Escape

by Paul Dowswell

  A guard stood at one side of the road, so James followed a large truck which was going into the docks, taking care that he stayed on the other side of it from the guard. Once on the quayside he walked up the gangplank of the nearest Swedish ship, and headed for the crew quarters. The ship was taking on a cargo of coal, and coal dust hung in the chilly winter air, making him cough.

  James could hear Swedish voices coming from a cabin, and knocked on the steel door. He walked in and saw two men sitting at a table sipping coffee. They looked up expectantly. Then one of them smiled and spoke to him in excellent English.

  “Royal Navy, I believe. I’d recognize your uniform a mile away!”

  James laughed. He was relieved that the man was so friendly.

  “Yes,” said James. “It’s not much of a disguise. I’m actually supposed to be Ivan Bagerov of the Royal Bulgarian Navy!”

  The men invited James to share a cup of coffee with them, and he told them his story, and asked if they would take him to Sweden.

  The man who spoke English gave a sorry shrug.

  “Look my friend, I’d love to help, but it can’t be done. When this coal is loaded into the hold, we’ve got several German dock hands coming on board to refuel the ship. They’re bound to see you on board, and if they suspect you’re a stowaway, then we’ll all be arrested. You can see for yourself that the ship’s just too small for there to be anywhere to hide you.”

  James was crestfallen. The man had been so friendly he felt sure he would help him. He had even begun to think his ordeal was almost over.

  “Please,” he begged. “I’ve been on the run for three days now, and this is the first time I’ve felt safe. There must be somewhere I can hide?”

  But the Swede had made up his mind. He spoke firmly, in a tone that made it plain that there was nothing more to discuss.

  “I’d like to help you, but I certainly don’t want to end up in a concentration camp. Look over there,” he said, pointing out of the cabin porthole. “That ship is heading for Sweden, too. It’s leaving any minute, so try your luck there.”

  That was that. James thanked the man and got up to leave. Standing on the deck, he surveyed the route down the gangplank and onto the other ship. Having felt so safe and near to success mere minutes ago, the trip between this ship and the next seemed terribly dangerous, and a huge unreachable distance. James’s nerve was finally going.

  As he walked down the plank, he saw to his horror that the other ship was about to leave the quayside. James ran, but he was too late. For one crazy moment he thought he could just leap on board, but he was sure he would be spotted and the boat would be stopped before it left German waters.

  “Right,” he said to himself, “back to the hotel, and try again tomorrow.” But now, dispirited and exhausted, James became careless. He did not bother to hide from the guard at the entrance of the dock, and he was spotted and stopped. Perhaps his unshaven appearance gave him away, for this time the Ivan Bagerov story did not work. The guard insisted that James go with him to the local police station to have his papers checked more thoroughly.

  There was nothing James could do but go. Besides, he was not too worried. There was still a chance that the police would be as baffled as everyone else had been by his Bulgarian documents.

  Shortly afterwards, James stood in front of the desk of a senior officer at Lübeck police station. The man examined his identity card with a magnifying glass and said quite casually in English:

  “So, where did you escape from?”

  James, who had been holding his breath in anticipation, let out a long sigh. Actually, he felt quite relieved that it was all over.

  The policeman was surprisingly polite. He offered James a seat and called in several of his colleagues. One of them mocked the forged pass, but another congratulated James on such a good forgery, especially as he had had such limited resources in his prison camp. He even told James that he should have put Polizei Präsident on the pass, instead of Polizei Kommissar.

  Everyone seemed quite amused by his tale, which made James feel more at ease. After all, he had heard that escapers were sometimes shot if they were caught. The man who escorted him back to the local military jail even told him he was sorry he had had such bad luck.

  After the escape

  James was sent back to Marlag und Milag Nord and spent ten days in solitary confinement in a punishment cell. His desire to escape had not left him. Five weeks later he was gone again, this time disguised as a merchant seaman. Taking the same route, he successfully boarded a ship to Sweden. This time he got there, and was able to make his way safely back to England.

