Authors: Daniel Silva
The Unlikely Spy (10 page)
Vogel spent the rest of the morning reading about Peter Jordan. When he finished he removed a pair of files from one of his cabinets, returned to his desk, and read them carefully.
The first file contained information on an Irishman who had worked as a spy for a short time but was cut loose because his information was poor. Vogel had taken possession of his dossier and placed him on the V-Chain payroll. Vogel was not concerned with the bad reviews the spy had received in the past--he was not looking for a spy. There were other qualities about the agent Vogel found attractive. He worked a small farm on an isolated stretch of Britain's Norfolk coast. It was a perfect safe house--close enough to London to make the journey by train in three hours, far enough away so the place wasn't crawling with MI5 officers.
The second file contained the dossier of a former Wehrmacht paratrooper who had been barred from jumping because of a head wound. The man had all the qualities Vogel liked: perfect English, an eye for detail, a cool intelligence. Ulbricht had found him at an Abwehr wireless listening post in northern France. Vogel placed him on the V-Chain payroll and tucked him away for the right assignment.
Vogel pushed the files aside and drafted two messages. He added the ciphers to be used, the frequencies at which the messages were to be sent, and the transmission schedule. Then he looked up and called for Ulbricht.
"Yes, Herr Captain," Ulbricht said. He entered the office, limping heavily on his wooden leg. Vogel looked at Ulbricht an instant before speaking, wondering if the man was up to the demands of an operation like the one he was about to launch. Ulbricht was twenty-seven years old but looked at least forty. His close-cropped black hair was flecked with gray. Pain lines ran like tributaries from the edge of his one good eye. The second eye had been lost in the explosion; the empty socket was hidden behind a neat black patch. A Knight's Cross dangled at his throat. The top button of Ulbricht's tunic was undone because the exertion of the most simple movements caused him to become overheated and perspire. In all the time they had worked together, Vogel had never once heard Ulbricht complain.
"I want you to go to Hamburg tomorrow night." He handed Ulbricht the transcripts of the messages. "Stand over the radio operator while he sends these. Make certain there are no mistakes. See that the acknowledgments from the agents are in order. If there is anything out of the ordinary I want to know about it. Understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"Before you go, I want you to track down Horst Neumann."
"He's in Berlin, I believe."
"Where is he staying?"
"I'm not certain," Ulbricht said, "but I believe there is a woman involved."
"There usually is." Vogel walked to the window and looked out. "Contact the staff at the Dahlem farm. Tell them to expect us tonight. I want you to join us there when you return from Hamburg tomorrow. Tell them we'll be there for a week. We have a lot to go over. And tell them to rig the jump platform in the barn. It's been a long time since Neumann jumped from an airplane. He'll need practice."
"Yes, sir."
Ulbricht went out, leaving Vogel alone in the office. He stood at the window for a long time, thinking it through once more. The most closely guarded secret of the war and he planned to steal it with a woman, a cripple, a grounded paratrooper, and a British traitor. Quite a team you've assembled, Kurt, old man. If his own ass wasn't on the line he might have found the whole thing funny. Instead, he just stood there like a statue, watching snow drifting silently over Berlin, worrying himself to death.
6
LONDON
The Imperial Security Intelligence Service--better known by its military intelligence designation, MI5--was head-quartered in a small cramped office building at 58 St. James's Street. MI5's task was counterintelligence. In the lexicon of espionage, counterintelligence means protecting one's secrets--and, when necessary, catching spies. For much of its forty-year existence, the Security Service toiled in the shadow of its more glamorous cousin, the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6. Such internecine rivalries did not matter much to Professor Alfred Vicary. It was MI5 that Vicary joined in May 1940 and where, on a dismal rainy evening five days after Hitler's secret conference at Rastenburg, he could still be found.
The top floor was the preserve of the senior staff: the director-general's office, his secretariat, the assistant directors and division heads. Brigadier Sir Basil Boothby's office was there, hidden behind a pair of intimidating oaken doors. A pair of lights glared down from over the doors, a red one signifying the room was too insecure to permit access, a green one meaning enter at your own risk. Vicary, as always, hesitated before pressing the buzzer.
