For proper understanding of the events which led to the breakup of Rado's organisation and the arrest of many of its members, it is necessary to bear the following facts and surmises in mind. As in most intelligence pictures there are some facts and many surmises; most of the facts were obtained only after I had been released from prison, and some I gathered when I was in Moscow. Without these facts in the back of the mind, many of the events of the mouvemente summer and autumn of 1943 appear inconsequential and illogical.
The two main antagonists to our organisation were naturally the Abwehr and the Swiss Bupo. The former because the actions of the network were aimed directly at the Third Reich and the latter because these actions were a violation of Swiss neutrality. The Abwehr were naturally the more concerned and were more active in attempting to penetrate and to liquidate the organisation. The Swiss were prepared to take action if evidence was brought to their notice but would not go out of their way to liquidate a spy network - especially if they thought it was working for the democracies. I use the word "democracies" advisedly- they became much more enthusiastic in their work when they realised it was a Soviet network, little love being lost between the bourgeois Swiss and the Soviet Union.
At some period of the war- presumably after the fall of France and before 1943- some portion of the Red Army network in Occupied Europe had been discovered by the Abwehr and the network rounded up, kept under observation, or "played back" in an endeavour to get more leads in. Either through their observations or their working of the double-cross the Germans had discovered that the network had an organisation in Switzerland. The ideal of any counterespionage organisation is to be in a position to eliminate or control an entire espionage organisation. If the former is done the enemy is rendered blind and if the latter is done he can be bemused. But in both cases it is useless to take half measures. Indeed if an attempt is being made to work a double-cross it is fatal. The portion of the network that is still working freely will at once show up that portion which is working under control, and a double-cross against the enemy which the enemy knows to be a double-cross is as dangerous as an active espionage ring. In fact more so, as you are certain that your intelligence or rather misleading intelligence is coming straight from the enemy headquarters.
In 1943 the Germans were perfectly aware that there was a Soviet spy ring operating in Swiss territory, but were unable to locate it and had no exact knowledge as to its members or its ramifications. At that time the Swiss were probably blissfully ignorant of any such thing going on in their territory, and in so far as they were interested were relying on such information as the Germans filtered through to them. The Germans would give enough information to make the Swiss take the usual police action - which would show the Abwehr exactly how far they had got- but not enough to enable the Swiss to round up the whole network- a thing the Germans preferred to do themselves.
The position of Rado's network was really similar to that of Mowgli after he had been cast out of the wolf pack. On the one hand he had the wolves- in the shape of the Bupo- who though not in active opposition were prepared if provoked to tear him to pieces, and on the other the tiger- in the shape of the Abwehr, who were really out for blood and would do anything to get the network in their power. We were assisted only by the few lone wolves, and we triumphed in the end.
I myself regard Lorenz and Laura as primary among the factors which led to the dissolution of the network. They do not, however, rank in the tiger category. Nothing better than jackals is worthy of them if my beliefs are correct.
My suspicions of Lorenz really began towards the end of 1942. By that time I had been in contact with him long enough and felt that he was quite out of the ordinary as regards Soviet spies. After one has dealt with secret agents in all walks of life one begins to have a feeling regarding them and their genuineness- and this I never had towards Lorenz and Laura. They were both far too mondaine, and she was far too chic to be part of a Red Army net. Also the information that they produced was not in any way high-grade- despite the golden opinions the director had about their capabilities. Their mode of life, their actions, their information, and the whole appearance of the setup filled me with a vague sense of uneasiness. Facts - or rather suspicions on my part-made the whole affair more sinister.
