Part III: Part XI
Chapter III: The Lion’s Den
Part XI
July 29, 1936
Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia, last monarch of the Second Reich, and successor to Frederick the Great, was no more. Sitting in a parked car under a footbridge in neutral Holland, Victor Reinert had heard of little else in the past week.
The Kaiser had died at his private estate, Huis Doorn, near Utrecht, on the morning of July twenty-first, apparently of a brain embolism. Though once reviled throughout Europe, he was honored at his death with a surprising degree of respect from the western powers that had once opposed him. At their instigation, the German government believed, the neutral government of the Netherlands -- which had played host to the Kaiser for a decade and a half -- sought to keep his body in the country for a private burial.
von Neurath had traveled personally to the Hague to negotiate for the return of the Kaiser’s body to Germany for a lavish state funeral. He was rebuffed. Dutch authorities insisted that they would steadfastly adhere to the wish expressed in the Kaiser’s will not to be returned to German soil until the monarchy was restored. Hitler, Canaris had said, was convinced that the Dutch -- or worse, the British -- had somehow tampered with the will, and deeply regretted the lost opportunity to walk behind Wilhelm’s casket in a show of continuity with the Second Reich. Instead, the man who had been the terror of a continent was interred just five days later in the family mausoleum at Huis Doorn in a small ceremony attended by barely two hundred dignitaries and close friends.
While investigating the medical circumstances of the Kaiser’s demise, an Abwehr-run spy cell in southern Holland had learned of another significant death on the same day as Wilhelm’s. Dirk Jan de Geer, a prominent Dutch politician and onetime prime minister, had attended a dinner at the home of a British national and fallen ill later that night. He was dead by morning. The leader of the cell, a Dutch fascist named Markus van Driel, had almost immediately become convinced of foul play. de Geer’s position as one of the nation’s strongest advocates of nonaligned neutrality made him, in van Driel’s assessment, a key impediment to Britain bringing the Netherlands into the war as one of the Allies. He had sent repeated and urgent requests to the Abwehr’s Berlin headquarters seeking permission to steal Kaiser Wilhelm’s body -- and possibly de Geer’s as well -- and trick an unwitting Amsterdam physician into performing autopsies. At some point, these communiqués reached Canaris’ desk, sending him into rare fit. van Driel and his cell were to attempt no such thing, he replied.
Dirk Jan de Geer was seen as a powerful influence in keeping Hendrikus Colijn’s government out of any attachments to the Allies.
Canaris judged the scheme to be madcap in the extreme -- conceived, as it was, by a men’s hat salesman -- and a danger to the delicate political situation with the Netherlands. He had been very much discomfited to receive an urgent message the very next morning, proposing to kidnap the prominent British citizen who had served de Geer his last meal, and torture him for information about his involvement with the SIS. Hoping to discourage van Driel and his associates from doing anything rash, Canaris had consented to a lesser operation. A special Abwehr group would be inserted into Germany to surreptitiously remove de Geer’s remains to Germany for testing for foul play, with van Driel allowed a strictly diversionary role. Operation Alraunwurzel was born.
Reinert, still deeply shaken by the incident in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland, had been reluctant to accept the mission. He protested to Canaris that he still did not fully trust the lives of his fellow agents to his own instincts. The Admiral, although moved, had impressed upon him the critical importance of determining the nature of any foreign influences in a country as strategically and politically important to Germany as the Netherlands. He didn’t need to spell out the consequences of Hendrikus Colijn’s government throwing its lot in with the Allies. Although the Dutch military itself was decisively outmatched, an Anglo-French landing in Holland could prove disastrous. Germany’s low-lying, sinuous border with the Netherlands was not particularly defensible, and there was ample area for staging large field armies. Directives from Hitler himself reflected his opinion that the Netherlands were the single greatest strategic vulnerability of the newly-expanded Greater German Reich. He had decreed that all priority must be given to keeping the Dutch out of the war. And so, Reinert had assumed command of the operation.
Over the next four days, van Driel, suddenly more docile after having been taken seriously by the Abwehr, began to send along substantial amounts of intelligence useful in the planning of Alraunwurzel. He had learned that prior to de Geer’s large funeral, an autopsy had in fact been been performed at St. Antonius Gasthuis, Utrecht’s most modern hospital. Whatever the findings had been, the official cause of death had not been publicly contradicted. de Geer’s body, van Driel learned, had been placed back in its sealed coffin, awaiting a private burial on the thirtieth of July. He was almost sure that the hospital still had it stored in its morgue.
And so, the German plan had taken shape. Five german agents, all of them veterans, would cross the Belgian-Dutch border near Zundert by truck, posing as musicians. Joseph Gottlob and Elisabeth Markl, who had gone with Reinert to Sankt Gallen seven months prior were the other two senior members of the team. In addition, Helmut Schelsky, a young sociologist well-liked by Canaris, would be responsible for photographing the autopsy documents for study in Berlin. The fifth and final root of the mandrake, as he called himself in reference to the operation’s code name, was a twenty-six year old adventurer by the name of Erich Gimpel. He had returned to Germany from South America upon the outbreak of war in Belgium, and was considered competent and capable far beyond his years. He would serve as Operation Alraunwurzel’s radio operator.
After crossing the border, the team was to stop the truck in a clearing, whereupon Reinert would get out and travel three kilometers on foot to a tiny churchyard where van Driel would be waiting. Having determined that nothing was awry, Reinert would lead van Driel back to the truck, whereupon the Dutchman would drive them to a safe house in Utrecht. Here, van Driel was storing the Abwehr-provided hearse that was so crucial to the operation. For the team would bring with it a coffin containing a significantly decomposed corpse with a resemblance to de Geer -- a ward against the off-chance that someone opened the hermetically-sealed coffin before the burial -- and dry ice for preservation. The idea was that the team would take on the appearance of a normal hearse and its attendants, gain access to the morgue, identify de Geer’s body, and then switch it with the one brought from Germany before sealing both coffins and smuggling their cargo out of the country.
