Hitler's Duchess

November 1944. Against the desperate backdrop of a doom-laden Reich, Duchess Walpurga von Croy has stolen a dossier containing kompromat on Hitler and the other Nazi leaders from her lover and boss, SS Colonel Alaric Storch. Walpurga’s beauty, charm and guile make her as dangerous as 100,000 enemy soldiers. The information in the file is so damaging it could be used to blackmail Hitler into surrender. She offers the Americans the file, on condition her former lover, American tycoon turned OSS agent Richard Adler, is the only one to escort her from her palace in Salzburg to the OSS station in Zurich. In 1932, Walpurga attempted to recruit Adler to participate in the Business Plot against FDR, but he refused and reported her to the authorities. Because of their complicated history, OSS spymaster Allen Dulles suspects a trap.

But Walpurga is an extremely enigmatic woman. Who is she really working for? What disturbing revelations about Hitler does her file contain? What is her true motivation? And does she hate Adler, or love him?

Adler parachutes deep behind enemy lines disguised as an SS officer, meets the Duchess and embarks on a perilous train journey through the treacherous alpine regions of Nazi Germany, fraught with unwitting saboteurs, air raids, suspicious policemen, wounded soldiers and the Blond SS Beast, Alaric Storch. What follows is a sample.

Copyright © 2022 Robert Ensor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

The author’s moral rights have been asserted.

First Published June 2022

The following is a work of historical fiction.Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. I acknowledge Karl Rosenheim for saving the world. Chapter 1: The Kamikaze, November 1944

Dick Adler woke in a sweat. A noise. The loose tile by the bed. Someone was in his room. He’d just been having a horrible nightmare in which he’d been in bed with a dark woman, handcuffed to her. She’d said, ‘until death do us part’ with a demonic grin on her face, like the alluring succubus of folklore.

Without thinking, he slid his hand under the mattress and grabbed his Sykes-Fairbairn fighting knife (a slender, six-inch blade that looked like a letter opener) and slashed at the face of the intruder standing over him. The man recoiled with a curse, bleeding from the lip. Before he could react, Adler was on his feet and stabbing with the knife. The intruder diverted the thrust away from his stomach. The blade pierced his side instead. Dick pushed him into the wall with both hands and was about to slash the brachial artery of the right arm.

‘Adler, stop god damn it, stop! It’s Major Henderson!’

Dick lowered his knife and his muscles relaxed. As the man staggered into the moonlight streaming in through the window, Adler could make out the olive drab uniform, iron grey hair and stern military jawline of his commanding officer.

‘Sir! What the devil are you doing skulking around here in the middle of the night? I thought you were a burglar.’

‘Your maid let me in. She respects the uniform. She declined to wake you though. Now I see why,’ he said, wincing as his fingers probed the knife wounds in his torso. ‘Jesus man, you’re a lunatic! You didn’t even give me a warning before you started slashing!’

‘A warning would defeat the object, sir. You taught us that.’

‘Don’t get smart with me, sonny boy. I’ll need stitches thanks to you!’

‘You’ll live,’ said Adler, confidently. ‘What’s this about, sir?’

‘A mission. Short notice.’

‘Must be damned important for you to come breaking in here.’

‘I didn’t break in! I called out to you twice before I approached the bed! And yes, it is important.’

‘I’ve heard that before. You come in here and get me all het-up with your talk of dangerous missions and four times out of five they never happen!’

‘This one’s a sure thing.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because Allen Dulles wants to personally brief you. And the Director is not accustomed to wasting his time.’

‘Allen Dulles?’ Dick could scarcely believe Dulles, the Director of the Office of Strategic Services in Switzerland, would come all the way here in the dead of night.

Henderson nodded.

‘Where is this briefing to take place?’

‘Well, since time is of the essence, the Director wants you to brief him right here, in your villa,’ he said, easing himself into a wicker chair, right hand clasped over his wound in an effort to staunch the bleeding.

‘Here? Now?’ Adler gulped. Dulles must have just flown in from Bern. In the middle of the night, no less. What in the hell is going on?

Henderson nodded. ‘You got anything for my wound?’

