Ring of Spies

by Alex Gerlis

  ‘Sure, I’ve been there – and at other places. Hundreds of our prisoners shot.’

  The captain handed Fine his lit cigarette. ‘Look, sir, I’m sorry I snapped at you. War is one thing, but this…’ he turned, his hand sweeping across the field of bodies, ‘this is just a massacre.’

  Major Mark B. Fine made a number of decisions on the short journey from Stavelot to the woods outside St Vith. When he finally got home to Chicago, he’d quit his job as a lawyer with the bank and stop working such ridiculous hours. He’d find a job with a smaller law practice, perhaps one that defended people with limited means. And hopefully he’d be able to spend more time with his wife and his two kids, whom he hadn’t seen for three years. He’d even try and make sure to visit his folks in Florida. He’d be less worried about money. He’d go for walks in the country. He’d stop smoking and cut down on his drinking, especially during the week. He’d read more books.

  * * *

  The quiet of the morning of Tuesday 23 January was broken an hour after dawn by the cacophony of outgoing artillery fire as the 7th Armored Division prepared their assault on St Vith. There was little if anything in the way of response from the Germans, and some of Major Fine’s colleagues in Headquarters Company speculated that the town might be undefended.

  ‘That’s not what our intelligence says,’ said Fine.

  ‘Ever thought your intelligence could be wrong?’ It was the voice of an infantry officer, who then ordered his units to advance on the town.

  ‘I think we need to wait, send in more artillery first, perhaps.’

  ‘Look, Major: the air force has bombed the hell out of them and there’s no need for us to wait. If we listened to you guys in intelligence, we’d still be deciding whether to land in Normandy. We’re going in.’

  Although Headquarters Company was meant to follow in from the rear, Major Fine found himself in charge of a convoy making unexpected progress on a track across a field. When they finally stopped, they were on the outskirts of the town and his radio operator told him they were closer to it than any other unit.

  ‘Apparently we’re the front line, sir. They say well done and we’re to secure that crossroads ahead of us so our heavy armour can come through.’

  ‘Ask them if we shouldn’t wait for infantry support? The 23rd should be nearby.’

  ‘They say to move in now, sir.’

  Major Fine positioned himself in a ditch and looked at the area through his binoculars. As far as he could tell, there were no Germans around. A Belgian sheepdog with a coat the colour of polished wood watched them from the other side of the road, its head cocked. It was a breed he’d grown fond of since they’d been in the country. That would be something else he’d do: get a dog. The kids had always wanted one. It could accompany him on his walks in the country.

  ‘I’ll go over and have a look.’

  ‘I’d wait, Major: it could be a trap. Maybe we should call in air support.’

  Major Fine nodded, but the idea of him being the man responsible for capturing St Vith was beginning to look quite attractive. It would certainly put a stop to those in Divisional Headquarters who took the view that intelligence officers weren’t proper soldiers.

  ‘I’ll nip across the road and see what’s going on.’

  He had half an eye on the dog as he climbed out of the ditch, somehow oblivious to the shouts behind him to get down, somehow unaware of the grey shapes rising above the low brick wall behind the grass verge the Belgian shepherd was stretched out on.

  The first bullets flew past him and only then did he realise that he had indeed run into a trap. To his left was a hedge and he made to dive into it. As he did so, a volley of fire was returned from the ditch he’d just climbed from.

  When they found his body a few minutes later, he was slumped against the hedge, the same fate that had befallen the people of Stavelot.

  Chapter 14

  Ravensbrück concentration camp, north of Berlin, January 1945

  After two years in Ravensbrück, Hanne Jakobsen had come to appreciate how much news from the world outside the camp could sustain you. They certainly couldn’t rely on the food for that.

  Early the previous September, rumours had begun to circulate that Paris had been liberated a week or so earlier. The effect on morale had been dramatic. The news had been confirmed one morning when an inmate found a copy of the previous day’s Völkischer Beobachter in a rubbish bin behind the administration block. An article on an inside page referred to the German forces’ ‘tactical withdrawal’ from Paris and the need to ‘step up defence of the Fatherland’. The prisoners knew what that meant.

  Hanne was so thrilled at the news she wept with joy. She’d never been to Paris, but there was something iconic about the city regarded as the most beautiful in Europe, arguably its cultural heart. If it had been prised from the Nazis’ grasp, then surely the war would end soon. Of course at Ravensbrück the celebrations – as muted as they were – didn’t last long. That evening an SS guard heard two French prisoners humming ‘La Marseillaise’. All the inmates from the women’s barracks were ordered to assemble in Roll Call Square, the assembly area between the barracks and the administration block.

  Hanne recognised the two women: young resistance fighters from Arras. They were standing on stools with thin ropes around their necks attached to a scaffold. The other prisoners were shepherded around them. Hanne had done her best to ensure she was as far back as possible, and could only just make out what the commandant was saying: something about how the women were going to regret singing ‘that cursed song’. Then he ordered everyone to look up: Hanne, like many of the other prisoners, had been averting her gaze. As she glanced up, a guard kicked the stool from under one of the girls. The drop was not enough to break her neck, and the noose ensured she struggled in agony for a couple of minutes before expiring. All that time the other girl had her eyes tight shut, as if that were a way to avoid hearing as well as seeing what was happening. The commandant grinned as he waited a good five minutes before her stool was kicked away.

