Chapter 889: The Leak

Whether Stalin and Zhukov, far away in Moscow, were foolish or not, no one knew. The sigh that Rokossovsky let out in his underground shelter could not have reached Moscow, a thousand miles away.

But just as Rokossovsky was clutching the telegram and cursing his superiors for their utter stupidity, in the Wolf’s Lair, Gascoigne and Reinhard Heydrich were also cursing at their own subordinates. Akado sat to one side, watching his two men curse, thinking that these generals were sometimes quite amusing when they swore. At least their curses were varied, so there was no fear of boredom from repetition.

He stirred the coffee in front of him with a spoon, seemingly with no interest in interrupting Gascoigne and Heydrich’s thesis on profanity. These two were now the public faces of the German intelligence services. There were truly not many things that could get them so worked up.

On one side, Gascoigne was pointing at one of his major generals in charge of intelligence and raging, “To actually let a Soviet spy get his hands into the quartermaster’s office, you’re a real elite of the Empire’s counter-intelligence, aren’t you! Tell me how much more top-secret intelligence you have to lose before you’ve completed your mission? Three years ago, for this kind of dereliction of duty, being shot would have been too light a punishment!”

On the other side, Heydrich was waving a document in his hand, mocking an old man in an SS Lieutenant General’s uniform. “Look! Look at what you promised me! A portion of the fuel supply reports for the hundreds of thousands of troops in the Central Army Group has been taken, and you still have the face to make promises to me? Do you want to pick a concentration camp and go in there yourself to see what my methods are like, is that it?”

The man being lectured by Gascoigne was the head of the Wehrmacht intelligence agency’s counter-espionage special investigation department. He was ruthless, steady in his work, had cracked many enemy spy cases, and was a well-known old spy chief in the military. The number of Soviet, British, American, and even renegade German spies who had died at his hands was already countless.

And the other man being lectured by Reinhard Heydrich was no nobody either. He was the commander of the SS special operations team, the uncrowned king in the SS intelligence department, and one of the possible successors to Heydrich’s position. He was secretly known as the Führer’s hound, famous for his all-pervasive and meticulous intelligence work.

In terms of seniority, even if these two were not as experienced as a battlefield veteran like Guderian, they should be considered major figures in the German intelligence services. Let alone being scolded like this, even on a normal day, Gascoigne and Heydrich would not easily make things difficult for such capable subordinates.

But the problem they had encountered this time was simply too infuriating. The Führer had personally inquired, and the mysterious third intelligence department had personally intervened to plug the hole at the last step. This made Gascoigne and Heydrich admire the vastness of Akado’s intelligence resources, and at the same time, made them even more dissatisfied with the laxity of their own subordinates.

A veteran Soviet spy, who had been undercover in the German army for seven years, had only recently become active. This nail, which had been a top secret, had begun to collect and verify intelligence on the German army’s logistical supply problems.

During the period of German-Soviet cooperation, both sides, taking advantage of the general environment of cooperation, had inserted a number of spies into the other’s camp. It was just that the Soviet army had only done so occasionally, as a matter of routine, while Germany had carried out a large-scale, shameless infiltration. The ultimate goals of the two sides were not on the same level at all, so the scale of their operations was naturally not on the same level either.

The Soviet side was carrying out normal international intelligence deployment according to the standard level of reconnaissance. The German side, under Akado’s operation, had turned it into a comprehensive strategic intelligence work deployment for a future war. With a well-thought-out plan against an unsuspecting opponent, if it wasn’t a one-sided affair, then the German intelligence personnel really should have just shot themselves.

But in such a one-sided situation, a Soviet pawn had actually managed to get into the German army’s relatively core logistics supply quartermaster’s office. And this spy had actually obtained a lot of reliable corroborating evidence, proving that the German army’s fuel was indeed in trouble.

For example, he had provided his contact with a train schedule, which showed that from the previous month, the number of oil tanker trains from Poland to Smolensk had begun to decrease. This was not the rhythm of stockpiling for an attack on Moscow. According to the data on the train schedule, the fuel in the German army’s hands was only enough for a defensive counter-attack and was by no means enough to encircle Moscow and get entangled with the Soviet army.

Another piece of corroborating intelligence came from the transport of the German army’s weapons and ammunition reserves. Apart from the regular rotation of personnel, the amount of ammunition the German army was transporting to the front had also seen a significant change. In order to support the attack on Stalingrad, most of the artillery and its ammunition resupply had been allocated to the southern theater.

