Agent in Berlin, page 23
‘Miller used to be a staffer on the Philadelphia Bulletin then I sent him out to Berlin to cover the Olympics three years ago and he stayed. He’s now a freelancer and the deal is he gives me first refusal on articles: I rarely have any trouble placing them.’
‘Is he good?’
‘Very, writes like an angel – what’s he been up to, Hersh?’
‘Do you get on with him?’
‘As well as I get on with anyone, yeah… come on, Hersh…’
‘Royd works for British Intelligence – and so does Jack Miller.’
‘He told you that?’
The lawyer nodded. Ted Morris downed a glass of very expensive red wine in one go and then studied his childhood friend’s face. Was this meant to be good or bad?
‘And what, you want me to stop using him?’
‘On the contrary: the British want you to continue using him, very much so, in fact. They’re very convinced there’ll soon be a war involving Britain and Germany and that will mean Miller will no longer be able to send articles to British newspapers, who are major clients of his. It’s vital he maintains his cover as a working journalist. A war will also mean communication between him and London will be most difficult. Royd wants to be sure that in the event of war not only would you continue to use him, but that you’d take more articles and also… and I appreciate this is especially sensitive, Ted… act as a conduit between Miller and Royd.’
The restaurant was quiet apart from the clink sounds of ice on crystal. Conversations were conducted at low volume and an expensive carpet muffled the footsteps.
‘You mean he sends messages to me and I pass them on to this Royd?’
‘Exactly. And the articles – they’ll want you to start commissioning more sports pieces, especially ones on soccer, and that will mean you asking Miller to go to certain places in Germany to cover matches.’
‘What about if I have a problem with all this, Hersh?’
‘A problem with what exactly, Ted?’
‘Miller’s a journalist: a journalist should be independent; his only masters should be the truth and facts. Being an espionage agent compromises a journalist’s integrity.’
Henry Adams looked at Ted Morris with a smile on his face.
‘Really, Ted, you think that? Come on – you should be proud of Miller rather than lecturing me on journalism ethics. You know as well as I do what the Nazis are up to. Hitler made a speech in the Reichstag just a few weeks ago when he said if Jewish financiers succeed in starting another world war then the result will be “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”. Those were his exact words, Ted, “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”. So, which fucking side do you want Jack Miller to be on?’
Hersh Applebaum had raised his voice and struck the table and one or two of the other diners turned round.
‘I didn’t say I have a problem with this, Hersh, I asked what if I have a problem with it.’
‘So, do you? You want Jack Miller to be on our side, Ted? Come on, I still have family in Europe, what the hell are they going to do?’
‘Change their name to Adams?’
‘Please don’t joke, Ted, this is deadly serious. Come on – will you help?’
Ted Morris didn’t reply at first, drumming his fingers on the immaculate table cloth before finally turning his gaze to his companion. ‘Of course I will, Hersh: how could I not? What will I need to do?’
‘You’ll get to meet Royd but as far as I gather some of the articles Miller sends you will be preceded by messages in code and you’re to pass those on and then the British will also want you to send messages to him and also send him to places, as I said – “I want you to go to Munich” – that kind of thing, Ted. But as I say, Royd will explain.’
‘Who’d have thought it, eh? Hersh Applebaum, secret agent!’
‘And so are you now, Ted Morris!’
Chapter 23
Hamburg
April 1940
Jack Miller could never quite make out Hamburg. Someone had once explained the city’s history to him: its origins as a member of the Hanseatic League meant it had long been an independent city state and some of that spirit carried over, even in 1940. The city traditionally had a radical edge to it; leaning to the left in the way that Berlin leant towards liberalism and Munich very much the opposite. Of course, what remained of that had been forced deep underground, but there was definitely an atmosphere to the city that marked it out from Berlin. Hamburg could not be more different from the capital: the swagger that came from it being a major port was always there.
Not only was it the Reich’s second largest city but it was also the country’s largest port, with an important naval dockyard and shipbuilding facilities. Early on in the war it was evident to Jack Miller that the RAF had its sights on Hamburg. It was an obvious target – and an easier one to reach from the RAF’s English bases than Berlin, and not as far inland as the Ruhr towns, so a safer place to attack.
But the RAF needed to know what to aim for, especially as they carried out their bombing raids at night. As one message to Jack made clear, they could have countless aerial reconnaissance flights over a target but they were meaningless without people on the ground spotting things that a camera on a plane tens of thousands of feet in the air couldn’t make out.
And then there was fussball – football, as the British insisted on calling it, but soccer to his American readers and as they were the only ones he now had, soccer it was. Even before the end of 1939 Jack Miller was being sent to the city on a regular basis – and he always had a perfectly legitimate reason for being there. As well as being Germany’s premier port, Hamburg was arguably its premier soccer city. With the country’s soccer competition organised into sixteen main Gauligen, Hamburg was part of Gauliga Nordmark and at various times no less than nine teams from the city played in Gauliga Nordmark. In so far as jokes were permitted in the German press a constant one was that the league should be re-named Gauliga Hamburg. The most important teams were Hamburger SV, Victoria Hamburg and St Pauli.
