The Secret Agent

by Stephan Talty

  Every few months, he received another note from Richard, telling him that “the deal” was progressing nicely. Twice his phone rang and a man with an American accent identified himself with the same code-name. He told Erickson to proceed, and to remain patient.

  Chapter Five

  The Prince

  To catch Berlin’s eye, Erickson needed a partner, someone who could provide entree to the powerful cliques that controlled German business. Soon he and the OSS settled on a possible candidate: Prince Carl Gustaf Oscar Frederick Christian Bernadotte, nephew of King Gustav V and brother-in-law of Belgium’s King Leopold, the bloody-minded imperialist of the Congo. The prince was a striking young man in his late 20s, already making a name for himself as a bit of an oddball, a thrill-seeker, and a libertine (many of Erickson’s friends were playboys in the old-world, “I-own-a-chateau-in-the-Côte-d’Azur” sense).

  Prince Carl—his family called him Mulle—was the youngest child and only son born to Prince Carl of Sweden and Princess Ingeborg of Denmark, scion of a family that had ruled Sweden since 1818. He stood fifth in line to the throne. Carl was almost but not quite movie-star handsome, with a long aquiline nose and slicked-back hair in the style of Errol Flynn. In school, he studied business, became fluent in Esperanto, and served as an officer in a cavalry company. In his teens and early 20s, Carl developed a reputation for wildness. “There were traditional princely incidents of motor accidents following erratic driving,” said the UK Telegraph diplomatically, implying either that Carl liked to drink or was just plain reckless. He was impulsive, perhaps a little spoiled, and not afraid of stirring up controversy. Later in life, he and a friend marched into the headquarters of the Stockholm Criminal Investigation Department to report they’d just seen a “flying saucer.” Carl and his friend, a film director, were driving along when the UFO lit up the sky with a burning light. The prince immediately stopped the car and opened the door to listen. His report, which caused a sensation, was “instantly classified” and the Swedish General Staff launched an investigation into the matter. They concluded that the prince and his friend had seen a fireball, if they’d seen anything at all.

  By the time he was being considered for the Erickson plot, Carl had managed to get himself barred from any consideration of becoming king, due to his misadventures in love. In 1933, the prince had set out on a trip around the world. During his port of call in the Netherlands, he was rumored to have fallen for Princess Julia, heir to the Dutch throne, whose family was desperate for a Protestant male groom to take the reins of state. The feeling was mutual. But something broke down, either the romance itself or negotiations between the two families. The relationship ended and in 1937. The prince then sealed his fate by marrying a divorcee, the daughter of the Master of Ceremonies at the ancient Swedish court. Because his bride was a commoner, Prince Carl had to relinquish his claim to the throne. Like King Edward VIII before him, Carl had traded the crown for love. He would go on to divorce his wife and remarry twice more: once to a builder’s daughter, and finally to a maid.

  Despite his eccentricities, Prince Carl was widely admired by the Swedish people. His “adventurous spirit and total lack of pomposity” was a relief from the remote, austere figures of King Gustav V. In recruiting him, the OSS must have reasoned that a more sober and well-established royal might not have been available to impersonate a Nazi.

  The prince quickly agreed to join the plot, and the OSS began spreading rumors that he was not only a black sheep of the King’s family, but a Hitler sympathizer. They carefully chose the time and place for the prince’s coming-out party: one afternoon at the veranda cafe of the imposing five-star Grand Hotel that looks out over the Prussian blue waters of Lake Mälaren. Erickson invited Carl for lunch with a group of his German friends. Stockholmers gaped as the prince sat down with the crème de la crème of the city’s pro-Nazi elite and began chatting about some of his favorite things: horses, sailboats, skiing. It was, for right-thinking Swedes, an omen and a disgusting spectacle. One man at a nearby table called over a waiter and asked to be moved away from the Prince’s group.

  In one stroke, Erickson become not only a collaborator, but a corrupter of Swedish nobility. But in espionage terms, it was a coup.

