The term “mole” as slang for a spy was not coined until the 1960s, but to modern ears the name of the farmhouse sounds distinctly apt: La Taupinière, the Molehill.
At night, when everyone was asleep, Ursula constructed her transmitter-receiver from parts bought at hardware shops in Geneva, Vevey, and Lausanne: keypad, an antenna with banana plugs, and two heavy batteries “each the size of a dictionary,” which she hid in the hayloft. At the back of the bottom shelf in the built-in wardrobe was a panel held in place by screws, behind which was just enough space to hide the assembled equipment. She drilled two small holes in the plywood partition and fed through the leads, enabling her to use the transmitter without removing it from the cupboard. When disconnected, the holes were concealed with wooden plugs resembling knots in the wood. The hidden transmitter might “evade a superficial house search” but she knew that “if it was located by taking radio signal bearings, even the best hiding place would be useless.”
Ursula moved the large wooden bed alongside the wardrobe, “so that I could see the mountains,” and communicate with Moscow while sitting up in bed.
On September 29, 1938, a clear, cool night, ideal for transmitting, Ursula tested her homemade radio for the first time. At 11:20, she established a good connection on a frequency of 6.1182 MHz and tapped out her call sign and a brief message, half a dozen “groups” comprised of five numbers each. She imagined the message as a shooting star. “With the speed of light my numbers streaked across the sky, where the half-moon was visible, arrived where they were expected, helped the comrades and gave them strength.” Some 1,500 kilometers away, in the receiving station in Dymovka forest near the Polish-Ukrainian border, a Red Army operator picked up the signal and sent back a brief acknowledgment. From Dymovka, the news that Sonya’s transmitter was functioning passed to the Center, and the desk of Major Vera Poliakova, the woman officer in charge of Swiss espionage.
Flooded with relief, Ursula stood at the open window: “I leaned my elbows on the ledge and looked out. Even the night air smelled of woods and meadows, and it was very quiet.”
Too pumped with adrenaline for sleep, she lay awake for hours before turning on her transistor radio and tuning in to the BBC, quietly, so as not to wake the household. The news banished sleep that night: “The British Prime Minister has been hailed as bringing ‘peace to Europe’ after signing a non-aggression pact with Germany.” The Munich Agreement allowed Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland region of western Czechoslovakia in exchange for a promise of peace, soon to be broken. As Ursula put it, the deal “gave the green light to Hitler’s expansionist aims.” War was coming.
“He should be beaten with his own umbrella,” declared Olga Muth, when Ursula told her of Neville Chamberlain’s deal the next morning. “And if Hitler wants to take Switzerland too, what will become of us?”
The news grew steadily worse. In Spain, the “Munich Betrayal” removed the last hope of an anti-fascist alliance, destroying Republican morale. Franco’s troops advanced swiftly, and Nationalist victory at the Battle of the Ebro signaled the end for the Spanish Republic and its band of international fighters. “How I wished I had been there with them,” wrote Ursula, “instead of on my own front here with two children, an old woman and twelve cows.” The fascist tide was rising on all sides. With horror, she read of the events on November 9, when Nazis went on the bloody rampage known as Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, destroying Jewish businesses and synagogues, murdering and arresting Jews. The Times reported: “No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenceless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday.” The Kuczynski Bank, founded by Robert’s father and the source of the wealth that had underpinned their former life, was confiscated and Aryanized overnight. So was Ullstein, the Jewish publisher for which Ursula had worked back in 1928: henceforth the company would be churning out Hitler’s propaganda and Das Reich, the Nazi newspaper.
From her Molehill high on a Swiss hillside, Ursula wrote to her parents in London: “Our spirits, just like yours, have sunk to zero.”
