Chapter Forty-six

The plane, an Army 6-29 transport, descended from the late-afternoon clouds to the airport in Lisbon. An Air Force corporal walked down the aisle.

‘Please buckle all seat belts! No smoking! We’ll be down in four minutes.’ He spoke in a monotone, aware that his passengers had to be important, so he would be more important, but courteous, when he had to tell them something.

The young man next to Matthew Canfield has said very little since their takeoff from Shannon. A number of times the major tried to explain that they were taking air routes out of range of the Luftwaffe, and that there was nothing to worry about. Andrew Scarlett had merely mumbled understood approval and had gone back to his magazines.

The car at the Lisbon airport was an armored Lincoln with two OSS personnel in the front. The windows could withstand short-range gunfire, and the automobile was capable of 120 miles an hour. They had to drive thirty-two miles up the Tejo River road to an airfield in Alenguer.

At Alenguer the man and boy boarded a low-flying, specially constructed Navy TBF with no markings for the trip to Bern. There would be no stops. Throughout the route, English, American, and Free French fighters were scheduled to intercept and protect to the destination.

At Bern they were met by a Swiss government vehicle, flanked by a motorcycle escort of eight men—one at the front, one at the rear, and three on each side. All were armed in spite of the Geneva pact, which prohibited such practices.

They drove to a village twenty-odd miles to the north, toward the German border. Kreuzlingen.

They arrived at a small inn, isolated from the rest of civilization, and the man and boy got out of the car. The driver sped the automobile away, and the motorcycle complement disappeared.

Matthew Canfield led the boy up the steps to the entrance of the inn.

Inside the lobby could be heard the wailing sound of an accordion, echoing from what was apparently a sparsely populated dining room. The high-ceilinged entry room was inhospitable, conveying the feeling that guests were not welcome.

Matthew Canfield and Andrew Scarlett approached the counter, which served as a front desk.

‘Please, ring through to room six that April Red is here.’ As the clerk plugged in his line, the boy. Suddenly shook. Canfield grabbed his arm and held him.

They walked up the stairs, and the two men stood in front of the door marked with the numeral six.

There’s nothing I can tell you now, Andy, except that we’re here for one person. At least that’s why I’m here. Janet. Your mother. Try to remember that.’

The boy took a deep breath. ‘I’ll try, Dad. Open the door! Jesus! Open the door!’

The room was dimly lit by small lamps on small tables. It was ornate in the fashion the Swiss felt proper for tourists—heavy rugs and solid furniture, overstuffed chairs and much antimacassar.

At the far end sat a man in half shadow. The spill of light angled sharply down across his chest but did not illuminate his face. The figure was dressed in brown tweeds, the jacket a combination of heavy cloth and leather. He spoke in a throaty, harsh voice. ‘You are?’

‘Canfield and April Red. Kroeger?’

‘Shut the door.’

Matthew Canfield closed the door and took several steps forward in front of Andrew Scarlett. He would cover the boy. He put his hand in his right coat pocket.

‘I have a gun pointed at you, Kroeger. Not the same gun but the same pocket as last time we met. This time I won’t take anything for granted. Do I make myself clear?’

‘If you like, take it out of your pocket and hold it against my head—There’s not much I can do about it.’

Canfield approached the figure in the chair. It was horrible.

The man was a semi-invalid. He seemed to be paralyzed through the entire left portion of his body, extending to his jaw. His hands were folded across his front, his fingers extended as though spastic. But his eyes were alert. His eyes.

His face—Covered over by white splotches of skin graft below gray short-cropped hair. The man spoke.

‘What you see was carried out of Sevastopol. Operation Barbarossa.’

‘What do you have to tell us, Kroeger?’

‘First, April Red… Tell him to come closer,’

‘Come here, Andy. By me.’

‘Andy!’ The man in the chair laughed through his half-closed mouth. ‘Isn’t that nice! Andy! Come here, Andy!’

Andrew Scarlett approached his stepfather and stood by his side, looking down at the deformed man in the chair.

‘So you’re the son of Ulster Scarlett?’

‘I’m Matthew Canfield’s son.’

Canfield held his place, watching the father and son. He suddenly felt as though he didn’t belong. He had the feeling that giants—old and infirm, young and scrawny—were about to do battle. And he was not of their house.

‘No, young man, you’re the son of Ulster Stewart Scarlett, heir to Scarlatti!’