‘Sure,’ Adler said, his half-awake mind struggling to process the onrushing tide of events. It seemed like he’d been awoken from one nightmare only to find himself landed plum in the middle of another. ‘First aid kit’s over there.’ He pointed to the top drawer of his bedside table.

‘Get dressed. Dulles is waiting for you downstairs in the study.’

Adler did as he was told and came downstairs in his olive drab OSS uniform with the winged patches on the shoulders. The villa was an old stone affair nestled amidst a grove of cypresses on the top of a cliff overlooking the beach. Handily situated a few miles from the OSS base at Bari, it had a private pool, rolling green lawns filled with fragrant lavender beds, hyacinths and olive trees and a central peristyle courtyard with a little fountain. Despite his boredom, he liked it here. On the rare occasions his maid forgot to close the window, he could hear the surf breaking from his bedroom.

Dick had agreed to protect the local mafioso, Don Galeazzo Carbonara, from US military interference, provided Carbonara work with him against the Germans and Mussolini’s Salo Republic in the north and give him a fair share of the profits from the mafia’s smuggling operation. The Don’s villa was thrown in as a sweetener, when Adler had suggested he was being cheated on percentages.

He entered the airy, high-vaulted main salon, in which the original eighteenth century furnishings and portraits had been preserved. As he rounded the corner into the study, Dick was confronted with the signature pipe and moon glasses of Allen Welsh Dulles.

‘Captain Adler. War has aged you,’ Dulles mumbled.

‘I’m not the only one, sir.’

Adler saluted his superior.

Dulles, who was wearing a crumpled business suit a couple sizes too small for his increasingly flabby body, stared long and hard at Adler, trying to discern disrespect in his tone. The Director belatedly returned the salute, flopped a heavy file on the desk and eased himself into the leather desk chair – Dick’s chair. There was no handshake. He nestled down, making himself comfortable, and lit his pipe.

‘Nice little place you’ve got here, Adler. I noticed there’s even a refrigerator in the kitchen, stocked with ham, pasta, cheese, pepper and eggs. Everything a growing boy needs to make a hearty bowl of spaghetti carbonara,’ he said, insinuatingly.

Adler gulped. He’d had an OSS document forger who owed him a favour knock up papers making him supply officer for a non-existent unit and used his new credentials to secure all sorts of banned goodies.

‘There’s only so many variations of spam a man can take, sir,’ Adler replied, judging that Dulles didn’t care a fig for minor violations of the rules.

Dulles gave him a chilly smile and gestured to the armchair opposite the desk, as if he owned the place.

Adler sat down. He studied the man across from him. Dulles was in his early fifties. He’d cut his teeth spying for the State Department in Switzerland during the Great War and had subsequently made a fortune with his brother John Foster at the law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, where his Wall Street and high society connections stood him in good stead. In 1926 he was appointed the first Director of the Council on Foreign Relations and in the ‘30s he authored two books on American foreign policy, all of which made him a diplomatic brain trust of sorts. He’d been recruited early into the OSS by the intelligence agency’s founder, ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, and had earned a reputation as one of the best spymasters in Europe by using intelligence reports on armaments factories from the O5 Austrian resistance group to pinpoint Allied bombing of southern Germany.

The hair at the top of Dulles’ high forehead was already white from stress. He looked like a perfectly normal middle-aged businessman. His appearance was bland – forgettable, even. Only the small, lifeless fisheyes peering out shrewdly from behind the rounded spectacles betrayed the shark-like predator lurking behind this seemingly avuncular façade.

‘How was South Tyrol?’ he asked, probingly.

Two weeks ago, Adler had returned from a six-month stint in northern Italy. He’d almost been killed on seventeen occasions and wounded twice. Dulles was trying to gauge whether he’d recuperated sufficiently to be ready for the next mission.

‘Lovely this time of year, sir.’

‘Heard it got a little hairy out there. Especially at a little place called Castel Nuovo.’

‘War is a little hairy, sir, when you’re not sat behind a desk, but I’ve not lost my taste for it,’ Adler said, trying not to show his surprise that Dulles knew about his doings in such detail. Dulles stared appraisingly at him with those shrewd little eyes and nodded, sagely.