And so, early on the morning of the twenty-seventh, Reinert and his team had boarded a plane from Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport to a military airfield outside Brussels. They crossed the border without incident, and successfully rendezvoused with van Driel. In person, he inspired perhaps even less confidence even than his photograph. He had a gaunt, weathered face, and lank yellow hair that hung almost to his shoulders. Nonetheless, he proved a competent driver, and they arrived that afternoon at the Utrecht safe house. There, despite explicit instructions not to involve the other members of the cell in the operation, van Driel introduced his two co-conspirators. Julian Smit was a very pale man in his thirties with a fierce admiration for National Socialism which he wasted no time professing to the Germans.
Now, squeezed up against van Driel’s second accomplice in the parked hearse, Reinert recalled their introduction two days before. “This is Gegenfurtner,” van Driel had said simply as a massively built man stepped into the room. He was fully a head and a half taller than Reinert and built on a frame more appropriate to a draft animal. “And I,” Reinert had replied, flushing, “am Rausch.”
They had spent the next day reconnoitering the hospital and its environs and refining the plan for the operation. Posing as a reformed minister’s secretary, Markl had been able to access documentation showing that de Geer’s coffin was indeed being kept in an annex behind St. Antonius Gasthuis. van Driel had managed to rent a small loft behind the hospital and from here they surveyed the area. St. Antonius was a long three-story brick building, with two newer wings that projected backwards from the far ends of the structure. There was a large courtyard in the space thus created, with a long walkway running to the annex, which abutted the street that ran behind the hospital complex.
St. Antonius Gasthuis from the front.
The hospital from the southeast, near the start of one of the new wings.
The annex, Reinert learned, was used exclusively as a morgue. Unless a body was being handled, there were only two people working there at any time during the day -- the diener and another doctor who had an office on the side facing away from the street. The Utrecht coroner had offices in the main hospital building, using the annex only when necessary. A watchman was employed each night to patrol the grounds, including both the annex and main building. The Germans could not count on his schedule being regular enough to execute the operation while he was elsewhere. Reinert had quickly ruled any night break-in too risky. They would have to carry out Operation Alraunwurzel during the daytime.
And so it was finalized: at ten o’clock exactly, the operation would begin with a spectacular diversion. Smit was to crash a small automobile against the hospital’s façade and flee the scene. Rigged with incendiaries, it would burst into a colorful fireball several seconds later, hopefully attracting the attention of all the medical and emergency personnel in the area. Markl, already in the hospital, would rush back to the annex and bring whoever was inside with her to the scene of the apparent accident.
The Germans -- taking Gegenfurtner along for his immense strength -- would then calmly drive the hearse up to the morgue annex, enter the building, perform the switch and drive back to the safe house. de Geer would then be loaded onto their truck and driven back into Free Belgium before nightfall.
Reinert was jolted to alertness by the starting of the hearse’s engine. Gottlob pulled it out from under the footbridge and down a tree-lined street. Reinert checked his watch. Nine forty.
They had soon pulled into the alley next to the three-story building containing van Driel’s loft. He would remain there throughout the entire operation and keep watch for anyone approaching the morgue. Reinert had given him a powerful flashlight with which he would signal danger to those below. He recapitulated the instructions for its use as the two men climbed the stairs to the loft.
It was respectably furnished, with a broad window looking down on the back of the hospital. Reinert perched himself on the window sill and withdrew his binoculars from a pocket. Unlike the rest of the team -- dressed in dark suits -- Reinert wore a physician’s coat, mask and stethoscope which he hoped might give him an added edge in bluffing his way out of trouble if necessary. The doctor’s outfit also afforded the advantage of ample pockets for his equipment and a loose-fitting profile -- from his belt Reinert wore Operation Alraunwurzel’s only firearm, a British-made Enfield No. 2 Mk I revolver.
Reinert scanned the binoculars across the hospital grounds and its silhouette against the morning sky. The day was thinly overcast, and Reinert noted the lack of shadows on the ground. He checked the watch again. Ten minutes. He returned to watching the hospital and its grounds for what seemed like the better part of an hour. Five minutes. He could hear van Driel’s agitated breathing behind him. One minute. Reinert swallowed several times to clear a knot in his throat. After Markl’s diversion, she was to get away from the get away from the hospital on foot and take a taxi back to the area of the safe house. Will there be any problem for her?
Reinert glanced back at the watch. Now. In fifteen seconds he heard screeching tires and the sound of crumpling steel.
He focused the binoculars on the rear entrance of the main hospital block. The doors opened and a woman in red appeared, running along the paved pathway to the morgue building. She covered the distance quickly, and began to knock frantically at the door on the side of the building.
Reinert felt van Driel tugging at his sleeve. “Look! Smoke.”
Sure enough, a plume of brown smoke could be seen on the other side of the hospital, now reaching up to twice the height of the three-story building’s roof.
Bringing the binoculars back to the morgue, he saw Markl leading two men out the door and towards the main hospital.
“Good, that’s her. Remember the signal, and keep a sharp watch over all avenues of approach.” Reinert clapped van Driel on the back -- partly to encourage him to follow his instructions, and partly to instill in himself a sense of confident leadership that he did not feel. Most of the other respected Abwehr agents acted like that -- patronizing those around them to project experience and competence. The reserved Canaris was the most notable exception.
Reinert dashed down the stairs of the loft, and got into the front seat of the hearse. “The annex should be clear. Drive calmly and slowly.”
Gottlob pulled out of the alley and onto the street behind the hospital. Within moments, the morgue had come into view.
“That’s the annex right there ahead,” Reinert said, pointing ahead. Gottlob backed the hearse into the driveway and turned off the engine.
Instructing the others to remain in the hearse, Reinert got out, and crossed onto the hospital lawns on foot. He walked calmly around to the entrance that he had watched Markl use barely two minutes earlier. He slipped a hand into his coat and grasped the handle of his revolver.
