by Alex Gerlis
‘I’ve been considering raising this with you. If there’s ever a problem, will you promise you’ll ensure you can get me to England, maybe on one of your convoys?’
‘I’d do my very best Telmo: what kind of problem were you thinking of, though?’
‘If they ever suspected me, that kind of thing. I’d like to go to England. I’d like to have a house in London. Maybe near to Buckingham Palace.’
‘I’d certainly see what we can do. Not sure how near to the Palace, but there are some other lovely parts of London.’
‘And if my source in Berlin was to accompany me, would that be a problem?’
‘No! Not at all. I’d need to know who this person is, of course…’
‘Even if we weren’t married?’
Which was how Telmo Rocha Martins came to tell Sandy Morgan all about Dona Maria do Rosario. He told him how Dona Maria had been a secretary to his head of department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; how they had become close and eventually became lovers; how it would be impossible for him to leave his wife and remain in his job and stay in Portugal. He told Morgan about how Dona Maria had become proficient in German and had been transferred to the Legation in Berlin, but not before he had confided in her and she had agreed to supply information. In her case, the motivation was personal and political. Her fiancée had been imprisoned during the 1926 coup and had died soon after. Following this she had left Porto and moved to Lisbon, working her way through the various Government ministries around the Praça do Comercio.
Telmo had chosen a good spot. They were at the end of the front row of their block, so there was no-one sitting in front of them or to the right. Morgan sat between Telmo and Edgar, acting as interpreter.
‘We’re very grateful to you Telmo,’ said Edgar quietly, pausing while Morgan translated. ‘Very, very grateful. I want you to know how much we appreciate your help. I can assure you if there’s ever a… problem here in Portugal, we’ll do our very best to get you to London.’
Telmo smiled and nodded his head, not taking his eyes off the pitch. ‘I’m very grateful. But can you promise me this assurance will also apply to Dona Maria?’
‘Of course.’
They paused as the crowd rose around them: a Sporting player was fouled on the edge of the penalty area. They continued to stand while the free kick was taken then sat down after it soared over the bar.
‘I need to ask you about Dona Maria. She’s sending a lot of material. How is she able to do this? Is she not suspected at all?’
‘I assure you she is careful. Because of my job, I’m in a position to see the diplomatic bag soon after it arrives at the Ministry, before anyone else other than a clerk has seen it. I’m then able to take the material, which is all in code. It’s not possible for other people to spot it. No-one suspects us. But I have something important to tell you.’
There was another delay as a Barreirense winger beat a succession of Sporting defenders then shot wide. ‘Our defence is too slow today, far too slow,’ Telmo said thoughtfully. ‘Listen carefully, please: Dona Maria passed on your message to Hugo, about getting hold of this document. A message came through on Friday. Hugo wants you to know he may be able to get hold of the document: it seems he has a source who has access to it. But there’s a price to pay.’
‘How much?’
Sporting scored and the crowd leapt up. Everyone around them were patting their companions on the back, as if they’d played a part in the goal. Telmo looked delighted.
‘Fortunately our attack is much better than our defence,’ he said. ‘It’s not money. It’s a lot more complicated. You’d better listen carefully.’
Edgar did listen carefully. It was complicated. He would need to get to Switzerland as soon as possible.
He was only shaken out of his thoughts by Sporting’s second goal.
The game finished 2-0. If only everything in life was so clear cut Edgar thought as they left the ground and Telmo melted into the crowd.
***
Chapter 16: London, February 1941
By noon on Wednesday 12th February, Christopher Porter had been kept waiting in a narrow corridor in a draughty and heavily guarded basement under the Admiralty building in Whitehall for well over an hour past the time of his appointment. When he was finally called in to the office outside which he’d been waiting, there was neither apology nor explanation, just a mildly exasperated look from Sir Roland Pearson.
‘How can I help you, Porter?’ Sir Roland had once been a colleague, but now worked in Downing Street and currently had the ear of the Prime Minister on all matters to do with intelligence. He gave the impression he was now far too important for his time to be wasted.
