CHAPTER THIRTY

To call it a nightmare would be inaccurate: nightmares always contain the tiniest kernel of realization that they are but dreams, that one can and will awake and be free of the horror. Metcalfe knew this was no nightmare. It was reality, his reality, the most horrific thing about it that there was no way out. In the last year working for Alfred Corcoran’s organization, he had been in quite a few frightening situations. He had come close to being discovered, had evaded detection or arrest on numerous occasions. He had been shot, nearly killed. And then he had witnessed murder, the deaths of people he cared about deeply.

But all of it paled to insignificance now.

He was in a cell in the infamous Lubyanka prison; he was in another world, where escape was impossible, where the skills that had gotten him out of so many difficult situations could no longer help him. He had no idea how long he had been in this cell: Was it ten hours? Twenty? There was no way to keep track of time, no rising or setting of the sun, no schedule, no regularity.

He was in a narrow, solitary underground cell, unheated and frigid. He lay on a hard iron bed whose mattress was no more than an inch or two thick and reeked of innumerable prisoners before him. There was a coarse gray woolen blanket no more than four feet long, which just covered his feet and knees and not much more.

Metcalfe was exhausted beyond exhaustion, but he couldn’t sleep: there was a bright electric light in the cell that never went out and slatted iron blinds that admitted tiny slits of electric light from somewhere outside. They didn’t want him to sleep; exhaustion, physical and mental, was their objective. Every half minute or so, the metal disk that covered the spy hole on the door slid open and an eye peered in. Whenever he pulled the short blanket over his face, a guard slid open the spy hole and barked at him to uncover his face. Whenever he turned to the wall, a guard would bark at him to turn back.

The cell was so cold he could see his breath. He couldn’t stop himself from shivering. He had been forced to undress, his clothes removed and slit open with razor blades, all metal buttons removed, his belt taken away. His body was searched. He was ordered to take a shower but was given no towel with which to dry himself. He had to put his ruined clothes back on his wet body, and he was then marched across an icy courtyard to another part of the building, where he was fingerprinted, his photograph taken, front and profile.

He knew a fair amount about the Lubyanka, but what he knew was nothing more than the dry, dispassionate stuff of briefing books, of intelligence reports, and the occasional whispered rumor. He knew that the oldest building in the Lubyanka complex had once been, before the Revolution, the headquarters of the All-Russian Insurance Company. He knew that the Cheka, the first incarnation of the Soviet secret police, had converted it into offices and interrogation chambers and prison cells.

He knew that it was a death factory, that important prisoners were executed in the cellar of Number 1 Dzerzhinsky Street, the most secretive of the connected Lubyanka buildings. He had been told that when a prisoner was about to be executed, he was led into a chamber in the cellar, where a tarpaulin was spread on the floor and a bullet administered to the back of his head from an eight-shot Tokarev automatic pistol, either just as he entered the room or as he faced the wall. The executioners were paid well, were always male and usually illiterate, and their work was said to take a toll: alcoholism and suicide ran rampant among the men who fired the shots.

Immediately afterward, the body was taken away to be buried in a common grave. A woman came in to mop up. Death was certified by a doctor employed by the NKVD, the death certificate the last piece of paper placed in a victim’s file. Unless the victim was famous, his relatives were always told that the executed man had been sentenced to ten years in prison with no right to correspondence, and that would be the last the relatives would ever hear.

All this he knew, but what he didn’t know was far greater. Had he been betrayed by someone or had the NKVD simply decided it was time to bring him in? He’d been seen at the dead drop; his hotel room had been searched; his transmitter had been found. There were a dozen reasons to arrest him.

But why had it been Lanas friend, her dresser and crew member, Ilya a man she seemed to trust implicitly, a man who had warned her that agents were searching for her who had brought him here?

