The Berlin Spies

by Alex Gerlis

  ‘I want to interview one of your officers.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Reinhard Schäfer.’

  Kozlov raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Schäfer, why?’

  ‘I believe he may have been involved with a Nazi plot at the end of the war and is still involved in it here… running it from this very building.’

  Kozlov shifted uncomfortably in his chair and fidgeted with something on his desk. He had the appearance of a man who needed a drink. While he considered his response he tugged his earlobe again. ‘Schäfer is a good Communist. His loyalty is unquestionable.’

  ‘I thought you just said that anyone over the age of fifty in this city would have been involved with the Nazis? Don’t forget, Schäfer was a police officer in Berlin during the war.’

  ‘Yes Krasotkin, Kripo – a bloody detective, not exactly Gestapo. He was never a Nazi. He passed all the checks after the war. He’d been KPD in the ’30s and when the KPD exiles returned from Moscow, a couple of them vouched for him personally: I’ve seen the bloody file. As far as I know, Ulbricht himself knew him. I understand where you’re coming from, Viktor Leonidovich. You operated behind Nazi lines in the war and you spent years interrogating the bastards. You don’t like Germans, but…’

  ‘I have no problem with Germans – I had some outstanding German agents. I do have a problem with Nazis.’

  ‘You’ll need to give me facts Krasotkin. Are you sure this isn’t just a hunch?’

  ‘I need to question him Piotr Vasilyevich. Then I can provide you with evidence.’

  ‘That’s not how it works, you know that Viktor Leonidovich. Schäfer is one of our top guys here: he runs some first-class agents. One of them in particular – what we get from him is so good that Schäfer sends his reports straight to Andropov in Moscow. Even I don’t know his true identity.’

  But I do.

  ‘Very well Piotr Vasilyevich. I’ll sort out the evidence, then come back to you.’

  ***

  Viktor was now a hunter, and Reinhard Schäfer was his prey.

  He’d decided to ignore Kozlov even though he knew there was a chance he’d warn Schäfer. He suspected Kozlov wouldn’t risk it. When he’d warned Kozlov of the fallout of ignoring what he was saying he’d seen the flicker of worry in the other man’s face, clearly turning over in his mind the career-limiting consequences of what could happen if what Viktor was saying were true. Warning Schäfer would be too risky. Viktor decided the most Kozlov would do was check the German’s files and wait for Viktor to come to him with the evidence.

  But Viktor could not risk waiting. He needed to get to Schäfer.

  Chapter 22

  England

  September 1976: The Monday

  ‘You MI6 chaps are like the proverbial London buses.’

  ‘And in what way would that be Paget?’

  Detective Superintendent Martin Paget drummed his fingers in the little space available to do so on his desk and paused, hoping his brief silence would signal his irritation at being addressed by his surname alone. He didn’t know what was worse: Lassiter talking to him like this, or Edgar using his first name. He couldn’t see what was wrong with using his rank. Just because they didn’t have them in MI6…

  ‘Because one can go months without hearing from you lot and now I’ve not only had you hammering on my door and barging in, but Edgar too. When we in the Branch want something from you we have to crawl on our knees and wait patiently to be granted an audience, but when you want something from us – well, we’re expected to drop everything and deliver it straight away. Don’t forget, we’re in the front line of fighting an actual war against the IRA. In case it’s escaped your intention, it was only a couple of weeks ago they blew up our ambassador in Dublin. And then there are the bloody KGB, who somehow seem to have a free run in London…’

  ‘Of course I’m aware of all that Paget, and we’re terribly grateful for your help. You say Edgar has been to see you: he’s not one of ours any longer, you know, hasn’t been for years.’

  ‘I thought he was still involved?’

  ‘Hardly. Don’t forget, he left the Service years ago. He certainly shouldn’t be going around claiming to be acting on behalf of the Service in any kind of official capacity: that would amount to misrepresentation.’ Lassiter paused and when he resumed it was in a more of a ‘matter-of-fact’ tone. ‘What did he want anyway?’

