were mesmerized. Paul was reminded of Heinsler on the ship.
I love the Führer and I’d do anything for him and the Party…
“The threat worked?” Morgan asked.
“Oh, yes. In fact, I think he respected me more for it.”
“And he can actually get us useful information?”
“If anybody can, he’s the one. I know his sort. It’s astonishing how resourceful some people can be when you wave money toward them.”
“Then let’s see if we can come up with some.”
They left the park and turned south at the Brandenburg Gate. Several blocks farther on they passed the ornate palace that would, when the repairs after the fire were finished, become the U.S. embassy.
“Look at it,” Morgan said. “Magnificent, isn’t it? Or it will be.”
Even though the building wasn’t officially the U.S. embassy yet, an American flag hung from the front. The sight stirred Paul, made him feel good, more at ease.
He thought of the Hitler Youth back at the Olympic Village.
And the black… the hooked cross. You would say swastika… Ach, surely you know… Surely you know…
Morgan turned down an alleyway and then another and, with a look behind them, unlocked the door. They entered the quiet, dark building and walked down several corridors until they came to a small door beside the kitchen. They stepped inside. The dim room was sparse: a desk, several chairs and a large radio, bigger than any Paul had ever seen. Morgan flipped on the unit and as the tubes warmed up it began to hum.
“They listen to all the overseas shortwave,” Morgan said, “so we’re going to transmit via relays to Amsterdam and then London and then be routed through a phone line to the States. It’ll take the Nazis a while to get the frequency,” the man said, pulling on earphones, “but they could get lucky so you have to assume they’re listening. Everything you say, keep that in mind.”
“Sure.”
“We’ll have to go fast. Ready?”
Paul nodded and took the set of headphones Morgan offered him, then plugged the thick jack into the socket he pointed to. A green light finally came to life on the front of the unit. Morgan stepped to a window, glanced out into the alleyway, let the curtain fall back. He pulled the microphone close to his mouth and pushed the button on the shaft. “I need a transatlantic connection to our friend in the south.” He repeated this then released the transmit button and said to Paul, “Bull Gordon’s ‘our friend in the south.’ Washington, you know. ‘Our friend in the north’ is the Senator.”
“Roger that,” said a young voice. It was Avery’s. “Be a minute. Hold on. Placing the call.”
“Howdy,” Paul said.