Reinert knocked forcefully four times. There was no sound from within. He knocked again. “Hallo?” Silence. He opened the door, slipped quickly into the room, and shut it behind him. To his immediate left was the open door to the physician’s office -- Reinert poked his head in. He was alone in the building. Sweeping his eyes around himself, he found himself in a spacious room. Further along the wall to his left, beyond the office door, was the entrance to the storage room which van Driel had told him about the day before. To his right was the principal morgue -- two rows of three tables for examination and embalming, one of which held a draped body -- and directly ahead of him three empty autopsy tables. The far corner of the room was occupied by what looked like a giant metal safe -- perhaps four meters by four meters -- and reaching up to the ceiling. A heavy steel door allowed access to what Reinert knew to be the refrigerated storage room. Into the wall to Reinert’s right -- the side facing the street -- was recessed a large pair of double doors for loading and receiving bodies, as well as a small back door. All around the room were boxes of medical instruments, freestanding racks of chemicals, file cabinets, and numerous other small items that would need to be left exactly as Reinert now found them to ensure the secrecy of the operation. He fixed in his mind the precise condition of the room as a series of mental photographs, took a deep breath and threw open the double doors to let in the others.
Gottlob backed the hearse up to the opening, and the others sprang out of the vehicle and squeezed around the rear of the hearse through the doorway. Gegenfurtner, whose fitting into the vehicle at all Reinert still could not quite comprehend, opened the back of the hearse and singlehandedly slid the coffin out on its runners onto the low table next to the doorway which was used for loading and unloading coffins.
“Get these,” Gottlob said, pointing over his head as he slipped into the morgue.
Reinert blinked. “What?”
“Those bundles at the top of the doorframe -- they’re black drapes meant for keeping the loading dignified. Gimpel and Gegenfurtner: pull them down so they close off the space between the hearse body and the doorframe itself.”
As the drapes came down, Reinert jammed both of the remaining doors -- the one in the back and the one on the side -- with steel bevel jams. Both doors opened inward, and until Reinert removed the jams, the Germans could count on no one being able to force their way into the annex.
As soon as the doors were jammed, those within the morgue snapped to their designated duties. Schelsky, the sociologist, and Gottlob began searching the file cabinets for the files from the de Geer autopsy. Reinert opened the metal door to the refrigerated storage room, followed by Gimpel and Gegenfurtner. He was struck by a rush of cold air and fumbled around for the light, finally finding the switch. There were three draped bodies lying on shelves, and a single metal-lined coffin resting on a rolling dolly.
“Alright. Alright...” Reinert stared at the coffin. They would have to get this coffin out and onto one of the tables in the morgue room, then switch the bodies between coffins. That of the real de Geer appeared far too heavy to handle. “Ge-gegenfurtner?”
“Yes sir?”
Reinert checked his watch. Fire crews would be attending to the burning car by now. “Gegenfurtner, tell me please if you are able to lift that coffin at all.”
Lumbering stooped through the doorway, he obediently grasped the coffin’s handles and tried to lift it. “If you and Gimpel help, we can lift it. I will roll it out first.”
Reinert backed out of the way as Gegenfurtner rolled the dolly into the main room and stopped it next to one of the examination tables. Reinert stooped to read the tag tied to one of the coffin handles. de Geer, D. “That’s him, men.”
Having found the de Geer papers in a file cabinet near the autopsy tables, Gottlob began laying the pages out on the empty autopsy table as Schelsky readied his camera.
Meanwhile, Gimpel, Reinert and the massive Dutchman each grasped a handle of de Geer’s coffin, bringing it toward the nearest embalming table. In doing so, however, they would have to rotate the coffin ninety degrees. After some moments of grunting and struggling, they set the coffin back down on the dolly. One of the several freestanding racks of chemicals that dotted the room was resting against the wall of the refrigerated room, blocking the way to the embalming table. At a word from Reinert, Gegenfurtner picked it up almost effortlessly and set it down at the center of the room barely even rattling the bottles of chemicals set upon it. Now, they were able to pick the coffin back up and set it down on the table. Gimpel began to unfasten the latches.
Reinert slipped the mask up over his nose and mouth. With Gimpel’s help he pushed open the coffin’s heavy lid. There was a sharp hiss as the hermetic seal was broken. Even through the mask, Reinert was instantly struck by the strong odor from within -- a combination of organic decay and the chemicals used to prevent it. He slipped from his breast pocket the photo of de Geer. The corpse was dressed in a dark suit; the face was somewhat mottled in complexion, and wore the full white mustache that appeared in the picture Reinert had been given of him. He could have mistaken him for the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel, judging strictly by appearance. “That’s him.”
The three men reached into the coffin and eased the body out and onto the adjacent table. They turned to the coffin they had brought with them and Gimpel opened it. Reinert paced over to the window and peered through the blinds. The loft window was dark. “Still all clear,” Reinert reported, “but we must keep watch.” The now-open coffin next to Gimpel revealed a decomposing body, lying on a bed of dry ice. It wore a similar mustache -- perhaps like in appearance to de Geer after two weeks at room temperature. Canaris was sure that even in the unlikely event that the coffin were opened again, the startled diener would be unlikely to report the corpse’s unusually rapid decay for fear that it would reflect poorly on his own performance in embalming the body. Rather, it served primarily to simulate the weight of an undisturbed coffin.
By now, Schelsky had the pages from the autopsy spread out, and was carefully photographing them one by one. Gottlob was at the window watching for any signal from van Driel. Reinert and the two stronger men took several steadying breaths before carefully lifting the pseudo-de Geer out of his coffin and into that of the real de Geer. Reinert carefully rearranged the corpse’s posture to a position similar to that which the real de Geer had held. At his signal, Gegenfurtner closed the lid and began to attend to the latches. Reinert could hear sirens in the distance. “Still no signal, right?”
Gottlob turned back in Reinet’s direction. “No. No signal.”
“Good. Erich, keep the pace up.”
“Yes, Herr Rausch.” Gimpel, who had a nozzle up to the coffin’s gasket, was pumping out air as fast as he could. Next to him was a large canister of the inert gas he would pump back into the coffin before completing the seal -- giving the perfect appearance of unbroken hermetic isolation of the corpse within.
