Agent in Berlin, page 8
‘Osbourne? Yes – he’s an old friend. Walker too. How funny you bumped into him. Do give him my warm regards.’
Barney Allen helped himself to a large Scotch and unusually for him drank it neat. Had Devereux replied that he didn’t know them that would have been bad news and had he referred to them as ‘acquaintances’ that would have been very bad news. But the response couldn’t have been more positive.
In Noel Moore’s own words, they were on the same bloody side.
* * *
On the Friday evening Barney Allen arrived on Regensburger Strasse at half past five, allowing himself half an hour to check out the Saxon before going in to meet Werner at six o’clock as they’d arranged.
Get to a rendezvous point early, Barney, allow yourself time to check it out.
See if there are rear or side entrances – watch the type of people who go in and out.
Do this from a point diagonally opposite but do walk past, but not too often.
Don’t loiter – walk round the block.
The area seemed to be pleasant enough but the Saxon was certainly not the kind of place he’d had in mind. He was hoping for a decent restaurant but this place didn’t look like a restaurant, it was more of a bar than anything else and the word Klub on the front didn’t bode well. It certainly didn’t look like the kind of club he was used to.
He spotted Werner go in just before six and waited another five minutes, just to be sure no one had been with him.
Once inside it took him a few moments to adjust to the dim light and only then did he spot Werner at the end of the bar talking to a younger man. He waited until they’d finished and they exchanged slightly awkward waves of recognition before Werner came over and said – without so much as a ‘hello’ or ‘how are you’ – to follow him. He knocked on a door to the side of the bar and once it opened they went upstairs. Barney rather hoped they’d find themselves in a restaurant but the room was wreathed in cigarette smoke with a small bar at one end, jazz playing loudly on a gramophone and a clientele which was exclusively male, every one of them staring at him as if he were an intruder.
‘It’s my club,’ said Werner, his arm sweeping the room in a proprietorial manner.
‘Rather different to mine.’
‘Does yours allow women in?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Well then, not too different after all. What would you like to drink?’
Barney said a beer would be nice and do they do food at all?
‘No – don’t worry, we’ll find somewhere else to eat. I thought we could start here. As you can probably guess, it’s a very discreet place and you said we need to talk. Let’s go through there where no one will hear us.’
They moved into another room, which was far quieter, and sat on their own in the corner, no one within earshot, and for a few minutes drank their beer and exchanged small talk. Werner mentioned the big race meeting in Hamburg and his trip to Aachen and then described his apartment and said Barney really ought to pay a visit and Barney asked Werner to call him Edward while he was in Berlin and then talked about the Olympics and said despite everything it was really rather impressive.
‘Why do you want me to call you Edward?’
Barney looked around. The only other men in the room were a couple who at first Barney had thought were father and son but now realised perhaps not: they were very interested in each other and oblivious to them.
‘This is what I wanted to talk to you about, Werner.’
‘To tell me you have a new name?’
Barney could feel his heart beating fast. He was nervous and had been dreading this moment. He’d assured Piers Devereux that Werner suspected nothing and saw him as a friend and that still appeared to be the case. He worried Werner was going to feel terribly let down: betrayed. He just hoped he wouldn’t make too much of a scene, especially in a place like this.
Barney leaned forward, his body now blocking Werner from the rest of the room and closer to him. ‘When I hired you to work for me, Werner, I may not have been quite as forthcoming as perhaps I could have been at the time about who you’d be working for.’
‘You said for your college, Barnaby. You want me to find possible partners. In fact in Aachen, I found such a college, I even have the name of someone there who—’
‘No, Werner, this is the… Look, I’m going to come straight to the point.’
Be clear with him, Barney: make sure he completely understands what you’re telling him. Avoid euphemisms!
He hesitated, trying to remember the little speech he’d rehearsed so carefully. If Werner reacted adversely, it would be a disaster, both for the Service and for Barney personally. His cover would be blown and he’d be without an important agent, a man he was trying to build a network around. Werner was looking at him curiously, interested in what he was about to say.
‘Please listen carefully and hear me out and if you’re going to react, please do so quietly. I work for British Intelligence, Werner. My job with Holborn College is what we call a front, a way of concealing what I really do. We are trying to find out what is really going on here in Germany and to do that we need to have Germans working for us, ones that we can really trust.’
He looked up at Werner who was blinking, but showing no other signs of reaction.
‘People like you, Werner. We’ve recruited you as one of our agents.’
It sounded far too blunt. He’d meant to say ‘we’d like to recruit you…’
‘Recruited me as what, Barnaby?’
‘I’ve just told you, Werner, as a British agent.’
‘Really… you mean…?’
‘Yes.’
Remember: don’t leave any room for misunderstanding – be emphatic!
‘What about if I don’t want to be recruited, Barnaby?’
‘Edward, please.’
‘Edward.’
‘Well, I’m afraid it doesn’t quite work like that, Werner. You’re already working for us. You don’t have much of a say.’
‘Really? Perhaps you could explain.’ Barney was surprised at Werner’s tone: more inquisitive than hostile.