* * *
—
LOITERING IN THE CRISP autumn sun outside Geneva Post Office, Alexander Foote reflected wryly that every Swiss housewife seemed to have bought an orange for lunch that day. He had no clear idea what he was doing in Switzerland. During the train journey he wondered if he might be embroiled in a black-market smuggling operation, or perhaps “cast in some Scarlet Pimpernel–like role of rescuing prisoners from Dachau.” This business was obviously clandestine, illegal, and in tune with his vaguely leftist politics, which was just fine with Foote. But he felt remarkably conspicuous standing around in a white scarf with a leather belt in his hand, eyeing up every passing woman as the clock ticked down. “I felt a self-conscious fool, at best self-doomed to embarrassment and at worst to a Swiss charge of accosting.” The town bell was striking twelve when he spotted her. “Slim, with a good figure and even better legs, her black hair demurely dressed, she stood out from the Swiss crowd. In her early thirties, she might have been the wife of a minor French consular official.” She was holding an orange, and a string bag containing a green parcel.
“Excuse me,” said Ursula. “But where did you buy that belt?”
Over coffee in a nearby café, each sized up the other. “He was tall, and a bit overweight. His hair was reddish blond, the eyelashes were fair, complexion pale and eyes blue. To another Englishman, his accent would have betrayed a lower middle-class background, but in Germany this would not matter.” She told him to call her “Sonya” and explained that henceforth, in all communications, he would be “Jim.” Foote was drawn to her. “A pleasant person and an amusing companion, my first espionage contact was not as frightening as I had expected…she spoke English with a slight foreign accent and was, I should judge, a Russian or a Pole.” Ursula observed him closely—“every word, cadence, gesture”—and noted that “he grasped things quickly and asked sensible questions.” After an hour, she had made up her mind.
“You will go to Munich on a one-year tourist visa,” she said. “There you will settle in, learn the language, make as many friends as possible, and keep your eyes open.” He should read up about wireless technology and study basic photography. In Munich his primary task would be to cultivate workers and officials at the BMW factory, which, in addition to cars, manufactured aircraft engines for the Luftwaffe. When Foote pointed out that he knew nothing about Germany, her response was brusque: “Look up Munich in the public library.” Once established, he could communicate his address via Brigitte in London by sending her a novel: on a specific page, he should write the address using an invisible ink made by adding cornstarch to water. When iodine solution was brushed over the page, the secret writing would appear. She then handed over 2,000 Swiss francs “for expenses” and told Foote to meet her, outside the post office in Lausanne, at midday exactly three months hence. She gave him some simple advice on how to detect if he was being followed. Finally she asked for a recommendation. The British Battalion in Spain had been disbanded, and its 305 surviving volunteers repatriated. Was there anyone else among Foote’s former comrades, she asked, who might be suitable for a similar assignment to his? He thought for a moment and then suggested a communist friend who had fought alongside him during the Battle of Jarama, earning a reputation for fearlessness. This man, Foote said, was “the only one of his old comrades capable of carrying out a risky job on his own.”
Ursula memorized the name: Len Beurton.
Alexander Foote boarded the train with a light heart, a full wallet, and only the faintest sense of what the future might hold. He had been told to expect a “difficult and dangerous” assignment; an expenses-paid holiday in Munich seemed to be neither. Clearly he was involved in some sort of espionage, but he had no clue who he might be spying for, nor, indeed, what spy
ing might involve. Perhaps, he reflected, Sonya was part of the Comintern, a communist organization he had dimly heard of. Back in Britain, he collected his belongings from his sister in East Grinstead, applied for a German tourist visa, and paid another visit to Mrs. Lewis at Lawn Road to learn about “conditions in Germany” and confirm the secret arrangements for passing on his address. Brigitte was no longer so brisk and impersonal. They met twice more, for what he called “social occasions.” An MI5 report later noted: “It is possible that F[oote] had a flirtation with Brigitte.”
