The Danger of Life

by Ken Lussey

  The pilot did as he had been asked. Bob was amazed by the effect of the illusion of sabotage. Ignoring the pain in his chest he leaned over the back of Monique’s seat, so he could get a clear view out of the front of the cockpit. ‘You know, Monique, at 5,000ft, I was convinced that we’d see the illusion for what it is. But even from here it looks very convincing, even when you are actively looking for edges or things that don’t fit.’ It seemed to Bob as though he was looking down into the building, onto pieces of damaged machinery lying around inside it.

  Bob realised that his lack of depth perception might make him particularly susceptible to the illusion. ‘Flight Sergeant Clapperton, could you tell me what you see when you look at that building down there, the one nearest the northern corner of the factory?’

  ‘It looks as if it’s suffered bomb damage, sir. But there haven’t been any air raids that I know of for quite some time.’

  ‘Thank you, Flight Sergeant. That’s what I was hoping you’d say. It is quite important that as few people as possible know about this.’

  ‘Know about what, sir?’ said the flight sergeant with a grin.

  Bob and Monique moved back into the cabin of the aircraft. The noise levels didn’t allow easy conversation, but Bob found he was intrigued by what was going to happen next to Geoffrey Smith.

  Monique leaned towards him, so she could be heard more easily. ‘Geoffrey radioed his handlers in the Abwehr on Tuesday to say he was planning to attack Hillington last night. He radioed them again in the early hours of this morning to say that the attack had taken place, and that he feared the British were closing in on him. He asked for information about how he could be extracted by submarine.’

  ‘You said the Abwehr aren’t good employers,’ said Bob.

  ‘I did,’ said Monique. ‘I can tell you now that when he contacts them again tonight, the Abwehr will tell Geoffrey that they are unable to arrange a submarine extraction and that he will have to make his own way to Lisbon. He will be able to travel overland from there to France and then to Germany. Geoffrey will tell them tonight that the pursuit is getting too hot for him to continue transmitting, and that he intends to bury the radio. He will then spend the next few days lying low in the safe house in Paisley. In the middle of next week he will find a berth on a British-registered ship that is due to sail from Greenock to Lisbon, where he will make contact.’

  ‘Rather him than me,’ said Bob.

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Monique. ‘But if his story is convincing enough then perhaps the Abwehr will feel they can use him a second time.’

  ‘What if his story doesn’t convince them?’ asked Bob.

  ‘Then he’ll be moved swiftly to a concentration camp and never be heard of again.’

  ‘How does anyone live like that?’ asked Bob. ‘It does raise the question of why he’s prepared to go back, and whose side he’s really on.’

  ‘I know, Bob, and that thought’s cost me a few sleepless nights. But though I don’t like the man, I do believe he’s on our side.’

  ‘I got the impression you had wider plans in place to help back up his story,’ said Bob.

  ‘Well, there is the hope that the Luftwaffe will send over a reconnaissance aircraft sometime during the next ten days, of course,’ said Monique. ‘And the RAF are aware at senior level of the need to let any single high altitude intruders through unmolested during that period. We’ve also arranged for the early edition of tomorrow’s Daily Express to print a short piece about an investigation into the cause of an explosion in a factory near Glasgow. This will be the edition that makes it onto the mail plane bound for Lisbon tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, one of the Abwehr agents we’ve turned in the Midlands will radio his Abwehr handlers tomorrow night. He will tell them that an agent he has recruited, one of many fictitious agents he runs, has told him that shifts at the Rolls-Royce engine plant in Derby have been extended to allow Merlin engine production to be increased, to make up for a sudden shortfall from one of their other two factories. Hopefully the Abwehr will add two and two together and arrive at a very reasonable but totally incorrect answer of five.’

  After the propellers had come to a standstill, Bob thanked Flight Sergeant Clapperton for the flight.

  ‘That’s alright, sir, you’re very welcome,’ said the pilot. ‘I’m told I’m needed to fly you up to Perthshire shortly, so I’ll get myself a cup of tea and then stay with the aircraft.’

  This was news to Bob.

