The Nazi's Son

by Andrew Turpin

  Moreover, and just as important from Johnson’s point of view, it would also mean losing any chance of finding out the information that Yezhov had been carrying about the La Belle bombing twenty-eight years earlier. Schwartz was their only lead at the moment.

  But Schwartz shook his head at Johnson’s offer. “Go screw yourself,” he said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Thursday, April 3, 2014

  Berlin

  Once it became clear that Schwartz was not going to cooperate, the CIA team eventually had little choice but to transfer him to the Limonenstrasse safe house. He wasn’t falling for the bluff of calling the German authorities, and the risks attached to keeping him at his home were too great. There was no way of knowing what visitors, private or from the ministry—or worse, the SVR—might turn up at any point.

  At the safe house, one of Johnson’s concerns was that they were forcibly detaining a German national in a country where they had no jurisdiction. They were all effectively committing kidnap. He knew it was extremely unlikely that Schwartz would later go to the German police, but nevertheless, it was an issue.

  He took Vic and Neal to one side. “I know this is about the greater good, but we could all end up in a German prison here.”

  Vic averted his gaze. “What’s the alternative? I don’t want to do it. I’d rather keep my team as much at arm’s length as I can. It’s your investigation. But . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “But it’s partly about your brother, so you’ll do it.”

  Vic shrugged. “Yes. We’re going to have to be flexible in our approach, and let’s be honest, this guy is the only lead.”

  “I agree,” Neal said. “When we eventually let him go, he’s not going to complain to the police, is he? He’s guilty of treason up to his neck.”

  Johnson paced slowly to a two-way mirror that allowed a view into the room next door, where Schwartz was sitting, guarded by two armed CIA officers, his wrists and ankles bound with black plastic flex-cuffs.

  “I’ll do the questioning, then, with Jayne,” Johnson said. He turned to look at Vic. “Your guys can take charge of the physical stuff. I don’t want any of your specials, though. No pharma treatment, mind drugs, waterboarding, electrics on his testicles. You know what I’m saying?”

  Vic frowned. “Agreed. This guy isn’t Spetsnaz or SEAL material—he may crack.”

  For the next three days they kept Schwartz in a bare room with light-proofed windows—a makeshift interrogation suite—so that he would not know the time of day. He remained strapped to a chair, apart from toilet breaks, was given water but no food apart from an occasional banana, and they used a shift system and an electronic device to keep him awake while continuing their questioning. The unit, which had pads attached to his chest, gave him a mild electric shock if he fell asleep and emitted a series of raucous squawks.

  Johnson just had to hope it worked. Enforcing sleeplessness and hunger was one thing. Breaking fingers and waterboarding were quite another.

  Nevertheless, they needed answers somehow if they were to move forward in any direction. Johnson had it in the forefront of his mind that it wasn’t just about Vic’s brother and what happened at La Belle. It was about pinpointing a mole working at the highest levels of Western intelligence whose ongoing leaks were likely to put at risk the lives of many good men and women—CIA and MI6 agents working in sensitive positions in hostile environments.

  In the meantime, the CIA station’s data analysis experts went to work on the three micro SD cards and the SRAC device.

  It turned out that the flash memory on the SRAC had been wiped clean, but it was very similar to a couple of other devices that had been captured from Russian agents over the past few years, including one in Washington, DC, and another in Helsinki. The unit was capable of receiving and transmitting data at very high speeds and operated on a high-capacity, long-life lithium battery.

  Two of the SD cards were empty, but the third contained four files, all encrypted, the keys for which proved resistant to the efforts of the local CIA team.

  Eventually, Jayne contacted a long-standing friend, Alice Hocking, at GCHQ, the UK’s Government Communication Headquarters, based at Cheltenham, with whom she had liaised regularly during her years at MI6. Alice, in turn, pressed someone in GCHQ’s Edgehill data decryption program team to try and unlock the documents.

  At the same time, Johnson and Vic had a meeting with Gareth Power, head of the Special Collection Service at Pariser Platz. The SCS was the highly classified joint unit set up by the CIA and the National Security Agency, the US government agency focused on collating so-called signals intelligence, with communications at its core, particularly in monitoring of phone, email, and internet traffic.

  The SCS’s Berlin unit had been monitoring Yezhov’s communications traffic round the clock from the day he indicated he was going to defect. Johnson requested that they revisit the captured material, with a special focus on calls, emails, and messages sent to Yezhov’s wife, Varvara, and their two children. Johnson knew from long experience of dealing with defectors that scraps of crucial evidence could often be found in communications to and from families.

  Perhaps there might also be copies of documents hidden at his family home. Unlikely, but possible.

  Power promised to carry out a full audit and report back as quickly as possible.

  On Thursday morning, Johnson tried once again to persuade Schwartz to talk, reiterating that he had no intention of turning him over to the German authorities. Schwartz was now in a zombielike state from hunger and lack of sleep and struggled to keep his body upright in the chair.

  This time, rather than make vague references to meetings that he knew Schwartz had conducted with intelligence officers, he decided to be a little more specific. He referred to sources inside the British embassy building whom he believed Schwartz had recruited, specifically an MI6 officer. It was as far as Johnson felt he could go without compromising Jones.