As is known to the veriest tyro in Soviet espionage it is strictly forbidden for any agent to know or to attempt to find out, the name of his contact. This is laid down for the mutual protection of both parties in case one or the other is caught. It is nothing but clear, practical common sense. Lorenz, however, did not subscribe to this. As I have said, shortness of time and pressure of work prevented me from obeying the rules in their strictest sense - and as a result I used to meet Lorenz in his villa. This procedure was accepted with alacrity by him as he alleged that it was difficult for him to get out and anyway the seclusion of the villa, tucked away in the foothills round the lake, made it an admirable conspiratorial rendezvous. That should have been enough; the rules had already been broken sufficiently without any further violation of elementary security. Despite this Lorenz showed a persistent desire to discover my name, or, if that were impossible, at least some sort of clue as to where I lived and my mode of life. Idle curiosity, it may be thought; I thought so at the time, but now I am inclined to think rather differently.
Lorenz tried to gratify his curiosity in a number of ingenious ways. Every time I went to visit him, though he knew that my time was precious, he insisted that I take off my overcoat and leave it in his extremely nicely furnished hall. While I was urged into the lounge, just off the hall on the left of the front door, by Lorenz, Laura would be, allegedly, getting the information that they had collected from their secret hiding place. This procedure appeared perfectly logical to me the first few times I visited them- even though the procedure was time - wasting and tedious for me. Unfortunately for all concerned, I was, and am, a martyr to the cigarette habit and an inveterate chain smoker. One day- it must have been in the late autumn of 1942- I went round to the villa to pick up their material and, having succumbed to the usual pressure, had gone into the lounge for the usual drink. On arrival there I found that my pockets were empty and that I had left my packet of cigarettes in my overcoat. I moved in a purposeful manner towards the door and was prevented almost by force by Lorenz from trying to get into the hall. Lorenz offered me one of his atrocious cigarettes with a rather feeble excuse. This I refused to smoke; with some justification as Lorenz smoked some vile brand. An embarrassed pause ensued with Lorenz firmly holding the door and after a moment he offered me a cigar which I accepted and he retired, allegedly to his cigar cabinet, to find it- it never appeared. After a short period Laura appeared, rather flushed, and the party went on as before.
Not being of a naturally suspicious nature, it took some time for the full significance of this incident to dawn on me- anyway, at least as long as it took to go by tram from their villa back to the corner near my flat. I then mulled the whole thing over in my mind and decided that I would see whether it was the result of an overheated mind or whether there was perhaps some undercurrent going on which the Centre might regard with some disfavour. I was not in the least bothered as to what anyone might find in any of my pockets. By that time I was a comparatively old bird in the espionage field and had had made for me a couple of detachable pockets which hung down inside the front of my trousers and attached to the front brace buttons. When full they gave me a rather middle-aged spread but I was prepared to sacrifice my vanity to security. The pockets would not have stood up to any sort of trained search but they did provide complete security against casual prying. Even Laura could hardly have got away with my trousers- though she did her best with my coat. In these pockets I kept all my personal papers such as my passport and permis de sejour - made out of course in my right name. There also I used to carry my gun, save in times of emergency when I used to extract it from its hiding place: a small "32 automatic, it gave me moral comfort at some of my more difficult rendezvous. Taking a tip from the films, I used, on such occasions as I thought I might have to use it and yet might be liable to search, to hide it in my hat, where it rested conveniently, if not comfortably, on the crown of my head.
Being a little chary of Laura's rather Fagin-like habits over my pockets, I naturally made things as easy for her as possible, and on my subsequent visits to the villa filled my pockets with purely innocuous documents, in a certain order and with certain papers interleaved, with the result that I was quite certain that the couple were, for whatever obscure purpose of their own, doing their best to find out what they could about me.
Any spy gets morbidly suspicious, but I do not think my suspicions of Lorenz and Laura were unjustified. They had done their best to discover my personal particulars by searching my pockets- hardly what is expected of a friendly spy; they had also done their best to discover where I lived- in this they were not successful until much later on, which is another story. Apart from this they were obviously living at a rate and in a style which even the Centre at its most expensive would hardly have sanctioned. They had also been living in Lausanne for some time before the war and had not taken the trouble to inform the Centre of the fact and had not started to get in touch again until 1941. Their villa in itself must have cost some six thousand pounds, and it would have been impossible to get this sum of money together from the Centre honestly. Also the villa and property were in Laura's name which gave the whole thing a slightly more shady air.
