Prince of Spies

by Prince of Spies (retail) (epub)

  ‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.’ This was followed by a quick smile.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Don’t look so shocked. It’s a saying, though maybe it doesn’t have the same meaning in English. It’s a childish way of saying you tell me about yourself and I’ll tell you about myself.’

  ‘Are we allowed to do that?’

  She shifted in the armchair and waved her hand in front of her in a dismissive manner. ‘Look, we’re going to be working very closely together. Do you imagine we’ll be going round Copenhagen with you addressing me as Agent Osric? You don’t think that could sound suspicious?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. So what do I call you?’

  She unfurled her legs and straightened herself up, leaning closer to him. She examined the end of her half-finished cigarette and placed it on the saucer of her coffee cup. ‘The way I operate is by deciding whether I trust someone or not, and if I do, by being very honest with them. But I set out rules, the code by which we’ll operate. You understand that?’

  Prince nodded, though he wasn’t absolutely certain he did.

  ‘I’ll explain: London would have told you they trust me totally. I’m very secure, I operate on my own. My links with the Danish resistance are indirect and very much on my terms. London clearly think that using me to plant the occasional bomb or find out which German units are in which garrison is a waste of my talents. So I’ve been totally undercover. My only contact with them has been through the MI6 station in Sweden, and even that has been intermittent. But because I know no one in Copenhagen suspects me, I have to be certain that whoever I work with here is safe. I have to know I can trust them. I cannot afford to be compromised.’

  She reached out for the cigarette, checked it was still alight and inhaled deeply.

  ‘I’ve watched this apartment ever since you arrived. Indeed, I was even keeping my eyes on you when you got here. If you’d been followed or if you were a traitor, believe me, I’d have known. So now I’ll be open with you. Come.’

  She stood up and beckoned him to follow her into the kitchen. She went over to the sink and turned on the taps. ‘Perhaps an unnecessary precaution, but who knows? This is the only time I will tell you my real name. You are never to use it. That should be obvious, but the reason I tell you is because sometimes not knowing something can be more dangerous than knowing it. And by the same logic, knowing my true identity could also help you. It is a difficult judgement to make, I accept that. London would be horrified, but they’re not here, are they? My name is Hanne Jakobsen. In case you’re wondering, I’m not married. Apart from my elderly father, I have no one in the way of family. You now tell me as much or as little about yourself as you see fit, but I have to know the identity they’ve given you – obviously.’

  Prince passed his legitimationskort to her. She examined it carefully, holding it up to the light, dabbing it with water, even sniffing it before finally allowing an approving nod.

  ‘This is very good. So you’re Jesper Holm, an accountant from Copenhagen. I presume you had no problems with it on your journey across Denmark?’

  ‘I didn’t use it.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘My contact in Esbjerg felt I should use another identity for that journey. I had papers in the name of Hans Olsen, a sales representative from Aarhus.’

  ‘And everything was fine?’

  ‘Yes… I was stopped quite a few times, but there didn’t seem to be any problem when they checked the legitimationskort.’

  ‘And what happened to Hans Olsen?’

  Prince tapped the sink. ‘He ended up as ashes in here.’

  She frowned. ‘That was probably a mistake. It’s a shame to waste a good identity. Never mind, Jesper Holm is good too. You don’t need to tell me about your life in England, but do tell me this: is this your first operation?’

  ‘Yes and no. It’s my first overseas operation, but I was involved in an operation back in England. I caught a Nazi spy and his British contact. I was a police officer; I suppose I still am a police officer. On secondment, I think you’d call it.’

  ‘A police officer – but so am I!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised, Jesper Holm. In Denmark we have many female police officers and we don’t just look after cases to do with children. I investigate some very serious crimes. I hold a senior rank.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘It’s called a vicepolitiinspektor – I’m not sure what the equivalent is in England. Tell me your rank.’

  ‘I’m a superintendent – a detective superintendent. It sounds as if I might outrank you!’

