So far, so bad. But what then? I had, in the safe deposit vaults in Rotterdam, papers proving that I was a Mexican officer on leave. It would be a simple matter to send for these papers, to admit that I was Horst von der Goltz, and to state that I was in England en route from a visit to my family in Germany and now bound for Mexico to resume my services. There remained but one matter to explain: why I was using an American passport bearing a name that was not mine.
That should not be a difficult task. Huerta had been overthrown barely a week before my leave of absence was issued. Carranza's Government had not yet been recognised, and already my general, Villa, had quarrelled with him, so that it L was impossible for me to procure a passport from the Mexican Government. In my dilemma I had taken advantage of the offer of an American exporter, who had been kind enough to lend me his passport, which he had secured and found he did not need at the time. As for my name, it ,was not a particularly good one under which to travel in England, so I had naturally been obliged to use the one on my passport.
It was a good story and had somewhat the appearance of truth. The question was, would it be believed? Even if it were, it had its disadvantages; for I should certainly be arrested as an enemy alien, and after a delay fatal to all my plans, I should probably be deported. I decided to try a bolder scheme.
In Parliamentary White Paper, Miscellaneous No. 13 (1916), you will find a statement which explains my next step.
"Horst von der Goltz," it says, "arrived in England from Holland on November 4, 1914
He offered information upon projected air raids, the source whence the Emden derived her information as to British shipping, and how the Leipzig was obtaining her coal supply. He offered to go back to Germany to obtain information) and all he asked for in the first instance was his travelling expenses."
What is the meaning of these amazing statements? Simply this. I realised that even if the story I had concocted were believed it would mean a considerable delay and ultimate deportation. And as I had no mind to submit to either of these things if I could avoid them, I decided to forestall my Russian friend by taking the only possible step one commendable for its audacity if for nothing else. Accordingly I walked straight to Downing Street and into the Foreign Office. I asked to see Mr. X, of the Secret Intelligence Department. This was walking into the jaws of the lion with a vengeance.
I told Mr. X that I wished to enter the British Secret Service; that I was in a position to secure much valuable information.
"Upon what subject?"
Zeppelin raids, I told him. I chose that subject first, because it was the least harmful I could think of in case my "traitorous" offer ever reached the ears of Berlin. No one knew better than I how impossible it was to obtain information about Zeppelins. I reasoned that the officers in command of Abteilung III. B in the General Staff would know that I was bluffing when I offered to get information upon that subject for the English. They would know that I was not in a position to have or to obtain any such knowledge, for in Germany no topic is so closely guarded as that. Also, I reasoned that it k was a topic in which the English were vastly interested. They were.
Mr. X was hesitating, so I added two other equally absurd subjects: the movements of the Emden and the Leipzig, about which I knew and the service chiefs knew that I knew absolutely nothing.
Mr. X was plainly puzzled. My intentions seemed to be good. At any rate, I had come to him quite openly, and any ulterior motives I might have had were not apparent. Then, too, I had offered him the key of my safe deposit box, telling him what it contained. He considered a moment.
"We shall have to investigate your story," he said finally. "We shall send to Holland for the papers you say are contained in the vault there; and you will be questioned further. In the meantime I shall have to place you under arrest."
I had expected nothing better than this, and went to my gaol with a feeling that was relief rather than anything else. My papers would establish my identity, and then, if all went well, I should go back to Germany and make my way to America by another route.
But all did not go well. Somehow, in spite of my commission and leave of absence--perhaps because my offer seemed too good to be true --the British authorities decided that it would be better to lose the information I had offered them and keep me in England. Whatever their suspicions, the only charge they could bring against me and prove was that I was an alien enemy who had failed to register. They had no proof whatever of any connection between me and the German Government. So on November 13, 1914, they brought me into a London policecourt to answer the charge of failing to register. I was delighted to do so. It was far more comfortable than facing a court-martial on trial for my life as a spy, as the English newspapers had seemed to expect. Accordingly on November 26 I was duly sentenced to six months' hard labour in Pentonville Prison, with a recommendation for deportation at the expiration of my sentence. I served five months at Pentonville, and then my good behaviour let me out.
Home Secretary McKenna signed the order for my deportation. I was free. I was to slip from under the paw of the lion.
