The Swiss Spy

by Alex Gerlis

  He had decided to remain in Marseilles for another day or two; a ship was due in from Greece and Greek crews always offered the opportunity of good contacts. But when he returned to his pension there was a telegram waiting for him, sent from the main post office in Gothenburg.

  ‘Mother ill stop return home soonest stop’

  The Russian rarely allowed himself the indulgence of emotion, but he did that afternoon, sitting quietly in his room for a few minutes after he had packed and contemplating what a summons home could mean. He had survived, as he liked to see it, various such calls over the past few years, but feared his luck could not hold out much longer. A sensation of fear swept over him and it took the remains of the vodka by the side of the bed and a cold bath before he came to his senses. I have done nothing wrong: No one in the service is indispensible, but I am closer to it than many.

  An hour later he had checked out of the pension and stopped at the main post office to send a telegram to Gothenburg to the effect that he was so concerned about mother he was returning home: love to mother stop. Then he headed to the port office, where he found the captain of a Turkish steamer leaving that evening for Istanbul who was more than happy to take a passenger, especially one who was offering to pay so generously. We have a light load: with luck we should arrive on Saturday; maybe Sunday.

  The steamer duly arrived in Istanbul early on the Saturday evening and the captain took his passenger straight to the house of his wife’s cousin, who sailed his trawler in the Black Sea. Yes, said the cousin. He would be setting off as usual on Sunday morning: yes, he would be happy to sail to Odessa first; yes, that is very generous. Thank you sir!

  Odessa was a day and a half’s hard sailing from Istanbul and, encouraged by the Russian’s generosity, the skipper made it there late on the Monday afternoon. He went straight to the railway station: the night train to Moscow was leaving at a quarter to midnight. He had time to send a telegram announcing his arrival then find a café where he could eat familiar food and get used to hearing familiar languages around him once again.

  It was past midnight when the train noisily pulled out of the station and, as the final leg of his voyage began, the fear that had struck him in Marseilles returned. It kept him wide awake until they reached Kharkov in the early hours of the morning, turning his stomach into knots and making his heart beat fast. Along with the fear came the doubt: should I have stayed in France? I could so easily have disappeared from there.

  The train was held in Kharkov for three or four hours. As usual, there was no explanation and no complaints from his fellow passengers. He left the train to send another telegram to Moscow: he didn’t want them to think he wasn’t coming.

  By the time dawn broke on the Wednesday morning they were approaching the outskirts of Moscow and the train slowed down. The Russian tried hard to compose himself. The cruellest part of this job was not the loneliness or the danger or the stress of swapping identities every few days: that was all to be expected. No, the worst part – the part he could never come to terms with – was that the one place you could call home, the place you risked your life for and suffered all the hardships on behalf of – was the place you feared most. He would have no idea whether the day that had just begun would end with a bullet to the head in the basement. It had happened to so many others, after all. But then he pulled himself together as he remembered what they instilled into all the new recruits: Never question; never discuss; never hesitate.

  The train pulled into Kursky station at eight o’clock and he was met on the platform by two young men who escorted him to a waiting car, which he decided was a bad sign. It was a glorious day in Moscow and he began to feel quite emotional on the short journey. He resolved if he survived this trip and was sent back into the field, he would make plans. Next time he was summoned back, he’d disappear. He had worked for the service since 1920; he had outlived all those he had been recruited with and many more recruited after him. He knew he was good, but he also knew that he was not indispensible. What mattered most was that he did outlive his luck and now he feared this had run out on him.

  The car drove straight into a basement, which he decided was another bad sign. He could feel his whole body trembling as he walked with his unsmiling escort to the lift. If it went down into the basement, he knew that was the end. Moments later they emerged onto the fifth floor and he had to bite his lip to stop tears of sheer relief. He was steered into a large office where there were half a dozen of them waiting, all of whom seemed to be pleased to see him. From that group, a familiar figure emerged and hugged the new arrival.

  ‘Viktor: welcome home.’

  ***

  He had been so well received that for a day or two after his arrival in Moscow he wondered whether this was some kind of elaborate trap. But it wasn’t: they were clearly very pleased with him, but most of all they wanted to know about Henry. Who would have thought it? Tell us everything? Does he realise how important he could be – do you realise how important he is? We need to handle him carefully.

  After three days in Moscow he was taken to one of the dachas outside the city that the service used. For the first time in years he could relax in the silence. A woman came in every day to cook and clean, and a younger woman arrived every evening and stayed with him until the following morning. The service could be brutal and cruel, especially to its own, but it knew how to look after those it was especially pleased with.

  Viktor stayed in the dacha for a week before travelling to Stockholm and from there by sea back to France. But not once during that time was he ever in doubt that he owed all this to Henry. Do you realise how important he is, they had asked?

  But Viktor certainly didn’t need anyone to tell him how important Henry was. An agent he had recruited had in turn been recruited by the British.

  Do I realise how important Henry is?

  Important enough to have kept me alive.