  Paget hesitated. He didn’t especially like Edgar, whom he had always found to be brusque and demanding, but nevertheless he respected him. It was clear that Edgar did not view the Branch as traffic wardens, which he was well aware some in MI6 called them, and Lassiter would certainly be one of those. He didn’t like his rudeness or his sense of entitlement.

  ‘I had always understood, Mr Lassiter, that there is a well-established protocol which governs the relationship between MI6 and Special Branch, one element being the confidential nature of discussions between officers. Edgar came to see me to discuss a sensitive matter of interest to both our Services. It would be quite wrong for me to discuss it.’

  ‘Did he go through Room 21?’

  ‘No, not as such, but…’

  ‘But that’s protocol, isn’t it Paget? In fact, Edgar is why I’m here. Anything official involving our two Services has to go through Room 21, where one of your chaps sits opposite one of ours in an unventilated room and in between drinking tea, eating digestive biscuits and failing to complete the Telegraph crossword they consider matters one service wants to discuss with the other. I think the word in vogue is “liaison,” which I assume they picked up from the Americans. So you see Paget,’ Lassiter was leaning menacingly across the desk, ‘if this didn’t go through Room 21 and give those chaps in there something to do, then your precious protocol doesn’t apply, does it? And you certainly don’t have any duty of confidentiality to Edgar. It’s not as if you’re some bloody priest taking confession from him, eh? So perhaps if you share with me what he wanted…’

  ‘How do you know he wanted anything?’

  ‘I am aware that Edgar has accessed old MI9 files at our place, and found some information of interest to him in them, possibly names.’

  ‘Last month Edgar approached me and said he had some information which could be of interest to Special Branch. He gave me a list of four names and asked me to see if any of those names popped up in our system. I think these names may have come from the files you mentioned. I can’t recall if Edgar mentioned MI9. I didn’t think there was anything improper in this request. I checked the names out and sure enough one of the names did indeed crop up – in a letter written years ago. The letter writer’s solicitor was to pass the letter on to the police in the event of him dying from anything other than natural causes and, as it happens, he died a few weeks ago.’

  ‘And the name?’

  ‘Christopher Vale, but his original name was Lothar Meier. M-E–I-E-R.’

  ‘I see… and were there any other names in this letter?’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘Names, Paget! For fuck’s sake, this need not be difficult. This is quite a serious matter actually. There is every chance Edgar may be fouling up an ongoing MI6 investigation and you have been assisting him, however inadvertently. What I mean is: you said Edgar gave you a list of four names. Other than Lothar Meier’s, did any of the others crop up in your system?’

  ‘Not that I recall.’

  ‘I’ll need to see the letter – and it’s the original I want, not a bloody copy. I’m not going to leave without it. I also want Edgar’s list of four names.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we clear this with Room 21?’

  ‘No need Paget, you seem to have established a very convenient precedent for bypassing Room 21.’

  Paget copied the names onto a sheet of paper and passed them to Lassiter. ‘Here you are, but as far as Meier’s letter is concerned, I’m afraid we only have a copy. I gave Edgar the original.’

  Lassiter looked at Paget as if he were a scho
ol pupil who had admitted to a serious misdemeanour. ‘Really? We’ll have to see about that then. Obviously I’ll read this carefully, but can you think of any other names that came up in it, even if they weren’t on Edgar’s list?’

  Paget closed his eyes and thought carefully. This whole business was becoming messy and the very last thing he wanted was to be caught in the middle of some bloody turf war in MI6. He was beginning to think that if he could pass the whole matter over to Lassiter, as unpleasant as he was, he could forget everything and return to less stressful tasks such as hanging out in noisy Irish pubs sympathetic to the IRA.

  ‘There was one, actually.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Quite a few references to a Captain Canterbury... You’ll have to excuse me Lassiter, but I didn’t actually read this letter in too much detail. Once I’d spotted Lothar Meier’s name I was in hurry to pass it on to Edgar. From what I could gather, Captain Canterbury was some kind of Nazi sympathiser whom this Meier had had contact with over the years. His name kept cropping up.’

