A Gathering of Spies (4 page)

It has nothing to do with me
, Winterbotham thought.

He sat and smoked pipe after pipe, and he kept thinking,
It has nothing to do with me, nothing to do with me
.

When the sun came up, he found Taylor's card and made a call.

2

HAM COMMON, SURREY

JANUARY 1943

The road meandered past St. Andrew's Church, wandering through gently rolling hills, over a landscape glitter-bright with pinpricks of frost. Winterbotham, gazing out his window, found himself appreciating the view. The trees were skeletal but lovely in a rather bleak way that appealed to him. One forgot the small pleasures of nature, he reflected, when one spent all one's time in the city. She was bleak and she was harsh, but she was also beautiful. And she would outlast them all—the war, the generals, the games, the bombs, the madmen, the soldiers, all of it.

Taylor, sitting beside him, noticed the appreciative look on his face.

“It's pretty,” he said, “isn't it?”

Winterbotham nodded. “The war seems very far away,” he murmured.

“It does indeed. But that's deceptive, old chap. The real war is being fought—and won—not very far from here. Not very far at all.”

“The real war?” Winterbotham said.

“Well, some might take exception with that. The ones doing the fighting, for instance.” Taylor was watching him with bright, eager eyes. “But it's true nonetheless. Our boys in the field would be doing a lot worse if we weren't doing what we're doing here. Take my word for it.”

Now the car was moving alongside a low stone wall, approaching a gate festooned with barbed wire. Winterbotham could see two guards, machine guns in hand, coming forward to meet them.

“What, exactly,
are
we doing here?” he asked.

Taylor smiled. “That's what you're about to find out, old chap. And if you're having second thoughts, now's the time. Once we go through that gate, there's no turning back.”

They pulled up to the gate.

Winterbotham held his tongue.

“Good afternoon,” Taylor said politely, handing his papers to the stone-faced guard outside his window.

Latchmere House, behind the low walls, behind the curls of barbed wire, between the spill of hastily constructed barracks, was a pale-green monstrosity.

The building, three rambling stories of damp and mildew, had been built as a mental hospital after the Great War. The army had found euphemisms to disguise Latchmere's true purpose; they had called it a “home”—so much nicer than “hospital”—for “victims of shell shock”—so much nicer than “mental patients.” But the architecture screamed “lunatic asylum,” and there was no mistaking it. The windows were narrow slits, far too small for a man to slip through. The rooms were bare, dark, drafty, and draconian.

Taylor ushered him into a small chamber furnished with one small table and two rickety chairs. Grayish sunshine filtered in. The air smelled sour and earthy, like the air in a fruit cellar.

“Have a seat,” Taylor said grandly, “and I'll tell you the greatest secret of the war.”

More dramatics
, Winterbotham thought. But he sat, settling his bulk carefully into an unsteady chair, and took out his pipe.

A small suitcase was resting on the table. Winterbotham looked it over curiously as he packed his orange-flavored tobacco. The case was tarnished metal, compact and nondescript. It was slightly too squat for a chessboard. He considered asking about it, and then decided that Taylor would explain in due time. This was Taylor's show, after all, and he had to let Taylor go ahead as he liked—unnecessary drama and all.

Taylor sat in the other chair, produced a cigarette, and waited until Winterbotham had his pipe going before lighting it. Then he leaned back, crossed his pudgy legs at the ankles, and said, “It's rather a lot to digest, what I'm about to tell you. Stop me if I go too fast.”

“Never fear,” Winterbotham said.

“You remember what I said the last time we met—about playing games?”

Winterbotham nodded. “Playing games is what you do.”

“Not just us. Hitler, too. He and his friend Canaris.”

Winterbotham nodded again. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was one of Hitler's more infamous cronies—the head of the Nazi intelligence service, the
Abwehr
.

“Would you care to guess, Harry, how many spies the
Abwehr
has sent to England since the early thirties?”

“I wouldn't have any idea.”