  ***

  Chapter 5: Switzerland, 1929–1930

  It was a filthy evening sometime in late January 1929 when Henry emerged from the pink-stuccoed building on the university campus. The rain swept into Geneva from every direction: the Alps, the lake, France. He paused at the end of the flight of steps, already drenched and wondering whether to dash into the Old Town through Les Bastions or go back into the building and wait for the rain to abate.

  He was still debating what to do when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You are deciding whether to brave the rain? Me too: who knows when it will stop? When it rains like this in Geneva it feels like it will rain forever.’ It was the last speaker at the meeting, a handsome man in his late twenties with piercing blue eyes, thick black hair which touched his collar and a distinctive Parisian accent. Henry had never heard anyone quite so charismatic and mesmerising. He wore no tie but had a silk scarf wrapped stylishly around his neck, and when he spoke it was about the injustices in Europe and around the world, and how only the Communist Party had the answer. Henry had felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck; tears had even come to his eyes. ‘Europe is in crisis: capitalism is in crisis. The solution is in our hands – your hands,’ he had told the 30 or so people sparsely arranged around the large lecture hall.

  ‘My name is Marcel by the way.’ The Frenchman’s hand was still on his shoulder as he gently steered him back into the building. The meeting had taken place in the Law Faculty and Marcel guided Henry through its corridors until they found a deserted seating area on the first floor. Marcel unfurled his silk scarf, revealing a white shirt with two or three buttons undone. He smiled at Henry, his teeth white and perfectly straight.

  ‘Maybe in ten or 15 minutes the rain will stop, but it’s good to talk. Are you a member of the Party?’

  ‘Not yet,’ replied Henry. ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  ‘Tell me why?’

  It was a while before Henry replied, during which time the noise of the rain beating on the windows grew heavier. When it rains like this in Geneva it feels lik
e it will rain forever.

  ‘I live in a privileged and bourgeois world,’ said Henry eventually. ‘I’ve visited Germany and seen areas where people have no jobs and little food. Even in Switzerland, you can go from a rich area to one nearby that’s completely different and that just seems wrong to me. My mother and my step-father are always saying a civilised world relies on having some people making money and others working for them. They say the reason why people are poor is they’re lazy and feckless. They blame unemployment on trade unions and socialists. I always find I disagree with whatever they say about politics and the people they seem to despise the most are communists. That got me thinking. If my mother and step-father are so opposed to communism, then maybe it can’t be that bad. When I saw a notice for this meeting in the library, I thought I’d come along. I’m reading a lot about it at the moment.’

  ‘Really? Tell me, what are you reading?’ Marcel leaned forward, genuinely interested.

  ‘I’ve read The Communist Manifesto, of course, and all three volumes of Capital, though I can’t pretend I found that easy-going. Now I’m reading The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, but it’s even more difficult.’

  ‘I understand, Engels isn’t the easiest person to read, but his ideas – they’re excellent, do you agree?’

  ‘I do.’

  Marcel edged his chair a bit closer to Henry’s. ‘I can tell from your accent that you’re not from Geneva.’

  ‘No, I lived in Zürich for a number of years. We moved to Geneva last year.’

  Marcel switched to German. ‘And can I ask what you do; are you a student here at the university?’

  ‘No… not yet. My mother isn’t keen on me being a student. She thinks I’ll end up mixing with people she disapproves of.’

  ‘Like communists?’

  ‘Like communists.’

  ‘I suspect you’re not a native of Zürich either? I’m not Swiss myself: I’m from Paris. I can always tell when someone isn’t Swiss: they have more… warmth.’

  Marcel patted Henry on the knee. A friend: someone to trust.

  ‘Actually, I’m originally from England.’

  ‘Really, where?’

  ‘I was born in a place called Woking; it’s not far from London.’

  ‘And how did you end up in Geneva?’

  ‘It’s a long story and a rather boring one, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No, no – not at all. People’s stories are always more fascinating than they realise. Do tell me.’

  Marcel edged his chair even closer to Henry’s and looked at his companion in admiration. ‘Please tell me, Henry!’

  ‘Well, as I say, it’s not terribly remarkable. My father was an accountant and a good deal older than my mother. He died suddenly in 1923. My mother was still in her early forties and, though we weren’t rich, my mother had aspirations to wealth. She inherited a life-insurance policy upon my father’s death and, as far as I can recall, she set about spending it – furs, jewellery – that type of thing. We spent most of that summer on the French Riviera and in Antibes she met a Swiss businessman, Erich Hesse. She married him later the same year.’

  ‘Rather quick?’

  ‘Indeed: indecent haste was how people described it. But my mother was quite unashamed about it. She disliked England and what she described as a provincial lifestyle. She wanted glamour and wealth, and Erich Hesse offered all that. In the short period following the death of my father, she’d quickly become accustomed to a certain standard of living, so, Herr Hesse was an extremely attractive proposition: financially at least. I ought to add he was also quite a bit older than my mother. He was 65 when they married.’

