“To that end—if I have to say this—you have my authority to do whatever you think is necessary.”
“I understand, Herr Reichsprotektor. I am honore
d by your trust.”
“Whatever is necessary, Manfred.”
“Jawohl, Herr Reichsprotektor.”
III
[ONE]
Office of the Director, Abwehr Intelligence
Berlin
0930 28 April 1943
“Korvettenkapitän Boltitz, Herr Admiral,” Admiral Wilhelm Canaris’s aide announced.
Canaris looked up from the work on his desk and saw the two young naval officers standing in his open door. He didn’t reply, but made three gestures. First, with his index finger he beckoned Boltitz into the office; then he signaled him to close the door; and lastly he pointed to a chair placed squarely in front of his desk.
After that, he returned his attention to the report on his desk; he didn’t look up again for five minutes.
When he had finished reading, he raised his eyes toward the ceiling. After a moment he nodded his head, as if in agreement with something, exhaled audibly, lowered his eyes to the desk, reached out for a pen, and wrote something quickly on the report before him.
A moment later, his aide-de-camp opened the door to his office.
There’s probably a button on the floor, Boltitz thought.
Canaris again signaled three times with his hand without speaking. He motioned the aide into the office, pointed to the report, which the aide came and took, and gestured a final time for the aide to close the door.
Then he looked at Boltitz, who started to raise himself from the chair.
Canaris held out his hand to signal him to remain seated. Boltitz sat back down.
Canaris almost visibly gathered his thoughts.
“There is always difficulty, Boltitz, when gathering intelligence that interests more than one agency; it becomes a question of priorities. Agency A, for its own reasons, is very interested to learn facts that are of little—sometimes no—interest whatever to Agency B, which, for its own reasons, is interested to learn a set of entirely different facts. I’m sure you’re aware of this.”
“I understand, Herr Admiral.”
“The Führer has not found time in his busy schedule to share with me his thoughts about what happened in Argentina, or, for that matter, to convey to me the importance he places on Operation Phoenix. Possibly this is because the Führer—who not only believes, as we all do, in our ultimate victory, but is burdened with the leadership of the state—does not feel he should waste his time dealing with the contingency of being offered, or forced to seek, an armistice, and the ramifications thereof.”
“I understand, Herr Admiral,” Boltitz said.
This wasn’t entirely true. Karl Boltitz was trying very hard to understand what Canaris was really saying.
Kapitänleutnant Boltitz recalled what his father, Vizeadmiral Kurt Ludwig Boltitz, had told him as he was about to report to the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht for duty with the Abwehr: “The best advice I can give you, Karl, is to listen to what Canaris is not saying.”
Kapitänleutnant Boltitz had not been at all happy about his assignment to a desk in Berlin. After a brief service upon the Graf Spee, he had been reassigned to submarines. He had quickly risen to become the Number One (Executive Officer) of U-241, operating in the North Atlantic from the submarine pens at St. Nazaire, and there had been no question in his mind that he would shortly be given his own boat.
There had in fact been orders waiting for Leutnant zur See Boltitz when U-241 tied up at the underground pens of St. Nazaire after his seventh patrol. But rather than announcing that he was detached for the purpose of assuming command of another submarine, the orders told him to report for duty to Section VIII (H) of the Naval Element, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht.
He had been a bureaucrat in Navy uniform long enough to know what Section VIII (H) was. It was the purposely innocuous-sounding pigeonhole to which naval officers working for Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the Chief of Abwehr Intelligence, were ostensibly assigned.
Earlier, he had had no doubt that his father had arranged his assignment to the Graf Spee; and now he had no doubt that Vizeadmiral Boltitz’s influence was getting him off submarine duty…a situation that gave him a good deal to think about.