More detailed still was the fact that most of the Mauser 98k rifles were flowing into Ukraine, indicating that the German army was actively arming the Ukrainian forces, which also marked a problem with the German army’s mobilization capability. There was another piece of intelligence showing that the German army had replenished the front with 450 new tanks in March, as well as repair parts for 1,500 tanks.

In any case, all sorts of peripheral intelligence intertwined to form a complete picture of the German army’s force distribution and development. To what degree of detail? So detailed that if this intelligence were placed on the desk of a German general, and they were asked to replace Zhukov to fight the German-Soviet war, there was a more than fifty percent chance they could turn the tables.

Such a detailed leak, such a terrifying intelligence crisis, made even Akado feel as if he had been at ease for too long, a little unaccustomed to the tense and dangerous environment of war.

Fortunately, the German intelligence departments were not complete idiots. At the very least, they had a premonition that the situation was not good. At the last moment, the hidden intelligence department under Akado’s command had personally acted and had killed the Soviet intelligence officer, who had already sent out a large part of the intelligence he had, right next to his radio set.

It was entirely thanks to the success of this operation that the German intelligence departments had avoided an irreparable loss. But a portion of the intelligence had indeed been obtained by the Soviets, including the fact that the German army in the central theater of the Eastern Front was short on fuel. Zhukov’s operational plan to go south to support Rokossovsky had been drawn up based on this precious piece of intelligence.

To cover up this mistake, or rather, to further confuse the already jittery Zhukov and Stalin, Akado had had to order the 80 “Butcher” bombers deployed at the front to carry out the dangerous mission of bombing Moscow, in order to shatter Stalin’s fragile heart.

If the German army had not successfully used intelligence to deceive the judgment of the Soviet high command several times before, if the German army had not achieved good results in the countless previous contests of wits and deception, then Stalin and Zhukov would probably not have been so cautious, and would not have so easily denied their own judgment.

“I didn’t call you here today to have you put on a show for me,” Akado finally spoke. The heads of the two intelligence departments, one had been berated to a pulp by the head of the Wehrmacht intelligence agency, the other had been scolded by the head of the SS into a turtle hiding in its shell.

He stood up, walked to Gascoigne’s and Heydrich’s side, reached out, and, holding a not-so-thick stack of files, patted them on the shoulder, one for each. “I know you’re not willing to really kill such capable subordinates or send them to a concentration camp. And I didn’t spend so much effort to cultivate two idiots who would just eat a bullet.”

“Today, I have hit both of you on the shoulder… one for each!” Akado said, looking at the two big shots of the Third Reich, his tone calm. “Remember this shame today! You must use your honor, your dignity, to wash away the shame of today’s failure!”

“Yes, sir!” Gascoigne’s face was flushed red. He saluted at attention. Heydrich did not speak but just lowered his head and raised his right hand in a salute. With these two big shots acting like this, the two high-ranking officials who were a head shorter behind them were naturally even more grieved and on the verge of death.

Akado walked to the other two, squinted his eyes, and his tone became even more severe. “I was forced to take off with 80 ‘Butcher’ bombers! I burned so much of the fuel that Field Marshal von Rundstedt regarded as his life! A full 12 were shot down by the enemy! Over a hundred pilots were lost! All because you failed…”

“Führer…” The two of them wished they could kneel down and speak. The issue of this intelligence leak had caused a major earthquake within the German intelligence departments. The internal self-inspection process had been carried out three times. Different departments had even investigated each other, and a number of parasites and dangerous individuals had been rooted out. There was even a British spy who had just recently been promoted to major by the Wehrmacht.

Akado did not make things difficult for them either. He waved his hand, interrupting their long-winded wailing. “Alright! I understand your difficulties, and I am also very clear on the hardship and toil of espionage work! Don’t forget that the system you now rely on as your eyes and ears was created by me. But do not slack off! Otherwise, we will be the ones who are most miserably liquidated in the future! The Soviets, the British, the Americans, the Japanese, whoever wins, we will all be hanged! So… don’t lose! Keep winning! Only if Germany wins will we not have to go to hell, understand?”

“Yes! Heil Akado Rudolph, our Führer!” The four of them immediately stated their position.

Akado waved his hand, ending this review meeting. “Go and do what you should be doing… and do it well! Anna, prepare my itinerary. I’m going to the airfield to visit and inspect the bomber units.”

He gave a helpless smile. The trouble his subordinates had caused, he still had to clean up personally.

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