A Gathering of Spies (7 page)

“You remember?” Canaris pressed. “You trained this woman?”

Hagen nodded. “Of course I remember. She was my star pupil.”

“According to the file,” Canaris said, “she vanished in 1933. According to the file, she has not made contact since.”

“That is true.”

“You understand,
Herr
Hagen, how valuable she would be to us now if she were truly as skilled as the file claims. She has been in America for over ten years; she is thoroughly integrated. We would have many questions for her, if we could find her.”

“I understand, Admiral.”

“
Herr
Hagen, let me speak frankly.”

Canaris leaned forward. His eyes, already pointed, became razor-sharp.

“I am aware that differences exist between our agencies,” he said. “I do not wish to level any accusations. But I would not be surprised if certain facts available to the Gestapo were not immediately made available to me. Be that as it may, my only concern now is finding this agent. I have heard that you and she enjoyed a close professional relationship. And so I ask you—without requiring an explanation for why I haven't already been told, understand—I ask you now: Has this agent made contact with you during the past decade?”

“No,
Herr
Admiral, she has not.”

Hagen was no longer feeling nervous. Now he was feeling irritated. Katarina Heinrich was a subject that reminded him of an error in judgment he had made more than a decade before. And Canaris's words contained many implied insults, no matter how judiciously he phrased them.

Along with the irritation, he felt disdain. Canaris made it sound as if he had a great personal stake in infiltrating America and discovering valuable information before the Allies attempted their invasion. But in truth he was against Hitler, as Hagen knew and would someday prove; he was a traitor. He was asking, Hagen was certain, only on the
Führer
's personal orders.

“Do you think she could have made contact with anybody else during this time, without your knowledge?”

“No,
Herr
Admiral. I do not believe so.”

“Do you know of any other agents in America,
Herr
Hagen, of whom I might not be aware?”

“No,
Herr
Admiral.”

Canaris thinned his lips. He reached out and pulled the file back across the desk, then deposited it in his drawer.

“
Herr
Hagen,” he said, “if you do come into possession of any information which may be valuable in this matter, I request that you submit it to me immediately.”

“Of course,
Herr
Admiral.”

“Or if you happen to recall some contact which you cannot, for whatever reason, recall at this moment—”

“There was no such contact, Admiral. To my regret.”

“I see,” Canaris said. He looked dismayed, but this, Hagen thought, was also an act. Beneath the dismay, he was pleased. Another thing gone wrong for the
Führer
. Another chance that the Allies would take care of Hitler without Canaris and his cowardly conspirators ever having to extend themselves.

The disdain washed over him again. He could hardly keep it off his face. “That is all,
Herr
Admiral?” he said.

“That is all.”

Hagen rose, rapped his heels together smartly, and extended his right arm, held straight, with the palm facing Canaris. “
Heil
Hitler!” he said.

“
Heil
Hitler,” Canaris answered, somewhat lackadaisically.

Hagen turned and moved toward the door. Before stepping out, he looked over his shoulder at Canaris. The man was bent over his desk, making a note.

Traitor
, Hagen thought darkly.

What he would have given for agent V.1353 to be alive and operating in America, just so he could withhold that information from Canaris. What he would have given for agent V.1353 to resurface, priceless intelligence in hand, proving to one and all that his judgment had been flawless … proving that she really was the best of the best.

But he had given up hope long before.

Hagen faced front again and let himself out of Canaris's office.

3

HAM COMMON, SURREY

APRIL 1943

Rudolf Schroeder, alias Russell Webb, was a charming psychopath.

He sat in one of the rickety chairs in the damp, gray room, looking damnably comfortable. Except for the brief walks between his barracks and this chamber, he had not spent any time under the sun since his capture four months before, but his skin possessed the ruddy color that comes with natural good health. He had a handsome face, narrow in the cheeks and broad across the forehead, with a sharp hooked nose. His blond hair fell over the broad forehead in a curly lock. He smiled easily. His turquoise eyes sparkled. One would never guess, upon first acquaintance, that he was a psychopath; one would know only that he was charming.

