by Alex Gerlis
‘The Americans are convinced that the Germans had very good intelligence at the start of their offensive that told them just where the Allied forces were. For some reason they’re blaming us, and while we’re disputing that we’re in any way to blame, we cannot ignore the fact that towards the end of November and during the first week of December there was a lot of radio traffic mentioning Milton again, and we think this was to do with the Ardennes offensive. Hard to be specific, but the timing is difficult to ignore.
‘Naturally we’re not sharing this with the Americans – we don’t want them to think we have a problem – but then we are curious as to why they’re blaming us for the intelligence being passed on. We’re meeting them tomorrow; all may be revealed then. You’re cordially invited.’
King paused as footsteps could be heard approaching the room and the door opened. A large man in a dark three-piece suit came in, mouthing, ‘Sorry’ as he pulled up a chair close to them.
‘Richard, you know Hugh Harper, I believe?’
‘Yes, we met last week.’ Prince leaned over to shake the older man’s hand.
‘Welcome on board, Richard: delighted to have you on the team. I take it Lance has given you a thorough briefing?’
‘I’m still doing that, sir: quite a lot of ground to cover.’
‘It’s a complicated business, Prince, and I’m not ashamed to say we’ve been rather stumped on this one. I don’t know quite how much Lance has told you, but confidentially, I fear many of my senior colleagues in MI5 have become rather smug and insist on holding to the view that we have a one hundred per cent success rate in capturing German spies operating in this country. Now of course as the person responsible for this, I ought to be the first to go along with their opinion, but there’s always been a worry at the back of my mind. After all, if we aren’t aware of a particular spy, then how can we know if we haven’t caught him, if you get my meaning?’
Harper paused as he blew noisily into a large handkerchief and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, Prince, but I’m getting over a beast of a cold. What I’m trying to say is that we’re forever patting ourselves on the back and saying, haven’t we done well, hoovering up any German spy the minute we get a whiff of them: clever us, silly Germans. But I think the Germans have wised up and their operation has become more sophisticated. I’m of the opinion Milton is a particularly highly placed agent and his handler in Berlin is most astute, hence the idea of sending over a go-between. It’s a clever system, rather like the way the resistance cells in France operated – independent of each other so if someone was caught, they wouldn’t give the whole game away.
‘We cannot prove that someone gave the Germans intelligence about our plans in Arnhem and the Allied dispositions in the Ardennes. Given the increased references to Milton and indeed to Donne that we came across in intercepts – and the fact that Byron was transmitting and receiving around these events – it is reasonable for us to work on the supposition that Milton is providing this intelligence. And there’s a big concern we have here. Let’s go over to the map, eh?’
Harper slowly got up and led Prince to the map, picking up a ruler from the desk and holding it near Rotterdam.
‘The mighty Rhine: Baldwin said it’s more our frontier these days than the white cliffs of Dover, and I think he was correct, even if he did say it ten years ago. The Rhine runs from here, where it joins the North Sea at the Hook of Holland, all the way down through the Netherlands and Germany into Switzerland – I’m sure you did all that in geography. The only way the Allies will get into Germany from the west is by crossing it. Arnhem and the Ardennes showed that the Germans are still a force to be reckoned with. Remember, Prince, it’s Germany we’re invading, not a country like France or Belgium where the native population is well disposed towards us and there are resistance groups to provide us with vital intelligence.
‘Meanwhile, the Red Army – which is a formidable fighting force with apparently endless reinforcements – is pushing in from the east. If we don’t get into Germany soon, our border with Europe really will be the Rhine.’
Harper stood silently looking at the map, stepping back at one stage and tilting his head as if the Rhine would appear less of an obstacle from another angle.
‘The General Staff are very clear about this, Prince: they regard the Rhine as the one major obstacle to us advancing into Germany and bringing this war to an end. However, they’re getting very nervous. They subscribe to the view that our Arnhem plans were betrayed to the Germans, and now the Americans are telling them the same was the case with the Ardennes. They’ve told Churchill they want this sorted before they come up with new plans to cross the Rhine, and naturally Winston is concerned; he didn’t envisage the war dragging into 1945 as it is, and—’
‘But do our generals know about the possibility that a spy is passing on this intelligence?’
‘Good question, Prince, and the answer is not as such, but Churchill’s bent his intelligence adviser’s ear about it and Sir Roland is insisting we sort it. He is certainly aware of the Milton network – he calls it my little problem, for Christ’s sake.’
Harper slowly sat down in the chair behind King’s desk and blew his nose again, then helped himself to a cigarette from a wooden box. ‘The last thing we want is the end of the war being delayed and us getting the bloody blame for it. I have to be able to look Winston in the eye and tell him we have eliminated any chance of plans to cross the Rhine being betrayed. So that’s your mission, Prince: find out who the hell Milton is. Do you smoke?’
Prince said he didn’t normally, but yes please, that would be very much appreciated, and he took a cigarette.
‘There doesn’t seem to be an awful lot to go on, sir.’