  Somewhat to Johnson’s surprise, after several days of refusing to communicate, Schwartz finally began to talk.

  “You have talked about the Stasi and the SVR,” Schwartz said in a whisper, his voice bubbling through spittle that had collected around his mouth and over his chin. A thick layer of stubble covered his face.

  “Yes,” Johnson said. He had mentioned them several times, although in general terms.

  “I was in the Stasi, correct. And I have had links with the SVR for some time.”

  Schwartz appeared to have raised the white flag.

  “When were you in the Stasi?” Johnson asked. He wanted to verify what he had been given from the MI6 files.

  “Until 1991. Until then I always worked for them.”

  “In Berlin?”

  “Yes, at the Normannenstrasse headquarters.”

  Johnson made a mental note to return to the topic of the Stasi in the ’80s later in the interrogation. Maybe Schwartz knew of people or operations that might help unearth the information that Yezhov had intended to bring about La Belle—although he didn’t want to refer directly to Yezhov. That was far too sensitive.

  For now, though, the more urgent task was to establish Schwartz’s part in current espionage activities.

  “So you have been passing the SVR information from your employer, yes?”

  “I have done some of that, and I have also acted as a Vermittler, how do you say, a ‘go-between,’ for some information from other sources.”

  “Go on,” Johnson said, leaning back in his chair, his mind now whirring. “What other sources?”

  Despite the bindings that held his arms fast to the side of the chair in which he was sitting, Schwartz’s body slumped down as far as it could go and his chin fell to his chest.

  Johnson jumped to his feet. Had the German suffered a heart attack or stroke?

  But after a few seconds, the German’s head lifted a little. “The information, the documents, came from other intelligence agencies, from government sources, fro
m highly placed civil servants. But not people whom I meet, or handle, or people I know. I am just a go-between, like I said. I do not even know what is in the files I pass on. They are all encrypted.”

  “Right. So you receive this information and you pass it on to Moscow Center?” Johnson asked. “How do you receive it and pass it on?”

  Schwartz gave a slight shake of the head. “I do not know who provides it. I receive it either on an SD card from a courier, at a dead drop site in Berlin, or electronically, using a receiver. I travel frequently to Moscow and St. Petersburg for business, and I pass the drives on to an SVR person at that time.”

  “How often?”

  Schwartz shrugged. He paused, seemingly trying to catch his breath before replying. “Every two, three, maybe four weeks. It depends.”

  “When was the last time?”

  Schwartz’s head rolled backward, and another dribble made its way down his chin. “It was about two weeks ago.”

  “Before March 21?” Johnson asked. That had been the date of Yezhov’s assassination.

  “I think March 18.”

  Johnson nodded. That most likely explained how details of the Yezhov operation had been transmitted to Moscow Center. The plan had only been finalized in the few days prior to that.

  “When are you expected to receive the next lot of files, and when are you expected to travel again?” Johnson asked.

  Schwartz shook his head. “There is nothing planned.”

  “How do you get communications from your handlers?”

  “We use a secure message service on my phone.”

  “Show me the messages.”

  Johnson picked up Schwartz’s cell phone from the table. The CIA team had previously scoured the phone, which required Schwartz’s thumbprint to gain access, but had found only personal messages, contacts, and documents.

  Johnson stepped over to Schwartz, grabbed his right thumb, and pressed it to the button at the bottom of the screen. Schwartz directed him to a messaging facility that was concealed deep within one of the social media apps that were loaded onto the device. It required an additional six-digit password to gain access.

  Johnson tut-tutted internally at the CIA team’s failure to spot the facility as he scrolled down the list of messages. All were extremely brief and mainly consisted of dates, times, and locations using GPS coordinates. The last message received was dated March 17.

  Thank you. Received safely. Will advise next delivery when ready, it said in German.

  “These are all from your handler, are they?” Johnson asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What is his name?”

  “I only know him by a code name—VIPER.”

  “Are you sure there is nothing scheduled? No deliveries, no meetings?” Johnson’s immediate concern was that Schwartz’s handler would realize from a missed appointment or delivery or a failure to respond to a message, that he had been blown.

  Schwartz screwed up his face but shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Do you have to check in to tell them you are alive and available or something?”

  Schwartz nodded.

  “When is the next check-in?” Johnson asked.

  “What day is it today? I’ve lost track.”

  Johnson wasn’t surprised. “It’s Thursday. The third.”

  “It’s today, then.”

  This time Johnson battled to avoid rolling his eyes. “What is the message you need to send?”

  “Just three words: alles ist gut. Everything is fine.”

  Johnson had little choice but to trust that the information was accurate. He had no way of verifying it, but his instinct was that Schwartz was telling the truth.

  “We are going to send that message now,” he said. “If I find out you are lying, you’ll regret it. Tell me what to do.”

  Reluctantly, Schwartz directed Johnson on how to compose and send the message.

