The Rhinemann Exchange: A Novel - Couverture souple

Ludlum, Robert

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0345539176 ISBN 13 : 9780345539175

Editeur : Bantam, 2014

A propos du livre

Extrait :

1

September 10, 1943, Berlin, Germany

Reichs-minister of Armaments Albert Speer raced up the steps of the Air Ministry on the Tiergarten. He did not feel the harsh, diagonal sheets of rain that plummeted down from the grey sky; he did not notice that his raincoat—unbuttoned—had fallen away, exposing his tunic and shirt to the inundation of the September storm. The pitch of his fury swept everything but the immediate crisis out of his mind.

Insanity! Sheer, unmitigated, unforgivable insanity!

The industrial reserves of all Germany were about exhausted; but he could handle that immense problem. Handle it by properly utilizing the manufacturing potential of the occupied countries; reverse the unmanageable practices of importing the labor forces. Labor forces? Slaves!

Productivity disastrous; sabotage continuous, unending.

What did they expect?

It was a time for sacrifice! Hitler could not continue to be all things to all people! He could not provide outsized Mercedeses and grand operas and populated restaurants; he had to provide, instead, tanks, munitions, ships, aircraft! These were the priorities!

But the Führer could never erase the memory of the 1918 revolution.

How totally inconsistent! The sole man whose will was shaping history, who was close to the preposterous dream of a thousand-year Reich, was petrified of a long-ago memory of unruly mobs, of unsatisfied masses.

Speer wondered if future historians would record the fact. If they would comprehend just how weak Hitler really was when it came to his own countrymen. How he buckled in fear when consumer production fell below anticipated schedules.

Insanity!

But still he, the Reichs-minister of Armaments, could control this calamitous inconsistency as long as he was convinced it was just a question of time. A few months; perhaps six at the outside.

For there was Peenemünde.

The rockets.

Everything reduced itself to Peenemünde!

Peenemünde was irresistible. Peenemünde would cause the collapse of London and Washington. Both governments would see the futility of continuing the exercise of wholesale annihilation.

Reasonable men could then sit down and create reasonable treaties.

Even if it meant the silencing of unreasonable men. Silencing Hitler.

Speer knew there were others who thought that way, too. The Führer was manifestly beginning to show unhealthy signs of pressure—fatigue. He now surrounded himself with mediocrity—an ill-disguised desire to remain in the comfortable company of his intellectual equals. But it went too far when the Reich itself was affected. A wine merchant, the foreign minister! A third-rate party propagandizer, the minister of eastern affairs! An erstwhile fighter pilot, the overseer of the entire economy!

Even himself. Even the quiet, shy architect; now the minister of armaments.

All that would change with Peenemünde.

Even himself. Thank God!

But first there had to be Peenemünde. There could be no question of its operational success. For without Peenemünde, the war was lost.

And now they were telling him there was a question. A flaw that might well be the precursor of Germany’s defeat.

A vacuous-looking corporal opened the door of the cabinet room. Speer walked in and saw that the long conference table was about two-thirds filled, the chairs in cliquish separation, as if the groups were suspect of one another. As, indeed, they were in these times of progressively sharpened rivalries within the Reich.

He walked to the head of the table, where—to his right—sat the only man in the room he could trust. Franz Alt-müller.

Alt-müller was a forty-two-year-old cynic. Tall, blond, aristocratic; the vision of the Third Reich Aryan who did not, for a minute, subscribe to the racial nonsense proclaimed by the Third Reich. He did, however, subscribe to the theory of acquiring whatever benefits came his way by pretending to agree with anyone who might do him some good.

In public.

In private, among his very close associates, he told the truth.

When that truth might also benefit him.

Speer was not only Alt-müller’s associate, he was his friend. Their families had been more than neighbors; the two fathers had often gone into joint merchandising ventures; the mothers had been school chums.

Alt-müller had taken after his father. He was an extremely capable businessman; his expertise was in production administration.

“Good morning,” said Alt-müller, flicking an imaginary thread off his tunic lapel. He wore his party uniform far more often than was necessary, preferring to err on the side of the archangel.

“That seems unlikely,” replied Speer, sitting down rapidly. The groups—and they were groups—around the table kept talking among themselves but the voices were perceptibly quieter. Eyes kept darting over in Speer’s direction, then swiftly away; everyone was prepared for immediate silence yet none wished to appear apprehensive, guilty.

