by Alex Gerlis
Edgar removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and the two men entered the bedroom. Henry was now stirring and making noises as though he were trying to speak. As Edgar approached him, Henry half-opened his eyes and his mouth moved.
‘Come on, Rolf, quick.’
‘He’s trying to say something, Edgar.’
‘Exactly: let’s get on with it.’
The sounds coming from Henry’s mouth were indistinct, but just before Edgar put the pillow over his face and Rolf held him down, there was one word they both heard clearly. Rosa.
There was a very brief and one-sided struggle, but they both agreed afterwards it was probably painless. He would have been too drugged to know what was going on, they assured each other.
‘He couldn’t have known a thing,’ said Rolf.
Edgar straightened his sleeves as he turned to the Austrian.
‘He knew too much.’
***
Epilogue
Rosa Stern was taken to the Gestapo headquarters in the old Hotel Silber building on Dorotheenstrasse, just south of the Schlossplatz and not far from the Hotel Victoria. She was in such a state of shock she did not utter a word. She sat very still in her cell, staring at the wall, her hands crossed neatly on her lap and her mouth slightly open, occasionally breaking into the slightest of smiles. A psychiatrist brought in by the Gestapo assured them she was not putting anything on. It was, he told them, one of the most extreme cases of catatonia he had ever seen. Could she, by any chance, have been subjected to a serious trauma recently?
‘So she’s gone mad then?’ the Gestapo officer asked.
‘You could put it like that: I find it’s much more common these days.’
They tried for a fortnight, convinced that when she did speak she would have plenty to reveal. Who was helping her in Berlin, for instance? Where had Hesse gone?
But Rosa said nothing, sitting quietly, occasionally swaying very slowly as if listening to a piece of soothing music and once in a while mouthing something silent to the wall. In the end, a Gestapo officer stormed into her cell and held his revolver in front of her, but there was still no reaction. When he hit her hard around the face she didn’t make a noise and stayed in the same position as she had landed on the floor. When he knelt beside her and released the safety catch she did not blink. He shot her four times, only stopping when his gun jammed.
***
Rosa Stern’s first husband, Gunter Reinhart, managed to avoid suspicion. He was questioned on two occasions that April, but was able to persuade the Gestapo that Hesse was a mere courier from one of the many Swiss banks he dealt with and his contact with him was confined to the handing over of documents. I wish I could help, but I really remember little about him… He was such an inconsequential man.
Reinhart assured the Gestapo he had not had any contact with his first wife since their divorce in 1935 and it had been many years since he had seen his son. The last he had heard, Alfred was in France. The Gestapo officer assured him this was one of a number of unresolved aspects of this case.
***
Franz Hermann also avoided coming under suspicion. Because he knew the woman who lived opposite had already contacted the police, he decided to risk taking matters into his own hands. With his mother safely at his sister’s in Brandenburg, he went to his local police station in Dahlem and reported the nurse he had hired to look after her had disappeared. She mentioned something about her husband being killed and having to return to Bremerhaven, but now I’m not sure… And a very helpful neighbour told me she’d seen the nurse leave the house with a man and a young girl, and drive off in an Opel. I hope I’m not wasting your time, but I’m becoming very suspicious…
The Gestapo officer in charge of investigating the whole business of Henri Hesse and Rosa and Sophia decided he believed Franz Hermann’s account: after all, had not the lawyer reported the matter himself to the police?
Franz Hermann’s good fortune only lasted until July 1944 when he was one of many thousands of people arrested after the attempt on Hitler’s life. Although the Gestapo never suspected him of being a British agent, there was enough circumstantial evidence to link him with the resistance to Hitler and he was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was murdered in November 1944.
***
Edgar and Basil Remington-Barber agreed that as Marlene Hesse had been unaware of her son’s intelligence activities, any contact with her would be counter-productive. She had waited until the second week of April before reporting her son missing to the police in Geneva. They could tell her nothing, but appeared to be very interested in what she could tell them: could Herr Hesse have perhaps travelled to Germany? Could she provide a list of his associates in Switzerland? She insisted she knew nothing and promised to let them know if she heard from her son.
Marlene Hesse’s income disappeared along with her son. Edgar was adamant it would be too suspicious if any money was transferred from Henry’s account at Credit Suisse. The last thing we need: what if she tells the Swiss police and they try and track the money? They’re good at that type of thing. Madame Ladnier was prevailed upon to close the account and ensure there was no trace of it having ever existed.
Her reduced circumstances meant Marlene Hesse had to move to a drab bedsit in a block between two railway lines, earning a living as a cleaner.
***
Viktor was not altogether surprised Henry had disappeared after he handed the Rostock Report over to him at the railway station. He had long wondered when the British would discover the man they had recruited as an agent in 1939 had been a Soviet spy for many years before that. Moscow seemed pleased with the Rostock Report: it reassured them a German invasion was unlikely and Stalin used it as vindication of his conviction that reports of invasion plans were just the British being mischievous. Viktor was well aware that Henry’s disappearance could cast doubt on the veracity of the report, so he decided to say nothing to Moscow: if they were pleased, why upset them?
