The Spy Net (24 page)

The general’s attitude demonstrated how little interest the German government had at that time in armaments, for certainly no one could have doubted the old gentleman’s loyalty. It was part of the apathy which marked much of German official life directly after the war, existing in anomalous fashion side by side with the far more positive forces of inventive activity and rebellious secret organisations sworn to avenge the German defeat.

Inventions of the sort which I have been describing, bought from foreigners, have of course a limited value to the purchasing nation. They are almost invariably sold to half a dozen other nations as well, in spite of promises to the contrary. Von G. I could trust, but I am sure that the astute little lady who figured in the robot invention did not miss any of the markets open to her. Each buyer was no doubt sworn to secrecy, as we were. The most valued invention or secret formula is that which is known, and can be known, only to the nation which produced it; necessarily it comes from one of the nation’s own nationals – usually an expert employed by the government for such work, or an employee of some great engineering or chemical works which is in close contact with government activities.

However, to prevent surprise, a nation must always know of every device that can be used against it in war. This knowledge also often enables a country to make improvements on their own
creations, or even give their inventors and experts the germ of an idea which might lead to some other invention; it may supply the missing link in some revolutionary device of their own, which is still in the experimental stage. The pursuit of these new devices is one of the most exciting activities of secret service, and the unusual fecundity of German genius in such matters directly after the war made the investigation unusually absorbing. But even as I moved about my work, excited and keyed up to the demands of it as I was, I could not help reflecting that it was a wasteful round of death producing means of death, the needy inventing means of destruction rather than production. I longed to harness all this brilliance and power to a concentrated force for living.

T
HE OCCUPATION OF
the Ruhr was in full swing, and the separatist movement for the creation of an independent Rhineland Republic was being actively pushed by the French. The British government had protested, and the British press, with no uncertain voice, was proclaiming that the French were not out for reparations, but only for further destruction of their hereditary enemy. Its correspondents were reporting each move of the French. Feeling was running high, not only in Germany, but also in the rest of Europe. The British intelligence service in Cologne was also proving a thorn in the side of their former ally. It was no use for France to pretend
that she was not sponsoring the separatist movement, for all her intrigues and plans were being uncovered by British agents. The Germans were fairly beaming with an appreciation of the British attitude, and were openly talking of a split between the Allies.

This was the atmosphere when one evening during one of my many discussions with General von G., he ingeniously switched the conversation to secret service.

‘I have been told,’ he said over the coffee and kirsch (its age having as usual been mentioned), ‘that you were in charge of the military section of the British secret service in Holland. Are you still occupied with it?’

I looked at him astounded. My surprise did not spring from this sudden reference to my connection with the British secret service, for I was aware that the Germans knew all about me from Holland; but I could see that he was leading up to some proposal, and I was amazed that a German should fancy my former service to be of any use to their Reich.

I said nothing, however, and he went on, ‘If you are, I have an interesting proposition to make to you. After the Armistice, our secret service grant was stopped entirely, and the German secret service ceased to exist. But it has been brought to life again, and the chief is one of my friends. He is seriously handicapped for funds. Why don’t you get your people to allow you to co-operate with him? You need information about France, just as we do. Now wait,’ he hurried on, silencing an objection he saw on the way; ‘I realise perfectly that the British secret service cannot risk involving itself, but don’t you see how perfectly natural it is that we should? I suggest that you get the British secret service to supply part of the funds, and we will supply the agents,
sharing the information obtained with you. You would be the sole intermediary, and nothing could ever be traced to the British.’

This struck me as an extraordinarily naive proposition, for I did not agree with the general that the Germans could risk being involved in secret service activities against France; the French were in the Ruhr and so could inflict any penalties they desired. Besides, how could the Germans be sure the British would not report the matter to the French? The fact that the British opposed the Ruhr occupation was no proof that even in a matter of secret service they would support the German power. I was convinced of the general’s honesty. I had been so often in his home that I knew he would not wittingly deceive me; so I attributed this very dubious plan to overzealousness on his part. I agreed, however, to meet a delegate from the German secret service so as to discuss the matter first hand.