It was possible, certainly, that Ilya was an informer, a low-level collaborator with the NKVD like so many people in Soviet life. The secret police would get a hold on someone a threat against a family member, the discovery of a petty dishonesty or simply offer a token regular payment. It didn’t take much to co-opt someone. The NKVD was suspicious of Metcalfe, knew that he regularly visited Lana: it was logical for them to hire or subvert Lana’s trusted assistant, to order Ilya to bring Metcalfe.

But was it possible … was it at all possible that Lana had betrayed him?

She would do anything to protect her father. If pressure had been placed upon her great, unendurable pressure was it so far-fetched to imagine that she might have cracked, gone along with the NKVD?

And then he reminded himself: Why is it so inconceivable that Lana might have deceived you … when you yourself have been deceiving her?

He didn’t know what to think. He was so deeply exhausted that he could no longer think clearly.

There was a loud metal clanking, and the lock on his cell was unbolted. Metcalfe sat up and braced himself for the unknown. Three uniformed guards entered, two of them pointing their weapons. “Stand,” the lead guard said.

Metcalfe stood, watching the three carefully. Not only was he outnumbered, but even if he managed to wrest the gun away from one of them, even if he put the gun to the head of one of them, seized a hostage, he knew he would never get out of here. He would have to cooperate until an opportunity arose.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Hands behind your back,” the same guard shouted.

He was marched through a dark hall to an iron door with a small grate in the center, which turned out to be a small, primitive elevator. His face was pushed against the elevator wall. The door clanged shut, and the elevator rose.

It opened on a long corridor with a long Oriental runner on a parquet floor and light-green-painted walls. The only light came from white glass globes that hung down from the ceiling.

“Look straight ahead only,” the lead guard commanded. “Hands behind your back. Do not look to the side.”

Metcalfe walked, a guard on either side of him and one behind. Out of the corner of his eye he saw they were passing a long series of offices, some of them with doors open, men and women working inside. Every twenty or so paces stood another uniformed guard.

He heard the repeated tap of metal against metal, then saw that one of the stationary guards was tapping his key against his belt buckle. A signal of some sort.

Suddenly he was pushed toward the wall and into a niche the size of a telephone booth. Someone of importance was passing by, or at least someone they did not want him to see.

At last they came to a large, dark-stained oak door. The lead guard knocked; after a few seconds it was opened by a small, pale-haired man of ghostly pallor. He was a secretary/receptionist of some kind, an aide-de-camp whose office was the antechamber to his superior’s office. His desk bore a typewriter and several telephones. Papers were signed, a copy given to the leader. Metcalfe watched in silence, unwilling to betray any emotion, any anxiety about where he was being taken. The aide-de-camp knocked on an inner door, then lifted a hatch set into it.

“Prisoner 08,” he said.

“Come,” a voice responded.

The aide opened the door, standing back as Metcalfe was escorted in by the lead guard; the others stayed behind, standing stiffly in a military position.

This was the spacious office of someone of high rank. The floor was covered with a large Oriental carpet; the furniture was dark and massive. Against one wall stood a tall combination safe. A massive desk, topped with green baize cloth, was piled high with folders and a battery of telephones. Behind it stood a slender, delicate-looking man with a high, domed forehead, a balding head, and round frameless spectacles that magnified his eyes grotesquely. He wore a crisply pressed gray uniform. Without moving from behind his desk he extended a spidery hand, making a quick gesture. The guard turned on his heel and departed from the room, leaving Metcalfe standing there alone.

The bespectacled man bent over his desk, sorting through papers for several minutes as if Metcalfe were not there. He pulled out a thick folder, then looked up at Metcalfe, saying nothing.

Metcalfe recognized the time-honored interrogation technique: silence tended to make the inexperienced subject uncomfortable, anxious. But Metcalfe was not inexperienced. He was determined to remain silent as long as his interrogator refused to talk.

After a good five minutes, the bespectacled man smiled and said, in perfect British-accented English, “Would you prefer to speak in English?” He then switched to Russian: “Or in Russian? I understand you speak our language fluently.”

