The Parsifal Pursuit Read online

  Table of Contents

  Also published by Enigma Books

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Publisher’s Note

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part I - Germany

  Chapter 1. - Interviewing Hitler

  Chapter 2. - Champagne or Me?

  Part II - America

  Chapter 3. - Churchill’s Cable

  Chapter 4. - The Chief

  Chapter 5. - Science and the State

  Chapter 6. - The Spear of Destiny

  Chapter 7. - A Problem with the Kaiser

  Chapter 8. - Wild Bill Donovan

  Chapter 9. - Dinner Can Wait

  Chapter 10. - The Hunt Begins

  Part III - Germany, America, and England

  Chapter 11. - A Knightly Order

  Chapter 12. - Protection Money

  Chapter 13. - Dinner in the Clouds

  Chapter 14. - Bobby Sullivan

  Chapter 15. - Peril in the Clouds

  Chapter 16. - The Crown Prince

  Chapter 17. - Negotiating With Hitler

  Chapter 18. - Harmony

  Chapter 19. - An Adventure Awaits

  Chapter 20. - The Spear Must Be Protected

  Chapter 21. - The Orient Express

  Part IV - Germany, Switzerland, Egypt and Austria

  Chapter 22. - The Captains and the Kings

  Chapter 23. - A Pleasant Surprise

  Chapter 24. - A Return to Germany

  Chapter 25. - The Adventure Begins

  Chapter 26. - The Ambasssador

  Chapter 27. - By Airship to Egypt

  Chapter 28. - The Factory

  Chapter 29. - A Luncheon in Alexandria

  Chapter 30. - Cabaret

  Chapter 31. - Death in Egypt

  Chapter 32. - A Cute Birthmark

  Chapter 33. - Mattie’s Nightmare

  Chapter 34. - The Last Honest Man in Munich

  Chapter 35. - Traitors Within Geneva

  Chapter 36. - Speechless

  Chapter 37. - The Night Belonged to the Apostles

  Chapter 38. - Joey’s Big Story

  Chapter 39. - A New Recruit

  Part V - Italy, Austria, and Germany

  Chapter 40. - Death in Venice

  Chapter 41. - There May Be Another Explanation

  Chapter 42. - Autogiros

  Chapter 43. - Her Nightmares Stayed Away

  Chapter 44. - We Have a Problem

  Chapter 45. - By Packhorse

  Chapter 46. - Stick With the Plan

  Chapter 47. - The Aftermath

  Chapter 48. - Fear for Mattie

  Chapter 49. - To Fight for Cockran

  Chapter 50. - No Time to Waste

  Chapter 51. - Sturm’s Apology

  Chapter 52. - Keep Mattie Safe

  Chapter 53. - The Castle

  Chapter 54. - Mattie Was So Close

  Chapter 55. - A Last Night Cap

  Chapter 56. - Screams in the Night

  Chapter 57. - Mattie Explains

  Chapter 58. - Did You Find Mattie?

