The Phoenix Incursion

By I.J. Sarfeh

 

Soon after World War II, countless sightings of one of Hitler's missing henchmen were reported in western England. What was this man, a genius at weaving plots and counterplots, doing on British soil?

On May 2, 1945, as the Allies stormed into Berlin, one of Hitler's powerful henchmen made a daring escape out of the Chancellery bunker. After his escape, some believed that a Red Army tank had killed him, but his body was not found. A world-wide manhunt for him proved fruitless. After World War II, countless sightings of the henchman were reported in Argentina, Paraguay, and Italy. He was also sighted in western England. What was this man, a genius at weaving plots and counterplots, doing on British soil?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781597053532

Book preview

Forward

Facts:

On May 2, 1945, as the Allies stormed into Berlin, one of Hitler’s top henchmen fled from the Chancellery bunker.

Although a lesser bureaucrat during the earlier period of World War II, the henchman’s influence escalated toward the end, when he was the titular second-in-command of the Nazi regime. Goebbels, Himmler, and Göring despised the archetypal behind-the-scenes powerbroker, but they could not thwart his ascendancy. More than anything, he gained power by controlling the Adolf Hitler Endowment, an enormous cache of money gathered through ‘voluntary’ contributions. No one knows how much of that money he transferred to his personal account before his disappearance.

Some believed that a Red Army tank killed him as he and Hitler’s physician, Ludwig Stumpfegger, roamed the war-torn streets of Berlin. But his body was not found, and a world-wide manhunt for him proved fruitless.

Without any conclusive evidence, in April 1973 a West German court officially proclaimed his death.

RUMORS:

Soon after the War in Europe ended, countless sightings of the henchman were reported: some in Argentina, some in Paraguay, some in Italy.

And some in western England.

Why was this man, a genius at weaving plots and counterplots, on British soil?

One

March 8, 1945

The fourth air-raid siren of the day blasted. The first three had been false alarms, but for some reason Angus Onslow found the last one strangely disquieting.

On that gray Thursday afternoon he was in a tobacco shop on London’s Streatham High Road. He had started smoking cigarettes again while stationed in North Africa. This damned war will get me long before cigarettes ever will, he rationalized.

He walked out of the shop as the sirens quieted. Minutes later he heard the roar of the V-1 Flying Bomb. Then followed the eerie silence heralding the drone’s nosedive, hurtling its destructive power at the innocents below. As Angus sped toward the mob scene at a nearby bomb shelter, the ground shook. The explosion was less than a mile north and in the area of his apartment. Glancing at the cumulus of black smoke, he imagined the worst: Wendy and Jessica buried under the rubble.

He broke into a sprint. Emergency vehicles and fire engines screamed past him, and the air-raid sirens blasted again. But he didn’t care. From Streatham High Road he turned right onto Amesbury Avenue. He ran toward the flames, the smoke, and the dust. He didn’t stop running until he saw the number 427 still visible over the charred entrance of his apartment building. The roof was gone and the rooms were gone, but the façade remained as if to shield him from the massacre behind it.

Instinctively Angus raced toward the burning rubble. Three firefighters stopped him and held on. As he thrashed about and shouted obscenities, they carried him away. A moment later the remaining wall collapsed in a cloud of flying bricks and mortar.

The firefighters restrained him until the blaze was doused and he had calmed down. One of them stayed with him. Wearing gas masks and asbestos-lined coveralls, the others searched in the rubble. By dusk they had pulled out six bodies. After wrapping them in red blankets, they took them to the Greater Streatham Hospital, where Angus was a registrar and surgeon.

Somehow he made his way to the hospital, his mind still in the rubble and as fragmented. A colleague intercepted him at the emergency receiving area. She gripped his arm. Are you up to identifying the victims in cubicle seven?

Glaring at her, Angus pulled away. He hurried along the row of green cubicles with the drawn curtains hiding the dead and the dying. The seventh cubicle housed two stretchers, each carrying a body covered with a clean white sheet. In a daze, Angus pulled back one sheet then the other.

The woman’s body was burned almost beyond recognition. But the gold charm bracelet was unmistakable—his gift to Wendy on their fourth wedding anniversary.

Then came the worst sight of all: Jessica’s head, burned and bandaged back onto her six-year-old body.

Angus slumped down on the floor between the stretchers. His colleague tiptoed in and stood behind him, softly massaging his neck. He spun around and hit her in the stomach. She ran off. Minutes later she was back with a needle, a syringe, and a burly constable.