‘Do you know Duchess Walpurga von Croy?’

‘Yes. I knew her in New York. In the thirties.’

‘You reported her to the FBI for her involvement in the Business Plot. She was arrested and, following an investigation, deported.’

The Business Plot was an attempt on behalf of certain American corporations to replicate Mussolini’s daring ‘March on Rome’ by recruiting a group of disgruntled veterans to be headed by Marine Corps General Smedley Darlington Butler with the object of overthrowing FDR’s government in a coup d’état and replacing him with a fascist-style military dictator. The Plot had failed because instead of becoming Generalissimo, Butler had reported the conspirators to FDR.

‘I don’t see how this is relevant, sir.’

‘The Duchess has been set up by the SD as a hostess in Schloss Leopoldskron – the kind of palace where the walls have ears. She claims to have come across intelligence vital to the outcome of the war. Certain sensitive files from the SD archive. Now, all of this is relevant because she has asked for you to personally exfiltrate her, with her files, from Salzburg to Switzerland.’

The Sicherheitsdienst (SD), operating under Himmler’s SS umbrella, was the main intelligence agency of Germany.

‘But – why would she ask for me?’

‘I was just about to ask you the same question,’ Dulles said, shuffling his papers impatiently. ‘We offered to send her a different officer. One without your…history. She refused. Despite considerable risk to her life, she insists she will only go ahead with the mission if you are the one to escort her to safety. You and no one else.’

‘Curious.’

Dulles raised an eyebrow.

‘Extraordinary. In light of her demands, I wondered if there wasn’t more to your relationship than was to be found in the rather spartan FBI report.’

Adler shrugged, affecting nonchalance.

‘Not really.’

‘We know she was your mistress. It’s useless to deny it.’

‘What if she was? I acted honourably – well, patriotically, anyway.’

‘Your patriotism isn’t in question. Your judgement is. Getting involved with a German spy. Say I was to consent to this reunion. Would you be able to conduct yourself dispassionately?’

‘I acted dispassionately back in ‘32. I reported her as soon as I knew what she was.’

‘As soon as she asked you to betray your government, you reported her. That’s not the same thing,’ Dulles said.

‘I didn’t know she was a spy until then.’

Dulles raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Hmmm…’

Adler did not like Dulles. He’d met him on a few occasions before the war. In ‘29, Reinhard, Dick’s father, hired Dulles to settle a lawsuit the company had brought against a cash strapped bank reeling from Black Tuesday. To a serial entrepreneur like Adler, whose business interests included Hollywood movies, gold mines and plane and bomb manufacture, it rankled to take orders from his father’s onetime lawyer. Over the years, he’d run into Dulles at cocktail parties in New York every now and again and done his best to avoid talking to him. He always thought Dulles too fascist in his leanings and a bit of a creep. The man had left behind him a slew of heartbroken society beauties. Adler never could understand why so many attractive women lost their minds over what was ultimately a banal looking weasel.

‘And I suppose you knew nothing of the Business Plot, sir?’

Dulles’ stare went from chilly to sub-arctic.

‘What exactly are you implying, son?’

‘At least I reported what I knew. Others knew all about it – more than me, even – and did nothing. Waited to see how the dice fell before committing themselves one way or the other. Such men are little better than traitors in my book.’

‘And you think I fall into that camp? Where’s your evidence?’

‘I made no accusation, sir,’ Adler said, holding his hands up placatingly, with an insouciant smirk.

‘Merely an insinuation. Well, you might wanna save your insinuations for someone a little further down the food chain.’

‘Don’t accuse me or I’ll destroy you? Not the most convincing denial I’ve ever heard.’

Dulles’ eyes flashed with anger. His thin lip curled.

‘You listen to me you spoiled brat. I knew your father, back in the day. You know what he said about you? Dicky, he’s a bright kid, but he’ll have a hard time because he doesn’t respect anyone. Your father was right. Your arrogance will be your undoing. I know you think of me as some upstart lawyer who ought to be treating you deferentially, as if you were a future client, and you may well be, but while the war is on, I am your superior. Unlike you, I’ve actually had to climb the greasy pole, instead of getting a free elevator ride to the top, and I’ve learned a few tricks on the way up that would never occur to the likes of you. Now, I have a file here of disciplinary infractions thirty pages thick. I know all about the little ghost unit you’ve been so assiduously “supplying” for the past couple weeks. I can have you court martialled tomorrow morning.’