  Chapter 59. - The Spear

  Chapter 60. - The Men in Hoods

  Chapter 61. - The Stables

  Chapter 62. - The New Templars

  Chapter 63. - Heed My Words

  Chapter 64. - Assault on Castle Lanz

  Chapter 65. - The Great Hall

  Chapter 66. - Tristan

  Chapter 67. - All I Care About Is Mattie

  Chapter 68. - The Hotel Belonged to Us

  Chapter 69. - And I Have the Key

  Chapter 70. - The Heart of the New Europe

  Chapter 71. - Himmler’s Camelot

  Chapter 72. - Kill Them All

  Chapter 73. - Death From Above

  Chapter 74. - Parsifal Represents a Model

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgements

  Coming in the Fall 2011

  Copyright Page

  Enigma Books

  Also published by Enigma Books

  Non-Fiction

  Hitler‘s Table Talk: 1941–1944

  In Stalin‘s Secret Service

  Hitler and Mussolini: The Secret Meetings

  The Jews in Fascist Italy: A History

  The Man Behind the Rosenbergs

  Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History

  Secret Affairs: FDR, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles

  Hitler and His Generals: Military Conferences 1942–1945

  Stalin and the Jews: The Red Book

  Fighting the Nazis: French Intelligence and Counterintelligence

  A Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and the Stalin Terror

  The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Algeria 1955–1957

  Hitler‘s Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf

  At Napoleon‘s Side in Russia: The Classic Eyewitness Account

  The Atlantic Wall: Hitler‘s Defenses for D-Day

  France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932–1939

  Mussolini: The Secrets of His Death

  Mortal Crimes: Soviet Penetration of the Manhattan Project

  Top Nazi: Karl Wolff—The Man Between Hitler and Himmler

  Empire on the Adriatic: Mussolini‘s Conquest of Yugoslavia

  The Origins of the War of 1914 (3-volume set)

  Hitler‘s Foreign Policy, 1933–1939—The Road to World War II

  The Origins of Fascist Ideology 1918–1925

  Max Corvo: OSS Italy 1942–1945

  Hitler‘s Contract: The Secret History of the Italian Edition of Mein Kampf

  Secret Intelligence and the Holocaust

  Balkan Inferno: Betrayal, War, and Intervention, 1990–2005

  Calculated Risk

  The Murder of Maxim Gorky

  The Kravchenko Case: One Man‘s War On Stalin

  Hitler‘s Gift to France

  The Nazi Party, 1919–1945: A Complete History

  Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations

  The Cicero Spy Affair

  The First Iraq War

  Becoming Winston Churchill

  Hitler‘s Intelligence Chief

  Salazar: A Political Biography

  Nazi Palestine

  Lenin and His Comrades

  American Police—The Blue Parade 1845–1945: A History

  The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb

  Mysteries

  Operation Neptune

  Paris Weekend

  NOC

  Code Name: Kalistrat

  Pax Romana

  The De Valera Deception

  To Carol and Becca, the loves of our lives.

  And, with love and affection, to our 92-year-old patriarch

  John McMenamin, our father and grandfather respectively.

  Publisher’s Note

  Some may question casting Winston Churchill as a key character in a series of historical thrillers set during 1929-1939, his “Wilderness Years” when he was out of power, out of favor and a lone voice warning against the rising danger posed by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. They shouldn‘t. Saving Western Civilization in 1940 when England stood alone as a beacon of liberty in a sea of tyranny tends to overshadow Churchill‘s earlier accomplishments.

  Churchill is, in many ways, a perfect historical figure around which to craft a period thriller. Winston was an adventure-seeking young man, a fencing champion in prep school, a championship polo player in the Army and a seaplane pilot in the early, peril-filled days of flight in 1910. In between, he was a much-decorated war hero in bloody battles on the Afghan-Indian border, in the Sudan, and in South Africa where his commanding officer nominated him for
the Victoria Cross, Britain‘s highest military honor, and where he escaped from a prisoner of war camp and made his way to freedom over hundreds of miles of enemy territory. In World War I, while other politicians, safely abed, sent millions of young men to their death, Winston was with his troops in the trenches of the bloody Ypres salient daily risking death himself.

  More importantly for this new series, Churchill maintained a private intelligence network in Britain and Europe during the 1930s which often left him better informed than his own government. The writing team of the critically acclaimed Churchill biographer Michael McMenamin and his journalist son Patrick McMenamin use this fact as a catalyst for their stories. With Churchill at the center spinning his own web, he lures into many adventures his fictional Scottish goddaughter, the beautiful Hearst photojournalist Mattie McGary and the American law professor Bourke Cockran, Jr., a former U.S. Army counter-intelligence agent. Winston, a romantic at heart, brings the two young people together. Romance blooms but it is not a match made in heaven. Both characters are strong-willed individuals and their Celtic tempers frequently clash. Cockran is the fictional son of Churchill‘s real life mentor Bourke Cockran, a prominent turn-of-the–century New York lawyer, statesman, orator and presidential adviser whose life is chronicled in Becoming Winston Churchill, the Untold Story of Young Winston and His American Mentor by Michael McMenamin and Curt Zoller (Enigma Books, 2009).

