The questions were asked and answered in a spirit of friendship at odds with men who worked as heads of intelligence organizations that despised each other. In 1938, Hitler appointed the Sicherheitsdienst, a division of the SS known as the SD, as the Nazi Party’s military arm of intelligence. Its job was to detect and expose members of the German government, intellectual elite, clergy, and military hierarchy who opposed the Nazi regime and to eliminate them by any means necessary. To carry out these orders, the SD dispatched spies and informants not only into the departments of government officials but also into the divisions of the German Army to gather intelligence against those suspected of treason. The task of ferreting out enemies of the Third Reich among the less-exalted ranks fell to the Gestapo.

From its creation, conflict had risen between the Abwehr—Germany’s oldest organization of army intelligence, headed by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris—and the upstart amateur Sicherheitsdienst, directed by the admiral’s archenemy, Heinrich Himmler. The Abwehr, whose purpose was to protect Germany from domestic and foreign espionage, despised the SD’s mission and the methods it employed. The new organization siphoned off materials, resources, and manpower needed by the Abwehr, undermined its intelligence reports, got in the way of its activities, and generally tromped on the Abwehr’s toes. Recently, Hitler had ordered the SD to investigate several Abwehr officers suspected to be involved in anti-Hitler plots.

By all appearances, the same dislike flowed between Major General Konrad March and Colonel Derrick Albrecht, but appearances could be deceiving. The counterintelligence chief of the SD and the head of the Abwehr in France were members of a very private club of brothers-in-arms mutually engaged in highly secret affairs.

“Are you going to bring him in for interrogation?” Derrick asked after Konrad had explained the basis for his suspicions.

“No. I will allow the buck to graze unaware of my gun scope until I discover who he’s not working for. I’ll learn soon enough. That list of names was authentic. If my English assets are rolled up, I will know the SOE or OSS is running him. If they are left alone…” Konrad shrugged, leaving it unsaid that Barnard Wagner would be in the employ of the SS or Gestapo or an entity within his own ranks seeking evidence to bring the charge of treason against him.

Derrick nodded approval. “A good move. This way you’ve ridded the Reich of what—fifteen assets?—in strategic positions to cause damage to the Allies. Let’s hope your spy is with the Brits or the Americans. What are you going to do with him if he is?”

“Ply him with intel that will send his bosses into tailspins of exuberance.”

“Be careful, Konrad, I beg you. The Americans or English may have planted him, but that doesn’t mean our brother organizations aren’t interested in you.”