X, Y & Z

by Dermot Turing

  • • •

  In the well-fed surroundings of the Hotel Continental, Rex began to sell to the Abwehr the story of his life. Indeed, his life was at stake, but it was Hans-Thilo Schmidt who was the mark in the last, the most deadly, of the games played by the baron of the casinos.

  By 20 March 1943, the details had all come out: how Schmidt had approached the French; the initial suspicions that Schmidt was a plant by German intelligence; the first meeting at Verviers. Then the photography (not omitting the detail of the bathroom); the 10,000 Reichsmarks paid to Schmidt; the correspondence in invisible ink; the locations of the following meetings; the flow of secret documents; the soap-factory cover plan. The attention of the interrogators was on what Hans-Thilo’s brother had negligently divulged, the secret War Ministry materials which revealed high German strategy.4

  Over the coming weeks, Rex spilled more beans. One by one, Rex’s contacts were rounded up. Among the victims was the French mole in the German Embassy. Hans-Thilo Schmidt’s proximity to the Enigma secret could not be ignored. The enquiry was widening. The German factory which manufactured Enigma machines was required to provide details of their dealings with Hans-Thilo Schmidt.5 On 23 March 1943, Hans-Thilo was arrested. On 10 April, his brother General Rudolf Schmidt was relieved of his command on the Eastern Front.

  The interrogation of Rex and the wide-ranging inquisition concerning Schmidt was not the only threat to the Enigma secret. The German Supreme Command Cipher Division had a new commanding officer, Major-General Wilhelm Gimmler. A new man at the top, a new investigation into the security of Enigma. Sooner or later, the threads must surely come together and the German bureaucrats catch up with their prisoners.

  • • •

  On 2 July 1943, a telegram from Słowikowski reached Polish intelligence headquarters in London. ‘SECRET. From Algiers. From Rivet – The following officers from the cryptology cell have been arrested in Spain: Maj. Michałowski, Capt. Palluth, Lt. Rejewski, Lt. Szachno, Lt. Suszczewski and Lt. Sylwester. Four of them, including Maj. Michałowski, are in Las Misiones prison in Barcelona, two in Lerida. Rivet asks if those officers could continue to work with the French in North Africa, instead of being withdrawn to England. RYGOR.’6

  The information in the telegram wasn’t completely accurate, but it was certainly good news. On 27 July, the prisoners were bundled off to Madrid, then to Portugal and then on to an overcrowded trawler called the Scottish which took them to Gibraltar. They had been in prison for almost six months. On 2 August, a transport plane took them, not to Rivet in North Africa, but to Hendon in North London, where they arrived the following morning.7 The bewildered group of released Poles – Rejewski, Zygalski, Michałowski, Szachno and Sylwester Palluth (but not his cousin Antoni) – were under the orders of the Polish Army. There was a debriefing. It still had to be decided what their role should be. Indeed, the role of Poland in the war was becoming a difficult question for the Allies.

  Following their victory at Stalingrad, the Red Army began to roll back the Wehrmacht. Consequently, the Polish government-in-exile had been looking for assurance about their post-war eastern border. Relations between the Poles and the Soviets had been dealt a near-fatal blow by the announcement by German radio in April 1943 that the bodies of 3,000 Polish officers had been discovered in a huge ditch at a place called Katyn. In defiance of the wishes of the British, whose diplomacy was designed to appease Stalin at any cost, the Polish government-in-exile demanded an investigation into the find, which – as the Germans had expected – showed that the Poles had been executed by their Russian captors. Only the towering authority of Sikorski could hold the shaky Russo-Polish alliance together. But on 4 July 1943, only days before the code-breakers themselves reached Gibraltar, Sikorski’s plane crashed on take-off there. For Poland, for the code-breakers, Russia was less of an ally than an enemy and certainly a force to be watched with the utmost care.