Winterbotham sat in the chair across the table. Taylor was standing by the slit window, running the antenna of the suitcase radio out through the aperture. It was half past midnight, and they were preparing to make Schroeder's latest transmission to the
Abwehr
center in Hamburg.

Schroeder kept smiling at Winterbotham. The smile was making Winterbotham feel antsy. That, he guessed, was the point. He tried not to fidget, and, for the most part, succeeded.

On the table between them sat the AFU set with which
Abwehr
agents communicated with their home base. Beside the suitcase radio sat a variety of small parcels. Taylor had brought these gifts for Schroeder; he brought similar ones every time they met. To Winterbotham, it seemed as if Schroeder was a woman and Taylor his suitor. The parcels included chocolates, a carton of cigarettes, two paperback novels, several books of matches, and a bottle of adequate Scotch.

Schroeder popped one of the chocolates into his mouth and kept smiling at Winterbotham.

“Delicious,” he said in his heavily accented English. “Andrew, you've outdone yourself.”

“Only the best for you,” Taylor said from the window.

Schroeder kept staring at Winterbotham as he chewed, and smiled. “Next time I'd like a plant,” he said. “Some nice, hearty plant that could stay alive in my cell. I hunger for life. Could you do that for me, Andrew? A plant?”

“Perhaps I could manage it.”

“A spider plant,” Schroeder said. “Or—how do you call it?—a Wandering Jew.” He grinned even wider.

Winterbotham felt an urge to lean across the table and put his fist through that grin. He restrained himself.

This was his third time meeting Schroeder, and he liked the man less with repetition. Schroeder was the worst kind of spy, one with no real allegiances whatsoever. He had been an aristocrat in Germany, the son of a wealthy hotelier, and had spent much of his life working in his father's business. He had been invited to join the
Abwehr
only half a year before, when things in Russia had been going well and Hitler had been turning his thoughts back to an invasion of England. He had joined up happily, promising to infiltrate the enemy—nobody, including Schroeder, seemed to have realized how quickly his accent would give him away—and then send back intelligence that would pave the way for an invasion.

As soon as he was caught, however, he had turned into a double agent without putting up so much as a token resistance. It really made no difference to Schroeder, Winterbotham knew, which side he was fighting on. To him the war was just another distraction from his pampered life. He seemed to enjoy his new role as a double agent even more than he had enjoyed his initial role as a spy: It was juicier. Right now he was dressed in prisoner's overalls, gray, and soft shoes with no laces. He wore the outfit with pride, as if it were a costume and he were an actor in a play.

Winterbotham hoped that Schroeder felt more kindly disposed toward him than he did toward Schroeder. There would come a time, after all, when he would have to trust his life to this man—in fact, they had reached it already. It was always possible that Schroeder and his masters had worked out a system of signals that was still unknown to MI-5. A certain letter inserted into a Morse code message might indicate that everything that followed was false information. Or a tiny hesitation during the transmission, a missed beat or half beat at a certain time. All it would take was one clue that Taylor and his friends had overlooked.…

Schroeder kept grinning at him.

Taylor finished with the antenna, came back to the table, and switched on the transmitter. He spun the dial, finding the arranged frequency. Schroeder himself would key the message back to Hamburg, with Taylor watching closely to make sure he didn't play any tricks. Having Schroeder key the message himself was a necessary risk. A man's Morse code style is as unique and distinctive as his fingerprints: If somebody besides Schroeder were to send the message, the Nazis would know immediately.

Finally, Taylor pulled up a third chair, reached into his briefcase, and produced a file. He passed it to Schroeder, who opened and read it, still chewing his sweets and looking bored.

“I've been busy,” he remarked.

“You have,” Taylor agreed.

