by Philip Kerr
“Yeah, well, the sons of famous fathers. Listen, there’s one more favor you could do for me. Only I’m kind of behind with what’s been happening in Germany. I was wondering if you knew of a shortwave radio receiver I might listen to. In private. Preferably through a set of headphones—just in case anyone thinks I’m a German spy.”
“I can do better than that,” said Poole. “That is, if you don’t mind driving about ten miles into the desert.”
In Ridgeway Poole’s dusty-looking Peugeot 202 we drove north out of the city on the Bizerte Road, through military cemeteries and fields piled high with broken ordnance and ammunition dumps. Overhead, flights of the American Ninth Air Force rumbled through the sky like rusty dragonflies on their way to bomb targets in Italy.
Nearer Protville, which was our destination, Poole explained that he had lots of friends in the American First Antisubmarine Squadron, which was stationed in a building formerly occupied by the Luftwaffe. “They’ve got a German radio,” he said. “And it’s in perfect working order. A real beauty. The radio officer is a pal of mine from before the war. I don’t imagine he’ll mind you using it. Here we are.”
Poole pointed out four RAF Bristol Beaufighters and about ten USAAF B-24s. Operating as part of the Northwest African Coastal Air Force, it was the task of the B-24s to seek out and destroy enemy submarines between Sicily and Naples and west of Sardinia, and to fly escort for Allied shipping convoys. We found the squadron in a jubilant mood. One of the B-24s had shot down a long-range Focke Wulf 200 and, even now, a navy patrol was out searching the Gulf of Hammamet for the Germans who had bailed out.
“A 200,” I remarked, when Poole had finished making the introductions. “That’s a strange plane to be operating this far south.”
“You’re right,” said Lieutenant Spitz. “Mostly they operate as maritime patrol airplanes over Salerno, but this one must have strayed off course. Anyway, we’re pretty excited about it, what with the president coming here this afternoon.”
“The president’s coming here? I didn’t know.”
“FDR’s son, Elliott—his recon squad is stationed here. When you guys drove up we thought you were the advance party.”
Even as Spitz was speaking, a truck carrying more than a dozen MPs hove into view, and then another.
“This looks like them now,” said Poole.
“I’ll see that they don’t bother you,” said Spitz, and he showed us into a small white building where the radio room was housed, then left us with Sergeant Miller, the radio operator.
“We have a Tornister Empfanger B,” Miller said proudly. “And the ultimate German receiver, the E52b Köln. The frequency range is selected by the oblong control to the left of the indicator.” Miller plugged in some headphones and switched on the E52. “But it’s already tuned in to Radio Berlin, so all you gotta do is listen.” He handed me the phones.
I thanked him and sat down. Glancing at my watch, I put on the headphones, thinking I might just catch the next German news broadcast. Poole and Miller went outside to watch the deployment of MPs.
During the Atlantic voyage of the Iowa, the Washington Times-Herald had published the rumor that an international conference of major importance was about to be held in Cairo, and I wanted to find out if these rumors were being reported on German radio. I was hardly surprised to discover that they were, and in detail. Not only was Radio Berlin reporting that Churchill and Roosevelt planned to meet General Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, but also that a conference of the Big Three, “to decide on military plans of great magnitude against Germany,” would take place at another location in the Middle East immediately afterward. On the face of it, I could hardly imagine that the Cairo conference could now proceed safely. And the Big Three conference now looked about as secret as a Hollywood divorce. Mike Reilly might as well have sent a press release to Hedda Hopper.
I kept on listening, hoping to learn more, turning up the volume as, for a moment, the signal from Radio Berlin seemed to fade away. Or at least, that was my intention. But somehow I managed to feed the German-speaking voice straight through the main loudspeaker. At almost full volume, it sounded like a speech at a Nuremberg party rally.
