The Swiss Spy (22 page)

Rather
had been Morgan’s response,
careful to show he was not too desperate. London had been crying out for
anything
from Berlin, such was their paucity of sources in the city.
And we mean
anything: even bloody bus tickets!

What Telmo came up with was much better than ‘bloody
bus tickets’. There were briefings from the German foreign ministry, minutes of
meetings with German officials, assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of
the armed forces, telegrams: half the contents of the diplomatic bag, as far as
Morgan could work out. And from what London was telling him, it was all first-class
stuff.
Well done. Plenty more of that will do nicely thank you!

But Morgan was a cautious chap. He was well aware
this intelligence coming out of Berlin could turn out to be too good to be true
and, if that were the case, he did not fancy getting the blame for it. So one
Saturday afternoon he took Telmo out for a drive to Cascais and they went for a
long walk along the seafront.

London want to know how come you’re getting such
good material out of Berlin?

They had walked for quite a while with Telmo saying
nothing, evidently weighing up whether or not to come clean.

‘I’ve been considering raising this with you. If there’s
ever a problem, will you promise you’ll ensure you can get me to England, maybe
on one of your convoys?’

‘I’d do my very best Telmo: what kind of problem
were you thinking of, though?’

‘If they ever suspected me, that kind of thing. I’d
like to go to England. I’d like to have a house in London. Maybe near to
Buckingham Palace.’

‘I’d certainly see what we can do. Not sure how near
to the Palace, but there are some other lovely parts of London.’

‘And if my source in Berlin was to accompany me,
would that be a problem?’

‘No! Not at all. I’d need to know who this person
is, of course…’

‘Even if we weren’t married?’

Which was how Telmo Rocha Martins came to tell Sandy
Morgan all about
Dona
Maria do Rosario. He told him how
Dona Maria
had been a secretary to his head of department in the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs; how they had become close and eventually became lovers; how it would
be impossible for him to leave his wife and remain in his job and stay in
Portugal. He told Morgan about how Dona Maria had become proficient in German
and had been transferred to the Legation in Berlin, but not before he had
confided in her and she had agreed to supply information. In her case, the
motivation was personal and political. Her fiancée had been imprisoned during
the 1926 coup and had died soon after. Following this she had left Porto and
moved to Lisbon, working her way through the various Government ministries
around the Praça do Comercio.

Telmo had chosen a good spot. They were at the end
of the front row of their block, so there was no-one sitting in front of them
or to the right. Morgan sat between Telmo and Edgar, acting as interpreter.

 ‘We’re very grateful to you Telmo,’ said Edgar
quietly, pausing while Morgan translated. ‘Very, very grateful. I want you to
know how much we appreciate your help. I can assure you if there’s ever a… problem
here in Portugal, we’ll do our very best to get you to London.’

Telmo smiled and nodded his head, not taking his
eyes off the pitch. ‘I’m very grateful. But can you promise me this assurance
will also apply to Dona Maria?’

‘Of course.’

They paused as the crowd rose around them: a
Sporting player was fouled on the edge of the penalty area. They continued to
stand while the free kick was taken then sat down after it soared over the bar.

‘I need to ask you about Dona Maria. She’s sending a
lot of material. How is she able to do this? Is she not suspected at all?’

‘I assure you she is careful. Because of my job, I’m
in a position to see the diplomatic bag soon after it arrives at the Ministry,
before anyone else other than a clerk has seen it. I’m then able to take the
material, which is all in code. It’s not possible for other people to spot it. No-one
suspects us. But I have something important to tell you.’

There was another delay as a
Barreirense
winger beat a succession of Sporting defenders then shot wide. ‘Our defence is
too slow today, far too slow,’ Telmo said thoughtfully. ‘Listen carefully,
please: Dona Maria passed on your message to Hugo, about getting hold of this
document. A message came through on Friday. Hugo wants you to know he may be
able to get hold of the document: it seems he has a source who has access to it.
But there’s a price to pay.’

‘How much?’

Sporting scored and the crowd leapt up. Everyone around
them were patting their companions on the back, as if they’d played a part in
the goal. Telmo looked delighted.

‘Fortunately our attack is much better than our
defence,’ he said. ‘It’s not money. It’s a lot more complicated. You’d better
listen carefully.’

Edgar did listen carefully. It was complicated. He
would need to get to Switzerland as soon as possible.

He was only shaken out of his thoughts by Sporting’s
second goal.

The game finished 2-0. If only everything in life
was so clear cut Edgar thought as they left the ground and Telmo melted into
the crowd.