Reinert could feel the beating of his own heart. The sirens were making him nervous, but he reassured himself that they were simply responding to the diversion on the far side of the hospital. While Gimpel worked on the hermetic seal, Reinert helped Schelsky replace the autopsy documents in the file cabinet which they had been taken from. Everything was in just the right order. It had to be. Is it? Reinert reopened the cabinet in a panic, rifling through the documents twice more before assuring himself that he was leaving everything exactly as it had been.
The click of steel latches told Reinert that Gimpel was finished. He saw Gegenfurtner help Gimpel load it back onto the dolly and into the refrigeration room. He checked that it was back in position and closed the metal door when they were all out. “We’re still clear? No signal, right?”
Gottlob remained at the window. “Correct.”
“Only one more thing to do then...”
“One. Two. Three!” The three men heaved de Geer’s body up off the table and eased it into the new coffin. There was a rolling crunch as the dry ice settled around the body’s extremities. Gimpel produced two more bags of dry ice and fitted them into the coffin’s open spaces. As soon as his fingers were clear, Gegenfurtner brought the lid down and closed it. Schelsky assisting now, the four of them lifted the coffin off the table, only to be startled by a loud thud from within the coffin. They set it back down on the low table and opened it.
de Geer’s head was splayed at an odd angle against the side wall of the coffin. Reinert could see that the skin was broken where the forehead had impacted. They had been instructed to keep the body as close to its post-autopsy condition as possible -- if it wasn’t, German investigators could have a hard time discerning anything conclusive about the true cause of death. “Pack something in! Is there any more dry ice?”
“Uhhh... There’s one more bag in the front of the hearse.” Gimpel sprinted out the morgue’s back door.
“He’s not going to be seen, is he?” Reinert snapped.
“No, still no signal.”
Gimpel came bounding back into the room with the bag under his arm. He quickly reset de Geer’s head in the proper position and fitted the bag into the space between the right ear and the coffin wall. He tested how much the head would roll around. It seemed firm. Gegenfurtner closed the coffin once again, and they lifted it off the table by its handles.
“Easy... Easy...” Reinert lifted the leading corner up over the rim of the hearse’s back bumper.
A thunderous crash sounded from within the coffin. They returned it to the low table and reopened it. de Geer’s body had slid down by half a foot. All it would take was a deep pothole on the road to the Belgian border to inflict serious damage to the head when it slid back up.
“Erich, you’re sure that there is no more dry ice?”
“Yes, Herr Rausch.”
“Anything else to pad him with?” Reinert cast about frantically. Sheets. Cotton balls. A hat and a suit on hooks by the door. A pillow on a stool. Everything in the room had its purpose and would be missed if suddenly gone. Reinert tore off his white coat and rolled it into a letter C. He formed it around de Geer’s head until snug. The coffin was closed yet again, and with Gegenfurtner’s help was loaded quickly and easily into the back of the hearse. The body was definitely secure. Reinert checked to make certain that the coffin’s ventilation hole -- necessary due to the presence of so much dry ice -- was unblocked.
Gottlob slipped out through the black drapes and started the engine, pulling the hearse into the driveway so the doors could be closed. Reinert and Schelsky ran a sweep of the room, checking that all was left just as it had been before they had entered the morgue. The file cabinets, tables and sheets were all back in place. The door to the refrigeration room was closed. The lights were on, but they had been on when the Germans had entered. “Let’s go.”
They closed the double loading doors, removed the steel jams and exited through the back door, joining the others in the driveway. Some of them had gotten out and were packing additional baggage around the coffin to keep it secure. Reinert looked back at the hospital. The brown smoke had stopped rising from the other side of the building, and now hung thirty meters in the air in a diffuse cloud.
“Wait!” yelped Schelsky. Everyone around the hearse snapped their heads in his direction. “The rack of chemicals!”
An image of Walther Neumann’s face flashed in Reinert’s mind. He had been caught because of Reinert’s own miscalculation. Looking at Gottlob: “Go! Drive to the church we passed on the way here. I’ll meet you there on foot. Understood?”
Gottlob nodded, checking to see that the other operatives were in the car. “Clear. Good luck, Victor.”
Reinert flung himself back up the sidewalk toward the morgue’s back entrance just as he heard the hearse pulling away. He opened the door, and carefully swept his eyes over the entire room twice. File cabinets. Tables. Sheets. Doors. Lights. Floor. File cabinets... Reinert dashed across the room and opened the file cabinet, checking again that the autopsy documents were in the right order. They were. File cabinets. Tables. Sheets. Doors. Lights. Floor. The only thing out of place was the rack of chemicals, which still stood at the center of the room. He paced toward it and squatted, picking it up slowly from the base so as not to disturb the bottles on its shelves. It was not quite as heavy as he had imagined, but poorly balanced. He allowed himself twenty seconds to turn ninety degrees to face the wall opposite the coffin. Slowly. One agonizingly slow step, with bended knees, toward the rack’s proper position against the wall. A second. He set it down for a moment and reestablished his grip on the metal poles that framed the rack. He eased it back up. The grip was firmer now, but he still dared breath little. Three steps, sliding the soles of his feet along the floor. Just a few more now and it will be right back in place where --
“Who are you?”
Reinert froze. He looked back over his shoulder. A man in a white doctor’s coat was standing in the doorway.
“I’m just the --”
The man’s eyes were wide with fear. “What are you doing in here?”
Reinert swayed under the rack’s weight. With a sickening rush he followed the doctor’s eyes as they fell to the exposed revolver at his waist. There was a flicker of indecision on the doctor’s face, before, bellowing, he dashed forward and shoved the chemical rack at Reinert with all his might. Reinert staggered backward for a moment, but couldn’t keep his legs under himself for long. The heavy steel frame came crashing down on top of him, its many jars of chemicals slipping off and shattering on the floor. As the sour smell of formaldehyde and harsh disinfectants filled his nostrils, Reinert struggled to free his pinned arms. He could feel broken glass digging into his back. Gritting his teeth, he flailed desperately, trying to get the rack off himself. He was trapped. Reinert turned his head to the side, and saw the white-coated doctor in the doorway, yelling frantically.
“Help! Help! Robber! A robber, help!”
Reinert gathered his strength for another attempt to free himself, but knew that it was too late. Many heavy footfalls could be heard thundering nearer down the concrete path.
