The Soldier Spies Read online

  There were five observation towers at each angle of the Desert Pentagon. Over the centuries, lookouts had reported from these the approach of camel caravans, tribes of nomads, armies of hostile sheikhs and pashas— and in more recent times, patrols and detachments of the French Foreign Legion and the German Wehrmacht.

  Today, there was nothing in sight on the desert in any direction, and it was possible to see a little over seven miles.

  Eric Fulmar, who was tall, blond, and rather good-looking, sat in the northwest tower of the Desert Pentagon holding a small cup of black coffee. Except for olive-drab trousers and parachutist’s boots, he wore Berber attire, robes and a burnoose. The cords around his waist, as well as those holding the burnoose to his head, were embroidered in gold, the identification of a nobleman.

  Depending on whether his dossier was read in Washington, D.C., or in Berlin, Germany, he was 2nd Lieutenant FULMAR, Eric, Infantry, Army of the United States, or Eric von Fulmar, Baron Kolbe.

  The chair he sat in was at least two hundred years old. He had tipped it back and was balancing on its rear legs. His feet rested on the railing of the tower. Beside him on the stone floor was a graceful silver coffeepot with a long, curving spout. Beside it was a bottle of Courvoisier cognac. His coffee was liberally braced with the cognac.

  Next to the coffeepot was a pair of Ernst Leitz, Wetzlar, 8-power binoculars resting on a leather case. And next to that was a Thompson .45-caliber ACP machine-pistol—which is to say, a Thompson equipped with a pair of handgrips, rather than a forearm and a stock. The Thompson had a fifty-round drum magazine.

  Fulmar leaned over and picked up the Ernst Leitz binoculars and carefully studied the horizon in the direction of Ourzazate. He was hoping to see the cloud of dust an automobile would raise.

  When he saw nothing, he put the binoculars down, then leaned to the other side of the chair, where he’d placed a Zenith battery-powered portable radio. He turned it on, and a torrent of Arabic flowed out.

  Fulmar listened a moment, then smiled and started to chuckle.

  It was an American broadcast, probably from Gibraltar, a message from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States, to the Arabic-speaking population of Morocco.

  “Behold, the lionhearted American warriors have arrived,” the announcer solemnly proclaimed. “Speak with our fighting men and you will find them pleasing to the eye and gladdening to the heart.”

  “You bet your ass,” Fulmar said, chuckling.

  “Look in their eyes and smiling faces,” the announcer continued, “for they are holy warriors happy in their sacred work. If you see our German or Italian enemies marching against us, kill them with guns or knives or stones—or any other weapon that you have set your hands upon.”

  “Like a camel turd, for example,” Fulmar offered helpfully.

  “The day of freedom has come!” the announcer dramatically concluded.

  “Not quite,” Fulmar replied. “Almost, but not quite.”

  He was thinking of his own freedom. Second Lieutenant Fulmar was at the moment the bait in a trap. Well, there again, not quite. Some very responsible people considered it likely that the bait—whether through cowardice, enlightened self-interest, or simply ineptitude—would, so to speak, stand up in the trap and wave the sniffing rat away. The bait himself kind of liked that idea.

  That, of course, hadn’t been the way they had explained the job to him. In several little pep talks they’d assured him they were totally confident that he could carry this “responsibility” off. But Fulmar’s lifelong experience with those in authority had taught him otherwise.

  Fulmar had his current situation pretty well figured out. It was kind of like a chess game. From the time he had received his first chess set, a Christmas gift from his mother’s employer when he was ten, he had been fascinated with the game—and intrigued by the ways it paralleled life. In life, for instance, just as in chess, pawns were cheerfully sacrificed when it seemed that would benefit the more powerful pieces.

  In this game, he was a white pawn. And he was being used as bait in the capture of two of the enemy’s pieces, whom Fulmar thought of as a bishop and a knight. The problem was that the black bishop and knight were accompanied by a number of other pawns both black and white.

