Agent in Berlin, page 36
‘No!’
‘We understand he was executed there. I’m most terribly sorry—’
Arno held up his hand for the Englishman to stop.
‘When I left Berlin in February, I had a gut feeling I’d never see Tadashi again and I think I’ve been mourning him since then. He was a very complex man, you know; I think he felt what he was doing was wrong and he was very conflicted: his feelings for men, his spying for the British – his whole life was a battle of emotions… He told me once he’d never return to Japan. His dream was to come to England and we talked about that many times but maybe in his heart he knew it was never going to happen.’
He walked over to the window and Barney opened the door and told the professor to come back in. The professor put his arm round Arno’s shoulder and spoke quietly with him in German and said how sorry he was and Arno was to stay with him and his wife for a few days and Arno replied that was most thoughtful but he would be fine and, in any case, he had a cardiology lecture that afternoon which he didn’t want to miss.
* * *
Jack Miller’s debrief was so unsatisfactory that Basil Remington-Barber didn’t feel they could even begin discussing future plans. The American gave the impression of going through the motions and was largely unresponsive. He was slightly less hostile to Noel Moore, but even then he was mostly monosyllabic.
The only times when he was more expressive was when he complained – loudly and at length – about how he’d been used by the British and, it seemed, the Americans, and indirectly he’d probably contributed to the death of his brother. He’d then stayed in his room and hardly eaten, and after a few days they were concerned enough to call the doctor. Although the doctor was trusted by Remington-Barber – he used him to treat escaping RAF aircrew – there was a limit as to how much he’d tell him, though the doctor knew Jack had been operating clandestinely in Germany and when he asked how long and was told since before the war he said in that case he wasn’t in the least bit surprised he was behaving like this.
‘I’m surprised he functioned for as long as he did: must have bottled it all up.’ The doctor suggested a spell at a sanatorium, one he could recommend. They’d be very discreet, he assured them, but perhaps if he wasn’t left there on his own, just in case…
The spell in the sanatorium lasted a month and was a success. Jack Miller slept for most of the first week and by the end of the third week seemed much better. He’d become especially close to Noel Moore, with whom he felt able to discuss his feelings, and Noel turned out to be a good listener.
When they returned to Bern in January, Basil took Jack for a long walk on the banks of the Wohlensee, the large lake west of the city.
‘You’re a free man, Jack: if you want to go back to the United States, I’ll do my best to get you to Portugal and you can catch a boat from Lisbon, though getting through France won’t be without risks.’
‘Or?’
‘Or you can stay here and continue to work for us: think of yourself as a wolf who’s roamed across the mountains and found a new den. I know you harbour a good deal of resentment, Jack, but as I’ve told you before – all of us have walk-on parts in this awful war: we have to accept that what we do can only be judged by its role in the great scheme of things.’
The American made an indistinct noise, as if yet to be convinced.
‘And there’s another thing: what will you do if you do return to the United States? Go back to your old life – join the army? That would be a terrible waste: you’re a fine agent – bright, resourceful, brave. If you stay here and work with us – with Noel and I – then you’ll be most effective against the Nazis and surely that would be the best way to avenge your brother’s death.’
Jack said nothing and when Basil glanced at him the American’s facial expression suggested he wasn’t sure he saw things the same way.
‘And Werner – and Tadashi: you’ll be avenging them too.’
He noticed Jack nod in apparent agreement though Basil knew full well he’d not won him over quite yet. There was one other matter that needed to be addressed. They carried on walking, the path turning quite muddy. Basil waited for Jack to raise the subject.
‘And Sophia?’ When Jack asked the question, it was in a rather too matter-of-fact manner, a somewhat heavy-handed attempt to sound like a casual afterthought.
Basil had anticipated the question: he’d hoped Jack would ask it because he knew if and when he did it would mean he was more or less on board. He waited before answering: he wanted his response to appear spontaneous.
‘I have a man in Berlin – the courier who collected your stuff from the kiosk and brought it here to Bern. He’s watching Sophia – from a distance of course. He assures me she’s safe.’
‘Safe for how long, Basil? She can’t stay there forever, can she?’
‘She has to stay there for the time being, but if and when we need to, I promise we’ll move heaven and earth to bring her out – and if you’re here there’s all the more chance we can pull that off, eh?’
They came to a bench and sat down despite the rain turning heavier and a low wind whipping off the surface. Jack was silent and Basil didn’t want to push him. When he looked over, Jack was gazing in the direction of the Jura Mountains, just visible in the distance, frowning as if trying to make something out. When he finally spoke there was a trace of emotion in his voice, along with a steely determination too.
‘As long as Sophia’s in Germany I’m staying in Switzerland.’
Author’s Note
Agent in Berlin is a work of fiction, so any similarities between characters in the book and real people are unintended and should be regarded as purely coincidental.
Inevitably there are a few exceptions to this, which will be obvious in most cases, though I’ve also featured some lesser-known real people either as characters in the book or by referring to them. Examples of this include Hans von Tschammer und Osten, the so-called Reichssportführer, and also Hiroshi Ōshima, the Japanese ambassador to Berlin.
There’s a reference in Chapter 7 to a German Jewish athlete called Gretel Bergmann. Despite being the German women’s record-holder at high jump she was not selected for the German team in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Bergmann fled to the United States, where she lived to the age of 103.
The other references to the 1936 Berlin Olympics are all based on real events, people and locations at the Games – including the Italy v USA match. It was intriguing to combine my passion for football with my interest in the Second World War. The details about the different German clubs, their grounds and the Gauliga system are factually correct although I was flexible with the timing of one or two fixtures.