Chapter III: The Lion’s Den
Part XI
July 29, 1936
Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia, last monarch of the Second Reich, and successor to Frederick the Great, was no more. Sitting in a parked car under a footbridge in neutral Holland, Victor Reinert had heard of little else in the past week.
The Kaiser had died at his private estate, Huis Doorn, near Utrecht, on the morning of July twenty-first, apparently of a brain embolism. Though once reviled throughout Europe, he was honored at his death with a surprising degree of respect from the western powers that had once opposed him. At their instigation, the German government believed, the neutral government of the Netherlands -- which had played host to the Kaiser for a decade and a half -- sought to keep his body in the country for a private burial.
von Neurath had traveled personally to the Hague to negotiate for the return of the Kaiser’s body to Germany for a lavish state funeral. He was rebuffed. Dutch authorities insisted that they would steadfastly adhere to the wish expressed in the Kaiser’s will not to be returned to German soil until the monarchy was restored. Hitler, Canaris had said, was convinced that the Dutch -- or worse, the British -- had somehow tampered with the will, and deeply regretted the lost opportunity to walk behind Wilhelm’s casket in a show of continuity with the Second Reich. Instead, the man who had been the terror of a continent was interred just five days later in the family mausoleum at Huis Doorn in a small ceremony attended by barely two hundred dignitaries and close friends.
While investigating the medical circumstances of the Kaiser’s demise, an Abwehr-run spy cell in southern Holland had learned of another significant death on the same day as Wilhelm’s. Dirk Jan de Geer, a prominent Dutch politician and onetime prime minister, had attended a dinner at the home of a British national and fallen ill later that night. He was dead by morning. The leader of the cell, a Dutch fascist named Markus van Driel, had almost immediately become convinced of foul play. de Geer’s position as one of the nation’s strongest advocates of nonaligned neutrality made him, in van Driel’s assessment, a key impediment to Britain bringing the Netherlands into the war as one of the Allies. He had sent repeated and urgent requests to the Abwehr’s Berlin headquarters seeking permission to steal Kaiser Wilhelm’s body -- and possibly de Geer’s as well -- and trick an unwitting Amsterdam physician into performing autopsies. At some point, these communiqués reached Canaris’ desk, sending him into rare fit. van Driel and his cell were to attempt no such thing, he replied.
Dirk Jan de Geer was seen as a powerful influence in keeping Hendrikus Colijn’s government out of any attachments to the Allies.
Canaris judged the scheme to be madcap in the extreme -- conceived, as it was, by a men’s hat salesman -- and a danger to the delicate political situation with the Netherlands. He had been very much discomfited to receive an urgent message the very next morning, proposing to kidnap the prominent British citizen who had served de Geer his last meal, and torture him for information about his involvement with the SIS. Hoping to discourage van Driel and his associates from doing anything rash, Canaris had consented to a lesser operation. A special Abwehr group would be inserted into Germany to surreptitiously remove de Geer’s remains to Germany for testing for foul play, with van Driel allowed a strictly diversionary role. Operation Alraunwurzel was born.
Reinert, still deeply shaken by the incident in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland, had been reluctant to accept the mission. He protested to Canaris that he still did not fully trust the lives of his fellow agents to his own instincts. The Admiral, although moved, had impressed upon him the critical importance of determining the nature of any foreign influences in a country as strategically and politically important to Germany as the Netherlands. He didn’t need to spell out the consequences of Hendrikus Colijn’s government throwing its lot in with the Allies. Although the Dutch military itself was decisively outmatched, an Anglo-French landing in Holland could prove disastrous. Germany’s low-lying, sinuous border with the Netherlands was not particularly defensible, and there was ample area for staging large field armies. Directives from Hitler himself reflected his opinion that the Netherlands were the single greatest strategic vulnerability of the newly-expanded Greater German Reich. He had decreed that all priority must be given to keeping the Dutch out of the war. And so, Reinert had assumed command of the operation.
Over the next four days, van Driel, suddenly more docile after having been taken seriously by the Abwehr, began to send along substantial amounts of intelligence useful in the planning of Alraunwurzel. He had learned that prior to de Geer’s large funeral, an autopsy had in fact been been performed at St. Antonius Gasthuis, Utrecht’s most modern hospital. Whatever the findings had been, the official cause of death had not been publicly contradicted. de Geer’s body, van Driel learned, had been placed back in its sealed coffin, awaiting a private burial on the thirtieth of July. He was almost sure that the hospital still had it stored in its morgue.
And so, the German plan had taken shape. Five german agents, all of them veterans, would cross the Belgian-Dutch border near Zundert by truck, posing as musicians. Joseph Gottlob and Elisabeth Markl, who had gone with Reinert to Sankt Gallen seven months prior were the other two senior members of the team. In addition, Helmut Schelsky, a young sociologist well-liked by Canaris, would be responsible for photographing the autopsy documents for study in Berlin. The fifth and final root of the mandrake, as he called himself in reference to the operation’s code name, was a twenty-six year old adventurer by the name of Erich Gimpel. He had returned to Germany from South America upon the outbreak of war in Belgium, and was considered competent and capable far beyond his years. He would serve as Operation Alraunwurzel’s radio operator.
After crossing the border, the team was to stop the truck in a clearing, whereupon Reinert would get out and travel three kilometers on foot to a tiny churchyard where van Driel would be waiting. Having determined that nothing was awry, Reinert would lead van Driel back to the truck, whereupon the Dutchman would drive them to a safe house in Utrecht. Here, van Driel was storing the Abwehr-provided hearse that was so crucial to the operation. For the team would bring with it a coffin containing a significantly decomposed corpse with a resemblance to de Geer -- a ward against the off-chance that someone opened the hermetically-sealed coffin before the burial -- and dry ice for preservation. The idea was that the team would take on the appearance of a normal hearse and its attendants, gain access to the morgue, identify de Geer’s body, and then switch it with the one brought from Germany before sealing both coffins and smuggling their cargo out of the country.
