The Company of Strangers (6 page)

They talked about his work at Heidelberg University and recent developments in physics. The man was knowledgeable, not expert, but he understood. The words ‘fissionable material’, ‘critical mass’, ‘chain reaction’ and ‘atomic pile’ were not mysterious concepts.

The conversation switched from physics to the Russians. Voss expressed his fear of them:

‘They have no reason to be forgiving after what we have
done to them. We have broken a pact, invaded their country, and brutalized the population. After the defeat we have suffered at Stalingrad it is possible that they will have the confidence to drive us back. If they succeed I believe they will not stop until they reach Berlin. They will punish us.’

‘So you would see it as advantageous that we negotiate a separate peace with the Allies?’

‘Imperative, unless we want to see Germany or a part of Germany in the Soviet Union. Perhaps we can even persuade the Allies that we are not the real enemy in this war and that…’

The man held up his hand.

‘One step at a time,’ said the man firmly. ‘First we will work on your transfer away from Rastenburg. You will need some training, too. The Abwehr headquarters along with the Army High Command has moved south to Zossen and we now live for our sins in a concrete citadel out there called Maibach II. You will spend some months with us. The work you will be doing is very different – gathering information, running agents in the field – it’s not the military intelligence that you know. After that we will send you to Paris and from there we will try to position you in Lisbon.’

‘Lisbon?’

‘It’s the only place in Europe now where we can talk easily with the Allies.’

Voss lived with his mother while he completed his training in Zossen. She looked after him as if he was at school again and it was a comfort for both of them. It was a wrench when he was transferred to France in June.

He spent eight months in the Abwehr’s French headquarters at 82 Avenue Foch in Paris and, furnished with his new perception of the power of words, saw the horrific
consequences for others who hadn’t yet come to the same understanding.

French and British men and women were arrested, sent to concentration camps, tortured and executed for what was, more than half the time, a totally imaginary situation. Both the Abwehr and the SD/Gestapo, who operated from next door, were playing what became known as radio games. Voss never worked out whether it was merely Allied stupidity or German infiltration into their intelligence operations at a very high level which enabled these deadly games to be played. Once an Allied radio operator was captured and his codename and signal extracted an Abwehr operator would continue broadcasting to London. Later when there were two security signals required, the Allies would reply simply reminding the operator that he’d forgotten his second signal but to continue. The baffled and angry radio operators soon supplied the second security signal to the Germans. Following these fictitious Abwehr broadcasts more agents and supplies would be flown into some misty French field and a reception from the Occupying force. These new agents’ codenames were then used to build fictitious networks operated by the Abwehr and Gestapo, dispersing vast quantities of misinformation to the Allies. Meetings convened by operational Allied agents were frequently attended by Abwehr men using captured agents’ codenames.

Occasionally Voss would stage arrests in the street to maintain verisimilitude.

Most intelligence activity was mirage and artifice. Very little was real. Intelligence, he discovered, was built on the foundations of the imagination and, in the case of the radio games, a blind belief in the veracity of technology. It was a terrifying concept, as terrifying as if the basic principles of physics or maths were completely wrong and whole academic disciplines had been built on falsehood and thus
all discoveries were intrinsically wrong, all achievements bogus.

Voss also learned never to fall in love in this world. Lovers betrayed each other easily. Torture, the Gestapo’s preferred method, was unnecessary. Just the insinuation of a lover’s infidelity to a prisoner was as powerful as any of their appalling applications. The emotional betrayal played such devious and teasing tricks on the mind. Jealousy was inevitable in the loneliness of a cell. The darkness, with only the infected mind for company, created powerful images that at first disheartened and later so enraged and ravaged the prisoners that they would grasp at a new strength and in their vindictiveness bring down not just the lover, but all the connections as well.

This did not mean that Voss was celibate in his time in Paris – that was impossible and there was something to prove to Giesler too – but he kept his distance. A French-woman called Françoise Larache taught him a different and darker lesson about love in the intelligence game.