  Together, he and the prince began courting local Germans, looking for a way into Hitler’s inner circle. Watching the Nazis mingle, boasting loudly of what was happening back in the home country, the spy realized something that would prove essential to his mission: The Nazis were very, very vain. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without Carl,” Erickson said, “because we found out quickly that the Nazis loved the idea of dining with royalty. They were snobs, but most of them didn’t come from the fine Germany families. When I helped them get their names in the papers, saying they were seen with So-and-So, they were very happy. So they fell for Carl straight away.” To that end, Erickson began playing to the Nazis’ egos, inviting them to the city’s hotspots, where he arranged for the prince to drop by their table for a glass of whiskey. “It always seemed that when we had these lunches, some photographer would always come by at the right moment, and a picture was taken showing the prince with his new friend.” The SS man would hurry back to Berlin with the photo tucked in his leather suitcase: The prince, the charming American businessman and the Nazi, their smiles loosened by several glasses of Glenlivet.

  But the masquerade came at a price. With every German friend he made, another Swedish one dropped away, muttering curses. When he showed up at his favorite restaurant, Bellmansro’s on Djurgården Island, people turned their backs on him. “When we went out, nobody wanted anything to do with us.” Stockholm was tense. Norway and Denmark had been occupied, an invasion of Sweden was a real possibility and reports of atrocities involving Jews and political prisoners trickled in over the radio waves. So Erickson and his royal consort were, understandably, snubbed wherever they went. “It was very unpleasant,” he remembered. Especially for a bon vivant like Erickson who could never resist a party.

  Perhaps the biggest obstacle to Erickson’s transformation into a pseudo-Nazi was his best friend, Max Gumpel. Gumpel was a wealthy, two-time Olympian who’d twice medaled in water polo before going on to build a sprawling construction empire. Like Erickson, Gumpel was a playboy. He owned several motorboats, and was often seen cruising up and down Stockholm’s waterways. He even dated Greta Garbo before she moved to Hollywood. Garbo liked him so much that she would stay with him on trips home to Sweden.

  Gumpel thought the world of Eric Erickson. He’d helped Erickson build a refinery for his company, and the two had formed a deep bond. “I had a very real and esteemed impression of your morals and honesty,” he wrote to Erickson. “Your thoughts were always clear and filled with high and honest ideals.” Unfortunately for the spy plot, Gumpel was a Jew.

  When Erickson began to inexplicably change into a fascist, heiling the Nazi officers from the terrace of the Grand Hotel, Gumpel was appalled. “I thought he would go crazy,” Erickson said later. The issue came to a head one evening when Erickson invited Gumpel to dinner with an entrepreneur named Lenshoek, a famously stylish man-about-town who also happened to be one of Denmark’s most prominent Nazis. Erickson and Gumpel listened as Lenshoek spoke glowingly of the Wehrmacht, how admirable its officer corps was, how unstoppable its momentum. Gumpel went ash-pale. He began arguing with the Dane, who announced that the Nordic countries “could not govern themselves and needed a Führer.” Hitler, he said, “was ordained to be the high ruler of a united states of Europe.”

  A year earlier, Erickson would have called Lenshoek a fool and cut him dead. But now, with Gumpel watching, he nodded approvingly at the idea of Hitler ruling Sweden and the rest of Europe. Gumpel was speechless. He couldn’t believe that Erickson was siding with the Germans.

  “Do you know how fucked up this all is?” he whispered to Erickson.

  After the dinner, the two friends walked home together and Gumpel promptly tore into the American
for his betrayal. But Erickson could say nothing. If Erickson was to be a secret agent, he had to horrify Gumpel. Should the American oilman and the Jew remain close, the Germans would never believe that Erickson was on their side. The spy had to sacrifice his Jewish friend in order to convince the Nazis he was genuine.

  “Max,” Erickson said, “whatever you hear or think, all I ask is that you believe in me.” It was the most Erickson could say without risking the mission. The two didn’t talk for the rest of the war.

