The Spymasters (Men at War 7)

Canidy watched as Mother Roo One and Two then quickly broke off from the formation, gaining altitude as they turned back toward the coast to prepare to drop their parachutists.

Joey, invisible under the radar, descended to six hundred feet ASL and settled in on a course of due northeast.

Canidy switched to INTERCOM, keyed his microphone, and said, “Very clever.”

In the dim light of the panel, he saw Hank turn to him and nod.

“It works every time. And we reverse the process when I come back. The controllers just think they’re seeing radar echo onscreen, not a third bird. After another ten minutes, I’ll take us up to eight thousand. They won’t care at all what we are then. And this black bird will really disappear in the sky.”

“I damn sure hope so,” Canidy said, then began unstrapping his harness. “What’s the guy’s name in back?”

“Kauffman. Good guy.”

“I’m sure he is. You okay here for a moment? I’m going to go back and make sure Apollo isn’t bugging Kauffman to help him repack his parachute for the tenth time and/or about to jump out the door.”

V

[ONE]

Schutzstaffel Provisional Headquarters

Messina, Sicily

1330 30 May 1943

“I wasn’t aware you knew anyone in the Abwehr,” SS-Standartenführer Julius Schrader said, his pious tone making the statement sound somewhat suspicious. “But then you’ve always been rather well connected, haven’t you?”

The portly thirty-five-year-old colonel was of medium height, with pale skin and a cleanly shaved head. He was sitting in the high-back leather chair behind the polished marble-top desk that dominated the large office, and absently wiping at something on the tunic of his uniform.

“But I didn’t personally know anyone!” SS-Obersturmbannführer Oskar Kappler snapped. “That is, beyond knowing, as you also well know, that the Abwehr has a new agent in the Trade Ministry here.”

Kappler, a lieutenant colonel thirty-two years old, was tall and trim and athletic. He had a strong chin, intelligent blue eyes, and a full head of closely cropped light brown hair.

Kappler looked at Schrader a long moment and went on: “And, for the record, I don’t appreciate your inference. We’ve been friends too long for that bullshit.”

He thought: Did I lay that on too heavy?

Oh, to hell with him! Despite his insistence otherwise, he has always been envious of my background.

I don’t appreciate his pious tone and his inference.

Until this morning, I did not know anyone here in the Abwehr.

But I sure as hell cannot tell him the truth about our meeting. . . .

Scheisse!

Kappler and Schrader were in the Sicherheitsdienst; the SD was the intelligence arm of the Schutzstaffel. The SD—which was to say SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmel—did not trust the German military intelligence agency—which was to say Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, under whom Himmel once had served—any more than it trusted any of the British or American intelligence agencies.

Kappler and Schrader had served in the Messina SS office for the last eighteen months. But they had been friends far longer, going back nearly fourteen years, when they were university students in Berlin and playing on the school’s polo team.

“He asked me down to coffee under the pretense of ‘a matter of great urgency,’” Kappler explained. “Turned out he only wanted to talk shop.”

He waved toward the telephone on Schrader’s desk, knowing that as a matter of course they tapped all the SS office lines. “Check the tape if you do not believe me!”

“You need to calm down, Oskar,” Schrader said as he got up from his desk. “That won’t be necessary, and you know it.”

Kappler thought: Maybe that was over the top . . . or perhaps just right.