Metcalfe blinked. English might give him an advantage, he thought. Perhaps it would deprive the NKVD man of the ease of nuance, a subtlety of expression that only a native speaker possesses. He replied in English, “It’s of no consequence to me.

As long as we can speak freely and openly. Do you have that authority, Comrade … ? I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.”

“I didn’t, as you Americans say, throw it. You may call me Rubashov. And “Mr.,” not “Comrade’ we are not comrades, after all, Mr. Metcalfe. Sit, please.”

Metcalfe sat on one of two large green leather couches positioned close to Rubashov’s desk. Rubashov, he saw, did not sit. He remained standing. Behind him hung three framed portraits, of Lenin, of Stalin, and of “Iron Felix” Dzerzhinsky, the infamous founder of the Cheka. Rubashov’s head appeared to be flanked by the portraits, as if it were part of the gallery.

“Would you like a glass of tea, Mr. Metcalfe?”

Metcalfe shook his head.

“It really is superb tea. Our chairman has it brought in from Georgia. You should have some, Mr. Metcalfe. You need sustenance.”

“Thanks, but no.”

“I am told you haven’t eaten the food you’ve been given. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Oh, is that what it was, food?” He recalled the tin plate of watery tripe soup that had been thrust at him, along with a stale hunk of black bread. How long ago had that been? How much time had passed since he’d been thrown into his solitary cell?

“Well, this is not exactly a spa by the Black Sea, although there’s no limit to the length of your stay, hmm?” Rubashov strutted out from behind his desk and stood facing Metcalfe, his arms folded across his chest. His tall black leather boots were polished to a mirrorlike finish. “So, you are a most skilled operative. There are not many who can evade our agents the way you did. I am most impressed.”

A quick denial was, of course, the response the interrogator wanted. But Metcalfe said nothing.

“I hope you understand the situation you’re in.”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I understand that I’ve been kidnapped and imprisoned illegally by agents of the Soviet secret police. I understand that a serious miscalculation has been made that will have ramifications far beyond what you may imagine.”

Rubashov shook his head slowly, sadly. “No, Mr. Metcalfe. No miscalculation. All ‘ramifications,” as you put it, have been considered. We are a tolerant nation, but we do not tolerate espionage conducted against us.”

“Yes,” Metcalfe said calmly. ” “Espionage’ seems to be the charge you like to throw around whenever someone decides a visitor is inconvenient, isn’t that the case? Someone, let’s say, in the Commissariat of Foreign Trade doesn’t like the terms of a deal that has been struck with my family’s firm, and “

“No, sir. Please don’t waste my time with your pettifoggery.” He pointed a tendril-like index finger at the heaps of folders on his desk. “These are all cases on which I am the lead prosecuting investigator. You see, I have much work and not enough hours in the day to do it. So let us, as they say, get right down to brass tacks, Mr. Metcalfe.” He strutted to his desk, retrieved a piece of paper, and handed it to Metcalfe. The investigator reeked of pipe tobacco and sour perspiration. “Your confession, Mr. Metcalfe. Sign it, and we can be done with our work.”

Metcalfe looked at the paper and saw that it was blank. He looked up with a sly smile.

“Just sign at the bottom, Mr. Metcalfe. We will fill in the details later.”

Metcalfe smiled. “You seem like an intelligent man, Mr. Rubashov. Not a crude man, like whoever made the foolish decision to arrest a prominent American industrialist whose family has friends in the White House. Not a man who wishes to be responsible for a diplomatic incident that is about to spiral out of control.”

“Your kind words warm my heart,” the investigator said, leaning back against his desk. “But diplomacy is not a concern of mine. It is not my portfolio. My job is simply to prosecute crimes, then to decide the sentences and see that they are carried out. We know far more about you than you might imagine. Our agents have observed your activities since you arrived here in Moscow.” Rubashov held up the thick folder. “Many, many details. And they are not the activities of a man whose purpose here is truly business.”