Harper and King shook their heads, both men watching him closely.
‘May I play devil’s advocate for a moment?’
‘Go on, Prince.’
‘If we accept that this Agent Milton is a traitor who betrayed us over Arnhem and may well do the same over the Rhine crossing – well, to ask an awkward question, does it terribly matter? I mean, the war’s as good as won, isn’t it? Surely this Milton chap has come into the game too late to do us any serious damage?’
‘A reasonable question to ask, Prince. My answer would be that the war is by no means won yet. Any delay could be critical, not least because we can’t be sure what Hitler has up his sleeve. They started firing their V2 rockets at us last September, and I can tell you, they’re causing more damage than we let on. What we don’t want is for Agent Milton’s intelligence to help the Germans to the extent that our progress is halted and they have enough time to develop even more dangerous weapons. We hear plenty of rumours about new aircraft and the like. We cannot afford to take our eye off the ball for one minute. We have to treat Milton and the other two agents as being as dangerous now as they would have been in, say, 1940.’
‘I understand, sir.’
‘Do you have any other thoughts?’
‘The code names, sir – there are six of them, aren’t there?’
‘Correct.’
‘And apart from the fact that they’re all the names of English poets, could there be any pattern?’
‘As you can imagine, we have looked into this.’ Lance King was still holding his cigarette like a dart. ‘It would be extremely foolish of the Germans to choose code names for their agents that had any kind of discernible pattern to allow them to be linked with actual people. Usually intelligence agencies – our own included – select names or words at random. We did consult a couple of professors at Oxford about the poets, didn’t we, sir?’
‘Indeed we did. I spent a very agreeable if slightly anachronistic lunch with them at the Randolph. Of course I couldn’t let on exactly what it was about, but I did ask them to see if they could deduce any pattern or clues from the use of these names, and in a nutshell the answer was no. Different styles of poetry, Milton and Dryden born in the seventeenth c
entury, Keats, Byron and Shelley in the eighteenth and Donne in the sixteenth.’
Harper stood up and stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray.
‘Get your coat on, Prince; we’re going for a drive.’
* * *
It was a short drive south from Mayfair into a smart residential area with long avenues between squares of Georgian town houses set around well-kept gardens. Hugh Harper had told his driver he’d take his own car, a Rover coupé in British racing green with a black roof and bonnet, which he drove too fast.
‘We’re in an area called Chelsea; I imagine you’ve heard of it. Smart housing, some of it converted into flats. To the west of here the housing is not quite as smart and it’s a bit more built up but still what they call a desirable area to live in. There’s a football team too, so I’m told – odd place for one. Used to be considered a very bohemian area, full of artists and the like, and it still has something of that feel to it. My sister-in-law has a place round the corner; hopefully I’ll not bump into her.’
Harper slipped the Rover into gear and drove for a while, at one stage alongside the river, before turning into another square – this one not quite as pristine as the previous ones. He parked at the end of a block and turned off the engine.
‘Lance told you about Byron, the agent we presume is the radio operator?’
‘He did, yes.’
‘Been well-nigh impossible to get a fix on where he is; I’m sure he told you that too. Doesn’t help when Lance shouts at the radio detection chaps. They’re trying their best. My hunch is that Byron is broadcasting from Chelsea: it’s the centre of the area where they think the messages are coming from, but until they get something to actually bite on, they won’t commit themselves. But there’s another reason why I think he could be around here. Lance told you about Dryden?’
‘The Polish chap who came over last June?’
‘That’s the one, Jan Dabrowski. A catalogue of disasters, I’m afraid. How we were unable to prise anything out of him is beyond me, though one does have to give him a good deal of credit for his courage in sticking to his story. However, I’m of the view that Dabrowski – Dryden – panicked when he got to London and made a mistake, or a series of them more to the point. I think that for some reason when he was waiting outside the pub in Kentish Town for Agent Byron, he thought he was being watched, or that he may have gone to the wrong place. As you know, he then took a taxi to the fall-back meeting point, in Hampstead, after which we arrested him.
‘Turns out that the taxi driver who took him to Hampstead forgot to tell us when we first questioned him that his passenger had written a letter during the journey and asked him to post it. He couldn’t recall the address, but he did remember it was somewhere in Chelsea.’
Harper opened the car door and gestured that Prince should get out. The two men walked slowly along the street. As they turned the corner, a short man with a slight limp was coming towards them and stopped when he spotted them.
‘Ah, Spencer, fancy seeing you off duty! On your way into work?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Jolly good. I may well see you this evening.’
‘Indeed, sir, good day, sir.’
Harper waited until the man was out of earshot. ‘Spencer’s a steward at my club, been there years. Good chap. Odd seeing people away from where you normally do. Anyway, back to Dryden. Christ knows, if I was operating in enemy territory I’m sure I’d be prone to panic – don’t know how you’ve managed it; you must have nerves of solid steel. I think Dryden had Byron’s address to use in an absolute emergency and decided to write to him. Madness for him to have the address, of course, but there we are.