  In common with the others in her hut, Hanne didn’t have an appetite that evening.

  * * *

  By January 1945, the rumours that helped nourish them said that some of the camps in the east – the terrible death camps they’d heard about – were being evacuated as the Red Army approached. In Hanne’s hut, a young Belgian prisoner confided that another Belgian in another hut had been told by a guard that Ravensbrück was about to be evacuated. She seemed so convinced it was true that Hanne felt it would be cruel to disabuse her. There was certainly no sign of it. Ravensbrück had turned into a vast industrial complex. More prisoners were arriving each day, and the rumours – not the kind of rumours that fed you – were that there were now more than fifty thousand inmates.

  Where would we be evacuated to? The coast?

  In the middle of January came the news that the Red Army had finally liberated Warsaw. There wasn’t much of a celebration among the few Polish prisoners remaining in the camp. They’d learnt their lesson from the fate of the French prisoners, and in any case, they were aware that after the failed uprising there wasn’t much left of Warsaw to liberate.

  But the mood of the guards and the camp officials changed after that. They became increasingly edgy, even nervous, as if looking over their shoulders.

  In the last week of January, Hanne was summoned to the Gestapo area. She was taken to the upper floor of a building between the commandant’s office and the SS headquarters. The guard who’d escorted her led her into a room with views over the Schwedtsee, the winter sun glinting off the lake. The woods reached up to its shores and the town of Fürstenberg was visible in the distance. It was a scene of such normality that she found herself less anxious than she’d normally be in the circumstances, a feeling that didn’t change when a thin man, perhaps in his late fifties, entered the office and told the guard he should remove the prisoner’s handcuffs and leave them alone. The guard asked if he was s
ure.

  ‘Of course I’m sure, you fool. And bring the prisoner some water.’

  He told her his name was Mohr. He was still wearing his coat as he sat down at the desk between them, a thick pullover visible beneath it. He looked more like an overworked clerk than a Gestapo officer. He had a grey pallor and a hacking cough, and wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  She’d had plenty of experience of the Gestapo, both from being forced to work alongside them as a police officer in Copenhagen and then as a prisoner. She knew enough not to be fooled by any suggestion of kindness. She replied that she was well enough: there was no point in saying otherwise, and she resisted the temptation to say she was better than he seemed to be.

  ‘I’ve read your file.’ He patted a folder in front of him and nodded as if talking about a good book. He stopped for another bout of coughing. ‘It is very interesting. Do you have anything to say, perhaps?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘This file tells me you are the only member of the spy ring operating in Copenhagen and Berlin who is in our hands. The businessman from Copenhagen – Knudsen – is dead. Those traitors in Berlin, Kampmann and Bergmann, they’re dead too. That just leaves you and that Peter Rasmussen. Have you heard from him?’

  She stared incredulously at him. He didn’t look like an unintelligent man and certainly not as inept as the fool who’d interrogated her in Berlin, but the idea that Peter Rasmussen could have been in touch with her, and that if he had she’d tell him, was beyond ridiculous.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. I don’t get much post here.’

  He coughed so much his grey skin turned briefly red. ‘You want to be very careful how you speak to me. Just because I’m being civil doesn’t entitle you to take that tone, understand? I asked if you’ve heard from Rasmussen.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Obviously I don’t imagine he sent you a postcard from a spa resort in Bavaria, but I’m not stupid: there are prisoners coming into this place all the time, many of them mixed up in the kind of criminal activities you and Rasmussen were involved in – trying to destabilise the Reich, pass on secrets to the enemy. Someone may have come across him and given a message to you.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You probably think that as long as he’s at liberty you’re safe, but let me tell you this: that may soon no longer be the case. Saying nothing and refusing to cooperate with us may not be as clever as you think. Some people in Berlin’ – Mohr made a gesture with his arm as if to indicate this didn’t apply to him, of course – ‘take the view that because events are not going Germany’s way, we should be less patient with a prisoner such as you. I’d think about that if I was you. Perhaps something has occurred to you about where Rasmussen may be – some clue from when you knew him that you have suddenly remembered?’

  She shook her head.

  Mohr closed the file and gave the impression their meeting was drawing to a close. Behind him she could see what looked like a pleasure boat moving quite fast across the lake. What did its passengers think when they looked towards the camp? Did they ever wonder what went on there: did they not spot the crematorium and its chimney?

  ‘How long have you been at the brickworks, Jakobsen?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’m not too sure – maybe since October.’

  ‘And you were at Siemens before that, in an office?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And now you’re outside making bricks for the Reich. Very well: you’re being moved to work in the Texled workshops, but don’t be fooled. The next time someone comes and asks you about Rasmussen, they won’t be as easy-going as me.’