I communicated my suspicions, as best I could, to the director and requested that, owing to my feelings of disquiet, I should be allowed to maintain contact with the couple through a cut-out- thus obviating any possibility that they might discover the real identity of their contact, which they had been trying to do so assiduously for the past months. In reply I received what can only be described as a "rocket" from Moscow. I remember the message well, because it came over to me in the spring of 1943 when my fears about Lorenz were at their height. As soon as I started decoding I realised from the reference number that the Centre was referring to my signal full of doubts and fears- and full of doubts and fears I decoded the answer, which did little to increase my peace of mind.
The director informed me that I was entirely mistaken and hinted strongly that I was suffering from "outstation suspicions" (a convenient phrase to cover any deficiency by the Moscow section concerned). He added that both
Lorenz and Laura had worked faithfully over a long period of years and that their information was regarded as vital. I was told that it was essential that I maintain personal contact with them as only in that way could it be ensured that their information reached Moscow early. I was not impressed by this. By no stretch of imagination could their information even begin to compare with that produced by Lucy, and anyway most of it struck me as turgid, verbose, and unimportant in the extreme. However, the orders of the Centre were the orders of the Centre and as a result I continued to have contact with them until one particularly blatant incident which caused me to sever contact with this couple once and forever.
It was in the early summer of 1943 that Lorenz and Laura made their last attempt to discover my identity. Normally I visited their villa in the late evening (as I have stated, they refused to rendezvous elsewhere) because I hoped that in the dusk my visits were less likely to be observed. On this occasion, however, I received a message that Lorenz wished to see me urgently; that the evening would not do and I must come up to his villa at lunch time. It was a broiling day, one of those days when one wishes passionately to be out of all this intrigue, to go and walk in the cool hills. I toiled laboriously up to the villa, cursing the day I was born and the fact that I had ever succumbed to the bait hung out to me in London. Espionage is not good for one's condition; in fact it might be called sweated labour if long hours in an enclosed atmosphere are criteria.
Lorenz greeted me warmly on my arrival and took me into the lounge, which was curtained and shuttered and as a result stiflingly hot. This Lorenz airily explained away as a precaution against eavesdropping. He handed me a long message which he stated was the most important information Lambert and Barras had produced to date. It dealt with troop movements and contained a certain amount of military information which, if true, would have been of some importance. It was, however, of immense length and extremely verbosely written. In the course of a long interview I went over it with Lorenz and attempted to cut it down into manageable length. After a few minutes of this, in the Turkish-bath like atmosphere of the lounge, I was dripping with sweat and on Lorenz's urging I removed my coat.
After we had dealt with the message as best we could Lorenz suggested a turn in the garden and we went out through the long french windows onto the lawn. As we stepped out Lorenz "absent-mindedly" closed the window, which was fitted with a self-locking Yale lock, with the result that we were locked out and had, after our stroll, to go round to the front of the house and ring the front doorbell - which was opened by Laura after a long delay. I was quite certain that this was yet another attempt to discover my identity by going through my coat pockets, which they thought might yield more profitable dividends than my overcoat. Of course these efforts were abortive as everything was still in the "pouch" pockets in the front of my trousers. I was busy congratulating myself on having avoided the trap, but was that moment stepping into yet another neatly contrived one. The front door was set at an angle to the front of the building and as I stood outside the door with Lorenz waiting for Laura to open the door she was busy photographing me through a hole in the shutter. This of course I did not know at the time and only learnt it when I was in Moscow. The Russians had discovered the whole story from captured German documents.