The match between Switzerland and Germany in Bern on 20 April 1941 did happen, as did the shock result of a 2–1 victory for the Swiss. After this game Goebbels is supposed to have said there’d be no further international sporting events where the result couldn’t be guaranteed in Germany’s favour.
Another very important true character referred to in the book is Frank Foley. Foley was a remarkable person. Throughout the 1930s – up until the outbreak of war – he was the head of the MI6 station in Berlin. As I say in the book, the Foreign Office and the British embassy in Berlin regarded espionage as a distasteful business and did their best to distance themselves from it. Frank Foley and his staff were based on Tiergartenstrasse, well away from the British embassy on Wilhelmstrasse, and were denied diplomatic status, which meant he’d have had no protection if he was caught by the Germans. Yet despite this he was a highly effective British agent and saved some ten thousand German Jews by issuing them with exit visas.
Although Ernst Scholz is a fictional character, Foley did recruit a senior Luftwaffe officer as an agent in 1938 but was ordered to drop him by the British embassy.
The war crime committed in Kielce in Chapter 20 (it also features in my novel Prince of Spies) is fictional, though typical of the atrocities carried out by the Nazis in Poland and elsewhere. Katzmann and Wittek – who are named in that chapter – are based on real people. In Kielce in 1946 forty-two Jews who’d survived the Holocaust and returned to the city were murdered during a pogrom carried out by locals.
The plot of Agent in Berlin is based around two true stories in the Second World War: the development of the Focke-Wulf 109 fighter plane and the events leading to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
With the FW109 I tried to avoid becoming too technical but hopefully the fundamentals and timeline of the plane’s design, the locations and the RAF bombing raids are all correct. The aircraft’s designer, Kurt Tank, is another person who actually existed. During 1941 there were a number of RAF raids on aircraft factories, especially in Bremen.
Likewise with the events leading up to (and including) Pearl Harbor. Inevitably when one delves into the highly secretive worlds of diplomacy and espionage even known facts can be controversial. It’s still a matter of dispute as to how much the British and indeed President Roosevelt were aware of the Japanese plans before the attack on Pearl Harbor. There’s certainly a school of thought that says Roosevelt was looking for a way into the war despite opposition to it in the US – and through the Purple intercepts was well aware of the Japanese plans. Likewise, Churchill was in no doubt it was in the United Kingdom’s interests for the USA to join the war.
The RAF carried out a series of bombing missions over Hamburg in May 1940, all of which coincide with Jack Miller’s visit to the city earlier that month.
In Chapter 16 there is a reference to the Selbstschutz. This organisation – of pro-Nazi ethnic Germans in Poland – did exist. In the same chapter there are references to two Polish cities: the city of Łódź was indeed renamed Litzmannstadt once the Nazis occupied Poland, while Wrocław in the west of Poland was called Breslau by the Germans.
Also in Chapter 16 Sophia and Barney meet at Wertheim’s on Leipziger Platz. This was actually the largest department store in Europe at the time, though during 1939 it was taken from its Jewish owners and later renamed. The store was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943.
There are a couple of references to the Jewish cemetery on Schönhauser Allee in Prenzlauer Berg. There was – and still is – such a cemetery there, which somehow continued to function during the war and was also a place where people hid.
When Ted Morris and Henry Adams meet for lunch in New York in Chapter 22 Adams makes a reference to a speech Hitler made earlier that year. Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag included this threat: ‘If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!’
Currencies and their relative value are tricky to get across in a novel. Broadly I’ve based £1 in 1938 being the equivalent of (just under) £69 in 2021 and $1 being worth $18.55 today. I also work on the basis of £1 (during the war) being worth around 12 Reichsmarks.
I’d like to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to the many people who’ve helped bring about the publication of this book. First and foremost, my agent Gordon Wise and his colleagues at Curtis Brown. Gordon has been enormously supportive over a number of years and continues to be an enormous help. My publishers Canelo couldn’t have been more impressive with the manner in which they’ve handled the first of the Wolf Pack novels and before that the Prince series and the re-issuing of the Spy Masters novels. As ever Michael Bhaskar and Kit Nevile and indeed the whole team at Canelo have been thoroughly professional, supportive and encouraging throughout the writing and publication process. My thanks too to Jo Gledhill for her skilful copy-edit, and to everyone who helped me with aspects of the book and answered seemingly odd questions as I was writing it.
And finally to my family – especially my wife Sonia, my daughters and their partners and my grandsons – for their encouragement, understanding and love.
Alex Gerlis
London
July 2021
About the Author
Alex Gerlis was born in Lincolnshire and for nearly thirty years worked as a BBC journalist. His first novel, The Best of Our Spies (2012), has been an Amazon bestseller and is currently being developed for television serialisation by a major production company. The other books in the Spy Masters series of Second World War espionage novels are: The Swiss Spy (2015), Vienna Spies (2017) and The Berlin Spies (2018). Prince of Spies – the first novel in the Prince series, commissioned by Canelo – was published in March 2020, followed by Sea of Spies, Ring of Spies and End of Spies. Alex Gerlis lives in London, is married with two daughters and is represented by Gordon Wise at the Curtis Brown Literary Agency.
www.alexgerlis.com
Facebook: @alexgerlisauthor
Twitter: @alex_gerlis
www.canelo.co/authors/alex-gerlis/
Also by Alex Gerlis
Spy Masters
The Best of Our Spies
The Swiss Spy
Vienna Spies
The Berlin Spies
The Richard Prince Thrillers
Prince of Spies
Sea of Spies
Ring of Spies
End of Spies
The Wolf Pack Spies
Agent in Berlin
First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Canelo
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Copyright © Alex Gerlis, 2021
The moral right of Alex Gerlis to be identified as the creator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN 9781800321564
Print ISBN 9781800325579
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Alex Gerlis, Agent in Berlin