‘As you know, Sir Roland, we met on the 3rd when you made clear the Prime Minister’s feelings regarding our intelligence from Berlin and the directive regarding a possible invasion of the Soviet Union. I subsequently dispatched Edgar to Lisbon, where he met our source Telmo on Sunday.’
‘Telmo: remind me?’
‘Telmo Rocha Martins: he works in the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lisbon and has proven to be an extremely useful source of information for us. His main informant is Dona Maria do Rosario, who is secretary to the Military Attaché in the Portuguese Legation in Berlin. As well as passing on information through Telmo, she also serves as a contact for Hugo – Franz Hermann, the Berlin lawyer who is working for us. Any information he has, or messages we have for him, comes through Dona Maria in the Portuguese diplomatic bag.’
Porter had now opened a notebook and put on a pair of reading glasses.
‘When Edgar met Telmo on Sunday he passed on the latest from Hugo. We were aware Hugo has been sheltering a Jewish family, which we thought an unnecessary risk and therefore did not wholly approve of. However, it transpires this family may be critical in terms of our obtaining a copy of the directive. The family Hugo is sheltering is comprised of Rosa Stern and her two children: an 11-year-old boy called Alfred and a five-year-old girl called Sophia. Rosa’s husband is a businessman called Harald Stern, who was arrested by the Nazis sometime in late 1939 and subsequently died – or was killed – in one of their prison camps. Stern was the father of Sophia but not of Alfred. Alfred’s father is one Gunter Reinhart, Rosa’s first husband. Reinhart is not Jewish: he and Rosa divorced in 1935 after Hitler’s law that prohibits marriages between Jews and non-Jews.’
‘I hope this family saga is leading somewhere important, Porter.’
‘It is, sir. From what we understand, Reinhart and Rosa Stern remained on good terms and he did what he could to help them. Rosa and the children had moved to Paris, but returned to Berlin when Harald was arrested – it seems he may have remained there to try to sort out some business matters. Now they’re being hidden in the home of a relative of Hugo’s. However, Reinhart works for the Reichsbank, where he occupies a fairly senior position. Part of his job is helping to move money out of countries occupied by the Germans. In this respect, it appears he has access to a copy of this Directive 21.’
‘Good heavens.’
‘Good heavens indeed. You see why I needed to give you the background.’
‘And this Reinhart – he can supply us with Directive 21?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘… He wants money, I imagine: how much?’
‘I only wish it were that simple. His condition is that we smuggle his son Alfred out of Berlin. Reinhart has a friend in Zürich: once Alfred has been safely delivered to that friend, he’ll release a copy of Directive 21 to Hugo.’
Sir Roland had leaned back in his chair and was staring at the ceiling, as if the solution may be hidden in the cobwebs he had spotted above the coving.
‘So how do we get Alfred to Zürich?’
‘Even as we speak Sir Roland, Edgar is on his way to Switzerland. We have an agent there called Henry Hunter. Hunter also has a genuine Swiss identity and is able to travel into Germany with it. A year ago we sent him there on a test mission of sorts, wh
ich went well. I’ve said to Edgar that he and Basil Remington-Barber must come up with a plan to get Hunter to Berlin and out again with Alfred.’
‘Which won’t be straightforward.’
‘Indeed, Sir Roland. But we have to get Alfred out – the prize is too great not to attempt it.’
Sir Roland stood up, walked away from the table and over to his desk, from which he picked up a silver box and lit a cigarette he selected from it. He offered the box to Porter, who refused, then removed his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. On the wall behind him was a map of Europe and for a while he studied it, reacquainting himself with the various locations. With his forefinger he traced an angled line south from Berlin to Zürich.
‘And once this Alfred is safely delivered to this friend in Zürich, we get the report?’
‘Once the friend has confirmed it.’
‘And I presume Hugo then hands the report over to Dona Maria whatshername and she pops it into the diplomatic bag, and we pick up the report in Lisbon?’