‘So I can go from being a grunt to running America’s largest private business empire? Sounds like a promotion to me.’

Dulles shook his head amusedly and leaned in closer. His coffee breath reeked like the bowels of a rotting badger.

‘We’re not talking about a dishonourable discharge, sonny boy. I know all about your racketeering. Hell, just on my walk in I saw enough contraband to have you sent to military prison for a year. And I know all about your stashes in the caves, your little “arrangement” with the local mafia,’ he said, putting steel into his voice.

‘You’re not going to lock me up. You need me, badly, or you wouldn’t have flown here at this ungodly hour, on such short notice. The fact you’re threatening me means there is no other candidate. I am your only hope and you’re worried the mission will be scotched without my participation. Isn’t that right?’

Dulles leaned back and smiled, puffing merrily on his pipe. The thunderclouds had cleared from his face as if there had never been the least threat of rain.

‘Well, at least we understand each other now. You may not respect me a jot, but I respect a man who knows how to stand up for himself. All the same, there’s no sense in getting yourself into trouble out of a misplaced sense of defiance, especially when, if I judge correctly, you’ll want to be a part of this mission just as much as I want you for it.’

‘Go on,’ Dick said, all the while thinking: typical bully. Give him a morsel and you’ll never eat again. Break his collar bone and he’ll wipe your ass.

‘Walpurga claims to have gotten hold of the Hitler file.’

Excitement flickered across Adler’s normally taciturn features before his poker face returned.

‘I thought it was just a myth,’ he said, dismissively.

‘Oh, it’s real. The file, amassed by German intelligence over a decade or more, contains all the dirt on all the top Nazis – including Adolf himself. Everything that is to be found to discredit the regime’s leadership, even in the eyes of their own people, is in that file. Far more than our agents could dream of finding on their own. All the sharpest teeth are inside the lion’s den, so to speak.’

‘How did Walpurga come into possession of this file?’

‘She claims to have found it in the safe of one Alaric Storch, also known as The Blond Beast, the SD’s head of counterintelligence.’

‘And how did she gain access to Storch’s safe?’

‘She’s his mistress. And she’s been working for him for years now, as well as spying for Hitler.’

‘A dangerous game.’

‘And that is precisely why she wants out.’

‘Which one’s after her?’

Dulles frowned.

‘It’s unclear. Maybe neither. Whatever the case, she’s under investigation as a British spy. It’s probably not Hitler’s doing, as he has placed her under his personal protection, meaning she can’t be arrested unless concrete evidence is found against her. But she is being watched, which makes a rendezvous challenging.’

‘It’s not the same without the challenge, sir.’

Dulles looked at Adler askance.

‘You a masochist, son, or do you just have a death wish? Best not to answer that.’

He shook his head and carried on. Adler smiled. Better not to know seen as I’m going regardless of my mental state.

‘On to operational details. You’re to parachute in. A B-24 Liberator from Bari airbase will drop you off in a field on the lower slopes of the Hinterberg, in the mountains between Salzburg and Bad Ischl.’

Dulles removed a map of Salzburg and the surrounding area from the sheaf of papers he’d brought with him and spread it flat on the desk.

‘That’s pretty far out from Salzburg,’ Adler noted.

‘It has to be. Salzburg and the Obersalzburg complex surrounding Hitler’s Berghof are well defended by anti-aircraft emplacements. Hinterberg is the safest and most sparsely populated area the planners could find that was close enough to the city for you to arrive at the rendezvous point in time, but not so close we run a high risk of the plane being spotted or shot down.’

‘Will I be jumping blind?’ in OSS parlance, to jump blind was to parachute into an area with no resistance helpers.

‘Not blind. Myopic,’ the Director said, with a sadistic grin, as if he’d just made a hilarious double entendre. ‘As you know, despite the fact their government has launched them into a suicidal two front war that now has no hope of victory, the populace of nearby Tirol, which you will be travelling through, is estimated to still be 90% pro-Nazi.’

