Agent in Berlin, page 18
You always seem resentful and ready to moan about life and how you’re feeling. Let me tell you, there’s no point in moaning all the time, no one cares – you need to take a grip on yourself and make something of your life.
She’d been shocked someone could speak to her like that, but then she thought about it and thought maybe the woman had a point. She recognised she did have a tendency to feel sorry for herself and maybe other people noticed that, so she decided to follow the woman’s advice and do something that she’d been thinking about. The Gestapo had an office within the building on Masurenallee and one lunchtime she summoned up the nerve to visit it. She explained she was a British citizen but a committed supporter of Nazi Germany. She’d like to offer her services in whatever capacity the Reich thought fit.
She didn’t imagine anything would come of it – who’d be interested in her after all – but to her surprise just one week later she was called back to the Gestapo office where a man who introduced himself as Karl Henniger took her into a private room and explained he was from section 4E of the Gestapo, which dealt with counter-intelligence and they were especially interested in British espionage operations in Berlin and they wanted to send her to London for her to offer her services to British Intelligence.
‘If they take you on then we’ll be able to find out about what they’re up to here!’
She was taken away for a week to be briefed on what to do in London and sure enough within a short time of her arrival there she was meeting with British Intelligence, who seemed to be very keen on recruiting her. They asked her to return to Berlin and to the radio station where they had an agent working. They gave her an envelope to pass on to him.
She was surprised – which was putting it mildly – that the British agent turned out to be Ken Ridley, a man she disliked intensely. He was a drunk with no evident interest in hygiene, lazy and loud and rarely missed an opportunity to treat women appallingly. He seemed to regard himself as more Nazi than the Nazis, even calling himself Fritz, and he was the last person she’d expect to be a British spy, but when she thought about it, she realised that was the whole point – someone so ridiculous the Germans wouldn’t suspect him.
She passed the information on to Karl on her return to Berlin. She imagined the Gestapo would watch him to see what other British agents he was in contact with while she’d start operating as a double agent herself. When Karl told her Ridley had been arrested, she was surprised that it had happened quite so soon but assumed they knew what they were doing. She was even more shocked when she found out that Ridley had been executed by the Gestapo just a few days after his arrest: she’d assumed there’d be an investigation and a trial and…
And this was why she was now so bitter. The Gestapo no longer had an interest in her because the British would know what she’d done. She’d been discarded by them and the thought of what would happen to her if she returned to England kept her awake at night.
Both Britain and Germany had used her. Life could not feel more hopeless.
* * *
On the first Sunday of May, Maureen Holland took the tram from outside her lodging house in Neukölln up to Mitte. It was a pleasant day and while she didn’t exactly feel full of the joys of spring it was sunny and she planned to stop by the Reichstag and then walk down the Unter den Linden and find a cheap place to eat and then maybe explore the area near the cathedral, which she didn’t know so well, and then return in time to do her laundry.
She was delighted to come across a small military parade on Königs Platz, which she watched with her chest bursting with pride. All around her was a sense of power and authority: the ubiquitous black and green uniforms seemed, perversely, to brighten the city. The red swastika banners draping from the buildings made Berlin feel like the centre of the world, such a wonderful contrast to London. After treating herself to lunch at a Bavarian cafe she walked through Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Platz towards the cathedral.
And that was when she saw him.
Ahead of her two men were talking, one older and taller than the other. They seemed to be friends as they slapped each other on the shoulder and shook hands warmly. As she got closer, she realised the older man was the one who’d interviewed her twice in London the previous month, the man who introduced himself as Mr Walton and told her about Ridley.
The man who’d tricked her.
She moved across the road to get a better view of Mr Walton. She’d told Karl that it was difficult to describe him but she’d know him if she saw him again. Now she had no doubt whatsoever.
The two men shook hands once more and moved off in different directions. The man calling himself Walton moved down Französische Strasse while the other man headed south past the cathedral. She knew she had to follow Mr Walton, but he quickly disappeared from view into a crowd of people.
But the other man was still in sight and she followed him. He caught a tram on Jerusalemer Strasse and she stayed with him as he left the tram on Tauentzienstrasse where he entered an apartment building. She waited across the road, watching the building for an hour and deciding this must be where he lived. She checked at the entrance and there were only eight apartments in the block.
That ought to be enough for Karl.
* * *
Before he’d transferred to the Gestapo Karl Henniger had been a police officer in nearby Potsdam. He was continuing a family tradition: his maternal grandfather had been a police officer, as had two of his uncles. And he always remembered his grandfather’s advice: trust your instincts.
As advice went it didn’t seem especially profound – more a case of stating the obvious – but as his career moved on and especially once he transferred to the Gestapo the more he realised that the process of policing often got in the way of what he instinctively knew was the right thing to do. His bosses tended to be too cautious, too occupied with paperwork and cutting corners.