‘Those packages I gave you in London – the ones I insisted you hand-deliver? I think there were four to be delivered to addresses in Berlin, then to Hamburg, Würzburg and Leipzig.’
‘And Magdeburg.’
‘That’s right. Those addresses were all contacts of British intelligence, Werner. We – you – were passing on messages to them. So, in a sense you’ve already started working for British intelligence and once you start… well, that’s it really. As far as the Gestapo are concerned, you’re a British agent.’
‘How would the Gestapo know about it?’
Barney shrugged.
‘It sounds like I’ve been blackmailed.’
‘That’s putting it rather strongly, Werner.’
‘I think it’s putting it rather mildly actually. Of course, I could pack it all in and return to Britain.’
Basically, Piers, I’ll be telling Werner I’m blackmailing him?
Absolutely, Barney!
Won’t he be furious, I mean I—
You said he trusts you, that he’s your friend?
I doubt he’ll be after this.
‘That’s no longer an option open to you, Werner. We’ve tightened up who we let in and I think you’ll find you’ll have difficulties in that respect. Whether you like it or not, you’re working for us, but I don’t want you to worry unduly… it oughtn’t to be dangerous, it’s more about keeping your ear to the ground, passing on messages, picking up interesting information and maybe even letting me know if you come across anyone else you may think may be suitable to work for us.’
A long silence during which Barney could have kicked himself for using the word ‘dangerous’, but Werner looked surprisingly relaxed as he finished his beer and lit a cigarette. When he looked him in the eye there was none of the hostility Barney had expected.
‘I did think fifteen pounds a week plus all my expenses was very generous.’
‘I was going to tell you that is being increased to seventeen pounds a week.’
‘I could say no, couldn’t I?’
‘By all means, but would you take the risk?’
‘I’ve taken risks my whole life. I could leave Berlin tonight and you’d never find me and I don’t believe you’ll tell the Gestapo.’
He looked directly at Barney, drawing hard on his cigarette and Barney felt sick. He didn’t doubt that would be the case. Werner would politely take his leave and quietly disappear.
‘But…’
‘But what, Werner?’
‘But what you’ve just told me, Barnaby… Edward… it sounds so exciting! Since I returned to Germany and spent time travelling around and meeting people I’ve been appalled – it was bad enough when I left, but now… The way people are treated, not just the Jews, but us homosexuals, political opponents… I thought before I left that the Nazis were so ridiculous that sooner or later people would tire of them and they’d go away, but now I realise that’s not to happen… I was going to tell you I didn’t think I could stand living here much longer but now you tell me there’s something I can do about it.’
‘So, you—’
‘So of course, I’ll work for you, Edward – I think it’s a marvellous idea!’
Chapter 9
Berlin
August 1936
‘Always remember, Miller, journalism thrives on adversity and injustice.’
It was in his first year at the Philadelphia Bulletin and Joe Walsh was delivering one of his ad hoc homilies in the middle of the noisy room, where the unremitting sound of shouting and typewriters soon drove some to realise journalism wasn’t the career for them. Jack Miller had returned to the newsroom to complain about the injustice of the police refusing to allow anyone back into a rundown apartment block where there’d been a shooting – not even the victim’s family. Everyone felt aggrieved.
‘But there’s your story, Miller – the unfairness and the anger. Look, bad news sells newspapers. Every year some new manager – usually a college-educated kid who’s still learning how to shave – arrives on the top floor and once he’s looked at the sales numbers, reckons he’s got it all worked out. If the paper sells this many copies when it’s full of bad news think how many we’d sell if we concentrated on good news: and you know what I tell ’em?’
Jack Miller leaned forward so as not to miss what Joe Walsh would tell the hapless college-educated manager.
‘I tell ’em we’d sell less than half the number of copies than when the paper’s full of bad news. If you find injustice, you got a story.’
Jack had certainly found his story in Berlin. The city – the whole country – reeked of injustice. The place was fuelled by it. You came across it on every street and in nearly every conversation.
But he’d arrived in Berlin at the end of June and for the first month he’d kept his head down and concentrated on finding his way around and sorting out his accreditation. Ted Morris in New York wanted a steady stream of colour pieces – the background to the Games, what German trains were like, the food… nothing likely to win him any awards but enough to keep Associated and its newspapers happy. He’d been told to keep away from politics – ‘the Nazi stuff’, Ted Morris had called it. That was hard to come to terms with because it was obvious to Jack Miller that this was the story. If journalism thrived on adversity and injustice then Berlin was like a seat of higher learning in it.
But that would have to wait until the Olympics. And to his surprise he found a great story of injustice at the Games.
It came on the first Monday, 3 August. It promised to be a good day for the United States: Jesse Owens, Ralph Metcalfe and Frank Wykoff would all be running in the Men’s 100-metre final at the Olympiastadion and later on the United States soccer team would be playing Italy – and Jack Miller had worked out a way he could cover both events. The 100-metre final alone gave him plenty of material even before the starter’s gun fired. Both Owens and Metcalfe had won their semi-finals and it would be a shock if one of them didn’t win the final. And both were black and given that it was apparent the Games had been designed as some kind of festival of Nazism there’d be a wonderful irony if men from what the Nazis termed an inferior race proved to be the best athletes in the world. And as a bonus Ralph Metcalfe was from Chicago, the home of the Daily News, one of the Associated newspapers.
