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That, of course, hadn’t been the way they had explained the job to him. In several little pep talks they’d assured him they were totally confident that he could carry this “responsibility” off. But Fulmar’s lifelong experience with those in authority had taught him otherwise.
Fulmar had his current situation pretty well figured out. It was kind of like a chess game. From the time he had received his first chess set, a Christmas gift from his mother’s employer when he was ten, he had been fascinated with the game—and intrigued by the ways it paralleled life. In life, for instance, just as in chess, pawns were cheerfully sacrificed when it seemed that would benefit the more powerful pieces.
In this game, he was a white pawn. And he was being used as bait in the capture of two of the enemy’s pieces, whom Fulmar thought of as a bishop and a knight. The problem was that the black bishop and knight were accompanied by a number of other pawns both black and white.
If the game went as planned (here Life and Chess differed), the bishop and the knight would change sides. And the white pawn wearing the second lieutenant’s gold bar would be promoted to knight. If something went wrong, the second lieutenant pawn and the black pawns (who didn’t even know they were in play) would be swept from the board (or—according to the rules of this game—shot) and the remaining players would continue the game.
The bishop was a man named Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz, a Pomeranian aristocrat presently serving as the senior officer of the Franco-German Armistice Commission for Morocco. His knight was Obersturmbannführer SS-SD Johann Müller, presently serving as the Security Adviser to the Franco-German Armistice Commission.
Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz, who had been educated at Harvard and had once been the German Consul General in New Orleans, had not long before established contact with Robert Murphy, the American Consul General for Morocco.
Von Heurten-Mitnitz informed Murphy then that he was convinced Germany was in the hands of a madman and that the only salvation he saw for Germany was its quick defeat by the Western Powers. He was therefore prepared, he said, to do whatever was necessary to see that Germany lost the war as quickly as possible.
The German diplomat went on to tell Murphy that Obersturmbannführer Müller, for his own reasons, had come to the same conclusion and was similarly offering his services: Through his own “official” sources, Müller had come into knowledge of the atrocities committed by the SS “Special Squads” on the Eastern Front and of the extermination camps operated at several locations by the SS. Müller was a professional policeman, and he was shocked by what the SS was doing (it was not only inhuman, it was unprofessional) .
Also, Müller understood that his one great ambition in life—to retire to the Hessian farm where he had been born—would not be possible if he were tried as a war criminal and hanged.
This being not only the real world, but also the real world at war, Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz’s noble offer could not be accepted at face value. His intentions had to be tested. He was offered a choice: He could do a job for the Americans, at genuine risk to himself; or he could choose to satisfy other needs.
Enter the pawns:
There were in French Morocco a number of French officers, Army, Service de l’aire, and Navy, who did not regard it as their duty to obey the terms of the Franco-German Armistice. Rather, they saw it as their duty as officers to continue the fight against Germany. These officers had provided considerable information and other assistance to curious Americans. And they were fully aware that what they were doing was considered treason.
Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz’s controller told him that he would be expected to round up twenty “treasonous” French officers whom the Americans wished to protect from French forces loyal to Vichy, and from the Germans themselves, and take them to the palace of the Pasha of Ksar es Souk, where they would be turned over to an American officer.
The American officer was to be parachuted into Morocco shortly before the invasion began. As soon as possible after the ships of the American force appeared off the Moroccan coast, he would contact Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz to furnish the names of the twenty officers.
Finally, Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz was informed that the American officer’s name was Second Lieutenant Eric Fulmar. Von Heurten-Mitnitz would not fail to take note of this. A U.S. Army second lieutenant, even one assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, was small potatoes. But Second Lieutenant Fulmar, Infantry, United States Army, held dual citizenship. His father, the Baron von Fulmar, was not only highly placed in the Nazi Party, but was General Director of Fulmar Elektrische G.m.b.H.
For months Eric Fulmar had been a thorn in the
side of his father and of many highly placed Party officials. When the war began, Eric had been a student of electrical engineering at the University of Marburg an der Lahn. But he had not remained in Germany to accept his duty to don a uniform to fight for the Fatherland. Young Fulmar’s departure was of course seen as a mighty thumbing of his nose at the Thousand-Year Reich. In other words, he was a messy embarrassment to his father and the Party.
Worse yet, he had not dignified his desertion by going to the United States. That could have been more or less explained. But he had gone to Morocco, of all places, as the guest of his classmate, Sidi Hassan el Ferruch, Pasha of Ksar es Souk.
Once there, he promptly made matters even worse by entering into the profitable business of smuggling gold, currency, and precious gems out of France through Morocco. His American passport and a diplomatic passport issued to him by the Pasha of Ksar es Souk saved him from arrest and prosecution.
When Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz was named to the Franco-German Armistice Commission, one of his missions had been to see that young Fulmar was returned to Germany. His best efforts (really those of Obersturmbannführer Müller) had been to no avail. And when the Americans entered the war—when he could have been arrested without offending American neutrality—Eric von Fulmar had simply disappeared.
In the American vernacular, then, Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz and Obersturmbannführer Müller were now offered the choice of putting up or shutting up.
The easiest thing for them would be to round up the twenty French officers and Baron Eric Fulmar and accept the congratulations of their superiors. It was hoped, of course, that, as their contribution to a quick end to the war, they would take the twenty to Second Lieutenant Fulmar and safety at Ksar es Souk. Which, of course, was treason.
More important, they would be compromised. Thereafter, the Americans would be able to demand other services—under threat of letting the SS know what they had done in Morocco.
When he had parachuted into the desert near Ksar es Souk three days before, Lieutenant Eric Fulmar would not have been surprised to find himself immediately surrounded by Waffen-SS troops. As it happened, German troops did not meet him; but this was no proof that Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz and Müller were playing the game as they were expected to. They may well have been waiting until he had furnished the names of the French officers before arresting him.
As soon as the code word signaling that the invasion was about to begin came over the Zenith portable radio, he had called Rabat to order the delivery of the list of French officers to Müller. Then he had telephoned Müller and told him the list was in his mailbox. To Fulmar’s surprise, Müller had told him the precise hour he expected to be at Ksar es Souk.
Müller was so clear and careful about the time of his arrival that Fulmar immediately suspected that when the truck appeared, it would be full of Waffen-SS troopers, not French officers. In view of that, he decided to change his plan to accompany the Berber force that would intercept the Müller convoy before it reached Ksar es Souk.
He decided he would watch the intercept from the palace tower.
Pawns are put in jeopardy, he thought. That’s part of the game. But nowhere is it written that they have to put themselves in jeopardy.
When the announcer began to repeat the presidential proclamation, Fulmar searched through the broadcast band, hoping to pick up something else. There was nothing.
He turned off the radio and picked up the binoculars again. This time there was a cloud of dust rising from the desert floor. Right on schedule. Fulmar slid off the antique chair and knelt on the stone floor in a position that would allow him to rest his elbows on the parapet to steady the binoculars.
