Double Cross in Cairo (13 page)

information about British and Allied military, naval and air forces in the Middle East; they cover an area ranging from Persia to Gibraltar and from Sicily to Capetown; they sometimes forecast a strategic plan, but generally descend to the most particular details for which personal observation is sometimes expressly claimed. They appear from the notes to have been mostly communicated by wireless; in some places the language plainly refers to their transmission by wireless. Of all the sources quoted, by far the commonest is a ‘
source militaire anglaise’
.

PRECIOUS
sent the collected reports off to Berlin by courier every Friday in the ‘original’ French, which he was forbidden by Leverkühn to alter or annotate. If he thought any report urgent, he would draft a signal for Hinz to send to Berlin and Sofia by the wireless transmitter of the German Consulate-General in Istanbul, the latter headed ‘
Spruch an andreas, zugleich fur Fremde Heerc West – Cura. fur KING’.

Attgerer sent copies of all
PASCHA
reports giving air intelligence to the Air Attache in Ankara (first Colonel Morell, later General Kettembeil) and also to
LOUIS
(Einz Luft Berlin), and Murwitz or Zähringer sent
PASCHA
’
S
naval intelligence to Einz Marine Berlin. But on Leverkühn’s instructions all the
PASCHA
reports received from the SD were sent to
ANDREAS. PRECIOUS
believed that there were some purely political
PASCHA
reports, which Bruno Wolf of the SD did not hand over to KONO.

It was announced by KONO that
PASCHA
was, or directed, an organisation of agents and that
PASCHA
, or one or more of his hard agents, sent their reports by wireless to the SD’s contact in Istanbul. This contact was not himself
PASCHA
, but received the reports of the
PASCHA
organisation by wireless and could transmit questions by wireless to the organisation.
PASCHA
himself had been recruited by Admiral Canaris before the war and was always regarded as an Abwehr, Berlin source; hence it was for Berlin to assess the value of
PASCHA
’
S
reports and for KONO to pass them to Berlin unaltered. It was also assumed that the SD received the reports merely because there was no branch of the Abwehr in Istanbul to receive them until the middle of 1941.

PRECIOUS
inferred from the dates and places mentioned in the reports that they were sent by wireless; they were sometimes written in telegraphic style. Indeed the ‘original’ reports typed in block capitals looked like wireless messages, not telegrams;
PRECIOUS
often saw them when or before Fraulein Schott copied them, and noticed also that they were sometimes crumpled, as it they had been carried in a pocket, presumably by the SD’s contact, since the SD would have passed them to Angerer properly enclosed in an envelope.
The time taken by
PASCHA
in answering
PRECIOUS
’
S
questions was not short, but nonetheless indicated to
PRECIOUS
that both questions and answers had alike been transmitted by wireless.

1. Alexandretta seems to have been the site of one of them when
PRECIOUS
arrived, but to have ceased about the end of March.

2. Alexandria or Cairo was probably another, as reports on areas all over the Middle East were represented as having come from those places.

3.
PASCHA
apparently had no ‘residential’ agent as far west as Tunis until July.

On 4 and 30 December 1942, 23 February 1943 and 6 April 1943
PASCHA
reported the presence of parts of the 3rd American Infantry Division and 4th American Armoured Division in the Julfa region on the Russo-Persian frontier. This disagreed with other reports from agents of
DENNIS
[von der Marwitz], Zedow [Zähringer] and
THEOBALD
[Thoran] and made
PRECIOUS
begin to doubt at the end of April whether
PASCHA
had eyewitnesses in all the areas on which he reported, and to wonder whether he might not be relying on, e.g. truck (train?) drivers for sources of his information, as Zedow’s agents often did.
PRECIOUS
therefore asked Wolf of the SD for particulars of the organisation; Wolf replied he knew nothing except that his reports were brought to him by his contact in Istanbul.
PRECIOUS
then asked if he might interview the contact; Wolf refused, but suggested that
PRECIOUS
should send any questions he wanted asked to Wolf for him to
pass to
PASCHA
through the contact in Istanbul; the questions should be in French, from which
PRECIOUS
concluded that the contact could only speak Turkish and French.
PRECIOUS
therefore put questions to
PASCHA
on 30 April 1943 ending with one about the Egyptian Army to discover whether he was or had a source in Egypt. To this last question there was no reply.