  The first three novels take place during 1929-1932 before Hitler‘s ill-fated, but entirely legal, appointment as the German Chancellor. In The DeValera Deception, Winston, Mattie and Bourke tangle with the IRA and a real-life, pre-Hitler, Russo-German conspiracy to dismember Poland. In doing so, they discover a plot in the US to assemble arms for an IRA coup d’etat in the new Irish Free State and Cockran seeks revenge for his wife‘s murder by the IRA in the 1922 Irish civil war. In The Parsifal Pursuit [Enigma Books, Spring, 2011], Winston sends Mattie on a grail quest in the company of a handsome villain intent on her seduction, a journey shadowed by the Nazis who want the ancient Christian artifact for Hitler. Also at Winston‘s behest, Cockran travels to Germany to represent a beautiful blonde heiress who is the victim of a Nazi fund-raising tactic—extortion of her business by a protection racket worthy of Al Capone. In The Gemini Agenda [Enigma Books, Fall 2011], Winston and his private intelligence network put Mattie and Bourke on the trail of a plot by Nazi scientists to kidnap and conduct lethal eugenic experiments on American twins. Shockingly, they learn the conspiracy is funded by Wall Street financiers and elements of US Army Intelligence who hope to unlock the secret to creating a master race. I hope you have as much fun reading these stories as I did.

  A new Winston-Mattie-Bourke trilogy set in 1933–1934 is in the making so stay tuned…

  Robert Miller

  Publisher

  Enigma Books

  “Live dangerously; take things as they come; dread naught; all will be well.”

  Winston S. Churchill

  The Daily Mail

  28 December 1931

  Prologue

  England and Austria 1914

  I have frequently been astonished since I have been in this House to hear with what composure and how glibly Members, and even Ministers, talk of a European war. I will not expatiate on the horrors of war, but there has been a great change which the House should not omit to notice… Democracy is more vindictive than cabinets. The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.

  Winston S. Churchill, 13 May 1901

  “The Fleet Will Be Ready”

  The British Admiralty

  London

  March, 1914

  WINSTON Churchill was late. Again. It was a lamentable habit which he had tried many times to cure but there was always so much to do. The Prime Minister would have to wait. He rose from his desk, walked to his office door, and caught the attention of his private secretary.

  “Pray telephone the Prime Minister and tell him I will be not punctual for our 4 p.m. meeting. Half past four will be closer to the mark. Explain I‘ve only now received an urgent naval intelligence report which requires my immediate attention. There‘s a good lad.”

  Churchill returned to his desk and opened the red dispatch box which had been sitting there since early morning, taking out a single sheet of heavy bond paper, dense with crisp black type––a report from naval intelligence at the British Embassy in Berlin. Churchill read it with care. He looked up, re-lit his cigar, then read it a second time. Slowly.

  When he was done, Churchill walked over to the window and stared out into an overcast sky. Rain soon would come. So would war. He shook his head. Von Moltke. Who would have thought the Chief of the German General Staff would be the one to betray the Kaiser? Every generation had its Judas and von Moltke had no way to know his warning to Austrian Emperor Franz Josef would also make its way to English ears and eyes. But there it was in black and white. The Kaiser was determined to acquire what even Napoleon had not.

  He knew others thought differently of him but Churchill neither wanted nor welcomed a war. He had warned against it for fourteen years, but old men didn‘t know war like he did. Now, it was all beyond his control. War was coming and he could do nothing to stop it. Just as he could do nothing to stop the Kaiser‘s latest scheme. That would be up to a forewarned Franz Josef. Churchill could do only what was within his power. When war came, he vowed to himself, the British fleet would bloody well be ready.