ANGUS AWAKENED BEFORE dawn in a crowded hospital ward, patients moaning, bedpans stinking. Yesterday’s images flashed in his head, and at once he knew what he must do. He quietly opened the metal locker next to his bed. After putting on his street clothes, he crept unseen past the nursing station then went outside. With winds gusting and rain threatening, he ran to the nearest bus stop on Streatham High Road. The posted schedule indicated the first bus would arrive an hour later. He resumed running.

Just before sunrise he was on the Battersea Bridge and staring down at the Thames River. After the previous week’s heavy rains, the riverbanks brimmed and the waters raged.

He climbed over the rail.

Knowing he could barely swim, he jumped.

Two

Angus regained awareness to the sound of loud coughing. Confused, he looked about. He was on a metal bed in a padded room. Leather restraints bound his wrists and ankles to the bed railings. Under a cloud of cigar smoke, his father leaned against the opposite wall.

Where the hell am I? Angus yelled.

Six-foot one, bald, and ruddy-complexioned, retired army general Sir Geoffrey Onslow tweaked his handlebar mustache. You’re in Westminster Hospital—the psychiatric ward. They fished you out of the Thames.

Get these bloody shackles off me!

You must first calm down, my boy.

How long have I been locked up like this?

A few days. But now I’ve stopped them injecting you with those infernal tranquilizers. Gave your psychiatrist a good piece of my mind about that.

Wendy and Jessica?

They’re buried. Brave soldiers, those two were.

Angus groaned.

Sir Geoffrey stepped toward the bed. Sorry about everything, but one has to stop the self-pity and press on, doesn’t one?

Angus glared at his father. Press on to what? More fighting and more slaughter of innocents?

Never fear. Berlin will soon fall, and Hitler will be hanged. Peace is just around the corner.

Not if warmongers like you or your old army chums can help it.

Blast you and your impertinence, sir! You don’t need a bloody psychiatrist. You need a bloody boot up the arse, that’s what.

Sir Geoffrey stormed out of the room.

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING Angus opened his eyes to a vaguely familiar man in a white coat.

We’re awake at last, the white-coat said from the foot of the bed. And we’re not going to do anything silly, are we?

We are not, and take these blasted straps off me. Who the dickens are you?

Doctor Hugh Means, your psychiatrist. He pressed the buzzer on the wall of the padded cell. An orderly shaped like a Sumo wrestler walked in. Untie him—wrists only, the psychiatrist ordered.

The orderly untied the straps binding Angus’s wrists to the bed’s side-rails.

Means said, Now let’s see if we can behave ourselves, shall we?

Angus sat up and looked at his ankles. Those too.

Means walked to the doorway. He then nodded to the orderly, who removed Angus’s ankle straps and lowered one of the side-rails. Angus tried to stand, but his legs buckled and he flopped back down.

What the hell have you been injecting into me? he yelled, waving a fist at the psychiatrist.

You’re quite the vicious sort, aren’t you?

Quite. And I’m hungry and thirsty. Were you planning to feed me? Or is this another form of quackery you bloody psychiatrists are experimenting with?

We’re insulting too, aren’t we?

When are you going to let me out of this vile prison of yours?

Oh, in a few weeks, maybe months. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a danger to yourself and everyone around you.

Three

David Ehrlich first learned of the Phoenix Incursion on the ides of March, 1945. His contact outlined the mission then congratulated him for being selected as a vital participant. Ehrlich heard no more about it until today, his birthday.

A little before five a.m., the wind clattering his bedroom window awakened him. He latched it and headed back to bed as the telephone rang. It did so three times, stopped, and rang again. He picked up the receiver.

The voice at the other end asked, Is this Dan Easton?

Wrong number.

Sorry.

So much for spending the evening with his friend, Ehrlich thought. But pleasure was always a distant second to the cause.

AT SIX P.M. ON THE same bleak day, Ehrlich left his place of work, a characterless office above a travel agency on the Strand. The thoroughfare was busy, but far less so than before the Blitzkrieg.

Ten minutes later he stepped into the foyer of the Golden Goose Tavern. He shook the rain off his umbrella and went inside. The venerable pub was crowded yet subdued—crowded because of the unremitting rain, subdued because of yesterday’s rocket bomb attacks. Eight of the robots had landed on London, killing ninety-seven civilians including fifteen children.

