by Seb Spence
The woman glowered at him silently. DaSilva’s jovial mood evaporated. “How did you do it?” he asked nervously.
“Never mind, but rest assured that his body will not be found.”
DaSilva felt he should change the subject. “So, where are we heading for next?”
“With the invasion in the offing, we need to stay here in the south-east,” Elliott responded. “Our colleagues in Hamburg have helpfully sent us a little shopping list.” He took out his wallet and removed from it a folded sheet of squared paper filled with columns of numbers and letters. “This is their latest signal; I decoded it earlier this evening.”
Referring to the sheet, he began: “These are their current priorities. They wish to receive:
- bomb damage assessments of the raids on British cities, particularly London, and the effect on morale
- the location of anti-aircraft defences, especially in the south east
- shipyard activity, shipping movements and the condition of harbours
- the location and capacity of plants producing corn oil, margarine, soap and sugar
- the locations of oil refineries and carbide works
- the location of oil pipelines and storage tanks
- data on aircraft production
- information on deliveries of war materiel from the United States
- the locations of camouflaged factories
- intelligence on: RAF bases, especially in southern England; troop movements; and the strength and position of coastal defences.”
DaSilva snorted derisively. “They must think we have a legion of people working for us. How can we manage to collect all that information?” And with Ortega gone, we’re one less, he thought to himself.
“You’re right,” Elliott mused. “We need to recruit more people. To paraphrase the Bard, ‘We must come not single spies, but in battalions’.”
8.
Sunday, 15th September, 1940: MI5 headquarters, 57-58 St James’s Street, London
After his meeting with Barton, Colonel Minton had returned to his office at IC3 and spent several hours weighing up in his mind the evidence for his suspicion that an Abwehr agent – or at least a German sympathiser – was on his staff. He persuaded himself eventually that it was more than just a hunch, in which case, he concluded, it was imperative that his superiors at MI5 be informed without delay. Accordingly, first thing in the morning he rang Brigadier Vaughan to arrange a meeting. Vaughan, however, was not available: he was over in Dublin negotiating with counterparts in G2 – the Irish military intelligence service – to get access to two Abwehr agents who had recently been arrested there. He was not expected to be back for several days.
Minton felt his news was too important to sit on until the Brigadier returned and so decided to contact Vaughan’s superior, General Cunningham, the deputy director of their department. In some ways, he reflected, Cunningham was a more appropriate choice to report the issue to, since one of his responsibilities was personnel vetting.
The infiltrator could be any one of the fourteen other staff who worked at IC3. Even his own driver could not be ruled out, so Minton did not take his staff car when he went to see Cunningham. Instead, he let it be known he was meeting up with some service acquaintances in town that morning and left in a taxi for the Army and Navy Club on St James’s Square. When he alighted at the club, he went for a walk round the square to check that no one was tailing him. Once satisfied that he was not being followed, he found a public call box and rang Cunningham’s assistant to request an urgent meeting. Cunningham had appointments all morning but agreed to see him for ten minutes at noon. Minton went back to the club and spent an hour reading the papers before setting off on foot along Pall Mall to Cunningham’s office at the MI5 building in nearby St James’s Street.
Arriving at No. 58, Minton passed between the two steel-helmeted guards standing on either side of the sand-bagged entrance and went straight in. He was told at the reception desk that Cunningham was waiting for him in Room 20. This was a room Minton had been to before – the Committee Room. He remembered it was on the third floor and walked across the foyer to the lift.
When he reached the door bearing the Roman numerals XX, he paused momentarily to check the time, then knocked and entered. Cunningham was standing in front of a wall-map of the U.K. He seemed to be studying the western coastline of Scotland and continued scrutinizing it for several seconds before turning to face his visitor.
General Cunningham was a veteran of the Great War; now in his fifties, he was an imposing – even intimidating – figure to behold. Muscular and 6’2” in height, he held himself stiffly erect, which made him look even taller than he was. He had close-cropped, slightly greying, dark hair and a toothbrush moustache. One side of his broad, square-jawed face bore the scars of shrapnel wounds received at the Somme. Cunningham was an officer of the old school: hard, tenacious and disciplined. He was also an efficient and competent organiser with an extensive network of contacts.
“This had better be important, Minton,” he growled. “I’ve got meetings on all day today – I come out of one and go straight into another. What’s the problem?”
Minton came straight to the point: “I believe IC3 has been penetrated by an Abwehr agent, sir.”
Cunningham glared at him in silence while he processed this information. “Well, I suppose that justifies your visit. What evidence have you got?”
Minton summarised the account of Lucy Walker’s arrest and interrogation that he had given Barton the previous evening.
“Have you reported this security breach to anyone else at MI5?”
“No, sir.”
“Good, keep it that way. I think it’s better if I deal with it. Are there any likely suspects?”
“Not at the moment – it could be any of the staff.”
“What about the Special Branch people who were involved in the girl’s arrest?”
