Kappler looked at him a long moment.
“Yes,” he said, “I will grant that that is what happened. And it is why Marty spent time in jail.”
Gisevius nodded and smiled smugly.
Kappler continued: “Marty was found guilty of aiding Rudolf Höss, who killed Walther Kadow for being the traitor they believed told the French about Albert Schlageter derailing the trains.”
“Schlageter was found guilty and executed,” Gisevius said.
“Correct. And almost immediately made a martyr for the Nazi party.”
Dulles, his face showing no emotion as he took in the discussion, had watched much of what Gisevius and Kappler described, first when serving in the U.S. diplomat service in Switzerland and collecting intelligence against the Austro-Hungarian and German empires, and then between world wars when developing clients in Germany for Sullivan and Cromwell.
During his time in both the government and the private sector, Dulles had come in contact with many leaders, including an up-and-coming charismatic politician, an Austrian by the name of Adolf Hitler.
“‘Wenn ich Kultur höre entsichere ich meinen Luger!’” Gisevius suddenly quoted, raising his right hand and mimicking a pistol with his thumb and trigger finger.
“Actually,” Dulles put in, “the pistol in question was a Browning—Whenever I hear of culture, I release the safety on my Browning! The key dialogue in the stage play on Schlageter’s life, dedicated to Hitler, trumpeting the anti-bourgeois of Hitler and Nazism.”
Gisevius, poking his cigar at Kappler again, said: “And you were a major supporter of National Socialism—of Hitler and the anti-bourgeois of Nazism—and encouraged others in your industry to support the same. You and Fritz Thyssen and Doktor Emil Kirdorf—”
“Kirdorf was a blind, doddering old fool!” Kappler exploded at the mention of the ninety-year-old industrialist. “But he was immensely powerful—”
“Hitler personally awarded him the Order of the German Eagle,” Gisevius interrupted, “the highest honor for a German civilian.”
“—yes, and so he influenced us, particularly as we shared a national pride. We all believed that the Treaty of Versailles was belittling our great people.”
With the treaty, Germany agreed to take responsibility for causing the First World War. It required that the country make steep reparations as well as to disarm—the aim to make the Germans conciliatory and to pacify them.
“As Kirdorf declared,” Kappler went on, “‘We will rise again!’”
Gisevius said: “And you embraced that. So much so that in Amsterdam you and Thyssen arranged, through Rudolf Hess, for a three-hundred-thousand-mark line of credit with the Dutch Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, which Thyssen happened to quietly own. Hess spent the complete line—which you then personally covered in Dutch guilders—to purchase what would become the Nazi party’s headquarters in Munich. . . .”
Kappler did not reply.
He thought: Did he get all this information from being at the Reichsbank—or from the Abwehr?
“. . . All this while,” Gisevius went on, puffing heavily on his cigar, “you and Thyssen were becoming buddies with Bormann and his goon squad. Bormann named his firstborn after Hitler, his second son after Hess, and his third after Heinrich Himmler. All of whom were godfathers to their namesakes. Hitler also served as witness to Bormann’s wedding to the daughter of a Nazi party official. And Hermann Göring’s five-year-old is Hitler’s goddaughter.”
He paused to let that sink in, glanced at Dulles, then looked back at Kappler and added in an unpleasant tone, “So, such is the dirty little secret of Herr Kappler being long connected with those goons who now make up Hitler’s High Command.”
Gisevius, turning and staring at the fireplace, took a deep sip of his cognac, the light from the flames reflecting on his snifter. He puffed his cigar, then turned to Dulles.
“Allen,” he said, “I’m afraid that this was not a good idea. I do not believe Herr Kappler is the proper candidate. If that indeed was your intention . . .”
“Proper candidate?” Kappler blurted, his tone clearly indicating that he was offended. “For what?”
He turned to Dulles and repeated, “Candidate for what?”
[TWO]
OSS Dellys Station
Dellys, Algeria
1145 30 May 1943
By the time Dick Canidy and John Craig van der Ploeg jumped to the ground from the Stinson, the guard had it chocked and tied down. Then, with a casual wave of greeting, he had headed back to his seat in the jeep.