Hamburger had won the Nordmark in the three years leading up to 1940 and seemed destined to be champions in 1940 too. Victoria was pushing them in second place and St Pauli was struggling.
Jack loved the compactness of the city and the fact he’d come to know his way around it and felt more at ease than in Berlin. It was a short walk from the station to his hotel, the rather grand Vier Jahreszeiten on the shore of the Binnenalster, the smaller of the two man-made lakes formed from the River Alste in the centre of the city. London carped on about the cost of the hotel but he told them that ought to be the least of their worries – and in any case, he had a good operational reason for staying there.
The hotel was well placed for Hamburger who played at the Sportplatz on Rothenbaumchaussee in the district of Rotherbaum, not far from the larger of the lakes, the Aussenalster. Victoria’s ground – Stadion Hoheluft – was a bit further north, in Eppendorf in the north of the city.
But St Pauli was his favourite club. Their ground – the Heiligengeistfeld – was in the heart of St Pauli, just north of the Reeperbahn, still an anarchic area with a distinct feel to it: not as grey, not quite as many swastikas on display. A visit to the Heiligengeistfeld gave him an excuse to visit the Reeperbahn and once he was in that area he was close to the port and docks, which spread out on both banks of the Elbe.
He had two good contacts in Hamburg, one who knew full well whom she was supplying information to, the other who’d have been horrified had he the slightest inkling.
Magda was a chambermaid at the Vier Jahreszeiten, giving him a perfect excuse for staying there. He’d run an agent in the city until early 1939, a communist docker called Klaus who’d managed to keep his politics secret and was willing to supply information about the port. He was especially useful because he was an expert at installing cranes and as a result was sometimes sent to Kiel, the major German navy base to the north of Hamburg. The intelligence he came up with was good – sometimes excellent – though his reports tended to be peppered with lengthy discourses on Marxism. Klaus seemed convinced that the revolution would start on the banks of the Elbe. Until February 1939 that was, when he announced he was leaving.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m leaving Germany.’
‘The Soviet Union?’
‘I’ve told you, I’m not that kind of communist: if I was I’d have been supplying them with information, wouldn’t I? I’m a proper Marxist: I follow the direction of comrade Trotsky and there’s a group in Brussels I’m going to join. My mother was half Dutch so I speak the language. I’ve got a leaving gift for you though.’
Magda was the leaving gift. She was a neighbour of Klaus who shared his political views: a committed Marxist with a hatred of the Soviet Union and enough common sense to have kept all that hidden. No one would have guessed that the shy chambermaid had any interest in politics. He always booked a room on the third floor overlooking the Binnenalster, one of the dozen rooms Magda was responsible for cleaning, which made communication between them quite simple.
He’d ask her to check out various locations in the city, note the times of goods trains, especially those using the smaller stations around the docks. She’d come up with information about the mood in the city, anything she could pick up on troop movements, food prices, what was happening to the city’s Jewish population, what was going on at Neuengamme in the north of Hamburg where the SS had built one of its feared prison camps.
The contact who didn’t know he was a contact was Jürgen, a local freelance journalist who covered St Pauli and who Jack paid for information on the club. Jürgen could not have been a more disagreeable character: a short, grossly overweight man with awful body odour, highly opinionated and with a misplaced sense of his own intelligence. He was a Nazi Party member with a seething hatred of Jews and a conviction he’d somehow been hard done by, blaming the people the Nazis targeted for his misfortune.
But he was a mine of information on St Pauli and whenever he visited Hamburg Jack would contact Jürgen and take him out for a meal. The German would talk non-stop – a mouthful of food was no impediment to conversation – and Jack would listen and make the occasional note and at the end of the evening slip Jürgen some money. I have no idea what I’d do without you, Jürgen, you’re marvellous!
But Jürgen was worth every painful minute Jack had to spend listening to his nonsense. This was because Jürgen saw himself as some kind of personality in the St Pauli area of the city, especially around the Reeperbahn and the even seedier side streets that ran off it and in the docks on the north bank of the Elbe and the port on its south bank. Jürgen did seem to know everyone and everyone appeared to know him. Of course, what Jürgen interpreted as respect and even friendship towards him was more a sense of fear, mixed with a recognition that if played the right way Jürgen could be of some use. He was a good source of tickets for matches at the Heiligengeistfeld and sometimes even for games at the Sportplatz or Stadion Hoheluft.
And then there were the women. Jürgen was evidently some kind of part-time pimp, bringing young girls from the villages of Lower Saxony to the city. He’d boast to Jack that all the girls were handpicked and tested by him and then sold on to the brothels around the Reeperbahn. I train them myself, Jack – each one of them!
All these activities seemed to give Jürgen the run of the port area and Jack would always be more than happy to accompany him.
Come, Jack, we’ll cross the river to Steinwerder, they’re finishing a new warship there… There’s a cafe we can visit in Waltershof: you can see the oil installations there – what a magnificent sight, Jack. How can we lose the war? There’s a new restaurant in Altona we could try – if you’re feeling rich: it’s close to the waterfront. Are you sure you don’t want to use that brothel I was telling you about? I’ve supplied all the girls – two of them are fifteen! You wouldn’t need to pay.