Metcalfe cocked his head to one side and arched a brow. “I am a man, Mr. Rubashov. I am not immune to the charms of your Russian girls.”

“As I said, Mr. Metcalfe, please do not waste my time. Now, your comings and goings in Moscow intrigue me. You seem to get around rather easily, and rather widely.”

“I know the city well.”

“You were seen retrieving documents on Pushkin Street. Are you denying you were there?”

“Retrieving documents?”

“We have photographs, Mr. Metcalfe.”

Photographs of what? he wondered. Of him taking the packet from behind the radiator? Of him slipping the packet into his coat? Without knowing how much they had seen, he didn’t know how much to admit to.

“I’d be curious to see these photographs.”

“I’m sure you would.”

“I deal in documents all day long. All this paperwork is the bane of my existence.”

“I see. And is it customary for you to run when approached by agents of the NKVD?”

“I think it’s a good idea for anyone to run when they see the NKVD coming, don’t you? Isn’t that a reputation you’re proud of that you strike fear into the hearts of even the innocent?”

“Yes,” the Russian said with a mild chortle. “But even more so, the guilty.” The wan smile faded from his face. “You are aware, I’m sure, that it is a criminal violation for a civilian to carry a gun in Moscow.”

“I carry a gun for protection,” Metcalfe said with a shrug. “There is a criminal element here, as you know. And we prosperous foreign businessmen are easy marks.”

“This is not a casual matter, Mr. Metcalfe. For this alone, you face a rather long prison term. And believe me, you do not want to spend time in a Soviet prison.” He turned around and stood before the portraits of Stalin, Lenin, and Dzerzhinsky, as if taking inspiration from them. Without turning back, he said, “Mr. Metcalfe, there are people in this organization men far more highly placed than I who wish to see you executed. We have evidence, far more evidence than you may realize, of your espionage activities. We have enough evidence to send you to the gulag for the rest of your life.”

“I wasn’t aware you people needed evidence to send people away.”

Rubashov’s magnified eyes stared. “Are you afraid to die, Mr. Metcalfe?”

“Yes,” Metcalfe replied. “But if I lived in Moscow, I wouldn’t be. In any case, if you really have enough of this trumped-up evidence to send me away, then why are you talking to me?”

“Because I wish to give you an opportunity. To make a deal, shall we say.”

“A deal.”

“Yes, Mr. Metcalfe. If you provide me with the information I seek confirmation of various details concerning the organization you work for, your objectives, names, and so on well, you may well find yourself on the next train home.”

“I wish I could help you. But there’s nothing to tell you. I’m sorry.”

Rubashov clasped his hands. “Well,” he said. “It is I who am sorry.” He stepped to his desk and pressed a button. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Metcalfe. Perhaps you will feel more inclined to speak freely the next time we get together.”

The door to the office flew open, and the three guards stormed in as if they had been waiting for their cue.

He was immediately taken to another part of the building, where the corridor was all white and brilliantly lit. A guard pressed a button on the door to a room that was marked interrogation chamber three. Armed NKVD soldiers inside opened the door to an all-white room, gleaming tiles on the floors, walls, even ceiling. Metcalfe saw that five guards were waiting for him bearing rubber truncheons. The door was shut.

He said nothing, for he knew what was coming.

The five men converged on him, wielding their truncheons. It felt as if he was being kicked, hard, in his stomach, in his kidneys, only ten times worse; pinpoints of light sparkled before his eyes. He struggled only enough to protect his vital organs from the brutally hard blows. But it was insufficient. He collapsed to the floor, his vision blurred.

The beating continued; fortunately, he passed out, the pain beyond endurance.

