The position then, at the end of September 1943, in the "cold war" between the Abwehr and ourselves showed a marked improvement in the Abwehr's score. They had made appreciable progress in their investigations into the network. They knew my name and address and that I was running a network and a transmitter in Lausanne. They knew Rado's name and address and had an agent well in with one of his organisation. They knew that Cissie had something to do with the network. They did not know of any connection between Rado and me.
So far emphasis has been laid on German activities against us and little or nothing has been said as regards the Swiss, who after all were somewhat concerned, because though the organisation was not directed against Swiss interests we were to some extent abusing Swiss hospitality by our activities. Also, as a last resort, if kidnapping and strong-arm methods failed, the Abwehr could always tip off the Swiss and have us arrested by the Bupo, which would at least liquidate a portion of the network. This was not, however, necessary, as the Swiss had not been inactive.
The Swiss had an efficient monitoring system and it subsequently transpired that they, like the Germans, had been monitoring our traffic for some time. Their original information, however, came from a casual source - or so I was told by the Swiss police after my arrest.
At some time, it must have been a year or so previously, one of the wireless staff at the Geneva airport had been casually twiddling the tuning dial of his set. No planes were due in and he had no signals to listen to and was looking for something on the short wave with which to lighten his boredom. Suddenly he picked up a strong signal transmitting in Morse but in code and using amateur procedure. This intrigued him as all amateur radio transmissions had been forbidden in Switzerland since the outbreak of war, and anyway an amateur transmitting five-figure groups was somewhat more than unusual. He noted the call sign and frequency and reported the matter to his superiors, and the report finally filtered through to the Bupo and the army.
The station was monitored and in due course by D.F. they discovered that it was located in Geneva. In the course of their investigations they came across another set, also working from the town and using a similar procedure. These sets were, of course, those of Bolli and Hamel. At that time the Swiss police were under the impression that these were either British transmissions or possibly a local Communist network working into Germany. It seems likely that at the same time they also picked up my transmissions from Lausanne and monitored them as well.
Exactly why the Swiss took no action for a period of at least a year, and only started offensive action against these sets in the autumn of 1943, I do not know. It is possible that they were hoping to get enough traffic to enable them to break the cipher, or it may be that they were unwilling to take action against sets which they thought were being worked by the Allies. Indeed they might never have taken action against them unless pressure had been brought to bear by the Abwehr, who could and may have given them the facts. The only people who can answer that question are the Swiss police and the Swiss General Staff. The fact remains that it was not till the autumn that any serious action was taken- and this speedily proved successful.
Mobile D.F. vans were ordered into action but it was not easy to locate the exact whereabouts of the two Geneva transmitters, as they were in a built-up area (which was the precise reason why they had been put there by us). When the vans had pinpointed the two transmitters to a comparatively small area, another technique was brought into play, one which was originated, I believe, by the Germans and used with much success to locate Allied transmitters working in occupied countries. During the time that the sets were on the air they cut off the current from each house in succession. When on pulling the switch the set went off the air they were certain that they had identified the house in which it was located. This they did, in turn, with both Bolli's and Hamel's transmitters.
On October 9 I was sitting in a cafe drinking my morning cup of coffee when I saw in the first edition of the Tribune de Geneve a small announcement that a secret short-wave transmitter had been discovered in Geneva and its operators arrested. This item was removed from all subsequent editions of the paper and it was mere chance that it caught my eye. That night I heard the Centre vainly calling the Hamel transmitter, and feared the worst. The next morning my telephone rang and I heard Rado's voice at the other end. "You will be sorry to hear that Edward is much worse and the doctor has been called in. He decided after consultation that the only thing to do was to take him to hospital." I made suitable sympathetic noises to keep up the pretence, but my mind was working furiously. This meant that the only firm link with the Centre was my transmitter, with the possible doubtful use to which we might put Bolli's (here I was overoptimistic). Rado's agitation, though suitable to the tenor of the conversation, was also perfectly genuine. With the "doctor" looking after Hamel, Rado felt the "hospital" looming unpleasantly near for him also.
A day or so later he telephoned me again and said that he was coming over to see me in my flat under cover of darkness, a thing he had never done before and an action symptomatic of his agitation. He arrived and told me that not only had the Hamels been arrested but the police had also simultaneously raided Margarete Bolli's flat and arrested her as well. Hamel had been caught flagrante delicto, sitting working the transmitter; Margarete had been caught equally in the act but in rather a different sense as she had been found in bed with Peters, the Abwehr agent, who had succeeded only too admirably in his task of getting into the girl's confidence. A complication, slightly embarrassing to the Abwehr, was that Peters had been arrested also as an accomplice!
