A Gathering of Saints
Page 20
‘So you think Malmstrom was working for Schellenberg?’ asked Black. He was swimming in a sea of names and interconnections. Much more and he’d drown.
Knight nodded. ‘I think that’s a reasonable conclusion.’
Black handed him the photographs. ‘All right,’ he said slowly. ‘Malmstrom is working for Schellenberg. What does that tell us about the man he was going to meet – The Doctor?’
‘Schellenberg is being groomed to take over the Foreign Intelligence Division of the SS under Heydrich. If Heydrich is running an agent here, Schellenberg would be the likely man to be his control. For a man at Schellenberg’s level to actively take on that role the agent in question would have to be of enormous importance and probably very highly placed.’ Knight paused and glanced at LiddelL ‘Well beyond the sort that Masterman and the Twenty Committee has been reeling in.’
‘It still doesn’t tell us anything about who the man might be,’ Black insisted.
‘Not yet perhaps.’ Knight shrugged. ‘Hopefully the message left by Malmstrom will give us a direction to follow.’
‘We need more than a direction.’ Liddell’s tone was dark. ‘We need an answer.’
* * *
Sitting at a window table in the cafe of Stockholm’s Grand Hotel, Charles Tennant smoked another cigarette and stared out across the narrow inlet at the sunlit walls and towers of the Royal Palace. A few small sailing boats coursed brightly back and forth through his line of sight and a little sightseeing packet chugged steadily southward into the open water of the Saltsjon.
God only knew who would be sightseeing in these mad days, he thought. The packet probably carried more spies than innocent passengers. Germans asking questions about Russians and Russian military officers chatting with British diplomats. Norwegian exiles negotiating with Swiss bankers, Swiss bankers having secret meetings with American business interests. Everyone watching everyone else.
With the exception of Switzerland, Sweden was the only neutral country in central Europe and after the invasion of Poland a year ago it had quickly become a Scandinavian version of Lisbon, a northern hotbed of intrigue with safe, albeit irregular flights to and from London, Moscow and Berlin. Tennant shook his head then butted his cigarette into the already overflowing ashtray. He’d been a fool to come here but he’d seen no other choice. If his cover in London had been jeopardised he wanted to be taken out of England immediately.
A short journey on one of those flights to Berlin and he’d spend the rest of the war doing something obscure for Heydrich’s office in that converted Jewish old-folks home on Berkaerstrasse they used as a headquarters. Perhaps he could spend his days reading the Times and the Evening Standard, analysing their content for psychiatric clues about the state of England’s morale.
He glanced at his watch. Almost time. He stood, tossed a five krona coin onto the table and left the cafe, making his way to the main lobby and then the street. A stiff breeze was blowing off the water and along the quay; he turned up the collar of his jacket against the chill.
Tennant found a taxi waiting at the stand on the corner and told the driver to take him to Skansen, Stockholm’s unique open-air museum on the Djurgarden peninsula a mile or so to the east. The taxi went through the complex, ultramodern ‘three-leaf clover’ at the Slussen then followed the broad Strandvagen along the water to the Djurgarden Bridge. They crossed over to Djurgarden, swung around past the castle-like Nordic Museum and finally stopped at the Skansen main entrance.
Tennant handed the driver a ten krona note, waved away the change and climbed out of the taxi. He joined the small line of people at the turnstile, paid for his ticket and stepped into the seventy-acre park. Skansen was roughly circular, crammed with examples of an extraordinary number of native trees, plants, birds and animals as well as examples of various types of Swedish architecture, including a typical dairy farm, ancient Lapp huts, craftsmen’s workshops, a church and a manor house.
An entire Swedish village had been reproduced and visitors could watch appropriately costumed people making butter, cheese and bread, weaving baskets, operating old-fashioned printing presses, woodturning on foot-operated lathes and blowing glass. More than a hundred buildings were within the hilly enclosure, almost ten times more than when the park first opened.