Panicking a little as I realized what I had done, I whipped off the headphones and tried to flick the switch that would cut the speaker. All I managed to do was find yet another pretuned German-language frequency. I jumped up and closed the open window quickly before trying, a second time, to switch off the radio. I was still examining the front of the Telefunken set when the door burst open and two U.S. Military Policemen stormed into the radio room and leveled their carbines at my head. I raised my hands instinctively.
“Turn it off,” yelled one of the policemen, a sergeant with a face of weathered brown brick.
“I don’t know how.”
The policeman worked the bolt on his carbine so that it was ready to fire. “Mister, you’ve got five seconds to turn it off or you’re a dead man.”
“I’m an American intelligence officer,” I yelled back at him. “It’s my fucking job to monitor German radio broadcasts.”
“And it’s my job to protect the president’s ass from German assassins,” said the sergeant. “So turn off the goddamn radio.”
I turned to face the radio, suddenly aware of the very real danger I was in. “Friendly fire” they called it, when your own side killed you. Which probably didn’t make it feel any better. I was about to experiment with another switch on the German radio when the MP said, “And don’t try to signal to anyone, either.”
I shook my head and, hardly certain of what I was doing, stood back from the radio, still keeping my hands up. I don’t have any excuse for this kind of cowardly behavior except to say that sometimes I get a little nervous when there’s a dumb, trigger-happy Okie pointing a loaded rifle at my head. I’d seen the metal hole at the end of the wooden part. It looked like the Washington Street traffic tunnel.
“You try to turn it off,” I yelled. “This isn’t my radio and I don’t know how.”
The MP sergeant spat copiously onto the dirt floor, took a step forward, and fired, twice, at the radio, which ended the German broadcast, forever.
“Now why didn’t I think of that?” I said. “Shoot the radio. Let me find you a German newspaper and you can shoot that, too.”
“You’re under arrest, mister,” said the MP, and, grabbing hold of one of my wrists, he handcuffed me roughly.
“Do they train you boys to think when you’re standing up?” I asked.
The two MPs frog-marched me outside the radio hut toward a group of jeeps that were now parked in the middle of the airbase. In the distance, surrounded by more MPs and oblivious of what had just happened, the president was inspecting Colonel Roosevelt’s recon squadron. But as we neared the first group of jeeps, I saw Agents Rauff and Pawlikowski throw down their cigarettes and walk toward us.
“Tell these two clowns to uncuff me,” I told them.
“We caught this guy using a German radio,” said the MP who had fired the two shots.
“He makes it sound like I was telling Hitler the president’s telephone number.”
“Maybe you were at that,” sneered the sergeant.
“I was monitoring a German news broadcast. On a shortwave receiver. I was not transmitting a message. As an OSS officer that’s my job.”
“Show us,” Rauff told the MP, and, still handcuffed, I found myself marched roughly back into the radio hut.
“This is a German radio, all right,” said Rauff, examining the equipment. “Be easy to send a message to Berlin on this.”
“Not anymore,” I said. “Not since Davy Crockett here put a couple of bullets into it. Listen, Rauff, there’s a radio operator somewhere around here named Miller. And a lieutenant named Spitz. I expect they’re on the other side of the airfield getting a look at the president. They’ll tell you that the Germans left all this equipment behind when they pulled out. And as I was trying to explain to these two a minute ago,
one of my jobs is to monitor German radio broadcasts. That is a proper function of intelligence, which is something I imagine still has relevance in the world of the Secret Service.”
“Oh, yes,” said Rauff. “Which is how I come to be thinking that it is a hell of coincidence that it should be you who suggested a German spy was sending radio messages from the Iowa.”
“Hey, that’s right,” agreed Pawlikowski, lighting a Kool. “It was him, wasn’t it? Might be a good way of covering up the fact he’s the German spy. Like a double bluff.”
Liking his theory a lot, Rauff added, “And let’s not forget that fellow Schmidt. He shared a cabin on the Iowa with you, didn’t he? Could be he found out that you were a German spy and was about to tell us. Except that you killed him first.”