  ‘So you moved here to Switzerland?’

  ‘Yes. To Zürich at first, this was where his business interests were. We lived there for around five years and moved here last year.’

  ‘Why the move to Geneva?’

  ‘My stepfather has property here, though he has all over Switzerland. I think the main reason was my mother: she always said she found Zürich rather stuffy but she loves Geneva and the area around it. We live by the lake, close to Nyon.’

  ‘And how did you become so fluent?’

  ‘I turned out to be something of a natural linguist,’ said Henry. ‘I’d never really fitted in well in England. I didn’t excel at school and I was bad at sport, so I was bullied a bit. I managed to make myself more popular by impersonating teachers – I was rather good at it and the other boys loved it. I was always playing pranks, phoning teachers and pretending to be the headmaster, that kind of thing. When I arrived in Switzerland at 13, I discovered my talent for impersonation was a godsend for learning languages: not so much the vocabulary and the grammar, which I found easy enough, but in imitating the accent and the nuance of speech. In Zürich I became fluent in German and Swiss-German, and since moving here my French has really come on.’

  Marcel nodded and smiled in the right places. He was sympathetic and friendly, someone Henry instinctively felt he could trust. To his surprise, Henry found himself opening up even more to this stranger: the coldness of his mother; his lack of a relationship with his step-father; his loneliness; his boredom; his curiosity about the world around him and his frustration at not being able to satisfy that.

  Marcel switched to English, but only after he had looked carefully around the empty room and moved his chair so close to Henry’s that they were touching.

  ‘You’re clearly very interested in communism, Henry.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, are you going to join the Party?’

  ‘Probably. I’m a bit nervous about what my mother and step-father will think. I know it’s nothing to do with them, but, if they found out, they’d throw me out of the house. But they won’t need to know, will they?’

  Marcel said nothing. He leaned back in his chair and looked Henry up and down.

  ‘You don’t have to join the Party, you know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What matters, Henry, is that you believe in the cause, that you believe in communism.’

  ‘I’m not terribly sure I follow you.’

  Marcel paused while a man and a woman walked by, their shoes reverberating long after they had passed on the wooden floor. The rain now sounded as if it had turned into a storm. Marcel lowered his head and only raised it very slightly when he spoke again.

  ‘Henry, if one truly believes in the cause, then there are many different ways of serving it. Joining the party and attending meetings have their place, but for someone such as yourself, there may be other ways… better ways in which you can help the cause more effectively.’

  ‘I’m still not really following you. Why are you so interested in me?’

  ‘Because it’s clear you believe in the cause and that you are a man of many parts, not all of them obvious ones. You have a natural caution about you, along with an inquisitive mind. You speak three languages. You have a Swiss passport and a British one. And the only person who knows that you are interested in the Party, that you came to the meeting tonight, is me.’

  ‘There were other people at the meeting.’

  ‘Sure, but do any of them know who you are, do they know your name?’

  Henry shook his head.

  ‘Exactly. For the time being, can I ask you not to join the Party or attend any meetings? In a few weeks, maybe two or three, possibly longer, I will approach you. We will meet and I may be able to introduce you to people who share our views. In the meantime, I ask you not to discuss this with anyone.’

  ‘But how will you know where to find me?’

  Marcel patted Henry’s knee. ‘Don’t worry: finding you will not be a problem.’

  ***

  Marcel found him in late February, around four weeks after they had first met.

  He was in the library at the university, where he spent most weekdays. It got him away from his mother and step-father, and away from Nyon and the home overlooking the lake. He tended to arrive at
the library around 11 in the morning and leave around four. On Marcel’s advice he had stopped reading political works (‘there’s no need to draw unnecessary attention to yourself’) and was now working his way through the French novelists. On this particular day he was finding it hard to concentrate on Zola's Thérèse Raquin so in the middle of the afternoon he went for a stroll along the corridors, past the crowded notice board where he had first spotted the handwritten poster advertising the Communist Party meeting. When he return to his desk he noticed that his copy of Thérèse Raquin was closed, with a slip of paper poking out of the last page he had been reading. It was a card from a bar on the Place de la Taconnerie and in neat handwriting, ‘Ce soir. 6.’

  The bar was in the shadow of St-Pierre cathedral and was little more than a dimly lit cellar. It was hard to make out the few other customers. Henry had arrived in good time – well before six – and for 30 or 40 minutes he sat on a small table facing the entrance and contemplated what he may have let himself into. Until that evening, he had decided that Marcel was just an enthusiast who had perhaps become carried away. He was, in Henry’s opinion, unlikely ever to contact him again and he’d come to the conclusion this was very much for the best. Whatever serving the cause in different ways meant, it was not for him.

  He did not notice Marcel until he slid into the chair opposite and greeted him warmly, placing two empty glasses on the table and proceeding to fill them both from a bottle of red wine while holding the cork between his teeth. He gestured for Henry to drink and it was only when they had both finished and he had refilled their glasses that he spoke.