Winterbotham had already read the file. It contained details of Schroeder's supposed discoveries over the previous two weeks. While working at his pub near the War Office, he had overheard two officers talking about a new anodizing process being experimented with by the navy. He had noticed increased numbers of servicemen on a train line that terminated in the vicinity of Portsmouth. And, most striking of all, he had approached for the second time a hoary old professor who had been spending a lot of time at the pub lately. Said professor seemed extremely disenchanted with his work for Military Intelligence. With permission from the
Abwehr
, Schroeder would now proceed to the next step—broaching, with this professor, the subject of spying for the Germans.

“I must say,” Schroeder said, “that I'm rather pleased with my success. I must be something of a hero in Berlin these days.”

Taylor lit a cigarette and offered a dry smile.

“If only it were true,” Schroeder said. “Imagine the reception when I returned home. Imagine the women!”

He launched into a dissertation on the women in Germany, who were, he felt, the most beautiful in the world. This segued into a story about one of his last nights in Hamburg, spent at the Valhalla Klub in the red-light district. The Valhalla Klub was famous for its system of telephones connecting the tables. When one saw a young woman of whom one felt enamored, one simply picked up the phone and placed a call. In Schroeder's case, however, the women had been taking the initiative and calling
him
. He had always fared well with women. One time, he and three friends had spent a weekend in Venice …

Winterbotham listened with half an ear. He was waiting for the correct moment to spring his surprise on Taylor. Ten minutes remained before they made contact with Hamburg. He decided that the time was right. He cleared his throat.

“Andrew,” he said.

“Hm?” Taylor said absently.

“A figure like you've never seen,” Schroeder said. “
Mein Gott
, this one …”

“Perhaps I should be mentioned by name in this report,” Winterbotham said. “Perhaps he should ask for information on the whereabouts of my wife. If he were to find that she were still alive, that could be a strong motivating factor for my treason.”

Schroeder paused in mid-boast. He and Taylor both turned to look at Winterbotham. For several seconds, nobody moved; then the German took another chocolate and popped it into his mouth, chewing slowly.

“Harry,” Taylor said. “May I have a word with you outside, please?”

They moved a dozen feet down the concrete hallway. Taylor stopped. He looked at Winterbotham with icy eyes, then said: “What the hell was that?”

“It makes perfect sense,” Winterbotham said. “I go into the pub every night and drink a few pints and talk about my wife. Schroeder gets an idea. If he were to find that she is alive, somewhere, that would provide a strong incentive for my—”

“For Christ's sake, Harry, what do you think you're doing?”

“Only trying to be helpful.”

“If you're trying to be
helpful
,” Taylor hissed, “do me a favor, old chap. Take it up with me in my office in Whitehall. Not in the presence of an enemy agent. Not ten minutes before we broadcast!”

“It just occurred to me.”

“Like hell it did,” Taylor said.

“You must admit—”

“You've had this idea in your head the whole bloody time, haven't you?”

Winterbotham said nothing.

“You've had this idea in your head the whole bloody time,” Taylor said again. He had become incensed to the point of repeating himself.

“Andrew—”

“I'll tell you something, Harry. I'll tell you something right now. This is the greatest secret of the war. The greatest goddamn secret of the war. And we're not going to jeopardize it for one man, no matter how much he might miss his wife. And you've no goddamn business pulling this on me, either. Not here, not now. No goddamn business.”

“Andrew—”

“Oh, now I see. Now I see. How could I not have seen it before?”

“You make it sound as if I planned this.”

“Next, no doubt, you'll threaten to withdraw your cooperation if we don't play along.”

Again, Winterbotham said nothing. That was precisely what he planned to threaten next. That was why he had waited to make the suggestion—so that the months already spent arranging the ploy, training him, developing him in the eyes of Hamburg, would be on his side. They
could
cut him loose now, he knew, and start developing some other story involving some other disenchanted Military Intelligence agent, but it would set them back.

“Good bloody Jesus Christ,” Taylor said, disgusted.