  ‘And did you follow that up?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning, did you try to find out who or where this Captain Canterbury is?’

  ‘No, I assumed that was something Edgar would be doing. Look, I know I’ve not been terribly thorough, but this was Edgar’s case. I have more than enough on my plate as it is. This isn’t really my business…’

  ‘No Paget, it certainly isn’t.’

  ***

  ‘When you first came to see me about this whole wretched business Edgar, I asked you whether this was all above board – I seem to remember that was the very phrase I used – and you assured me it was. You promised I wasn’t going to get into trouble and that, rather than this being a favour for you, you were actually providing me with valuable information. Well…’

  They were sitting in Paget’s car, parked in a turning off a country lane not far from Edgar’s home in Dorset. It was early evening and despite the open windows it was stifling in the car. Edgar raised his eyebrows, encouraging Paget to answer his own question. He was not going to help him out.

  ‘Well, where do I start Edgar? Lassiter came to see me this morning. Jesus Christ, Edgar, he pretty much threw the book at me. He implied you have at best a tenuous connection with the Service, that you’re on what amounts to some kind of freelance operation, and that you are fouling up an ongoing MI6 operation – his words Edgar, not mine – and therefore I’m some kind of accessory after the fact.’

  ‘Which is why you’ve driven all the way down here?’

  ‘I left work as soon as I could. I need to know what the hell is going on, because I need to have my defence ready, so to speak. I would not put it past Lassiter to go to the top with this, and the last thing I need is to have the Deputy Assistant Commissioner on my back.’

  ‘What did Lassiter actually want?

  ‘He wanted to know what you were after.’

  ‘How did he even know I was after anything?’

  ‘He implied he has a source in the Branch, which wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.’

  ‘Tell me what you told him – and don’t worry, you’re not going to get into any kind of trouble for this.’

  Paget had been staring ahead out of the windscreen at the field of gently swaying wheat in front of them. He turned round and gave Edgar a sceptical look. ‘Really Edgar? You’ll excuse me if I don’t share your confidence. I told Lassiter the truth: how you gave me a list of four names and asked me to check in our systems whether any of them cropped up. I told him about the Christopher Vale letter and that Lothar Meier – his original name – was one of the names on your list.’

  ‘And did that satisfy him?’

  ‘Satisfy would be the wrong word Edgar. He insisted I give him Vale’s letter and your list, which of course I had to do. He actually asked for the original letter but I’m afraid I felt obliged to tell him you have that. He was not very happy. And something struck me as very odd about Lassiter, more so as I look back on it. Nothing I told him seemed to surprise him very much – especially when I told him about Lothar Meier. I made it clear that his letter was only to be passed on by his lawyer if he died from something other than natural causes. But Lassiter didn’t react to this. He didn’t ask me when he had died, or how. That struck me as odd; such an obvious question to ask.’

  ‘Strange. And that was that?’

  ‘There was something else he wanted to know. He asked if the letter contained any names other than the ones on your list. There was one other name, which I did tell Lassiter about.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You’ll have seen in the letter, Meier mentions a Captain Canterbury. When I told Lassiter this he seemed very interested, even momentarily shocked, if that’s not too strong a word. He was very keen to know whether I’d looked into this man and I assured him I hadn’t. But this rather intrigued me so, when Lassiter left with his copy of the letter, I did some checking on this Captain Canterbury. He turns out to be a most fascinating, if unsavoury, character.’

  Paget turned round, scanning the lane and the empty fields around them. ‘Look, I hope I’m not being unduly jumpy Edgar but I wonder if we’re a bit exposed here?’

  ‘There’s no-one around here Paget. This is my part of the world; it’s deserted even when it’s busy.’

