Agent in Berlin, page 20
‘He’s dead, Tadashi.’
‘Who?’
‘Werner: he was arrested by the Gestapo on 6 May. He was about to arrange Arno’s escape. We assume he was killed by the Gestapo, probably soon after his arrest, we—’
‘How can you be so certain?’ Tadashi looked nervous, wringing his hands before getting up and pacing the room.
‘Because as far as we know none of his contacts or sources have been arrested or questioned. If they’d tortured him, he’d have told them something, but we don’t think that happened. No one’s approached you, have they?’
‘No.’
‘There we are then… it’s just over three months since his arrest. If the Gestapo knew anything about you you’d have heard by now so we can now resume our relationship. As we promised, we’ll get Arno out of Berlin and once you know he’s safe in England you can supply us with more intelligence. London are very keen to know more about Japan’s intentions in case there is a war between Britain and Germany.’
Tadashi stopped pacing the room and sat down again, he was shaking his head and continued to do so and when he finally spoke it was with a bitter smile on his face.
‘The only flaw in that plan is that I have no idea where Arno is.’
Chapter 19
Berlin
August 1939
They’d waited until the middle of June before doing anything and even then, there was precious little they could do.
At first, they were annoyed, Arno more so than Tadashi who had some sense of how these things worked and how slow government departments and agencies could be. He told Arno he still instinctively trusted Werner and he was sure that when he eventually showed up there’d be a satisfactory explanation.
But Arno grew increasingly nervous and irritable. He no longer bothered with his medical textbooks or studied English, telling Tadashi there was no point: why would he bother if he wasn’t going to England? He’d be slumped on the sofa in his dressing gown when Tadashi left for work and would still be like that when he returned. He’d say very little but at some stage in the evening he’d snap and there’d be a whispered argument during which Arno would berate the older man for being so stupid.
In the middle of June, the tension with Arno reached such an intolerable level that Tadashi promised to do something. One evening he travelled down to Schöneberg and to the club on Reppich Strasse where he’d first met Werner in February. The club had been closed down, though he knew that wouldn’t satisfy Arno, so Tadashi told him he’d spoken to a barman there who knew Werner and said he thought he was out of town for a few weeks because his mother was ill.
‘Where is his mother ill?’
‘I have no idea. But it shows we have no reason to worry.’
But Arno was unshakeable in the belief he did had every reason to worry and this was underlined a month later, on a Saturday evening in July, when Tadashi agreed Arno could go out for a walk. He’d not left the apartment for weeks and Tadashi felt a walk might calm him down.
They took every precaution – waiting until a time when dusk was about to give up the struggle with night and darkness would drop onto the city. Tadashi went to the ground floor, checked all was clear and propped open the side door and waited in the doorway so he could watch both the stairs and the pathway. He coughed – three times – and on this signal that all was clear Arno came down the stairs in his stockinged feet and holding his shoes in an effort to minimise any noise.
As he passed the door to the apartment on the second floor it flew open and Frau Sauer was standing there, her arms folded high on her chest as if preparing to scold a naughty child.
‘Who,’ she demanded, ‘are you? And what the hell are you doing here – why are you in your socks and carrying your shoes: you must be a burglar!’
Arno replied in his most deferential manner: nothing could be further from the truth – he was simply delivering a letter and had removed his shoes because on this floor they made a noise and at this time of night—
‘I don’t believe you! Who removes their shoes like that? And why is the door open down there, it’s meant to be closed at all times. I’ve seen you before, haven’t I – with that foreign man on the fourth floor?’
Arno shrugged and muttered something about being very sorry and it wouldn’t happen again. Frau Sauer unfolded her arms and started to move back inside her flat when Tadashi appeared from downstairs.
‘You don’t need to worry – this gentleman is with me, there’s no problem, I can assure you.’
She looked far from assured as Tadashi took Arno’s elbow and guided him back up the stairs.
* * *
‘And what happened then?’ Jack noticed that Tadashi’s composure had broken, he seemed to be on the verge of tears.
‘Fortunately, nothing happened with Frau Sauer, she’s a busybody rather than a Nazi informer. I took her a very expensive box of Swiss chocolates and apologised and said the man was my German tutor and neither of us had mentioned it at the time because I’m embarrassed about my German. I don’t know whether she believed me but nothing came of it. It was too much for Arno though: he was convinced someone was going to inform the Gestapo and they’d raid the apartment and arrest him and… I tried to reassure him but he wasn’t having any of it. He told me if he was caught in my apartment I’d be in trouble too even though I’m a diplomat… I thought I’d managed to calm him down but later that week – it was a Wednesday, 19 July – I came home from work to find him gone. There was a note saying it was for the best and not to try and look for him and to take care, that was it…’
Tadashi’s voiced trailed off. He looked devastated. ‘I cannot tell you how… bereft I am. My world feels as if it has come to an end. I blame myself. Maybe I should never have approached Werner for help.’
‘You have no idea where he is?’
‘None whatsoever. I wouldn’t know where to start looking and even if I did it would only make matters worse, I’m hardly inconspicuous.’
‘What can I do to help?’