What in fact had happened was that Lorenz and Laura had gone over to the Germans some time before, probably before the war. Their handsome villa and expensive mode of life was made possible by Abwehr finance. The information that they had been supplying had been in its turn supplied by the O.K.W. and was a clever mixture of truth and fiction. Most of the truth consisted of unimportant facts which there could be no harm in the Russians knowing, or facts concerning troop movements, etc.. which could be of no use to the Russians as they would not affect the eastern front. The information they had given me that evening was false and was designed to affect the course of a battle being fought at that time.
On looking back at it all afterwards I realised that it had once been suggested, indirectly, that I also should work for the Germans. It was at a dinner party at the villa. The service, food, and silver were well up to the standard of luxury of the rest of the place. I congratulated Lorenz on having such pleasant things and he told me that if I liked I, too, could be in a similar position. He had been at Leningrad University with the head of the Russian Counterespionage Department and naturally as a result he had the complete confidence of Moscow. He suggested that I should suggest to Moscow that I work under him and hand over the communications network to him. In return he, Lorenz, would guarantee me five hundred dollars a month and five hundred dollars' expenses over and above what I was getting at that time and in addition would have no work to do as Lorenz would do it all for me and I could lead a life of leisure allegedly "talent-spotting" for the network. I passed Lorenz's statements on verbatim to Moscow and added that I did not like the idea at all. The Centre told me to tell Lorenz that they would have nothing to do with it and added that it would be useless anyway as I knew the code and would still be able to check up on Lorenz's material and that they had no intention of sending out another code to the Swiss network.
It is obvious what Lorenz, or rather his German masters, wanted. With me out of the way and the code in their hands they could not only pick up the remainder of the network at their leisure but also use the channel for deception purposes if they wished. The Centre had prevented that plan from working, and so the Germans had to fall back on identifying me and then abducting me so that they could extract the necessary information from me by torture.
The Abwehr are nothing if not efficient and they put two operations in hand- both of which were successful. One was probably planned in Paris and the other in Switzerland and it was thanks to this separate planning that, though successful in their primary aim, that of identifying me, they were not successful in their ultimate aim, that of getting me into their power.
Early in June I received instructions from the Centre to meet a courier from France and hand over some money to him for the French network. I was given four different days as rendezvous. The first two inside the entrance of the funicular station at Ouchy, and the last two inside the main entrance of the Botanical Gardens at Geneva. All meetings were to be at midday and I was given the necessary passwords and control questions and also descriptions as to how both the courier and I were to be dressed. No one contacted me on the first three days and it was only at the last rendezvous, the second time I was at the Botanical Gardens, that an individual came up to me and we exchanged the correct passwords and I handed over the money.
The director had ordered me to have no conversation with the courier but merely to hand over the cash and go away. However, the courier handed over to me in his turn a large book done up in a bright orange paper and told me that between two of the pages I should find three ciphered messages which must be sent off urgently by radio to the Centre. He also said that he had valuable information which he wanted to get over and suggested a further meeting as soon as possible and named a place near Geneva- which was also very near the German- controlled French frontier.
All this made me very suspicious as such loquacity against strict orders was unusual in a Soviet agent. I began to suspect that perhaps the original courier had been arrested and his place taken by an Abwehr agent. The orange wrapping would serve as a convenient beacon light for anyone who was trailing me home, and the meeting place near the frontier would serve admirably for abduction in the best Gestapo traditions. As for the cipher messages- if these were also phony, then they would serve as admirable pointers towards identifying my transmitter. I had no doubt that the Germans had long been monitoring the network and if on one of the services that they were listening to they suddenly found the three messages they had planted it would at once identify that transmitter as mine.
I tried to dissemble my suspicions as much as I could and said that I could not attend a meeting that week as I had business elsewhere and so fixed on a meeting in a week's time. On leaving the rendezvous I hid the book as well as I could under my coat and returned home by a roundabout route, taking evasive action. In my next transmission I reported on this fully to the director and he agreed that I should not attend the meeting. As regarded the cipher messages, which were there as the courier had said, gummed between two pages and in a cipher that I did not know, the director asked me to send them over but so to disguise them with dummy groups and then by re-enciphering in my own cipher, that they would neither be recognisable as the original messages to the monitors nor serve as a guide to our cipher to the cryptographers.