  ‘A dark-coloured Jag drove past the entrance to the lane about five minutes ago, I caught it in my driver’s mirror. What looks like the same car has just driven past again, this time going in the opposite direction and far more slowly. It’s probably nothing, but I’d feel somewhat easier if we drove on into a bit more cover.’ The policeman had started the engine and drove the car down the lane. Eventually they came to a small wood and he reversed into it, giving them the cover of the trees. Both men opened their doors and removed their jackets. Paget took out his notebook.

  ‘Christ Edgar, I don’t know whether I’ve ever known such a hot summer. Some of the younger chaps in the office have even taken to not wearing ties, but I think that’s a step too far.’ He fanned himself with his notebook. ‘I’m wondering what you’ve got me into, to be quite honest Edgar. Though you could be right, maybe after all this will be a case for the Branch. There was nothing on Captain Canterbury in our main filing system, but I dug around. Lothar Meier’s letter said that the first time he saw Canterbury after the war was in 1956, when he turned up in Nottingham and said he’d recently been released from prison. My hunch was that he could have been court-martialled. I don’t know how much you know about this subject Edgar, I imagine more than me, but during the war a number of British prisoners of war went over to the German side, collaborating with the enemy in various ways. All rather shameful. They were known as renegades. My hunch was right, and it appears Captain Canterbury could well have been one of them.

  ‘Everything points to his real name being Bramley Arthur Sefton Bevan, more commonly known as Arthur Bevan. Bevan was born into a wealthy family in Berkshire in 1905, went to public school and then Sandhurst, got a commission in the King’s Own Regiment and then ended up in the Royal Air Force where he became a pilot. He left the RAF in 1934 and went into estate management, as far as we can tell – the records are a bit vague at this point. However, they are not vague about the fact that by 1937 Bramley Arthur Sefton Bevan was an active member of the British Union of Fascists, Mosley’s lot. We know he was living in the Worcester area at the time because the local constabulary there had begun to keep an eye on him. According to them he chaired some meetings and subscribed to fascist newspapers.

  ‘When Bevan left the RAF he automatically became part of the RAF Reserve, and so when war was declared, he was expected to re-join the RAF. He was a qualified pilot after all, and they were much in demand at the time as you can imagine. Extraordinarily, Bramley Arthur Sefton Bevan refused to join. He wrote back to the RAF saying that this was a war he didn’t believe in, and he felt this country was making a big mistake siding against Germany. Can you ima
gine it Edgar? Personally I’d have thrown the book at him at that point, but the RAF must have been pretty desperate because they persisted and told Bevan that if he didn’t join up he’d be conscripted, but as a non-commissioned officer.

  ‘So Bramley Arthur Sefton Bevan re-joined the RAF with his old rank of Pilot Officer. According to the files he was flying transport aircraft, and was captured by the Germans in Belgium in May 1940. It is rather unclear as to what happened: Bevan claims his aircraft’s engine seized as he was about to take off when the Germans approached the airfield. But there is also some suggestion that he may have deliberately surrendered. Anyway, Bevan ended up at a prisoner of war camp for Allied air crew near Frankfurt. While he was there he caused no end of trouble. According to the ranking RAF officer at the camp Bevan didn’t stop going on and on about how the Allies were going to lose the war, and how we were on the wrong side. He blamed the Jews for everything and got into a number of scrapes with fellow prisoners. The prisoners managed to get word of this back to MI9 through the usual channels and told the German commandant they could no longer guarantee Bevan’s safety, such was the ill-feeling against him.

  ‘Sometime in 1942, possibly in March, Bevan disappeared from the camp and there are no records of him turning up at another British prisoner of war camp. However, MI9 did receive reports from Berlin that Bevan had turned up there, and was working for the Germans in some kind of propaganda capacity. It seems for a time he worked with William Joyce – you know, Lord Haw Haw – and then went to work at the German Foreign Ministry. Shockingly, he was not the only British person in Berlin working for the Germans during the war. It seems there was a little community of them. Hard to imagine a more unpleasant group, don’t you think?

  ‘MI9 ensured he was put on something called a ‘British Renegades Warning List’ and, sure enough, he was captured by a Canadian unit in May 1945 in Belgium, going by the name of Stephen Sefton.