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

his mind and if Canaris didn’t like it, he was welcome to dismiss or arrest him, whatever he pleased. Occasionally, he warned Oster about the tone of his remarks and the ease with which they could be misconstrued as treasonous, especially his acerbic asides on the regime’s leading personalities. It did little good. Several weeks before, he’d taken Oster with him to attend a reception for a visiting delegation of Japanese military officers in the new Reichschancellery, on the Wilhelm-strasse. It was Oster’s first visit inside the still-unfinished building, and he seemed on his best behavior, as reserved and stiffly formal as the other members of the officer corps present.
    On the way out, they walked beside the building’s architect, Albert Speer, who didn’t lose a moment in underlining how close he was to the Führer and how the Reichschancellery was just a small foretaste of their plans for rebuilding Berlin on a truly heroic scale. Oster stopped to gaze at Arno Breker’s towering bronze nudes, The Party and The Army. He pointed at their genitals. “Here we have a perfect recapitulation of your architecture, Herr Speer. Oversized but flaccid.” Oster strolled ahead and left Canaris standing with the flustered architect.
    Oster rose from the couch and prowled the room. “Sooner or later, our Austrian corporal will push too far,” Oster said. “There are no restraints. We’ll be plunged into a war we cannot win. It’s only a matter of time. Mark my words.”
    Outside, Gresser was at his desk. Figures moved past in the corridor: secretaries, orderlies, officers. Was it only a matter of time before someone overheard and repeated it to those whose business it was to nose out such sentiments? “Come,” said Canaris. “Let’s go for a stroll on the Embankment. My doctor advises I need more fresh air and exercise.” They walked to the main entrance of the War Ministry, past the busts of Moltke and Blücher, Prussia’s two great vanquishers of the French, out along the Tirpitz Embankment, beside the canal. Across the hall, stuck in a corner, was a small bust of Baron von der Goltz, Prussia’s original spymaster. He had formed what was among Europe’s first professional intelligence services at the behest of Frederick the Great, the king who’d abolished torture as an instrument of state.
    Unburdened of frigid, insistent darkness, Berlin was any city of the north awash in the high tide of spring. Oster lit a cigarette by the Embankment wall. He cupped his hands to shield the match from the breeze. Two nursemaids halted their perambulators several yards behind, leaned over to adjust the blankets covering the infants within, chatting as they did.
    â€œDo you know the story of the cat and the rat?” Oster said.
    â€œI suspect that I’ve heard every cat and rat story,” Canaris said. “Don’t tell me you have a new one.”
    â€œAn old Swabian tale, but perhaps it will be new to you. In it, the rat succeeds in convincing the cat that he isn’t a cat at all but a rat.”
    â€œStupid cat.” Canaris casually surveyed the parade of pedestrians on the Embankment. The nursemaids trailed behind.
    â€œClever rat. Eloquent and impassioned, he gradually gets the cat acting like a rat. The cat starts to scurry around on its belly, lives in sewers, doesn’t clean itself, feasts on garbage, becomes one of the pack. Most wonderful of all, the cat soon realizes he doesn’t miss being a cat one bit. He feels quite free now that the burdens of independence, cleanliness, and self-respect have been lifted. He is filled with gratitude toward the rat.”
    Canaris resisted the impulse to turn and see if the nursemaids were still following. “But how do the rats feel about having a cat in their midst?”
    â€œOh, after a while the cat so much enjoys the role of rat that the hair falls off his tail.