Tennant didn’t have the slightest interest in any of it. Ignoring the sights around him, he trudged up the steep hill directly beyond the entrance, turned left and went past the Lapp camp, then followed a narrower path along to the Seal Basin.
He found a bench, sat down and waited. From behind, screened by a wall of trees, he could smell the rich, heavy scent of the model tar works. In the bright, crisp sunlight with the breeze rustling through the trees around him the scene was idyllic.
A platoon of children dressed in lederhosen and brightly coloured dresses swarmed over the fence surrounding the Seal Basin while a plump, large-busted matron in a nurse’s cape and cowl brooded over them, making sure they didn’t fall in among the small cavorting beasts. Couples meandered by, holding hands, arm in arm, smiling. A trio of white-bearded old men went by, their severe dark clothing and walking sticks from another time, talking loudly to each other in lilting, musical Swedish.
A quarter of an hour passed and finally, looking up, he saw the man he was to meet walking slowly along the path, playing the idle tourist. Tennant almost laughed aloud when he saw whom Heydrich had sent to meet him. It was Schellenberg, Heydrich’s young deputy, dressed in a dark blue suit and a ludicrous little trilby hat. Without the highly polished jackboots and dead black SS uniform, he looked as unassuming as a junior stockbroker in The City or a solicitor’s clerk. He was fit enough, reasonably tall and trim, but his boyish features were soft, almost effeminate, his skin too pale and smooth. The only hint of hidden strength was the broad duelling scar running from the left side of his chin to a point halfway up his jaw.
Tennant had no illusions about the man, however. At thirty, Walter Schellenberg had risen swiftly through the SS hierarchy to his present position. He was intelligent, quickwitted and had degrees in both medicine and law from the University at Bonn. He’d been a member of the Nazi Party since they came to power in 1933 and he was totally committed to German hegemony over Europe at any cost. Wisely, he’d never shown any obvious interest in usurping his master’s position and seemed content to stay where he was, resting on his laurels won the previous year at Venlo in Holland, where he’d masterminded the plan to kidnap two British agents, Payne Best and Richard Stevens. The interrogation of the captured men had brought on the collapse of the entire British espionage network in Europe, all accomplished in a single afternoon.
Schellenberg sat down on the bench beside Tennant and watched the children hovering around the Seal Basin. The psychiatrist did the same and they sat there for a long moment, silently. Out of the corner of his eye Tennant watched the Nazi smile, the upturned mouth deepening the duelling scar to a dark, shaded slash. When he spoke finally it was in flawless, barely accented English.
‘Well, Doctor, here I am, as you requested.’ Tennant assumed that Heydrich had kept his word and that Schellenberg was referring to him by his code name and not alluding to his actual identity. On the single occasion the two men had met before his real name had not been used. For that matter, Schellenberg hadn’t used his real name either.
‘Hauptmann Schaemmel.’
‘You remembered.’ Schellenberg smiled broadly.
‘I have a very good memory.’
‘I too.’ The young intelligence officer reached into his jacket pocket, took out a small, leather-covered case and removed a cigarette. He lit it with an ordinary kitchen match, igniting it on the nail of his thumb, and leaned back against the bench.
‘I have an urgent problem,’ said Tennant.
‘Malmstrom? The Swedish courier?’
‘I never knew his name.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Schellenberg smiled again. ‘And neither does he.’
‘You kno
w about his death?’
‘Of course.’
‘I was the one who killed him.’
Schellenberg looked shocked, then pleased. ‘Good Lord. It never occurred to us that you were the one responsible. Interesting.’
‘There was another man.’
‘You killed him as well?’
‘Yes. An MI5 watcher. There were two of them. Malmstrom was being followed.’
‘MI5? What makes you think that?’
‘Who else would it be?’
‘As it turns out they were American.’ Schellenberg puffed on his cigarette and stared at the rowdy group of children on the opposite side of the gravel path. Their matron, exasperated, caught one by the ear and led him away. The others followed. For the moment Tennant and Schellenberg were alone.
‘American?’
‘They belonged to the new group being organised by William Donovan. ‘Wild Bill’ I believe they call him. Amateurs.’