  She shot him a disapproving look. ‘Well, we’ll see about that. We need to talk about your mission. What have you been told?’

  Prince hesitated. ‘I’m not sure how much I’m…’

  ‘Look: we have to trust each other. This is the only way the mission will work. Let me help you. Agent Horatio…’

  ‘I’ve been told he’s a Danish businessman whose work frequently takes him to Berlin. Apparently on a recent trip there he came across intelligence about the German rocket programme. Up to now he’s been handled by Stockholm, but London want him to be run from Copenhagen; they think that’ll be safer. My job – our job – is to find him, decide whether we think he’s genuine and then run him. London is desperate for whatever intelligence he has on the rockets.’

  Hanne had turned the taps off as Prince spoke and walked back into the lounge. ‘And do you know any more about him?’

  ‘No. I don’t even know his name or where he lives; I was told you’d know that. Once we’re ready, I’m to approach him in the street and ask him where the Amalienborg Palace is and—’

  ‘Hang on. Jesper Holm is from Copenhagen and he doesn’t know where the Amalienborg Palace is? Couldn’t they have come up with something more imaginative?’

  ‘Maybe, but we can’t change it now. I ask him where the Amalienborg Palace is, and he is to reply asking whether I’d prefer to approach it from Frederiksgade or Amaliegade, then I say, whichever one is nearer to the church with the big dome.’

  ‘Very well then – it’s not the way I’d have chosen to do it, but there we are. I’ve already checked out Agent Horatio and I’m as sure as I can be that he’s genuine. He’s a businessman called Otto Knudsen, fifty-three years of age, lives on his own in a smart apartment block in Gammelholm, overlooking the Nyhavn canal in the centre of the city. He doesn’t have a criminal record and because of this we don’t have too much on him, but thanks to the Gestapo, we have records of political affiliations in the 1930s at our headquarters, and certainly at the time of the general election in 1935, he was registered as a supporter of the social democrats. I was also able to check the municipal records, which show he was divorced many years ago and has no children. He works for a specialist engineering company based in Copenhagen called Mortensen Machinery Parts. He’s a salesman, and this job takes him to the other Scandinavian countries and into Germany. He therefore had good reason to be in Berlin and an excuse to be in Stockholm, where he contacted the intelligence people at the embassy. Stockholm gave us the dates he told them he was last in Berlin – the trip where he claims to have found out about the rockets. He told them he flew there. I have a friend who works at Kastrup airport; we were at police college together. I’ve told her I’m working on a sensitive case and she’s promised to let me see the passenger lists covering that period.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Is that the time? I need to get a move on, I really do. I need to be in the office at half eight. If it turns out Otto Knudsen did fly to and from Berlin when he says he did, I have one more check to make on him. If he still looks trustworthy after that, then you can approach him. Hopefully in three days we should know one way or the other. Until then, you stay here.’

  * * *

  It was six in the evening by the time Vicepolitiinspektor Hanne Jakobsen arrived at Kastrup airport on
Amager island, south of the city centre. There’d been no flights for a few hours, but the small police station next to the terminal building was still open. Her friend Margrethe was the officer in charge; she’d sent one of the other three officers on duty for a meal break and told the other two to check the terminal building. She led Hanne into her office.

  ‘You have half an hour, Hanne, no more than that, though it’s extremely rare for the Germans to come in here. There are plenty around when there are flights, and they patrol the runway and perimeter, of course, but it’s best to be quick in any event. You asked for all of August, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re all here.’ She tapped two large ledgers on her desk. ‘The blue book is passengers leaving, the green one passengers arriving. These are just for Danish citizens, you realise that? Germans and other nationalities are in other books. There’s a separate one for Jews, even though they’re allowed to travel.’

  ‘I’m only interested in Danish nationals, thank you.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me anything, of course, but just in case anyone asks anything, though that’s highly unlikely…’

  ‘Just say it’s a financial crime. Hopefully they’ll find that boring. I’ll be fine on my own, thanks, Margrethe.’

