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Dulles had watched the early years of World War Two with a professional detachment—though ultimately he not only joined those who believed the United States should intervene in the war but became a vocal proponent of it. He wrote books arguing against America’s neutrality.

And when, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, America finally found itself fully involved, he found himself serving his country in the Office of Strategic Services, working old contacts in Switzerland and establishing new ones to find anti-Nazis—Germans especially but also anyone else—willing to do anything to stop the evil that was Adolf Hitler.

* * *

Allen Welsh Dulles, deep in thought as he considered what would be the course of the evening’s meeting, took another puff on his pipe, exhaled, then leaned forward for his glass of cognac. He held the snifter so that its large bowl rested in his palm, the body heat from his hand gently warming the cognac through the fine crystal.

He started to rock the snifter, then stared at the slowly swirling cognac as he thought: The details of these bombings could cause him to tip either way—for us or against us.

But there’s no doubt they will make him furious.

I can only hope he blames his losses on Hitler.

Dulles put the glass to his nose, inhaled the rich aroma of the cognac, then took a sip. As he felt the alcohol warm his throat and then his stomach, there came a tap at the solid wooden door. It began to swing inward. He set his glass back on the table and glanced at his Patek Philippe wristwatch—the elegant Swiss-made timepiece, a gift from his wife, Clover, when Dulles had first served in Switzerland, showed it was shy of 11 P.M.—then he nodded appreciatively at his guest’s punctuality and glanced toward the door.

A serious-looking man in his late twenties with an athletic build and wearing the satin housecoat of a manservant—but who in fact was an armed OSS agent—entered the room first.

“Mr. Dulles, may I present Herr Kappler?”

He made a grand sweeping gesture with his right hand, and a tall, erect fifty-five-year-old man entered the library. The agent then quietly slipped back out the door, pulling it shut behind him with a solid click of its heavy metal latch.

Wolfgang Augustus Kappler had hawk-like facial features, piercing green eyes, and short dark hair that was graying at the temples. While he carried himself with an air of unquestioned confidence, Dulles knew him to be charming and gracious—a genuinely gentle man. He also knew that he was a devout Roman Catholic and anti-Nazi, one careful to distinguish between those who committed the atrocities in pursuit of National Socialism and its Final Solution for a master race and those who quietly fought the Fascism and racism while trying to save the Fatherland from further destruction.

At least till now maybe, Dulles thought.

Kappler wore a solid gray three-piece suit with a stiffly starched white dress shirt and a silver necktie. The custom-cut woolen garment fit perfectly, which accentuated a bulge in the jacket’s left patch pocket.

Dulles, with a warm smile, began to approach him.

“It is a real pleasure to see you again, Wolffy.”

Kappler effortlessly strode across the room and, with both hands extended, reached out and vigorously shook Dulles’s right hand.

“Allen,” Kappler said in his strong, deep voice, “it is always good to see an old friend.”

The two had known each other for almost a dozen years, having first met in the Berlin office of Sullivan and Cromwell.

Dulles, after getting his law degree at George Washington University in 1926, had been recruited by Sullivan and Cromwell, the international law firm based in New York City at which his older brother, John Foster Dulles, already had made partner. There was prestige involved with taking the position, certainly, but Dulles quietly admitted that the money was too good to turn down. And, he decided, if necessary he could always return to the diplomatic corps.

Thus, Allen Welsh Dulles came to handle international clients for the firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, and Kappler had come to him at the suggestion of Friedrich “Fritz” Thyssen, a fellow industrialist, for help with his corporate investments.

Like Thyssen, Kappler between world wars had been quietly looking to diversify his holdings beyond Germany and neighboring countries. His main business, Kappler Industrie GmbH, was hugely successful in the manufacture of steel and iron and other key materials for the building of automobiles, heavy trucks, trains, and aircraft. Wolfgang Kappler had sought to expand that business abroad while at the same time very quietly investing in other businesses.

The United States of America came immediately to his mind.

Allen Dulles oversaw for Kappler the setting up of a U.S. holding company in which Kappler, through Dulles’s investment banker connections, poured significant funds into blue-chip companies General Motors Corporation, Boeing Aircraft, International Business Machines, and E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, as well as a few smaller railroads in which Kappler hoped eventually to secure a controlling interest.

These companies proved to be as Kappler had expected—solid investments that were not subject to the mercurial economies he suffered in Europe, Germany’s out-of-control inflation being but one problem.

Yet bringing Kappler Industrie to the United States—and selling its various metal products to GM and Boeing and others for automobile and aircraft manufacturing—had not been the success that he or Dulles had anticipated. Which led Dulles then to suggest that Kappler look south, to the wealthier countries in South America that were hungry for new industry.

In almost no time, Dulles had created additional holding companies in Argentina and Uruguay, with others planned for Chile, Brazil, and Venezuela. These, however, were not like the holding companies Kappler had in North America, ones through which he simply bought shares of existing corporations. These were far superior. The South American properties contained manufacturing and import-export companies that Kappler either wholly owned or held a majority interest in.

And they quickly had begun to pay off handsomely. Even more important—especially with the Nazis squeezing any German company that they wished, from extorting them for money to outright stealing them in the name of nationalization for the Thousand-Year Reich—Kappler had wealth being generated far from Germany and Europe.

[THREE]

Allen Dulles motioned with his pipe toward the low marble table holding the humidor and bottles of Rémy Martin.