***

By
noon on Wednesday 12th February, Christopher Porter had been kept waiting in a
narrow corridor in a draughty and heavily guarded basement under the Admiralty
building in Whitehall for well over an hour past the time of his appointment. When
he was finally called in to the office outside which he’d been waiting, there
was neither apology nor explanation, just a mildly exasperated look from Sir
Roland Pearson.

‘How can I help you, Porter?’ Sir Roland had once
been a colleague, but now worked in Downing Street and currently had the ear of
the Prime Minister on all matters to do with intelligence. He gave the
impression he was now far too important for his time to be wasted.

‘As you know, Sir Roland, we met on the 3rd when you
made clear the Prime Minister’s feelings regarding our intelligence from Berlin
and the directive regarding a possible invasion of the Soviet Union. I
subsequently dispatched Edgar to Lisbon, where he met our source Telmo on
Sunday.’

‘Telmo: remind me?’

‘
Telmo Rocha Martins: he works in the Portuguese
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lisbon and has proven to be an extremely useful
source of information for us. His main informant is Dona
Maria do
Rosario, who
is secretary to the Military Attaché
in the
Portuguese Legation in Berlin.
As well as passing on information through Telmo,
she also serves as a contact for Hugo – Franz Hermann, the Berlin lawyer who is
working for us. Any information he has, or messages we have for him, comes
through
D
ona
Maria in
the Portuguese diplomatic bag.’

Porter had now opened a notebook and put on a pair
of reading glasses.

‘When Edgar met Telmo on Sunday he passed on the
latest from Hugo. We were aware Hugo has been sheltering a Jewish family, which
we thought an unnecessary risk and therefore did not wholly approve of. However,
it transpires this family may be critical in terms of our obtaining a copy of the
directive. The family Hugo is sheltering is comprised of Rosa Stern and her two
children: an 11-year-old boy called Alfred and a five-year-old girl called
Sophia. Rosa’s husband is a businessman called Harald Stern, who was arrested
by the Nazis sometime in late 1939 and subsequently died – or was killed – in
one of their prison camps. Stern was the father of Sophia but not of Alfred. Alfred’s
father is one Gunter Reinhart, Rosa’s first husband. Reinhart is not Jewish: he
and Rosa divorced in 1935 after Hitler’s law that prohibits marriages between
Jews and non-Jews.’

‘I hope this family saga is leading somewhere
important, Porter.’

‘It is, sir. From what we understand, Reinhart and
Rosa Stern remained on good terms and he did what he could to help them. Rosa
and the children had moved to Paris, but returned to Berlin when Harald was
arrested – it seems he may have remained there to try to sort out some business
matters. Now they’re being hidden in the home of a relative of Hugo’s. However,
Reinhart works for the Reichsbank, where he occupies a fairly senior position. Part
of his job is helping to move money out of countries occupied by the Germans. In
this respect, it appears he has access to a copy of this Directive 21.’

‘Good heavens.’

‘Good heavens indeed. You see why I needed to give
you the background.’

‘And this Reinhart – he can supply us with Directive
21?’

‘Yes, but…’

 ‘… He wants money, I imagine: how much?’

‘I only wish it were that simple. His condition is
that we smuggle his son Alfred out of Berlin. Reinhart has a friend in Zürich:
once Alfred has been safely delivered to that friend, he’ll release a copy of
Directive 21 to Hugo.’

Sir Roland had leaned back in his chair and was
staring at the ceiling, as if the solution may be hidden in the cobwebs he had
spotted above the coving.

‘So how do we get Alfred to Zürich?’

‘Even as we speak Sir Roland, Edgar is on his way to
Switzerland. We have an agent there called Henry Hunter. Hunter also has a
genuine Swiss identity and is able to travel into Germany with it. A year ago
we sent him there on a test mission of sorts, which went well. I’ve said to
Edgar that he and Basil Remington-Barber must come up with a plan to get Hunter
to Berlin and out again with Alfred.’

‘Which won’t be straightforward.’

‘Indeed, Sir Roland. But we have to get Alfred out –
the prize is too great not to attempt it.’

Sir Roland stood up, walked away from the table and
over to his desk, from which he picked up a silver box and lit a cigarette he
selected from it. He offered the box to Porter, who refused, then removed his
jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. On the wall behind him was a map
of Europe and for a while he studied it, reacquainting himself with the various
locations. With his forefinger he traced an angled line south from Berlin to Zürich.

‘And once this Alfred is safely delivered to this
friend in Zürich, we get the report?’

‘Once the friend has confirmed it.’