The meeting eventually took place at the Fürstenhof Hotel, just off the Potsdamerplatz, where General von G. introduced me to one Major von Tresckow. I was faced by a man with hard steel-grey eyes, and stiff, close-cropped dark hair, whose carriage and manner immediately betrayed him to be an army officer. For a moment we stood and looked at each other, each sizing the other up. I was quite prepared for a cross-examination and a gradual leading up to the point, but instead, after informing me that he was representing his chief, he wasted no time in repeating verbatim the general’s proposal. His chief evidently knew all about me. No question was asked about my identity nor about my secret service connections.

Now I was really astonished. It was obviously a serious proposition. I refrained from committing myself, but tried to
draw out von Tresckow to find out how he intended operating. He refused, however, to discuss the matter further until I had found out whether on principle the British secret service would co-operate. If the answer was in the affirmative he promised to present a concrete scheme to me, but warned me that we would not be put in touch with the agents themselves; the only basis of co-operation would be the exchange of German reports for a monthly sum from the British, which could be stopped at any time if the information seemed unsatisfactory. I jibbed a bit at this, suggesting that it would please headquarters better to pay for each piece of information according to its value. But both of us agreed that no definite details could be discussed until I had the chief’s permission to proceed with the negotiations.

The subject closed, the general ordered coffee. For the next half-hour we exchanged reminiscences about Holland, and discussed at some length the Cavell affair, the general loud in his denunciation of the criticism which the Germans had brought on themselves in the matter, whereas the much sharper von Tresckow saw that the execution was a colossal tactical blunder.

I eventually took my leave, promising von Tresckow to communicate with him through the general as soon as I had received a reply from the chief.

I had no idea what attitude the chief would take, for although it was a wonderful opportunity, and I knew all nations spy on each other, however friendly their relations may be, yet there were obvious complications in this case. The only possible method to employ would be one which gave both sides a loophole for complete denial in case of need, for I realised neither service
would trust the other completely. Such a plan could, however, be devised, and so I waited curiously for a decision.

The chief did not keep me long in suspense: he instructed me to drop the matter completely. What his reasons were, he never told me.

In this attempt the typical optimism and miscalculation of the Germans was as obvious as it was in their attitude on the war guilt or the Cavell case; in spite of their cleverness in other fields, they have invariably failed in diplomacy, and never seem to have been able to foresee the response which foreign nations would have either to their acts or their proposals. It is not that they are deceitful. I am sure that in this matter they were acting in perfectly good faith. It was purely a case of bad judgement. They entirely misinterpreted the British motives in opposing the French concerning the Ruhr.

That the German secret service was short of funds did not surprise me in the least. It is the cry of all secret services in peacetime, and even of some during war. Before the war, the British secret service grant was negligible, and even after it, on the occasion of my transfer to Berlin, I saw C worrying over a sheet of figures to see how he could possibly cover the ground. The Belgian secret service suffered from this same handicap during the war. It would be interesting to relate what part of a country’s revenue is earmarked for secret service, but that is one of the things which, as Kipling says, is another story – and it is not mine to tell.

The German proposal that we should use foreign agents to spy on another country, especially a friendly one, is common practice. When it is announced in the newspapers that an
American subject has been arrested in Europe on a charge of espionage, the one country it is certain he was not spying for is the United States. The name of Major von Tresckow was, of course, fictitious; this, coupled with the fact that I had met him in the lobby of an hotel, would have enabled the Germans to repudiate the whole affair if the British had reported the matter to the French.

General von G. was greatly disappointed with the decision; he had hoped to be appointed as the intermediary to deal with me. It would have put him once more on the active pay list, which would have increased his sadly diminished income.

I felt very sorry for the old general. In civilian life he was a fish out of water. Everything around him had changed, and he was at the age when it was difficult for him to adapt himself. With me he was a great favourite: his peppery disposition, his crashing voice, which seemed eternally ringing across a parade ground, and his grandiose mannerisms were a continual source of amusement, though I would never have dared to show it. The pathos of his situation was not limited to his own case; he was representative of a type. Formerly a masterful man of action, he was, like many an old officer of the imperial regime, reduced to the position of an opportunist, if not an intriguer. It is to his credit that his schemes were so obvious, so futile, so hopeless of results; their lack of cleverness proved them to be new and awkward channels of action.