As far as Henry was concerned, he assumed Edgar had killed him, which was what his service would have done in the same circumstances. It was a shame: he liked synok and he had been a good agent, but he had lasted far longer than Viktor had expected. In early June, he told Moscow Henry had been recalled to London.
Viktor Krasotkin’s encounters with British Intelligence resumed in early 1944 when he turned up in Vienna, where he remained until at least the end of the war.
***
Rolf Eder continued to work for British intelligence. Edgar had been so impressed by him that when he became involved in plans for a clandestine mission inside Austria he had no hesitation in recommending Rolf. He slipped into Vienna in early 1944 and was still operating there when the Red Army liberated the city in April 1945.
***
Captain Edgar returned to London soon after Henry Hunter’s death. The mission was deemed a success by those who pronounced on such things, though it was also acknowledged it had not been without its unfortunate aspects. Operation Barbarossa meant Germany committed itself to fighting on two fronts in Europe and British military chiefs were convinced this was a fatal error. Edgar was credited with having run a successful intelligence operation, helping to ensure the Soviet Union was at the very least confused as to German intentions and at best – thanks to the Rostock Report – convinced there would be no invasion.
The End
Author’s note
The Swiss Spy is a work of fiction and, with a few obvious exceptions, all the characters in the book are fictional. Having said that, the book is based on actual historical events and in that respect I have endeavoured to be as authentic and accurate as possible.
There was indeed a high-level meeting of senior German military figures in the Bavarian town of Bad Reichenhall in July 1940, where plans to invade the Soviet Union were first discussed, notwithstanding the fact the two countries were supposedly bound by a Non-Aggression Pact at the time. Hitler’s Directive no 21 referred to in the book i
s genuine: it was released on 18th December that year and outlined plans for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Rostock Report featured in the book is a work of fiction.
Operation Barbarossa began on 22nd June 1941 and Hitler expected to conclude it within just a few months. In the event, it ended in disaster for Germany. They failed to reach Moscow by the time the Russian winter took hold, allowing the Red Army to regroup and push the Germans back. The Germans suffered a crushing defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad in February 1943 and Operation Bagration in June 1944 was the start of Germany’s defeat on the eastern front.
There is a good deal of evidence to show the Soviet Union ignored dozens of credible intelligence reports about the planned German invasion. Many of these came from their own intelligence services, including a copy of a handbook to be used by German troops in the Soviet Union, which was passed on to the Soviet Embassy in Berlin by a German Communist printer. As for the British intelligence, Stalin was convinced these reports were disinformation, designed to provoke a war between the Soviet Union and Germany. He described them as ‘English provocation’. So though the missions at the core of The Swiss Spy are fictional ones, the idea of British intelligence using other sources to inform the Soviet Union would be quite in keeping with what was happening at the time.
I have done my best to ensure details such as street names, the locations of embassies, railway stations, airports and other named buildings and places are accurate. Many of the hotels referred to in the book existed and, in some cases, still do. The Adlon in Berlin seems to be the preferred hotel in most Second World War espionage novels, but in fact both the Excelsior and the Kaiserhof, where Henry Hunter stayed, were equally prominent at the time. Both were destroyed by Allied bombing, as was the Hotel Victoria in Stuttgart, which had been the main hotel in the city.
Readers may wonder whether it really was possible to fly on commercial routes in Europe during the Second World War. The answer is that it was, most commonly if the departure or destination airports were in neutral countries. Muntadas Airport in Barcelona was a major hub for travel around Europe, as was Portela Airport in Lisbon and Zürich Airport. During the war, Whitchurch Airport in Bristol replaced Croydon Airport as Great Britain’s main commercial terminal: the site is now a housing estate. In June 1943 a BOAC flight from Lisbon to Bristol was shot down by the Luftwaffe over the Bay of Biscay. All four crew and 13 passengers were killed, including the famous British actor Leslie Howard. It was one of very few attacks on civilian flights in Europe during the war. The names of the airlines, the type of aircraft used and the flight details in the book are, to the best of my knowledge, accurate.
The Roman Catholic cathedral of St Hedwig was destroyed in an Allied air raid in March 1943 (it has since been reconstructed). Although Father Josef is fictional, a priest at St Hedwig, Bernhard Lichtenberg, was arrested for publicly protesting at Nazi policies towards Jews and the euthanasia programme. He died while being transported to Dachau in November 1943.
This is probably not the place to go into detail about the considerable complicity of the Swiss banks in the Nazi war effort. However, it is well established there was an active relationship, to say the least, between the Reichsbank and most of the major Swiss banks, including Bank Leu. Bank Leu was an independent bank until it became part of Credit Suisse in 1990.
To save fellow football fans the effort I had to go to, I can assure you the match between Sporting Lisbon and Barreirense that features in Chapter 15 did actually take place on the 9th February 1941 – and Sporting did indeed win 2-0.