  Once home, James wrote An Escaper’s Progress, an account of his adventures in Marlag und Milag Nord. He noted that being an escaper is like meeting someone at a party whose name you cannot remember. You have to pick up clues as you talk, by asking leading questions. In this way he learned how to get by without drawing attention to himself in the places and situations he found himself in.

  After the war James became an Antarctic explorer, and was a Conservative Member of Parliament between 1959–1964 and 1970–1979. He also helped to set up the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, an organization dedicated to finding evidence of the Loch Ness Monster.

  A Spy in the Scrubs

  Night fell early on Saturday October 22nd, 1966. An overcast sky and chilly north wind reminded visitors to London’s Hammersmith Hospital that winter would soon be upon them. Along the side of the hospital was a small alleyway, which separated it from Wormwood Scrubs prison. Parked in the alley, in a nondescript blue saloon car, sat a sullen, anxious-looking man, who cradled a bunch of chrysanthemums.

  Anybody who fleetingly noticed him would assume he was planning to visit a relative in the hospital. But a longer glance would have revealed that he was talking to his chrysanthemums in a rather agitated, impatient way. The man was Sean Bourke, and what he was actually doing was speaking into a walkie-talkie hidden in the flowers. He was about to commit an exceptionally serious crime.

  Wormwood Scrubs was a dreary Victorian building. It was home to many of London’s petty criminals. Most had been given short sentences, and none were considered particularly dangerous, apart from one. Among the burglars, car thieves and sellers of stolen goods, was the infamous spy George Blake. A former senior officer in MI6 (the British secret service), Blake had betrayed at least 42 British agents to the communist Soviet Union, and passed on other vital top secret information to Britain’s enemies.

  His trial in 1961 had caused a sensation, and he had been sentenced to 42 years in prison, the longest term ever given to a spy in peacetime. Blake had been placed in Wormwood Scrubs, in West London, because the British secret service needed to talk to him from time to time. They were based in London, and it would be convenient to have him reasonably nearby.

  With hindsight this was not a smart move. Blake was a very clever man, with a fascinating, tangled history. Born Georg Behar in Holland, of a Dutch mother and Jewish father, his loyalty lay with his communist beliefs, rather than any one country. He fought with the Dutch resistance when the country was occupied by the Nazis in 1940, then escaped to Britain in 1943. He joined the Royal Navy, where he was recruited into the British secret service. Caught up in the Korean War, he survived three years as a prisoner of the North Koreans. On his return he had become convinced communism was the best system of government, and gave top secret information to the Soviet Union, the world’s leading communist nation, for almost ten years.

  Curiously, Blake was a popular prisoner in “the Scrubs”. A tall, charming man, he taught illiterate prisoners to read and write, and was courteous and cooperative with the prison guards. Some prisoners sympathized with his communist views, and others felt his sentence was too harsh. He had made many friends in prison. Among them were Sean Bourke, a small-time villain, and Pat Pottle and Michael Randle – two peace activists jailed for their part in a demonstration at an American airbase in Britain. All three had recently been r
eleased from prison, and had decided to help him escape.

  Now, as Bourke fidgeted outside in the gloom, Blake was standing in the bright glare of Hall D, chatting with one of the prison officers about whether television wrestling matches were faked. The guard was so engrossed in the conversation he failed to notice another prisoner, a friend of Blake’s, carefully removing two panes of glass from a large window above his head.

  The conversation over, Blake headed back to his cell, picked up a walkie-talkie radio recently smuggled into the prison, and made his way to the broken window. The hall was now virtually empty, as most guards and prisoners were at the weekly movie, which was shown every Saturday evening.

  Unseen, he slipped out into the cold night air and leaped down to a porch roof below the window. From there he jumped onto a waste container and then down to the ground. Before him stood a 6m (20ft) high brick wall.

  “Sean, Sean, can you hear me?” he whispered into his walkie-talkie, as he crouched in the shadows.