And so, early on the morning of the twenty-seventh, Reinert and his team had boarded a plane from Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport to a military airfield outside Brussels. They crossed the border without incident, and successfully rendezvoused with van Driel. In person, he inspired perhaps even less confidence even than his photograph. He had a gaunt, weathered face, and lank yellow hair that hung almost to his shoulders. Nonetheless, he proved a competent driver, and they arrived that afternoon at the Utrecht safe house. There, despite explicit instructions not to involve the other members of the cell in the operation, van Driel introduced his two co-conspirators. Julian Smit was a very pale man in his thirties with a fierce admiration for National Socialism which he wasted no time professing to the Germans.
Now, squeezed up against van Driel’s second accomplice in the parked hearse, Reinert recalled their introduction two days before. “This is Gegenfurtner,” van Driel had said simply as a massively built man stepped into the room. He was fully a head and a half taller than Reinert and built on a frame more appropriate to a draft animal. “And I,” Reinert had replied, flushing, “am Rausch.”
They had spent the next day reconnoitering the hospital and its environs and refining the plan for the operation. Posing as a reformed minister’s secretary, Markl had been able to access documentation showing that de Geer’s coffin was indeed being kept in an annex behind St. Antonius Gasthuis. van Driel had managed to rent a small loft behind the hospital and from here they surveyed the area. St. Antonius was a long three-story brick building, with two newer wings that projected backwards from the far ends of the structure. There was a large courtyard in the space thus created, with a long walkway running to the annex, which abutted the street that ran behind the hospital complex.
St. Antonius Gasthuis from the front.
The hospital from the southeast, near the start of one of the new wings.
The annex, Reinert learned, was used exclusively as a morgue. Unless a body was being handled, there were only two people working there at any time during the day -- the diener and another doctor who had an office on the side facing away from the street. The Utrecht coroner had offices in the main hospital building, using the annex only when necessary. A watchman was employed each night to patrol the grounds, including both the annex and main building. The Germans could not count on his schedule being regular enough to execute the operation while he was elsewhere. Reinert had quickly ruled any night break-in too risky. They would have to carry out Operation Alraunwurzel during the daytime.
And so it was finalized: at ten o’clock exactly, the operation would begin with a spectacular diversion. Smit was to crash a small automobile against the hospital’s façade and flee the scene. Rigged with incendiaries, it would burst into a colorful fireball several seconds later, hopefully attracting the attention of all the medical and emergency personnel in the area. Markl, already in the hospital, would rush back to the annex and bring whoever was inside with her to the scene of the apparent accident.
The Germans -- taking Gegenfurtner along for his immense strength -- would then calmly drive the hearse up to the morgue annex, enter the building, perform the switch and drive back to the safe house. de Geer would then be loaded onto their truck and driven back into Free Belgium before nightfall.
Reinert was jolted to alertness by the starting of the hearse’s engine. Gottlob pulled it out from under the footbridge and down a tree-lined street. Reinert checked his watch. Nine forty.
They had soon pulled into the alley next to the three-story building containing van Driel’s loft. He would remain there throughout the entire operation and keep watch for anyone approaching the morgue. Reinert had given him a powerful flashlight with which he would signal danger to those below. He recapitulated the instructions for its use as the two men climbed the stairs to the loft.
It was respectably furnished, with a broad window looking down on the back of the hospital. Reinert perched himself on the window sill and withdrew his binoculars from a pocket. Unlike the rest of the team -- dressed in dark suits -- Reinert wore a physician’s coat, mask and stethoscope which he hoped might give him an added edge in bluffing his way out of trouble if necessary. The doctor’s outfit also afforded the advantage of ample pockets for his equipment and a loose-fitting profile -- from his belt Reinert wore Operation Alraunwurzel’s only firearm, a British-made Enfield No. 2 Mk I revolver.
Reinert scanned the binoculars across the hospital grounds and its silhouette against the morning sky. The day was thinly overcast, and Reinert noted the lack of shadows on the ground. He checked the watch again. Ten minutes. He returned to watching the hospital and its grounds for what seemed like the better part of an hour. Five minutes. He could hear van Driel’s agitated breathing behind him. One minute. Reinert swallowed several times to clear a knot in his throat. After Markl’s diversion, she was to get away from the get away from the hospital on foot and take a taxi back to the area of the safe house. Will there be any problem for her?
Reinert glanced back at the watch. Now. In fifteen seconds he heard screeching tires and the sound of crumpling steel.
He focused the binoculars on the rear entrance of the main hospital block. The doors opened and a woman in red appeared, running along the paved pathway to the morgue building. She covered the distance quickly, and began to knock frantically at the door on the side of the building.
Reinert felt van Driel tugging at his sleeve. “Look! Smoke.”
Sure enough, a plume of brown smoke could be seen on the other side of the hospital, now reaching up to twice the height of the three-story building’s roof.
Bringing the binoculars back to the morgue, he saw Markl leading two men out the door and towards the main hospital.
“Good, that’s her. Remember the signal, and keep a sharp watch over all avenues of approach.” Reinert clapped van Driel on the back -- partly to encourage him to follow his instructions, and partly to instill in himself a sense of confident leadership that he did not feel. Most of the other respected Abwehr agents acted like that -- patronizing those around them to project experience and competence. The reserved Canaris was the most notable exception.
Reinert dashed down the stairs of the loft, and got into the front seat of the hearse. “The annex should be clear. Drive calmly and slowly.”
Gottlob pulled out of the alley and onto the street behind the hospital. Within moments, the morgue had come into view.
“That’s the annex right there ahead,” Reinert said, pointing ahead. Gottlob backed the hearse into the driveway and turned off the engine.
Instructing the others to remain in the hearse, Reinert got out, and crossed onto the hospital lawns on foot. He walked calmly around to the entrance that he had watched Markl use barely two minutes earlier. He slipped a hand into his coat and grasped the handle of his revolver.