“Well, we would, thank God. About a hundred. And that doesn't include the Brits who sold us out to the Nazis—there are a few of those, too.”

He waited to see what impact this revelation would have on Winterbotham. Winterbotham waited to see how long Taylor would wait. Finally, Taylor cleared his throat, disappointed, and continued.

“Now, here's the good part,” he said. “Of those hundred-odd agents, Harry, we've captured … How many would you guess?”

“I wouldn't have any idea.”

“All of them,” Taylor said, and grinned.

This time Winterbotham couldn't help himself. He blinked with surprise. “
All
of them?”

“Every last one.”

“How can you be sure?”

“We weren't, at first. But as time went on … Suffice it to say that if we had missed even one, Harry, we would know about it by now—for reasons that will become clear in a moment. We got most of them right at the start of the war. In September of thirty-nine, we rounded up all the enemy aliens in the country. We went over each case individually. If there was any doubt, we interned them. They're not made of terribly stern stuff, these
Abwehr
agents, and few of them have any training worth mentioning. They cracked quickly. And then … What do you think we did then?”

“You hanged them, no doubt.”

“Some of them, yes. But some of them, we realized, could be of more value to us alive … and so we started Double Cross.”

“Double Cross?”

“That's what this place is,” Taylor said. He made an expansive gesture with the hand holding the cigarette. “The headquarters of Operation Double Cross. The greatest misinformation campaign ever conducted in war or in peace. We have dozens of
Abwehr
agents here, Harry, and they're all working for us. They use these”—he tapped the suitcase on the table—“these radios to send intelligence back to Hamburg. But in reality, everything they say is coming from us. Do you see?”

Winterbotham nodded slowly. “You're feeding them worthless information.”

“Not …” Taylor trailed off.

Winterbotham read his face in an instant. Taylor may have had his talents in this world, but concealing his thoughts was not among them.

“Andrew,” Winterbotham said mildly, “if we're going to be working together, it goes without saying that I'll require your full confidence.”

Taylor frowned. “Of course,” he said, but he didn't look pleased. He cleared his throat. “Not exactly worthless,” he said. “And that's where it gets tricky. We can't simply feed them worthless information, or they'd realize that their spies have been compromised. No, Harry, the intelligence has to be true, at least for the most part. If Canaris loses faith in his spies, the jig is up, as they say—and we'll need the operation to be in good working order as the war goes on. Whenever we send troops back to the mainland, next year or the year after, we'll use Double Cross as our ace in the hole. We'll make sure Hitler expects the landing to be exactly where it won't be.”

“So you're sending true information?”

Again, he could see Taylor hesitate.

“It's extremely delicate,” Taylor said then. “Yes, the bulk of the information is true. But of course, we don't want to help our friend Canaris too much, or he might just win the war. We walk a very fine line here, Harry. Sometimes we provide intelligence of some value—it's a sacrifice that has to be made. Sometimes we put a bit of a spin on the truth. If there's an accident at an airfield, we'll let one of their spies take credit for it, claiming sabotage. Sometimes we'll manufacture something out of whole cloth that will seem, to reconnaissance planes, to be real. We have all sorts of people working for Double Cross. All sorts. Chess champions. Musicians. Crossword puzzle enthusiasts. Illusionists—magicians. Once we used mirrors to make one tank look like thirty. And they believed it.”

Winterbotham whistled.

Taylor nodded, finally satisfied with the effect he had created.

“But you must appreciate the fragility of our situation,” he went on. “We have all sorts of fictions, mixed in with the truth, going out over these little suitcase radios. All it would take to raise suspicion is one
Abwehr
agent that we missed—just one—sending a report that goes against everything else. If
one single agent
slips through our trap, Harry, the whole operation could be compromised.”

“It sounds dicey.”

“It is. So you can see why I needed a total commitment from you. As I said, this is the best-kept secret of the war, and, if I may allow myself the conceit, the most important.”

“Yes, I can see.”