“I think it’s unlikely to have been one of them. They were all assigned to the surveillance operation at short notice, and besides, the plan the cell had devised relied on us decoding the Abwehr’s radio messages to the Spanish Embassy. None of the Special Branch officers involved in the arrest was aware we were monitoring and decoding these messages.”
“What’s happening to the IC3 staff when the place shuts down?”
“The four interrogators are to be transferred to refugee reception centres in London; the guards and support staff have various postings.”
“The interrogators are the main problem. If one of them is working for the Germans he might let some of his Abwehr friends get past the screening at a reception centre. So, until we can clear them, we’ll arrange for the four interrogators to be sent somewhere they can’t do any harm – a location in Wales perhaps, on a ‘special’ training course of some description: Balkan languages or something like that. We’ll keep them under surveillance. The others are less of a problem. We’ll give them remote postings and keep an eye on them.”
“What about me?”
“You, Minton?”
“Yes, I think formally I should be considered a suspect too.”
“Now you really are wasting my time – how could you be working for the Abwehr? That would mean you’ve just shopped yourself to me. Bit of an own goal, wouldn’t you agree? I think we’ll proceed on the basis that you’re not a suspect, Minton.”
“Thank you for your confidence, sir. In that case, I’d like to request that I assist with coordinating the hunt for Cobalt.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be possible, Minton, given that you’re about to be transferred to one of the refugee reception centres. Why do you want to remain on the case?”
“Because I’m responsible for Miss Walker’s present situation – I’m the one who has put her behind bars. I want this investigation to be resolved as quickly as possible so that she can be released without unnecessary delay.”
“No-one wants Abwehr agents running around loose, Minton; we’re all keen for Cobalt to be
brought in at the earliest opportunity. I assure you, the case will have top priority. Don’t worry, we’ll pick up her trail again.”
“It’s not just the time element that’s important, sir. Tracking down Cobalt now will require some finesse – if it’s mishandled, and the cell realise we’re still investigating Cobalt, they may try to eliminate Lucy Walker to prevent her from identifying them. I don’t want to be indirectly responsible for her death.”
“I’m sorry Minton, I can’t agree to continuing your involvement with the case. We need to deploy you where your talents are most effective – in the refugee screening centres. You’re one of our best interrogators, not a sleuth. The staff at the centres are overstretched as it is, and you just won’t have the time to take on extra work. We’ll keep you up to date with developments in the case, but you can’t be involved operationally. When we pull Cobalt in – as we will certainly do eventually – you can have the job of interrogating her. Now, if there’s nothing else to discuss, I have to go to my next meeting – I’m already late for it.”
Cunningham’s decision did not come as a surprise: Minton had guessed he would be shunted off the Cobalt case. He had also realised that if he was going to work outside his MI5 remit, he would have to supply his own resources, which was one of the reasons why, the previous evening, he had taken on Barton as an unofficial assistant. Minton was determined to crack this case as swiftly as possible. Given that Vaughan was clearly out of ideas for tracking her down and appeared to be simply waiting for something to turn up, it seemed to Minton that the only way to speed up the process was for him to get involved in person. If he could not be involved formally, he would have to act independently.
When he left the building in St James’s Street, Minton felt satisfied with the outcome of the meeting. He had alerted the service to the threat of German penetration and now knew which way he should proceed in the hunt for Cobalt.
9.
Monday, 16th September, 1940: H.M.P. Holloway, London
Lucy Walker was roused from her first night in Holloway Prison by the sound of the all-clear sirens wailing somewhere beyond the outer walls. Like birdsong, the sirens had become a feature of the early morning, for, since ‘Black Saturday’ a little over a week previously, heavy bombing raids on London had become a nightly occurrence. Lucy awoke feeling disoriented, emotionally drained and still rather tired, but relieved that the interrogations with Minton were over.
Not surprisingly, during her incarceration at Windermere House she had developed a deep dislike of the Colonel – her tormentor for eight days. Curiously, though, she got the impression that at the end he had been trying to make amends for his treatment of her. He himself had escorted her to the prison and, in front of her, had instructed the governor to ensure that her stay there was as comfortable as conditions permitted. Minton told him she was to be kept away from the other prisoners and allowed anything she requested that would make her stay more bearable. She had been put in a cell by herself and already they had provided her with a wireless, writing materials and a selection of books, magazines and newspapers. Though still depressed by her situation, she felt strangely heartened by Minton’s parting words: “Don’t worry Lucy; justice will prevail.”
Chapter 5
1.
Wednesday, 1st January, 1941: Refugee Reception Centre, Crystal Palace, North London
Seated at his desk, Colonel Minton closed the file of interrogation transcripts he had been reviewing and looked up at the clock on the wall opposite: it was five past midnight – the new year had officially started. Below the clock was a Bugatti calendar for 1940 that he had inherited from the previous occupant of the office. It had a picture of an elegant, fur-clad woman standing in front of an equally elegant, black coupé. He stood up from his desk and walked over to it. After briefly examining the picture, he took the calendar down and dropped it in the wastepaper basket. In its place, he pinned up one for the new year: a plain Stationery Office calendar that his assistant had left out for him.