  The 39-year-old First Lord of the British Admiralty jammed on his hat and picked up his walking stick. The Prime Minister must be told. At once. The clock on his office wall clicked once more. 4:35 p.m. Winston Churchill was late. Again.

  “The Holy Brotherhood”

  Castle Lanz

  The Austrian Alps

  March, 1914

  MAJOR Josef Lanz was no stranger to violence. A shade over six feet, he was taller than the average man under his command in the elite unit of ten Austrian Army mountain troops standing patiently behind him on their wooden skis, semi-automatic carbines slung over their shoulders, awaiting his order. He pushed the hood of his white parka back and his dark hair and sunburned face stood out against the blinding white of the snow. A pale scar ran diagonally across his left cheek, a souvenir of more youthful days and happier times. He took off his snow goggles and looked at his army-issue wrist watch below which was a discrete Celtic sun cross tattoo in deep red with a small circle over the center of the cross.

  Lanz turned to the man beside him, his second in command, Captain Hans Weber, who had the same tattoo on his wrist. “The snow is letting up. Have the men camp here for the night. Tell them we will ski out at first light. Post no sentries. You and I will ascend to the castle but only after the men are asleep. The threat to the heilege lance, is real. And it comes from our German friends, not the Black Hand.”

  Captain Weber‘s eyes narrowed at Lanz‘s words. “I understand, Major. No sentries.”

  Weber knelt, unstrapped his skis and walked back to the men standing on their skis in silence looking like medieval monks in whitehooded mountain parkas.

  AT the base of the castle, which had been in the Lanz family for generations dating back to the Crusades, the Austrian major approached a small wooden door. Freshly varnished, a brass lock of modern design was flush with the wood. It had taken both men nearly thirty minutes to make the trek up. They were carrying identical oblong parcels approximately six feet long, each wrapped tightly in oiled, waterproof canvas. As they placed their packages down in the snow, Weber expressed his surprise at the modern door and lock.

  Lanz caught his glance. “Ever since our Order was reborn, I have come here each summer with a single craftsman; each time a different man; each time blindfolded, content to ride in comfort on one of the small Haflinger pack horses bringing supplies and fuel. I knew this day would come where we would once more need to protect our sacred relics from the barbarian hordes, whether they be our German brothers to the north or the savage Slavs in the east.”
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  Lanz reached inside the pocket of his parka, fished out a key, inserted it into the brass lock and turned the key to the right. The polished door slid silently open on oiled hinges. The two men were standing in a small dark antechamber, the fading afternoon sunlight from the open door their only illumination. Lanz produced an electric torch from his field pack and directed it toward the far corner where stone steps led upward.

  “I‘ll hold the light and you engage the metal lever on the left. That will start the generator. Then we dine on warm food and sleep in comfort. 0300 will come soon enough.”

  “Yes, Major,” Weber said, as he walked over and pushed the lever upward. He was rewarded with three incandescent globes of light springing to life and illuminating the stairway.

  “To our duties first,” Lanz said. “Take the second replica upstairs to the Great Hall. The hidden space beside the fireplace. Make an entry in your notebook as to its location.”

  “Where are you going, Major?”

  Lanz smiled. “My apologies but you know better than to ask. Both of our notebooks will be delivered to the Archduke himself. But even he will not be able to learn the true location of Castle Lanz from reading them, let alone where within its grounds the holy relic is hidden. That is my secret alone. Rest assured, my old friend, it will be a fitting location.”

  NIGHT had long since fallen as the two men approached the five tents in silence. The snow-covered mountains were pale against a stark canopy of stars, a few embers in the campfire still glowed amidst the dormant ashes surrounding them. Nearby, stacked neatly against one another in a circle, a group of 7.92 mm Mannlicher M98/40 assault rifles stood ready. Lanz counted them. There were ten. He turned to Weber and unslung his weapon, a Bergmann MP 18/1 submachine gun, and watched while Weber did the same. Lanz crossed himself and turned to Weber, who also made the sign of the cross, then pulled the bolt back on his 9 mm weapon.