‘Find Arno and get him out of this wretched country and to England. Once he’s there and I know he’s safe you have my solemn word I’ll give you the pick of intelligence from the embassy.’
* * *
Barney Allen – Brian McKenzie – had no idea how Noel Moore found him.
It was the Friday morning, the day after Jack had been to see Tadashi Kimura – they were due to catch up that afternoon – and Brian McKenzie was on the pointless trail of Kohn and Sons and as he suspected not getting anywhere, which suited him fine. As long as it helped verify his cover story.
He was on Dorotheen Strasse having just left the Reich Ministry for the Interior where an earnest and severely asthmatic young man – first name Adolf – in the Office for Jewish Affairs was trying to explain the situation to Mr McKenzie from Canada.
The meeting had got off to an awkward start when he remarked that Adolf was probably a useful name to have in career terms and the young Adolf looked mortified as he nervously glanced around the room to check no one had heard that. He explained that although a small sum of money had been found in the Kohn and Sons bank account it was now the property of the Reich and Mr McKenzie could fill in a form if he wished but he doubted a Canadian company would be very high up the list of beneficiaries.
Mr McKenzie asked for this in writing and Adolf told him to return on Monday and it would be waiting for him – there is a small fee, you understand.
It wasn’t quite lunchtime but he was hungry and not due to meet Jack until he’d finished at the Propaganda Ministry so he was looking for somewhere to eat when a man appeared alongside him and said very sotto voce to keep on walking and then take the next left and they could wander up to the Spree and walk along its banks and have a nice chat.
‘Have you heard the news?’ Noel Moore was less relaxed than when they’d last met, more nervous – but then that seemed to be the case with most people in Berlin. The whole city appeared to be on edge.
‘Not for a day or so, I did look at yesterday’s Der Angriff.’
‘Don’t bother. This is news that won’t be in any newspapers, not yet at any rate: there are rumours that the Nazis and the Soviets are about to announce some kind of treaty or alliance.’
‘What? That’s impossible surely—’
‘We don’t know quite what it is but it’s likely to be a non-aggression pact of sorts. Apparently, Moscow station have picked that up and one or two of our sources are saying the same. They’ve already got a commercial agreement in place and evidently the talks in Moscow between us and the French and the Soviets are going badly. All hell’s broken loose at the embassy and at our place too. Have you ever met the ambassador?’
‘You mean Henderson? No, I can’t say I have: Piers can’t stand him though.’
‘Not surprised – he’s been one of the most ardent appeasers of Hitler and now look at all the good that’s done him, landed Britain right in it. Christ… the fools… we’re making plans to get out, you know. We’re sending out what we can by diplomatic bag and burning the rest – it’s like a version of hell in our office, I can tell you. It’s bloody August and we have all the fires raging away, it’s unbearable, an actual inferno. They’re even making plans for where to send us – Frank’s going to Oslo and I’ve just been told I’m off to Bern.’
‘With Basil – yes, I know.’
‘How?’
‘I recommended you, Noel. Basil’s a good sort but getting on a bit. He could do with you there and Switzerland’s going to be a very important place for us assuming they can remain neutral. I’ll be needing some favours from you. What about your networks here?’
‘We’re dismantling them as we speak – Frank’s dishing out exit visas left, right and centre. Our networks have shrunk considerably in recent weeks but the message to those remaining is to go to ground and forget about us but the truth is folk don’t really need telling that, that was what they were planning to do. I’m not prying, but do I take it you have people in Berlin still running agents?’
Barney Allen nodded. Half a dozen SS officers were walking towards them and the two Englishmen stepped either side to allow them through, nodding politely as they did so.
‘Frank’s planning to run a few who’ll remain here from Oslo, not too sure how he’s going to manage that. There is one though…’
Noel Moore hesitated, seemingly unsure whether to continue. ‘Around two years ago – it would have been early summer 1937 because it wasn’t long after Henderson became ambassador – I came across this chap. Are you a golfer, by any chance?’
‘Well, the odd round, you know, but horses are more my thing: in my experience they’re more obedient than golf balls.’
‘There’s a very decent golf club here in Berlin, the Wannsee Golf and Country Club and I used to play there most weekends up to a year ago when it all became unbearable: difficult to concentrate on a putt when there’s a bloody swastika flag above the hole. They’d even started putting little Nazi eagles on the golf balls. That summer I met this very agreeable German chap: I was due to play with a chap from the French embassy but he didn’t turn up and this man – who I knew by sight – his partner had cried off too so we played a round together. We both played off the same handicap and were very well matched and not just in terms of golf, but also in how we got on: conversation was easy and the silences weren’t awkward. I told him I was a minor official in the consular section of the British embassy and he told me he worked in one of the ministries and that was that. We arranged to play another round a fortnight later and then a week or so after that and by the August we were really rather pally. We’re a similar age, both divorced and without children, so that was something else in common and we arranged to have dinner at the club one evening and that’s when he told me he works at the Air Ministry and he’s a Luftwaffe officer. Let’s go down there, it’s a bit quieter.’
They turned away from the river and into a quiet lane.
