by Alex Gerlis
Thereafter he was consumed by two thoughts: how on earth had he forgotten about Myrtle, and how could he find her?
He’d met Myrtle through Arthur, the man who twelve years previously had found him one rainy night in Cambridge and begun the process of recruiting him as a German spy, though he’d not realised it at the time.
After that, he’d hear from Arthur two or three times a year: a handwritten letter telling him where they were to meet a fortnight or so later. A generous cheque was always enclosed to cover his expenses.
They tended to be soulless meetings: he had little in common with Arthur and didn’t terribly like the man; indeed he resented him for having inveigled him in the first place into something he knew he was unable to extricate himself from. He had the impression the purpose of these encounters was for Arthur to check he hadn’t gone off the rails.
The last time they’d met had been in early December 1938 – a largely silent lunch in a stuffy restaurant on Jermyn Street. As it came to a merciful close, Arthur said there was someone he’d like him to meet, and within moments a woman he introduced as Mary had joined them at their table.
She was a good ten years older than Palmer, possibly even in her mid forties, but with a very pretty face and an air of sophistication that completely charmed him – so much so that after half an hour he realised Arthur had slipped away and he hadn’t noticed. She told him she had rooms nearby and he was to join her, which he did as if in a trance.
It wasn’t his first time with a woman, though it might as well have been. She persuaded him to stay that night and for much of the following day, and had she allowed him to, he doubted he’d ever have left. But in the middle of the following afternoon, she told him it was time to go. When he’d dressed, she was waiting for him in the tiny kitchen with two large sherries.
‘I want you to know I’m aware what you do for the cause.’
He was about to reply that he really wasn’t sure what she meant, but she hushed him and continued.
‘I want you to know how much I admire you: if only there were more men like you.’ She paused as if unsure whether to continue, and then pointed to the bedroom. ‘That was… work, you know, they wanted to be sure there wasn’t anything… untoward about you, nothing they’d need to be concerned about. There isn’t.’
She finished her sherry before he’d begun his and moved close to him, her hand stroking his face before resting on his shoulder. ‘I’m not supposed to see you again, but I want you to know that if you ever need me – really need me, I mean as a matter of life or death – my real name is Myrtle. Not far from here – in Cork Street – is an art gallery called Bourne and Sons Fine Art. Bourne is spelt B-O-U-R-N-E. You’ll need to visit it in person and ask for either a Mr Bourne or a Mr Ridgeway, and enquire if they have any works by an artist called Myrtle. If they say no and inform you they no longer sell her works, you must leave immediately and never return. But otherwise they’ll ask your name. Give me one you’ll remember.’
He looked around the room and spotted the bottle of sherry.
‘Mr Harvey.’
* * *
It had been touch and go for a while. They’d taken Hanne to the Red Army field hospital in Rostock, where her condition deteriorated. The doctors explained that her body was overwhelmed by typhus. On her second night there a doctor took Prince aside and said he should follow her outside, where she lit a cigarette and leaned against a wall.
‘She needs to be in a specialist hospital in your country. She requires drugs we don’t have. You need to arrange it as soon as possible.’
By the end of the week, Hanne was stronger. Prince had heard that the British 6th Airborne Division was based just thirty miles to the west, in Wismar, and she was taken there by ambulance and then flown to Britain. A week after being rescued from the farmhouse in Germany, she was in hospital in London. Her condition worsened again, and apart from a brief visit to Lincoln to see his son, Prince spent every waking moment at her bedside. After a few days she regained consciousness and seemed much better. That evening he bumped into her elderly doctor in the corridor.
‘It was touch and go: I’ve no idea how she managed to survive.’
Prince felt tears forming in his eyes. Would she recover fully?
‘Oh, I expect so: women are far more resilient than we are. I understand,’ the doctor dropped his voice and looked round, ‘your wife operated behind enemy lines for us?’
Prince replied that that was right, but she wasn’t actually his wife.
‘Really? I’ve never met a couple more obviously suited. You’d better get on with it, hadn’t you?’
* * *
He left the farm in Lincolnshire in the middle of August and travelled down to London. He knew he was taking an enormous risk. He’d met Myrtle almost seven years previously and anything could have happened to her in that time, nor could he be sure the art gallery would still be there, and even if it was, whether Mr Bourne or Mr Ridgeway would still be around.
He’d travelled to the capital on VJ Day and people were even more euphoric than they’d been on VE Day. The whole country seemed to be partying and no one paid any attention to him.
Bourne and Sons Fine Art was a small gallery with a dark painting in an ornate frame in the window and a musky smell inside. It appeared deserted until an elderly man in a three-piece suit emerged from the back and asked how he could help. Prince asked whether a Mr Bourne or a Mr Ridgeway was there. He sounded hesitant: he wasn’t certain he’d remembered the last name correctly. His stammer must have sounded quite pronounced. The man said he was Mr Ridgeway and how could he help?