Vicary had received his summons at nine o'clock, while he was locking away his things in his gunmetal gray cabinet and tidying up his hutch, as he referred to his small office. When MI5 exploded in size at the beginning of the war, space became a precious commodity. Vicary was relegated to a windowless cell the size of a broom closet, with worn bureaucratic green carpet and a sturdy little headmasterly desk. Vicary's partner, a former Metropolitan Police officer named Harry Dalton, sat with the other junior men in a common area at the center of the floor. The place had a newsroom rowdiness about it, and Vicary ventured there only when absolutely necessary.
Officially, Vicary held the rank of a major in the Intelligence Corps, though military rank meant next to nothing inside the department. Much of the staff routinely referred to him as Professor, and he had worn his uniform just twice. Vicary's manner of dress had changed, though. He had forsaken the tweedy clothes of the university, dressing instead in sharp gray suits he purchased before clothing, like almost everything else, was rationed. Occasionally, he bumped into an acquaintance or old colleague from University College. Despite incessant warnings by the government about the dangers of loose talk, they inevitably asked Vicary exactly
what
he was doing. He usually smiled wearily, shrugged his shoulders, and gave the prescribed response: he was working in a very dull department of the War Office.
what
he was doing. He usually smiled wearily, shrugged his shoulders, and gave the prescribed response: he was working in a very dull department of the War Office.
Sometimes it was dull, but not often. Churchill had been right--it had been time for him to rejoin the living. His arrival at MI5 in May 1940 had been his rebirth. He thrived on the atmosphere of wartime intelligence: the long hours, the crises, the dismal tea in the canteen. He had even taken up cigarette smoking again, which he had sworn off his last year at Cambridge. He loved being an actor in the theater of the real. He seriously doubted whether he could be satisfied again in the sanctuary of academia.
Surely the hours and the tension were taking a toll on him, but he had never felt better. He could work longer and needed less sleep. When he did go to bed he dropped off immediately. Like the other officers, he spent many nights at MI5 headquarters, sleeping on a small camp bed he kept folded next to his desk.
Only the ill treatment of his half-moon reading glasses survived Vicary's catharsis--still smudged and battered and something of a joke inside the department. In moments of distress, he still absently beat his pockets for them and thrust them onto his face for comfort.
Which he did now, as the light over Boothby's office suddenly shone green. Vicary pressed the buzzer with the reflective air of a man about to attend the funeral of a boyhood friend. It purred softly, the door opened, and Vicary stepped inside.
Boothby's office was big and long, with fine paintings, a gas fireplace, rich Persian carpets, and a magnificent view through the tall windows. Sir Basil kept Vicary waiting the statutory ten minutes before finally entering the room through a second doorway connecting his office to the director-general's secretariat.
Brigadier Sir Basil Boothby had classic English size and scale--tall, angular, still showing signs of the physical agility that made him a star athlete at school. It was there in the easy way his strong hand held his drink, in the square shoulders and thick neck, in the narrow hips where his trousers, waistcoat, and jacket converged in graceful perfection. He had the sturdy good looks that a certain type of younger woman finds attractive. His gray-blond hair and eyebrows were so lush the department wits referred to him as the bottle brush from the fifth floor.
Officially, little was known about Boothby's career--only that he had served in Britain's intelligence and security organizations his entire professional life. Vicary thought the gossip and rumor surrounding a man often said more about him than his resume. Speculation about Boothby had spawned a veritable cottage industry within the department. According to the rumor mill, Boothby ran a spy network during the First War that penetrated the German General Staff. In Delhi, he personally executed an Indian accused of murdering a British citizen. In Ireland, he beat a man to death with his pistol butt for refusing to divulge the location of an arms cache. He was an expert in the martial arts and used his spare time to keep his skills sharp. He was ambidextrous and could write, smoke, drink his gin and bitters, or break your neck with either hand. His tennis was so good he could have won Wimbledon.
Deceptive
was the word used most often to describe his play, and his ability to switch hands midmatch still confounded his opponents. His sex life was much talked about and much debated: a relentless womanizer who had bedded half the typists and the girls from Registry; a homosexual.