And then something happened to this day I don't know what. Instead of being deported I was thrust into Brixton Prison, where Kuepferer hanged himself, strangely enough, just after his troubles seemed over. Kuepferer had driven a bargain with the English. He was to give them information in return for his life and freedom; and then, when he had everything arranged, he committed suicide. In Brixton I was not sentenced on any charge, I was simply held in solitary confinement, with occasional diversions in the form of a "third degree." After my first insincere offer to give the English information I kept my mouth shut and made no overtures to them, although I confess that the temptation to tell all I knew was often very great. The English got nothing out of me, and in September, 1915, I was shifted to another prison. They took me out of Brixton and placed me in Reading gaol the locale of Oscar Wilde's ballad. Conditions were less disagreeable there. I was allowed to have newspapers and magazines, and to talk and exercise with my fellow-prisoners.
You may be sure that all this time the English made attempts to solve my personal identity as well as to learn the reason for my being in England. They could not shake my story. Time after time I told them: "I am Horst von der Goltz, an officer of the Mexican army on leave. I used the United States passport made out to Bridgeman Taylor from necessity to avoid the suspicion that would be attached to me because of my German descent.
"Gentlemen, that is all I can tell you."
Over and over again I repeated that meagre statement to the men who questioned me. I would not tell them the truth, and I knew that no lie would help me. And then came an event which changed my viewpoint and made me tell if not the whole story at least a considerable part of it.
I had, as I have said, managed to secure newspapers in my new quarters. It is difficult to say how eagerly I read them after so many months of complete ignorance, or jvvith what anxiety I studied such war news as came into my hands. It was America in which I was chiefly interested, for I knew that after my capture some other man must have been sent to do the work which I had planned to do. I know now that it was von Rintelen who was selected that infinitely resourceful intriguer who planted his spies throughout the United States, and for a time seemed well on the way to succeeding in the most gigantic conspiracy against a peaceful nation that had ever been undertaken. But at the time I could tell nothing of this, although I watched unceasingly for reports of strikes, explosions and German uprisings which would tell me that that work which I had been commanded to do, and from which I was only too glad to be spared, was being prosecuted.
So several months passed months in which I had time for meditation and in which I began to see more clearly some things which had been hinted at in Berlin and of which I shall tell more later. And then one day I read a dispatch that caused me to sit very silently for a moment in my cell, and to wonder and fear a little.
Von Papen had been recalled.
I read
the story of how he and Captain Boy-Ed had overreached and finally betrayed themselves; of the passport frauds they had conducted; of the conspiracies and seditions they had sought to stir up. I learned that they had been sent home under a safe-conduct which did not cover any documents they might carry. It was this last fact which caused me uneasiness. Had von Papen, always so confident of his success, attempted to smuggle through some report of his two years of plotting? It seemed improbable, and yet, knowing his tendency to take chances, I k was troubled by the possibility. For such a report might contain a record of my connection with him and I was not protected by a safe-conduct!
My fears were well founded, as you know t Von Papen carried with him no particular reports, but a number of personal papers which were seized when his ship stopped at Falmouth.
In my prison I read of the seizure and was doubly alarmed; increasingly so when the newspapers began publishing reports which implicated literally hundreds of Irish- and German-Americans whose services von Papen had used in his plots. Then as the days passed, and my name was not mentioned in the disclosures, I became relieved.
"After all," I thought, "he knows that I am here in prison and that I have kept silent. He will have been careful. These others he has had some reason for his incautiousness with them. But he will not betray me, just as he has betrayed none of his German associates."
Then, on the night of January 80, 1916, the governor of Reading prison informed me that I was to go to London the next day.
"Where to?" I asked.
"To Scotland Yard," he said briefly.
"What for?"
"I do not know."
My heart sank, for I realised at once that something had occurred which was of vital import to me. I have faced firing squads in Mexico. I have stood against a wall waiting for the signal that should bid the soldiers fire. And I have taken other dangerous chances without, I believe, more fear than another man would have known. But never have I felt more reluctant than that night when I stood outside of Scotland Yard, waiting for what?
I was brought into the office of the Assistant Commissioner and found myself in the presence of four men, who regarded me gravely and in silence.
There was something tomb-like about the atmosphere of the room, I thought, as I faced these men and then I changed my opinion, for I saw lying open on the table around which they were seated a box of cigarettes. I reached forward to take one, forgetting all politeness (for I had not smoked for six weeks), when my eye caught sight of a little pink slip of paper which one of them held in his hand a slip which, I knew at once, was the cause of my presence there.
It read:
"WASHINGTON, D.C.
"September 1, 1914.
"The Riggs National Bank,
"Pay to the order of Mr. Bridgeman Taylor two hundred dollars.
"F. VONPAPEN."
One of the company turned over the cheque so that I could see the endorsement.
They were all watching me. The room was very still. I could hear myself breathe. They handed me a pen and paper.
"Sign this name, please Mr. Bridgeman Taylor."