  But there was no reply. Bourke was busy. Two young lovers were kissing and cuddling in a car parked all too close to his own. Naturally, he did not want any witnesses to this escape. Pretending to be a prison official, he was busy trying to shoo the couple away.

  Blake waited for what seemed like an eternity, his heart pounding in his chest and a terrible fear lurking in his stomach. The missing window panes would be spotted all too soon, and he had only a few minutes to get away. Blake had been in Wormwood Scrubs for four weary years, and the visits by the secret service men were becoming more and more infrequent. He knew they would soon transfer him to a top security prison outside London, where escape would be all but impossible. This was going to be his one and only chance to get away.

  Eventually Blake’s radio crackled.

  “George? Are you there? Thank Heavens! Look, I’m throwing the ladder over now.”

  Another terrible, still silence ensued. Then came a clattering sound as a lightweight ladder, made from washing line and knitting needles, snaked over the wall.

  “OK Sean, hold tight, I’m coming over now,” whispered Blake, and he ran from the shadows and out to the ladder, certain he would be spotted at any second.

  He climbed clumsily, scraping his fingers on the rough brickwork. Blake was not an athletic man, and this physical exercise quickly tired him. Standing on top of the wall, panting and puffing, he looked down to see Bourke and his car. Freedom was only seconds away, but Blake was so desperate to escape, he could not even wait that long. Rather than climbing down the outer wall he leaped from the top, breaking a wrist and cutting his face as he landed.

  “Good Heavens, man,” said Bourke, “are you all right? There was no need to do that!”

  He picked up his friend and bundled him into the back of his car. Then he dashed around to the driver’s seat and started the engine. The car spluttered into life, and Bourke shot off up the alley, scattering hospital visitors and crashing into the back of a car in front of him. Before the outraged driver could get out, Bourke had clumsily lurched around him, and driven off to merge into the stream of early evening traffic heading away from central London.

  “We did it! We did it!” he shouted jubilantly.

  In the back seat, Blake was holding his broken wrist and wincing with every bump in the road. But despite this, and the blood dripping down his face, he was grinning like a madman.

  All the dull indignities of prison life flashed before him – the miserable, stale floorcloth stench of the place, the taste of limp, lukewarm cabbage, some of the Scrubs’ creepier residents…

  “Good Lord, what I’ve had to put up with these last four years!” he exclaimed.

  Blake was ecstatic. Then, for a second, he looked more serious.

  “It’s not over yet though is it? I’ve got this to sort out,” he said, holding up his arm, “and then I’ve got to get out of this country.”

  “All in good time, George, all in good time,” said Bourke. “First we’ll get you back to the hiding place I’ve found for you, and have something decent to eat.”

  It was only a short journey, and as far as they could tell, no one was following them. Bourke had found Blake a room in a house, in a seedy, anonymous street not far from the prison. Bourke parked in front of the house. They waited until the street was clear, then walked quickly in before anyone spotted them.

  Inside, Bourke bathed the wound on Blake’s face, and bandaged up his damaged wrist the best he could. Then he left to go and dump the car a good distance away. He returned with a bottle of whisky and a bottle of brandy.

  “This will help us wash down our supper,” he laughed. “And wait until you see what I’ve got to eat!”

  Bourke was soon frying two huge steaks. When they were ready he cut Blake’s into small pieces and watched as he wolfed it down with one hand. Blake was ravenously hungry, and soon had appalling indigestion.

  “Four years of prison food,” he laughed, “and now this. No wonder I feel sick!”

  “Have some brandy,” suggested Bourke, “that’ll sort you out!”

  After finishing their steaks, Bourke and Blake talked about the escape.

  “The trouble we’ve had getting you out of there,” Bourke said.

  He told his friend all about how he, Pottle and Randle had tried to contact Blake’s family to raise funds for the escape, and how they had fallen out over Bourke’s inability to provide receipts for everything he bought.

  “I mean, how do you get a receipt for a forged passport?” Bourke snorted.