  She’d written nothing down, of course, but she remembered every detail of her conversation with George Weston. Weston was the MI6 head of station in neutral Sweden, who’d inherited Hanne when MI6 hurriedly shut down its operation in Copenhagen at the start of the war. On a visit to Stockholm in 1940, he’d told her to lie low. No one knows about you. Let’s keep it like that, eh? Don’t do anything that’s going to draw attention to yourself. I’ll call you when I need you, and when I do, rest assured it will be most urgent.

  Weston had been counting the months to his retirement when the war started, but his fluency in Swedish and Danish ensured he was too valuable to let go. Having spent the two or three years prior to the war becoming increasingly raddled in appearance and testy in spirit, he’d now found a second wind and was enjoying every moment. At the end of October 1942, he’d summoned Hanne to Stockholm. They met in the main bar of the Grand Hotel on Södra Blasieholmshamnen and exchanged pleasantries. He insisted she try a turquoise-coloured cocktail, his hand resting on her knee, even when she tried to move it. ‘Part of the cover, dear: be a good girl, eh?’ He continued in that manner once they left the hotel and walked by the harbour towards Skeppsholmsbron.

  ‘Danish chap popped in to see us the other day. Move a bit closer, dear.’ His arm reached round her waist, guiding her towards him. He allowed it to rest on her backside. ‘There we are. Now we don’t look like a couple having a row, do we?’

  ‘I’m young enough to be your daughter!’ she’d replied.

  ‘All the more reason to look lovey-dovey, eh? Now this Danish chap – we’re calling him Agent Horatio, by the way – sells ball bearings. I’m not terribly sure what they do, come to think of it, but evidently, he’s important enough to travel outside Denmark to sell the bloody things. Smile as I talk to you, dear, perhaps link your arm in mine. That’s it. He told me he’d spent the first week of August in Berlin, and while there he’d picked up some intelligence about these long-range rockets the Germans are developing. London are terribly excited, practically wetting themselves. They want to know more about this chap and then ensure we run him as an agent. I’ve told them to calm down. Chap’s a walk-in after all, and I’m most sceptical about people who wander in off the street and offer us intelligence. Having said that, he did come across as credible, and although the fact that he waited the best part of three months to make contact is annoying, it actually rather works in his favour. Apparently he was waiting until he had a business trip to Stockholm, so that makes sense. Anyway, London insists we make contact with this chap. The first thing you need to do is check out his story. Best to start with his visit to Germany in August.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Check he actually made it. I’m not certain of the dates, but he did say “Four nights in the Reich is as much as anyone can manage”, so it’s a reasonable supposition that he flew out on Monday the third, returning on the seventh. You’ll find an envelope in your handbag, dear; in it are Horatio’s details. You’ll obviously destroy it once you’ve committed them to memory. And there’s one other thing…’ He had paused and looked around. ‘Assuming Horatio turns out to be who he says he is, London plan to send out an agent. They think running Horatio will be a full-time operation – too much for you to cope with along with your job. Your role will be to look after this agent. Should be rather splendid for you to have some company!’

  Now she checked the blue ledger for the names of all passengers on the daily 10.00 Deutsche Lufthansa direct to Berlin. Otto Knudsen’s name wasn’t there on Monday the 3rd or indeed any other day that week. She checked the previous week, but he wasn’t there either. She turned to the green ledger for returning Danish citizens and checked the 18.05 flight from Berlin: no sign of Knudsen. It looked as if his story was about to fall apart. They should have asked her to check him out before sending Agent Laertes over. Reluctantly she called her colleague into the office.

  ‘I’m sorry to involve you, Margrethe, but the person I’m looking for was supposed to be on direct Deutsche Lufthansa flights to and from Berlin, but I can’t find his name anywhere.’

