Agent in berlin, p.1
Agent in Berlin, page 1
Agent in Berlin
Cover
Title Page
Main Characters
The Wolf
Prologue Pearl Harbor, Honolulu
December 1941
Chapter 1 England and Berlin
May 1935
Chapter 2 London
January 1936
Chapter 3 England
March 1936
Chapter 4 Philadelphia and New York City, USA
April 1936
Chapter 5 Berlin
June 1936
Chapter 6 Berlin
April 1936
Chapter 7 Berlin
July and August 1936
Chapter 8 Berlin
August 1936
Chapter 9 Berlin
August 1936
Three years later…
Chapter 10 London and Berlin
February 1939
Chapter 11 Berlin
February 1939
Chapter 12 Berlin
February 1939
Chapter 13 Gelsenkirchen and Berlin
March 1939
Chapter 14 London and Berlin
April 1939
Chapter 15 Bern, Switzerland and Berlin
May 1939
Chapter 16 Berlin
May 1939
Chapter 17 Berlin
May 1939
Chapter 18 Berlin
August 1939
Chapter 19 Berlin
August 1939
1940
Chapter 20 Kielce, Poland
January 1940
Chapter 21 Berlin
February 1940
Chapter 22 New York and Hamburg
April 1940
Chapter 23 Hamburg
April 1940
Chapter 24 Berlin and Hamburg
April 1940
Chapter 25 Switzerland and London
May 1940
Chapter 26 Berlin and Switzerland
October 1940
1941
Chapter 27 Berlin
January 1941
Chapter 28 Germany and France
January and February 1941
Chapter 29 Berlin
February 1941
Chapter 30 London
March 1941
Chapter 31 Germany
April 1941
Chapter 32 Berlin and Bern
April 1941
Chapter 33 Berlin
June 1941
Chapter 34 London and Berlin
November 1941
Chapter 35 Berlin
November and December 1941
Chapter 36 Germany
December 1941
Chapter 37 England, Germany and Switzerland
December 1941 and January 1942
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Alex Gerlis
Copyright
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
Main Characters
Barnaby Allen (Barney) MI6 officer
Piers Devereux Barney’s boss at MI6
Roly Pearson British Intelligence chief
Tom Gilbey MI6 officer
Jack Miller American journalist
Lieutenant Tom Miller US Navy, brother of Jack
Werner Lustenberger German businessman
Sophia von Naundorf Wife of SS officer, Berlin
Karl-Heinrich von Naundorf Husband of Sophia
Tadashi Kimura Japanese diplomat, Berlin
Arno Marcus Jewish man, Berlin
Maureen Holland Briton working at Berlin radio station
Fritz – Ken Ridley Berlin radio
Karl Henniger Gestapo officer, Berlin
Harald Mettler Clerk at Swiss embassy, Berlin
Oberstleutnant Ernst Scholz Luftwaffe officer at Air Ministry, Berlin
Timothy Summers First Secretary, British embassy, Berlin
Noel Moore Passport Control officer (MI6), Berlin
Basil Remington-Barber MI6, Bern, Switzerland
Joe Walsh Editor, the Philadelphia Bulletin
Ted Morris Associated Newspapers, New York
Albert Haas Journalist, Berlin
Harald Fuchs (Rudi) SS officer, Berlin
Hiroshi Ōshima Japanese ambassador, Berlin
Kuzumi Kobayashi Japanese Secret Police, Kenpeitai, Berlin
Doctor Ludwig Vogt Charité Medical School, Berlin
Air Vice-Marshal Frank Hamilton Head of RAF Intelligence Branch
Cromwell RAF Intelligence analyst
Wing Commander Tim Carter RAF Intelligence officer
Austin US Intelligence officer, London
Joseph Jenkins US Intelligence officer, London
Brookes Foreign Office
The Wolf
The wolf is an unusual creature, feared and revered at the same time.
Many cultures worship the wolf, seeing it as a benevolent animal bringing good fortune. Some Native American tribes believe the Earth to have been created by wolves. Italians cherish the wolf for rescuing Romulus and Remus.
In other cultures, the wolf has a more malevolent reputation; feared as a hunter. In medieval times some Christian cultures saw the wolf as the incarnation of evil; in fairy tales it is resolutely cast as the big, bad wolf.
Norse mythology recognised this paradoxical view of the animal with tales of the wolf chasing both the sun and the moon.
The wolf is a highly social animal, living in packs, which can number in double figures. But the wolf can also operate as a solitary creature – the lone wolf – existing outside the comfort of the pack.
Wolf packs operate within their own territory and commonly travel up to fifty miles a day.
The wolf would make a perfect spy.
Prologue
Pearl Harbor, Honolulu
December 1941
Tom Miller had never had much time for religion. Thankfully his parents hadn’t been too bothered by it either and the fact they’d both died by the time he was twenty only confirmed his scepticism about matters of faith.