Reinert knocked forcefully four times. There was no sound from within. He knocked again. “Hallo?” Silence. He opened the door, slipped quickly into the room, and shut it behind him. To his immediate left was the open door to the physician’s office -- Reinert poked his head in. He was alone in the building. Sweeping his eyes around himself, he found himself in a spacious room. Further along the wall to his left, beyond the office door, was the entrance to the storage room which van Driel had told him about the day before. To his right was the principal morgue -- two rows of three tables for examination and embalming, one of which held a draped body -- and directly ahead of him three empty autopsy tables. The far corner of the room was occupied by what looked like a giant metal safe -- perhaps four meters by four meters -- and reaching up to the ceiling. A heavy steel door allowed access to what Reinert knew to be the refrigerated storage room. Into the wall to Reinert’s right -- the side facing the street -- was recessed a large pair of double doors for loading and receiving bodies, as well as a small back door. All around the room were boxes of medical instruments, freestanding racks of chemicals, file cabinets, and numerous other small items that would need to be left exactly as Reinert now found them to ensure the secrecy of the operation. He fixed in his mind the precise condition of the room as a series of mental photographs, took a deep breath and threw open the double doors to let in the others.
Gottlob backed the hearse up to the opening, and the others sprang out of the vehicle and squeezed around the rear of the hearse through the doorway. Gegenfurtner, whose fitting into the vehicle at all Reinert still could not quite comprehend, opened the back of the hearse and singlehandedly slid the coffin out on its runners onto the low table next to the doorway which was used for loading and unloading coffins.
“Get these,” Gottlob said, pointing over his head as he slipped into the morgue.
Reinert blinked. “What?”
“Those bundles at the top of the doorframe -- they’re black drapes meant for keeping the loading dignified. Gimpel and Gegenfurtner: pull them down so they close off the space between the hearse body and the doorframe itself.”
As the drapes came down, Reinert jammed both of the remaining doors -- the one in the back and the one on the side -- with steel bevel jams. Both doors opened inward, and until Reinert removed the jams, the Germans could count on no one being able to force their way into the annex.
As soon as the doors were jammed, those within the morgue snapped to their designated duties. Schelsky, the sociologist, and Gottlob began searching the file cabinets for the files from the de Geer autopsy. Reinert opened the metal door to the refrigerated storage room, followed by Gimpel and Gegenfurtner. He was struck by a rush of cold air and fumbled around for the light, finally finding the switch. There were three draped bodies lying on shelves, and a single metal-lined coffin resting on a rolling dolly.
“Alright. Alright...” Reinert stared at the coffin. They would have to get this coffin out and onto one of the tables in the morgue room, then switch the bodies between coffins. That of the real de Geer appeared far too heavy to handle. “Ge-gegenfurtner?”
“Yes sir?”
Reinert checked his watch. Fire crews would be attending to the burning car by now. “Gegenfurtner, tell me please if you are able to lift that coffin at all.”
Lumbering stooped through the doorway, he obediently grasped the coffin’s handles and tried to lift it. “If you and Gimpel help, we can lift it. I will roll it out first.”
Reinert backed out of the way as Gegenfurtner rolled the dolly into the main room and stopped it next to one of the examination tables. Reinert stooped to read the tag tied to one of the coffin handles. de Geer, D. “That’s him, men.”
Having found the de Geer papers in a file cabinet near the autopsy tables, Gottlob began laying the pages out on the empty autopsy table as Schelsky readied his camera.
Meanwhile, Gimpel, Reinert and the massive Dutchman each grasped a handle of de Geer’s coffin, bringing it toward the nearest embalming table. In doing so, however, they would have to rotate the coffin ninety degrees. After some moments of grunting and struggling, they set the coffin back down on the dolly. One of the several freestanding racks of chemicals that dotted the room was resting against the wall of the refrigerated room, blocking the way to the embalming table. At a word from Reinert, Gegenfurtner picked it up almost effortlessly and set it down at the center of the room barely even rattling the bottles of chemicals set upon it. Now, they were able to pick the coffin back up and set it down on the table. Gimpel began to unfasten the latches.
Reinert slipped the mask up over his nose and mouth. With Gimpel’s help he pushed open the coffin’s heavy lid. There was a sharp hiss as the hermetic seal was broken. Even through the mask, Reinert was instantly struck by the strong odor from within -- a combination of organic decay and the chemicals used to prevent it. He slipped from his breast pocket the photo of de Geer. The corpse was dressed in a dark suit; the face was somewhat mottled in complexion, and wore the full white mustache that appeared in the picture Reinert had been given of him. He could have mistaken him for the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel, judging strictly by appearance. “That’s him.”
The three men reached into the coffin and eased the body out and onto the adjacent table. They turned to the coffin they had brought with them and Gimpel opened it. Reinert paced over to the window and peered through the blinds. The loft window was dark. “Still all clear,” Reinert reported, “but we must keep watch.” The now-open coffin next to Gimpel revealed a decomposing body, lying on a bed of dry ice. It wore a similar mustache -- perhaps like in appearance to de Geer after two weeks at room temperature. Canaris was sure that even in the unlikely event that the coffin were opened again, the startled diener would be unlikely to report the corpse’s unusually rapid decay for fear that it would reflect poorly on his own performance in embalming the body. Rather, it served primarily to simulate the weight of an undisturbed coffin.
By now, Schelsky had the pages from the autopsy spread out, and was carefully photographing them one by one. Gottlob was at the window watching for any signal from van Driel. Reinert and the two stronger men took several steadying breaths before carefully lifting the pseudo-de Geer out of his coffin and into that of the real de Geer. Reinert carefully rearranged the corpse’s posture to a position similar to that which the real de Geer had held. At his signal, Gegenfurtner closed the lid and began to attend to the latches. Reinert could hear sirens in the distance. “Still no signal, right?”
Gottlob turned back in Reinet’s direction. “No. No signal.”
“Good. Erich, keep the pace up.”
“Yes, Herr Rausch.” Gimpel, who had a nozzle up to the coffin’s gasket, was pumping out air as fast as he could. Next to him was a large canister of the inert gas he would pump back into the coffin before completing the seal -- giving the perfect appearance of unbroken hermetic isolation of the corpse within.
Reinert could feel the beating of his own heart. The sirens were making him nervous, but he reassured himself that they were simply responding to the diversion on the far side of the hospital. While Gimpel worked on the hermetic seal, Reinert helped Schelsky replace the autopsy documents in the file cabinet which they had been taken from. Everything was in just the right order. It had to be. Is it? Reinert reopened the cabinet in a panic, rifling through the documents twice more before assuring himself that he was leaving everything exactly as it had been.