  “Thank you,” Johnson said after he had pressed the send button. He stroked his chin. “Maybe the files, the information, you receive come from an agent in MI6?” He continued, “Perhaps one who is based here in Berlin? Maybe he gives you SD cards, or you pick up his short-range transmissions using that receiver of yours?”

  “I swear. I do not have contact with any agents inside MI6 giving me information,” Schwartz croaked.

  Johnson leaned forward. “You are not telling me the truth. I know you had a secret meeting in a hotel room only a few days ago with an MI6 officer who works here in Berlin.”

  “That is true that I had a meeting, but it is not what you think.”

  Schwartz was in such a state by this stage that he could hardly speak. From his long experience of interviewing and interrogating suspects, Johnson was convinced that finally, some truth was emerging, although it would all require thorough checking to corroborate the facts.

  He turned to Vic, who was standing behind him. “Let’s give him some food. He’s starting to cooperate. Maybe something to eat will encourage him further.”

  Johnson turned back to Schwartz. “In that case, please do tell me what I should really think, then.”

  “The truth is not that he was passing information to me or that I was recruiting him,” Schwartz said, his voice now scarcely audible. “No. Actually, he was trying to recruit me. He has been trying for a long time.”

  “What was your reply?”

  “I said no.”

  “So where do your files and your SD cards that you pass to Moscow come from originally?” Johnson asked.

  “I understand from London.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Thursday, April 3, 2014

  Berlin

  A few hours after Schwartz’s disclosure in the interview room, the Edgehill team at GCHQ returned the documents to Jayne, via Alice, on the SD card by secure transfer. Thankfully all had been unlocked.

  It quickly became evident that the documents were copies of internal CIA and MI6 material that had already been circulated to a number of people, including Vic and Nicklin-Donovan. They related to two joint intelligence-gathering operations being run by the CIA and MI6: one in Turkey, the other in Ukraine. Both were concerned with a series of complex moves to counter Russian operations designed to unmask British- and American-run assets in the respective governments of those two countries.

  If the plans were now in the hands of Moscow Center—which Johnson and Vic assumed had to be the case—then all of those operations were effectively blown.

  Vic and Johnson went for a walk in the Botanic Garden, with its sprawling array of winding paths, to discuss the findings in a location where there was no danger of being overheard and no listening devices would be present. After checking carefully for any sign of surveillance, they sat on a bench.

  Vic took out his phone and checked his emails. He bent over the screen, concentrating on the contents of one of them, then turned to Johnson.

  “I’ve just been sent a precise list of CIA and MI6 people with clearances to access those documents that Schwartz had,” Vic said. “There are, unfortunately, quite a few people in those specific security compartments in both services.”

  “Including Rick Jones?”

  “Here’s the interesting thing, Doc. The answer to that is no. He’s not on the list for any of those documents. Nobody in Berlin is. They’re all in London apart from a few in the local stations in Kiev, Ankara, and Istanbul.”

  Vic had christened Johnson with the nickname Doc during their stint together in Pakistan and Afghanistan after learning that he had spent four years in the early 1980s, prior to joining the CIA, doing a PhD on the economics of the Third Reich at the Freie Universität in Berlin.

  After a pause, Vic continued. “So unless someone else in London has passed them to Jones, which I believe is not the case, he is not the source of the leak that went to Schwartz.”

  Johnson exhaled. The GCHQ findings and the list that Vic had received completely corroborated what Schwartz had eventually told him and which Johnson no
w believed to be the truth.

  He stood. “We’re going to need a lot more information from Schwartz about his London connections, and I need to grill him about the ’80s too. We can’t afford to let him go, but . . .”

  “But what?” Vic asked.

  Johnson shook his head. “I’m worried this could cause a diplomatic firestorm. The Germans, from Angela Merkel downward, would go berserk if they knew we were holding him, no matter what this guy has done or whatever information he’s telling us—they would expect to be handling it, not us. It’s been four days.”

  “You’re right.” Vic threw up his hands. “But what other options do we have? Anyway, given he’s been committing high treason, he’s not exactly going to complain to the police, is he? And as you’ve said, his job at the ministry is over.”

  Johnson inclined his head in acknowledgment. “But I’m also worried about the SVR. I know we’ve sent that alles ist gut message, but it’s still possible it could be a coded alert to indicate he was under duress rather than a reassurance.”

  “Possible. But I doubt it. Let’s get back there and get on with the questioning.”

  When they walked into the safe house in Limonenstrasse after a forty-five-minute circuitous route to ensure they were not being followed, Schwartz was asleep on a long brown leather sofa, an empty plate of what had been spaghetti Bolognese lying on the floor next to him. He was guarded at gunpoint by one of the CIA security staff.

  “Wake him up,” Vic said.

  “He’s only just gone to sleep,” the guard said.

  “Just wake him. Do it.”

  The guard pulled Schwartz upright but he immediately fell back down again, still unconscious. The guard slapped his face. Eventually, his eyes remained open, albeit unfocused, and he hauled himself up to a sitting position.

  Vic ordered the guard to leave, then poured a strong black coffee from a flask on a table and instructed Schwartz to drink it. The German left it untouched.

  Johnson sat with Jayne and Vic opposite Schwartz on the other sofa.