Seldom if ever can a spy have gone on a mission with so few technical qualifications and knowledge as I. Speaking only inferior French, a little kitchen Spanish, and elementary German, I was not exactly qualified for work on the Continent. Knowing nothing of wireless or other secret means of communication, I was equally ill equipped to communicate any information that I might acquire; and I laboured under the additional handicap of not knowing for whom I was working. My only qualifications were my native common sense, a capacity to judge a position and sum up a situation correctly and succinctly, and, most important in Russian eyes, a good political background. That I ended my career as a spy speaking fluent French and passable German, an efficient wireless operator capable of building my own set, and with a working knowledge of microphotography and the simpler secret inks, speaks, I think, more highly for my adaptability than for the efficiency of the Russian Intelligence Service. In obtaining these qualifications I received no help and little encouragement from my masters. No one could have been more of an innocent in espionage than I was at first, and the fact that I lasted was more a matter of personal good luck than good judgment by the Russians. It must be remembered, however, that I was a "new boy" recruited ad hoc and for a network still in embryo. Their other networks were longer established and better installed. I should know, as in the end I was running one.
After having established contact, my new acquaintance and I adjourned prosaically for coffee. A pleasant person and an amusing companion, my first espionage contact was not as frightening as I had expected. She told me that she was unfortunately not allowed to reveal her name nor to tell me for whom I would be working- for the moment. I could call her Sonia. She spoke English with a slight foreign accent and was, I should judge, a Russian or a Pole- certainly a Slav. When I was finally established in the network I learnt her name. She was Maria Schultz and had had a long career as a Red agent. She and her husband, Alfred Schultz, had worked for the Red Army in Poland and the Far East. Her husband was, I gathered, still in the Far East and I believe at that time was under arrest by the Chinese for espionage activities. She was now starting up a network in Switzerland for work against Germany, and I was one of the first of her recruits. But all this I learnt later, and the only new knowledge that I had acquired in the cafe was her cover name- which for ease and clarity I shall continue to use throughout the narrative.
Sonia and I continued to meet for several days at various public rendezvous in Geneva, but I learnt little more of any interest. All I was told was that it had been decided that I was to go to Munich. There I was to install myself as a tourist and learn the language, make as many friends as possible, and keep my eyes open. Not very onerous or indeed explicit instructions, but after the Spanish front line it was a relief to know that the task described to me in London as "difficult and dangerous" was to be, at any rate for a start, so easy and pleasant. Sonia gave me two thousand Swiss francs for my expenses in Munich and fixed up a rendezvous in three months' time. This time it was to be in Lausanne but at the same locale, the General Post Office, and a series of hours and days were fixed in case anything went wrong.
It was with a light heart that I returned to England to collect my kit and get my visa. Early in November I arrived in Munich.
Munich at that time was a pleasant place. At least for an innocent abroad with enough pocket money and little to do save prepare political reports on Germany and for the rest of the time enjoy myself. I managed to pick up a fair circle of acquaintances and the only brainwork I attempted was to learn German- which I was taught by a local member of the S. S. who lived in the same pension. Time passed swiftly and pleasantly enough till my next rendezvous with Sonia in February.
The only happening of even remote interest during my first Munich stay was that I lit by accident on Hitler's Stammtisch. Looking one day for a cheap place to lunch, I happened on the Osteria Bavaria and, having settled down to the good l/6d set lunch, I noticed a flurry at the door and Hitler strode in accompanied by his adjutant Bruecker, his photographer and toady Hoffmann, and two A. D. C. s. I discovered that the proprietor of the restaurant had been a fellow comrade during the first war; Hider had lunched there on and off for over fifteen years and even now that he had reached power he ate there whenever he was in Munich. This I confirmed, as I made a habit of lunching there and saw him sometimes as often as three times a week. I mention this triviality as it was to have somewhat surprising consequences later.
My second contact with Sonia went off as smoothly as the first, and this time we had several quite long and moderately enlightening talks. It was during this visit that I learnt for the first time that my masters were the Red Army Intelligence. Sonia told me that she was engaged in setting up a new network for them in Switzerland and that my credentials had been referred back to the Russian D. M. I., who had made the necessary checkups, and that I was now on the strength as a "collaborator" at a salary of U. S. $150 a month and all reasonable expenses.