A month or two later a fresh seed of doubt about
PASCHA
was sown in KONO’s mind by Berlin with a signal asking if coincidences between
PASCHA
reports and material supplied to KONO by the General Staff might not be caused by KONO’s passing this material indirectly to
PASCHA
. Berlin suggested that KONO night have passed it to someone, who might be, unknown to KONO, a member of the
PASCHA
organisation or in touch with it, or might have put questions to
PASCHA
leading him to give answers agreeing with the material. This suggestion alarmed Hinz and made him wonder whether there might not have been a leakage back to
PASCHA
through Lieutenant Ancora, the Italian assistant military attaché in Istanbul, with whom Hinz used to exchange military information. However, KONO asked General Rohde and
DENNIS
if they had been responsible for any such leakage, passed their negative answers to Berlin, and suggested that perhaps the leakage was in Spain.

The third blow to KONO’s confidence in
PASCHA
was his report of 9 July, amplified on 17 July, that the 5th English Division was in Syria and consisted of the 13th, 15th Brigades and the 3rd, 9th and the 91st artillery regiments. On 19 July
PRECIOUS
asked
PASCHA
for an explanation of this report, as according to KONO’s information this division had taken part in the attack on Sicily. On 24 July
PASCHA
reported that ‘
la repetition de la transmission’
had established an error in the transmission and a confusion in the text, which should have read 5th Indian Division. On 31 July
PRECIOUS
pointed out that this reply was unsatisfactory, because
PASCHA
had given the numbers of the brigades of that division, which could only be the numbers of the 5th English, and not of the 5th Indian Division; and he asked for further particulars of the source and channel of
PASCHA
’s original
information – a question which was never answered.
PRECIOUS
interpreted these reports as indicating that either consciously or unconsciously
PASCHA
was passing to KONO British ‘smoke’ concealing the fact that the 5th English Division was taking part in the attack on Sicily.
PRECIOUS
thinks, however, that
PRECIOUS
correctly anticipated the Allied attack on Pantellaria within two days.

In June or July a ‘
nouvelle convention’
was negotiated at
PASCHA
’
S
suggestion.
PASCHA
offered to supply reports (a) more than once a day, (b) from new sources covering Malta, and Gibraltar, (c) giving greater details of divisional numbers, (d) in return for a further T£12,000 a month. Canaris told Hinz at the Sofia conference to pay
PASCHA
this further salary, but it was never in fact paid. The file shows that on 31 May in answer to a question about commandos in Malta
PASCHA
promised direct communication with Malta from 10 June; he had already produced one ‘
communication
directe Malte’
on 29 April. The first fruits of the ‘
nouvelle convention’
were the longest single report ever received from
PASCHA
covering 14–20 July which contains one report on 17 July about Malta from a ‘
source directe
’; but the reports following it fell off instead of maintaining the improvement, and justified the complaint made in the questionnaire for
PASCHA
, drafted by
PRECIOUS
and amended by Hinz about the end of July, which repudiated the ‘
nouvelle convention’.
PRECIOUS
formed the opinion that
PASCHA
had somehow recruited a British or Allied wireless operator receiving messages from Malta and Gibraltar, but had then ‘lost’ him and so been unable to fulfil this part of the new bargain.

