by Alex Gerlis
‘He wants a guarantee that Britain will ensure Austria becomes an independent country once again after the war. And he wants to be made head of the Austrian government, for at least a year – until proper elections are held.’
‘Is that all? I was wondering whether he’d want money or gold or something like that,’ said Sir Roland. ‘It all seems straightforward enough: we have the Moscow Declaration, after all, which satisfies his first demand, and as for him being made the head of a provisional government, well we certainly can promise him that – frankly, if he wants us to resurrect the Austro-Hungarian empire and give him a crown to put on his head, we can promise that too, eh?’
‘And… erm… Number 10?’ Porter was fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt.
‘Oh, I’ll mention it to Winston and I’ll make sure a note goes to Eden but, to be perfectly frank with you, everyone’s attention is solely on the Normandy landings at the moment. I understand that’s been keeping you rather busy, eh Edgar? Well done, I hear congratulations are in order.’
‘Maybe a touch premature, Sir Roland, but let’s keep our fingers crossed,’ said Edgar.
During the silence that followed Sir Roland closed the file on his desk and carefully screwed the top back onto his fountain pen, clear signs the meeting had ended. Edgar made to get up but noticed Porter hadn’t moved.
‘Everything alright, Porter?’
‘Yes, Sir Roland,’ he said. ‘Clearly I’m pleased we can give that response to Leitner. But… there’s something troubling me, more a tiny niggle at the back of my mind.’
‘Go on.’
‘I suppose it surfaced when you expressed your annoyance that it had taken Rolf and Katharina so long to get around to seeing Leitner,’ continued Porter. ‘Edgar’s right, of course, there are probably all kinds of good reasons why, but I’d been thinking myself that the failure to do anything about Viktor and the delay with Leitner didn’t feel… well … quite right, I suppose. To be honest, I too would’ve expected them to have met with Leitner within a couple of weeks, not a couple of months.’
‘Come on, Porter – no need to beat around the bush.’
‘Alright then. Should we not consider the possibility, however remote and unpalatable, that perhaps Rolf deliberately delayed meeting Leitner?’
‘Hang on,’ said Edgar incredulously. ‘What are you suggesting? That Rolf isn’t to be trusted?’
‘I’m merely posing the question.’
‘Well,’ said Sir Roland. ‘That does rather set the cat amongst the pigeons, eh? What do you think Edgar?’
‘I think Rolf is one of us, Sir Roland. I’ve never suspected him of being otherwise. Do you have any evidence, sir?’
‘No of course not, Edgar, I was merely expressing my unease, that’s all. You have to admit, delaying meeting up with Leitner is a bit odd, to say the least.’
‘Who recruited Rolf in the first place?’
‘Whitlock, Sir Roland.’
‘Why don’t you go and have a chat with him Edgar? Put our minds at ease.’
‘I’m rather preoccupied with D-Day sir, I have an agent who…’
‘… May I interrupt?’ said Porter. ‘Whitlock’s in a pretty bad state these days. I’m not sure how long he’s got. If you’re going to see him then you’d better get a move on.’
***
Edgar left London early the following morning. It was time he could ill afford. The agent he was running – or trying to run – in France was his priority at the moment and, as far as he was concerned, Porter’s ill-founded doubts about Rolf were a distraction. But Edgar also knew it was vital for Sir Roland to retain confidence in the Austrian mission, so clearing up any confusion with George Whitlock would ensure this wasn’t a wasted journey.
He drove west out of London, a steady stream of military convoys passing in the opposite direction towards the Channel ports. He toyed with the idea of leaving the A40 early and allowing himself a nostalgic drive through the centre of Oxford and possibly even the indulgence of a few minutes wandering around his old college. But he knew he couldn’t afford the time and he also knew it would unsettle him, in a way he could never admit to anyone else. It had been the one time when his life was settled and uncomplicated, with nothing to worry about, and little to fear and everything to hope for. One of his tutors had taken him aside in his last term there and asked him his plans. ‘Problem with this place for chaps like you is that it’s near-perfect, too much of an idyll. It won’t be very long after you leave that you’ll realise life will never be as good as this. Some people find that hard to deal with.’
