The Kehlstein conspiracy

CHAPTER TWO

Just one week later, on Tuesday September 5th, Taurig sat behind his desk at Gestapo Headquarters in Berlin's Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, studying a copy of a report, which had been submitted by him to the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler nearly two months ago. It contained carefully analysed itineries of a number of senior officers of the replacement army. Meetings with a number of suspect civilians such as the socialist Julius Leber or - already in the autumn of 1942 - with Dietrich Bonhoeffer were underlined. Some of these meetings had been in the presence of high ranking officers like Generalfeldmarschall Erwin von Witzleben or General Beck. The report concluded that in the Bendlerstraße Headquarters of the replacement army a major conspiracy was being developed to overthrow the Nazi-government and assassinate the Führer, with Oberst Claus von Stauffenberg and, among others, Oberstleutnant Werner von Brecht as its organisers. But there had been no response to Taurig's report.

The door to the office suddenly opened and a tall man in blazing SS- uniform entered. He glanced at Taurig with a peculiar grimace that could have been interpreted as a smile.

Hauptsturmführer Menke seated himself comfortably in front of Taurig's desk. "What's new with you?" he asked curtly, as he stretched his legs and tucked his hands under his belt. There were not many men in Gestapo Headquarters that would enter Taurig's office without knocking. Fewer still would seat themselves uninvited. Even senior officers had an inexplicable respect for the remote Hauptsturmführer Taurig. Menke leaned heavily back in the chair, dropped his chin on his chest and looked at Taurig pensively.

"Well?"

"I don't like it," Taurig said. "Too many traitors got away."

"Don't you think they've had enough?" Menke asked.

"A man like von Brecht never gives up," Taurig answered. "He's our main problem at the moment. We must catch him before he starts reorganising."

Menke knew Taurig well. If Taurig had a premonition, Menke was alert to it. They had served together in the early Russian campaign. Menke and Taurig had seen their first combat together, shared the same manhole many times and Menke had shaped himself in the image of the remote, undisturbed giant that was now sitting at the desk in front of him. Taurig's admiration for Menke was not so great. After their first battles, Menke had developed a cruelty which manifested itself in the conquered peasant villages, His interrogations were invariably ruthless and he passed and executed his own sentences with a ferocity that, even in the SS, did not pass unnoticed. They called him "The Butcher" after a massacre in Poland in which Menke had gunned down forty-seven young hostages single-handed. The submachine gun had been quietly taken out of his hands by Taurig.

It was the first and only time they had ever clashed. Menke knew that he was outclassed. When he returned to the unit two weeks later Taurig had merely given him a short nod. They had left it at that. Now they were as close as jungle animals can get.

"What are you going to do about it?" Menke asked.

"I was going to ring Heini when you came in," said Taurig.

"Himmler's out," Menke answered. "Let's have a look again at that report you wrote."

After a spell of concentrated reading he looked at Taurig, then said: "The whole bloody lay out. You'll be Himmler's number one boy after this. No wonder he put you in charge when we crushed that Bendlerstraße lot."

Taurig had selected Menke as his second man and Menke knew his own star would be rising along with that of the man behind Oberst Skorzeny who had led the SS when it occupied the Bendlerstraße block and crushed the Putsch.

"The big one that got away worries me," Taurig said pensively. "I'm not interested in those Fieldmarshalls and Generals that'll hang for this. Von Brecht is a different matter. If I am right about the man he's probably planning a new attempt this instant. I'll ask Himmler to assign us exclusively to this task. I doubt if he'll ignore me this time."

"What about pretty Pauli Räder?" Menke asked mockingly.

"I was disgusted when he played around with von Brecht's boy," Taurig said pensively."And useless at that. But if Himmler insists we'll simply have to drag him along. If his dirty games will get us von Brecht I'll buy it. But no more failures from that bloody queer."

"Von Brecht has two son's..." Menke said pensively.

"I don't want the young one involved," Taurig cut him short. "Axel is only fourteen and a model Kameradschaftsführer.

"It was not necessary," Axel von Brecht said. "You could have brought him in and we would have questioned him, Now we'll have to report to the police." This was that Tuesday afternoon.

"You are getting too soft-hearted," the younger boy said. "He was in the cellar and he didn't know the password."

"Still it was stupid to kill him. His father may be an officer. Then we are in trouble."

The dead boy on the floor looked about ten years old but the whiteness of his face might have enhanced its youthfulness. The puddle of scarlet blood contrasted strongly with the pallor of death.

"You shot him in the heart," Axel continued. "That was not necessary."

"I aimed at the belt, like we've been told," the boy, Ralph, continued. "You are just being awkward. What's there to talk about? He didn't know the password and started running. It could have been a spy. So I shot at his belt. I thought you would be pleased."

Axel looked pensively at the young killer. Logically speaking he was right. Still, they would have to find out who the father was before reporting to the police. It would make all the difference.