‘Turns out Ernst is an Oberstleutnant, equivalent to a wing commander in the RAF, so pretty senior. But he didn’t say what he did and to be honest I didn’t push it because at that stage there was no indication at all that he’d want to work for us and I didn’t want to blow my own cover by asking him. He’d mentioned he wasn’t a Nazi Party member but he never said anything against the Nazis: he came across as very loyal, rather the Prussian officer-type if you know what I mean.
‘By the autumn we’d taken to having dinner every few weeks and one evening he asked me about my divorce: it was a bit out of the blue, took me aback, to be frank – you know… was it mutual thing, any regrets – could have been awkward but in fact it was rather helpful to get it off my chest – lots of regrets as it happens. Then Ernst told me his story, which is really rather pitiful.
‘He’s from Leipzig and met his wife there and by all accounts it was a very happy marriage, but in 1935 – after those anti-Jewish laws came out – it turned out that her father’s mother had been Jewish, which his wife had no idea about. It didn’t stop her being a German citizen but she was concerned it would affect her career as she was a schoolteacher, so for some convoluted reason, she insisted on divorcing him because she didn’t want his career to be damaged either. As far as I understand it, the plan was that once they were divorced, they’d sort out her paperwork and one thing and another and they could re-marry, but it all went dreadfully wrong and she ended up killing herself in a bedsit in Frankfurt.’
‘That’s dreadful, Noel, appalling.’
‘I could tell you literally hundreds of stories like this, it’s far too common, I’m afraid. Ernst told me that this all happened just before he moved to Berlin so no one is aware of this, just that he’s divorced.’
‘How dreadful. Is that what made you approach him?’
‘I was thinking about it, but before I could make the first move, he asked if I know anyone at the British embassy who may be interested in information that may prevent a war, words to that effect. As per the rule book I played it very straight, said that wasn’t my area but I could ask around to see if anyone knew anyone – you know the score, and then did nothing, waited for him to bring up the subject again. When he did so I asked him why he was doing this and he said it was his way of getting his own back after what happened to his wife. He’d thought of leaving Germany but had nowhere to go, doesn’t speak another language et cetera, no money… whereas if he stayed here he’d have a job and access to all kinds of information. He told me his job was to do with the development of a new fighter aircraft, which was then in its very early stages.
‘I told him I’d see what I could do and of course reported the matter to Frank and he told me that Henderson was being bloody awkward. By now we’re well into 1938 and the embassy was toeing the Foreign Office line that we’re to do nothing that would damage our relationship with Germany and certainly nothing that could undermine our mutual desire to defeat Bolshevism, though I’m not sure how that will play if it’s true that Germany and the Soviet Union are to become best friends. Frank described Henderson as an arch proponent of the Foreign Office view that espionage is a distasteful business and they’d take an especially dim view of a senior Luftwaffe officer becoming a British spy—’
‘I find that somewhat hard to believe…’
‘It’s true, I’m afraid: he did ask Broadway for their approval and they said to check with Henderson so Frank raised it with him in rather vague terms… senior German officer, based at one of their ministries… nothing to give them a clue as to who he was, and they said absolutely not.
‘I was prepared to go ahead nonetheless and I think Frank was too but then… Ernst – his surname’s Scholz, by the way – began to have second thoughts and, to be frank, I don’t think our dilly-dallying helped. He said he’d decided he could only justify supplying intelligence in the event of war breaking out. I didn’t think I was on awfully strong grounds to argue, though I did point out that sometimes intelligence can help avert a war. So that’s the situation, Barney: potentially the best bloody spy I’d have ever recruited except I’ll be out of Berlin. He’ll need someone to handle him in person. That’s why I asked if you had someone in Berlin – someone good I could hand him over to before I bugger off to Switzerland.’
‘I think I do have just the person, Noel.’
* * *
‘You are being serious, aren’t you?’
‘Whyever not, Jack?’
It was the Tuesday afternoon, 22 August, and they were in Jack’s apartment, with little sign of the American’s normally carefree attitude. He looked stunned.
‘I’ll tell you whyever not… last week after I saw the Japanese diplomat you told me that finding this Arno guy and getting him out of Germany and to England was my number one priority and after that running the diplomat would be my new number one priority. Now you’re telling me that tomorrow morning I’m going to be introduced to a Luftwaffe officer and if there’s a war I’m going to run him too and he’ll also be my number one priority. And that’s not forgetting all my other agents I have to travel round the country to see. You’ll forgive me for appearing confused – and overworked.’
‘I’m afraid that’s what happens, Jack.’
‘I need some help.’
‘I’m working on that.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means that I have an excellent potential agent but I’m waiting to hear from them… the time’s not right at the moment.’
‘Jesus… meanwhile I look after everything on my own. You’ve heard they’re bringing in rations?’
‘I saw something in—’
Jack went over to the table and came back with a sheet of paper, which he read from. ‘Seven hundred grams of meat a week; one eighth of a pound of coffee; one hundred and ten grams of marmalade – I can’t stand the stuff; two hundred and eighty grams of sugar. Apparently, bread is going to be rationed too but no one’s sure how much. There is some good news though…’