The snow fell early in Switzerland that year, blanketing the mountains. “The magnificent landscape seemed to have been specially created as a backdrop for this house,” wrote Ursula. Every day, seven-year-old Michael skied down to the school in Caux. On Sundays they caught the little blue train that chugged to the top of the mountain, and then skied almost a mile to the house. Nina and Ollo spent the afternoons tobogganing. Ursula began to mix among the large expatriate community in Geneva, where the spies rubbed shoulders with diplomats, journalists, and sundry others who seemed to do nothing at all. As always, Ursula made friends both with people of like mind and others of quite different views. They were all interesting: Robert Dell, the correspondent for The Manchester Guardian, and his son-in-law David Blelloch, who worked for the International Labour Organization; an elderly Jewish woman named Lillian Jakobi, who had escaped an unhappy marriage to a rabbi; Marie Ginsberg, a librarian at the League of Nations. Diplomacy was the overriding topic of conversation in Geneva, gossip and secrets the chief currency of exchange. In this strange kaleidoscope, it was impossible to tell who was spying for whom. Many of Ursula’s new acquaintances were well informed, and sometimes indiscreet, about the deteriorating international situation. She passed on whatever she gleaned to Moscow. “Was I deceiving people who were sympathetic towards me?” she wondered. Ursula also struck up a friendship with the wife of the local farmer, Frau Füssli, a kindly, exhausted Swiss woman with four children, a domineering husband, and “friendly brown eyes.” Their conversations tended to focus on how much Frau Füssli would rather be married to the farmer on the other side of the valley, with whom she was conducting an affair.
One Spring afternoon, Johann Patra appeared at the door of the farmhouse. After their last meeting in Moscow, he had gone back to China to aid the communist insurgents (a lucky absence that probably saved him from Stalin’s butchers), and was paying another brief visit to the Center before returning once more to Shanghai. He had found out where she was living, and decided to drop in on Ursula unannounced. She was pleased to see him, but struck by how naïve he now seemed and dismayed at how little interest he showed in his vivacious three-year-old daughter. “I did not blame him,” she wrote. “But neither did I understand him.” Perhaps they had never really understood each other. Their love affair now seemed a distant fantasy.
Ollo was an ever-present helpmate: cooking, cleaning, sewing, and caring for little Nina, with whom she had established a deep bond, occasionally referring to the baby as “my child.” Nanny and child shared a bedroom. At times, Ursula wondered whether Ollo’s attachment to her daughter was a little obsessive. With Michael, she was overly strict. Olga Muth knew that Ursula often worked late into the night, sending messages on the transmitter hidden in the bottom of her wardrobe. When Ursula came to breakfast drained from lack of sleep, Ollo sent her back upstairs. “I see how long the light burns in your room….Stay in bed, I’ll keep the children quiet.” Their complicity was more open these days. Ursula even discussed what Ollo should do in the event of a police raid. “If something happens, you have seen nothing and heard nothing, and you stick with that story.”
As in Ursula’s childhood home, the rivalry between mother and nanny was unspoken, but intense. Ollo considered herself to be the better mother, and once even hinted that Ursula’s espionage was impinging on her maternal duties. Stung, Ursula shot back: “Should I give up my work because I have them, or should I give up the children because of my illegal work? Both would be impossible for me.” Ollo had touched a raw nerve. When Ursula needed to send a wireless message or attend a rendezvous, she ceased mothering and, as her own mother had done for rather different reasons, handed the job over to Ollo. She adored her children, but sometimes it was a relief to be able to pause being a mother and resume being a spy. She did not put her work ahead of her children; but she did believe she could have both a family and a career as a spy.
That winter, Foote installed himself in a furnished apartment at 2 Elisabethstrasse, Munich. A university student and SS officer named Eugen Lahr agreed to teach him German, and happily introduced Foote to other Nazis. As instructed, Foote bought a novel, wrote his address in secret ink, and posted it to Lawn Road. He forgot, however, to indicate which page the message was on, leaving Brigitte “to soak the entire volume in iodine to bring out the secret writing.” Then he relaxed. Posing as an eccentric and wealthy British tourist, he had “enough pocket money and little to do, save enjoy myself”—something he was rather good at.