Ehrlich squeezed his six-foot four frame into the only remaining space at the bar. He ordered a whiskey then gazed at the mirror behind the row of exotic liqueur bottles. From where he stood, he could see the reflection of the staircase to the basement billiards room and lavatories.

Halfway through his drink he spotted a little man in a rain-drenched homburg disappearing down the staircase. Ehrlich found a vacant spot at a table near the banister. Politely, he asked the three elderly patrons if he could join them. They nodded and resumed their discussion of how the Allies should deal with postwar Germany.

A few minutes later the little man and his homburg were back upstairs. He looked around the pub, found Ehrlich, made eye contact with him, and left.

One of the patrons at the table declared that Germany should never again be allowed to exist as a sovereign nation. His friends thought it was a splendid idea.

Have you thought of the consequence? Ehrlich asked.

What con—consequence? slurred the tipsiest of the three men.

A massive uprising. A bloodletting campaign of terror against the occupiers. And it will not end until the return of German self-rule.

Rubbish. We won’t let that happen.

How do you propose to stop it?

We’ll just bomb them out of existence, my dear chap, the youngest of the trio said.

Ehrlich abruptly stood and went downstairs to the men’s lavatory. Tucked behind the commode was a marked envelope. It had an ink smudge on the back and ‘Janus’ scrawled on the front. After tucking the envelope in his breast pocket and flushing the toilet, he returned to the bar. He sipped another whiskey, all the while searching for any eyes that might be on him. Standing at the far end of the bar, a tall, attractive woman smiled at him. He smiled back, and she came over carrying an empty wine glass. He bought her a refill.

For fifteen minutes he tolerated the trite conversation. Then he told her he must leave. My wife is expecting me home soon.

After retrieving his umbrella, he scanned the crowd one last time then headed to the Oxford Circus Underground station. He purchased a one-way ticket to Kensington and joined the scrum at the platform. A moment later the train screeched to a stop. He was the last to squeeze into one of the cars. As soon as the doors started closing, he jumped out and scanned the platform. No one else had done as he had. He boarded the next train.

At the door of his Kensington flat he went through his habitual security check. The thin black thread was still draped across the top of the door. The strand of cellophane tape remained intact across the lower doorframe. Once he was inside, he checked the windows. None of his subtle markings there had been disturbed.

Ehrlich undressed down to his shorts. After seventy-five pushups and sit-ups, he examined himself in the full-length bedroom mirror. A more intense exercise routine was in order, he thought. But his life in the foreseeable future would not permit routines of any sort.

He made a cheese and tomato sandwich, lit the gas heater in the living room, and sank into his overstuffed armchair. Tidily furbished in the necessities without regard to style, his flat was a temporary residence until the War’s end. Ehrlich had long ago shunned the stability of a permanent home. And based on what he knew of the Phoenix Incursion, it promised him no more than the life of an outlaw.

The prospect thrilled him.

From the envelope he pulled out a scribbled note:

Dear Janus: I miss you. Rudy is still in Phoenix, and he says it is terribly hot. Please visit me this weekend. I’m awfully lonely. Love, Anna.

It meant the operation was about to begin. This weekend he must radio his German contact, Rudy.

ON SATURDAY MORNING Ehrlich rode his motor scooter toward Slough. He made several abrupt stops and turns along the way to make sure he wasn’t being followed. At the door of a thatched cottage ten miles north of town, a petite young woman greeted him.

He had met Anna Waldheim—a.k.a. di Rienzi—once before, soon after she contacted him about the mission. But he had never seen her in daylight. Now, as he viewed her olive skin, sultry eyes, and gleaming black hair, he thought most men would find her looks special.

It’s really nice to see you, David, she said in English with a trace guttural accent. Please come in.

How’s life treating you? he asked.

As well as can be expected, what with our nation’s destiny in question.

That is never in question. Greatness can not be vanquished.

She led him up a wooden staircase to a small room littered with boxes, clothes, and stacks of dusty books. After unlocking the closet, she pushed aside the hanging garments. She lifted a barely visible hatch behind them and pulled out a radio transmitter.

It took her five minutes to contact Rudy. Janus is here to talk to you, she said, referring to Ehrlich’s code name.

Despite the low volume and the background static, Ehrlich recognized Rudy’s voice.

Good to hear from you, Rudy said in English. I have arranged the transaction at Frank’s office. When your business there is complete, go to the old woman’s place. Be there by four-thirty to escort our special guest. I will give you the details when we meet. By the way, the number at Frank’s is two-oh-five-three-one-three, extension four.