‘Do you sell any works by an artist called Myrtle?’
The man had been shuffling around and wringing his hands but now stood quite still. For a while he said nothing, looking at the man in front of him in disbelief, then beyond him into the street. Without saying a word, he went to the door and locked it, turned the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’ and pulled down a blind. ‘And may I ask your name, please, sir?’
‘Mr Harvey.’
* * *
He was told to return at eight the following morning. When he did so, an anxious Mr Ridgeway hurried him in and took him to a cluttered office at the back.
‘We’ve heard all about you and seen those dreadful posters. We wondered what had happened to you. We can’t have you hanging round London, though, can we?’
Edward Palmer agreed.
‘Myrtle will look after you. She said she was wondering when you’d be in touch.’
‘Thank you, I—’
‘Please don’t thank us. We ought to thank you. Now, we don’t want to write this down, do we, so you’d better listen. I’ll let you out the back and then you should walk to Marylebone station. We are sure they don’t know anything about us, but you can never be too careful. Are you all right for money?’
Edward Palmer said he was fine.
‘Purchase a return ticket – always looks less suspicious, I’m told. You probably know that kind of thing better than I do. When you arrive at your destination, leave the station and keep walking. Don’t look for Myrtle – she’ll find you.’
‘Where am I going?’
‘I am sorry, I ought to have told you that first. Your destination is Gerrards Cross.’
Aftermath
Justice was meted out to Christopher Gerald Andrew Spencer with what in more normal times would have been described as improper haste. Agent Byron had been caught in May, and with the end of the war in sight, Hugh Harper worried that could mean the end of emergency regulations, which permitted treason trials to be held behind closed doors and with any publicity kept to a minimum. Spencer went on trial at the Old Bailey on the first Monday in July, and by the Thursday afternoon he had been found guilty. He was sentenced to death the following morning and his appeal and plea for clemency were disposed of by the end of the month.
On the evening of Thursday 2 August, Spencer was visited in his death cell at Pentonville by Pri
nce and Lance King. Since his first interview he had given nothing away, remaining largely silent other than occasional protestations of innocence or ignorance. No, he told them, he had absolutely no idea where Edward Palmer could be. ‘I’m terrified: don’t you think if I could tell you I would?’
He was executed at nine o’clock the following morning.
* * *
MI5 was satisfied that Franz Rauter had told the truth and provided them with invaluable information. Indeed, the former Abwehr officer had so impressed Hugh Harper that he had a word with Tom Gilbey, and Prince was deputed to broach with Rauter the possibility of him working for the British. The German was surprisingly amenable to the idea, and in September he returned to Germany with a new identity.
* * *
Iosif Leonid Gurevich’s combination of cunning, intelligence and competence, along with his relative sobriety, marked him out in Soviet-occupied Berlin, so much so that within months he’d been promoted from podpolkovnik to a one-star commissar.
Author’s Note
Ring of Spies is a work of fiction, so any similarities between characters in the book and real people are unintended and should be regarded as purely coincidental.
There are references to obviously non-fictional characters such as Winston Churchill and Hitler, and in Chapter 7 (and elsewhere) real people such as Schellenberg and Keitel are featured in the context of the German High Command, but otherwise none of the book’s characters existed in real life.
The spy ring at the core of the plot – Milton, Byron, Donne et al. – is fictional, but Ring of Spies is factually based on the Second World War, so many of the locations and events mentioned in the book are genuine.
In particular the central plot of the story is built around three important military engagements: Arnhem (September 1944); the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944–January 1945) and the crossing of the Rhine at Remagen (March 1945).
There is no evidence that the failure of the British airborne assault on Arnhem was due to espionage. However, it is a fact that Field Marshal Model’s Army Group B intelligence officers had predicted an airborne assault in that area, and Model had chosen to base himself there, along with the 9th and 10th Panzer divisions.
Much of the detail relating to the Battle of the Bulge is based on fact, including the various massacres carried out by the German forces – most notably the murder of more than eighty US Army prisoners of war at Malmedy by units of Lieutenant Colonel Joachim Peiper’s 6th SS Panzer Army.
The unexpected capture of the bridge over the Rhine at Remagen by units of the US Army’s 9th Armored Division is based on fact. Capturing a bridge of this size intact probably shortened the war by a matter of weeks.
In Chapter 5, references to the resistance in Belgium are based on real organisations, in particular the Armée Secrète and the communist Milices Patriotiques. Schaerbeek was a stronghold for the communist resistance. The Luftwaffe was based at the Hotel Metropole and the Gestapo in Avenue Louise.
