by Clare Mulley
Less than two weeks later Christine and Andrzej were summoned to Cairo. After another long, hot drive, the Opel was again waved through the border, this time into Egypt, and they were directed to the rambling Continental Hotel, whose bars and shady verandas had been all but taken over by the services. Here they were met by Peter Porter, who told them, rather stiffly now, to rest and relax while their future was being decided. It was not the welcome they had anticipated, but they knew the Cairo office had other priorities: the Germans had reached North Africa, the siege of Tobruk was in full force, and Vichy France was in the process of giving Germany access to its military facilities in Syria. Christine and Andrzej were soon surrounded by old friends including Andrzej Tarnowski and Kowerski’s cousin, Ludwig Popiel, recently returned from service in the desert with the Carpathian Lancers. The Lancers were commanded by Colonel Władysław Bobinski, whose horses Christine had ridden when she was just fourteen, and who was also stationed at the Continental along with many of his officers. And yet, given the number of people they knew at the hotel, the atmosphere surrounding Christine and Andrzej was surprisingly tense. Stranger still, apart from Ludwig, Tarnowski and Bobinski, none of the Polish or British officers at the Continental, or even the Polish Ambassador, whom Christine knew well, were talking to them.
Having driven fairly blithely across hundreds of miles of Nazi-sympathizing territory, often carrying incriminating letters and sometimes microfilm, and just weeks or at times days ahead of the Nazi advance, they were finally safely in British controlled territory. But two days later they were interrogated, separately, and at length, at SOE’s Cairo office, then a small villa on the banks of the Nile. Something was terribly wrong.
7: COLD IN CAIRO
‘X & Y are now in Cairo’, the Middle East branch of SOE informed London at the end of May 1941, glad to have an unassailable fact to report concerning the pair. X and Y were, of course, Christine and Andrzej, currently sheltering in the bars of the Continental Hotel both from the city’s increasingly oppressive heat at the start of the long summer and from the unexpected chill of their welcome. It was obvious that they were being cold-shouldered by both the Poles and the British in the city, but far from clear why. Although complicit in this treatment, the British in Cairo were little better informed than Christine and Andrzej. A few weeks earlier they had been keen to embrace their returning agents, Peter Wilkinson telling Colin Gubbins, now head of SOE Military Operations, that they were ‘under a very considerable obligation to these people’.1 But by late May, Wilkinson’s tone had changed and he was referring to Christine and Andrzej as ‘rather a problem’.2 The problem stemmed from a top-secret Polish intelligence report claiming that at least one Polish agent had been killed as a result of what were described as Christine’s ‘indiscretions’.* Although the Poles refused to elaborate, and this accusation was never either effectively substantiated or disproved, they demanded that Christine and Andrzej should not be employed again until there had been a full investigation. Both of them were ‘very well thought of’ by Colonel George Taylor, the SOE office in Cairo informed London, but ‘viewed with grave suspicions’ by Polish intelligence. ‘Please discuss fully’, they begged, and telegraph by return, ‘what to do with X, Y’.3
‘Nobody who did not experience it can possibly imagine the atmosphere of jealousy, suspicion and intrigue which embittered the relations between the various secret and semi-secret departments in Cairo during that summer of 1941’, the SOE officer Bickham Sweet-Escott wrote.4 Internal relations between the various British services were strained enough, but tensions between the Poles and the British were in another league. Christine had a foot in each camp, which left her open to suspicion and politicking from both sides. From the British perspective, she had proved herself a valuable and trustworthy agent; ironically it was her Polish nationality – her greatest asset to them – that was now causing difficulties. The Poles had fought hard for independence from their rather overbearing British allies from the start of the war, securing the right to run their own operations, and to send their own signals using their own codes. In 1940 British secret services had agreed that all their clandestine communications with Poland would go through official channels. Arguably, in directly employing first Christine and then Andrzej the British had failed to honour this arrangement. With Christine now being monitored by the Poles themselves, her presence in the British offices in Cairo was a decided embarrassment.
The official Polish intelligence and counter-espionage unit, known as the ‘Second Bureau’, had far greater concerns, however. They had been keeping Christine under surveillance ever since she had appeared in Budapest. It was no surprise to them that she was reporting to the British, but they had recently begun to suspect that she was hiding something more sinister: that she might be a double agent working for the Nazis. These suspicions were seemingly supported by the apparent ease with which, in Istanbul, Christine had secured visas for Andrzej and herself to travel through pro-Vichy Syria and Lebanon, both then in the French Mandate. The British knew that visas could be obtained at a price, but it seemed impossible to the Poles that anyone other than a German spy could have achieved such a thing. This was just seen as corroborating evidence, however; the Second Bureau’s concerns about Christine had much deeper roots.