  Margrethe leaned across, flicking the pages of the ledger. ‘Here, there is another direct Deutsche Lufthansa flight, but it shows as the Oslo service. It leaves Oslo at 14.55, lands here at 16.44, then takes off again for Berlin at 17.25, landing there at… here… 19.25. Same with the return: it leaves Berlin at 8.40 in the morning, lands here two hours later and forty minutes after that flies on to Oslo. A lot of people prefer this flight.’

  And sure enough, on Monday 3 August, an Otto Knudsen was on the Oslo/Copenhagen flight to Berlin, returning from the German capital that Friday on the Copenhagen/Oslo flight. Even more helpfully, the ledger also contained his legitimationskort number.

  * * *

  Now she’d established that Knudsen’s journey to Berlin was indeed as he’d described it, there was, as she’d told the Englishman, just one more check she needed to make.

  Knudsen lived in an apartment in one of the elegant six-storey painted houses on the Nyhavn canal. The building was on the south side of the canal, on the block between Heibergsgade and the Nyhavnsbroen bridge. It wasn’t difficult for her to gain access to Knudsen’s top-floor apartment. It took her just a minute to pick the lock, and she allowed herself ten minutes to look around.

  She wasn’t searching for anything in particular, but she’d developed a good sense for whether something wasn’t right. For a start, there were no obvious signs that this was where a German sympathiser might live. The bookshelf contained no right-wing literature; there was nothing on his desk that appeared suspicious. The apartment was clearly that of an affluent man: well-kept and clean, with good furniture. She checked the drawers in the bedroom: a few letters and papers, nothing unexpected. There were three large paintings in the lounge, modern interpretations of boats on the canal.

  Her ten minutes were up. Her gut feeling was still that Knudsen was who he’d said he was. Nothing she’d seen in his home disabused her of that.

  Agent Laertes could now approach him.

  * * *

  She returned to the apartment off Carstensgade around eight in the evening, entering it so silently, as always, that he was aware of her presence only when she appeared in the lounge. There were few pleasantries; she only wanted to know everything was in order. She was concerned with security: any strange noises outside the apartment, that kind of thing. Then it was down to business.

  ‘From what I can tell, Agent Horatio is genuine, although of course that can’t be guaranteed. I’ve watched him the last two mornings and he appears to have a routine – the time he leaves his apartment, the route he takes to his office, the café he stops at on the way for
breakfast. You’ll bump into him on that route; I’ve identified the best place to do it. I’ll explain.’

  Prince could feel his heart beating fast. It was a feeling of fear mixed with a growing excitement. It also meant he’d be able to leave an apartment he’d been confined to for too long. The walls had begun to close in on him.

  ‘When will I be bumping into him?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  * * *

  From the north bank of the Nyhavn canal he watched Otto Knudsen leave his building on the south bank. Everything was precisely as Hanne had described it. Knudsen, a tall, smartly dressed man in a dark trilby-style hat with a wide brim and a long light brown raincoat, left the building a shade after eight o’clock. He turned left and walked briskly along the canal, past the junction with Heibergsgade and towards Kongens Nytorv, a large square where Prince recalled having lunch with his grandparents in another life.

  Agent Horatio will enter the square and turn right. He’ll then turn left and go into one of the cafés on the north side. If you follow him, you’ll be able to see where he goes. Try and approach him as he goes into the café. If it doesn’t feel right, wait until he leaves it.

  Prince fell into step with the other man. As they approached Kongens Nytorv, Knudsen quickened his step. Only when it was too late did Prince notice a queue in front of him on the north side of the canal, as Nyhavn joined the square.

  It was a German checkpoint.

  He had no alternative but to stay in the queue, gathering his thoughts as he did so. He realised he now wouldn’t be able to pick up Knudsen before he entered the café. Hopefully he’d be able to spot which one he was in and approach after he’d left it. He tried to remain calm. He was confident he knew every aspect of his Jesper Holm identity; after all, he’d had plenty of time in the apartment to study it over and over again.