It is perhaps worth noting in passing that all Russian spy payments and accounts are made and calculated in United States dollars. The Red Army net had the strongest objections to dealing in any other sort of currency and went to endless trouble to secure dollars for payment.
Sonia said that in normal times I would have been sent to a special school in Moscow for at least year 011 recruitment. There I would have been taught all the tricks of the trade such as W/T transmission, micro-photography, secret inks, sabotage instruction, etc. As it was thought that an international crisis was imminent. Moscow had decided to dispense with this in my case and 1 was to return to Germany at once and study all these and kindred subjects on my own account.
Sonia gave me a cover name, Jim, and some idea of the elements of the game, especially in the matter of contacting my superiors or others in case of emergency. If I lost contact with her I was to attempt to get into touch with the M. I. Directorate in Moscow through a Soviet military attaché. I was to go to the Soviet M. A. in any country other than the one in which I was working or of which I was a native. In my case, of course, this ruled out Berlin and London. I was to use any device or artifice that I could think of to get into the presence of the attaché himself and get him alone, even to the extent of threatening any minor official with punishment by the N. K. V. D. I was also expressly forbidden to mention my name or show my passport to any official at the embassy - even the attaché on my first visit. Having reached the presence, I was to hand him a message for transmission to Moscow. In my case this would run approximately as follows: "Jim operating in Jersey and a native of Brazil has lost contact with Sonia who lives in Sicily where she has a musical box and wishes to re-establish communication with the director. " In other words "Foote operating in Germany and a native of Britain has lost contact with Maria Schultz who lives in Switzerland where she has a wireless transmitter and wishes to re-establish contact with the D. M. I. " Only when the attaché had received a reply giving the necessary instructions and receiving permission from the D. M. I. to ask for my identity was I allowed to disclose my name.
If for some reason I was unable to establish contact with a Soviet military attaché and the need was urgent (and funds permitted), I should take a ticket for the Far East via the Trans-Siberian Railway and while in Moscow call at the headquarters of the Red Army, which would put me in touch with the department concerned. Only in a last resort was I to go to Russia on an Intourist ticket. Soviet agents were not allowed to keep passports which contained Intourist visas, as these might indicate to the outside world that the holder was favourably inclined toward the regime. In such cases the passport was taken away and a special department of the Soviet Intelligence removed the offending pages. This was a lengthy process and so this course was discouraged.
I was also told that later on I should be given a "place of conspiracy" which would be a fixed spot in some nearby country- probably Belgium or Holland. Certain fixed days and hours would be given me for contact and I would be told my own passwords and distinctive objects and also of course those of the contact. I was, however, to go there only if I lost contact with my group leader, Sonia, or on orders from the director.
All these arrangements sound slightly academic in the light of subsequent events. Cooped up in Switzerland, surrounded by countries at war with my own and later at war with Soviet Russia, the chances of meeting a Soviet attaché or of obtaining an Intourist visa were slight. As for places of conspiracy, these would have to be confined to Switzerland itself. In point of fact the emergency, luckily, never arose, as from the time that we were surrounded until the day of my arrest we always had at least two wireless sets working to Moscow at any one time.
While still in Lausanne, Sonia asked me to write out a report on political and economic conditions in Germany. She had also shown great interest in Hitler and my little Munich restaurant- which I had mentioned to her in the course of casual conversation. She sent my report back over her secret transmitter to the director and must have sent a separate report on the Hitler episode as I was told that the director was extremely interested in the report on Hitler and instructed me to check up on his movements and habits as well as I could.
Sonia also told me that I might expect to receive a visit from a new collaborator who would contact me in Munich and with whom I should have to operate in future. She added that it was possible that we would be asked to carry out some act of sabotage, the actual occurrence of which the director could check from his study of the press. I (and I gathered that this was a general instruction to all agents) was therefore to plan a possible sabotage operation and keep it, as it were, on ice until such time as the director authorised it. Such a scheme could perform no really useful function except that of checking the reliability of an agent and his planning ingenuity, as it was unlikely that even the most fanatical Red agent would put his head in the noose by some really profitable sabotage scheme when he could much more easily and quietly undertake some small-scale arson which would duly appear in the local press and satisfy Moscow.