Cold water was thrown on him, reviving him, bringing him back to his state of excruciating, ineffable pain. Then the beatings resumed. He spit blood onto the floor. Blood pooled in his eyes, ran down his cheeks. No longer was his vision blurred; now it was oddly segmented, like a motion-picture projector whose film was slipping its sprockets. Flashes of light alternated with a maroon-stained field of vision. He wondered if he was going to die here, in this gleaming white-tiled room, his death certified by some anonymous Soviet staff doctor, his body tossed into a common grave. Even in his delirium a crazed, segmented hysteria that alleviated the unbearable pain of the truncheon blows he thought about Lana. He worried about her, wondered if she was safe, whether they had brought her in for questioning as well. Whether she would remain safe, or whether her day would soon come and she would before long be in the white-tiled room, blood streaming from her scalp, her nose, her eyes.

That was what did it for him: that image of Lana having to endure what he was now going through. He couldn’t permit it. If there’s anything in my power, he commanded himself, I must use it to protect her, to keep her out of this nightmarish place. If I die here, I’m not protecting her.

I must live. I must stay alive somehow.

I must talk.

He put up a crumpled hand, a crooked index finger. “Wait,” he moaned. “I want “

The guards stopped, on a signal from the man who seemed to be their leader. They watched him expectantly.

“Take me to Rubashov,” he croaked. “I want to talk.”

Before they brought him back to Rubashov’s office, however, they took special pains to clean him up. It wouldn’t do to have him seeping blood all over the chief investigator’s Oriental carpet. He was stripped, pushed into a shower, then handed a fresh gray uniform to put on. He was barely able to raise his arms, the knifelike pain in his side was so great.

But Rubashov, it seemed, was in no hurry to see him. Metcalfe recognized this tactic as well. He was kept standing in the hallway outside the investigator’s outer office for what seemed an eternity; he longed to sit; he had to force himself to remain standing. Metcalfe knew that the beating in the interrogation chamber was only a prelude to other techniques. Often the prisoner was made to stand against a wall for days on end without sleep. The prisoner soon came to crave death. Only two guards accompanied him this time, an implicit recognition that he was too weakened, too enfeebled, to pose much of a physical threat.

At last he was shown in. The pale, ghostlike assistant was gone, his workday presumably ended, replaced by another young man, who looked even more furtive. Papers were signed, then the inner door was opened, and Metcalfe was escorted in.

Whenever the violinist spoke with SS Gruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, he was keenly aware of what an extraordinary privilege it was to have such a mentor. Heydrich was not only a virtuoso violinist, but he was also a brilliant strategist. That he had personally selected Kleist for this mission was a testament to the assassin’s talents.

He did not, therefore, like to disappoint Heydrich. He got right to the point, as soon as the scrambled telephone connection had been made and Heydrich had picked up.

“I have as yet been unable to learn what the American is up to,” he said. He quickly recounted because Heydrich had little patience for extraneous details how the American’s associate, the Brit, had refused to talk even under great duress and had to be killed. He related how the diplomat Amos Hilliard, who had led Kleist to a scheduled rendezvous with the American, had unfortunately recognized Kleist perhaps from one of Corcoran’s face books and had to be eliminated as well. After which, of course, with a body in evidence, Kleist had had to beat a hasty retreat.

“You acted properly,” Heydrich reassured him. “The diplomat would have blown your cover. Moreover, each member of the ring you are able to rid us of is a gain for Germany.”

The violinist smiled as he glanced around the German embassy communications room. “That raises the question, sir, of whether it is time to eliminate the American as well.” Kleist did not dare suggest the great frustration he felt that he had not yet been allowed to finish off the American once and for all.

“Yes,” Heydrich replied quickly. “I think it is indeed time to shut down this spy ring. But a report has just come in that the American has been taken into the Lubyanka for questioning. There he is almost certain to die the Russians may do our work for us.”

“Another fisherman has hooked the fish,” Kleist said, disappointed. “And if they don’t complete the task?”

“Then it will fall to you. And I have no doubt whatsoever that you will succeed.”

