Shadows of War by Michael Ridpath Read Free Book Online

Conrad wondered.

7
    Berlin, 8 November
    ‘Ah, come in, Hertenberg. Sit down.’
    ‘Thank you, excellency,’ said Theo as he took a seat in front of the admiral’s desk.
    Admiral Canaris’s office was on the top floor of the Abwehr building on the Tirpitzufer in Berlin, overlooking the chestnut trees lining the Landwehr Canal. The admiral was a small, neat man with light blue eyes and fine white hair. He was stroking a rough-haired dachshund nestled with its eyes closed on his lap. With him was Colonel Oster, a debonair cavalry officer and the man who had recruited Theo into the Abwehr. As a trainee lawyer, Theo had been introduced to Oster by his father, under whom Colonel Oster had served. Paradoxically for a former pacifist, the Wehrmacht and the Abwehr had seemed to Theo a good alternative to joining the Nazi Party, which Theo would have had to do if he wanted to pass his final assessor’s exams. Officers in the Wehrmacht were still not required to become Party members.
    Despite Canaris’s rank, Theo felt at ease. The Abwehr was a haven of safety in a very dangerous Reich. Canaris led by example: he felt spying was the preserve of gentlemen, and honour and duty were more important than ideology. He looked after his own, and Theo was very much one of his own.
    ‘What brings you to Berlin in such a hurry?’ Canaris asked.
    ‘A couple of things, excellency,’ Theo began. ‘I saw de Lancey yesterday.’
    ‘Ah, de Lancey,’ Canaris smiled. ‘I wondered when he would pop up again. I take it he is with the British secret service now?’
    ‘Not directly, I think. He said he was sent to Holland by Sir Robert Vansittart of the British Foreign Office. To meet a man called Captain Schämmel of the OKW’s Transport Division. Schämmel is supposed to be representing leaders of a plot to overthrow Hitler. I’ve never heard of him.’
    ‘Neither have I,’ said Canaris. ‘Tell me what you know about him.’
    Theo related all that Conrad had told him about Schämmel and his generals.
    Canaris listened closely. ‘And de Lancey didn’t say which general this Schämmel was representing?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘What do you think, Hans? Have you heard of this person?’
    Colonel Oster shook his head. ‘Could he be one of Göring’s men?’
    ‘Possible,’ said Canaris. ‘I doubt it myself, but you never know.’
    The senior echelons of the Nazi Party were by no means united; it was Hitler’s deliberate strategy to keep them rivals. Himmler’s SS, Heydrich’s Gestapo, and Göring’s little empire comprising the Luftwaffe and the Prussian Interior Ministry were all separate power blocks. Then there were the lesser Nazis like Ribbentrop and his Foreign Ministry, Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry, Rudolf Hess and Alfred Rosenberg. The stormtroopers of the SA, once a force to be reckoned with, had been neutralized by Himmler in the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ back in 1934. Outside the Nazi Party were Canaris and the Abwehr, Schacht and the Finance Ministry, Admiral Raeder’s navy and, perhaps most powerful of all, the army led by Generals von Brauchitsch and Halder.
    The conspiracy that Canaris, Oster and Theo had been involved in encompassed the army and Schacht, as well as one or two other politicians and some elements of the police. Göring was certainly not one of this group, but he was ambitious and powerful, and perhaps the most likely of Hitler’s friends to make a move against him.
    ‘Or it could be a trap,’ said Canaris.
    ‘A trap?’ said Oster. ‘Set by whom?’
    ‘The Gestapo,’ said Canaris. ‘We know they suspect something. They could be trying tease out from the British who among us has been talking to them.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘It’s what I would do. And it’s the kind of idea Heydrich would love.’
    Theo was yet again impressed by the subtlety of his chief’s thought process. Not for him the simple giving and taking of orders. The admiral’s escapades in the last war when, as an