A fortnight later the Centre informed me that my suspicions were correct and that the courier had been a German agent and that as I had been recognised by at least one member of the Abwehr I must regard myself in jeopardy and at least partially compromised. I was therefore to break all connection with Rado and his group and contact my own agents only through a system of cut-outs. I took this opportunity to break finally with Lorenz and Laura and told Moscow that this was because they had refused to deal with me through a cut-out. This was probably lucky for me as I learnt afterwards in Moscow that the Russians had discovered from captured German documents that I was to be kidnapped at my next rendezvous with Lorenz and taken to Germany.
From the end of June 1943 I had contact with Moscow only about twice a week, and the traffic was principally concerned with financial transactions and reporting on the liquidation of Anna and her group. As regarded finance, it was about this time that I started my most ambitious single financial transaction. I was arranging for the transfer of a hundred thousand dollars from the United States for our use in Switzerland. The innocent intermediary in this case was a Swiss firm with, of course, a branch in New York. The Centre was being more than usually tiresome and insisting that the money should be paid in ten separate instalments of ten thousand dollars each, while the Swiss company wanted it in a lump sum. The negotiations dragged on for months and it was not till the end of October that a compromise was finally reached whereby the money was to be paid in two equal sums of fifty thousand dollars each. In order to see fair play it had been arranged that the Swiss franc equivalent of this sum, three hundred thousand francs at the black market rate, should be paid into an account in the names of two lawyers, one to be nominated by each side. I approached a well-known Lausanne lawyer, known to me only by reputation, and asked if he would act for me, explaining that it was a normal business black market transaction. Unfortunately for me my arrest came just before the transfer could be made; this was, however, fortunate for the lawyer as otherwise he might have found himself in the embarrassing position of being the unwitting paymaster of a Russian spy.
After I had reported on the arrest of Anna and completed the preliminaries for the transfer of the hundred thousand dollars I had little to do, as I was now out of touch with Rado on Moscow's orders. As a result I got permission from the Centre to take a holiday and so in September I had a well-earned rest in Tessin, far away from the hurly-burly, excitement, and fatigue of international espionage.
In my absence, however, that precious pair, Lorenz and Laura, had not been idle. On my return I questioned my concierge Madame Muller as to whether anyone had been inquiring for me in my absence. She then told me that a couple, answering to the description of Lorenz and Laura, had been round and had tried to pump her as to my friends and my habits. The excuse that they gave was not uningenious. Laura said she was very worried as I had been at one time very much in love with her sister and had indeed not only promised to marry her but things had gone so far that it was imperative that I should marry her. However, at this stage my affections had apparently cooled off and they were trying to find out whether there was not perhaps another attraction which had seduced me from the charms of her sister. If there was someone, then they wished to contact them and warn them of my "true character" as a heartless seducer. They had also visited my charwoman, Helene, with a similar story, and had offered money to both in an endeavour to extract the information.
They were, however, singularly unsuccessful. The life of a Soviet agent leaves little time for romance. My day was far too full with contacting my sources, coding, decoding, and transmitting, for me to have any time for amorous dalliance. Any spare time I had I spent in a vain attempt to catch up on my arrears of sleep. I was also not such a fool as to meet my contacts in my flat, so that this little effort was almost useless from Lorenz's, or rather the Abwehr's, point of view. Not quite, however, as they obviously now knew my address and name as well as having my photograph.