He wondered whether it was the reason why people like Whitlock drifted back to Oxford, spending their later years in small flats or retirement homes in the north of the city, in places like Park Town and Summertown. Now Whitlock had moved from his flat just off the Banbury Road to a nursing home on the banks of the River Cherwell.
‘You won’t be very long with him?’ said a rather stern Scottish matron. It was a statement more than a question.
‘How ill is he?’
‘You’re not family, are you?’
‘No, a friend and former colleague. Does he have long left?’
‘I doubt he’ll see the end of the month.’
Whitlock was propped up in an armchair by a window that looked out over a yellowing lawn with the river peeking out between rose bushes at the end of it. Despite the heat, he was swathed in blankets, his skin stretched and a strange yellow hue. A pair of bloodshot eyes swivelled around to fix on Edgar as he pulled up a chair alongside.
‘Not good, eh George?’
‘Apparently not, Edgar,’ said the old man. ‘Not long left, I fear. I can tell by the frequency with which the chaplain comes to visit me. Every day now. Looks surprised when he sees I’m still here. Probably thinks it’s something to do with his prayers, eh? And my sister, she spends most of her time weeping. Suppose I’ve had a decent innings though. Pass me that water will you?’
Edgar lifted a glass and helped Whitlock sip slowly and painfully from it, then sat awkwardly as he coughed violently for a few minutes. ‘What’s the problem, Edgar?’ he said after a moment.
‘I’ve come to see how you are, George.’
‘Come on, Edgar, you’ll be up to your neck with D-Day. You won’t have given up all this time just to pay me a social visit, eh? Out with it, Matron will come and kick you out soon.’
Edgar shifted his chair close to Whitlock, close enough to hear the other man’s painful breathing. Each breath sounded as though it could be his last.
‘Rolf’s in Vienna. Has been for a couple of months now.’
‘Is the woman with him?’
‘Yes. The thing is, though, he’s only just got around to meeting with Leitner and… well… Let me ask you a question, George. Did you recruit Rolf or did he recruit us?’
‘Not sure I understand you, Edgar. We recruited him, of course. How on earth would he recruit us – put an advert in the Wiener Zeitung seeking employment from an intelligence agency?’
‘What I mean,’ said Edgar, ‘is that sometimes it’s fairly obvious when we recruit someone. We need a person working in a particular Government department, for instance, and we target specific recruits, check them out then approach them. That’s us recruiting them. Then we have people who approach us, don’t we?’
‘The ones who turn up at the Embassy?’
‘That’s right, the walk-ins: you know the score. They turn up at the Embassy and ask if they can help out, offer to work for our intelligence people. Sometimes for money, sometimes not. So, in effect, they’re recruiting us. We don’t tend to trust those people, do we?’
‘Obviously not.’
‘But sometimes people are much more subtle than that. They put themselves in a position where we notice them then approach them. Sometimes takes ages to effect. They’re the ones to be wary of because we think we’ve recruited them and therefore trust them, whereas in fact they’ve recruited us.’
There was another bout of coughing, this one more violent than before. A nurse hurried into the room and tended to Whitlock, looking anxiously at Edgar. ‘You’ll need to leave, I’m afraid. He needs to rest. He shouldn’t be talking so much.’
‘Five minutes,’ said Edgar.
He waited until the nurse left the room. Whitlock looked worse than when he’d come in.
‘And you’re saying Rolf may have recruited us? Bit late to have second thoughts isn’t it, Edgar, now he’s working for us in Vienna?’