I knew it would be folly to attempt to disguise my handwriting. I wrote out my name. It corresponded exactly with the endorsement on the back of the cheque.
"Do you know that cheque?" I was asked.
"Yes," I admitted, racking my wits for a possible explanation of the affair.
"Why was it issued?"
I had an inspiration.
"Von Papen gave it to me to go to Europe and join the army but you see I didn't--"
"Ah! Von Papen gave it to you.
I was doing quick thinking. My first fright was over, but I realised that that little cheque might easily be my death-warrant. I knew that von Papen had many reports and instructions bearing my name. I was afraid to admit to myself that after all these months of security I had at last been discovered. Von Papen's cheque proved that I had received money from a representative of the German Government. There might be other papers which would prove everything needed to sentence me to execution. I was groping around for an idea and then in a flash I realised the truth. It angered and embittered me.
There passed across my memory the year and more of solitary confinement, during which I had held my tongue.
I swung around on the Englishmen.
"Are you the executioners of the German Government?" I asked. "Are you so fond of von Papen that you want to do him a favour? If you shoot me you will be obliging him."
"We are going to prosecute you on this evidence," was the only answer.
"You English pride yourselves," I said, "on not being taken in. Von Papen is a very clever man. Are you going to let him use you for his own purposes? Do you think he was foolish enough not to realise that those papers would be seized? Do you think" this part of it was a random shot, and lucky "do you think it is an accident that the only papers he carried referring to a live, unsentenced man in England refer to me? Just think! Von Papen has been recalled. The United States can investigate his actions now without embarrassment. And he, knowing me to be one of the connecting links in the chain of his activities, and knowing that I am a prisoner liable to extradition, would ask nothing better than to be permanently rid of me. And in the papers he carried he very obligingly furnished you with incriminating evidence against me. You can choose for yourselves. Do him this favour if you want to. But I think I'm worth more to you alive than dead. Especially now that I see how very willing my own Government is to have me dead."
My hearers exchanged glances. I had made the appeal as a forlorn hope. Would they accept it and the promise it implied? I could not tell from their next words.
"We shall discuss that further. Meanwhile, you will return to Reading."
The next few days were full of anxiety. I could not tell how my appeal had been regarded, but I knew that it would be only by good fortune that I should escape at least a trial for espionage for that is jvhat my presence in England would mean. Finally, I received a tentative assurance of immunity if I should tell what I knew of the workings of German secret agencies.
In spite of any hesitancy I might formerly have felt at such a course, I decided to make a confession. Von Papen's betrayal of me for that he had intentionally betrayed me I was, and am, convinced was too wanton to arouse in me any feeling except a desire for my freedom, which for fifteen months I had been robbed of merely through the silence which my own sense of honour imposed upon me. But I must be careful. I had no desire to injure anyone whom von Papen had not implicated. And I did not wish to betray any secret which I could safely withhold.
I speculated upon what other documents von Papen might have carried. So far as I knew the only one involving me was the cheque; but of that I could not be sure, nor did it seem likely. It was more probable that there were other papers which would be used to test the sincerity of my story. My aim was to tell only such things as were already known, or were quite harmless. But how to do that? I needed some inkling as to what I might tell and on what I must be silent.
That knowledge was difficult to obtain, but I finally secured it through a rather adroit questioning of one of the men who interrogated me at the time. He had shown me much courtesy and no little sympathy; and after some pains I managed to worm out of him a very indefinite but useful idea of what matters the von Papen documents covered.
What I learned was sufficient to enable me to exclude from my story any facts implicating men who might be harmed by my disclosures. I told of the Welland Canal plot so far as my part in it was concerned, and I told of von Papen's share in that and other activities. And I took care to incorporate in my confession the promise of immunity that had been made me tentatively.
"I have made these statements," I wrote, "on the distinct understanding that the statements I have made, or should make in the future, will not be used against me; that I am not to be prosecuted for participation in any enterprise directed against the United Kingdom or her Allies which I engaged in at the direction
of Captain von Papen or other i epresentatives of the German Government; and that the promise that I am not to be extradited or sent to any country where I am liable to punishment for political offences, is made on behalf of His Majesty's Government."
It was on February 2 that I completed my confession and swore to the truth of it. Affairs .went better with me after that. I was sent to Lewes prison, and there I was content for the remainder of my stay in England. And although I was still a prisoner I felt more free than I had felt for many years. I was out of it all free of the necessity to be always watchful, always secret. And, above all, I had cut myself adrift from the intriguing which once I had enjoyed, but which in the last two years I had grown to hate more than I hated anything else on earth.
My Adventures as a German Secret Service Agent Page 13