Deceptive
was the word used most often to describe his play, and his ability to switch hands midmatch still confounded his opponents. His sex life was much talked about and much debated: a relentless womanizer who had bedded half the typists and the girls from Registry; a homosexual.
In Vicary's opinion, Sir Basil Boothby symbolized all that was wrong with British Intelligence between the wars--the wellborn Englishman educated at Eton and Oxford who believed the secret exercise of power was as much a birthright as his family fortune and his centuries-old Hampshire mansion: rigid, lazy, orthodox, a cop in handmade shoes and a Savile Row suit. Boothby had been eclipsed intellectually by the new recruits drawn into MI5 at the outset of the war: the top brains from the universities, the best barristers from London's most prestigious houses. Now he was in an unenviable position--supervising men who were more clever than he and at the same time attempting to claim bureaucratic credit for their accomplishments.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Alfred. A meeting in the Underground War Rooms with Churchill, the director-general, Menzies, and Ismay. I'm afraid we've got a bit of a crisis on our hands. I'm drinking brandy and soda. What will you have?"
"Whisky," Vicary said, watching Boothby. Despite the fact that he was one of the most senior officers in MI5, Boothby still took a childlike pride in dropping the names of the powerful people with whom he met on a regular basis. The group of men who had just gathered in the prime minister's underground fortress were the elite of Britain's wartime intelligence community: the director-general of MI5, Sir David Petrie; the director-general of MI6, Sir Stewart Menzies; and Churchill's personal chief of staff, General Sir Hastings Ismay. Boothby pressed a button on his desk and asked his secretary to bring Vicary's drink. He walked to the window, lifted the blackout shade, and looked out.
"I hope to God they don't come again tonight, bloody Luftwaffe. It was different in 1940. It was all new and exciting in a strange kind of way. Carrying your steel helmet beneath your arm to dinner. Running for the shelters. Fire-watching from the rooftops. But I don't think London could endure another winter of a full-fledged blitz. Everyone's too tired. Tired and hungry and ill-clothed and sick of the petty humiliations that go with being at war. I'm not sure how much more this nation can take."
Boothby's secretary brought Vicary's drink. It was on the center of a silver tray, resting atop a white paper napkin. Boothby had a fetish about water marks on the furniture of his office. He sat down in a chair next to Vicary and crossed his long legs, pointing the polished toe of his shoe at Vicary's kneecap like a loaded gun.
"We have a new assignment for you, Alfred. And in order for you to truly understand its importance, we've decided it's necessary to lift the veil a little higher and show you a little more than you've been allowed to see previously. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"
"I believe so, Sir Basil."
"You're the historian. Know much about Sun-tzu?"
"Fourth century B.C. China is not exactly my field, Sir Basil, but I've read him."
"Know what Sun-tzu wrote about military deception?"
"Sun-tzu wrote that all warfare is based on deception. He preached that every battle is won or lost
before
it's ever fought. His advice was simple: Attack the enemy where he is unprepared and appear where you are not expected. He said it was vital to undermine the enemy, subvert and corrupt him, sow internal discord among his leaders, and destroy him without fighting him."
before
it's ever fought. His advice was simple: Attack the enemy where he is unprepared and appear where you are not expected. He said it was vital to undermine the enemy, subvert and corrupt him, sow internal discord among his leaders, and destroy him without fighting him."
"Very good," Boothby said, visibly impressed. "Unfortunately, we'll never be able to destroy Hitler without fighting him. And in order to have any chance at all of beating him in a fight, we have to deceive him first. We have to heed those wise words of Sun-tzu. We need to appear where we are not expected."
Boothby rose, went to his desk, and brought back a secure briefcase. It was made of metal--the color of polished silver--with a set of handcuffs attached to the grip.
"You're about to be BIGOT-ed, Alfred," Boothby said, opening the briefcase.
"I beg your pardon?"
"BIGOT-ed--it's a supersecret classification developed specifically to cover the invasion. It takes its name from a stamp we placed on documents carried by British officers to Gibraltar for the invasion of North Africa. TO GIB--to Gibraltar. We just reversed the characters. TO GIB became BIGOT."
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