C
EASELESS ACTIVITY, AND
the stirring, rapidly changing events through which I had lived during the intervening years, had already dimmed my memory of those delightful evenings which I had spent with Tania and her brother in The Hague, when I found myself suddenly plunged into the vortex of Russian life in Berlin.

One could not miss the Russians in Berlin; there were thousands of them there, more than in any of the other large capitals of Europe. Many of them, especially the wives and daughters, were very popular with the members of the control commission and with some of the attachés of the different embassies, and it was in this milieu that I first became acquainted with them.

I was delighted. All of them had travelled much, and had lived
interesting lives. In addition to listening to the adventures which they had gone through during the revolution and in escaping from Russia, I heard graphic descriptions of Russia, Turkestan, and Siberia, and tales about the Cossacks and the Kirghiz. Most of them had lived at the Russian court, and had a stock of stories about the Tsar and the baneful influence of the superstitious Tsarina on her weak husband, about the Grand Dukes, the court balls, and the lavish entertainments that went on in Petrograd and Moscow before the revolution, and about Rasputin and the scandals connected with him.

Some of them had been with the White armies of Kolchak, Youdenish, Denikin, or Wrangel; they were quite willing to recognise their own mistakes, but from their recital of events, it was quite evident that they had been left in the lurch by the Allies. There was no excuse for the betrayal of Kolchak by the Czechs. It amazed me constantly to see the tolerance with which they took this major catastrophe. It was, however, the same fatalistic attitude which I had known among the Russian refugees in Paris – an air so compounded of stoicism and apparent frivolity that one scarcely knew how to judge them.

Things did not go so badly for these refugees at the start. Some had been able to get hold of a certain amount of money in foreign currencies before they escaped, others had been able to secure their jewels. Accustomed, however, to luxury and extravagance, most of them spent every penny they possessed before trying to engage themselves in some occupation which could secure for them a livelihood. Berlin had practically nothing to offer them in the way of fixed employment; thousands of its own people were out of work. They could not get out of Germany, as
they had no passports; the League of Nations had not yet started issuing them, and they had no inclination to ask them of their Bolshevik enemies, who had now been recognised by the Germans as the
de facto
government.

All that remained then was to join the band of financial adventurers with which Berlin swarmed. Some were remarkably successful; the majority failed completely, and how they ever got enough to eat was a mystery to me. I felt dreadfully sorry for these refugees scattered over the face of the earth; they were not only here, but in every capital of Europe. Many years later, when I visited China, I even found them in Shanghai, half-starved, living in the filth and squalor of the Chinese quarter.

Although as a class they could be criticised for their treatment of the Russian people, and for the mess which they had made not only in governing, but in refusing to see the writing on the wall months ahead, and for their futile attempts to stop the revolution when it did come; yet, for the most part, as individuals, they were not responsible for a system which had been handed down for generations, and which they had learned to accept as part of their heritage. They endured adversity with an astounding philosophy; they were always willing to help each other by sharing whatever they had, and they were invariably cheerful, at least on the surface, even though perhaps they did not have the price of a meal in their pockets.

Some of them held up under the strain; others it broke. Prince K., a former governor of Riga, worked in a department store, and could smile at the strange tricks fate had played him, while poor Prince Pavlik O. took to drugs, and died as a result shortly afterwards. He was the son of the former Russian ambassador
to Italy, and, in addition to vast estates, had owned most of the sugar-mills in Russia. For a while he lived on the money which a rich Romanian friend had loaned him. After this, he went around fruitlessly trying to sell an interest in his mills, which he was still in hopes would be returned to him someday. Von Malzahn, who was then in the Foreign Office, and who was later the German ambassador in Washington, was very kind to him. They had known each other when von Malzahn was a young attaché in Petrograd before the war. Prince O. took me around to see him one evening. As we sat and talked, I could see the look of pity in von Malzahn’s eyes; he remembered Prince O. in better days.