I returned to Germany after my short and this time moderately constructive trip. I at least knew now for whom I was working, even if the precise details of what I was supposed to do were still lacking. I was not unnaturally curious as to the identity of the "collaborator" whom I had been promised. I could only hope that he might be somewhat more versed in the technique of espionage than I was. In this respect I was to be sadly disappointed. I do not know whether the reader has suffered from the same nightmare that I used to have as a child. I would dream that I was about to conduct a symphony orchestra and the whole audience was assembled, ready and waiting, and the orchestra poised for the first tap of my baton. At that moment I would suddenly realise that not only did I not know the piece which I was supposed to conduct but also that I was unable to read a note of music. On such occasions in dreams, one merely wakes up in a cold sweat. In real life, working for the Russians, it happened only too often- and there was no awakening.
Before I left Sonia gave me U. S. $900 ($450 for three months' salary and a similar sum for three months' expenses). My instructions were not varied. Indeed variations on such a vague theme were hardly possible. I continued to lunch at the Osteria and observe the Fuehrer at such times as he visited the place, and otherwise maintained my previous contacts and continued to learn German. The place was, of course, still full of tourists basking in the twilight of European peace. English and American, they still continued to flock to Munich to observe the picture scenes of the past and the preparations for the future. The former they found more interesting. Van Gogh had not yet been banished from the Neue Pinakothek and only the memorial to the fallen of the Munich Putsch really marked the New Germany. The shadow of the Chamberlain umbrella still lay heavy over the political scene. Anyone who delved deeper could see how thin this veneer of peace really was. Conversations with my S. S. friends and the evidence of my eyes convinced me that it was only a matter of time before the military machine took control and the country went to war. I felt sure that when this happened England would be involved and consequently anything that I could do then or later against Germany would be of value. The future position of Russia was then, as always, enigmatic. There were rumours going about Munich of a possible German-Russian rapprochement but these did not seem to tally with the oft-repeated tirades of Nazi leaders against the Bolshevik Menace and the Red Terror. In the interval before the storm burst I was prepared to go on with the tasks given me by Sonia. The future could take care of itself- and the future did.
In April I received the expected call from my "collaborator." It was an unexpected call from an old friend. The doorbell of my pension in Elizabeth Strasse rang, and the maid ushered in a colleague whom I had not seen since the days of the Spanish War. I was astounded that he had found me, as I had, on instructions, severed all connections with the brigade and even my own family did not know that I was in Germany. I soon discovered that this was no social call but that he was in fact my new fellow worker in Sonia's network in Germany.
Bill Philips (or, to give him his Soviet cover name, Jack) had been recruited in exactly the same way as I. In fact I had been indirectly responsible for his recruitment, as I had given King Street his name as a likely candidate to succeed me in the job of courier to Spain. He had worked with me in brigade transport in Spain and, quite apart from our jobs being side by side, we had been drawn together as he was not a Party member either. (It is not without significance that, as far as Sonia was concerned, the network that she set up consisted of almost entirely non-Party members- though their anti- Fascist records were impressive. This was, after all, mere common sense on the part of Moscow. A Party member would be ipso facto suspect. It would take quite a lot of foreign police digging to discover my past - open as it was.)
Bill had already set himself up in Frankfurt, having received instructions as vague and unsatisfactory as mine. He had been told specifically only that he was to keep an eye on the I. G. Farben factory and to help me in the "Hitler scheme."
It was news to me that this was in fact a scheme. At our last meeting Sonia had told me to keep a general eye on Hitler's movements, but in the subsequent two months the idea had burgeoned in the eyes of the Kremlin into a full-blown scheme for assassination with Bill and me apparently cast for the principal roles. We were neither of us very willing actors as neither of us really fancied a martyr's crown- especially since on the face of it the scheme appeared suicidal and doomed to failure. We did feel, however, that in fairness to our employers, who, after all, had been paying us for some months with little or no return for their money, it behoved us to look into the matter- and the result was not unpromising.