‘I’m exactly what I want to be! I have nothing to do with you.’ The young man breathed deeply. The fear was leaving him now, and in its place Canfield saw that a quiet fury was taking hold of the boy.

‘Easy, Andy. Easy.’

‘Why?… For him?… Look at him. He’s practically dead—He doesn’t even have a face.’

‘Stop it!’ Ulster Scarlett’s shrill voice reminded Canfield of that long-ago room in Zurich ‘Stop it, you fool!’

‘For what? For you?… Why should I?… I don’t know you! I don’t want to know you!… You left a long time ago!’ The young man pointed to Canfield. ‘He took over for you. I listen to him. You’re nothing to me!’

‘Don’t you talk to me like that! Don’t you dare!’

Canfield spoke sharply. ‘I’ve brought April Red, Kroeger! What have you got to deliver! That’s what we’re here for. Let’s get it over with!’

‘He must understand first!’ The misshapen head nodded back and forth. ‘He must be made to understand!’

‘If it meant that much, why did you hide it? Why did you become Kroeger?’

The nodding head stopped, the ashen slit eyes stared. Canfield remembered Janet speaking about that look.

‘Because Ulster Scarlett was not fit to represent the new order. The new world! Ulster Scarlett served his purpose and once that purpose was accomplished, he was no longer necessary—He was a hindrance—He would have been a joke.

He had to be eliminated…’

‘Perhaps there was something else, too.’

‘What?’

‘Elizabeth. She would have stopped you again—She would have stopped you later, just the way she stopped you at Zurich.’

At Elizabeth’s name, Heinrich Kroeger worked up the phlegm in his scarred throat and spat. It was an ugly sight. ‘The bitch of the world!… But we made a mistake in twenty-six—Let’s be honest I made the mistake—I should have asked her to join us—She would have, you know. She wanted the same things we did—’

‘You’re wrong about that.’

‘Hah! You didn’t know her!’

The former field accountant replied softly without inflection.

‘I knew her—Take my word for it, she despised everything you stood for.’

The Nazi laughed quietly to himself. That’s very funny—I told her she stood for everything I despised—’

‘Then you were both right.’

‘No matter. She’s in hell now.’

‘She died thinking you were dead. She died in peace because of that.’

‘Hah! You’ll never know how tempted I was over the years, especially when we took Paris!… But I was waiting for London… I was going to stand outside Whitehall and announce it to the world—and watch Scarlatti destroy itself!’

‘She was gone by the time you took Paris.’

‘That didn’t matter.’

‘I suppose not. You were just as afraid of her in death as you were when she was alive.’

‘I was afraid of no one! I was afraid of nothing!’ Heinrich Kroeger strained his decrepit body.

Then why didn’t you carry out your threat? The house of Scarlatti lives.’

‘She never told you?’

Told me what?’

The bitch-woman always covered herself on four flanks. She found her corruptible man. My one enemy in the Third Reich. Goebbels. She never believed I’d been killed at Zurich. Goebbels knew who I was. After nineteen thirty-three she threatened our respectability with lies. Lies about me. The party was more important than revenge.’

Canfield watched the destroyed man below him. As always, Elizabeth Scarlatti had been ahead of all of them. Far ahead.

‘One last question.’

‘What?’

‘Why Janet?’

The man in the chair raised his right hand with difficulty. ‘Him—Him!’ He pointed to Andrew Scarlett.

‘Why?’

‘I believed! I still believe! Heinrich Kroeger was part of a new world! A new order! The true aristocracy!… In time it would have been his!’

‘By why Janet?’

Heinrich Kroeger, in exhaustion, waved the question aside. ‘A whore. Who needs a whore? The vessel is all we look for…’

Canfield felt the anger rise inside him, but at his age and in his job, he suppressed it. He was not quick enough for the boy-man beside him.

Andrew Scarlett rushed forward to the overstuffed chair and swung his open hand at the invalid Kroeger. The slap was hard and accurate. ‘You bastard! You filthy bastard!’

‘Andy! Get back!’ He pulled the boy away.

‘Unehelich!’ Heinrich Kroeger’s eyes were swimming in their sockets. ‘It’s for you! That’s why you’re here! You’ve got to know!… You’ll understand and start us up again! Think! Think the aristocracy! For you… for you—’ He reached with his slightly mobile hand to his inside jacket pocket and withdrew a slip of paper. ‘They’re yours. Take them!’