They met when using the same bar. He would take a coffee in the mornings and find her watching him. He would stop off in the evening for a glass of something and she was often there at a table, smoking her strong cigarettes. They exchanged words and began to share a table, where he would watch her red lips connect with the thick tip of her cigarette, and her fingers pick off the flakes of tobacco from her pointed tongue. One night they went for a meal and back to his apartment where they made love. She was energetic and inventive, doing things on their first night which surprised him.

They became regulars of each other’s company in bed, and as Françoise was quick to demand, out of bed as well. She pushed him to do things which were at first exciting and then became increasingly more reckless. She liked to make love on the balcony with people passing in the street
below. She would lean back over the rail, her arms around his neck, and then suddenly let go so that he nearly lost her over the edge. They would have sex in doorways and on landings while people ate their dinner and table-talked. She would even cry out and the talk would stop inside. Voss would have to close his hand over her mouth. The greater the chance of being discovered, the more excited Françoise became.

Then one day in the autumn with the dried leaves rustling over the balcony, her mischievous eye, the one that glinted when she looked up at him from under her eyebrow, became darker, as if he was seeing deeper in and what was there was more sinister, taboo.

It started with a request that he spank her for being a naughty girl. Voss felt stupid with a grown woman over his knees and she had to encourage him to be serious and to be more severe. It didn’t seem to be fun any more. He still lusted after her, but for Françoise the sex was being driven by something else. He became reluctant to play her games, she angry. They had furious arguments, monumental rows with flying objects, which would end in brutal love-making where each thrust into her seemed to be a payment back. He found himself reeling out of his apartment into the docility of occupied Paris, unable to believe what he’d participated in the night before, only knowing that it was powerful, intense and degrading.

Françoise’s goading became worse. There was no fun now. She said terrible, unforgivable things and, although he could see what she was doing, he was a part of it too. There was no stepping back. She was forcing him to slap her, and not just a hysteria-breaking slap, a punishing slap. She wanted to be hit hard. She drove her face at him. The words came out slicing the air, lacerating, stabbing, each one honed to cut deep to the bone. They grappled and wrestled each other to the floor. She sunk her nails into
his neck. He wrenched himself free and found his fist cocked back to his shoulder. He swayed, dizzy at what this had come to. Her face was suddenly soft, her eyes dreamy. This was what she wanted. He stood up, straightened his clothes. All lust gone. Her face hardened. He gave her his hand, she took it and he pulled her to her feet. She spat in his face. He pulled her to the door, grabbing her coat and handbag on the way, and threw her out of the apartment.

He made discreet inquiries. She was an informer, a collaborator. She delivered her countrymen, neatly trussed, to the Gestapo. The SD man Voss spoke to tapped the side of his head, shook it.

He saw her once more before he left Paris, walking in a snow-covered street on the arm of a huge, black-coated SS sergeant. Voss hid in a doorway as they went past. She was holding snow to the side of her face.

In mid January 1944 Voss was called to a meeting at the Hotel Lutecia. It was at night and the room in which the meeting was being held was dark. Only a small lamp lit one corner. The man he was meeting sat in front of the light, he had no face, only the silhouette of hair combed back, maybe grey or white. His voice was old. A voice that spoke as if under pressure, as if the chest was tight with phlegm.

‘There are going to be some changes,’ he said. ‘It seems our friend Kaltenbrunner at the Reich’s Main Security Office is going to get his way and bring the Abwehr under the direct control of the SD. God knows, they’ve been trying long enough. It is something we are going to have to live with. We want to be sure that you are in position with the right information for negotiation with the Allies before it happens. I understand you have been following the activities of a French communist intellectual, Olivier Mesnel, here in Paris.’

‘We are in the process of disentangling his network. We haven’t found out yet how his information is reaching Moscow or how his orders come in.’

‘He has now applied for a visa to go to Spain.’

‘He is ultimately heading for Lisbon,’ said Voss. ‘We were lucky enough to intercept the courier sent by the Portuguese communists asking him to go there.’