We never understood why the Swiss, having held their hands so long, acted in the end with such precipitancy.
They had not kept the buildings under observation; but if they had they could have scooped the whole gang, including Rado. As it was, Rado had a narrow escape as he went round to see Hamel a few hours after his arrest and while the police were still searching the flat. Luckily he happened to glance at a clock which Hamel kept in his shopwindow and the hands showed danger. It had been agreed that the hands of the clock should show midday when all was clear. During transmission times or if danger threatened the hands were changed to some other time. As Hamel was transmitting at the time of his arrest the signal showed danger, and Rado was warned before he knocked and fell into the hands of the police.
All this was reported to the Centre over my set- which was now the only link the network had with Moscow. The director expressed concern, but stated that Lucy's information was so important that we must continue working despite the arrests, and he ordered Rado and me to make every effort, with the aid of the local Party, to recruit new operators and construct new sets.
Rado was frantic with worry and anxiety- worry over the breakdown of the organisation and anxiety concerning his personal safety. He had cause for anxiety, for he had broken practically every security precaution in the espionage code. Fearing that he was being tailed, he had, some time previously, deposited all his records with Hamel, who had a secure hiding place built into his flat. These records contained not only all the financial details of the network but also copies of telegrams which had been sent, often with the encoded version attachéd to them. As if this were not sufficient, he had also been idiotic enough to leave a copy of his code book there, and this, too, fell into the hands of the police. He feared, not without reason, that his code was compromised and that, with the material captured, the Swiss would be able to read all the back traffic that he had sent, which they had picked up through their monitoring of the sets. This meant that not only was I the only physical link with the Centre but also that my code was the only one which could be used.
The police haul had been even better than this. Among the messages that they discovered was one giving the details of a new Swiss Oerlikon cannon which was still on the secret list, and from the messages the Swiss were able after some study to discover that the source of much of the military information was none other than their trusted military evaluator, Lucy himself. Thus not only was Rado guilty of espionage against Swiss interests, which would make the Bupo doubly anxious to get to the bottom of the affair, but his ill-considered actions had imperilled our most valuable source as well. I also shrewdly suspected that, among the other miscellaneous financial papers, the police would find clear pointers towards me and the rest of the network. My fears were not ungrounded as subsequent events showed.
A few days later Rado reported that the Geneva Communist Party had been able to make contact with the Hamels and Bolli through the agency of a prison warder who was a secret member of the Party. Hamel told us that he had been shown a photograph of me and told that the original was the head of the entire network. They did not know then of the existence of Rado - or so it appeared. (The photograph of course was the one supplied by Lorenz.)
Rado had gone to ground in Berne, but soon after he plucked up courage and went back and lived openly at his flat. He noticed, however, that it was under observation, or he thought it was, and went to ground again in the flat of a couple of Party sympathisers in Geneva.
All this was reported back to the Centre, who ordered me to take control of the entire group, and the director stated that he had given orders to Rado to put me in touch with his two main cut-outs, Pakbo and Cissie. Although Rado had now ceased to use his cipher, the Centre still sent occasional messages in it for him. They regarded their codes as unbreakable unless the key fell into the wrong hands and could not believe that an old hand like Rado had been so foolish as to hand the whole thing to the Swiss on a plate- as he had done.
Rado agreed to put me in touch with Pakbo, but said that Cissie declined to have any contact with me. He said that owing to the visit of the two presumed German agents to her flat a month or two back she feared that she would be compromised if she was in direct touch with me. That was Rado's story; but I learnt after my release that it bore little relation to die truth. In fact, Cissie had asked to be put in touch with me but this Rado had refused to do. The reasons were not difficult to understand. Rado wished at all costs to keep control of the organisation and in order so to do was prepared to disobey the director's orders. He also knew that it would be extremely embarrassing to him were I to meet Cissie and compare notes- especially on finance. Rado had been indenting on me for large sums of money to pay Cissie and her agents but had been keeping a large proportion of this money for himself. This discrepancy would immediately come out when we met- as it did a year later.
As a result Rado stated that he would continue to receive the Lucy information through Cissie and pass it on to me through a cut-out. He also said that he would act as cut-out between Jean Beauchamp and me. Jean was the son of a Communist leader and was busy recruiting wireless operators for the time when we could once again start up new sets. We also arranged for a place of conspiracy for Jean and me in case of emergency.