Where you have Russians, there you will have parties, restaurants, cabarets, and clubs. They love to gather together for a celebration, and above all to talk. Every one of them is a musician; they all know their folk-songs, and love not only to listen but to participate in them. On festive occasions, in their private homes and elsewhere, the meals are always accompanied by bursts of song which produce a general spirit of camaraderie and an indescribable gaiety. Russian friends of mine will remember the palatial flat which I had just off the Kurfurstendamm; I could afford it during the inflation. Here, when I could spare the time, we assembled and sang those never-to-be-forgotten gipsy songs to the accompaniment of a guitarist who was a master. He was an old Turk, who had played before many a Grand Duke; their names and those of many others were inscribed on his instrument.

Sakuskis – hors d’oeuvres which the Russians can consume by the hour – and vodka were plentiful, and we drank innumerable toasts; I learned to drink my first
charochka
, an intimate ritual
among friends where each in turn has a toast sung to him while he drains his glass to the last drop.

As far as restaurants were concerned, it was at Olivier’s on the Motzstrasse that we generally gathered. Olivier had been head chef to the Tsar, and his cooking gave me a taste for Russian food which ever since has led me off in search of a Russian restaurant in whatever town I have visited. Alas, I have often suffered, for every Russian is not a good cook. It was at Olivier’s, too, that I heard those gipsy entertainers, the very best in Tsarist Russia, who had followed the
émigrés
into exile. Who can equal Gulescu, or even Iliescu on the violin, or Raphael on the accordion, or the deep-throated notes of Nastia Poliakova, in their rendering of this haunting music? For those who wish to hear them, they are now probably to be found in Paris at the Restaurant Muscovite in the rue Caumartin, at ‘La Maisonette’, or at Casanova’s; some, perhaps, are still in Berlin.

It was not all amusement or self-deception with the Russians in Berlin. A good many of them seriously tried to retrieve their fortunes, and it was quite natural that they should turn their attention to their own country. Their schemes generally involved some sort of concession, which the Bolsheviks, pressed for money, were now granting to foreign capitalists. In the background, one frequently found some White Russian acting as technical adviser. At first I listened to the typical Russian enthusiasm surrounding these plans with friendly indifference, but as I thought over the possibilities, my professional interest and my personal curiosity sprang into a new hope. My affairs in Germany were hanging fire; I had options on at least a dozen interesting inventions, and had spent considerable time and
money investigating them and trying to dispose of them, only to see a lack of vision and fear of losing money prevent industrial concerns from investing in them readily. Many of these companies today, I know, regret their lack of courage. It was natural, then, that I should grasp at the opportunity to find myself a new field. And here it was.

I spent hours with former Russian owners, going over plans for concessions of every description: manganese, timber, oil, river transportation on the Volga, pigs’ bristles, casings, and trading in every form. Eventually, encouraged by the success of the German concessions of Dr Wirth and others, I set out for London to arrange a trip to Moscow.

In London, among the many English holders of Russian bonds, among owners of confiscated property in Russia, and in the various commercial circles, I discovered a great deal of interest in these concessions, and found myself rushed into a series of interviews at the clubs – if not at the Junior Carlton or White’s, then at the Devonshire or St James’s.

All this culminated in a small holding company being formed by half a dozen persons, of whom one was a peer, one the wife of a baronet, one the director of a steel works, and another a director of a large company trading with India. I was commissioned by this group to proceed to Moscow to negotiate for a general trading concession on the most favourable terms I could secure. It was planned, when this had been obtained, to float a larger company, to include manufacturers who would be interested in buying from or selling to Russia. In the new company I was to have a directorship.

On leaving London, I felt that I was undertaking quite an
adventure, for it was early in 1924, and a departure for Russia was still considered news by the papers. So far only a very few foreigners had been allowed to enter the country, and the number of Englishmen had been confined to a few isolated cases. Forced by necessity, a few European concessions were being granted, but if my journey were successful, mine would be the first trade agreement, on a concession basis, made between Russia and an English company. It was quite obvious that foreigners were not wanted at all in the country, and, of course, tourists were unheard of.