In so far as this young Naval officer led his life by any credo it was that you should treat other people as you’d like to be treated yourself, and that first weekend in December was a good case in point.
The Pacific Fleet had been on high alert for the past couple of weeks at its base in Hawaii, meaning all overnight shore leave had been cancelled. But that Saturday night it was agreed a dozen junior officers from the USS Arizona could have shore leave and Lieutenant Tom Miller was one of the lucky ones when lots were drawn.
One of the unlucky ones was his best friend, Mark Bianci. The two shared a cramped cabin and were the same age and rank, and both from Philadelphia. Mark was devastated at not having been selected for shore leave. He’d recently met a young nurse called Lucy from the Naval hospital and Lucy had managed to arrange for them to have the use of a friend’s apartment at Aiea Bay that weekend.
Tom decided that if he were in Mark’s position, he’d like someone to do the right thing by him – and as nurses came in groups, Lucy was bound to have friends. So, he gave his shore leave to an unspeakably grateful Mark Bianci, who promised him he’d return the favour one day and said his priority that weekend – which Tom somehow doubted – was to quiz Lucy on her friends and find one suitable for Tom.
Lieutenant Tom Miller’s watch wasn’t due to start until nine on the Sunday morning so he allowed himself longer in his bunk.
Even at anchor a large battleship was a cacophony of sounds, a consequence of putting thirty thousand tons of metal and fifteen hundred men on the water. It took Tom Miller a few moments to work out what it was that woke him at five to eight that Sunday morning.
The first sound he heard was shouting in the corridor, followed by doors slamming and the wail of the ship’s air-raid alarm, and he knew he had to get to the bridge as soon as possible.
There was panic in the narrow passageways: people hurried in different directions, pushing others against the bulkheads; shouts that this was no drill.
Tom Miller made it to the bridge just in time to spot the first wave of a dozen Japanese torpedo bombers swooping in low from the north. He saw guns open fire on the USS Nevada on their stern and the USS Vestal moored next to them took a direct hit.
Then came the first explosion and his reaction was to notice how everything appeared almost festive, the crackling sounds and the sight of multi-coloured explosions.
For a moment Lieutenant Tom Miller was too shocked to move, then someone shouted at him to head to the bow where a fire was raging. He dropped down a ladder and hit the deck as another torpedo struck the front of the ship.
He came to a few seconds later and glanced at his wristwatch which told him it was eight minutes past eight, and he thought of his father, whose wristwatch this had been and somehow that gave him the strength to get to his feet. He staggered along for a few yards, still thinking of his father, feeling his firm hand guiding him by the elbow.
Lieutenant Tom Miller’s final moments soon followed: a blinding light and a volley of deafening sounds, followed by lasting darkness and a perpetual silence.
* * *
Forty minutes after Lieutenant Tom Miller’s death the second wave of Japanese aircraft attacked. Within a quarter of an hour, they’d gone, and the attack on Pearl Harbor was over, leaving much of the US Pacific Fleet destroyed and more than two thousand Americans dead.
Chaos and confusion hung over the island along with the long plumes of black smoke and the acrid smell of destruction.
From his office on North Road, overlooking Quarry Loch, Lieutenant Commander Sam Stein had watched in utter shock as the attack unfolded. He’d fled to the bomb shelter at first and then decided he was deserting his post so climbed the stairs back to his office on the top floor. The windows had all been blown out and he scanned the sky and then the Harbor with his binoculars, doing his best to hold his shaking hands steady, pausing to make notes and wondering whether he should type them up or telephone San Diego.
The end of the raid was marked by a minute or so of a strange silence; a brief pause between the aircraft departing and the onset of sirens and screams. Still in a state of shock, Sam Stein shuffled over to his desk, cleared the debris and – because he couldn’t think what else to do – began to write a report. The sky thick with Japanese warplanes, the surface of the Harbor covered in wreckage, the—
The sound of footsteps on broken glass caused him to look up. It was Robert Clarke – Robert V Clarke Junior indeed – another lieutenant commander he knew from meetings at Fleet Headquarters. Clarke worked for the Office of Naval Intelligence and had a superior air about him and a faux-English accent, along with a habit of treating anyone not of superior rank with disdain.
‘The road’s blocked and I can’t get near Kuahua. Give me a telephone, Stein.’ He seemed surprisingly calm and pronounced ‘Stein’ as ‘Shtein’ and then allowed himself a pause and the trace of a smile.
‘If you can find one that works, sure. They’re all down.’
Robert V Clarke Junior sniffed as if trying to work out what the smell was. He walked around the room, trying all the phones in turn before slamming them down and muttering ‘Jesus Christ’, looking at Sam Stein as if all this were his fault.
‘They’ve destroyed the fleet,’ said Stein. ‘From here I’ve seen the Nevada, Arizona, West Virginia and Oklahoma all badly hit. There must have been… what? … two hundred Japanese planes in each wave?’