‘Loyal to a fault,’ Adler commented, mordantly.

‘But we do have one asset. Since the White Rose was broken up, he’s just about the only resistance left in the whole city. Josef Mohl, a near-sighted retired tailor—’

‘This just keeps getting better and better,’ Adler muttered.

‘He will meet you near the landing zone, at a lone tree on the edge of the closest road. I’ve marked the location on your map,’ Dulles said, pointing at a crossroad marked with red pen about a mile away from the mountain peak.

‘Mohl will give you a lift to a location near Schloss Leopoldskron, the Duchess’ palace,’ he said, indicating the palace and route on the map. The palace was situated a couple miles from the city.

‘Hold it. Mohl has an automobile?’

‘He says he does.’

‘I was under the impression there was little to no fuel left in Germany for private vehicles. So what is this thing running on? Coal?’

‘I don’t know. But he claims to have enough to get to Zurich and there’s no sense in lying. I guess he got it on the black market. It’s difficult to get into the finer details over the wireless; the old man isn’t the best radio operator.’

‘Right. But if he’s spotted driving that thing, especially after curfew, he’ll raise suspicions.’

‘He will. But his house is only a few miles from the RV. And once you’re in the car with him, your SS disguise – which we’ll get onto shortly – will endow you with sufficient authority to commandeer a private car at night. If questioned, you could say you siphoned fuel from your broken-down SS vehicle into his. Anyway, Mohl will take you to Leopoldskron. There you are to rendezvous with the Duchess, on the lakeside path to the rear of her palace, taking every precaution to identify and avoid her Gestapo watchers. Mohl will then hand over the keys to his car. You are to drive through the border and stop at the OSS office in Zurich. You know the address.’

‘I’m just gonna drive on through, huh?’

‘That’s right. Our Documents section has procured travel permits and identity papers for you both. The pretext for the journey is that Generalführerin Traudl Wunk (the Duchess), in her capacity as a senior German Red Cross nurse with international contacts, is on a diplomatic mission to meet with her opposite numbers in the Swiss Red Cross to discuss increasing aid for prisoners of war, forced labourers and civilians in Germany and the occupied territories; an important and plausible sounding mission for a Reich facing starvation. The Duchess should be able to bring off the act; she is, after all, a patroness of the German Red Cross.’

‘Is this Wunk woman a real Red Cross nurse?’

‘She is. One of our assets in the Red Cross befriended her and provided accurate biographical details and photographs. She is also an acquaintance of Walpurga, who is already familiar with the details. Miss Wunk is 38 years old, and the two women don’t look dissimilar, but we’ve pasted photos of von Croy into the Kennkarte and passport just in case. Wunk, whilst a senior nurse, is not particularly well known outside the Red Cross and she is currently in Munich, sleeping off a potent tranquiliser placed in her wine glass by our agent. So you needn’t fear running into her or anyone who knows her on your journey.’

‘Why can’t Walpurga travel under her own name?’

‘Because she is currently under investigation as a British spy. As such, she will be considered a flight risk. Border police probably have her name on a list of persons they are to prevent from leaving the country.’

‘Right. I guess she’ll need a uniform…’

Dulles sighed.

‘Yes, Adler, I have done this before you know.’

‘I ask because I need to know if I’m bringing her disguise in with me.’

‘That won’t be necessary. She has already been provided a nurse’s uniform by our agent in the Red Cross.’

‘That’s handy. I’d have a hell of a hard time explaining a nurse’s outfit in my bags to a policeman.’

‘I should imagine it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve explained away an item of women’s clothing,’ Dulles noted, with wry humour.

‘Speak for yourself. So – who am I playing?’

‘You are SD Sturmbannführer Gregor Stahl,’ Dulles said, pronouncing the name in the guttural German accent Adler would have to adopt.

Adler nodded respectfully.

‘SD is good, means the police and soldiers I’ll run into should be too terrified to get overly officious with me. Rank equivalent to major should help in that regard, too. Come to think of it, why not make me a colonel or general?’