Ehrlich understood the instructions. He must go to Zurich’s Franken Bank Suisse—Frank’s office. After picking up a sum of money, he must proceed to the apartment on Helgastrasse in Berlin—the old woman’s place. He must be there by April 30—four-thirty. Rudy would then detail the plans to escort a V.I.P. out of Germany. Ehrlich’s code for securing the bank transaction would be the number 205313 with four added to each digit.

Not much time to organize, Ehrlich thought. But he was confident of his resourcefulness and wasn’t overly worried. Back in his apartment late that evening, he drank Turkish coffee while planning his strategy.

By midnight the plan was complete.

Four

Sitting in the cramped conference room, David Ehrlich noted the jovial mood of the officers of Unit Six, British Army Intelligence. End-of-the-War fever, he imagined. Colonel Goodwin, whose rank bespoke his analytical genius rather than anything military, stood at the head of the oval table. Like the rest of the unit, he wore civilian clothes.

After wiping his horn-rimmed glasses on his old-school tie, Goodwin announced, As the War in Europe draws to a close, we face another problem. Major Ehrlich tells me that top Nazi officials are planning a mass exodus from Germany. He feels strongly that Unit Six should do its share to prevent it. Therefore I’ve asked him to update you on his findings and his proposal to remedy the situation.

Ehrlich clattered his chair back and stood up. He was the most distinguished member of the section assigned to analyzing the enemy’s military transmissions. In late 1943 he had uncovered a Nazi plot to kidnap Winston Churchill. Dumbfounded as to how he had done it, Colonel Goodwin requested that Ehrlich personally brief the Director General of Security Services. Immediately after the briefing, steps were taken to thwart the plot. A look-alike stood in for the Prime Minister, and most of the would-be kidnappers were killed. As a result, Ehrlich could append an O.B.E.—Order of the British Empire—to his name.

Before World War I, Ehrlich’s father, Helmut, had been a career diplomat posted in England. With the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and impending war, Helmut was recalled to Germany, but his English wife refused to leave Britain. After a near-violent quarrel, he left her and their five-year-old son. Once World War I ended, he brought his son to Germany on frequent visits to remind him of his heritage. And he indoctrinated the boy on the virtues of being a German and an Aryan. The visits stopped in 1937 when Helmut was reassigned as an envoy to Japan.

According to British Army Intelligence records, David Ehrlich thrived in England and its educational system. He finished at Oxford not only as a promising scholar of military history, but also as star of the rugby team.

What his records did not show, however, was that his keen mind and fluent command of English and German were deemed perfect for service in the German intelligence network. A month before the Second War’s outbreak, a Gestapo agent recruited him at Helmut’s suggestion.

David Ehrlich unhesitatingly agreed to help the Nazi cause.

He enlisted in the British Army and asked to be assigned to its intelligence service. His request was accepted for the same reasons that the Gestapo had recruited him. But at first British Army Intelligence viewed him with some suspicion until he could prove himself.

He task was translating and analyzing intercepted enemy messages, which he did diligently. Gaining the confidence of his superiors, especially since several of them were rugby fans, he quickly erased their suspicions and rose in the ranks. He was transferred to a unit in London. There, he was named head of a section for deciphering arcane communications that could pinpoint the movements of German infantry commanders. As a section head, Ehrlich accumulated much classified information about the inner workings of British Army Intelligence and about its personnel. He regularly transmitted the information to his German contacts.

Even now, after more than five years of service in the British agency, Ehrlich’s activities as a German agent remained unknown. They were unknown because he rarely veered from the truth in passing on deciphered German messages. Such was the price for remaining an effective double agent.

Clean-shaven, blond, and with pale blue eyes that betrayed little, he was viewed as somewhat of an enigma—genial yet distant, cheerful yet impassive.

OUR BIGGEST CONCERN, ladies and gentlemen, is no longer the War, Ehrlich said after Colonel Goodwin sat down. It is what comes afterwards.

He launched into his speech, delivered as mechanically as cataloging components of the gasoline engine. Flicking page after page of documents in a thick ring folder, he enumerated the evidence that his section had picked up from the German airwaves. The inescapable conclusion? The Nazis had organized an underground network providing means of escape for their top officials.

What do you propose we do about it, David? one of the staff asked at the end of the dissertation.

First we must discover its infrastructure and resources.

How will we do that?