This time, Rubashov was seated behind his enormous desk, his head all but obscured by the towers of folders. He appeared to be writing something; after a few minutes he finished, set down his pen, and looked up.

“You had something you wished to say, Mr. Metcalfe?”

“Yes,” said Metcalfe.

“Good. I knew you were a reasonable man.”

“You have forced me into this.”

Rubashov stared, his magnified eyes fish like “We think of it as persuasion, and indeed, it is only one of many forms of persuasion we employ.”

Blood was pooling in his mouth; Metcalfe spit it onto the carpet. Rubashov’s eyes flashed with anger.

“A shame. You see, it would have been better far, far better for you not to hear what I am about to tell you.” When challenged by authority, you must always lay claim to a greater authority. If you learn nothing else from me, learn this. Alfred Corcoran.

Rubashov’s brows arched above his rimless spectacles.

“Of that I have no doubt, Mr. Metcalfe,” the investigator said gently. “You would much prefer not to tell me the truth. But let me assure you that you are doing the right thing. The difficult thing, yes, but you are a brave man.”

“You misunderstand me, Rubashov. What I am about to tell you, you will wish you had not heard. You see, it is not easy for a businessman such as myself to operate in Russia. Accommodations must be made inducements at the highest level, shall we say. Arrangements made in great secrecy, discretion observed scrupulously.” Metcalfe raised his hands with difficulty, turned his palms up to indicate the grandeur of the room. “In this fine office you are blissfully unaware of the workings at the very top at the level of the Politburo which is how it should be. Matters of state at the highest level are always matters of statesmen, Ru-bashov. And statesmen are but men, after all. They are human beings. Human beings who have desires. Human beings who have greed, avarice wants and needs that, in this workers’ paradise, must always be kept private. Wants and needs that must be taken care of by discreet, well-connected individuals. And that is where Metcalfe Industries comes in.”

Rubashov stared, unblinking, betraying no reaction.

“And certainly you will understand that any… accommodations my company has made on behalf of the very highest officials in your government must remain entirely secret. So I will not tell you about the Western appliances we have secretly shipped to a house in Tbilisi and in Abkhazia houses that belong to the mother of your boss, Lavrenty Pavlovich.” He used the name and patronymic of Beria, implying familiarity; it was a little-known fact that Beria had provided his mother with two houses in Soviet Georgia and had furnished them expensively. But Rubashov would know; Metcalfe had no doubt of that.

Rubashov shook his head slowly, his reaction cryptic. Metcalfe continued, “When it comes to himself, of course, your Lavrenty Pavlovich is considerably more extravagant. You will never hear from me about the magnificent little sixteenth-century Tintoretto that hangs in the dining room of his town house on Kachalova Street.” Few, if any, knew where Beria lived, but Metcalfe, who had been briefed, was able to call that detail to mind. “Somehow I doubt you have ever been invited to Lavrenti Pavlovich’s house for dinner, and even if you had, I suspect you wouldn’t even have appreciated the glory of that little gem. The chairman of the NKVD is a refined man with exquisite tastes; you are but a muzhik. And you will never hear from these lips about how Lavrenti Pavlovich raised money for this purchase by selling Russian church artifacts and icons abroad a transaction handled with complete discretion by Metcalfe Industries.”

The investigator was no longer shaking his head. His face had paled visibly. “Mr. Metcalfe,” he began, but Metcalfe cut him off.

“Please, ask Beria about this. Pick up the phone right now and call him. Ask him, too, about the icons that were removed from the Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow. Please, go on and call him. Ask him.”

Metcalfe returned Rubashov’s look with a blank-faced stare. Rubashov reached the tendrils of his right hand toward the bank of telephones and picked up the receiver of a white one.

Metcalfe sat back against the couch and smiled. “Tell me something, Mr. Rubashov. Was it your decision to arrest me? Or were you following orders from above?”

Rubashov held the receiver against his face. A faint nervous smile played about his lips, but he did not reply. Neither did he dial the phone.