The cellar was some twelve by sixteen feet. It had been allotted to Axel's group a month ago, when the house was bombed. On the left wall a large inscription was painted in Rune: "Wir sind geboren, um für Deutschland zu sterben". The walls were black and draped with the red Swastika flags. A curtain separated a special Sanctum from the rest of the room.

Axel drew the curtains aside.

Flags were suspended from the ceiling. A large oak table was placed against the wall. On it were candles, dented helmets and a few photographs of Hitler youths killed in battle. The full text of the Horst-Wessel-Lied was emblazoned on a poster flanked by the "Siegerrune". It was getting dark and Axel lit the candles.

"Put him on the table," Axel ordered. "Then cover him with one of the flags. But cover him well. It will give us time to think."

"A spy covered with the flag?"

"We don't know if he was a spy," Axel said softly. "It's a child, he's Aryan and he's dead. That much we do know. Now give me the gun."

"But I'm on guard...!"

"You are relieved until I have had time to think. Now do as I say."

The boy handed the weapon to Axel. Then two other boys helped him to place the child's thin body on the table. Axel closed the sanctum.

It was then that the air alarm sounded.

The cellar was bomb proof and the boys remained impassive to the sounds of the explosions that were around them.

"Let's dump him outside," one of the boys said. "It'll save trouble. We don't know who his father is, as you said."

"That would make it a crime," Axel said. "Don't you understand? Now it's only an act of war. It has to be reported through the proper channels."

"You are growing soft-hearted," Ralph said. "Fancy going through all that trouble while there is so much important work to be done. I always thought you would turn out a cissy. You even look like a beautiful girl."

The flush on Axel's face was barely noticeable. This was the problem they had been teasing him with since he could understand. That he was to beautiful to be a boy. As if it mattered

Axel made a quick step forward. He had only been a Kameradschaftsführer for three weeks and now he was challenged. His fist shot out and hit Ralph in the stomach quite hard. The boy doubled up and stood gasping for air. Axel could have easily finished him off with a few more blows, but he didn't.

"Don't be stupid," he said. "It isn't worth it."

"A very good report," Paul Räder said to Axel, standing in front of him at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse Gestapo-H.Q. "Normally of course such minor matters never reach my desk... But then of course... that is not why you stand before me..." It was Wednesday morning now, the 6th of September.

"I'm honoured, Herr Obersturmführer," the boy said in a crystal clear fourteen year old voice.

Lithe and taut, tall, slender, blue-eyed Aryan blond, the SS-officer thought. Just how much did the boy know?

"When did you see your father last?" Räder asked abruptly.

"Nearly three years ago Obersturmführer," the boy lied unemotionally. "He left us when I was eleven years old."

"Surely you know he worked at Bendlerstraße?"

"Yes..."

"Has it not occurred to you that he might be involved...?"

"I know he's been in combat for three years, Obersturmführer. The Knight's Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster... surely...," the boy said proudly.

"The highest award for bravery in combat...," Räder said pensively. He liked to think the boy was clean.

"And your brother?"

"My brother Günther has just graduated from Döberitz first and youngest of his class," said Axel.

So he didn't know. He couldn't... the boy was proud, frank and honest. Just how loyal would he be? Would he betray his father?

"You live alone with your mother then...?"

"I have been living with my group the last three weeks," Axel responded. "My mother said it would be better... for a Kameradschaftsführer..."

"From now on you will stay with us," Räder said definitely. "Report at my house this evening. Or better still, wait for me here and then drive home with me. I need an ordinance."

From the moment he had laid eyes on Axel, Paul Räder had known that the boy's influence on his life would somehow be decisive.

It had happened to him before but the experience was rare, always frightening. Three times they had been young girls, a boy only once.
That perfection and drug-like attractiveness, that uninhibited, almost cruel beauty. Everything about these rare creatures beamed sexual desirability. In their innocence they were the ultimate lust object. They frightened Räder beyond reason and he had immediately gone out of their way. Avoiding them for fear of losing himself again, the way he was once lost to that other drug.

And now this.

He knew there was no way out this time. The boy was practically offered to him. Fatherless, motherless, brotherless kid.

This time he would not back out.

Ten past seven in Berlin, September 9th. The dusk would soon settle over the ruins of an Empire which a tall and weathered man in his early forties was overlooking from a high window in a luxurious Charlottenburg apartment.

Werner von Brecht was unlike the high-ranking staff officers he had mingled with during the past months in many ways. One of the youngest flying officers to graduate from air training school in 1929, he had climbed the ranks as the Luftwaffe grew in strength.

Like most of his young colleagues in those days he had only one dream: to see Germany return to world power, regain its honour after the shameful defeat in 1918 followed by the dishonourable peace and the humiliating Weimar period. One day, von Brecht knew, Germany would regain its rightful place among the nations and fulfill its destiny, leading humanity into a new and brilliant future.