Jack Miller wrote 750 words on the final, focusing on the restrained reaction – and some hostility – from the German crowd to Owens’ victory, with a couple of paras towards the end on the man from Chicago winning silver. He’d worked in a pun about the Windy City that he was actually pleased with. He filed from the press centre at the stadium and then headed over to the Poststadion in Moabit where the United States soccer team was taking on Italy.
Until that day Jack Miller hadn’t been much of a soccer fan. His sport was baseball – he was a big Phillies supporter. But soccer was popular in Philadelphia, particularly among the city’s German community. The city’s Philadelphia German Americans team had won the American Soccer League the previous season and that year they’d won the National Challenge Cup. And not only that, eight of the eleven playing Italy were Philadelphia German American players: Ryan, Fiedler, Crockett, Altemose, Nemchick, Pietras, Lutkefelder and Greinert, which would keep Joe Walsh happy, it may even get onto his front page. And three others played in Boston so the Globe would be pleased and Bartkus played in Brooklyn and Zbilowski in New Jersey so the New Yorkers would have some interest there.
From the first whistle the game was marked by violence, with the Italians committing a series of fouls, few of which were punished. At one stage in the match Achille Piccini of Fiorentina fouled Fiedler so badly the referee – a German called Karl Weingartner – sent him off. But he wouldn’t leave the pitch and Miller watched the Italians surround the referee, some manhandling him, one even holding his hand over the official’s mouth. To Miller’s astonishment Piccini was allowed to stay on.
The Italians went on to win 1–0, the goal coming from Annibale Frossi of Internazionale. Miller was at once appalled and captivated: soccer seemed to have all the human drama and intrigue one could wish for in a sport. And he had his story: a great injustice, committed against the United States of America and specifically against eight honest men from Philadelphia by a German referee and an Italian team with little regard for the rules of the game. For good measure he added in a sentence about Mussolini and how close the Italian fascists were to the German Nazis, though he fully expected that to be subbed out.
* * *
A few days after meeting Noel Moore, Barney Allen found Der Grüner Baum on Soor Strasse. He went there after watching the 1500-metre semi-finals at the Olympiastadion and felt that stopping by for a drink was plausible enough.
Der Grüner Baum had low ceilings and dark furniture and in the way of Berlin bars comprised one large room with the bar in the centre, quite unlike British pubs with their different rooms and their nooks and crannies. There were around a dozen men in the front of the bar, all sitting or standing on their own and all silent. On the other side of the bar, he saw a group of people and as he made his way round there, he realised they were talking English. He ordered a beer and remained at the bar, trying to follow the conversation behind him, which seemed to be about the rents in the city and where was the best place to live.
‘Schöneberg – are you serious? It’s still too expensive.’
‘And too close to Wilmersdorf and all those Jews.’
‘But not for long!’
There was laughter and Barney Allen glanced round and saw there were five of them, three men and two women, one of whom – a pretty girl perhaps in her twenties – caught his gaze and smiled.
‘Where is it you said you were going to move to, Fritz?’
…calls himself Fritz…
‘I’ve told you – Pankow. You get far more for your rent than in the fancy areas round here. In fact, I’ve already found a place!’
‘You didn’t tell us that, Fritz.’
‘You didn’t ask – for the same as I’m paying for a single room in Mitte and sharing a filthy kitchen and bathroom with a dozen others, I’m now going to get my own double room with an armchair and a small kitchen area – and I share the bathroom with just the two other people on my floor.’
‘Where is it?’
‘On Forcheimer Strasse, just off Kissingen Platz. It’s a pleasant enough area and there’s a U-Bahn station nearby.’
‘You sound like an estate agent!’ The man had said that with a mock Jewish accent and the others laughed and so did Barney Allen, turning round and raising his glass at the small group.
‘You understand?’
‘I would jolly well hope so, I’ve only been in Berlin a couple of weeks, not long enough to forget my English!’
They invited him over and Barney insisted on buying a round – no please, I insist, my pleasure – and then joined them and there were the introductions, first names only: Clarice, Jean, Norman, Donald and Fritz. Fritz was almost exactly as Noel Moore had described him: a large man with a florid complexion and a moustache a bit like Hitler’s, though that was stretching it a bit. He was certainly the dominant character of the group – the one with the loudest voice along with an impressive capacity for drink. No sooner had he finished one large glass of the strong Bavarian lager than he’d signal for another.
Barney Allen had introduced himself as Ted and said he was from London where he was a teacher and had saved up for two years to come to the Olympics because he loved sport and all things German and here he was – ‘very boring, I’m afraid.’ They said not all and what did he think of the Games and he replied he was very impressed and then went into tedious detail about the different events he’d been to – who came first, second – their times, the conditions and he noticed the others’ eyes glaze over as they made mental notes not to ask him any more questions.