  He told Blake how they had planned everything, from getaway car to radio sets, knitting needle rope to false passports. The whole escape had come to £700, money which the three had put up themselves and borrowed from friends.

  In between drinks they ate strawberries and cream. But while they were eating, a television show they were watching was interrupted by a news flash. A serious looking man announced:

  “Soviet spy, George Blake, has escaped from Wormwood Scrubs prison, in London. The escape happened at around 6:30pm this evening. Blake climbed over the prison wall using a ladder thrown to him by an accomplice. The two men are believed to have driven off in a small blue car, heading west out of London.”

  A recent picture of Blake appeared on the screen, a prison mug shot of him looking stern and distant.

  “A news flash!” said Bourke. “They didn’t even wait for the main bulletin. You’re Britain’s most wanted man!”

  Bourke laughed. But Blake looked more serious.

  “I hope no one saw us come into the house,” he said. “Every policeman in London will be looking for me.”

  The next day Bourke went out to find a doctor. Blake knew Bourke had a network of sympathetic friends, but his own background in espionage taught him that no one could really be trusted. Every contact they made like this laid them open to the possibility of betrayal.

  Around noon, Bourke returned with a doctor, and a bundle of newspapers. The doctor was a serious young man who greeted Blake coolly, then treated his broken wrist. It was agonizing, and Blake drank the last of Bourke’s whisky to deaden the pain.

  After the doctor had gone, Blake said:

  “Are you sure he won’t betray us? He didn’t seem very friendly.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Bourke. “He’s on our side. He was probably just worried about helping a runaway convict! Now look at this…”

  Bourke showed Blake the day’s papers. They were full of stories of the escape. One paper had made much of the chrysanthemums Bourke had left behind in his hurry to get away. The paper painted a picture of him as a shadowy criminal mastermind, and wrote that his chrysanthemums were a mysterious calling card.

  The two men laughed at the way their escape had been presented to the British public. They were particularly amused by one newspaper’s theory that a substitute had been sent to prison in his place and allowed to escape, while the real Blake had returned to Moscow as a double agent.

  But all this publicity
was bad news. Blake’s face was on the front page of every newspaper, and flashed on television at every news broadcast. They were going to have to be extremely careful. Although the doctor who treated Blake’s wrist never did give them away, they still thought it best to move to a nearby house to stay with a man who was a friend of Randle and Pottle. This proved to be a disaster. The man’s wife told her psychiatrist that they were hiding two men from the police, so another bolt hole was needed urgently.

  Bourke too had made a silly mistake. Despite all his careful planning for the escape, he had bought the getaway car they used in his own name, and the police had traced it. Now his photograph was appearing alongside Blake’s on every newspaper front page, and his name was being mentioned on every radio and television news bulletin.

  By early November they had moved to Pat Pottle’s house, which was also in London. Tired of all this hiding, Blake was now desperate to leave the country. But, two weeks after the escape, his name and photograph were still all over the papers and television. It would be too risky to try to leave the country in the normal way, via a ferry or plane, even using a false passport.

  Pottle and Randle tried to alter Blake’s appearance dramatically. They gave him a drug called Meladinin which was supposed to make skin much darker, and also put him under a sun-lamp for several tanning sessions. The experiment was a miserable failure. Blake still looked instantly recognizable. But Randle came to the rescue with another ruse.

  He had a large Volkswagen camper van, and Blake was hidden in its blanket compartment. Randle and his family drove to Europe, telling border police they were going sight-seeing in East Germany. At the time, this country was controlled by the Soviet Union so Blake would be safe there.

  The trip went without a hitch, and a very stiff and slightly carsick Blake was dropped off just outside Berlin. He introduced himself to the first East German soldier he could find, but no one believed his story. He was taken to Berlin, and a Soviet secret service officer who knew him personally was flown over to see him. When this officer walked in, hugged him and started to shout “It’s him! It’s him!” Blake knew his troubles were over.