Free Glenn Meade by The Sands of Sakkara (html) Page A

intelligence, with responsibility for overseeing almost twenty
thousand personnel and agents in thirty countries around the world.
    It was almost noon when the young
Prussian adjutant knocked on the office door in the Abwehr's headquarters at
74-76 Tirpitz Ufer in
Berlin
,
overlooking the Landwehr canal, and, receiving no reply, entered. The adjutant
was a new man, barely a week in his post, but he was already acquainted with
the admiral's eccentricity. He saw a small man in his middle fifties with bushy
grey eyebrows and a stooped back, who looked like a provincial schoolmaster,
wearing frayed slippers and a crumpled naval uniform, kneeling on the floor and
feeding a bowl of scraps to two nervous-looking pet dachshunds.
    The adjutant coughed. 'Herr
Admiral.'
    Canaris looked up, distracted.
'What is it, Bauer?'
    'A call from SS headquarters, from
General Schellenberg.'
    'And what does Walter want this
time?'
    'The general requests an urgent
meeting at nine hundred hours.'
    'For what purpose?'
    'He didn't say, Herr Admiral. Only
that it's urgent.'
    Suddenly there was the distant
wail of an air raid siren.
    Canaris sighed, patted the dogs to
calm them, got to his feet and dusted his knees. US Air Force B-17S had been
raiding
Berlin
during daylight all the previous week, with deadly effect, and by the sound of
it they were about to start again. 'Very well. I suppose you had better organize
the car. And make it quick, before the Americans go to work.'
    ' Zu Befehl, Herr Admiral.' Bauer shouted the reply, snapped to attention, and
smartly clicked his heels, causing both animals to whimper. Canaris frowned
with displeasure.
    'Do me a favour, Bauer. This heel-clicking
and shouting business, it's all very well on the parade ground, but please
refrain from doing it in the office. It rather frightens the dogs.'
    Bauer flushed. 'As the Herr
Admiral wishes.'
    When the adjutant left, Canaris
looked down at his beloved dachshunds, their snouts stuck in the bowl, and
sighed wearily.
    'No rest for the wicked, my
children. I have a feeling young Walter may be up to his tricks again.'
    Walter Schellenberg was one of the
most unorthodox SS intelligence officers Canaris had ever met, and perhaps also
the most likable. A young man of thirty-two, and a lawyer by profession, he was
dashing and handsome, with a taste for the finer things in life. A graduate of
the
University
of
Bonn
, he had shrewdly
joined the SS after Hitler came to power in 1933, and managed to obtain a post
in the SD, the SS intelligence department, where his sharp aptitude and
businesslike mentality soon attracted Himmler. Schellenberg quickly rose to
become a member of Himmler's personal staff, and was eventually appointed Head
of SD Ausland, the foreign intelligence branch, for like his boss he revelled
in plots, subterfuges and secrecy, as if they were his very lifeblood.
    A chain-smoker, he had an easy
manner, and he was in a good mood when Canaris entered his office on the third
floor, despite the fact that the bombardment was going on outside, wisps of
smoke and dust drifting up from the wall ventilator.
    'Sit down, Wilhelm.' Schellenberg
smiled. 'As usual you look like you have the weight of the world on your
shoulders.'
    Schellenberg wore his black SS
uniform, the cuff-titles bearing the legend RFSS in silver thread. Reichsfuhrer
der SS. Himmler's personal staff. The sight of the cuff-title made Canaris
shiver inwardly. He always detested having to visit the Reich Main Security
Office on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, the headquarters of the SS and the Gestapo,
from which Heinrich Himmler and his deputies presided over their empire of
evil. The black uniforms and grim surroundings never failed to send a chill
down his spine.
    'Sometimes it certainly feels that
way,' he replied. 'So, what is it this time, Walter?'
    There was a lull in the bombing
and Canaris heard a screech of tyres outside in the inner courtyard as a truck