  The aircraft door was opened by Sergeant Peter Bennett. ‘Good to see you safe and well, sir. By the sound of it you’ve had an interesting few days.’

  ‘Thank you, Peter, it’s good to be back.’ As Bob got out onto the tarmac he looked around. ‘Where to now?’

  ‘We’ve borrowed the operations room, over by the control tower, sir.’ Sergeant Bennett pointed to the nearby building.

  Bob followed Monique into a room with a row of windows looking out onto the airfield. A group of men were standing by a table on one side of the room, on which cups and saucers and plates of biscuits had been laid out. Several of the men were smoking. Much of the room was occupied by a meeting table clearly formed from several smaller folding tables.

  Major Walter Miller strode over to greet Bob, ignoring Monique totally, and holding out a cup and saucer to him. ‘Hello, sir. Do you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘Hello, Major. Can I introduce Madame Monique Dubois, who is with the Security Service? Monique, this is my deputy, Major Walter Miller.’

  ‘Good to meet you, Major,’ said Monique. ‘Thank you, I’d love a cup of tea.’ She took the cup and saucer out of the major’s hands and carefully sipped the tea, blew on it, then sipped again.

  Major Miller took Bob to one side. ‘Sir, you do know that MI5 are not meant to be involved in this operation, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Bob. ‘Flight Lieutenant Buchan told me when I spoke to him on the telephone yesterday. However, Madame Dubois happened to be in Glasgow and is an expert on the Soviets and on the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs in Moscow, or the NKVD if you prefer. I therefore took the decision to ask her to participate.’

  It was clear that Major Miller would have appealed the decision if there had been anyone more senior present, but equally clear that he didn’t want others in the room to notice that he’d objected and been overruled. ‘Do you want to chair the meeting, sir?’

  ‘No, Major, it’s your show. You sit at the end of the table, I’ll sit here, next to you, and Madame Dubois can sit next to me.’

  Bob hadn’t seen so many of his people in the same room together before. Flight Lieutenant Buchan was standing to one side, clearly preparing to brief those present. Also sitting around the table were Sergeant Bennett, Lieutenant Dixon and Petty Officer MacDonald.

  Major Miller leaned over to him. ‘Sergeant Potter would be with us, sir, but he is on his way down to Southampton. It’s Captain Bell’s funeral tomorrow. His family live near there.’

  ‘I’m pleased we will be represented,’ said Bob.

  Major Miller began the meeting. ‘Most of you know one another. Sitting to my right is Group Captain Sutherland, who is deputy head of MI11 and our senior officer here in Edinburgh. To his right is Madame Monique Dubois, from MI5. Could I ask the gentlemen at the end to introduce themselves for the benefit of the group captain and Madame Dubois?’

  A police officer in uniform spoke first. ‘I’m Inspector Steven Robertson, sir. My role will be to set up a secure area around the property in Leith and make sure no-one gets in or out.’

  The smart-suited civilian beside him spoke next. ‘Hello, sir, I’m Lieutenant James Bruce. I’m in charge of Special Branch in Edinburgh City Police. Do you mind my asking if you are related to Superintendent Sutherland? I know he has a son in the RAF.’

  ‘Yes, he’s my father,’ said Bob.

  ‘I report to the sup
erintendent, sir.’

  Bob smiled. ‘Please pass on my regards and tell him I promise to call in on him and Mum to say hello, just as soon as the world slows down a little.’

  After the members of MI11 had introduced themselves, Major Miller turned to his left. ‘Flight Lieutenant Buchan, could you fill in the background, please, and tell us what is planned for today?’

  ‘Yes, of course, sir. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. In the early hours of last Thursday morning, an RAF Police guard disturbed an intruder trying to gain entry to a de Havilland Mosquito aircraft parked at RAF Leuchars. The intruder fired at the guard, who returned fire and killed him. The intruder turned out to be a Sergeant Jacek Winograd, serving with the 4th Polish Parachute Battalion in Fife. He’d been stationed at the Polish Army camp in Tents Muir, just a short distance from RAF Leuchars. Sergeant Winograd had only recently joined his unit, having previously served in a Polish tank brigade stationed in the Scottish Borders.

