Read Online The Hour of the Cat by Peter Quinn - Free Book Online Page A

pipe. He washed his hands. The face in the mirror had black circles beneath the eyes; yellow nicotine stains on the upper and lower teeth. He pushed the hair back from his forehead. A line in a slow retreat. Premature gray giving way to white. Some movie star.
    Arnheim was right. He needed more exercise. Once he had been rigorous in his devotion to physical fitness. It was particularly important for sailors who spent months at sea. He’d seen enough officers trussed up in corsets so they’d look suitably trim in their dress uniforms to know the dangers of idleness. He’d walked the decks and went up and down ladders till his legs hurt. On land, he’d been a faithful visitor to the officer’s gymnasium. Now, given the demands on his time, the best he managed was horseback riding or the strolls with Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster, his deputy at the Office of Military Intelligence. But it would be untrue, he knew, to ascribe the strolls to a desire to stay fit. It was Oster’s outspokenness—more and more venturing beyond frankness to recklessness—which drove him outdoors, away from the casual eavesdropping of co-workers or subordinates or passersby.
    Canaris was barely back at his desk when Oster entered in his usual manner, sauntering past Gresser and not bothering to knock. He’d ignored complaints about his unannounced entries for so long that Canaris stopped making them. Oster fell onto the couch, sprawling rather than sitting.
    Although only a year older, Canaris felt far senior, like a professor indulging a bright but undisciplined undergraduate. He recognized in Oster one of a type: the veterans forever changed by the fronterlebnis , the shared experience of the Western Front. They were marked by the same insouciance and cynicism; the same adolescent impatience with rank and routine; the same spirit that helped drive the Freikorps, the soldiers and sailors who’d joined together at the war’s end to put down the Reds. It had also been on display in the Brown Shirts, or SA, the Storm Troopers who’d spearheaded the rise of the National Socialists. Like the vast majority of the officer corps, Oster had been in sympathy with them at the start. But, unlike most, he’d soured rapidly on what he saw as a regime incurably poisoned by thuggery, corruption, and overreaching ambition. To one degree or another, there were other officers with similar opinions, a relatively small percentage to be sure, but few as poor at masking their contempt as Oster.
    â€œHave you seen Piekenbrock’s report?” Oster said.
    â€œYou know my feelings on the matter.” Canaris initialed a stack of requisition forms. He would not be drawn in. He had stated his views on the subject emphatically, so no one could infer a different interpretation, or leap from a criticism of particular acts to an attack on the regime.
    â€œYou’ve read it?”
    â€œOf course.” The actions that had followed the annexation of Austria in March, the orgy of SS confiscation and violence directed primarily at the Jews, had become a constant theme of Oster’s visits. He had underscored parts of Colonel Hans Piekenbrock’s confidential summary so Canaris couldn’t miss them. SS Officers Kaltenbrunner, Globocnik, and Eichmann were particularly odious and brutal in their behavior. The regular army made no attempt to stop or mitigate their conduct, and in many ways abetted it. The SS and Gestapo proceeded with impunity.
    â€œA vile bunch.”
    â€œI have said all I’m going to say on the matter.” Canaris said it publicly, glass in hand, at the Naval Ball held a few days after the annexation, into a microphone: All of us are still dazzled by the experience of the great German consolidation. It exalts every heart!
    The audience answered in a single unanimous shout: Heil Hitler!
    From his first days with Military Intelligence, Oster had made it clear that he would say what was on