‘Because the SD is a relatively small outfit. Even after their absorption of the Abwehr, there are only a few thousand personnel, and most of them are petty bureaucrats. There are too few SD colonels and generals and they are too well known by the rank and file – one of the policemen or Gestapo officers you encounter might be aware there is no general with your name or, if you adopt the identity of a dead general, they might have read his name in the obituaries, whereas there are plenty of majors and few of them are sufficiently well known to pose a risk.’

Adler nodded.

‘I see.’

‘No, you don’t. It gets better,’ Dulles said, licking his lips.

‘Gregor was a member of an elite unit, the Brandenburgers, comprised largely of Germans fluent in foreign languages who have spent much of their lives abroad. Stahl’s father, Georg, was an international wine merchant, originally from Koblenz; Gregor was raised in California until the age of 10 when his father moved to Yugoslavia to expand his operations in that country. When his father died, Gregor took over the Serbian vineyards. He only returned to Germany for business trips and holidays racing his sports cars around the Nürburgring. Probably spoke better English and Serbian than he did German. That would explain your accent and ah, imperfect command of the language.’

Adler chuckled, nonchalantly.

‘They certainly need explaining.’

‘On the outbreak of war, Stahl returned to the Fatherland and volunteered for a commission in a logistics regiment. Because of his international background, however, he was recruited into the foreign language speaking Brandenbergers to conduct guerrilla warfare operations in Yugoslavia in preparation for the German invasion of that country. During one of these sabotage missions, he was wounded in the leg and, unable to fight behind enemy lines anymore due to his injuries, he was reassigned to work for the SD in counterespionage, as an interrogator of the kind of guerrilla warrior he himself had been. The rationale presumably being he knew how to think like one of them. He was certainly effective at hunting down Yugoslav partisans, but he would stop at nothing to obtain the intelligence the German occupation needed; he resorted to methods of torture considered extreme even by the standards of the Gestapo: dogs, mutilation, castration. He killed hundreds of civilians in the course of his duties, most of whom were probably innocent. He was so brutal he got a reputation, which painted a target on his back for the local partisans. One day in Sarajevo, whilst walking from his apartment to his office, he was bundled into the back of a car by partisans. They tortured him in reprisal for his brutality. He’s officially listed as missing in action, presumed dead.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘The partisans killed him, of course. But the body was never found – they dumped it in the Miljacka river, so burned and mutilated nobody could identify it. One of our men was with them at the time, providing them with arms, explosives and advice. The partisans were going to burn Stahl’s papers and uniform along with his body, but our operative, mindful of our pressing need for valid German documents, saved them from the flames. Once his work in the Balkans was complete, he returned to Italy with them. We’ve been sitting on them ever since, waiting for a sufficiently important mission into greater Germany or Yugoslavia involving an American agent with an accent.’

‘How thoughtful of you,’ Adler said, sarcastically.

‘Don’t thank me. Thank our agent.’

‘I would if I knew his name.’

‘You’re a big boy, Adler. You should know the drill by now.’

Adler smiled at the omission. They never knew each other’s names unless they needed to. The very existence of the OSS base here at Bari was a secret, so Adler was masquerading as an Army Air Force Captain.

‘I assume I bear some resemblance to this man?’

Dulles frowned over his pipe and squirmed a little.

‘Close enough.’

‘That’s not terribly reassuring, when you think my life could depend on whether I’m recognised or not.’

‘He’s 28 years old. 187 centimetres, with brown hair and blue eyes. Our experts are replacing his photo with yours as we speak. You’ll be able to look at it soon.’

‘So I might be able to fool some border policeman, but what happens if I run into someone who knew Stahl – and knows he’s supposed to be dead?’

‘He died in May ’43; long enough ago for him to be half-forgotten by most of the men he served with, and most of them are still in Eastern Europe. The majority of the men you’ll meet in Innsbruck will be wounded soldiers from the Gothic line and France, so there should be little risk of being recognised by someone who knew him.’

‘Right. All the same, wouldn’t it make more sense to create a fictional identity? I mean, why run the risk of being recognised if you don’t have to?’