The fundamental issue was her close working relationship with Stefan Witkowski and his clandestine Polish intelligence group, ‘the Musketeers’. Ironically it was precisely because the Poles had considered Christine a liability, and would not use her as a courier between Hungary and Poland with the mainstream ZWZ, that she had first started working with the determinedly independent Musketeers. In 1940 the British had been desperate for intelligence on the German position inside Poland, and were delighted to employ Christine to bring out information that had not been sourced by official Polish intelligence and filtered through the Polish government-in-exile. Christine meanwhile, pleased to have found a job valued as much by her compatriot Witkowski as by the British, if anything became over-enthusiastic about her role. In early May 1941, Peter Wilkinson, who was censoring her letters, described the information they contained as ‘rather good stuff’, but was shocked to find one enclosing photographs of documents committing the British government to unreserved support for the Musketeers. ‘These latter rather alarming’, he reported. ‘We mustn’t make this sort of mistake again!’5 Christine was perhaps naive about the sensitivities of her position, but to the British her commitment to the Allied cause and to Poland seemed beyond doubt. However, by early 1941 the ZWZ and the Second Bureau were beginning to have serious doubts about Witkowski’s activities – and his loyalties.
At their height, the Musketeers had around 800 members, with agents operating inside the Russian-occupied area of Poland and across Europe, including over 200 actually inside Germany. Witkowski himself had travelled around the Reich purporting to be senior SS officer ‘Artur August von Tierbach’, while gathering high-quality intelligence for both the Poles and the British. His ambition and effectiveness reportedly enraged his official Polish intelligence rivals, who were determined to discredit him unless he agreed to pass all intelligence exclusively to the Second Bureau in return for a monthly budget and continued operational independence. Nonetheless, tensions continued to mount. Witkowski complained that the Second Bureau was not giving the Musketeers due credit for their intelligence reports. The Second Bureau in turn became furious when Witkowski bypassed them and gave intelligence directly to General Sikorski, now head of the Polish government-in-exile and commander-in-chief of the Polish forces, and indirectly to the British. A significant part of this intelligence went through Christine.
In an attempt to stem such intelligence rivalries, in early 1941 the Musketeers were officially merged with the ZWZ. But although Witkowski had been sworn into the fold he remained impossible to control, continuing to develop independent contacts with White Russian organizations, and becoming involved in secret talks with unnamed German commanders. Like Chris
tine, and indeed many Poles, Witkowski saw Soviet Russia as just as great a threat to Poland as Nazi Germany. With contacts in both camps, he was unable to resist exploring ways to play the two aggressors off against each other, or to cut deals to try to ameliorate the harsh terms of the Nazi occupation. Not only did this undermine the authority of the Polish government-in-exile, inevitably it also left the Musketeers open to enemy infiltration, and certainly to claims of this. Several Musketeer agents were later reported to ‘gradually change their stories until finally they would admit to working for the Germans’ in the hope of cooperating with White Russians against the Soviets.6 In May 1941 Sikorski decided to withdraw all support from the ‘unsatisfactory and harmful’ Musketeers, and, for the sake of continued good relations with their Polish allies, Britain officially supported this decision.7 Christine, well known to be Witkowski’s little ‘Fly’, had arrived safely in Cairo, against all the odds, right in the middle of the crisis surrounding the Musketeers. It was no wonder that she was subject to suspicion, and soon fell foul of the bitter jealousies and personal rivalries that followed. As her close companion, although never a Musketeer agent himself, Andrzej was tarred with the same brush.
A series of signals and telegrams now crossed and recrossed between Cairo, London and Istanbul, and between Polish and British intelligence, until at least one British message complained of ‘getting fed up with the bloody chaos’.8 According to Julian Amery, ‘there was a good deal of spy mania at the time and the authorities were taking no chances’.9 For a while the idea was mooted of sending Christine and Andrzej to London and offloading them onto the Polish administration there, but it seemed a waste of valuable assets. On the other hand, although SOE might have little doubt about Christine’s loyalty, the British were anxious to preserve good relations with the Poles. With the Baltic states steadily falling to the Axis, France already lost, Russia still treaty-bound to Germany, and the USA studiously avoiding being drawn into the conflict, Britain could not afford to alienate its ally. For Wilkinson this was the critical point. ‘The disadvantages of giving support to an organisation which is not collaborating with the Polish Government are obvious,’ he wrote with regard to Christine and the Musketeers, ‘and, in my opinion, outweigh all possible advantages.’10 It was decided that Christine and Andrzej should remain in Egypt, at least temporarily, but were not to be used in any connection with Poland, and were not to renew contact with the Musketeers. This last proved more tricky than it seemed, as a series of reports and microfilm still filtered through to Christine, carried by escaping Polish servicemen hoping to rejoin their army in the Middle East, and which she passed on regardless of her official position.
It was June 1941 before Colonel Guy Tamplin, the British liaison officer with the Polish authorities in Cairo, finally explained the situation to Christine and Andrzej. ‘Christine and I were appalled’, Andrzej remembered.11 Since the start of the war the two of them had risked their lives for Poland, only to be denounced and blacklisted as suspected double agents by their fellow countrymen. Christine felt thoroughly let down. ‘I am so fed up with everything and everyone that I am becoming a desert island’, she wrote to Kate O’Malley.* In Belgrade, George Taylor had promised to look after them, she continued, but ‘now he says he can do nothing, and has left us on ice’.12 And yet the situation continued to be so confused that at times it seemed farcical. Christine had to fend off constant insinuations, but no direct accusation, that she was a Nazi agent, while at the same time contending with the low-key anti-Semitism that was prevalent in Cairo. Andrzej learnt that he had been awarded the Virtuti Militari, Poland’s highest military honour, on the same day that he was officially denounced as a spy by the Second Bureau. Both of them were hugely relieved when they learnt that Peter Wilkinson was arriving from London later that month to resolve their seemingly impossible situation.