  ‘Amongst Sergeant Winograd’s effects was a page that looked like it had been torn out of a school exercise book. It was, in effect, a crib-sheet on how to start up a de Havilland Mosquito. It seemed clear that the sergeant was intending to steal the Mosquito, but we had no idea why. The Polish Army in Britain is responsible for its own security, so we were very much in their hands when it came to looking into his background, which is never an easy thing to do when most of that background lies in a country now occupied by the Germans.

  ‘It was only when Group Captain Sutherland suggested, via a note he left me on Saturday morning, that we might want to look for Soviet connections that things started to move.’

  ‘That was Madame Dubois’ idea,’ said Bob. ‘How did the Polish security people respond?’

  ‘Like they’d been poked with a very sharp stick, sir,’ said Flight Lieutenant Buchan. ‘I’m sure they weren’t being obstructive before then but giving them a direction in which to look produced remarkable results. By the end of Saturday, I knew that Sergeant Winograd came from eastern Poland, an area that was occupied when the Soviets invaded the country on the 17th of September 1939, just a couple of weeks after the Germans invaded Poland from the west. Large numbers of Poles were killed by the Soviets during the invasion and during the occupation that followed, which only ended when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union in June of last year. Many Poles were also deported to labour camps in the far east of the Soviet Union.’

  ‘And now we are allies of both Poland and the Soviet Union.’ said Lieutenant Dixon.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Bob. ‘The Poles are hardly blessed with the best of neighbours, are they? Carry on, Flight Lieutenant.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I also spoke on Saturday to Wing Commander Gill at RAF Leuchars, who confirmed that a Mosquito, if fully fuelled as that one was, could have been flown to Soviet territory. He said that if he’d been planning it, he’d have taken a route over Sweden and the Baltic that avoided Axis-held territory as much as possible, perhaps finishing up somewhere securely in Soviet hands beyond besieged Leningrad. An even more northerly route to Murmansk would have been within the range of the aircraft and might have been preferable in terms of likely opposition. He made the point, though, that the Polish pilot was woefully ill-equipped to make the flight in terms of equipment and clothing. He didn’t even have a map that went much beyond Fife. In his view the whole enterprise was doomed to failure.’

  ‘Anyway, on Sunday morning Major Kaminski telephoned to say that their security people had unearthed material of real value. Apparently, Sergeant Winograd had trained as a pilot, and had proved very proficient. But he was present when a close friend’s aircraft crashed at a training base and the friend was trapped and burned alive. Winograd ceased pilot training and requested a transfer to the army, which was granted.

  ‘Just as significantly, amongst Sergeant Winograd’s effects was a letter which the Polish security people think was written by his sister, Adrianna. It had no date and no return address. It said that she and the sergeant’s mother were well, but that nothing had been heard from his father. It went on to say that she was in terrible danger, and that she had been told that her safety, and their mother’s safety, depended on Jacek going to visit his uncle Cyryl in Leith, and doing exactly what he was told when he visited. His sister also told him to burn the letter when he had read it. Obviously he didn’t. The Poles’ interpretation of the letter was that Sergeant Winograd’s mother and sister are prisoners of the Soviets and he was being blackmailed.’

  ‘Do we know how the letter got to him?’ asked Major Miller.

  ‘No, sir. We do, however, know who Cyryl is. From what I heard, Sergeant Winograd was a good soldier, but as a spy he was mediocre. Three weeks ago he took a week’s leave from his unit. He told them that an elderly relative who was a refugee living in Scotland was ill. Men going on leave have to leave contact information. The sergeant said he could be contacted via a Cyryl Winograd and left a telephone number.’

  ‘I’m guessing the telephone number was a giveaway?’ said Bob.

  ‘Correct, sir. The telephone number linked to an office near the docks in Leith run by a gentleman called Sergei Avdonin. It seems he is a shipping agent who finds cargoes suitable for Soviet vessels intending to take part in the Russian convoys. Our friends in Special Branch kindly set up watch on the office and arranged to listen in to telephone calls.’

  ‘Has anything interesting turned up?’ asked Bob.