  The break with Gumpel was painful, but far worse was to come. His wife, Elsa, who thought she’d married a successful, charming, liberal businessman and had expected a life of parties and backgammon in Stockholm, was now living with a fascist. Elsa had no idea why Erickson had changed so drastically. “She didn’t know a thing about what I was doing.” Nevertheless, Elsa shared his fate as an outcast. Her friends and family turned on her and she was shunned in the streets and boulevards of Stockholm. Soon she was exhibiting signs of extreme nervous tension. Unable to bear the public hatred of almost everyone she knew, and horrified by Eric’s new friends, Elsa was slowly becoming unstable.

  The American had no choice but to send his wife to an asylum. Elsa would be in and out of the place for the entirety of the war, and the two would divorce in 1949. After their split, Erickson rarely talked about her. Perhaps it was simple guilt, or maybe the mad wife didn’t go with the triumphant nature of the story. Perhaps he knew, if he’d trusted her, she could have come out of the war a different, far healthier, person.

  Even as his personal life fell apart, Erickson faced stiff resistance from the Nazis he was trying to bamboozle. Many of them were suspicious of Erickson’s sudden transformation. “A few of the higher-up Germans said to me, ‘Erickson, I don’t believe a word that you say. You’re an American and always will be.’”

  The spy looked around for a way in. He was already widely despised in Stockholm. His friends had turned their backs on him. He couldn’t possibly make himself any more hated in his adopted country than he already was. How could he convince the Nazis he was one of them?

  “It was difficult,” Erickson said of this time in his life. “I began to think the whole mission was all a bit meaningless.”

  On his trips to Berlin, Erickson began to notice the scarcity of luxuries in the capital. Due to the economic blockade, there was little but essentials in the shops: meat, wheat, perhaps milk, but little else. He thought about it for weeks and decided to try to use the blockade in his favor. On his next business trip to Germany, he stuffed his luggage with embargoed items unavailable in Berlin and delivered them to the homes of his German friends—not to the husbands whom he was courting, but to their better halves. “I would bring silk stockings, gin, whiskey and champagne and give them to the wife,” Erickson said. “That was the best strategy I ever came up with.”

  It wasn’t only the Scottish whiskey and the stockings that mattered to the German wives. It was fact that Erickson was willing to risk fines and even jail time for people the West regarded as depraved. By smuggling a few things to brighten his friends’ lives, he demonstrated to these women that he genuinely cared about them and their families. Erickson was a link to the outside world, to Paris and London and memories of the things they enjoyed before the war. The manners, the implied concern, as much as the gift, mattered.

  “When the husband would come home,” he remembered, “the wife would say ‘That man can be trusted.’” Finally, in late 1942, the work paid off. Erickson was invited to Germany to pitch some oil deals to the Reich. He made reservations to fly from Stockholm to Berlin and notified his OSS handlers about the trip. They were delighted.

  The scheme was beginning to take hold. After months of ingratiating himself with the pro-Nazi elite, Erickson’s cover was firmly established. He was a leading pro-German businessman in an industry that the Reich needed to win the war: oil. He’d recruited a partner in the scheme who had strong connections to the Swedish royal family. He’d advertised his willingness to get the Germans the hydrocarbon products they needed, no matter the personal cost.

  On paper, he was a hot prospect. But Berlin wasn’t Stockholm, and the American knew more rigorous tests awaited him.

  Chapter Six

  Berlin

  On his departure date, Erickson packed his bags with the usual embargoed goodies, said goodbye to his wife and drove to the airport in Stockholm. He checked his luggage and proceeded to the gate. He showed his ticket and boarded a small propeller plane to Berlin. The other passengers on board were well-dressed, in suits and dresses, a business crowd in a time when flying was still an upper-class thing. Just before the plane taxied to the runway, two men in street clothes enter the cabin. They spoke briefly with the stewardess, their eyes scanning the rows of passengers.

  “Which one of you is Eric Erickson?” one called out.

  Erickson, startled, motioned them over. Was Elsa ill? Or was there a problem at Pennco?

  “I’m Erickson,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “You’ll have to come with us.”

  “Come with you?” Erickson replied. “Who are you anyway?”