  * * *

  A prisoner didn’t ask to be sent to work in Texled – that was one way of guaranteeing you’d never get there. You just had to hope you were in the right place at the right time when they had a rush on and a sudden need for more workers. Texled was a business run by the SS, an abbreviation of The Company for Textile and Leather Utilisation, and the rumours were that it was one of the only businesses run by the SS that actually made a profit.

  The hours were long and the work monotonous but the tailoring workshops did have the advantage of being warm, and at least you could sit down if you were operating the sewing machines. It hadn’t always been like that: when the workshops had started, the guards had done their best to ensure the prisoners working in them weren’t too comfortable. But then the managers complained. If the windows and doors were kept open then the uniforms and clothes they were making would get damp, and as for prisoners standing, well, that meant they were less efficient. And the less efficient they were, the less money the SS made.

  Now the workshops were producing a new range of uniforms and Hanne was put to work sewing buttons onto jackets. Next to her was a taciturn Norwegian woman she’d met before in the Siemens factory and hadn’t exactly warmed to: she couldn’t even remember her name. Conversations between prisoners were forbidden, but it was hard for the guards to police it above the cacophony of machinery.

  ‘Have you noticed anything about these uniforms?’ the Norwegian asked.

  ‘They’re for the Wehrmacht?’

  ‘You don’t say! I mean anything unusual about them.’

  Hanne pushed her chair back and held the jacket up in front of her, as if admiring her handiwork. ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘Do you have children?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Look at the size of it. It’s for a boy not more than fourteen or fifteen. I’m surprised you can’t tell: I thought you were smart.’

  They stopped speaking as a guard strolled past, a truncheon in her hand, eager for any excuse to use it. Hanne and the Norwegian woman – she remembered her name now, Gudrun – bowed their heads and concentrated hard on their sewing for a while.

  ‘I’ll tell you what it means. The Germans are calling up children into their army. Once they do that, even they know they’ve lost the war.’

  Chapter 15

  London, January 1945

  ‘I wouldn’t take odds of five hundred to one.’

  ‘Yes, Lance, but then this isn’t Ascot, is it? In any case, I don’t think one should look at it like that. Once we’ve established which office the information has come from, we can then see who may have been responsible. Still, quite a tall order to have something by the end of the month: just three bloody weeks. What do you think, Prince?’

  Harper, King and Prince had returned to the mews house in Mayfair after the meeting with the Americans at the Home Office. The two MI5 officers looked expectantly at Prince.

  ‘If someone wanted to look at the map, would they be expected to sign for it?’

  ‘That’s a good question, but I suspect it varies from office to office. I suppose strictly speaking all offices ought to have a sign-out system for restricted documents, but I know from experience it won’t be like that. We may well find offices where they’ve been rigorous in that respect and can provide us with a comprehensive list, but in other places it will have been a free-for-all.’

  ‘In that case it will be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. But even if we find that each of the thirty-eight offices that received the map had diligently compiled registers of who’d seen them, surely digging around like that will alert Milton. We don’t want him – assuming it’s a man – knowing we’re on to him.’

  ‘That’s true, Prince. What do you propose?’

  ‘I think we should approach the investigation the other way round. In other words, rather than seeing who had access to the Ardennes map, we ought to see if there are other ways of finding Milton.’

  ‘And Arnhem,’ said Lance King. ‘Don’t forget that whoever betrayed the Allies over the Ardennes also betrayed us over Arnhem.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re thinking the way you are, Prince,’ said Harper. ‘There’s a reason why we’ve brought you on board for this case. We needed an outsider, someone not known within MI5, someone with
a proven track record. While Lance handles the map side of this business, as discreetly as possible, of course, I want you to go undercover for a month or so. We’ll find you a place in London and from now on that will be your base. The fewer people who know about you the better. We need to somehow infiltrate you into a world we only suspect exists: when you return to London, you’ll be introduced to someone who knows more about that than anyone else.’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘I need to get a move on, but there’s one other matter I need to raise with Prince: Lance, perhaps you could give us a moment?’

  They waited until the other man had left the room. Harper moved to a chair opposite Prince and leaned forward, his arms on his thighs.

  ‘My hunch is that Milton is British. For what it’s worth, my feeling is that Byron is too – remember what the Polish chap said just before he died about two Englishmen. If they were foreign, I think someone would have caught wind of them by now. They’re probably perfectly integrated. What we’ve given you today and yesterday is more than anything else the background to the case: the evidence about Milton and Byron and the radio transmissions, the arrival of Donne, the fact that everything is pointing to some kind of betrayal over Arnhem and the Ardennes – and most importantly, of course, the concern that our plans to cross the Rhine could also be betrayed. But there’s something we’ve not told you yet. Come a bit closer.’

  Prince looked around, puzzled as to how much closer he could come in the small office. He edged forward in his chair.

  ‘We told you yesterday about the German transmissions we were intercepting and decoding, and you quite rightly asked how we were able to do this. We’ve developed an ingenious and complex system for breaking the Germans’ most secret and highly encrypted coded radio transmissions. We call this system Ultra – the name indicates that it’s even more secret than the top-security classification we previously used, “most secret”.