The Honor of Spies

Goebbels, because there would not be an uproar in the world's press over Germans shooting down a civilian airline of a neutral power carrying a load of priests and nuns.

Goring, because Hitler hadn't ordered the Luftwaffe to do the shooting down. And Heinrich Himmler, because he hadn't been ordered to put the Sicherheitsdienst to work destroying the airplanes.

Not one of them--but me, personally!

"Have von Deitzberg take care of this."

All Himmler was doing was relaying the Fuhrer's orders.

Yet if I somehow succeed in destroying the airplanes, Himmler will of course take all the credit.

And if I fail, I will have Hitler personally furious with me. And I am a lowly SS-brigadefuhrer, not a senior general. Hitler doesn't scream at unimportant people like me; he just has the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler stand them in front of a wall.

Unless he's really angry, and orders the Leibstandarte to hang me from a butcher's hook with Goebbels's movie cameras filming so the Fuhrer can watch my agony at his leisure and over and over again.

And it's not as if I don't already have my hands full.

I still have no idea how I'm going to do what else I have to do here--eliminate that gottverdammt

American Frade of the OSS, locate and eliminate the Froggers, find out how much damage the Froggers have done to Operation Phoenix, and check on both how the confidential special fund is being handled in Uruguay and whether that miserable deviate von Tresmarck has been able to keep his mouth shut.

And now this!

And I am absolutely alone!

Cranz and Raschner are incompetent--not only did they fail to eliminate Frade but they managed to lose an SS officer and half a dozen of his men while shooting up an empty house. Only a fool would not consider that they will shortly receive a letter from Himmler--now that I think about it, it probably came in the same pouch as Himmler's letter to von Lutzenberger and me--ordering them to secretly report on how I am carrying out my assignments.

And Cranz will do a good job on that. That Sohn der einer Hundin would like nothing better than to get me out of the way so he could become first deputy adjutant to the Reichsfuhrer-SS.

Well, as I always say about facing a difficult task: "You need good men and a lot of money."

And I have all the money I could possibly need--or will just as soon as I can get to Uruguay.

But men? Where am I going to find good men?