Foote dined out for every meal. One day, in search of lunch, he alighted on the Osteria Bavaria on Schellingstrasse, which offered a decent-looking set menu. Foote was tucking into his deep-fried trout with Kartoffelsalat, when there was a “flurry at the door and Hitler strode in.”
By chance Foote had chosen to lunch in the führer’s favorite restaurant, run by a former comrade from the First World War. Hitler always ate in the rear annex, separated from the other diners by a thin wooden partition, on which hung a coatrack. He was usually accompanied by his adjutant, SS Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Brückner, and several aides. Like most tyrants, Hitler was fussy about food, and his order never varied: “Eggs and mayonnaise, vegetables and pasta, and compote of fruit or a raw grated apple, and Fachinger Wasser,” a faddish medicinal mineral water that claimed to cure stomach ailments. The führer farted frequently during meals. No one objected. In March 1935, Hitler dined at the Osteria Bavaria with the British Nazi-sympathizing Mitford sisters, Unity and Diana: one a substantially insane Hitler groupie, the other the mistress of Oswald Mosley, the British fascist leader. Over lunch, Diana admired Hitler’s “greyish blue eyes, so dark that they often appeared brown and opaque.” A year later, she married Mosley at the Berlin home of Joseph Goebbels, with Hitler in attendance.
Amused to be in such infamous company, Foote took to lunching regularly at the restaurant and noted that when in Munich Hitler ate there up to three times a week. “This triviality,” he wrote, “was to have surprising consequences.”
Foote and Ursula met again, as planned, outside Lausanne Post Office. Sonya was still only “moderately enlightening” about his role, but her financial generosity was enough to allay any qualms: he was now on the payroll, she explained, with a salary of $150 a month, plus expenses, in return for which he should compile reports on “political and economic conditions in Germany.” More intriguingly, she said he would shortly be contacted by a “new collaborator.” Together they should work on “a possible sabotage operation and keep it on ice until such time as the director authorized it.”
Not much the wiser but quite a lot richer, Foote returned to a Munich “still full of tourists basking in the twilight of European peace” that would not last much longer. “Conversations with my SS friends and the evidence of my own eyes convinced me that it was only a matter of time before the military machine took control and the country went to war.”
* * *
—
RUDI HAMBURGER CAME TO Switzerland to say farewell. Having completed a two-month radio course in Paris, he was keen to get back to China and begin working as a Soviet spy in his own right. Moscow had finally agreed to his request: he was ordered to sail from Marseilles to Shanghai accompanied by the Red Army’s senior intelligence officer in the region, who was returning to China and would oversee Rudi’s clandestine work.
The officer was Johann Patra.
For
both men, the situation was, to put it mildly, odd. Johann would be working with the man he had cuckolded. Rudi would be taking orders from his wife’s former lover, the biological father of the child everyone believed to be his. The Center was not known for its sensitivity, but even hard-bitten Umar Mamsurov had felt moved to ask Hamburger if he was prepared to work under Patra. As Ursula put it, “generous and principled as he was, Rudi had a high opinion of Johann, and agreed.” Rudi was philosophical, or pretended to be. “There was no personal conflict between us on account of his earlier co-habitation with my wife. As men, we understood each other. The past was the past.”
Rudi was determined to avoid a scene and stayed for only a few days, but the final parting from his family was supremely painful. Little Michael, deeply attached to his father, recalled the moment of separation with undimmed pain eight decades later. “I remember him saying goodbye, and saying he would return soon. My mother told me he would be coming back, but he didn’t. She was not honest with me about that. One day he was there; the next he was gone. I waited and waited.” Ollo was also upset by Rudi’s departure, unwilling to accept that the marriage was really over.
Agent Sonya Page 18