‘No, not at all. No reason whatsoever to distrust him. I was just wondering how you’d recruited him. You said it was in ’36, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right: a long time ago now, Edgar,’ said Whitlock. ‘I’m sure I recruited him rather than the other way around. Remember the political situation in Vienna was pretty difficult, even then? As ever, we rather depended on a group of locals, people who could be trusted to carry messages or watch buildings – that kind of thing, low-level stuff. I ran a core of around six such people, but most of them left Austria in early ’36 so I needed to recruit more. I knew a lot of social democrats in those days and one of them was a professor at the university who I trusted. Just before he got out, I asked him if any of his students could be trusted to help me with courier work and he recommended Rolf. In fact, now I think about it, what happened was that he invited me around to his apartment, where he’d arranged for a couple of likely people to turn up. Rolf was there with his fiancé, a rather forceful lady called Frieda if I remember correctly. She was a bit of a red you know. But Rolf was much more reasonable and very personable. That’s how I recruited him.’
‘But you see, George, what if Rolf…’
There was more coughing now and in the short gaps between the coughs Whitlock moaned. When the nurse came in she pressed a bell and the Matron entered soon after.
‘You’ll leave now,’ she told Edgar. ‘He’s simply not well enough to talk.’
***
The following day they reconvened in Sir Roland’s office.
‘He’s that bad, is he?’
‘The Matron said she doesn’t think he’ll last the month. I don’t think he’ll last the week. I thought he was going to die while I was there.’
‘Shame,’ said Porter. ‘Good chap, old school and rather traditional, but one of us. Did he have anything useful to say – about Rolf?’
‘I asked him how Rolf was recruited, whether we recruited him or he recruited us. Sounded like we recruited him, as I suspected, though it wasn’t clear-cut by any means.’
‘Well we need to remain cautious, can’t do much more than that,’ said Sir Roland. ‘Meanwhile, have they really not been to establish whether this Viktor is in Vienna?’
Edgar stood up and walked over to the window; a pair of pigeons were were fighting on a rooftop opposite and in the distance a squadron of Spitfires was heading south.
‘If Viktor’s in Vienna it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that they haven’t encountered him yet.’
Chapter 16
Vienna, July 1944
It was the end of July and Viktor was experiencing an unusual range of emotions. As far as he could tell from both Radio Moscow and the BBC, the war was going well for the Allies. In the west the British, American and Canadian armies were finally breaking out of Normandy. In the east the Red Army had captured Lvov, Bialystok and Minsk, and was just a few miles from Warsaw. In his more optimistic moments he believed it was possible the war in Europe could be over by the end of the year or early in 1945.
But those optimistic moments were few and far between. He’d moved out of Irma’s apartment in early March into a draughty room on the top floor of a flea-infested boarding house in Floridsdorf and had begun work at the nearby locomotive works. According to the KPO Central Committee in Moscow, there were bound to be some clandestine communists among the thousands of workers there – but if there were, Viktor couldn’t find them. As an electrician he was sent to repair machinery all over the factory and he also volunteered for all the different shifts, so in the first two months at the factory he came across most of the employees. But, try as he might, he could find no comrades. Not that he’d expected it to be easy, he realised they weren’t going to be wearing Lenin badges nor would they be found reading The Communist Manifesto during their short meal breaks; he wasn’t listening out for workers whistling the Internationale. But he was nothing if not skilled at sniffing out likely help; after all, it was what he’d been doing throughout Europe for many years now. He was also a very good electrician, well trained by Moscow all those years ago, so he invariably finished his jobs ahead of schedule, allowing plenty of time to fall into conversation with the machine operators. These conversations would be innocent enough, but there would be concealed morsels of bait, which the right person would hopefully pick up. I managed to get some meat at the butcher’s yesterday… How long do you queue for bread…? My neighbour’s son is stationed in Warsaw, I hope he’s alright… One of the guys in the paint shop said they’re cancelling all routine operations at the AKH, I’ve no idea why…
In his experience, someone would be unlikely to respond straight away, but there might be a moment’s hesitation, a slightly raised eyebrow, a barely concealed grimace or response just too carefully worded. A bolder person may pick up on one of the remarks: I’ve not been able to get meat for weeks… the AKH is full of wounded soldiers… things look bad.