“Listen to me,” I said. “According to the German news broadcast I just heard, the Germans know all about this Cairo conference. And it sounds to me like they’ve got some pretty good ideas about the one after that. Now, if I were a Luftwaffe commander in North Italy with fifty Junkers 88 bombers at my disposal, I would already be planning to bomb Mena House in Cairo. Yes, that’s right. Mena House. The Germans even know that that’s where the conference is going to be held. Under the circumstances, it would seem that even an elementary level of prudence demands a change of location. So why don’t you tell that to Hopkins and we’ll see what he has to say about all this?”
Rauff searched me and found my automatic. “Well, well, the prof is concealing some iron here.”
“That’s standard issue for all OSS officers. Surely you must know that.”
“I’d say you’ve got some explaining to do, Prof,” said Rauff. “And I’m not talking about the meaning of life.”
“The meaning of life? Tsk, tsk, Agent Rauff. You’ve been reading a book again.”
XVII
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20-
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1943,
TUNIS - CAIRO
IT WAS MIKE REILLY, the head of the White House Secret Service detail, who decided that I was telling the truth. But it took him a lot of frowning and several fingernails to arrive at the conclusion that if I really had been a German agent then I’d had ample opportunity to take a pop at Roosevelt while I was on the Iowa; or in the president’s study back in Washington. I was beginning to see why the U.S. Treasury wanted to keep the service a secret. It wouldn’t have done to let the Germans know that the president’s safety depended on cheeseheads like Rauff and Pawlikowski.
“I’m sorry about that, Prof,” Reilly told me when his two men had gone. “But they’re paid to be overzealous.”
“I understand. So am I.”
We were meeting on Saturday evening in the magnificent dining room at La Mersa. As soon as Rauff and Pawlikowski left for La Casa Blanca, Reilly had the Joint Chiefs join us, and I told them what I had heard on Radio Berlin.
“Is this confirmed?” asked Admiral Leahy, who was FDR’s personal representative on the Joint Chiefs.
“Yes, sir,” said Reilly. “I took the liberty of radioing the American legation in Cairo and was told that while they had no knowledge of what the Germans were broadcasting, the president’s imminent arrival in Cairo is an open secret. They would be very surprised if the Germans didn’t know about it.”
“So what are the British saying?” General Marshall asked. “This is supposed to be their sphere of influence.”
“They’re saying that eight squadrons of fighter aircraft have been concentrated in Cairo for the protection of the president and Mr. Churchill,” said Reilly. “And that there are more than a hundred antiaircraft guns on the ground, to say nothing of three infantry battalions.”
“And Churchill? What’s his opinion?” asked Admiral King.
“Mr. Churchill is still en route from Malta aboard the HMS Renown,” Reilly said. “He’s not due in Alexandria until tomorrow.”
“And Eisenhower?”
“General Eisenhower is well aware that security in Cairo has not been the best, sir.”
“That’s a considerable understatement,” General Arnold said.
“If you remember, it was Ike who proposed the conference be moved to Malta.”
“No, Mike, Malta’s no good,” Arnold answered. “There are no decent hotels in Malta.”
This was the kind of diplomacy I could understand. Good hotels made for good foreign policy.
“There’s no decent food and not much water,” Leahy added.
My mind was made up. I didn’t want to go to Malta any more than Arnold.
“Maybe we’re making too much of this,” said Arnold. “Okay, the secret’s out. We were aware of that on the Iowa. All that’s changed is that we know for sure that the krauts are in on the secret. If they were planning a surprise bomber attack, then they’d hardly tell the world on Berlin Radio that they know all about the conference. I mean, that would just put us on our guard. No, they’d say nothing at all about it.”
“What do you think, Prof ?” asked Reilly
“I think General Arnold makes a good point. But at the very least, we should be even more vigilant. Deploy a couple of night-fighter squadrons north of Cairo. Bring in some more armored cars. More troops.”
“Makes sense,” agreed Leahy. “What else?”
“Since the two principal targets are the president and Mr. Churchill, perhaps we ought to leave the final decision to them. A short delay in the departure for Cairo might be a good idea, just to give them time for an exchange of telegrams.”