It was only when Christine and Andrzej were sitting opposite Wilkinson that it became apparent the news was not going to be good. According to Andrzej, Wilkinson dispensed with their services without a word of explanation, suggesting only that Christine hasten to join the Red Cross and Andrzej to sign up with the Polish armed forces. Both of them were stunned, Andrzej in ‘a furious rage’, Christine ‘pale and silent’.13 When Andrzej dutifully started to hand over their last rolls of microfilm, Wilkinson abruptly rose to see them out, announcing sharply that ‘Your microfilms are of no interest to us. Good-day.’14 In Wilkinson’s account of the meeting, however, he made clear that there were serious concerns that the Musketeers’ ‘amateur operations’ might compromise the ‘infinitely more clandestine activities’ of the official Polish resistance; an explanation which he believed Christine and Andrzej accepted ‘philosophically’.15 Perhaps Wilkinson was simply more optimistic about Christine’s shocked silence than the occasion warranted; later he admitted that it had ‘proved a painful interview’, and one that he had ‘handled badly’.16 In the space of just five minutes he had made lifelong enemies of both Christine and Andrzej, something he would later sincerely regret. Christine did not apply for a job with the Red Cross, and she swore that she would never again be dictated to by a man behind a desk. Wilkinson did, however, give them both a lifeline by neglecting to have them struck off the SOE payroll. A shrewd judge of both character and situation, he had taken apparently decisive action, while ensuring that ultimately the British retained control of their impressive and still potentially useful Polish agents.*
It was now mid-June, well into the long Cairo summer that would stretch through until October. Rising early, before the stifling heat of the day started to hang in the air, Christine and Andrzej would head to ‘Grey Pillars’, the massive building also known as ‘Hush Hush House’, to petition the SOE office for an update on their status. As the days ran into weeks they also fired off letters to every senior British and Polish officer they knew. Top of Christine’s list was Sir Owen O’Malley, whose response to her pleas only had Wilkinson commenting drily that Sir Owen ‘seems to have fallen a victim to Mme’s well-known persuasiveness’.17 The Poles showed no sign of changing their position, and without their support, her case looked hopeless.
Andrzej was less directly linked to the Musketeers than Christine, and, as a decorated officer, was also more generally employable. Gubbins, based in London, approached General Sikorski on his behalf, writing tactfully that ‘I am anxious that this man should not suffer through any fault of ours’, and suggesting that Andrzej should be allowed join the Polish armed forces in Egypt.18 Andrzej meanwhile wrote to his former commanding officer, General Stanisław Kopanski. When Kopanski was appointed to the Carpathian Brigade, Andrzej cornered him at the Continental and, using an old Polish expression, asked if they could speak privately, ‘between four eyes’. ‘That is impossible’, Kopanski told him, to the obvious delight of a contingent from the Second Bureau who were watching from across the lobby, only to add that with his war wounds they had only three good eyes, and three legs, between them.19 After their talk Kopanski also fought Andrzej’s corner, but there were still no job offers. ‘He is a very decent officer,’ one Polish report conceded, but he ‘finds himself under the negative influence of Mrs G’.20
Christine and Andrzej both loathed taking a salary, however basic, without contributing anything to justify it, and they were frustrated and soon rather disturbed by their seemingly idle and purposeless lives while they were surrounded by action. They spent the long summer afternoons lying under the slow ceiling fan in their dark room, shuttered against light and heat and insinuation. When they could they listened to Polish radio, broadcast from the Embassy in Cairo, or dozed on the verandas that ran the length of the hotel. Most Cairo establishments closed from midday until five, when the whole city lay in a motionless stupor of heat. These were the lost hours of the day when, according to the author Lawrence Durrell, who was also caught in Cairo, ‘one feels walked upon by the feet of dead elephants’.21 Even the covered souks and the Muski, the warren of lanes lined with open-fronted
shops jammed between massive gateways and ancient latticed windows, were quiet in the afternoons; the shopkeepers sleeping in the shade until evening brought some relief and some custom. Then Christine would join the crowds of men in long white djellabas and women swathed in black, small boys carrying trays of tea, and donkey-carts piled high with goods, all pressed into the maze of narrow streets in Cairo’s Old City. She had little money to fritter in the fashionable palm-shaded bar at Shepheard’s Hotel, which occupied a villa where Napoleon had once stayed, or in cafés like Groppi’s that sold fresh cream cakes, and few invitations to officers’ parties. Instead she would while away the early evenings petting the long-limbed Egyptian street cats, pitying the city’s exhausted and overworked horses, and sipping tea with the Muski shopkeepers who could tell she had no interest in buying. Andrzej meanwhile greedily eyed the silks, bottles full of perfume, and above all the jewellery, wishing he were in a better position and could buy a gift for Christine.