But there was nothing: the Austrians, he’d come to realise, were loyal and enthusiastic Nazis. Maybe Paul the plumber had been right, there were no communists left in Vienna. There were French workers at the factory but, as he’d suspected, they were little more than slave labour. For the most part they did the more menial jobs and were closely watched. Occasionally Viktor did come into contact with them, but he felt it would be too risky to reveal he knew French. He spoke to a few in German but they were clearly as wary of him as they were of everyone else.
Viktor was a patient man: he was experienced enough to appreciate that espionage was a waiting game, one in which an agent or a contact may need to be cultivated over a period of months or even years. His job, he liked to remind Moscow, was like watching a flower grow. But for the first time in his career he was experiencing a fear of failure. It was one thing finding a potential recruit and developing that contact, but now he wasn’t finding anyone at all. His one saving grace was that Vienna was so isolated Moscow had no way of contacting him: they’d be waiting to hear from him and he had no intention of doing that until he was ready.
By the end of July, Vienna was being bombed by the US Air Force on a regular basis, creating an air of unease in the city that hadn’t been evident when he’d first arrived. People had developed a habit of glancing anxiously up to the sky as they walked along and, of course, it took just one person to do this for others nearby to do the same. Emboldened by this and by the good news coming from both the western and eastern fronts, Viktor decided the time had come to try one last possibility, one that had been in the back of his mind but which he knew would be so laced with danger he’d been reluctant to use it.
He had first met the agent he knew as Acheron back in 1934, at a time when looking for communists to recruit in Vienna was easy – it wasn’t so much a matter of finding any, as it was now, but of being spoilt for choice. Acheron stood out from all the others: he was bright, brave and charismatic, and everyone he came into contact with respected him and was loyal to him. But Acheron had another quality, one Viktor always looked for but rarely found. It was the ability to be impressive, yet at the same time manage to remain unnoticed and be part of a crowd.
As far as Viktor was aware from what he’d picked up in Moscow, Acheron had almost certainly been alive in early 1942. Three of the comrades from his cell had been killed, and Acheron and the remaining ones had gone to ground. That was the last anyone had heard of him. Of course, that was two years ago and in that time thousands of comrades had been captured, but Viktor knew that
if anyone could survive it would be Acheron. When he last saw him, in 1937, Acheron was living in Hernals but Viktor knew he moved around every few months, so it would be pointless trying there. He decided to risk visiting the one place where there was a chance of making contact with him.
Over a period of two weeks he went to the area on half a dozen occasions. It was apparent from his first visit that the place was being watched – not very well, but watched nonetheless. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t someone stationed there all the time, which was a familiar Gestapo technique; keeping an eye on somewhere, quite happy for those inside to know it and creating a degree of uncertainty.
So Viktor avoided the area for a week then returned on a Friday morning at the end of July. He’d just finished a night shift at the factory but, rather than get any rest, he went straight to the 9th District using a combination of trams and foot. He walked the last mile into Alsergrund then along Liechtensteinstrasse, managing to briefly catch a glimpse of the front of the place. It didn’t look as though it was being watched, but he wasn’t going to risk going through the front entrance and, in any case, a watcher could appear at any moment. He found the turning he was looking for off Liechtensteinstrasse and from there the narrow alley that backed on to the shops. He worked out which gate was the right one and the back door was simple to unlock. He silently entered, finding himself in a small room from which a door was half open into the shop. A man was standing at the counter with his back to him, a spiral of cigarette smoke drifting up. Viktor stood there for a minute, until he was absolutely certain the man at the counter was alone. He then allowed himself a small cough.
When Ernst Lang spun around he went white and his mouth dropped open, his eyes bulging with utter terror. ‘No!’
He said nothing else for a minute. ‘How the hell did you get in here? Please leave! Not through the front, get out the back, quickly.’
‘I’m not leaving, Herr Lang. We need to talk. This is what we’ll do: you’ll turn around and face the door then light yourself another cigarette. I’ll stay here where no one can see me, but you can listen.’