  The London to Bletchley railway line runs alongside the Grand Union canal for much of its length, passing the town of Hemel Hempstead, on the outskirts of which sits the village of Boxmoor. Unlike Hemel, Boxmoor has a station on the line and it is less than a mile – if a stiff uphill walk – from the station to a large house in comparatively rural surroundings, in a place too small to have a name, but nonetheless called Felden. Its isolation, hilltop setting and railway link made Felden the perfect place for foreign spies to keep an eye on an ally of dubious intentions. The house was called ‘The Arches’ and it was requisitioned by the British in May 1943 because the radio reception at Stanmore was inadequate for long-distance communication and interception. On 22 June 1943, the Polish Radio Intelligence Company commanded by Captain Kazimierz Zieliński moved into the house, in whose grounds there were now 8m radio masts and associated outbuildings. It was a bit like Bletchley Park, just on a smaller scale.8

  A few weeks later, on the orders of Jan Żychoń, a meeting took place between Biffy Dunderdale and Major Władysław Gaweł, the officer in charge of Polish signals intelligence in London. Item 4 on the agenda was the group of code-breakers formerly belonging to Ekspozytura 300. Dunderdale was told the team would be assigned to the Radio Intelligence Company at Felden. ‘We may use some of them to improve Russian cryptology.’ Dunderdale was delighted. ‘He said he was especially interested in intelligence focused on Russia, since the Radio Intelligence Company at Felden was the only source of information about Russia for them.’9 Here, in a large suburban house, on the fringes of the peacetime commuter belt, the fugitives from Ekspozytura 300 would be put to work for the rest of the war.

  • • •

  Gustave Bertrand had been practising his magical tricks. He could make people disappear; his latest act was to disappear himself. There was a hint to Gwido Langer that Bertrand had looked in on the prison in Perpignan where Langer was locked up with Ciężki, Fokcyński and Gaca, but they hadn’t seen him then or since. After that, he had made something appear: half a 20-franc note bearing the signature of Gwido Langer. The second part of the payment to the courier who was to deliver the four Poles to safety was due to be settled only when Bertrand had both halves of the note. One half had been seized by the Gestapo when Langer was arrested. Now Bertrand had both halves of the note and he had paid off those who had led the Poles into ambush. Langer never forgave Bertrand for this. To Langer, it was a betrayal and the 20-franc note was proof positive that, having pulled off his disappearing act, Bertrand was being played by the Germans, if not actively working for them.10

  The business of the note was proof of something, certainly. It did not take a torn 20-franc note to provide evidence that shady characters like Gomez and his associates had done some deal with the Gestapo. But the farrago with the note did not prove that Bertrand was working for the Nazis. In a telegram to Stanisław Gano in London, Bertrand apologised for not helping more with the evacuation: his country had been ‘conquered and sold to the enemy’.11 And, unknown to Langer, there was an explanation for Bertrand’s disappearance. He was working underground.

  The Kléber network wasn’t a traditional spy network at all. It was a complete bureaucracy replicating as much of the structure of the pre-war Service de Renseignements as was feasible in the circumstances of conquest and sale. ‘It was a vast organisation covering numerous networks and sub-networks.’ Its crucial role was to keep the French underground – the Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur – connected with senior anti-Vichy officers in North Africa and (via Dunderdale) their Allies in London, and to keep both those constituencies abreast of developments in France. As the Allies lumbered towards the inevitable invasion of France, Kléber and its subdivisions would furnish them with the order-of-battle and other details about the defending Wehrmacht, as well as provide coordination with the Resistance. The heart of Kléber was its radio organisation. At the head of Kléber was a French officer who was expert in radio intelligence. His name, sometimes, was Gustave Bertrand.12

  • • •

  On 9 September 1943, Gwido
Langer (weight now 66kg) recorded in his diary that he and Ciężki were being transferred from the prison camp at Compiègne to the Schloss Eisenberg in the Sudetenland. Internierungslage IV was no more an ordinary camp for prisoners of war than Compiègne. It was an internment centre for ‘prominent personalities’. Among the approximately 138 luminaries held at Eisenberg in early 1944 were General René Altmayer of the French Army; Michel Clemenceau, son of the Great War era French premier, and Pierre de Gaulle, brother of the Free French general. Clemenceau was in room 46, where Langer and Ciężki were placed. Unfortunately, such august company did not presage an uplift in the conditions. Langer’s weight continued to fall. By 15 January 1944 he was at 58kg, a 27 per cent drop in weight. He had all the appearance of a living skeleton. At least, though, letters had begun to arrive from Poland and Red Cross parcels were now allowed. Slowly, Langer’s weight began to creep back up. On 27 January, he got his first letter from Janka his wife.

