The compound was protected by the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Regiment of the SS. They made sure that no one who could possibly put Hitler, or any of the other members at the top of the Nazi power structure, in any danger could get near any of them.
Canaris motioned for Gehlen to come to his seat.
When Gehlen was squatting in the aisle beside him, Canaris said, “I didn’t have time to ask, Gehlen, but are you acquainted with Oberstleutnant Wilhelm Frogger, late of the Afrikakorps?”
“I know who he is, Herr Admiral.”
“There was an interesting message from Mexico City overnight,” Canaris said. “The guards at border crossings from the United States have been alerted to look for him. He has apparently escaped from the prisoner-of-war camp in Mississippi and may be trying to get into Mexico.”
It is equally possible, Canaris thought, since there have been virtually no other escapes from POW camps in the United States, that Frogger said something he should not have—or approached, tried to recruit—the wrong person in the POW camp, and, following an ad hoc, secret, middle-of-the-night court-martial, was convicted of being a traitor, executed, and buried.
Gehlen did not reply.
“I didn’t know him well,” Canaris went on, “but he never struck me as the sort of chap who would succeed in something like escaping from a POW cage.”
“I don’t know what to think, or say, Herr Admiral,” Gehlen said.
“It has been my experience, Gehlen, that if you don’t know what to think, it is best to think some more, and if you don’t know what to say, it is best to say nothing.”
Canaris turned his attention to his briefcase, and Gehlen knew he had been dismissed.
Among senior intelligence officers, there was a saying: “One should not listen to what Canaris says; one should pay attention to what he does not say.”
There were four Heinkel 111s parked at the airfield. One was always kept there against the unlikely possibility that the Führer might suddenly decide to go to Berlin or Berchtesgaden or Vienna. The other three aircraft suggested to Canaris that the three most powerful men in the Nazi hierarchy—Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, and Martin Bormann—also had been summoned to Wolfsschanze. They were the only officers important enough to have their own aircraft kept waiting for them.
Göring had the grandest title. He was Reichsmarschall des Grossdeutschen Reiches. He was the most popular—after Hitler, of course—with the people. But he had failed to bomb England into submission, and later to protect Germany from American and British bombers. Moreover, he had become the next thing to a drug addict, and tales circulated of homosexual orgies at Carinhall, his hunting estate in the Schorfheide Forest north of Berlin, and his influence had suffered.
Canaris knew that many of the rumors about Göring’s sexual proclivities and drug addiction had been, if not invented, then circulated by the man everyone agreed was the most dangerous senior Nazi, Heinrich Himmler. He had two titles: He was Reichsprotektor Himmler and Reichsführer-SS Himmler. And, playing on Hitler’s distrust of his generals, Himmler had managed to create his own army—thirty divisions strong—called the Waffen-SS.
The third man likely to have traveled to Wolfsschanze in his own Heinkel, Martin Bormann, also had two titles. Originally, he had been the Parteileiter of the Nazi party, running it as Hitler’s deputy, and answering only to him. Recently, without objection from the Führer, he had started referring to himself as Reichsleiter Bormann, suggesting he was leading the Reich, not only the political party, and again subordinate only to Hitler.
And if those three—or only two of them—were there, Canaris reasoned, then chances were good that so was the clubfooted minister of public enlightenment and propaganda, Paul Joseph Goebbels, Ph.D.
He probably caught a ride with Bormann. Or Günsche commandeered a Heinkel for him as he did for me.
Four vehicles—a large Mercedes open sedan and three Kübelwagens, militarized, canvas-topped versions of the Volkswagen—came to meet the Heinkel as ground handlers showed the pilot where to park. An SS-hauptsturmführer was standing in the front seat of the Mercedes. Nine storm troopers under an SS-oberscharführer, all armed with Schmeisser machine pistols, got quickly out of the Kübelwagens and surrounded the airplane.
When the hauptsturmführer saw that his men were in place, he gestured rather imperiously to the sergeant to go to the airplane. He then got out of the Mercedes and walked to the Heinkel.
The door in the fuselage opened and Canaris came out.
The hauptsturmführer and the oberscharführer gave the Nazi salute. Canaris returned it with an almost casual wave of his arm and walked to the Mercedes, followed by von und zu Waching and Gehlen. They all got in.
The oberscharführer went into the Heinkel as the hauptsturmführer walked quickly to the Mercedes, which started off as soon as he got in.
They drove off the airfield to the collection of buildings and yellow-and-black-striped barrier pole guarding access to the inner compound.
A half-dozen SS officers and enlisted men gave the Nazi salute, and one of the latter trotted to the Mercedes and opened the car’s passenger doors. Canaris and the others got out. The barrier pole was raised, and they walked past it and got into another open Mercedes.
Changing cars saved the time it would take to thoroughly search a car entering the interior compound.
The car, a Mercedes reserved for senior officers, carried them a kilometer and a half past stark concrete bunkers and finally stopped before one of them, where another half-dozen SS officers and enlisted men, all armed with Schmeisser machine pistols, gave the Nazi salute.
They had reached the Führerbunker itself.
Canaris, von und zu Waching, and Gehlen got out of the Mercedes and walked to a sturdy steel door, which an enlisted man pulled open just as they reached it and closed after they had passed through.
They were now in a barren room, presided over by an SS-obersturmbannführer. There was a table, and a row of steel cabinets each large enough for a suitcase. A double shelf above a coatrack held perhaps twenty uniform caps.