Adolf Hitler had crystalised the dream into a simple operational model: Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. And: Deutschland über alles.

It was with this holy thought that von Brecht had plunged his Stuka into the inferno's of Warsaw, Rotterdam and London. The African campaign had been less triumphant. When he returned to Europe in 1944 his dream was over. In one blinding flash his eyes had opened to reality. After Normandy, the worship for his beloved Führer had changed into a hatred so strong that it gave him a new purpose in life: to destroy the lunatic that had betrayed them, before he could plunge the Heimat in an inferno of blood, death and ruins only to prolong his own miserable life a few more months.

It was then that he met Stauffenberg.

He had come to know the one-eyed Oberst in the officers mess at Bendlerstraße. Here at last, was a staff officer who had seen combat like von Brecht. Crippled by enemy fire many times, the man had grown like a tree. Von Brecht sensed a hidden power in him greater than his own and he had known at once they shared the same hatred. Hatred for that man who had shattered their dreams. Werner von Brecht had found his new God.

The new transfer to Bendlerstraße was a mere formality and from then on von Brecht devoted himself to his new purpose: Hitler's assassination, followed by a putsch that would end the war and ensure Germany an honourable peace.

Then once more, on the 20th of July 1944, von Brecht's world disinte-grated like a Super Nova. Months of meticulous planning, involving many men and high ranking officers in Berlin, Paris and elsewhere, were lost in a single phuff!: the explosion that failed to kill Adolf Hitler.

Stauffenberg was shot the same day and what was left of the ancient breed of high ranking staff officers took their own lives or were massacred in the days that followed. Some, like von Brecht, had managed to get away to pre-arranged hide-outs. Later Werner received a detai-led report of what had happened to his young son Günther in Plötzensee prison, followed by his wife's suicide that same day.

"I would not have asked this from you if it was not a matter of the greatest importance," Werner von Brecht said. "Räder is as close as we can get into their camp. It is not often that boys of your age can play a part in history..."

Axel was standing in front of a six foot window, overlooking an endless row of ruins.

"How could you be so sure he'd order me to live with him?" he asked softly. Slowly he turned to his father.

Werner von Brecht had not discussed the details of Paul Räder's sexual taste. Only a few hints had been made. Now he had little choice. The boy must know.

"I thought you would understand...?"

A few rays of the dying sun had caught the boy's marble profile. The blush was barely visible in the purple glow.

"I expect you'll be quite safe. After all, he would be taking a tremendous risk."

"Would he be...?"

If von Brecht had his doubts, it was no time to show them now. The

stakes were much too high.

"Nothing will ever come of it... unless you would allow it yourself... Räder is no fool."

"How far must I go..?"

"I expect nothing of you that you cannot cope with... using your own sound judgement... and of course... taking into account the signifi-cance of what you may come across... Some of this naturally may upset you. Just remember you are not the only one who suffers these days, but you may be one of the very few who can help ending it."

Axel was silent for a while. Von Brecht realised how fond he had grown of the boy in the past days. He sensed a sadness within himself which was confusing. It was not fear, just a strange, remote pain.

"It is not a heroic role," Axel said at length. "More a girl's part. I don't mind dying in battle, but this... people often treat me as if I were... not quite manly..."

"It's only because you look very... young. You have something... which makes people want to protect you... people grow fond of you in a particular way..."

"Like one grows fond of a girl."

He said it with a bitterness which pained the older man.

"Like one grows fond of... something very... fine... it will change when you get a little older. You are only fourteen. One is not quite a man at fourteen you know. One becomes a man a little later... and by acts of significance..."

Von Brecht set his mind to work again after his son had left. Metho-dically he reviewed the situation. Finally, when he had come to a conclusion, most of the night had passed. One thing was clear to him beyond any doubt. With the greater part of Germany's underground resistance exposed, hunted and demoralised, a new initiative would have to be his.

He, Oberstleutnant Werner von Brecht, would accept the challenge.

He owed it to his friend von Stauffenberg, to Germany and to his son's future. Günther would be avenged. But who could get close enough in the Führer's presence to succeed where even Stauffenberg had failed?

It was much later in the day when von Brecht realised that by a quirk of fate he had probably met the only man alive, capable of such an enterprise: Elyesa Bazna. Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen's Albanian valet. The man he had met in Ankara. In the house with the green Mandalla.

Where von Brecht had bought the invasion plans...

The Messerschmitt 109E glided low over the moonlit clouds, two days later, Monday September 11th. It disappeared into the white just before midnight. When it emerged again at 1200 feet the coast was not far off. The pilot had to swim ashore.

When the British Coast Guard found the wreck, half an hour later, von Brecht had disappeared into the night.

He rented a small room in Canterbury on Tuesday, September 12th. From Friday the 15th a seemingly meaningless personal ad appeared daily in the leading British newspapers.

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