The intelligence he gathered on the tours of the port was invaluable. The trip to Hamburg at the beginning of May was a case in point.
Urgent – urgent – urgent, was how the message from London had started, encoded in a telegram from Ted Morris. Vital you confirm locations of oil installations in and around Waltershof and further up river. Please identify possible target Brunsbüttel.
Brunsbüttel was ridiculous: it was almost at the point where the Elbe joined the North Sea and had already been bombed in the first month of the war. He’d been there once and he wasn’t going to risk a return trip.
But Waltershof was Jürgen’s hunting ground. Within four days of getting the message, Jack was back in Hamburg, timing his visit with Victoria playing at home to Polizei Lübeck, which was not a team to mess around with – a joke Jack found hard to resist in match reports.
He arrived two days before the game. Magda promised to take a day trip to Brunsbüttel but wouldn’t be able to visit for at least a week. She told Jack what she could about oil installations along the Elbe, but that didn’t amount to a lot.
Jürgen was delighted to see his very good friend Jack all the way from the United States of America, the country which was so wisely not meddling in European affairs and a man who appreciated good football and good food and good girls, especially the young ones?
‘That cafe you took me to earlier in the year, Jürgen: the one that you said served the best seafood in Hamburg?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You took the owner some Victoria tickets?’
‘Ah – that one! In Waltershof, yes… the food is no longer so good, supplies you know…’
‘Shame, I’d love to visit it again – the fresh herring was wonderful. Do you fancy lunch there tomorrow?’
‘Why not, though the herring’s not so fresh these days. I’ll take him some tickets for the Lübeck game. We may get a free lunch then.’
The food was poor – it had been the first time Jürgen took him there – but the view was magnificent: the large oil tanks, the complicated spider’s web of piping leading from one tank to another and then over the road before running along the ground to the quayside… the anti-aircraft batteries positioned on each corner and behind the refinery area a large lorry park covered with camouflage netting, a dozen tankers parked under it. They’d gone for a walk after lunch from the cafe towards the Elbe, past the refinery. Jürgen was smoking, which made Jack nervous but he needed to concentrate on working out how far the lorry park was from the refinery, how the pipes over the road could be identified, the distance from the building they led into to the quayside—
‘Stop!’
Two men in uniform emerged from inside the refinery, Jack recognised them as the Hafensicherungstruppen – the harbour police, a branch of the SS. He remembered Jürgen complaining to him once about the Hafensicherungstruppen: ‘the bastards are too straight, you can’t bribe them!’
One of the officers was older and shorter than the other and looked unconcerned. The other one was that dangerous breed, an enthusiastic policeman.
Where are you going… what the hell are you doing here… this is a restricted area, you know… let me see your identity cards…
Jürgen – who never failed to misread a situation – announced that this was ridiculous, that they had every right to be here. ‘I am a Nazi Party member – here, look at my Mitgliedskarte!’ He thrust the card under the officer’s nose in an aggressive manner and moved close to him. Jack spotted the man put his hand to his nose and step back.
‘Very good, and are you here on Party business?’
‘We were having lunch and decided to go for a walk and you have no right to stop us, especially me being a Party member. Tell me, are you a Party member? I want your name! And my friend here is an American journalist!’
This was the worst thing Jürgen could have told them. He should have been conciliatory from the start – so sorry, officer, we weren’t thinking, of course we’ll leave now. Instead, the officer now seemed interested in Jack.
‘Card, please.’
Jack presented all the paperwork: his identity card, his residence permit, his permit allowing him to travel to and from Hamburg, his press card from the Propaganda Ministry and his even more impressive credentials from the Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen – the Ministry of Sport.
‘I’m here to cover the match between Victoria and Polizei Lübeck.’
‘Where?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Where is the match?’
‘Stadion Hoheluft.’
‘And where is that?’
‘Eppendorf.’
The officer looked round, gazing into the distance, north, south, east and west, shielding his eyes from the sun so as to see better. ‘I can’t see the ground round here, can you, Jens?’
The older policeman said no he couldn’t.
‘So why are you here?’
Jack spoke politely and apologetically. My colleague, Jürgen, is a sports journalist in the city and we always meet before a game and we visited the seafood cafe for lunch and then went for a stroll and of course we didn’t realise this was a prohibited area and we apologise for being here. I can assure you had we known we shouldn’t be here we wouldn’t…
He stopped talking, not sure he’d convinced the younger officer.
‘You’re a foreigner.’
‘American: we’re a neutral country. I have no interest in politics or anything like that. I cover sport.’
‘You’ll need to come with me. Both of you.’
Jürgen started to say something, but Jack put out an arm to stop him. ‘That would mean I’ll miss the match.’
The older officer glanced at his watch and strolled forward. ‘Otto, we need to finish the patrol and then it’s our break. They’ve given an explanation and that one has a Mitgliedskarte. Just take their details and we can put it in our daily report. It will be fine.’
Otto looked annoyed but did as he was told, though not without an air of resentment. He wrote all their details in his notebook and assured them it would all be in their report at the end of the day.