The click of steel latches told Reinert that Gimpel was finished. He saw Gegenfurtner help Gimpel load it back onto the dolly and into the refrigeration room. He checked that it was back in position and closed the metal door when they were all out. “We’re still clear? No signal, right?”
Gottlob remained at the window. “Correct.”
“Only one more thing to do then...”
“One. Two. Three!” The three men heaved de Geer’s body up off the table and eased it into the new coffin. There was a rolling crunch as the dry ice settled around the body’s extremities. Gimpel produced two more bags of dry ice and fitted them into the coffin’s open spaces. As soon as his fingers were clear, Gegenfurtner brought the lid down and closed it. Schelsky assisting now, the four of them lifted the coffin off the table, only to be startled by a loud thud from within the coffin. They set it back down on the low table and opened it.
de Geer’s head was splayed at an odd angle against the side wall of the coffin. Reinert could see that the skin was broken where the forehead had impacted. They had been instructed to keep the body as close to its post-autopsy condition as possible -- if it wasn’t, German investigators could have a hard time discerning anything conclusive about the true cause of death. “Pack something in! Is there any more dry ice?”
“Uhhh... There’s one more bag in the front of the hearse.” Gimpel sprinted out the morgue’s back door.
“He’s not going to be seen, is he?” Reinert snapped.
“No, still no signal.”
Gimpel came bounding back into the room with the bag under his arm. He quickly reset de Geer’s head in the proper position and fitted the bag into the space between the right ear and the coffin wall. He tested how much the head would roll around. It seemed firm. Gegenfurtner closed the coffin once again, and they lifted it off the table by its handles.
“Easy... Easy...” Reinert lifted the leading corner up over the rim of the hearse’s back bumper.
A thunderous crash sounded from within the coffin. They returned it to the low table and reopened it. de Geer’s body had slid down by half a foot. All it would take was a deep pothole on the road to the Belgian border to inflict serious damage to the head when it slid back up.
“Erich, you’re sure that there is no more dry ice?”
“Yes, Herr Rausch.”
“Anything else to pad him with?” Reinert cast about frantically. Sheets. Cotton balls. A hat and a suit on hooks by the door. A pillow on a stool. Everything in the room had its purpose and would be missed if suddenly gone. Reinert tore off his white coat and rolled it into a letter C. He formed it around de Geer’s head until snug. The coffin was closed yet again, and with Gegenfurtner’s help was loaded quickly and easily into the back of the hearse. The body was definitely secure. Reinert checked to make certain that the coffin’s ventilation hole -- necessary due to the presence of so much dry ice -- was unblocked.
Gottlob slipped out through the black drapes and started the engine, pulling the hearse into the driveway so the doors could be closed. Reinert and Schelsky ran a sweep of the room, checking that all was left just as it had been before they had entered the morgue. The file cabinets, tables and sheets were all back in place. The door to the refrigeration room was closed. The lights were on, but they had been on when the Germans had entered. “Let’s go.”
They closed the double loading doors, removed the steel jams and exited through the back door, joining the others in the driveway. Some of them had gotten out and were packing additional baggage around the coffin to keep it secure. Reinert looked back at the hospital. The brown smoke had stopped rising from the other side of the building, and now hung thirty meters in the air in a diffuse cloud.
“Wait!” yelped Schelsky. Everyone around the hearse snapped their heads in his direction. “The rack of chemicals!”
An image of Walther Neumann’s face flashed in Reinert’s mind. He had been caught because of Reinert’s own miscalculation. Looking at Gottlob: “Go! Drive to the church we passed on the way here. I’ll meet you there on foot. Understood?”
Gottlob nodded, checking to see that the other operatives were in the car. “Clear. Good luck, Victor.”
Reinert flung himself back up the sidewalk toward the morgue’s back entrance just as he heard the hearse pulling away. He opened the door, and carefully swept his eyes over the entire room twice. File cabinets. Tables. Sheets. Doors. Lights. Floor. File cabinets... Reinert dashed across the room and opened the file cabinet, checking again that the autopsy documents were in the right order. They were. File cabinets. Tables. Sheets. Doors. Lights. Floor. The only thing out of place was the rack of chemicals, which still stood at the center of the room. He paced toward it and squatted, picking it up slowly from the base so as not to disturb the bottles on its shelves. It was not quite as heavy as he had imagined, but poorly balanced. He allowed himself twenty seconds to turn ninety degrees to face the wall opposite the coffin. Slowly. One agonizingly slow step, with bended knees, toward the rack’s proper position against the wall. A second. He set it down for a moment and reestablished his grip on the metal poles that framed the rack. He eased it back up. The grip was firmer now, but he still dared breath little. Three steps, sliding the soles of his feet along the floor. Just a few more now and it will be right back in place where --
“Who are you?”
Reinert froze. He looked back over his shoulder. A man in a white doctor’s coat was standing in the doorway.
“I’m just the --”
The man’s eyes were wide with fear. “What are you doing in here?”
Reinert swayed under the rack’s weight. With a sickening rush he followed the doctor’s eyes as they fell to the exposed revolver at his waist. There was a flicker of indecision on the doctor’s face, before, bellowing, he dashed forward and shoved the chemical rack at Reinert with all his might. Reinert staggered backward for a moment, but couldn’t keep his legs under himself for long. The heavy steel frame came crashing down on top of him, its many jars of chemicals slipping off and shattering on the floor. As the sour smell of formaldehyde and harsh disinfectants filled his nostrils, Reinert struggled to free his pinned arms. He could feel broken glass digging into his back. Gritting his teeth, he flailed desperately, trying to get the rack off himself. He was trapped. Reinert turned his head to the side, and saw the white-coated doctor in the doorway, yelling frantically.
“Help! Help! Robber! A robber, help!”
Reinert gathered his strength for another attempt to free himself, but knew that it was too late. Many heavy footfalls could be heard thundering nearer down the concrete path.
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