He sat down again at his desk and, by way of New Year celebration, poured himself a measure of Scotch from the bottle he kept in one of the bottom drawers. Traditionally, this was a time for reviewing the old year and looking ahead to the next, but Minton regarded this custom as irrational. The boundary between the old year and the new held no special significance for him – it was just an arbitrary marker in the continuous flow of time. As he sipped the whisky, he looked round his office and, despite his unsentimental view of New Year, began to reflect on the last few months.
It was in October that he had moved there, to the refugee reception centre at Crystal Palace. Although this office he was now in was cramped and shabby compared with the one he had at IC3, he did not mind, for he was finding his new post very rewarding: since starting, he and his staff of interrogators at the centre had netted six Abwehr agents. By posing as refugees, these agents had hoped to pass through immigration control and enter straight into the country. It may have seemed a less hazardous method of entry than parachuting in or landing from a submarine, but it was also less effective, for the Abwehr had underestimated the efficiency and competence of the British intelligence officers charged with screening the arrivals.
Though a satisfying job, it was exhausting. General Cunningham had been right about the workload: during the last months of 1940, staff at the five refugee reception centres in London were overwhelmed with work. The handful of interrogators at each centre were responsible for processing hundreds of refugees every day – on one occasion, over 500 had been brought to the Crystal Palace centre all at once in a fleet of London buses. The refugees usually arrived cold, hungry and exhausted, often after a gruelling journey trying to evade the German security forces. Many were disoriented by the experience of arriving in a strange country where officials and men in uniform gave orders to them in a language they did not understand. If they arrived at night, there was usually an air-raid in progress and many of the refugees would be thrown into a state of panic. Minton’s first task when dealing with a new batch of arrivals often consisted of trying to impose calm and order on several hundred hysterical people.
Then came the job of searching their luggage. Every item had to be carefully examined for espionage materials: codes and coding equipment, instruments for secret writing, ingredients for invisible ink, caches of banknotes, even concealed weapons. Following this, there were the actual interrogations to perform. Refugees whose stories could be corroborated by reliable sources could be dealt with in a matter of hours, but suspicious cases might require days of questioning before they could be cleared. It was all very time consuming.
Minton found himself working round the clock at his new job. Although he had made an effort to direct Barton in the search for Cobalt, it was becoming increasingly difficult to find the time to do this. Barton had proved to be an enthusiastic and capable investigator, but so far he had not made much headway with the case. Minton had twice contacted General Cunningham for news of developments in the MI5 investigation, but Cunningham had been vague: things were progressing well, he had said, but he expected the case might take months to resolve – there were complications that he was not at liberty to go into. The mole who had been operating at IC3 had not yet been identified.
Minton had also spoken with his contact at GC&CS: there had been no further radio messages from Cobalt since Lucy Walker’s arrest. However, he discovered that a new ‘fist’ had started sending from the London area just days afterwards. They were using a new and as yet unbroken code. He remembered Cobalt’s last message had said, “All future contact will be via Argon.” He surmised that another member of Cobalt’s cell had taken over the job of radioing messages. Unless Barton had some luck in following up his lines of investigation, it seemed to Minton their best hope for catching Cobalt would be breaking this code, which could take months.
Minton drained the last of the whisky from his glass and set it down on the desk. He had a feeling that tracking down Cobalt wa
s going to be a long, slow process.
2.
Thursday, 9th January, 1941: Camden, North London
Barton had spent the day at a very tedious meeting concerned with working out the arrangements for WAAF personnel to take over the crewing of barrage balloon sites from men, thereby releasing them for front-line duties. The venue was an office building in Camden that had been requisitioned as an annex by the WAAF Directorate. He had got a lift there with a colleague from Balloon Command, the intention being that they would go into town afterwards for dinner at the Mirabelle and then on to a party at the Berkeley Hotel.
However, by the time the meeting finished at 5pm, Barton had developed a severe headache; he was no longer in the mood for fine dining or partying and decided to call off. His colleague headed for the West End by himself, leaving Barton to make his own way back to Stanmore. En route to the nearest Underground station, Barton happened to pass by a pub and decided to go in for a beer – he felt a quiet drink might relax him and dissipate the throbbing in his head.
Barton took his pint over to a table in a corner of the bar and sat down on the upholstered bench that ran along one wall. It was a high-ceilinged room, with wood panelling to half its height, and in the upper part of the wall were mounted large bar mirrors in ornate wooden frames. He took off his officer’s cap and laid it on the table but kept his raincoat on as it was chilly in the room.
It was 5.30pm, only half an hour after opening time, and there were few customers in the place. A tall, middle-aged man in a black overcoat and hat was standing at the bar, staring down at his drink, and slumped over a table in the corner opposite Barton was a sleeping squaddie, his head resting on his folded arms and an empty beer glass in front of him. A couple of bearded old timers were playing dominoes in silence at a table in the middle of the room. The only other occupant, apart from Barton, was the barmaid, who was languidly polishing glasses behind the counter.