The flow of
PASCHA
reports ended suddenly with the month of August. To
PRECIOUS
’s enquiries Wolf replied that
PASCHA
had been put in difficulties by the Italian armistice, but hoped to re-establish his organisation on a smaller scale. He never did. After waiting a fortnight at Wolf’s request,
PRECIOUS
was told by Wolf that he had seen his contact in Istanbul; Wolf was very upset, but helpless. At
PRECIOUS
’
S
suggestion Leverkühn then summoned Wolf; Wolf came but, according to Leverkühn, said he would
not be sending any more
PASCHA
reports. This collapse of
PASCHA
, at the time of the Italian collapse, first made
PRECIOUS
think that
PASCHA
relied on Italian agents.

In September or October 1943 Willi Hamburger was in touch with George Earle, the American naval attaché, through having stolen his mistress, and was trying to get information which he could take out to the British without hurting the Abwehr. He told
PRECIOUS
that he had heard that someone connected with the SD, that at the back of the
PASCHA
organisation was an Italian Jew connected with Marconi’s office or shop in Cairo, and asked
PRECIOUS
for his name and further particulars. These
PRECIOUS
told him he could not give, because he did not have them.

PRECIOUS
had always considered that
PASCHA
or his organisation might be Jewish. It was not until July 1943 that KONO received an order forbidding the employment of Jews. Canaris would have had no objection to recruiting Jews, as the fact that this ban was not laid on until 1943 indicates; at the same time if
PASCHA
or his organisation were Jewish, Canaris would be reticent about him and so would the SD. There were of course other guesses to explain Canaris’s reticence, e.g. some promise made by Canaris. Leverkühn told
PRECIOUS
he was going to ask Canaris who
PASCHA
was; but so far as
PRECIOUS
knows, he never did. KONO in fact employed no Jews, because both Hinz and Ulshoefer were against employing them. The ban was interpreted in the spirit: ‘You keep your Jews, but you don’t mention them!’ In
PRECIOUS
’
S
opinion, the SD knew more about
PASCHA
than KONO, and Canaris more than the SD.

No further information about
PASCHA
had been acquired by KONO by the time
PRECIOUS
left. Leverkühn turned down a suggestion from Ludwig that he should ‘trail’ the SD contact in Istanbul in the hope of identifying
him. KONO thought he lived in Ayes Pasha, where the German Consulate was. A theory held ‘jokingly’ was that
PASCHA
was connected with the British military attaché in Ankara, perhaps through his Security Officer (name unknown), who was betraying information to the Germans.

This theory was based on the ‘
source militaire
’ which
PASCHA
often quoted, and which KONO thought he might have in 9th Army Headquarters. It was also supported by the scale of
PASCHA
’
S
remuneration, which indicated (
PRECIOUS
thought) more than oriental greed;
PASCHA
was paid T£30,000 a month, not by KONO, but (KONO assumed) by the SD.

PRECIOUS
asked the Interrogating Officer (a) if he thought
PRECIOUS
should have suspected that there was something suspicious about
PASCHA
[and] (b) if he knew of the
PASCHA
organisation as such before
PRECIOUS
gave his information about it. Evasive answers were returned.
PRECIOUS
seemed to think (i) that British interest in a defunct organisation was curious; (ii) that on reflection his own suspicions should have been aroused sooner and more strongly; and (iii) that
PASCHA
was at least partly under British control. (i) could not be disguised, but (ii) was not consciously suggested; nor was (iii), although it was not discouraged.
PRECIOUS
professed a complacent faith in the omniscience of Berlin, Berlin would know whether
PASCHA
’
S
reports were true or false and while Berlin accepted them without complaint, KONO were content to be a conduit pipe for these. KONO had good reason to be satisfied with a source that covered so much ground with such an appearance of speed and veracity and was neither recruited nor controlled nor paid by them, as long as it satisfied the Head of the Abwehr in Berlin, by whom it was reputed to have been established. In the last few months of its life it came under suspicion both from
PRECIOUS
and from Berlin, but according to him its reports were still eagerly awaited. When it dried up, KONO were left to ponder how far it had ever really covered the wide regions laid suddenly bare and how best they could now be covered with new, and less bountiful, sources of supply.