Porter closed his notebook and folded up his reading glasses. Twice he started to speak, but hesitated. He was clenching then unclenching his fists and clearly finding difficulty in knowing where to start.
‘Can I be most frank and most honest with you, Sir Roland?’
‘I’d rather hoped that’d been the case up to now anyway, Porter.’
Porter’s hands were now clasped as if in prayer. He inhaled deeply before speaking.
‘The most obvious route to bring the directive out of Berlin would indeed be through the Portuguese diplomatic bag, I quite agree. But if there’s an overriding purpose to us obtaining this document, it’s to help prove to the Russians their supposed allies are not what they seem and in fact have plans to invade them. Correct?’
Sir Roland nodded.
‘Up to now, the Russians have chosen to ignore all these warnings, especially the ones that can be attributed to us. Frankly, they don’t believe what we tell them. They’re convinced our motives are to stir up trouble between them and the Germans. They choose to believe whatever intelligence we’re passing to them is false. Our concern is that if we – the British – show them the directive or tell them about its contents, they’ll similarly ignore them, as they have all the other warnings. All the considerable effort of obtaining the directive will have been wasted.’
‘What do you suggest then Porter?’
‘This is where I have to be very frank. Henry Hunter, our agent in Switzerland, is not quite what he seems. I think I’ll have that cigarette after all, Sir Roland.’
Sir Roland rejoined Porter at the table and slid the silver cigarette box across it, followed by a box of matches. He noticed Porter shook slightly as he lit his cigarette.
‘We had our eyes on Hunter for some time. He’s ideal in many ways: very good Swiss identity, speaks all the relevant languages. Even the Swiss believe he is Swiss, if you get what I mean. We picked him up here just before the start of the war: he was trying to smuggle out some money he’d inherited and we gave him the choice of working for us or spending a few years breaking rocks or whatever we make people do in prisons these days. He chose to work for us.’
‘Good.’
‘However, what he didn’t know – and still doesn’t – is we know something else about him, which is that he’d already been recruited as an agent: by the Russians.’
Sir Roland had been moving his cigarette towards his mouth. Now he stopped, holding it is mid-air. He leaned towards Porter.
‘Really? When did this happen?’
‘We think it was around 1930 or 1931, Sir Roland – a couple of years after he moved to Geneva from Zürich with his mother and step-father. Basil Remington-Barber had an informant in the Geneva branch of the Communist Party of Switzerland. He thought we’d be interested because Hunter had dual British and Swiss nationalities. He’d seen Hunter at one or two meetings, then he disappeared from view. Normally, we wouldn’t have attached a good deal of importance to that: plenty of young chaps go to these type of meetings then lose interest. But Remington-Barber’s informant thought he’d seen Hunter chatting to a French chap rumoured to have links with the Comintern; and we know it’s a well-established recruitment tactic of the Soviet intelligence agencies for them to keep an eye open for likely recruits who’ve joined or try to join their local communist parties. What happens is they spot someone then persuade them the best way to serve the cause is not to be a party member but to work for them. They leave the party, all records are destroyed and they display no outward affiliation with or interest in communism – often the opposite, in fact. We assume this is what happened with Hunter.’
‘And how and when did you get to know he was a Soviet agent?’
‘Not until early ’39. We think he must’ve been told to lay low until they needed him and, certainly the way he was living in Geneva, no-one would have had any reason whatsoever to suspect him We became very interested in a Soviet spy master, chap called Viktor Krasotkin. Very bright chap: based in Paris but moves around Western Europe as if he owns the place. Quite brilliant actually, but our people in Paris were aware of him and for a while had someone quite close to him. This person tipped us off about an English chap with Swiss nationality who was one of Viktor’s agents. Once we knew this, we tried to recruit him and he rather fell into our hands.’
‘But what has this to do with the directive?’
‘Once Henry delivers the boy Alfred to Zürich and Reinhart gets the green light, Henry can return to Berlin and bring the document back to Switzerland.’