‘And I presume Hugo then hands the report over to
Dona Maria whatshername and she pops it into the diplomatic bag, and we pick up
the report in Lisbon?’

Porter closed his notebook and folded up his reading
glasses. Twice he started to speak, but hesitated. He was clenching then
unclenching his fists and clearly finding difficulty in knowing where to start.

‘Can I be most frank and most honest with you, Sir
Roland?’

‘I’d rather hoped that’d been the case up to now
anyway, Porter.’

Porter’s hands were now clasped as if in prayer. He inhaled
deeply before speaking.

‘The most obvious route to bring the directive out
of Berlin would indeed be through the Portuguese diplomatic bag, I quite agree.
But if there’s an overriding purpose to us obtaining this document, it’s to
help prove to the Russians their supposed allies are not what they seem and in
fact have plans to invade them. Correct?’

Sir Roland nodded.

‘Up to now, the Russians have chosen to ignore all
these warnings, especially the ones that can be attributed to us. Frankly, they
don’t believe what we tell them. They’re convinced our motives are to stir up
trouble between them and the Germans. They choose to believe whatever
intelligence we’re passing to them is false. Our concern is that if we – the
British – show them the directive or tell them about its contents, they’ll
similarly ignore them, as they have all the other warnings. All the
considerable effort of obtaining the directive will have been wasted.’

‘What do you suggest then Porter?’

‘This is where I have to be very frank. Henry
Hunter, our agent in Switzerland, is not quite what he seems. I think I’ll have
that cigarette after all, Sir Roland.’

Sir Roland rejoined Porter at the table and slid the
silver cigarette box across it, followed by a box of matches. He noticed Porter
shook slightly as he lit his cigarette.

‘We had our eyes on Hunter for some time. He’s ideal
in many ways: very good Swiss identity, speaks all the relevant languages. Even
the Swiss believe he is Swiss, if you get what I mean. We picked him up here
just before the start of the war: he was trying to smuggle out some money he’d
inherited and we gave him the choice of working for us or spending a few years
breaking rocks or whatever we make people do in prisons these days. He chose to
work for us.’

‘Good.’

‘However, what he didn’t know – and still doesn’t –
is we know something else about him, which is that he’d already been recruited
as an agent: by the Russians.’

Sir Roland had been moving his cigarette towards his
mouth. Now he stopped, holding it is mid-air. He leaned towards Porter.

‘Really? When did this happen?’

‘We think it was around 1930 or 1931, Sir Roland – a
couple of years after he moved to Geneva from Zürich with his mother and
step-father. Basil Remington-Barber had an informant in the Geneva branch of
the Communist Party of Switzerland. He thought we’d be interested because
Hunter had dual British and Swiss nationalities. He’d seen Hunter at one or two
meetings, then he disappeared from view. Normally, we wouldn’t have attached a
good deal of importance to that: plenty of young chaps go to these type of
meetings then lose interest. But Remington-Barber’s informant thought he’d seen
Hunter chatting to a French chap rumoured to have links with the Comintern; and
we know it’s a well-established recruitment tactic of the Soviet intelligence
agencies for them to keep an eye open for likely recruits who’ve joined or try
to join their local communist parties. What happens is they spot someone then
persuade them the best way to serve the cause is not to be a party member but
to work for them. They leave the party, all records are destroyed and they
display no outward affiliation with or interest in communism – often the
opposite, in fact. We assume this is what happened with Hunter.’

‘And how and when did you get to know he was a
Soviet agent?’

‘Not until early ’39. We think he must’ve been told
to lay low until they needed him and, certainly the way he was living in Geneva,
no-one would have had any reason whatsoever to suspect him We became very
interested in a Soviet spy master, chap called Viktor Krasotkin. Very bright
chap: based in Paris but moves around Western Europe as if he owns the place. Quite
brilliant actually, but our people in Paris were aware of him and for a while
had someone quite close to him. This person tipped us off about an English chap
with Swiss nationality who was one of Viktor’s agents. Once we knew this, we
tried to recruit him and he rather fell into our hands.’

‘But what has this to do with the directive?’

‘Once Henry delivers the boy Alfred to Zürich and
Reinhart gets the green light, Henry can return to Berlin and bring the document
back to Switzerland.’

‘The point of that being…?’

‘He’ll be made well aware quite how important the
document is – top secret, et cetera. We know as soon as he gets back to
Switzerland, he’s bound to show it to Viktor Krasotkin, even before he hands it
over to Edgar. That way, the Russians will know it’s genuine. It’ll have come
straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. They’ll have to believe it then,
won’t they?’

***