I did not think I was incurring any risks by entering Russia, but I did feel that I was taking a journey into the unknown. I had heard enough about Bolshevik atrocities and about the Cheka, or its successor, the GPU, to make me feel uncomfortable, and the long wait of three weeks before Moscow sent permission for my visa to be granted was not heart-warming. Possibly this was simply the usual Russian delay, to which I became accustomed later on; possibly my association with the secret service was known to the Russian Police, and they felt inclined to question my motives and arrange for a supervision of my movements. Watched in Russia I certainly was – but of that later; in my last days in England it was not any dread of espionage that haunted me, and kept me arguing continually to myself that, after all, mine was a simply harmless commercial enterprise. It was rather, I think, the feeling one has in walking over a trackless plain in the dark, in unfamiliar country: the new Russia was unpredictable, a completely unknown quantity, and I was uneasy before it as one is always uneasy before blankness.

On my arrival in Berlin, where I intended stopping over a
couple of days, my mission took on an entirely different aspect. No sooner did my Russian friends hear that I was on my way to Moscow, than I was besieged by requests. Each in turn wanted me to do something for him – to look up relatives or friends, or to examine some piece of property, the return of which was still hoped for. I promised to do my best, and said goodbye to them with a feeling of sadness. I realised that the very fact of my journey must fill them anew with the ache of homesickness; I was on my way to their native land, which, perhaps, they would never see again.

I was packing my bags in great haste at the Adlon Hotel when a telephone message announced that Prince M. was in the lobby and wished to see me. Asked up to my room, he announced on entering that he had an important matter which he wished to discuss with me.

‘I can’t give you much time,’ I replied. ‘I am leaving by the eight o’clock train, and it is now six; I still have to pack and get my dinner.’ What he had to tell me, however, was of such interest that I delayed my departure without objection for twenty-four hours.

Prince M. was one of the few Russians in Berlin who was still comparatively well off. Before the war, he had maintained a palatial home in Paris, in which he had placed a few of the priceless old masters from his magnificent private collection in Russia. He had been fortunate enough to get a good price for them, and had been living on the proceeds. When I first met him I had mistaken him for a Scot: he spoke English with a pronounced Scottish accent, acquired from his boyhood governess. She had spent thirty years in his family, and had remained with them in Russia until about six months previously, when the family had
persuaded her at last to return to Scotland. I had met her on her way through Berlin, and had been amused at the similarity of their speech.

I had seen quite a lot of Prince M. in Berlin, and from him had learned a great deal about his family history. He worried continually about his old father, who still remained in Leningrad in spite of his many endeavours to get a visa from the Bolsheviki to leave the country. ‘They are after our family jewels,’ he told me on several occasions. ‘Our emeralds are famous throughout Russia, and the Bolsheviki refuse to believe my father’s story that I escaped with them. That is why they are holding him.’ Naturally then, I was all attention on the evening of my departure, when he spoke once more about the jewels.

‘My father has them hidden away. The stones have been removed from their settings, and it will be simple to transport them,’ he urged eagerly. ‘I will give you the password which the governess brought me from my father, so that you will be secretly identified at home. Are you willing to bring them out for me? It is purely a business proposition; I can pay you £500 if you are successful.’

My first impulse was to refuse, for the money did not interest me in the least. I certainly placed a higher value on my safety. I was already nervous about my trip, and I knew that should I be caught, there would be trouble. I did not relish getting involved with the Bolsheviki; they had already demonstrated that they were not afraid to mete out the severest punishment to foreigners. My love of adventure carried me off, however, and before I was well aware what I was doing, I had told Prince M. that I would not accept the money, but that I was willing to undertake
the job. Armed with the password and the address of his father in Leningrad, I continued my journey the next evening, considerably more perturbed in mind than when I had left London. I reproached myself for giving way too easily. Here I was on a trip to Russia to arrange a concession in which I hoped to build up a future, and yet I was jeopardising it right from the start by engaging myself on a foolhardy side-issue. But I knew myself well enough to be aware that, had I been able to withdraw, I would not have done so.