‘The point of that being…?’
‘He’ll be made well aware quite how important the document is – top secret, et cetera. We know as soon as he gets back to Switzerland, he’s bound to show it to Viktor Krasotkin, even before he hands it over to Edgar. That way, the Russians will know it’s genuine. It’ll have come straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. They’ll have to believe it then, won’t they?’
***
Chapter 17: Zürich, February 1941
Under the identity of Patrick T O’Connor Jr, a US citizen, Edgar left Muntadas airport in Barcelona just before ten in the morning on Swissair flight 1087. The flight landed on time in Locarno at a quarter past one. Five hours later he was in a small apartment above a hardware shop on Basteiplatz. He was let in by a pleasant-looking Austrian who introduced himself as Rolf.
‘No need to worry about Rolf,’ Remington-Barber had assured him. ‘Completely trustworthy: he’s an Austrian social democrat. Whitlock recruited him in Vienna sometime around ’36. Nazis rolled into Vienna in March 1938 and Rolf rolled out soon after that: hates the Germans more than we do, if that’s possible. His fiancée’s a prisoner of theirs. When Whitlock had to leave Vienna and he found out Rolf was here in Switzerland, he recommended him to me.’
***
Basil Remington-Barber and Henry Hunter arrived in Zürich late on the Thursday afternoon and checked into the same hotel on Oetenbachgasse where Henry had stayed the previous February, the night before he travelled to Stuttgart. The next morning Remington-Barber left Henry in his room to rest and met Edgar as arranged on Bahnhofquai. Together they watched a noisy barge make its way up the Limmat.
‘Hunter alright, is he?’
‘After a fashion, yes. Picked him up yesterday morning in Geneva during his morning walk and told him to pack his bags, bid his farewells and we’re off to Zürich. It’s a year since he was in Germany and I rather think he assumed we’d forgotten about him. Not very happy I haven’t told him what’s going on, but then I hardly know myself, do I?’
‘And did you give him an opportunity to make contact?’
‘Naturally. I told him we’d catch the one o’clock train to Zürich and I’d meet him by the platform with his ticket at a quarter to one. That gave him ample opportunity to get a message to his other people that something may be on. Good to dangle bait of some kind in front of them.’
‘Good, well done Basil. S
orry to be elusive, but I need to track someone down. Come along to the apartment later this afternoon with Hunter.’
***
All things considered, it had not been a good day and a half for Henry Hunter, and it showed no signs of improving. On the Thursday, he had been whisked away from Geneva by Basil Remington-Barber, with little by way of an explanation other than ‘We’re going to Zürich: pack for a few days. Don’t forget your passport.’ The subsequent train journey had passed mostly in silence, Remington-Barber declining to answer any of Henry’s questions.
Then Remington-Barber had ordered him to remain in his stuffy little hotel room for most of Friday morning. He had no idea what was going on or what was going to happen, so he was feeling increasingly anxious. There was a small part of him – a very small part, admittedly – which was relieved that, after a year of hearing nothing from the British, at last they now seemed to have plans for him. An even smaller part of him was excited at the prospect of what those plans may involve. He had spent the past year reflecting on the fact the trip to Stuttgart and Essen had been fraught with danger, but the excitement of having completed the mission so successfully had surprised him. The months since had been a mixture of boredom and nervous anticipation: added to this was the pressure of serving two masters. The 100 pounds paid into his Credit Suisse account each month was some consolation.
Now Remington-Barber had sent a friendly Austrian called Rolf to bring him to a small apartment above a hardware shop on Basteiplatz. It was 3.30 in the afternoon and they had been waiting in the sparsely furnished lounge for the best part of an hour. Henry was sitting on an uncomfortable sofa while Remington-Barber nervously paced the room, darting over to the window overlooking Basteiplatz every time he heard footsteps below. The diplomat had said very little since they had arrived there. Sit over there Henry; yes, we’re waiting for someone; please be patient.