Clarke shrugged and lit a cigarette without offering one to Sam Stein.
‘Shouldn’t we have known about it, Robert? Surely, we must have had some idea, some kind of warning? An attack that size… it doesn’t just come out of thin air.’
For the first time Lieutenant Commander Robert V Clarke Junior of the Office of Naval Intelligence looked his fellow officer in the eye and without the condescending manner.
‘Oh, we knew all right… we certainly bloody well knew.’
Chapter 1
England and Berlin
May 1935
‘Who do you think will win?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ The wind whistled round the racecourse and Barney Allen hadn’t quite caught what the man alongside him had said. He was considerably shorter than Allen and his accent certainly wasn’t English: there was something distinctly continental about it.
‘I asked who you think will win the Chester Cup?’ There it was again, the accent – the ‘th’ in ‘think’ sounding not quite right, and ‘win’ sounding more like ‘vin’. ‘Cup’ sounded a bit like ‘cap’. The man looked up at Barney Allen, his eyebrows raised expectantly.
‘I hope you don’t think I’m being impolite but I’m afraid my job precludes me from being involved in betting or giving my opinion on horses.’ Allen was doing his best not to sound too pompous but was aware he came across as more patrician than he intended.
The man nodded his head slowly, apparently impressed that someone could have a job that was so important they could be at a racecourse yet not discuss the big race of the day. After all, the Chester Cup was the most important race held at the course all year.
‘And what job would that be, may I ask?’ ‘Would’ sounding like ‘vood’.
‘Well you see…’ Allen moved his hands from behind his back and tried to adopt a less military stance. ‘I work for the Jockey Club. I’m a steward. We’re the chaps who oversee the rules of horse racing, make sure everything’s in order, so you’ll understand that we’re not allowed to give tips about who we think will win a race and we’re most certainly forbidden from betting on races.’
He was aware he was sounding pompous again so he chuckled and the man responded with a broad smile and held out his hand to shake Barney Allen’s and introduced himself as Werner, and Barney said he was Barnaby and was very pleased to meet him and was Werner German by any chance?
Werner said he supposed he was and Barney Allen smiled again and replied in German, apologising if it was somewhat rusty, and said he hoped Werner didn’t think he was being difficult in any way but he hoped he understood and he was pleased for an opportunity to use his German.
‘Your German is very good and your accent is excellent. You speak a very pure German, as if you’re from Hannover.’
And that was how their friendship began. Barney handed Werner his card and asked him where in Germany he was from. Werner shrugged and said he was more German than anything else but his grandparents were Swiss, Austrian, Dutch and French so although he’d spent a good deal of his life in Germany, he regarded himself as European. He also had a Swiss passport, he added. And a French one.
Barney Allen asked what brought him to England and Werner said the atmosphere was far more pleasant than it was in Germany these days and in any case horse racing was his passion and England was the home of horse racing and was it true that this was the oldest racecourse in the country?
‘Indeed it is: in fact, the oldest racecourse in the world, would you believe? The first race took place here in 1512, a bit before my time!’
Both men laughed and Werner said the oldest racecourse in Germany was the Horner Rennbahn in Hamburg and that was less than a hundred years old and now that they were friends perhaps Barnaby could tell him who he thought would win the Chester Cup?
Barney Allen hesitated, watching the runners parade past, their flanks already steaming, and peered through his binoculars to study them in more detail. He noticed Werner had moved closer to him and was looking expectantly up at him, waiting for an answer.
‘Completely between you and me, Werner, I’d go for Damascus: Foster’s a good jockey over this distance. Sired by Transcendent and the dam’s Attar, so a decent pedigree. That’s the horse, not the jockey!’
Werner laughed and asked his new friend to point out Damascus, which he did before saying he needed to get up to the steward’s enclosure now and it was nice meeting Werner and perhaps they’d bump into each other at another racecourse one day – who knows?
As he made his way to the stands Barney Allen shook his head, astonished at how easily this funny little man had managed to persuade him to reveal information he’d normally never dream of divulging to anyone. There was no doubt that as a Jockey Club official he was in a privileged position, picking up inside information – how a horse was likely to run, what injuries another may be carrying. And he knew he was obliged to keep what he heard to himself. Somehow, the man called Werner had got him to do otherwise. It was almost as if he’d been hypnotised.
Barney Allen wasn’t in the least bit surprised when Damascus duly won the Chester Cup. As he waited for a taxi outside the racecourse, he felt a tap on his arm and turned round to see the dapper German standing next to him. Werner had a broad grin on his face and gave Barney a knowing wink as he said what a pleasure it had been to meet him and how much he’d enjoyed the Chester Cup in particular. They shook hands once more and Werner said he still had Mr Barnaby’s card and perhaps they could meet for lunch in London. He moved closer to Barney Allen and dropped his voice. ‘The lunch will be on Damascus!’