Trust your instincts.
The Englishman Ken Ridley was a good example of this. His instinct told him something wasn’t right about the case, but his boss wasn’t having any of it: he was delighted they’d caught a British spy and insisted that once he’d confessed there was no reason to delay his execution.
But Karl Henniger knew that the Englishman had held out for so long under torture and only confessed out of desperation, when he’d do anything to stop it. Henniger had no problem with torture per se, but he did think it sometimes got in the way of the truth. He couldn’t reconcile the fact that Ridley had confessed to being a British spy yet they found no physical evidence that he was. They’d turned his rooms in Pankow upside down, pulled up the floorboards and examined every scrap of paper. They checked his desk at the radio station and interviewed everyone who knew him but there was nothing. Despite the confession – and his execution – Ridley came across as a drunk, someone it was hard to take seriously.
The nagging doubts about Ridley’s guilt and whether Maureen Holland had been tricked by the British remained.
One afternoon at the end of April Henniger decided there was nothing to be lost in calling in on the house in Pankow where Ridley had lived. The landlady was an odd sort, dressed for winter and smelling of fried potatoes and muttering to herself as she shuffled round the lodging house.
‘What about the rest of his possessions – all these clothes? I can’t let the room until it’s all gone.’
The Gestapo man said they’d finished with everything so she could get rid of them. Her eyes lit up when he suggested she sell them.
‘And the floorboards and the panels you pulled off the walls – what about them?’
‘They were put back as we found them.’
‘Not very well, sir.’
He asked her if she really wanted to make an official complaint against the Gestapo and she said of course not, in fact nothing could be further from her mind and if there was anything she could do to help… talking of which, was Herr Henniger interested in a man asking her about Herr Ridley?
‘I beg your pardon?’
She told him about the short man possibly in his thirties who came to look round maybe a week after Herr Ridley died and he seemed very interested when she showed him this room and wanted to know the name of the man who was a British spy and—
‘You told him he was a British spy?’
‘I didn’t know I wasn’t meant to, sir. He seemed very interested. And there was something about him, sir… German certainly, was nicely dressed and well-mannered and – with respect to my other tenants – not the kind of man I would be expecting to be renting a room here.’
Henniger questioned her closely: no, he didn’t give her his name, no, she couldn’t describe him other than what she’d already told him.
‘But I’d know him again if I saw him, sir!’
Now it was a Monday morning and Maureen Holland had asked to see him and was insisting that the previous day she’d seen the British man who’d recruited her in London – the one called Mr Walton – on Französische Strasse.
‘You’re certain?’
‘Absolutely certain: I said I’d know him if I saw him and it was definitely him.’
‘So you followed him?’
‘I lost him in the crowd, sir.’
She was sitting on the other side of his desk looking a bit too smug for someone who’d apparently seen a British spy in the centre of Berlin and then lost them. He shook his head and muttered something about that not being good enough and maybe it was her imagination and really…
‘But I did follow the other man.’
‘Which other man?’
‘I told you, Mr Walton was talking to another man – they were near the cathedral. When I couldn’t spot Mr Walton, I decided to follow the other man. I managed to follow him on the tram and then on foot to an apartment building on Tauentzienstrasse.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘He was quite short, well dressed – but I’d definitely know him if I saw him again.’
* * *
Maureen Holland had that opportunity just a few hours later.
Two of the apartments on Tauentzienstrasse were occupied by single women and three by couples where the man was either older or taller than the man described by Maureen Holland. It was late in the morning when the other three men were hauled in to the Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse where they were taken to separate cells and left alone.
Werner felt sick when the cell door slammed shut. He felt his heart pounding hard. He was as certain as he could be they’d find nothing incriminating in his apartment. He always contacted Barnaby either by telephone or letter, always in code and always with ample precautions. He never telephoned from the same place and likewise with post boxes. He’d memorised all the telephone numbers and addresses. He’d even removed the metal boxes in which he kept the camera, money and some documents from under the floorboards. He’d discovered he could access the roof space his block shared with the house next door and was able to secrete the boxes in their eaves.
When the cell door opened he joined his two neighbours in the corridor and they were marched up a flight of stairs and into a large room where five other men were waiting. All eight of them were given a numbered card to hold in front of them and then made to stand in line with bright lights shining at them.
He became aware of two figures walking in front of them. It was hard to make them out but one was certainly a woman. There was a pause and the door closed and then opened and two more figures walked in front of them.
‘Number two, come with me. The rest of you can go.’
It was only when the other seven moved away from the line that Werner realised he was standing alone. He looked down at his number.
Two.
* * *
It had almost been civilised at first.