  It was Lieutenant Bruce who replied. ‘We had the premises watched and telephone calls intercepted from late Sunday night, sir. Over the next two days, by the end of Tuesday, we identified several visitors who were probably legitimate, plus two men who visited separately and who we have been able to identify as members of the Polish Army in Scotland. They each stayed for about an hour. On Tuesday evening Sergei Avdonin received a telephone call from a man we have been able to identify as Colonel Irakli Kuznetsov. He commands a Soviet Air Force unit based at a place called RAF Errol, between Perth and Dundee. The call was about transport arrangements for personnel and was innocuous enough in itself, but the fact that the two men are in contact seemed interesting.’

  ‘We have a Soviet Air Force unit based in Scotland?’ asked Bob.

  Flight Lieutenant Buchan took up the story again. ‘We do, sir. They’re just forming at the moment but are known as No. 305 Ferry Training Unit. It seems that earlier this month the Soviets placed an order for the delivery of 200 Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle aircraft. The idea is that Soviet aircrews will train at RAF Errol, and after the aircraft are delivered to them from the manufacturer, they will fly them direct to Russia.’

  Bob asked, ‘How did we convince the Soviets to go for the Albemarle? It’s had a few problems, hasn’t it?’

  ‘I get the sense that it was what we could spare, sir,’ said Flight Lieutenant Buchan. ‘I think it’s the same principle as supplying them with large numbers of Hawker Hurricane fighters when the story is that Stalin really wanted Spitfires. What’s interesting is that this time around the rumours are that the Soviets only settled for the Albemarles after being told they couldn’t have Mosquitoes.’

  ‘Ah, now that is interesting,’ said Bob.

  ‘I talked to the RAF Police flight commander at RAF Errol, a Flying Officer Frost. The Soviets have only been flying occasionally, and for the last month, in a couple of Avro Ansons and in Miles Masters that they’ve borrowed from No. 9 Advanced Flying Unit, which also operates from Errol. They have now received the first two Albemarles and have begun training on them. Apparently, there’s a story doing the rounds on the base that one of the first pilots trained by No. 305 Ferry Training Unit didn’t speak Russian. It seems he was overheard receiving instruction in English. That would have been at about the time Sergeant Winograd was on leave.’

  Bob leaned back in his chair, wincing as the bruising on his chest made its presence felt. ‘So, the theory i
s that we have an NKVD operation in Leith that is recruiting members of the Polish Army in Scotland to spy for the Soviet Union? And that almost as an aside they fed one of their recruits who happened to be a pilot through to this Colonel Kuznetsov, so he could arrange for a Mosquito to be stolen and flown to the Soviet Union?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Flight Lieutenant Buchan. ‘He couldn’t use one of his own pilots because a Soviet turning up at RAF Leuchars would have been viewed with much more suspicion than one of the long-term Polish neighbours.’

  ‘Just a thought,’ said Bob. ‘Does the map that Winograd was carrying, the one that Wing Commander Gill said didn’t go much beyond Fife, cover RAF Errol?’

  ‘The airfield is on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, sir, so I’d think it possible. We can check if you like. If it does, then as you know, the actual airfield won’t feature, even if it existed when the map was surveyed.’

  ‘No, there’s no need. There will be a copy on the premises here. We can take a look when the meeting finishes. Let’s get back to the bigger picture. What are we proposing to do today?’ asked Bob.

  ‘The Poles are keen to have the Soviet operation in Leith closed down as quickly as possible, sir. They can’t be seen to be having anything to do with the closure themselves. The idea is simply to arrest Sergei Avdonin and see what he can be persuaded to tell us in the time it takes the Soviet Embassy in London to come hammering on the door and claiming diplomatic immunity for him. Meanwhile, we will go through his office in Leith with a fine-toothed comb and see what comes up. With your agreement, sir, Major Miller will lead that part of the operation. We thought you might like to pay Colonel Kuznetsov a visit and suggest that for the remainder of his stay in Scotland he becomes a model citizen.’

  ‘A lot more could be achieved if you let the Soviet operation run and monitored what was going on,’ said Monique. ‘If you close it down, it will simply restart in another form sometime in the future, and without us knowing about it.’