There was indeed a Directorate of Military Intelligence at the War Office, and it did include sections such as MI4, MI5, MI6 and MI9. However, the section where Major Edward Palmer was based – MI18 – is fictional.
Ultra is the now well-known British system to break top-secret German codes at Bletchley Park. Knowledge of it during the war (and for many years afterwards) was highly restricted.
Latchmere House in south London and Huntercombe in Oxfordshire (chapters 3 and 4) were both MI5 interrogation centres during the war.
The following regiments referred to in Ring of Spies were all part of the British Army in the Second World War: the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment, the Royal Dragoons, the York and Lancaster Regiment and the Middlesex Regiment.
As remarkable as it may seem, the Germans did indeed establish a British Free Corps, which was intended to be a British unit within the SS. They recruited from among British prisoners of war but were notably unsuccessful: at its height, the Free Corps had fewer than one hundred members and never saw action. Most of its members – known as renegades – were prosecuted after the war but treated surprisingly leniently.
And talking of fascists… the Imperial Fascist League, with which Spencer is linked (Chapter 31), did exist during the 1930s (as did Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, which is also referred to). It was dissolved when the war started. Many British fascists were held in detention during the war under Defence Regulation Section 18B – as is the case with Vince Curtis in Chapter 18. Many of these prisoners were held at Brixton as he was.
Franz Rauter worked for the Abwehr, the German military intelligence organisation. The Abwehr long pre-dated the Nazis and was regarded as a professional and successful operation. However, it was increasingly distrusted by the regime (its heads, Admiral Canaris and General Oster, were not party members) and was abolished in February 1944 with its functions being taken over by the RSHA.
I’ve endeavoured to be as accurate as possible about Ravensbrück. This Nazi concentration camp was primarily for women, and it is estimated that it held about 130,000 prisoners during the war, of whom around 90,000 were murdered there. The British SOE agents Violette Szabo, Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe were murdered at Ravensbrück on 5 February 1945. The camp was also an important industrial complex for the Nazis. There was a death march involving around 25,000 prisoners towards Mecklenburg in March 1945, and the following month hundreds of prisoners were rescued by the Swedish Red Cross and taken to Denmark. The camp was liberated by the Red Army on 30 April.
The Palace Arms, where Arthur Chapman-Collins was killed (Chapter 20), did exist during the war in that exact location, though as is the case with so many pubs, it is now a residential block.
In Ring of Spies there are references to sums of money in pounds sterling. I used the Bank of England website to estimate the value of those sums today: £5 in 1945 would be worth in 2019 (the latest date they have) £217, which equates to approximately €243 or US $275.
I’d like to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to the many people who’ve helped bring about the publication of this book, not least my agent Gordon Wise at Curtis Brown who has been enormously supportive over a number of years. My publishers Canelo have done a fantastic job with the Prince series and also in re-publishing my Spy Masters novels. Their enthusiasm and drive have been impressive and motivating not least because I began writing Ring of Spies in the middle of March, days before the COVID-19 lockdown began in the UK but Michael Bhaskar and Kit Nevile and the whole team at Canelo remained utterly professional and helpful throughout. Thanks too to Jane Shelley for her skilful copy-edit and to the many people who helped me with aspects of the book and answered seemingly odd questions as I was writing it.
And finally to my family – especially my wife Sonia, my daughters and their partners and my grandsons – for their encouragement, understanding and love.
Alex Gerlis
London, August 2020
About the Author
Alex Gerlis was a BBC journalist for nearly thirty years. His first novel, The Best of Our Spies (2012), has been an Amazon bestseller and the television/film rights for it have recently been bought by a major production company. The other books in the Spy Masters series of Second World War espionage novels are: The Swiss Spy (2015), Vienna Spies (2017) and The Berlin Spies (2018). Prince of Spies – the first novel in the Prince series commissioned by Canelo – was published in March 2020, followed by Sea of Spies in June 2020 and now Ring of Spies. Born in Lincolnshire, Alex Gerlis lives in London, is married with two daughters and is represented by Gordon Wise at the Curtis Brown literary agency.
www.alexgerlis.com
Facebook.com/Alex Gerlis Author
Twitter: @alex_gerlis
www.canelo.co/authors/alex-gerlis/
Also by Alex Gerlis
Spy Masters
The Best of Our Spies
The Swiss Spy
Vienna Spies
The Berlin Spies
The
Richard Prince Thrillers
Prince of Spies
Sea of Spies
Ring of Spies
First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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United Kingdom
Copyright © Alex Gerlis, 2020
The moral right of Alex Gerlis to be identified as the creator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788638739
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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