  Now it was Ciężki’s health that was the worry. Langer records that:

  people were getting very sick due to malnutrition, and if the food parcels had not come in February the whole camp would have turned into a cemetery. It was difficult to walk even to the second floor. Major Ciężki was unwell too. That year Dr Clarte [another inmate in the same cell] told me he didn’t think Ciężki would make it. The doctor thought Ciężki would die of tuberculosis.’

  Ciężki wrote home from the Schloss Eisenberg that, at ‘51 kilograms, I now belong to the featherweight category’.13

  • • •

  Georges Baudin was always thinking about radio. Radio communications were a lifeline in the upside-down world where his home country was occupied by one group of foreigners and the hope of freedom lay in the hands of another group of foreigners. So it was a major concern of his that the amount of equipment at his disposal was constantly diminishing. Every time there was a raid, precious equipment was captured or destroyed. Fortunately, the intelligence service had arranged for a drop-off of some replacements and information on the pick-up was to be given in Paris.

  Baudin’s rendezvous with the intelligence service was at the church of the Sacré-Coeur at Montmartre on 3 January 1944, and the procedure was a textbook example of tradecraft. Baudin did not know his contact, so they would meet by the statue of St Antony of Padua. The contact would have a copy of the paper Signal in his left hand. Baudin would say ‘Salve’ and the countersign was ‘Amen’. Yet when the day came, no one carrying Signal was anywhere to be found. Another man had come in and made a show of praying, but nowhere near the statue. Baudin and the other man were evidently both waiting and after a while it dawned on Baudin that they were waiting for each other.

  ‘Salve,’ said Baudin tentatively.

  ‘Est-ce bien vous qui venez de Clermont-Ferrand?’ said the other man.

  By this point, Baudin ought to have twigged that something was amiss. Instead, he arranged to meet two days later in the same place. On that occasion, despite the time appointed being the early hour of 8 a.m., the church was positively teeming with the pious. One kept his hat on. One guarded the door. The other two took pews before and behind our man, each poking a revolver into his ribs. Baudin was soon on his way to 101, Avenue Henri-Martin, and he had only himself to blame.14

  101 Avenue Henri-Martin was a branch office of the Abwehr, whose chief had sallow skin, an unwelcoming expression and appalling taste in clothes. He was Christian Masuy (real name Georges Delfanne) and he specialised in water torture. Masuy’s victims were repeatedly immersed in a bath, filled with ‘cold water, blood, clumps of hair, and excrement’.15

  Georges Baudin did not wish to take a Masuy bath. Having had his pockets emptied and his fake ID examined, he decided to confess his true identity. He was, in truth, the Commandant Gustave Bertrand, of the French secret intelligence service. It was not much of a surprise, for Masuy and his boss were already acquainted with Commandant Gustave Bertrand.

  Back in the spring of 1940, Louis Rivet and his regiment of intelligence officers had been carefully watching the German Embassy in Brussels. The embassy was the place from which the Abwehr conducted operations. The director was an officer called Hermann Brandl, cover-name Otto, and his chief agent was someone called Delfanne, alias Masuy. When the war overtook the game of the spies, Otto was ordered out of no-longer-neutral Belgium. He could not go to Germany by the direct route because that lay straight through the combat zone. Their only option was to take a train, through France, and trust in their diplomatic status to give them safe passage.16

  When the train pulled into the station at Lille it was searched, as everyone had expected. Inspector Robert Blémant was vulgar and contemptuous, and, unfortunately for Otto, he was also diligent, anti-Nazi and not impressed by official bits of paper. In Inspector Blémant’s view, Germans should just be locked up, particularly as everyone knew Otto was a spy working for the Abwehr and the claim to diplomatic immunity was a veneer of falsehood. Despite the complaints of the ambassador himself, Otto was taken off the train and marched off the offices of the Surveillance du Territoire, France’s MI5.17 Otto began to talk his way out, telling the French about German radio operators working under cover in France. It wouldn’t matter, since the Germans were coming anyway and saving his own skin was the priority. Otto’s first disclosure was of a 70-year-old man with a transmitter and a much younger Javanese wife, whose expensive needs could only be satisfied from a reliable spying income.18

  An emergency call went out to Gustave Bertrand to investigate the ageing spy, his transmitter, and the Javanese wife, and true to duty Bertrand leaped into a car and drove the 250km to Lille. The man confessed and was taken from his Javanese wife. Otto told Bertrand what he needed to know about the transmitter and the technical instructions found with it.