“So, you'll forgive me my theatrics?”

Winterbotham made a loose gesture.

Taylor frowned. He took a long drag from his cigarette. The paper crackled. He exhaled a rafter of smoke toward the ceiling, then said, “Those are only the basics of Operation Double Cross. There's more to it, of course. In fact, it's phenomenally complicated. We need our intelligence to seem
real
, Harry, and we go to great lengths to create that impression. We try to keep our pet agents here at Latchmere for as little time as possible. Once we're convinced they can be trusted, we put them back out into England, doing whatever it is Canaris thinks they're doing. They live with their case officer, who conducts the surveillance that they are supposed to be conducting. Then, together, they go over what intelligence will be sent, what will be held back, what will be spun.”

“What if they don't prove as trustworthy as you think?”

“Then they hang,” Taylor said.

He looked at Winterbotham levelly.

“Hm,” Winterbotham said.

“I won't keep anything from you, Harry. It's a bloody business. Sometimes they go bad, and sometimes they need some extra convincing to turn in the first place. We try to keep everything friendly, for obvious reasons. We want them to be satisfied in their work for us. In fact, we damn near pamper them, trying to keep them happy. But it doesn't always work out.”

Winterbotham said nothing.

“Our hands are far from clean,” Taylor said. “In our effort to keep Canaris in the dark about Double Cross, we've had to make sacrifices. We've had to pretend not to know about enemy operations that we did know about. There have been difficult decisions, and there have been casualties. Civilian casualties. Casualties that could have been avoided … but at the cost of the entire operation.”

Winterbotham nodded shortly.

“It's not pleasant,” Taylor said.

“No.”

“But it must be done.”

“I suppose.”

“Don't suppose. It's a fact.”

“Mm.”

Taylor looked at him for a moment. He bit his lower lip. Then he nodded in agreement with some secret thought. “Somebody has to take the responsibility,” he said softly. “It's not easy, Harry. But it must be done.”

Winterbotham set his pipe down on the table. “What do you want from me?” he asked.

“Three weeks ago—when I first got in touch with you—we received a new crop. Four agents, straight from Hamburg. Two of them parachuted in. One came on a U-boat and then paddled ashore in a dinghy. One came in under a false passport—Swiss. We got all of them, of course. As soon as they arrived, they got in touch with their contacts here. And their contacts work for us.”

“They're here now, at Latchmere?”

“Three of them are, yes.”

“Where's the fourth?”

“She chose not to cooperate,” Taylor said, and left it at that.

Winterbotham picked up his pipe again. It had gone out. He held it without relighting it.

“Of the remaining three,” Taylor continued after a moment, “there is one of particular interest to us here at Double Cross. His name is Rudolf Schroeder, although his papers call him Russell Webb. His assignment is to find work in a pub in the vicinity of the War Office. He's to listen to the conversation, get a feeling for the atmosphere, and keep his eyes open for a possible convert. You understand what I'm saying?”

“He's looking for someone to turn.”

“Precisely. Men come into the pub after a hard day of work and have a few pints, and their tongues loosen. Perhaps they talk about what they're working on, or perhaps they complain about their bosses. If anybody complains too much, Schroeder moves in. He makes an offer. Straight forward—quid for service. And of course, a place of honor in their magnificent thousand-year Reich when this is all over.”

“Hm.”

“As far as the
Abwehr
knows,” Taylor said, “Schroeder is doing remarkably well. He's already found work in a pub, and he's settled into a boardinghouse that doesn't suspect him. He's sent back his first few reports. Nothing very earth-shaking: weather data, a few words about British morale, some demands for more spending money. But sometime soon, within the next few weeks, Schroeder is going to accomplish something far more impressive. He's going to find the perfect candidate for turning. He's going to make contact, and he's going to have spectacular success.”

“I see.”

“All fabricated, you understand. But the appearance of truth is vital.”

“Yes.”

“To create the appearance of truth, Harry, we need to cleave very close to the
actual
truth.”