‘There is one other thing. Lance used a chap called Hood to interrogate Dabrowski. Hood’s one of us, but he’s not on the books, if you see what I mean. Lance knows I have reservations about us using him, but it’s hard to deny that he has on occasions been most effective – though this wasn’t one of them. Hood told Lance he’d given Dabrowski a few electric shocks and slapped him around a bit – nothing more than he normally does, but then the Pole collapsed. Hood gave him some smelling salts and says he came round.
‘He wasn’t making much sense – evidently he was talking Polish half the time, and why we didn’t have a Pole there is beyond me – but Hood is convinced he said in English “I have to meet two Englishmen.” He repeated the phrase twice and then lost consciousness and died soon after that. Apparently he had a heart attack – another one, would you believe.’
‘Did he definitely say two?’
‘That’s what we were wondering, but Hood’s absolutely adamant. So there we are Prince: all you need to do is find two Englishmen.’
Chapter 12
London, January 1945
Agent Milton had never imagined it would end like this. He’d always thought he’d have some kind of warning they were on to him, an inkling at the very least that the net was closing in.
But this was so sudden, and all he could think was how naïve he’d been to think it would be different, as if they’d treat it as a game of cricket rather than the arrest of a traitor.
He’d arranged to meet Agent Donne in Hyde Park, on West Carriage Drive – north side of the Serpentine. For some reason he’d decided that day that it would be safer if he walked south of the park and entered it from the west. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d done that, other than to vary his route. He entered the park near the royal palace and strolled through Kensington Gardens towards the rendezvous point. He was close to the lake when he saw them, marching purposefully towards him.
They were about a hundred yards from him and Oakley was pointing towards him with an outstretched arm as if taking aim. As they came closer he heard the brigadier call his name, and then he realised to his utter horror that the familiar-looking man next to Oakley was none other than Major Dorking, the head of security at the Department of Military Intelligence.
He felt his chest tighten and became so light-headed his eyesight didn’t seem right, as if bright lights were shining in his face. What made matters infinitely worse was that for the first time, and like an utter fool, he’d concealed a slip of paper inside his hat. Written in closely packed tiny handwriting was a list of Allied deployments along the Rhine. He knew it was wrong, but it was information he doubted he or Jim would memorise accurately. There was no question they’d discover it when they searched him.
He noticed Major Dorking’s hand reach inside his coat pocket, no doubt to remove his pistol, and he wondered whether to hold up his hands. He turned round, and as he suspected, any escape route was blocked: three policemen were walking towards him and he was sure he could see more in the distance.
He was alongside a wet wooden bench and he decided to sit down. He reckoned they’d be less likely to shoot a seated man.
* * *
‘They want the meeting to be in Grosvenor Square, Roly.’
‘They must be bloody joking, if you’ll pardon my language.’
‘They’re insisting; they say that as they requested the meeting, they have the right to host it.’
‘You’ll need to speak up, Hugh, it’s a poor line.’
‘Is that any better? I said their view is that they called the meeting therefore they should decide where it’s being held.’
‘First I’ve heard of that kind of nonsense. I’m not going to their embassy: went there for Christmas drinks and had to stand all evening – and they put ice in the whisky without even asking. Tell them to come to Downing Street – the Americans like coming here: they think they’ll bump into Winston.’
‘They won’t come to Downing Street, Roly, and we’re not having them wandering round the MI5 offices.’
‘How about my club – or even yours?’
‘It’s not that kind of meeting. I tell you what: there’s a new secure meeting room at the Home Office. I’ll get them to come there.’
‘Very well, Hugh – and will it be just you and me?’
‘I
’ve asked Lance King to come along – he’s the case officer on this one – and I want Gilbey’s chap, Prince, there too. He’s on board now.’
‘Very well, but please don’t get too worked up about meeting the Americans. Tom and his lot do it all the time. It’s just one apparently friendly intelligence agency having a chat with another; it should be fine.’
* * *
‘We didn’t realise there’d be four of you.’
The atmosphere had been frosty before the meeting even began. The three Americans had arrived early at the Home Office and hadn’t taken kindly to being kept waiting for ten minutes in the chilly reception area before Lance King finally turned up to take them down to the meeting room in the basement.
The leader of their delegation was Joseph Jenkins, an overweight man in his forties with a severe haircut and a strong Southern accent. He was a senior liaison officer for the Office of Strategic Services in London and seemed to harbour a deep dislike of the British, though Sir Roland Pearson took the view that he was simply one of those people who didn’t get on with anyone. It was his nature: highly combative and easily offended. According to his file, he’d been divorced three times, a feat Pearson had never heard of.
Jenkins – who preferred to be called Joseph rather than Joe – was joined by one of the junior OSS liaison officers and a US Army attaché.
‘Come on, Joe, it’s not a team sport, is it? We don’t need to have equal numbers.’ Pearson chuckled as Jenkins angrily removed a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. He counted out three copies and tossed them across the table to the Englishmen.