  Meanwhile, the French high command had got wind of the case of Agent Otto. It was now a matter of honour: Otto had to be released. Blémant was wild with fury. Paul Paillole, Blémant’s minder from French counter-intelligence, agreed, honour be damned. So Blémant put together a plan. The train would be allowed to proceed on its journey, but Blémant would remain aboard and cause an accident. Then Otto could be taken off and disposed of quietly. Everyone would be satisfied.

  There was only one flaw in Blémant’s plan and that was that he told people about it. Otto certainly knew that his life was in peril. And orders were orders and these orders had come from General Gamelin – the French commander-in-chief – himself. Paillole could not allow the general’s instructions to be disregarded in so transparent a way. Someone, though, needed to take Otto to the station and send the train on its way. Clearly Blémant was not the person for that task, which fell to the one French officer on the scene who had not been involved in the illegal detention or assassination plans. That officer was Captain Gustave Bertrand.

  So it was Bertrand who brought the good news and escorted Hermann Brandl to the railway station on 14 May 1940. It seemed, to Otto, that the officers from French counter-intelligence had been trying to get him to switch sides and Otto’s parting shot to Bertrand was, possibly, a conspiratorial remark: ‘Perhaps, one day, we’ll see each other again.’ Within weeks, much to the chagrin of Paillole, Otto was established in Paris as head of the French branch of the Abwehr, running an extortion racket called the ‘Bureaux Otto’ and acquiring notoriety and cash with equal speed.

  But that march to the railway station in 1940 saved Gustave Bertrand when, indeed, the two spies met again. The French files were in German hands, and Brandl knew that Bertrand was part of Rivet’s organisation; he knew that Bertrand was in touch with MI6. And in Bertrand, Brandl hoped to find the ultimate double agent. A double agent trusted by all, but working for the Abwehr. Bertrand was confronted with the truth: we know all about your pre-war story and the informant you had in Berlin. The Abwehr, it seemed, knew all about Hans-Thilo Schmidt.

  Bertrand knew that dissembling and deception would be hard, but he could foresee the areas of interest as they were j
ust the ones he would have asked about himself: the structure of the Resistance’s organisation in France; the relationship of the Resistance with Algiers and London; the names and funding and codes and modes of communication. And then came the big question. Would Bertrand take the torture chamber downstairs, or turn and work for the Abwehr?

  For Bertrand that was no choice at all. He could effortlessly get through the questioning by feeding the Abwehr with harmless technical detail about radios and interception. There was, however, still one further interrogation to endure, from Otto’s boss, Colonel Rudolf, in the Hotel Continental, where Rex had already dished up the juicy story of Schmidt. The encounter with Rudolf proved to be nothing more than an exchange of bland niceties about the peril of the Russians and then Gustave Bertrand, the head of the Kléber network in metropolitan France, found himself signed up as the highest-ranking French agent of German counter-intelligence.

  • • •

  After their debriefing, the Polish code-breakers who had escaped from Spain endured four weeks of bureaucracy. There were upsides – back-pay for the period from February, fresh uniforms, a boozy night – and plenty of meetings as well as a brief posting to Kinghorn. Located on the northern side of the Firth of Forth, guarding the approach to the marine base at Rosyth, the village of Kinghorn was home to a radio interception station and a company of Polish ex-patriate servicemen. Then there were a few weeks’ holiday for the German-ciphers experts: Henryk Zygalski went back to Edinburgh, where there were some old friends, including Włada, one of his girlfriends from the old days in Algiers. By mid-September it was back to work, in the new place at Felden. Zygalski and Rejewski were billeted in a nearby house, where they were delighted to see the lawn next door was sprouting mushrooms that were sadly ignored by the house’s owner. A debate on the wisdom of eating toadstools ensued; the crazy Poles were allowed into the neighbour’s garden to take the harvest. The next day, much to the amazement of their British neighbour, they seemed to be alive and to have gone to work as usual.19