It was not necessary to reconnoitre the field because I knew the restaurant extremely well. Hitler always lunched in a private room which was separated only by a thin wooden partition from the corridor leading from the restaurant to the lavatories. It was along this partition that the coats of the customers were hung. As far as we could gather there was no special surveillance of the place and no extra precautions were put into force when the Fuehrer honoured it with his presence. What could be easier, we argued, than to put a time bomb in an attaché case along with our coats and, having had an early lunch, abandon the lot in the hope that the bomb would blow Hitler and his entourage, snugly lunching behind the deal boarding, into eternity. Looking back on the scheme now, it appears to me to have been well-nigh foolproof. It also bears a startling resemblance to the July 1944 attempt by Stauffenberg. In his case wooden partitions caused the scheme to fail: the blast escaped and Hitler survived. We were too innocent then to know of the niceties of explosives, but as the other three walls were solid Bavarian stone it seems likely that we might have been successful. But the whole affair never got further than the planning stage. It is easy enough as an officer cadet to plan a Tactical Exercise without Troops. It is equally easy as a cadet spy to plan a Sabotage Exercise without Explosives. In both cases the individual has the power and not the ultimate responsibility. The officer cadet will blithely throw away a company in a dashing assault on an impregnable position, knowing that the worst that can befall him is a low mark. Similarly we planned the operation knowing that the worst that could befall us would be a sour look from Sonia.
Determined, however, to earn our keep, on paper if not in practice, we went even further and planned an alternative scheme which involved assassination in its more traditional character- by revolver rather than T.N.T. It was Hitler's habit to proceed down the restaurant en route to his private room, acknowledging the plaudits of the lunchers who, not unnaturally, rose to their feet on the entrance of the head of the state. One day Bill stationed himself at the table next to the gangway, and as Hitler approached put his hand rapidly and furtively into his pocket- and drew out a cigarette case. I on the other side of the room watched the reactions of Hitler's entourage and the rest of the lunchers among whom one imagined there must have been a fair sprinkling of trigger-happy Gestapo agents. Nothing whatever happened. No reaction was visible- though to my heated imagination no action could have looked more suspicious. Looking back on this, it all seems incredibly jejune- even though Bill's act required a considerable amount of personal courage as, if the guards had been alert, it would have been small comfort to him to have been beaten to the draw- of a cigarette.
With such innocent sports Bill and I whiled away our ' time in Munich together. He had little more to do in Frankfurt than I had in Munich, and preferred to come down and see me so that we could do nothing together.
In May I met Sonia again at Vevey at the end of the three months' period. She urged me to go on with further plans for the Hitler assassination plot. I agreed to look into the matter in greater detail, which I had no intention whatsoever of doing. There was no more planning to be done- all that was necessary was an explosive suitcase or a potential suicide- and Sonia's network could provide neither. I returned to a Germany where such plots were still only in the backs of the minds of German generals.
There was one more sabotage exercise during our German period. This scheme was born of Bill's enthusiasm for his job. He had discovered that there was a Zeppelin in a hangar close to Frankfurt and conceived the brilliant notion of burning it up. I never saw it, and Bill's description was confused, but I have always imagined that it was the Graf Zeppelin, which was frequently paraded round Germany on show. Bill said that it would be perfectly easy to put a time bomb with a slow fuse in a cigarette packet under one of the seats and let it and the hydrogen in the envelope do the rest. The next step was of course the manufacture of an incendiary mixture. Sonia had given me instructions in the compounding of an efficient incendiary mixture from chemicals which could be bought easily and openly. After this lapse of time I am vague as to the formula but remember that sugar, aluminium powder, and charcoal were among the ingredients. A moderately accurate time fuse was not difficult to make with two chemicals separated by a division which would be dissolved by acid action in a specified length of time depending on the thickness of the partition. Bill and I conducted simple but satisfactory experiments in a secluded meadow near Munich. However, I was not at all convinced that it would set fire to the leather cushion of the seat in the Zeppelin under which it would have to be concealed. I was also under the impression; I believe now wrongly, that they used helium rather than hydrogen filling for the envelope with the result that we would have to rely on the combustion of the interior fittings alone with no assistance from the gas in the envelope. Before I could go further with my experiments I was summoned to Vevey to an emergency meeting with Sonia. This was in August and coincided with Bill's routine visit at the end of his three months' period.
Sonia was extremely excited over the scheme- even more so than she had been over the Hitler plot. We discussed the whole thing at length, walking up and down the front at Vevey. Sonia was convinced that it would work. I was equally certain that the whole thing would be a flop from the start and that even if the bomb could be planted unobserved the incendiary mixture would ignite nothing save itself.
Ultimately Sonia invited me back to her home so that we could try out the mixture in peace and quiet. This was the first time that I had been asked to her house. Previously we had always met at agreed rendezvous, and I felt that it was a step forward in my initiation into the network. Sonia lived in a modest little chalet at Caux sur Montreux with her two children and her old German nurse. As pretty a domestic, bourgeois atmosphere as one could find anywhere. The only slightly incongruous note was struck by the two bits of her wireless transmitter, which at that time, with incredible carelessness; she used to leave lying about the house. Not at all the setup one would expect for a Russian agent of long standing.