I would like to thank my agent, Gordon Wise at Curtis Brown and his colleague Richard Pike for their help, encouragement and sound advice. Gordon rightly has an outstanding reputation as an agent and I realise how fortunate I am to be one of his clients. I would also like to thank my publishers, Studio 28, and especially its editors Rufus Purdy and Alice Lutyens. Rufus first saw The Swiss Spy when I mistakenly thought it was the finished article: the fact he has contributed so significantly to its current state is testament to his editorial brilliance.
And, finally, my thanks and love to my daughters Amy and Nicole and my wife, Sonia. It cannot be easy living with a writer, not least one who wonders aloud how to kill someone and who, at times, lives exclusively in a world that existed more than 70 years ago. As a teacher, Sonia is a very astute and frank reader: draft chapters are returned with plenty of annotations in red biro, the occasional tick compensating for the more frequent exclamation marks.
Alex Gerlis
London, February 2015
Also available
The Best of Our Spies
Alex Gerlis’s thrilling debut novel
France, July 1944: a month after the Allied landings in Normandy and the liberation of Europe is underway. In the Pas de Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young British Special Operations Executive secret agent working with the French Resistance, disappears. In London, her husband Owen Quinn, an officer with Royal Navy Intelligence, discovers the truth about her role in the Allies’ sophisticated deception at the heart of D-Day. Appalled but determined, Quinn sets off on a perilous hunt through France in search of his wife. With the help of the Resistance he finds Nathalie, but then the bitterness of war and its insatiable appetite for revenge, catch up with them in dramatic fashion.
Based on real events of the Second World War, The Best of Our Spies is a thrilling tale of international intrigue, love, deception and espionage.
Read an excerpt now:
Chapter 1: Northern France, May 1940
The first time they saw German troops was around eight hours after they had left Amiens.
Fear had swept through the 20 of them, mostly strangers who had silently come together by happening to be on the same road at the same time and moving in the same direction. ‘Don’t head north,’ they had been warned in Amiens. ‘You’re walking into a battle.’
Some of the original group had heeded that advice and stayed in the town. A dozen of them had carried on. They were refugees now, so they kept moving. It had quickly become a habit, they couldn’t stop themselves.
A tall, stooped man called Marcel had assumed the role of leader and guide. He was a dentist, from Chartres, he told them. The rest of the group nodded and were happy to follow him.
Marcel decided the main road would be too dangerous, so they dropped down to follow the path of the Somme, passing through the small villages that hugged the river as it twisted through Picardy. The villages were unnaturally silent, apart from the angry barking of dogs that took turns to escort them through their territory. Anxious villagers peered from behind partially drawn curtains or half-closed shutters.
Occasionally, a child would venture out to stare at them, but would quickly be called home by an urgent shout. Some villagers would come out and offer them water and a little food, but were relieved to see them move on. Refugees meant war and no-one wanted the war to linger in their village. In a couple of the places, one or two more refugees joined them. No-one asked to join, no-one was refused. They just tagged along, swelling their numbers.
On the outskirts of the village of Ailly-sur-Somme a middle-aged couple came out from their cottage and offered the group water and fruit. They sat on the grass verge while the couple appeared to argue quietly in their doorway. And that’s when they called her out.
‘Madame, please can we have a word with you?’
She was sitting nearest to the house, but wasn’t sure if they meant her. She looked around in case they were addressing someone else.
‘Please, could we speak with you?’ the man asked again.
She walked slowly over to the doorway. Maybe they had taken pity on her and were going to offer a meal. Or a bed. She smiled at the couple. Behind them, in the gloom of the hallway, she could make out a pair of piercing eyes.
‘Madame. You seem a decent lady. Please help us.’ The man sounded desperate. ‘A lady passed through the village last week.’
There was
a pause.
‘From Paris,’ his wife added.
‘Yes, she was from Paris. She said she had to find somewhere in the area to hide and asked us to look after her daughter. She promised she’d be back for her in a day or two. She said she’d pay us then. She promised to be generous. But that was a week ago. We can’t look after the girl any longer. The Germans could arrive any day now. You must take her!’
She looked around. The group was getting up now, preparing to move on.
‘Why me?’ she asked.
‘Because you look decent and maybe if you’re from a city you’ll understand her ways. Are you from a city?’
She nodded, which they took as some kind of assent. The woman ushered the girl from inside the cottage. She looked no more than six years old, with dark eyes and long curly hair. She was dressed in a well-made blue coat and her shoes were smart and polished. A pale-brown leather satchel hung across her shoulders.
‘Her name’s Sylvie,’ the man said. His wife took Sylvie’s hand and placed it in the woman’s.
‘But what about when her mother returns?’
The wife was already retreating into the dark interior of the cottage.
‘Are you coming?’ It was Marcel, calling out to her as he started to lead the group off. His voice sounded almost jolly, as if they were on a weekend ramble.
The man leaned towards her, speaking directly into her ear so the little girl could not hear. ‘She won’t be back,’ he said. He glanced around at the girl and lowered his voice. ‘They’re Jews. You must take her.’