  The men flashed their badges: Swedish police. Erickson protested that the plane was leaving in a few minutes. The undercover officers told him that they’d hold the plane for him, if they decided to let him back onboard.

  “What?” said the hot-tempered Erickson. “What sort of damned idiocy is this?”

  The men grabbed Erickson’s luggage and escorted him down the aisle. The reason for such a public humiliation was clear to the spy: the Swedish government couldn’t openly oppose Germany. It was simply too powerful. But the Swedes, who had no idea the American was in fact a secret agent for the Allies, could make it known how much they despised collaborators.

  Erickson was taken to a border patrol office, where he was strip-searched and cross-examined. The police even took out some of the expensive cigars he was bringing as gifts for high-ranking Nazis, and broke them apart, perhaps to see if he was smuggling microfilm or other secret information.

  Erickson was a powerfully built man, and in the tiny interrogation room, he nearly lost his composure. He demanded to know why he was being treated like a criminal, but the police refused to answer. The confrontation nearly became physical. Finally, after twenty minutes, Erickson was escorted back to the plane and allowed to fly to Germany.

  After the war, the OSS confessed to Erickson that they’d set up the whole thing. Tikander and the Americans had called the Swedish police and reported that a suspicious character was betraying the state and should be searched thoroughly before being allowed to fly to Berlin. They didn’t, however, inform Erickson. “You couldn’t have reacted the way you did if we’d told you that you were going to be questioned,” Tikander said. “We had to do it, especially when we knew who was on the plane with you.” It turned out that the pilot on the flight was Count Carl-Gustaf von Rosen, nephew of Hermann Göring, chief of the Luftwaffe.

  As the plane descended into Templehof airport in Berlin, Erickson gazed out his small window. Down below was something he’d never seen at Templehof: row after row of trees partially disguising the runways. Planes were hidden under the trees and the hangars roofs were painted to look like shrubbery.

  The new look of Templehof wasn’t for show. Berlin was protecting itself from Allied bombers.

  Erickson hailed a taxi to a meeting with the German bureaucrats in charge of the Reich’s oil contracts. Berlin looked dingier, more menacing. Buildings he remembered as being crisp and white on his last visit now turned a grimy face to the world. Baroque landmarks were draped in camouflage netting. Streets teemed with Gestapo men in their black uniforms, and Erickson saw Wehrmacht troops in light-green wool and steel helmets packed into the backs of transport trucks, one after the other streaming down the highway. Civilian traffic was light, which indicated to Erickson that wartime gas rationing was already in place. There were even signs t
hat the early bombing raids were having an effect: Erickson caught quick glimpses of streets that had been roped off, with mounds of rubble and half-demolished buildings visible in the distance.

  The meeting didn’t go well. The officials were friendly enough, but dubious about the whole project. They were concerned with richer prospects, especially the synthetic oil facilities where German scientists were making huge strides in turning coal into fuel. He chatted up the functionaries, but they couldn’t give Erickson what he truly wanted: access to the plants.

  Discouraged and uneasy, Erickson returned to the Hotel Eden. A few minutes after he’d arrived, the black phone on the bedside table rang. It was the front desk. An officer of the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsfuhrers (SD), the intelligence arm of the SS, was waiting for him downstairs. Erickson told the clerk he’d be right down. His heart was pounding rapidly. If the SD had found out his secret, he was bound for one of the concentration camps, such as Oranienburg, which specialized in secret agents and saboteurs. Hitler, who despised spies (even his own), had directed that any secret agents be given a special distinction at the guillotine. They were turned face-upwards and forced to watch the blade descend toward their neck.

  Erickson took the elevator down, spotted the SD officer in the lobby and was ushered into the back seat of a Mercedes. His escort sat beside him, with two more officers up front. The black Mercedes swung through the half-empty streets. How do they know who I am? Erickson asked himself. He thought back on his time in Stockholm. Had someone seen him with the American diplomats? Was he being watched in Sweden? The SD men said nothing. Erickson’s throat grew dry as he watched the driver heading toward the city center.