After dinner we adjourned to the loggia to test out the bomb. We placed the mixture underneath one of Sonia's sofa cushions which she sacrificed for the purpose. As I had thought, the only result was a large quantity of black smoke and an unholy stink. By mutual agreement no further mention was made of the Zeppelin scheme.
But while we had been indulging in amateur pyrotechnics, fireworks on a larger and more European scheme began to go off. About August 23 I was ordered to return to my post in Munich. I boarded the train for Germany in Lausanne but almost before I had settled down and before the train was fairly under way, to my astonishment Sonia entered the carriage and sat down opposite. Luckily the only other occupant left for a few moments and in a hurried whisper Sonia told me that she felt certain that Great Britain would fight and that despite Moscow's orders it would be better for me to delay my return until things became a little clearer one way or the other. We arranged a series of rendezvous on alternate days in Berne, and I left the train and returned to Montreux.
I was not unnaturally somewhat concerned over Bill, who had returned to Germany and was taking a holiday at Titisee on his way back to his post at Frankfurt. Sonia, on the other hand, refused to be perturbed, saying that Moscow would send orders in good time and that for the moment he could do no harm: an attitude not really consistent with her concern over my return to Munich. Sonia was, however, oversanguine as to the solicitude of the Kremlin for their minor operatives in potentially enemy countries. The German-Russian pact hit us like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Such a volte-face had never been regarded as practical politics by most people and such rumours of German-Russian flirtations as had reached Switzerland were in the main regarded as merely journalist bar gossip. The first and only reaction to the fact that we had to report Moscow was a day later when Sonia received a message to pull all the agents she could out of Germany and break all contact with any remaining resident agents.
This was my first experience of Russian Realpolitik and it came as something of a shock. Its effect on Sonia, who was an old guard Communist and had for the past eight years regarded Fascism as the major world menace, was of course, shattering. As a good Party member she had had Party discipline drilled into her until it was second nature for her to obey the whims of a Party directive- but she had always regarded the main Party line as being firmly and steadfastly directed against Fascism. At one blow all this was changed and she, as a good Party member, had now to regard the Nazis as her friends and the democracies as her potential foes. Such a bouleversement of all her preconceived ideas was really too much for her. Working as an undercover agent, she had naturally been less subjected to Party propaganda at first hand than her more docile colleagues, who obeyed the behest of King Street - or rather of Moscow relayed through King Street. The latter obediently trimmed their sails to the prevailing wind from the steppes. Sonia, too, paid lip service to her orders and obediently disbanded the organisation that she had been at such pains to build up; but I think that from that time onward her heart was not in the work. She continued to obey such orders as she received and carried out operations to the best of her ability, but at the first opportunity she pulled out and returned to England. In a way she was lucky to have received her disillusionment early in the war. She had worked for many years for what she thought was a righteous cause, and she was spared the final discovery that that cause was not an idealistic crusade but merely power politics in its crudest form.
While Sonia was wrestling with her political conscience I was left with the more practical difficulty of recalling Bill from Germany. As anyone who has tried knows, continental telephoning at the best of times is a game which requires patience and an equable temper. Transfrontier telephoning provides an additional hazard. Add to both these an imminent European war and a plethora of nervous switch censors at the main exchanges on both sides of the border, and it ceases to become a game of skill and degenerates into a haphazard game of chance. In this case I was lucky and after the waste of only several valuable hours, an uncounted number of francs, and the last remnants of what had once been a placid temperament, I managed to get through to Bill where he was sun-bathing beside the lake and told him to get out of Germany as fast as he could. He appeared somewhat surprised, as international events had apparently by-passed his rural retreat and certainly gone over his head. He managed to get out to Switzerland with a few hours to spare. We waited to see what the world and Moscow would next bring forth. The former brought us war soon enough. As for the latter, Moscow evidently decided that discretion was the best course and during the first week of a Europe at war we received no kind of instruction. Heaven knows we had done little enough for the past year, but it was somewhat galling to think that the little we had done was apparently to be completely wasted. I need not have bothered. There would be work enough before I found rest in a Swiss prison.