“At the beginning of the war we encouraged Harvard to become a member of the American Ordnance Association, a pro-defense lobby with close ties to the War Department. As a result he receives a great many War Department press releases and is well-known around Washington, with lots of friends in the Senate and Roosevelt’s cabinet. Since 1942 he has, to all intents and purposes, been the owner of a house in Acapulco, where he has often entertained senators who have been totally unaware that the place is full of hidden microphones. Harvard’s main usefulness has been in reporting Washington gossip, but occasionally he has also been able, on an informal basis, to recruit people who are sympathetic to our cause.
“One such is a man, code-named Brutus, who will be accompanying President Roosevelt on his forthcoming visits to Cairo and Teheran for the Big Three Conference. I need not remind you that this is extremely timely. Fate has presented us with an opportunity that might otherwise have taken months, perhaps years to prepare. Think of it, gentlemen. Our own man, inside Stalin’s own conference room at the Russian embassy in Teheran, and armed quite legitimately. In my opinion, the very simplicity of such a plan is its best guarantee. As you all know, I have always taken the view that a lone assassin stands the best chance of success in the killing of any head of state. With all the NKVD security apparatus that Comrade Beria will undoubtedly deploy, it seems highly unlikely that Wotan will be suspecting an assassination to come from this particular quarter.”
“Is Wotan to be shot, then?” asked Hansen.
“No, he is to be poisoned,” said Canaris. “With strychnine.”
Von Loringhoven, a Balt who had grown up in Imperial Russia and trained with the Latvian army before transferring to the Wehrmacht, shook his head. As someone who had recently served as the intelligence officer with a unit of pro-German Cossacks on the eastern front, he was quite used to seeing men so consumed with hatred that they were prepared to betray their own country and to kill their own kind. But Brutus seemed harder to understand. “So what’s in it for him?” he asked bluntly. “How do we know he will do it?”
“He’s a patriot,” replied Canaris. “A German-American, born in Danzig, who would like to see a swift end to this war. With honor for Germany. If he fails to kill Wotan with poison, he will shoot him.”
“And he’s prepared to give his own life for this? The Russians will shoot him if he’s caught. Or worse.”
“I don’t see how else this undertaking is to be carried out, Baron,” said Canaris.
“Nor do I,” observed von Bentivegni.
“It’s one thing saying it,” said von Loringhoven. “But it’s something else to do it.”
“Successful assassinations have nearly always involved men acting on their own who were prepared to sacrifice their own lives for a cause they believed in. Gavrilo Princip when he killed the Archduke Ferdinand. John Wilkes Booth when he killed Lincoln. And the fellow who murdered President McKinley in 1901.” Canaris had made a close study of presidential assassinations. “Leon Czolgosz. One man with the will to act decisively, can change history. That much is certain.”
“Then I have another question,” said von Loringhoven. “For all of us. Are we all satisfied that in this murder there is honor for the Abwehr and for the Wehrmacht? I should like to know that, please. To me, poison is not the action of honorable men. What will history say of men who plotted to poison Wotan? That’s what I should like to know.”
“It’s a fair question,” said Canaris. “At the risk of sounding like the Fuhrer, my own opinion is this. That we might never get a better chance than this one. Also, that if we are successful, then such an operation could only restore the reputation of the Abwehr in Germany. Just think of the look on all their faces when they learn what has happened. The people who wrote us off. Himmler and Muller. That bastard Kaltenbrunner. We’ll show them what the Abwehr is capable of. Not to mention the people of Germany. If this conference succeeds, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt will have succeeded in stripping this country of every shred of honor.”
Von Loringhoven still looked unconvinced. So Canaris spoke again.
“Do we need to remind ourselves why we have set this plan into motion? In January, at Casablanca, President Roosevelt made a speech demanding the unconditional surrender of Germany. A speech that our sources inside the British secret intelligence service have assured us even Sir Stewart Menzies, my opposite number, regarded as disastrous. Gentlemen, there is only one other example of unconditional surrender in recorded history: the ultimatum that the Romans gave the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War. The Carthaginians rejected it and the Romans felt this justified razing Carthage to the ground-something they had intended to do in the first place. Roosevelt has backed us into a corner with his demand for unconditional surrender. History will say that he gave us no choice in the matter but to act as we have done. Germany demands that we do this. And for me that is enough. That is always enough. If Brutus succeeds, then the Allies will undoubtedly negotiate.”
Von Loringhoven nodded. “Very well,” he said. “I am convinced.”
Everyone else at the table nodded firmly.
Canaris sipped his coffee and leaned back from the table. Staring at the ash on his cigar, he said, “I have thought long and hard about a code name for this operation. And you will not be surprised that I have chosen ‘Decisive Stroke.’ Because I think we can all agree that the assassination of Wotan is what this will be. Perhaps the most decisive stroke in the history of modern warfare.”
X
Thornton Cole disliked homosexuals. Not loudly. He just disliked them for what he imagined were moral reasons and, when homosexuals worked for the government, for security reasons, too. He thought they might be blackmailed. Cole headed up the German desk at the State Department and had admired Sumner Welles as a farsighted internationalist, much to be preferred to the elderly and unimaginative Cordell Hull. But now, following the resignation of the assistant secretary of state and the rumors about Welles’s homosexuality, Cole had felt obliged to revise his good opinion of Welles-the more so when, upon recalling his own meetings with the man, he fancied that he might once have been the object of a pass.
Like Welles, Thornton Cole had been a Grottie-a graduate of Groton. Another well-connected Grottie, Willard Mayer, had introduced Cole to Welles, and after that, at Welles’s instigation, the two men had met a couple of times at Washington’s Metropolitan Club. Cole had been flattered by the older man’s attention, and even what now looked to be a clumsy pass had not set off alarm bells. It had happened a few years back, also at the Metropolitan. Welles had had too much to drink and in the course of the evening had compared Cole’s profile to that of Michelangelo’s David, adding, “Of course I can’t answer how your body compares, but your head is certainly as handsome as David’s.” Sumner Welles was married, with children, and Thornton Cole had been of the opinion that the assistant secretary of state’s words were merely maladroit and certainly not evidence of any sexual attraction. Now, of course, the remark looked very different. This realization upset Thornton Cole quite disproportionately, and, reasoning that Welles was hardly likely to be the only homosexual in the State Department, he had written down the names of the other men he suspected of being secretly queer: Lawrence Duggins (Welles’s former deputy), Alger Hiss, who was assistant to Stanley Hornbech, the State Department’s political adviser in charge of Far Eastern affairs, and David Melon, who worked for Cole on the German desk. Cole resolved to keep tabs on each of them. He focused first on his own deputy, and the nascent idea that he might uncover a whole nest of fags in State began to take hold of his imagination when he discovered that Melon was friendly with a man named Lovell White. Cole added White’s name to his list when he found that the two men occasionally spent the night together at White’s elegant Georgetown home. White, a flamboyant dresser and Washington wit, was a member of the American Ordnance Association, a pro-defense lobby with close ties to the War Department. Friendly with several senators and congressmen, White frequently invited the great and the good to his house in Acapulco and seemed to know everyone in government. The question was, how many of them were homosexuals, too? Thornton Cole made it his mission to find out.