‘Why would the Americans be following Malmstrom?’
‘For the same reason MI5 might have had him under surveillance. Putting the staff at the Swedish embassy under surveillance is an obvious precaution. They do the same with the embassy of Portugal in Portman Square and the Swiss legation at Montagu Place. Standard operating procedure; it’s the same in Berlin.’
‘That’s all well and good. But I was compromised.’
‘Did anyone see you?’
‘Not that I’m aware of.’
The younger man shrugged elegantly. ‘Then how were you compromised?’
‘Presumably Malmstrom was carrying a reply to my earlier transmission, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘He didn’t have any message on him. Presumably he dropped it earlier.’
‘You didn’t check the other mailbox?’
‘No. And I can’t go back there now. They’ll be watching, surely, and so will MI5.’
‘I see.’ Schellenberg thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘You’re right.’
‘So now the Americans have the message. The message intended for me.’
‘It was in code.’
‘Codes can be broken.’
‘It will take them weeks. The Americans’ cryptanalysis capabilities aren’t what they once were. Without the key text it will be very difficult.’
‘Difficult but not impossible.’
‘No. Not impossible,’ Schellenberg agreed.
‘The message presumably includes my code name; it could be traced, given enough time.’
‘Perhaps.’ Schellenberg reached up and traced the line of his duelling scar thoughtfully. ‘That is the operative word of course – time.’ He turned and looked at Tennant directly. ‘I suppose it’s up to you. Return to London or give up your position and come back to Berlin with me.’
‘I don’t like giving up. But if there’s to be a risk, I need to know the benefit.’
‘The transmission you sent was extremely interesting. Especially considering the people who seem to be involved. British intelligence wouldn’t involve itself in an ordinary murder investigation under normal circumstances. There’s something very strange going on. We’d very much like to know what it is. We have some other information that…’ Schellenberg paused, censoring himself abruptly, his mouth hardening. ‘Ever since you told us about their system of turning agents, we’ve had to utterly discount any information coming from the Abwehr.’ Schellenberg laughed harshly. ‘Not that SS Gruppenführer Heydrich ever has believed a word from Canaris anyway.’ He paused. ‘Frankly, Doctor, you are our only real source. We’re depending on you.’
Tennant nodded but he didn’t take the blandishment seriously. For all he knew, Schellenberg and Heydrich had half a dozen other agents in London, all running independently.
Whatever the case, his breaking of the conversation in mid-sentence was telling. Plots and counterplots, schemes within schemes. Something was going on and suddenly the thought of retiring to Berlin seemed fraught with danger. What might happen to him there? He’d seen enough of men like Schellenberg and Heydrich to know that, win or lose, the life of a pawn caught within even the mildest Nazi internecine squabble could be very short. Freud might have his weaknesses and shortcomings but Tennant was a firm believer in the power of the subconscious and the value of the blind, unsubstantiated hunch. He made his decision.
‘If I’m to remain in London, I’ll need a new system of communication.’ ’
‘That can be arranged.’
‘The message Malmstrom was bringing to me. Is there any way you can find out what happened to it?’
‘Of course. At this point we still have a source in the American embassy. Quite a good one, actually. We’ll keep you advised.’
‘All right.’
‘You’ll go back? Investigate this murderer MI5 is so interested in?’
‘Yes.’ Tennant nodded, letting out a long breath. ‘I’ll go back.’
* * *
Returning to his desk in the garret of the Kensington Park Gardens mansion, Morris Black went over Liddell’s Magic Circle list again, groaning inwardly. Next door, in what they were all now calling the Map Room, Police Constable Swift was studiously cataloguing each and every piece of evidence gathered from the four murder scenes, filing it all neatly in the growing collection of metal cabinets that now spilled out into the landing at the head of the stairs.