“Mike? What do you think?”
“It couldn’t do any harm to stay here another day,” agreed Reilly. “And it might be better if the president flew at night.”
“That’s true,” said Arnold. “There would be no need for a fighter escort at night.”
“How about this?” I said. “All the Joint Chiefs to fly on Sunday morning, six A.M., as scheduled. But the president doesn’t fly until late Sunday evening, which means he wouldn’t arrive in Cairo until Monday morning. In other words, we fool the world into believing the president is arriving in Cairo at lunchtime on Sunday, when in fact he won’t be there for another twenty hours. That way, if the Germans were to mount an attack, then the president would be safe.”
“Let me get this straight,” said General Marshall. “Are you proposing to use the Joint Chiefs as decoys?” The cavernous dining room at La Mersa seemed to give his words an extra resonance.
“That’s right, sir, yes.”
“I like it,” said Reilly.
“You would,” growled King.
“My suggestion has another advantage,” I added.
“What do you want us to do now?” asked Arnold. “Put up some smoke for German bombers?”
“No, sir. I was thinking that when you all arrived in Cairo, who better than yourselves to evaluate the security situation on the ground for the president? If you get there and decide that the situation warrants a change of location, you could direct the president somewhere else. Alexandria, for example. After all, that’s where Churchill is due to arrive tomorrow morning. And I’m told there are some excellent hotels in Alexandria.”
“I don’t like Alexandria,” said General Marshall. “It’s a hundred miles nearer to Crete, and the last I heard, there were thirty thousand German paratroopers on Crete. Not to mention, the Luftwaffe.”
“Yes, sir, but the Luftwaffe on Crete is mostly all fighters, not bombers,” I said. This was the advantage of being a specialist in German intelligence. I did at least know what I was talking about. “And they’re short of fuel. Of course, we could always choose Khartoum. But the logistics of moving everyone in Cairo a thousand miles to the south might be too much to contemplate.”
“Damn right they are,” muttered King.
“There are no good hotels in Khartoum, in any event. I’m not sure there are even any bad ones.”
I found myself beginning to warm to Arnold.
“Gentlemen,” said Marshall. “I think we’ll just have to hope that for
once British defenses are as good as they say they are.”
I WENT BACK to La Mersa, had a shower, and checked my mail. There wasn’t any. Poole wanted me to see four of the local sights. Two of the local sights were named Leila and Amel, the other two were called Muna and Widad. But I’d had enough excitement for one day. Besides, I could hardly have looked in my shaving mirror and told myself I was in love with Diana with some Tunisian broad’s lipstick on my shirt collar. So I had a lousy dinner and went to bed early, although, as things turned out, I was not alone.
Early on the morning of Sunday, November 21, I awoke, with a couple of flea bites. It was a bad start. And when I looked in my shaving mirror I didn’t feel I had gained very much from declining Ridgeway Poole’s offer of hospitality. Awakening with a couple of Tunisian girls had to be better than awakening with a couple of flea bites. Things always look a lot different in the morning.
At six A.M. I accompanied the Joint Chiefs on one of the C-54s leaving the airfield of El Aounia. Ahead of us lay a five-and-a-half-hour flight to Cairo. I was pleased to discover that none of the president’s Secret Service agents were on our plane. The last thing I wanted was to endure the further scrutiny of Agents Rauff and Pawlikowski.
APPROACHING CAIRO from the west, we enjoyed a spectacular view of the Pyramids before putting down at an RAF airfield in the western desert. Minutes later, the RAF were driving the Joint Chiefs and their liaison officers to the Mena House hotel, near the Pyramids at Giza. I was driven to Shepheard’s Hotel in the center of Cairo.
“Imshi,” yelled my driver, or, as often, “Fuck off,” as he steered the little Austin Seven between ancient-looking Thorneycroft buses, nervous flocks of sheep, cruelly laden asses, and other impatient drivers.