“It is now clear to me that either you are conspiring against Beria … or you are being used as a tool, an instrument, by his enemies within this organization. Which is it?”

“Your insolence will not be tolerated!” Rubashov exploded, the receiver still to his ear. His anger helpless anger, it seemed to Metcalfe was a good sign.

Metcalfe continued as if Rubashov had not said anything. “Of course, I’m sure you imagine that you can simply make me disappear and your problems will disappear as well. Well, I’m afraid you underestimate me. I have family attorneys on retainer in New York who keep some particularly damaging documents in a safe, to be released publicly if I do not contact them by a certain prearranged time. The scandal that will result will be enormous. The names of the men in Moscow with whom Metcalfe Industries has dealt secretly over the years, men even more highly placed than Chairman Beria well, these are not names you will want to have any part of blackening. One name in particular is not a man one wishes to upset.” Metcalfe turned his head and looked straight at the portrait of Stalin on the wall. Rubashov turned to see where Metcalfe was looking, and then a look of unmistakable terror crossed his ashen face. It was an expression

Metcalfe had never seen on the face of a ranking NKVD officer.

“That would be tantamount to signing your own death warrant,” Metcalfe went on. He shrugged. “Not that it makes a difference one way or another to me. After all, you did force me to talk, isn’t that right?”

Rubashov pressed the button on the side of his desk to summon the guards.

Berlin

When Admiral Wilhelm Canaris had finished his briefing, the men around the conference table were thunderstruck. They met in the main conference room of the new Chancellery, which had been built to the Fuhrer’s specifications by his favorite architect, Albert Speer. Outside, a blizzard was raging.

In an alcove above them was a marble bust of Bismarck. None of the men in the room, not even Hitler, knew that it was in fact a replica of the original bust that had sat in the old Chancellery for years. When the original was moved to the new headquarters, it had been dropped and it broke at the neck. Speer had secretly commissioned the sculptor to create an identical replacement, which was then steeped in tea to give it the patina of age. The architect considered the accidental destruction of the original to be an ill omen.

The men at the table were all the topmost leaders of the Reich. They were all here to debate the merits of the prospective invasion of the Soviet Union, which was still in discussion. There remained a good deal of opposition to attacking Russia. Men like Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and General Alfred Jodl had all argued that their forces were overextended in other theaters of war.

The old arguments had been assembled. They must not enter this quagmire. Instead, they should neutralize Russia, keep it at bay, make sure it did not interfere.

But the intelligence out of Moscow had changed all that.

The atmosphere in the room was electric.

Operation Groza had changed everything. Stalin was secretly planning to attack them. They must move first.

The first objection came from the head of the Reich Main Security Office, SS Gruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich. “How can we be sure this intelligence is not a plant?” he asked.

Admiral Canaris watched the tall, sinister-looking security chief with the long, bony nose and the reptilian eyes. He knew Heydrich well. They were social friends, of a sort. Heydrich, a talented violinist, often played chamber music at the Canaris home with Frau Canaris, who was also a violinist. Canaris knew that the younger man was a barbarous fanatic, never to be trusted. Raising an objection like this was just the sort of thing Heydrich would do. He wanted to demonstrate before the Fuhrer his superior understanding of the espionage business.

“My people have examined the documents thoroughly, and I would invite you to have your staff do the same,” Canaris replied equably. “You will find that they are genuine.”

“I simply question why it is the NKVD has not yet discovered this leak,” Heydrich persisted.

Field Marshal von Paulus said, “But we have seen no other evidence that Stalin is planning such an attack. We have seen no mobilization, no deployments. Why would the Russians do us the courtesy of attacking?”

“Because Stalin wishes to seize all of Europe,” Jodl said. “That has always been his desire. But it will not happen. There can be no more question that we must launch our Praventiv-Angrijf our preventive attack on Russia. With eighty or a hundred divisions, we will defeat Russia in four to six weeks.”