‘Do you have any idea why he is required in Lisbon?’

‘No, and I don’t think Mesnel does either.’

‘You will take this opportunity to follow him to Lisbon and to install yourself as the military attaché and security officer in the German Legation. When these changes come through, which could be next month, you will find yourself directly answerable to SS Colonel Reinhardt Wolters. He is not one of us, needless to say, but you must make him your friend. Sutherland and Rose are running the Lisbon station of the British Secret Intelligence Service, you will be talking to them directly, procedure is in the brief. There are some documents here which you should look at and memorize before you go and a letter which contains important information on microdot. You will use this information to open negotiations with the British. You must show them that we can be trusted, that our intentions are honourable and that the reverse is true of the Russians.’

‘I’m not sure how the latter will be possible. I understand there is no Soviet legation in Lisbon.’

‘That’s true. Salazar won’t allow them in. No atheists on Catholic Portuguese soil – which reminds me, we must make sure the Portuguese don’t deny him a visa.’

The man seemed to laugh for no particular reason, or perhaps it was a wheeze that became a cough. He lit a cigarette.

‘It is possible that Olivier Mesnel will lead you somewhere. He must be going to Lisbon for a purpose which I
don’t think, given his political beliefs, will be to take a ship to the United States.’

‘At the Casablanca Conference it was decided that our surrender would have to be unconditional. We will have to offer something extraordinary for the British and the Americans to even consider breaking with the Russians.’

A long silence. Smoke rising from the chair drifted towards the lamp behind.

‘Believe me, the Americans will be looking for any reason they can to cut themselves away from Stalin at the first opportunity, especially after the Russians have invaded Europe. At the Teheran Conference Stalin said that up to a hundred thousand German officers would have to be executed and he would need four million German
slaves
– that was his word – to rebuild Russia. This kind of talk is unacceptable to men of humanity such as Churchill and Roosevelt. If we can provide a catalyst…’ he paused, struggled in his chair as if suddenly cramped, ‘…the Führer’s death, I think, would be sufficient.’

Voss shivered even though it was warm in the room. The water he was easing himself into now felt deep and cold.

‘Is that a planned action?’

‘One of many,’ said the man, as tired as if he’d planned them all. Voss wanted to get away from contemplating the enormity of the statement.

‘I’ve lost track of the development of our atomic programme. That could be important to the Allies. They’ve seen that we have the potential…can we put their minds at rest?’

‘It’s all in the documents.’

‘How much time have we got?’

‘We hope to make progress…like all things, in the spring, but by the end of the summer at the latest we must have results. The Russians have retaken Zhitomir and have
crossed the Polish border – they’re no more than a thousand kilometres from Berlin. We are being bombed to rubble by the Allies. The city is a ruin, the arms and munitions factories working at barely fifty per cent. The air force can’t reach the new Russian arms factories on the other side of the Urals. The bear gets stronger and the eagle weaker and more short-sighted.’

There didn’t seem to be any need of more questions after that and Voss was gestured towards the table where three fat files awaited him. He sat down and reached for the lamp. A hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed it in the same way that his father’s used to – reassuring, giving strength.

‘You are very important to us,’ said the voice. ‘You understand what is written in these files better than anybody, but we have chosen you for other reasons too. I can only ask you, please, when you are in Lisbon, do not make the same mistake you made with Mademoiselle Larache. This is too important. This is about the survival of a nation.’

The hand released him. The man and his pressurized voice left the room. Voss worked until 6.00 a.m. going through the files on the atomic programme and the V1 and V2 rocket programmes.

On 20th January 1944 Olivier Mesnel was issued with an exit visa to travel to Spain. On the 22nd January Voss boarded the same night train as Mesnel, which left the Gare de Lyon heading south to Lyon and Perpignan, crossing the border at Port Bou and then on to Barcelona and Madrid. Mesnel rarely left his compartment. In Madrid the Frenchman stayed in a cheap pension for two nights and then took another train to Lisbon on the night of 25th January.