‘Well, firstly, that would take longer, and, considering the Duchess’ precarious situation, time is of the essence. Secondly, no matter how skilled the forger, an experienced policeman with enough time to do a thorough inspection could still tell the difference, so real documents are always preferable – even if the photographs are fake. Thirdly, if, god forbid, you were arrested by the police or the Gestapo, one of the first things they’d do is check your name against their lists. Better they find a name that’s supposed to be missing, than nothing at all. You can explain it away by saying you escaped the partisans and some dummkopf bureaucrat forgot to update your file. It’s the kind of administrative error that happens more often than you’d think. And it’s more plausible that you would be still alive and serving, if you were listed as missing, rather than confirmed as dead. That’s part of what makes the Stahl papers so valuable; why our agent went to such lengths to hold on to them.’

Dick nodded.

‘Alright. Fair enough. So, what happened to me after I escaped the partisans?’

‘Given the attempts on your life, Yugoslavia was deemed too dangerous for you to be useful there, so you were transferred to the Salzburg SD, where Colonel Storch, impressed by your commando background and passion for racing, reassigned you to be the Duchess’ new driver and bodyguard.’

Adler nodded. ‘Sounds plausible enough. The boys in Censorship and Documents have outdone themselves.’

‘You should be grateful; it’s as good a cover as you’re ever likely to get. Without it, given the state of your German, this would be a kamikaze mission.’

‘It’s a good fit, I’ll give you that.’

‘Wait. There’s more. The Duchess has insisted on bringing jewellery, gold coins and cash with her to Switzerland.’

‘Hmmm, that’ll look suspicious. But could be useful for bribing border police.’

‘We can make better use of her assets than that. If the jewels are discovered during a search of your bags, you are to reveal that the Red Cross meeting is simply a cover for the ‘real’ mission: to contact Jean-Paul Battard, an executive of Chromium Deposits bank, and a known associate of the Duchess, with a view to depositing Nazi plunder in his institution in case of defeat and occupation by the Allies. There is a number here for Battard. The Duchess assures us he is willing to play his part, if necessary, to corroborate your story. Such a mission would undoubtedly be secret because of the detrimental effect on morale should it be known that the SS is preparing to lose the war. The gold and jewels in the satchel and handbag are therefore merely a sample, a first deposit, to open an account and see if Chromium Deposits can be trusted with larger sums in the future. Some Reichsbank bullion has been added, to lend credence to this story.’

‘Great! Anything else I should know?’

‘Yes,’ Dulles said, lowering his pipe and peering at Adler above the wire-rims of his moon-glasses.

‘Do not trust the Duchess. Whatever there is between you. She has a history of blackmail, confidence trickery, infidelity, thieving and double-crossing. She has played both sides for two decades. Most people who play that game are dead within a year. Not her. She has not only survived; she has profited. She is more alluring than Mata Hari and more cunning than Talleyrand. There is no one individual more responsible for the British policy of appeasement, save Hitler, Neville Chamberlain himself and a handful of press barons, most of whom she had bent round her little finger. All of which makes her about as dangerous as 100,000 enemy soldiers.’

‘Don’t worry, I already distrust her.’

‘It’s easy to say that glancing at her photograph from the comfort of my office, but she’s exceedingly charming in person.’

‘You don’t need to tell me,’ Adler thought for a second, studying the generic middle-aged man with the dead eyes. ‘Wait a minute…are you speaking from experience, sir?’

Dulles scrunched his lips uncomfortably. A tinge of colour flushed his pale cheeks.

‘I knew her, yes, during the last war. I was assigned to Vienna, until just before we entered the fray. She was just a girl then, but she was more worldly wise than any woman I ever met. And my god, was she beautiful,’ he said, voice tinged with wistful nostalgia.

‘Yeah, she was quite the looker when I knew her,’ said Adler, eager to fill the awkward silence.

Dulles suddenly looked up, eyes flashing with anger.

‘It is imperative you remain cool and detached, you hear me?’

‘I understand, sir.’

‘You understand, but will you act on that understanding? I wonder. And I find it exceedingly suspicious that, given your history together, she looks to you of all people to rescue her.’

‘You think the whole thing is a setup?’