  If the game went as planned (here Life and Chess differed), the bishop and the knight would change sides. And the white pawn wearing the second lieutenant’s gold bar would be promoted to knight. If something went wrong, the second lieutenant pawn and the black pawns (who didn’t even know they were in play) would be swept from the board (or—according to the rules of this game—shot) and the remaining players would continue the game.

  The bishop was a man named Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz, a Pomeranian aristocrat presently serving as the senior officer of the Franco-German Armistice Commission for Morocco. His knight was Obersturmbannführer SS-SD Johann Müller, presently serving as the Security Adviser to the Franco-German Armistice Commission.

  Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz, who had been educated at Harvard and had once been the German Consul General in New Orleans, had not long before established contact with Robert Murphy, the American Consul General for Morocco.

  Von Heurten-Mitnitz informed Murphy then that he was convinced Germany was in the hands of a madman and that the only salvation he saw for Germany was its quick defeat by the Western Powers. He was therefore prepared, he said, to do whatever was necessary to see that Germany lost the war as quickly as possible.

  The German diplomat went on to tell Murphy that Obersturmbannführer Müller, for his own reasons, had come to the same conclusion and was similarly offering his services: Through his own “official” sources, Müller had come into knowledge of the atrocities committed by the SS “Special Squads” on the Eastern Front and of the extermination camps operated at several locations by the SS. Müller was a professional policeman, and he was shocked by what the SS was doing (it was not only inhuman, it was unprofessional) .

  Also, Müller understood that his one great ambition in life—to retire to the Hessian farm where he had been born—would not be possible if he were tried as a war criminal and hanged.

  This being not only the real world, but also the real world at war, Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz’s noble offer could not be accepted at face value. His intentions had to be tested. He was offered a choice: He could do a job for the Americans, at genuine risk to himself; or he could choose to satisfy other needs.

  Enter the pawns:

  There were in French Morocco a number of French officers, Army, Service de l’aire, and Navy, who did not regard it as their duty to obey the terms of the Franco-German Armistice. Rather, they saw it as their duty as officers to continue the fight against Germany. These officers had provided considerable information and other assistance to curious Americans. And they were fully aware that what they were doing was considered treason.

  Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz’s controller told him that he would be expected to round up twenty “treasonous” French officers whom the Americans wished to protect from French forces loyal to Vichy, and from the Germans themselves, and take them to the palace of the Pasha of Ksar es Souk, where they would be turned over to an American officer.

  The American officer was to be parachuted into Morocco shortly before the invasion began. As soon as possible after the ships of the American force appeared off the Moroccan coast, he would contact Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz to furnish the names of the twenty officers.

  Finally, Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz was informed that the American officer’s name was Second Lieutenant Eric Fulmar. Von Heurten-Mitnitz would not fail to take note of this. A U.S. Army second lieutenant, even one assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, was small potatoes. But Second Lieutenant Fulmar, Infantry, United States Army, held dual citizenship. His father, the Baron von Fulmar, was not only highly placed in the Nazi Party, but was General Director of Fulmar Elektrische G.m.b.H.

  For months Eric Fulmar had been a thorn in the
side of his father and of many highly placed Party officials. When the war began, Eric had been a student of electrical engineering at the University of Marburg an der Lahn. But he had not remained in Germany to accept his duty to don a uniform to fight for the Fatherland. Young Fulmar’s departure was of course seen as a mighty thumbing of his nose at the Thousand-Year Reich. In other words, he was a messy embarrassment to his father and the Party.

  Worse yet, he had not dignified his desertion by going to the United States. That could have been more or less explained. But he had gone to Morocco, of all places, as the guest of his classmate, Sidi Hassan el Ferruch, Pasha of Ksar es Souk.

  Once there, he promptly made matters even worse by entering into the profitable business of smuggling gold, currency, and precious gems out of France through Morocco. His American passport and a diplomatic passport issued to him by the Pasha of Ksar es Souk saved him from arrest and prosecution.