Rado therefore suggested that the best thing for the network and himself would be for him to take refuge in the British Legation (there was, of course, no Soviet representation in Switzerland and the nearest Soviet official was in Ankara or London). Once there, with him safely inside the hedge of diplomatic immunity, the network could continue functioning as before- with the one difference that the British would have to be brought into the picture. Rado himself was not in touch with the British but Pakbo, through his cut-out Salter, the Balkan service attaché, made the approach and Rado received the reply that the British were prepared to harbour him if necessary. The Swiss end of the deal was therefore settled and he had only to square the Centre. I therefore passed on to the Centre Rado's request that he should be allowed to retire from the world and take refuge with the British. Almost by return transmission I received a most emphatic "No." The Centre added that they could not understand how such an old hand as Rado could even think of making such a suggestion, as "the British would track down his lines of communication and use them for themselves."
This idea of Allied co-operation rather shook Rado, but it was not in the least inconsistent with the attitude that the Centre had adopted on previous occasions. Once, in 1942, Rado had had in his hands certain documents and plans which would have been of great value to the British as well as to the Russians, but the material was so bulky that it was impossible for us to pass it over the air. He therefore had suggested that it be handed over to the Allies - through a suitable and secure cut-out of course. The Centre's reaction was immediate. Rado received instructions to burn the information at once. From the director's point of view there was little difference between information falling into German or British hands. It was Russian information and if it could not be passed to the Centre, then the right place for it was the wastepaper basket- however valuable it might be to Russia's allies.
In the meantime I received further news from Hamel through the "fellow-travelling" warder in the jail. Hamel had been told by his interrogators that there was another transmitter working in Lausanne and that a posse of army technicians had been sent out to track it down.
I informed the Centre of this and was told that Lucy's information was still so vital that I must risk everything and continue to transmit. In the meantime, until other transmitters were available and I was able to move my residence, I was to send no information at all save for Lucy's material.
At this time I was seeing Rado twice weekly- or as near as we could make it, having regard to his fears and to my other appointments. The only point of these meetings was for Rado to pass on Lucy's material and any messages he might have about the reconstruction of the network. At our rendezvous we used to check up carefully to see whether we were being followed and this paid good dividends. On one occasion towards the end of October we had arranged to meet just inside the Pare d'Eaux Vives in Geneva. Rado arrived by taxi and entered the park. I noticed that the driver of the cab, as soon as he had been paid, drove off but stopped almost at once at a telephone kiosk into which he hurriedly shut himself. I told Rado and we decided at once that, trivial as the incident might be, we had better play for safety and we left the park at once by separate gates. We went just in time. I learnt later that the police had circulated a photograph of Rado to all cab drivers in Geneva. The driver in question had recognised his fare and rung up police headquarters. A hurry call had been sent out to the various squad cars prowling round the town and they covered all the exits. But they were too late, for Rado and I had left and arranged a somewhat less disturbed rendezvous elsewhere.
This little incident put the finishing touch to Rado's fears. From that time on it was impossible to lure him out of his hidey-hole with the local Communist Party. In fact he remained underground until he left the country a year later, and took virtually no further part in the network. His nerve had been going for some time. Small blame to him as he had been working under a strain for many years. This strain had been increased by the fortuitous addition, through the accident of war, of a number of other networks to his own. He had coped manfully with the dribs and drabs of heterogeneous networks thrown at his head and succeeded up to a point and for some time. I prefer to remember him at the height of his power as the genial cartographer to the world at large, and the successful spymaster to the favoured few, rather than as the hunted rat of his last Swiss days or the frightened, broken man of Paris and Cairo. Only the Centre knows his fate. He certainly cheated many out of their just dues, but equally he drove them to obtain the best results. He had been faithful to his masters- after his fashion.
To make matters worse, at that time the network was very short of money. Our cash reserves were down to five thousand dollars. Rado himself was completely broke and in addition had borrowed five thousand dollars from the local Communist Party and a further five thousand from Pakbo. At that time the network was costing some ten thousand dollars a month in salaries and expenses alone- quite apart from extras such as bonuses. To make financial matters worse, the director had authorised me to spend ten thousand dollars to finance a plan for the escape of the Hamels and Bolli from prison. This sum was needed as a bribe to the "fellow-traveller" warder and his colleagues. The director set great store by this plan as he was apprehensive lest Bolli, the least experienced of the three, should break down under interrogation. She knew Pakbo's and my real names and, of course, a great deal about Rado. The Hamels were not so important as they knew the names of none of the network save that of Jean Beau- champ, who had recruited them, though they knew Rado and me by sight.
I need not have worried unduly about the financial side, as matters were swiftly taken out of my hands. On the night of November 19/20 I contacted Moscow at the scheduled time, which was then half past midnight. I passed over a short message to them and then began taking down a long message which they had for me.
Three quarters of an hour later there was a splintering crash and my room was filled with police. At one-fifteen in the morning of November 20 the "doctors" took the matter into their own hands. I was arrested and the last link between the Centre and Switzerland was broken.