Canfield picked up the paper and without looking at it handed it to Andrew Scarlett.

They’re numbers. Just a lot of numbers.’

Matthew Canfield knew what the numbers meant, but before he could explain, Kroeger spoke. ‘They’re Swiss accounts, my son. My only son… They contain millions! Millions! But there are certain conditions. Conditions which you will learn to understand! When you grow older, you’ll know those conditions have to be met! And you’ll meet them!… Because this power is the power to change the world! The way we wanted to change it!’

The man-boy looked at the deformed figure in the chair. ‘Am I supposed to thank you?’

‘One day you will.’

Matthew Canfield had had enough. ‘This is it! April Red had his message. Now I want it! What are you delivering?’

‘It’s outside. Help me up and we’ll go to it.’

‘Never! What’s outside? Your staff members in leather coats?’

‘There’s no one. No one but me.’

Canfield looked at the wreck of a man in front of him and believed him. He started to help Heinrich Kroeger out of the chair.

‘Wait here, Andy, I’ll be back.’

Major Matthew Canfield, in full uniform, helped the crippled man in brown tweeds down the stairs and onto the lobby floor. In the lobby, a servant brought over the crutches discarded by the Nazi when he first ascended the staircase to his room. The American major and the Nazi went out the front door.

‘Where are we going, Kroeger?’

‘Don’t you think it’s time you called me by my right name? The name is Scarlett. Or, if you will, Scarlatti.’ The Nazi led them to the right, off the driveway, into the grass.

‘You’re Heinrich Kroeger. That’s all you are to me.’

‘You realize, of course, that it was you, and you alone who caused our setback in Zurich. You pushed our timetable back a good two years—No one ever suspected… You were an ass!’ Heinrich Kroeger laughed. ‘Perhaps it takes an ass to portray an ass!’ He laughed again.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Just a few hundred yards. Hold your pistol up, if you like. There’s no one.’

‘What are you going to deliver? You might as well tell me.’

‘Why not! You’ll have them in your hands soon enough.’ Kroeger hobbled along toward an open field. ‘And when you have them, I’m free. Remember that.’

‘We-have a deal. What is it?’

The Allies will be pleased. Eisenhower will probably give you a medal!… You’ll bring back the complete plans of the Berlin fortifications. They’re known only to the elite of the German High Command—Underground bunkers, rocket emplacements, supply depots, even the Führer’s command post. You’ll be a hero and I’ll be nonexistent. We’ve done well, you and I.’

Matthew Canfield stopped.

The plans of the Berlin fortifications had been obtained weeks ago by Allied Intelligence.

Berlin knew it.

Berlin admitted it.

Someone had been led into a trap, but it was not him, not Matthew Canfield. The Nazi High Command had led one of its own into the jaws of death.

Tell me, Kroeger, what happens if I take your plans, your exchange for April Red, and don’t let you go? What happens then?’

‘Simple. Doenitz himself took my testimony. I gave it to him two weeks ago in Berlin. I told him everything. If I’m not back in a few days, he’ll be concerned. I’m very valuable. I expect to make my appearance and then… be gone. If I don’t appear, then the whole world knows!’

Matthew Canfield thought it was the strangest of ironies. But it was no more than he had anticipated. He had written it all down in the original file, sealed for years in the archives of the State Department.

And now a man in Berlin, unknown to him except by reputation, had reached the same conclusion.

Heinrich Kroeger, Ulster Stewart Scarlett—was expendable.

Doenitz had allowed Kroeger—bearing his false gifts—to come to Bern. Doenitz, in the unwritten rule of war, expected him to be killed. Doenitz knew that neither nation could afford this madman as its own. In either victory or defeat. And the enemy had to execute him so that no doubts existed. Doenitz was that rare enemy in these days of hatreds. He was a man his adversaries trusted. Like Rommel, Doenitz was a thorough fighter. A vicious fighter. But he was a moral man.

Matthew Canfield drew his pistol and fired twice.

Heinrich Kroeger lay dead on the ground.

Ulster Stewart Scarlett was—at last—gone.

Matthew Canfield walked through the field back to the small inn. The night was clear and the moon, three-quarters of it, shone brightly on the still foliage around him.

It struck him that it was remarkable that it had all been so simple.

But the crest of the wave is simple. Deceptively simple. It does not show the myriad pressures beneath that make the foam roll the way it does.

It was over.

And there was Andrew.

There was Janet.

Above all, there was Janet.