  When Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz was named to the Franco-German Armistice Commission, one of his missions had been to see that young Fulmar was returned to Germany. His best efforts (really those of Obersturmbannführer Müller) had been to no avail. And when the Americans entered the war—when he could have been arrested without offending American neutrality—Eric von Fulmar had simply disappeared.

  In the American vernacular, then, Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz and Obersturmbannführer Müller were now offered the choice of putting up or shutting up.

  The easiest thing for them would be to round up the twenty French officers and Baron Eric Fulmar and accept the congratulations of their superiors. It was hoped, of course, that, as their contribution to a quick end to the war, they would take the twenty to Second Lieutenant Fulmar and safety at Ksar es Souk. Which, of course, was treason.

  More important, they would be compromised. Thereafter, the Americans would be able to demand other services—under threat of letting the SS know what they had done in Morocco.

  When he had parachuted into the desert near Ksar es Souk three days before, Lieutenant Eric Fulmar would not have been surprised to find himself immediately surrounded by Waffen-SS troops. As it happened, German troops did not meet him; but this was no proof that Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz and Müller were playing the game as they were expected to. They may well have been waiting until he had furnished the names of the French officers before arresting him.

  As soon as the code word signaling that the invasion was about to begin came over the Zenith portable radio, he had called Rabat to order the delivery of the list of French officers to Müller. Then he had telephoned Müller and told him the list was in his mailbox. To Fulmar’s surprise, Müller had told him the precise hour he expected to be at Ksar es Souk.

  Müller was so clear and careful about the time of his arrival that Fulmar immediately suspected that when the truck appeared, it would be full of Waffen-SS troopers, not French officers. In view of that, he decided to change his plan to accompany the Berber force that would intercept the Müller convoy before it reached Ksar es Souk.

  He decided he would watch the intercept from the palace tower.

  Pawns are put in jeopardy, he thought. That’s part of the game. But nowhere is it written that they have to put themselves in jeopardy.

  When the announcer began to repeat the presidential proclamation, Fulmar searched through the broadcast band, hoping to pick up something else. There was nothing.

  He turned off the radio and picked up the binoculars again. This time there was a cloud of dust rising from the desert floor. Right on schedule. Fulmar slid off the antique chair and knelt on the stone floor in a position that would allow him to rest his elbows on the parapet to steady the binoculars.

  It was two minutes before the first of the vehicles came into sight. It was a small, open, slab-sided vehicle—a military version of the Volkswagen, Germany’s answer to the jeep. Four soldiers in the black uniforms of the Waffen-SS rode in the Volkswagen. Behind it was a French Panhard armored car.

  Fulmar frowned. The armored car was unexpected. It smelled like the trap he worried about. Behind the Panhard was a Citroën sedan, and behind that a civilian truck, obviously just pressed into service. The truck was large enough to conceal twenty French officers. Or that many Waffen-SS troops. Behind the truck were two other slab-sided Volkswagens holding more Waffen-SS soldiers.

  About half a mile from Ksar es Souk, the convoy disappeared from sight in a dip in the terrain. And then it reappeared, rounded a turn, and skidded to a halt. The road had been blocked there by a four-foot-high pile of rocks.

  From the tower, Fulmar could see the Berbers waiting for the convoy, but to the Germans the Berbers were invisible.

  The Waffen-SS troops jumped from their Volkswagens and formed a defensive perimeter around the convoy.

  The Panhard moved in front of the leading Volkswagen and then tried to climb the pile of rocks. Nobody left the truck. Which meant nothing; they might be trying to conceal the presence of more German troops as long as possible.

  Fulmar saw the muzzle flashes of the Panhard’s machine gun moments before he heard the sound. And then the Panhard burst into flame, and a huge plume of black gasoline smoke surged into the sky.

  There were more muzzle flashes, followed moments later by the rattle of the weapons. Two of the Waffen-SS troopers rushed toward a Berber position before being cut down.