Previously Lorenz had made one other effort to get me out of the way. After my arrest I learnt that the Swiss police had received a denunciation from the French Consulate General in July. The denunciation, as my name was then unknown to Lorenz, merely consisted of my photograph with a statement that the original of the photograph was an important Soviet spy who was working a radio transmitter from Lausanne. The police took no notice of this as they received hundreds of such denunciations each day, and it was only later that they connected this up with Rado and his network. This denunciation had obviously come from Lorenz, since only he had my photograph and he also had good connections with the French Deuxieme Bureau. The reason why Lorenz was anxious for me to be arrested by the Swiss, and only in the last resort by the Germans, was obvious. It arose from no nice feelings about shedding blood, but from a very lively sense of self-preservation. Not only was he being financed by the Abwehr but also he had been receiving large sums of money from me- none of which he had thought fit to declare to the Germans. Also he knew that if I were arrested I could give a fairly- complete picture of his past (which I had learnt from Moscow before I first contacted him), which details he was not anxious for the Germans to know. Over and above this he was living in Switzerland on Swiss papers and wished to go on living there after the war- a war which at that time he could see it was unlikely that Germany would win. It was therefore in his interest to keep his hands as clean as possible and get me safely shut up in a Swiss prison where I could do him no harm; but this must be arranged in such a way that he was kept out of it, or there might be awkward questions as to how exactly he knew all the facts. Hence the anonymous denunciation via the French.
After these efforts in the summer of 1943 Lorenz and Laura faded out of the story. I ascertained after my release that they were still living in their villa and for all I know may still be doing so. When in Moscow I was told that an N.K.V.D. man was being sent to Switzerland who would have, inter alia, the task of interviewing them. I can only hope that they enjoyed it and are still in a position to enjoy their handsome villa and their luxurious mode of life. I somehow think it unlikely that they are still in the net in the espionage sense of the word. If they returned to Russia the net would be more likely to have a literal rather than literary connotation with a strong flavour of labour camp about it.
I informed Moscow of this visit by Lorenz and Laura, and they replied that I must at once move and set up somewhere else in Switzerland. Easier said than done, as at that time I was again in constant radio touch with the Centre and to find another place and to get police permission to move there would take a very long time.
The reason for my daily contact with the Centre was that I was ordered to renew my contact with Rado. He also had been having Abwehr trouble and was anticipating more. In his case it had been partially sheer bad luck. One day in a restaurant he had come face to face with a former Soviet agent who before the war had gone over to the Germans. The agent recognised him and after this Rado believed that he was being watched by the Abwehr. He said that he thought that Margarete Bolli ("Rosie") was being watched also, and he had therefore taken her transmitter away for the moment. He gave no reason for Rosie's having fallen under suspicion and it was only later that I learnt that he had been committing one of the major espionage sins of mixing business with pleasure and had been having an affair with Rosie and that she had been in the restaurant with him when he was spotted.
Another cause for disquiet was that, during the time I had severed contact with Rado, two persons had gone to see Cissie (Rachel Duebendorfer, one of Rado's principal cut-outs), stating that they came from me, and had given both my real and my cover name, Jim. The latter meant nothing to Cissie as she did not know it and anyway we had never met- though we knew of each other's existence. She refused to have anything to do with them and stated that she had never heard of anybody called Foote, and "Jim" conveyed less than nothing to her. I can only assume that this was yet another attempt by the Abwehr to get into the network. Cissie was an old hand at the game, so they may have got her name as a result of interrogations of other captured agents elsewhere.
The Abwehr were not slow to take advantage of the lead given them by the accidental encounter of the traitor Soviet spy with Rado. They decided that Rosie was probably easier game and so concentrated their efforts on her. A handsome blond Aryan Abwehr agent, one Hans Peters, was put on the job. He managed "accidentally" to scrape an acquaintance with the girl and the acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship and more. Time lay heavy on her hands during the day, as she had nothing to do save transmit several nights a week, so she was not averse to having an attentive youth at her beck and call. He was able to take her out and give her a good time; and the Abwehr were not averse to paying for it.
In view of the recognition of Rado and the Cissie incident, Rado and I agreed to limit our contact to the minimum and meet only under cover of darkness. He also contacted the Swiss Communist Party and asked them to have hiding places ready for us if it became necessary for the organisation to go underground. From this time, the end of September, things moved swiftly forward to a crisis.