Fox On The Rhine Read Free Page A

oath and his duty to his country as he saw it. It was a difficult choice, a bitter draught from a cup he’d wished would have passed him by. History might brand him a traitor, an oath breaker, and the thought of his reputation forever stained by betrayal was almost too much to bear. He admired the younger Stauffenberg’s stoicism, his aristocratic certainty that his choice was correct, honorable.
    He watched the dust cloud trailing Stauffenberg’s staff car as the colonel and his driver drove away from the Wolf’s Lair without apparent urgency. His coconspirator would board an aircraft for Berlin within a few minutes. Not so long ago he’d thought of the young officer as almost a son. Now, in the end, it seemed as if their roles had reversed. May God be with him... and with the Fatherland.
    Fellgiebel knew that he had his own mission to carry out, but now that the time had come the general’s will strangely deserted him. He knew he had only minutes to live.
    ‘Treachery! Murder! Help--bring the surgeon!” The cries came from the destroyed staff building, and several officers stumbled into the sunlight, caked with dust and debris. Was Hitler among them?
    Fellgiebel gawked, frozen in place, feeling the pulse pounding in his temples. Had they succeeded? What should he do?
    “The führer is slain!” gasped one general, falling to his knees in shock or despair.
    In that admission Fellgiebel found his strength and darted through the door of the communications center. Idle couriers stared in surprise as the general pulled open a large case, withdrawing several long hand grenades. Holding the fragmentation bombs in one hand, he drew his pistol with the other. The wide-eyed radio operator lurched to his feet, staring at the general in disbelief, while the two operators spun around at the telephone switchboard.
    “Back!” snarled the general, gesturing the men away from the signals equipment. Gun in one hand, grenade in the other, he made a formidable picture of persuasion. Stumbling over chairs, the communications staff scrambled toward the doors.
    The general ran to the switchboard and picked up the telephone speaker, barking a series of numbers into the phone. In another moment, the line was answered with a curt “Was?”
    “Die Brucke ist verbrennt!” barked the panting Fellgiebel, before quickly breaking the connection.
    The signal for success--”The bridge is burned!”--would be spread by the conspirators across the Reich, though Fellgiebel now felt a piercing regret at the knowledge that he wouldn’t be alive to see the effect of those momentous words. Arming the grenade, he dropped it behind the bank of the telephone switchboard.
    Next the general fired four shots from his Walther into the cabinet-size radio, each slug splintering tubes and wiring. Fellgiebel reached out and pitched the huge radio onto its side before firing more shots from his handgun.
    He was still shooting as an SS guard burst through the door. Fellgiebel did not look up as the man’s Schmeisser erupted, stitching a line of bloody holes up the general’s back, knocking him onto the switchboard that would never be used again.
    A second later, the grenade behind the telephone switchboard exploded, shredding the panel into lethal shrapnel, simultaneously ripping into the SS guard and tearing away at Fellgiebel’s unfeeling corpse.
     
    Belorussia, Soviet Union, 1157 hours GMT
     
    “Die Brucke ist verbrennt!” crackled a voice over the radio. Hauptmann Paul Krueger ignored it--obviously some code phrase that had nothing to do with him. He had other things on his mind as he piloted his Messerschmidt through the clear summer skies.
    This morning had started out bad and gotten worse. A pitifully few fighters were all that remained of the once mighty Luftwaffe on the Russian front, and most of those were in a sorry state of repair. Some otherwise flyable machines had been stripped for parts to make a few craft airworthy. Ammunition supplies