  And then the others began to raise their hands in surrender.

  One German and three French officers, plus a Waffen-SS driver, came out of the Citroën with their hands in the air. Then the truck disgorged a dozen more Frenchmen—officers, civilians, and, astonishingly, two women. The German officer almost certainly was Obersturmbannführer Müller.

  A Berber on horseback appeared. He rode over to the Panhard armored car and took a long, meditative look at two of its crew who had escaped and were lying on the ground. He killed both of them with a burst from his Thompson machine-pistol. He then rode over to the place where the two Waffen-SS troopers had been cut down and fired short bursts into their bodies.

  More horsemen appeared. The remaining Germans, including the officer who had been in the Citroën, had their hands tied behind them. A rope was looped around their necks, making a chain of them. And one of the Berbers on horseback started leading them toward Ksar es Souk.

  The French officers and the women were left unbound, but they were still unceremoniously herded down the road toward the palace. The vehicles were left where they had stopped.

  The operation hadn’t gone exactly as planned, but it had worked, and the armored car hadn’t been nearly as much of a problem as it could have been. And, obviously, Müller was doing what he had been told to do.

  Fulmar put the binoculars case around his neck, picked up his Thompson machine-pistol, and wound his way carefully down the narrow stone stairs of the tower.

  At the bottom, he emerged into the courtyard. Spotting a small boy, he ordered him in fluent Arabic to fetch the cognac, the coffee service, and the radio from the tower.

  Then he started toward the gate from the inner to the outer courtyard. Just before he reached it, he covered his face below the eyes with part of the blue cloth of his headdress. The once-glistening parachutist’s boots were now scarred and torn by the rocks and bushes of the desert; they looked like any old boots. He was quite indistinguishable from a bona fide Berber.

  In the outer courtyard there were a hundred Berbers, a third of them women in black robes. The men had painted their faces blue, as was their custom, and most of them were armed as he was with a Thompson. Off at one side, handlers held about forty horses. Fulmar made his way among the men to a group of the leaders and told them what had happened.

  And then one of the Berbers touched his shoulder and nodded toward the gate. The horseman with the string of prisoners was now in sight.

  “As soon as he’s inside, go get the trucks and cars,” Fulmar ordered. “And see what you can do about hiding the armored car.”

  “Why?” the Berber as
ked.

  “Just do it,” Fulmar said.

  The Berber made a mocking gesture of subservience.

  "I hear and obey, O son of heaven,” he said.

  “May you catch the French disease and your member turn green and fall off,” Fulmar said.

  They laughed at each other, and the Berber walked to where the horses were being held. He swung easily into a tooled leather saddle, then called out the names of half a dozen men, who trotted to the horses and mounted. They rode out of the courtyard as the German prisoners were led inside.

  The Germans appeared terrified.

  What the hell, Fulmar thought, I’d be terrified too if I was being led with a rope around my neck into a King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table palace by a bunch of guys with blue faces and submachine guns.

  He turned to another Berber.

  “The stocky one,” he said. “The one without the leather equipment. Take him inside to the small room or the library. Leave someone with him and make sure that no one else goes into the room with him.”

  “And the others?”

  “Take them into the main room and get them something to eat and drink. They are not to be bothered.”

  “Not even their boots?”

  “Not even their boots,” Fulmar said. “They fought well. They deserve honorable treatment.”

  When the French arrived and had been herded into the courtyard, Fulmar walked up to them.

  “On behalf of His Excellency Sidi Hassan el Ferruch, Pasha of Ksar es Souk, I welcome you to his home. You will be fed and cared for, and when it is time, you will be taken behind American lines.”

  He spoke in French. They seemed to accept him as a French-speaking Berber. At least he got no surprised, wary looks.

  He was a little puzzled at the lack of excitement. No joy. No cries of pleasure. Then he realized that these people had expected to be taken somewhere in the desert and shot to death by the SS. They were in shock. They hadn’t quite understood yet that they would live.