‘I would say that’s more likely than her seeing you as some knight in shining armour, wouldn’t you?’

Adler gulped. He disliked Dulles, but the man was talking sense.

‘But why would German intelligence go to all this trouble just to capture me? What would be the value in that?’

‘Considerable. For once in your life, you underrate yourself, Adler. Aside from your intimate knowledge of numerous special operations, you are a prominent OSS agent and representative of American industry. Some in the press, god help them, have even touted you as a symbol of America’s future. If you were captured or compromised, you would thereby humiliate and discredit the country, specifically the fledgling American intelligence apparatus, before it has even had a chance to hatch. Such an eventuality would see our funding cut, or worse, the disbandment of the Office of Strategic Services and the cessation of any attempt on behalf of our country to form secret services. I need not remind you there are still those within the government who believe, like Henry Stimson Junior, that “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” The future of American intelligence is at stake. Don’t mess it up.’

‘With that much on the line, what makes you think this operation is worth the risk?’

Dulles stared shrewdly at Adler.

‘This operation is not merely risky. Given the surveillance on the Duchess, your accent, the fact we can’t drop a team in with you – which, by the way, I’m not at all comfortable about – and the probability the whole thing is just a trap engineered by the SD, I’d put the odds of your survival at 100 to one. The odds of success are even slimmer than that – maybe 200 to one. If captured, you can expect to be tortured by the Gestapo for information and then unceremoniously executed under the authority of Hitler’s commando order.’

‘Gee, that’s some sales patter you got there, sir. And knowing all that, you still wasted your time to come here and enlist me?’

‘That’s right. Because on the off chance the Duchess is telling the truth, and you can bring her back here with the Hitler File, the war is over. We can blackmail the German government into surrender.’

‘I see. The odds are terrible, but the stakes couldn’t be higher. And if I refuse, you’ll have me thrown in prison. Some choice, huh?’ Adler sighed, feigning reluctance.

In reality, his spine was tingling at the prospect of becoming the man who ended the war. He’d always suspected one day he’d change the course of history. Now was his chance.

‘Like I said, I’m not entirely comfortable having you go in alone, without even a radio man for backup. And youcan’t bring a radio: it would ruin your disguise.’

Adler nodded at the soundness of this decision. The OSS, like the British SOE, had radios that could be hidden in seemingly innocuous suitcases. But this camouflage would not stand up to even a routine baggage search.

‘Should anything go wrong, you could be incommunicado behind enemy lines for weeks.’

Adler thought the statement was true enough, but there was more behind it than mere fatherly concern for his agent’s safety. Dulles would clearly prefer to have someone keep tabs on Adler and rein him in, if necessary.

‘All going well, backup shouldn’t be necessary. All I’ve got to do is drive from Salzburg to Switzerland. I should reach Zurich in time for lunch.’

‘You’ve been doing this a while now, Adler. When does all ever go well on these missions?’

Dick grumbled, recalling all the failed missions, all the agents and partisans killed over the years. Even when the mission was a success, rarely did every particular go according to plan.

‘You know Adler, if you were to decline, I’d still have you jailed, but I would understand your decision, given that I’m effectively asking you to die for your country.’

Adler shrugged, nonchalantly, affecting his customary devil may care attitude in the face of death.

‘I wouldn’t write my obituary just yet. Those are the odds for an average agent.’

‘And you consider yourself above average – the best? Is that it?’ Dulles said, raising a sceptical eyebrow, as if he were talking to a delusional case.

‘I do.’

‘Well, I sure hope you’re right,’ he said, sarcastically.

‘That being said, even I’m not invincible. So, I guess I should go redraft my will. You’re a lawyer, you can be my witness and help me with the phrasing, can’t you?’

Dulles looked at his watch.

‘No time. There’s a B-24 Liberator waiting for you at Bari Airfield. Your uniform, equipment and documents should be ready by the time we arrive.’

‘Wait. I’m going in tonight?’

‘This must be a night drop. Like I said, the Duchess could be arrested any time now. We can’t afford to delay another day. And we have four hours left before sunrise.’ You can buy the full title off amazon as a paperback or an ebook: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B4G7RFZN