Black had been staring at the row of names on the page in front of him for several hours, smoking cigarettes and listening to the intermittent clatter of Swift, hard at work on his battered Royal. The sound was gratingly accompanied by the limping policeman’s relentless, off-key whistling and the staggered tap of his regulation boot clips on the creaking floorboards as he went from typewriter to file cabinet and back again. It was all slowly driving Black to distraction, mostly because it pointed up his own lack of concentration and inability to buckle down.
Ever since the night of the bombing at Burlington Arcade it seemed as though almost every thought was intruded upon by flickering memories of those moments. Not the fear or the panic or the terrible exploding images but the smell of Katherine Copeland’s hair, soft flesh, cool mouth crushed on his.
Next door Swift went from ‘The Lambeth Walk’ to a mutilated Peter and the Wolf. ‘Bloody hell,’ Black grunted. His mouth tasted like the bottom of a canary cage. He took a bitter swallow of the cold, ungodly tea Swift had brewed an hour before, lit yet another cigarette and looked at the list again. It had been waiting for him on his desk the morning after the raid.
According to Liddell, it was relatively complete, naming virtually everyone included in Churchill’s so-called Magic Circle of those who knew about the Ultra secret. Somewhere down the row of names, Black knew, was the first turning of the key that would lead him to Queer Jack. All he had to do was go through them one by one, starting with the boffins and their minders at the Government Code and Cipher School headquarters at Bletchley Park, an estate fifty miles north-west of London:
Fred Winterbotham, director of SIS Scientific Division
Comdr. Alastair Denniston, director, GC&CS
Edward Travis, Denniston’s second-in-command
Dillwyn Knox, senior assistant, GC&CS
Oliver Strachey, senior assistant, GC&CS
John Cairncross, senior assistant, GC&CS
Hugh Alexander, mathematician
Stuart Milner-Barry, mathematician
Gordon Welchman, mathematician
Alan Turing, mathematician
In addition, according to Liddell, a score or more of people were actively involved in the deciphering of messages at Bletchley, some being members of one of the three services but mostly civilians of every imaginable stripe from lawyers to stockbrokers and archaeologists.
After the Bletchley group came the longer list of high-ranking military and intelligence personnel:
John Masterman, the donnish head of the XX Committee
Stewart Menzies, head of MI6
Miss Kathleen Pe
ttigrew, his ironclad secretary
Col. Valentine Vivian, deputy chief, MI6
Lt. Col. Claude Dansey, assistant chief, MI6
Brig. ‘Jasper’ Harker, acting head of MI5
Guy Liddell, director, B Division, MI5
Anthony Blunt, his senior assistant, an art historian
Maxwell Knight, head, B5(b) Department, MI5
Gen. George Davidson, director, Military Intelligence
Air Marshal ‘Stuffy’ Dowding, Fighter Command
Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park
Charles Medhurst, director, Air Intelligence
Archibald Boyle, his deputy
Air Commo. Gerry Blackford, Air Ministry, Plans Division
Jack Slessor, Blackford’s second-in-command
Adm. John H. Godfrey, director, Naval Intelligence
Comdr. Ian Fleming, his assistant
Winston Churchill, prime minister
Desmond Morton, Churchill’s personal assistant
Thirty names in all but, as Liddell had bleakly pointed out in his covering memorandum, this didn’t account for between eighty and a hundred other people who came into direct contact with the daily intercepts somewhere between Bletchley Park and Whitehall.
That list, when Liddell’s people completed it, would include a score of Wrens at Bletchley, two dozen dispatch riders and an assortment of teleprinter operators at the Air Ministry, Fighter Command HQ at Stanmore, the War Department and the Admiralty, the Air Intelligence Office, the Department of Military Intelligence and Admiral Godfrey’s DNI.
As far as Morris Black was concerned, the Magic Circle was more like an endless series of concentric rings spreading out across an almost infinite pond. Regardless of what Denniston or anyone else said about the absolute security around Ultra, Black knew that, with so many people involved, someone, somewhere, would talk. Everyone on Liddell’s list had friends, family, lovers or confidants. Absolute security in such an environment was as unlikely as Masterman’s contention that a clean sweep had been made of every Nazi agent in England.