The Gestapo officer introduced himself as Karl Henniger and told the guards to undo Werner’s handcuffs and then leave them alone. He was quietly spoken and seemed almost apologetic. He was sure that Herr Lustenberger understood that these things had to be investigated. Would you like some water? Please help yourself.
There was a pause as Henniger looked at his notes and Werner wondered quite what he meant by ‘these things’.
‘Yesterday a woman saw a man she recognised as a British Intelligence officer on Französische Strasse. This man was talking with another man and she decided to follow that man, which she did to an apartment block on Tauentzienstrasse. This matter was reported to me this morning. The woman was the first person to view the identity parade, which you have just taken part in, and she had no hesitation in identifying you.’
Werner thought about responding but remembered the advice he’d been given on his training in England. Don’t say anything for as long as possible: wait until they’ve revealed everything they know.
‘The second person to attend the identity parade was the landlady of a lodging house on Forcheimer Strasse in Pankow. She identified you as the person who’d been there a few weeks previously enquiring about a British spy who’d lived there and who I had the pleasure of arresting. She was certain that you are the man who came to the house. Is that so, Herr Lustenberger?’
Werner said he hadn’t been to Pankow for many years.
‘And meeting the man in Französische Strasse?’
Stick to your story: be consistent.
He shook his head. ‘I only went as far as the Kurfürstendamm yesterday.’ He thought about Barnaby and wondered what he’d do when he didn’t turn up outside the tabac on Behrenstrasse. Maybe he’d realise he was in danger and do something about it, though for the life of him he couldn’t imagine what Barnaby could do.
Don’t say any more than is absolutely necessary.
‘But these denials, Herr Lustenberger, they don’t explain why two women – who’ve never met each other, I ought to add – both identified you on the identity parade. I’ve done many of these parades and I can tell you that neither of them was hesitant in any way.’
Behave as an innocent man would in those circumstances: be outraged at being falsely accused.
Werner was taking some heart from the fact that this was all they seemed to have on him. ‘I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding and I know you have a job to do but I can assure you this is a matter of mistaken identity.’
‘You worked for the British, Herr Lustenberger.’
‘For a college, not for their intelligence service… and the bastards sacked me.’
He stopped himself. Don’t come across as being clever.
‘This interrogation will continue in due course. I can assure you that the longer it goes on the more intense it will become and if necessary, I’ll bring in colleagues who are specialists at obtaining information that people are reluctant to give. In the meantime, I’ll give you time to think. Let me leave you with this one thought…’
The Gestapo man stood up and leaned over the table as if about to speak in confidence. ‘An early confession and a full disclosure of information invariably leads to a prisoner’s life being spared. Many people in your position regret mistakes they have made and choose to co-operate with us, which is always appreciated. You may wish to keep that in mind.’
* * *
Untersturmführer Harald Fuchs was in the courtyard at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse when his world began to disintegrate. He was standing with a couple of colleagues admiring a new staff car and without a care in the world. He watched as a convoy of Gestapo cars screeched to a halt at the entrance to their part of the building.
Three men were dragged from the cars and marched to the door. For a few seconds they were facing him and one of them was, unquestionably, the man he knew as Josef but whose real name was Werner and who knew him as Rudi. He was now a prisoner of the Gestapo.
He felt himself go numb and sway and the voices around him became muffled and his throat tightened. One of his colleagues asked if he was all right and he said something about feeling a bit sick and perhaps if he went inside and sat down and had a cigarette.
After a while he told his colleagues he needed to go to Registry and may be a while. Once there he found a quiet spot behind a high rack of shelving and sat down, closed his eyes and thought carefully as he smoked his way through a packet of cigarettes even though the idiot in charge of Registry didn’t approve of smoking there.
If Lustenberger was a prisoner of the Gestapo it was only a matter of time before Harald’s name came up… he had no idea why the man had been arrested, but he couldn’t afford to take the risk that he would say nothing or even be released. If he said anything about his relationship with Harald then he’d be finished. He’d be drummed out of the SS and end up in one of those camps.
If I get away with this, I’ll never look at another man again!
That evening he waited until all of his colleagues had left the office and his floor was more or less deserted and then moved through the offices until he found what he was looking for. He then waited until midnight when he knew no one would be around.
He rang the Gestapo custody office and told the duty sergeant it was Sturmbannführer Müller and please could he confirm if any prisoners by the name of Werner – he wasn’t sure of the surname – were being held overnight.
He knew the sergeant would have felt intimidated by a call from an SS major but Harald Fuchs had made sure he came across as very measured, to the obvious relief of the custody sergeant who said yes, there was a prisoner by the name of Werner Lustenberger in custody, that’s L -U-S… and Fuchs laughed and said not to worry he knew how to spell it and the custody sergeant laughed too and said yes of course the Sturmbannführer could come down and see the prisoner and, yes, of course he understood this was routine and there was no need for bothersome paperwork.