Why, I’ll go there myself, of course. I am fluent in the language and have in-depth knowledge of the country. Therefore I could do us a lot more good there than sitting here on my ass and getting fatter by the day.

You’re going to play field agent? Hell, Dave, you’ve been at a desk for the whole War. How can you possibly—?

I approve his mission, Colonel Goodwin interrupted. Any objections? If not, let’s adjourn for tea.

No one objected. Ehrlich was given a special pass to travel throughout Allies-controlled Germany, which made up most of the country now. He could even commandeer an army vehicle in Wiesbaden if he felt the need.

ON THE LATE MORNING of April 27, 1945, Ehrlich arrived in Zurich. He rode a taxi to the Franken Bank Suisse, a smaller and lesser known bank in the city. After showing his identity at the kiosk, he was ushered into a windowless cinderblock room in the basement. There, he wrote a check for the equivalent of ten-thousand English pounds, which he collected in bundles of five-pound notes. He would have preferred hundred-pound notes, but those were being taken out of circulation. He stuffed the bundles inside a concealed compartment at the bottom of his oversized suitcase.

On Sunday he crossed into Germany by train, then rode another to Wiesbaden. He presented himself to the Commanding Officer of a British Army unit set up in a downtown hotel. After verifying Ehrlich’s papers and orders, the CO arranged for him to use an Army Jeep. The CO also let him stay overnight in one of the better rooms at the same hotel.

The following morning Ehrlich drove to the northern outskirts of Berlin and rented a room at a nondescript hostelry. Then he met his Gestapo contact, Rudy, at the partly destroyed Helgastrasse apartment. They talked at length, during which the agent revealed more details of the plan. Ehrlich was impressed with it, especially when he heard who would lead the mission. After telling Rudy where he was staying, Ehrlich returned to his lodgings. A day later two members of the team joined him. Together they waited for the signal to start the first stage of the Phoenix Incursion.

On the morning of May 1, a day after Hitler’s suicide, an elderly woman in a wrinkled black dress came to Ehrlich’s room.

I bring word from Rudy, but first my money.

Ehrlich thrust two five-pound notes into her hand—German currency was almost worthless. She stuffed them inside her shoes.

Rudy’s special guest will leave his quarters at midnight.

Five

He regained consciousness to flashes in the sky and distant explosions.

The body pressed against his side was still. He nudged it, but it did not react. Sitting up, he recognized the face, a silvery apparition in the moonlight.

Ludwig, get up, he whispered. This is your friend, Mart—uh—Josef. Josef Schmidt.

Examining Ludwig’s face more closely, Josef shuddered at the terrified look frozen in death. Then he remembered the Russian tank that had separated them from the rest of the escapees. It came at them, firing at whatever moved. Then the turret rotated toward him and Ludwig. The gun blasted, and everything went blank. Now, next to him was his dead friend. How long had they been lying there?

Looking about him, Josef realized where he was: on a bridge at Invalidienstrasse where it crossed the railroad tracks. Bomb craters, debris, and bodies were scattered up and down the span. Only a black dog moved, darting from corpse to corpse with its tail down. A moment later the dog trotted off as the bridge quivered. Josef heard the rumble of an approaching tank. He jumped up and took a step, but immediately felt a knifelike pain in his right heel. Hobbling away, he kept as much weight off his right foot as possible. A block beyond the bridge he collapsed behind a building door that was partially off its hinges. He peered through the space between the door and the frame.

A Russian tank thundered by, a column of soldiers following. He braced himself for one of them to look behind the door, but they marched on. Another tank and its entourage came and went. Then four children and their mother walked by in the opposite direction from the tanks and troops.

Will we ever go back Mamma? the biggest of the children asked.

To what? To the ruins we once called our home? No, my dear, we will not. Cheer up now. We will live with Auntie in the peaceful countryside. And you will have lots of fun, all of you.

Will we have rabbits?

Yes, rabbits and vegetables and eggs.

Will Papa be there?

I have already told you, Papa has gone forever.

No, no! You are lying! He would never leave us.

The other children joined in the chorus of shrill denials, then the family moved out of earshot. A few minutes later others followed them, at first in little groups, then in a steady procession heading west out of the city. Invalidienstrasse had become a highway to safety.

Tired, his head still spinning, Josef crawled away from the entrance. A door opened to his left, and a voice whispered, Are the Russians after you?

Yes.

Come inside.

Josef crawled in. A single candle lit the