Silence would come when either Alt-müller or Speer himself rose from his chair to address the gathering. That would be the signal. Not before. To render attention before that movement might give the appearance of fear. Fear was equivalent to an admission of error. No one at the conference table could afford that.

Alt-müller opened a brown manila folder and placed it in front of Speer. It was a list of those summoned to the meeting. There were essentially three distinct factions with subdivisions within each, and each with its spokesman. Speer read the names and unobtrusively—he thought—looked up to ascertain the presence and location of the three leaders.

At the far end of the table, resplendent in his general’s uniform, his tunic a field of decorations going back thirty years, sat Ernst Leeb, Chief of the Army Ordnance Office. He was of medium height but excessively muscular, a condition he maintained well into his sixties. He smoked his cigarette through an ivory holder which he used to cut off his various subordinates’ conversations at will. In some ways Leeb was a caricature, yet still a powerful one. Hitler liked him, as much for his imperious military bearing as for his abilities.

At the midpoint of the table, on the left, sat Albert Vögler, the sharp, aggressive general manager of Reich’s Industry. Vögler was a stout man, the image of a burgomaster; the soft flesh of his face constantly creased into a questioning scowl. He laughed a great deal, but his laughter was hard; a device, not an enjoyment. He was well suited to his position. Vögler liked nothing better than hammering out negotiations between industrial adversaries. He was a superb mediator because all parties were usually frightened of him.

Across from Vögler and slightly to the right, toward Alt-müller and Speer, was Wilhelm Zangen, the Reich official of the German Industrial Association. Zangen was thin- lipped, painfully slender, humorless; a fleshed-out skeleton happiest over his charts and graphs. A precise man who was given to perspiring at the edge of his receding hairline and below the nostrils and on his chin when nervous. He was perspiring now, and continuously brought his handkerchief up to blot the embarrassing moisture. Somewhat in contradiction to his appearance, however, Zangen was a persuasive debater. For he never argued without the facts.

They were all persuasive, thought Speer. And if it were not for his anger, he knew such men could—probably would—intimidate him. Albert Speer was honest in self-assessment; he realized that he had no substantial sense of authority. He found it difficult to express his thoughts forthrightly among such potentially hostile men. But now the potentially hostile men were in a defensive position. He could not allow his anger to cause them to panic, to seek only absolution for themselves.

They needed a remedy. Germany needed a remedy.

Peenemünde had to be saved.

“How would you suggest we begin?” Speer asked Alt-müller, shading his voice so no one else at the table could hear him.

“I don’t think it makes a particle of difference. It will take an hour of very loud, very boring, very obtuse explanations before we reach anything concrete.”

“I’m not interested in explanations. . . .”

“Excuses, then.”

“Least of all, excuses. I want a solution.”

“If it’s to be found at this table—which, frankly, I doubt—you’ll have to sit through the excess verbiage. Perhaps something will come of it. Again, I doubt it.”

“Would you care to explain that?”

Alt-müller looked directly into Speer’s eyes. “Ultimately, I’m not sure there is a solution. But if there is, I don’t think it’s at this table. . . . Perhaps I’m wrong. Why don’t we listen first?”

“All right. Would you please open with the summary you prepared? I’m afraid I’d lose my temper midway through.”

“May I suggest,” Alt-müller whispered, “that it will be necessary for you to lose your temper at some point during this meeting. I don’t see how you can avoid it.”

“I understand.”

Alt-müller pushed back his chair and stood up. Grouping by grouping the voices trailed off around the table.

“Gentlemen. This emergency session was called for reasons of which we assume you are aware. At least you should be aware of them. Apparently it is only the Reichs-minister of Armaments and his staff who were not informed; a fact which the Reichs-minister and his staff find appalling. . . . In short words, the Peenemünde operation faces a crisis of unparalleled severity. In spite of the millions poured into this most vital weaponry development, in spite of the assurances consistently offered by your respective departments, we now learn that production may be brought to a complete halt within a matter of weeks. Several months prior to the agreed-upon date for the first operational rockets. That date has never been questioned. It has been the keystone for whole military strategies; entire armies have been maneuvered to coordinate with it. Germany’s victory is predicated on it. . . . But now Peenemünde is threatened; Germany is threatened. . . . If the projections the Reichs-minister’s staff have compiled—unearthed and compiled—are valid, the Peenemünde complex will exhaust its supply of industrial diamonds in less than ninety days. Without industrial diamonds the precision tooling in Peenemünde cannot continue.”

The babble of voices—excited, guttural, vying for attention—erupted the second Alt-müller sat down. General Leeb’s cigarette holder slashed the air in front of him as though it were a saber; Albert Vögler scowled and wrinkled his flesh- puffed eyes, placed his bulky hands on the table and spoke harshly in a loud monotone; Wilhelm Zangen’s handkerchief was working furiously around his face and his neck, his high-pitched voice in conflict with the more masculine tones around him.

Franz Alt-müller leaned toward Speer. “You’ve seen cages of angry ocelots in the zoo? The zookeeper can’t let them hurl themselves into the bars. I suggest you lose your benign temper far earlier than we discussed. Perhaps now.”

“That is not the way.”

“Don’t let them think you are cowed. . . .”

“Nor that I am cowering.” Speer interrupted his friend, the slightest trace of a smile on his lips. He stood up. “Gentlemen.”

The voices trailed off.

“Herr Alt-müller speaks harshly; he does so, I’m sure, because I spoke harshly with him. That was this morning, very early this morning. There is greater perspective now; it is no time for recriminations. This is not to lessen the critical aspects of the situation, for they are great. But anger will solve nothing. And we need solutions. . . . Therefore, I propose to seek your assistance—the assistance of the finest industrial and military minds in the Reich. First, of course, we need to know the specifics. I shall start with Herr Vögler. As manager of Reich’s Industry, would you give us your estimate?”

Vögler was upset; he didn’t wish to be the first called. “I’m not sure I can be of much enlightenment, Herr Reichs-minister. I, too, am subject to the reports given me. They have been optimistic; until the other week there was no suggestion of difficulty.”

“How do you mean, optimistic?” asked Speer.

“The quantities of bortz and carbonado diamonds were said to be sufficient. Beyond this there are the continuing experiments with lithicum, carbon and paraffin. Our intelligence tells us that the Englishman Storey at the British Museum reverified the Hannay-Moissan theories. Diamonds were produced in this fashion.”

“Who verified the Englishman?” Franz Alt-müller did not speak kindly. “Had it occurred to you that such data was meant to be passed?”

“Such verification is a matter for Intelligence. I am not with Intelligence, Herr Alt-müller.”

“Go on,” said Speer quickly. “What else?”

“There is an Anglo-American experiment under the supervision of the Bridgemann team. They are subjecting graphite to pressures in excess of six million pounds per square inch. So far there is no word of success.”

“Is there word of failure?” Alt-müller raised his aristocratic eyebrows, his tone polite.

“I remind you again, I am not with Intelligence. I have received no word whatsoever.”

“Food for thought, isn’t it,” said Alt-müller, without asking a question.

“Nevertheless,” interrupted Speer before Vögler could respond, “you had reason to assume that the quantities of bortz and carbonado were sufficient. Is that not so?”

“Sufficient. Or at least obtainable, Herr Reichs-minister.”

“How so obtainable?”

“I b...

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Autumn 1943. American agent David Spaulding is among the global espionage elite who have converged on Buenos Aires. His top-secret mission can bring World War II to an explosive end. But what happens in this city of assassins, betrayals, and sensual encounters is the most sinister and terrifying deal ever made between two nations. Intense, high-level covert negotiations will soon bear dangerous fruit with the aid of expatriate German industrialist Erich Rhinemann. But suddenly the game changes, and Spaulding is the man caught in the middle. Struggling furiously to save his sanity, the woman he loves, and his very life, Spaulding might be the only one who can rescue the world from a shattering fate.
 
Praise for Robert Ludlum and The Rhinemann Exchange
 
“A superb plot filled with exciting chases, double crosses, secret codes, and beautiful women . . . a picture of the beastliness underlying the espionage world, a world of brilliance without scruples, brutality without restraint.” —Chicago Tribune
 
“A breathtaking pace . . . The plot is extraordinary.” —Bestsellers
 
“A paragon in the field.” —The New York Times

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Bantam
• Date d'édition: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0345539176
• ISBN 13: 9780345539175
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 480