Synopsis

In Chapter 1 (KTB #148) ERICH begins his career as a spy, and he lets us know of his love of beautiful women. In Chapter 2 (KTB #149), he was transferred home to Germany and his shipboard romance with Karen ended. In Chapter 3 (KTB #151) he began his training as a spy - and he learned that a spy who falls in love with an enemy spy - gets shot! In Chapter 4 (KTB #152) we read where ERICH himself falls for a woman who turned out to be a German spy herself and her job was to lure German spies in training to betray themselves - and ERICH is nearly washed out of spy training. In Chapter 5 (KTB #153) we learned that ERICH was to be in charge of Operation PELIKAN, the plan to blow up the Panama Canal with two Ju 87 STUKA dive bombers brought over on two U-boats. At the last moment, it was thought by the German agency, that someone had tipped off the Americans to this plot, so the plan was scrapped. In Chapter 6 (KTB #154 and KTB #155) we read how ERICH and the Abwehr tried to find him a partner for his mission into the USA with the intended purpose of sabotaging the Manhattan Project - the atomic bomb project in the United States. In Chapter 7 (KTB #156) we read about the Atlantic crossing to the USA where ERICH and Billy were to be put ashore to assault the ‘Manhattan Project’. In Chapter 8 (KTB #157), the two agents landed on the coast of Maine, ready to begin their sabotage of the atomic bomb project.

CHAPTER 9: Tricked by Billy in New York

New York received us with all the casualness of a great metropolis. It was swarming with soldiers due to go oversea within the next few days and meeting their dear ones for the last time before sailing. For this reason finding a hotel room was a major problem. Billy and I arrived at Grand Central Station. We left our luggage in the cloakroom and went to try our luck. After two hours’ search we found a modest double bedroom in the Kenmore Hall Hotel on 33rd Street in Manhattan. I strolled past the skyscrapers with studied nonchalance although I had never seen them from close to before and was terribly impressed with them. I dare not stand gaping at them and give myself away as a stranger.

We had now been in America for three days, and I was beginning to feel more secure. I was speaking fluently now and letting the devil take care of my accent. Billy was enjoying the whisky, the generous supply of pocket money (5,000 dollars, in fact, which I had given him soon after landing), and the willing attentions of the sort of girls whom one can buy anywhere in the world for around about two and a half dollars. My immediate task lay in reading dozens of newspapers, visiting the cinema four times a day, making friends with chambermaids, taxi drivers and waiters, in the interests of achieving complete acclimatization. As far as America was concerned at this period, the war was taking place mainly in the newspaper headlines and the New Yorker was ignoring it in a way which made the hopelessness of my mission only too obvious. But it was not for me to have private doubts; I had to carry out my instructions.

Now on my third days in the States, I was able to approach a policeman without a thumping heart, I could look a military patrolman smilingly in the face, I could deal with officials and was no longer embarrassed when I was asked what sort of bread I wanted with my hamburgers.

“It’s killing,” said Billy, “to discover that the F.B.I. are so sound asleep. They should have caught us long ago.”

“Yes,” I replied, “they should have!”

“Nothing can happen to us now. We’re well in. The worst part was the landing.”

“It certainly was - apart from our mission,” I replied.

But he didn’t want to hear anything about that. He strutted about town distributing tips, the size of which made my blood run cold. But I needed him desperately and I wanted to keep him in a good mood. New York was offering him more than bomb-damaged Berlin had been able to offer him a few weeks earlier.

I got busy assembling my transmitter. There were two possible methods for sending my news back to Germany. I had a note, written of course in invisible ink, of some cover addresses in Spain and Portugal. But to have written there would have been so obvious that the dumbest official in the Censorship Department would have become suspicious. It would have been better to use the names and addresses of certain American prisoners in Germany. We had made a close study of their family connections and respective habits and I could have sent a fabricated letter which would have given the impression of being utterly genuine, but between the lines, invisible to the censor, would have been the real text. The International Red Cross could have been made the unsuspecting go-between for my reports and letters, which would have been directed to certain real names and addresses, would have been opened by M.I. and de-coded. But even this course did not commend itself, for it would have been weeks before my reports reached the right quarter, that is to say, Amt VI.

I assembled my transmitter. The good old short wave, I decided, was as ever the spy’s best friend. There were in America, even during the war, many amateur transmitters. Conditions were by no means as strict as they were in Germany. If my set were to be seen, which of course I would try to prevent with every means in my power -- I could still be taken for an amateur. The important thing was that all parts of the apparatus should be of American origin short-wave transmitters......

I bought the various parts for my set from several different New York radio shops. I wanted to have as little to do with radio dealers as possible, and therefore took a very close look at their window displays before I went in so that I should not invite special attention by asking for something they had not got in stock.

I was standing in front of a shop window in 33rd Street wondering whether I could get a 6-L-6 tube there. For the last hundred yards a massive city cop had been walking behind me. He had been strolling along close to the pavement edge, wearing a sky-blue uniform with an outsize badge on his cap. Like all New York policemen he carried a light baton, and this he was swinging round and round from his finger by a cord.

He was walking quite slowly and keeping close to me. Gradually a feeling of suspicion, excitement, horror, crept up my spine. I looked straight in front of me at the shop window. He was perhaps now one yard away from me. I wondered if one of the radio dealers into whose shops I had been had become suspicious and sent the man after me. He had a good-humored, rather bloated face and did not look in the least like a crafty captor of secret agents. But it had happened often enough in the past, that through some odd chance the most dim-witted policeman had caught the most accomplished spy.

He came to a halt beside me. At his right side he carried an enormous Colt revolver, the weight of which dragged his belt down. He pushed his cap slightly to the back of his head, pointed with his stick to a radio receiver, and said:

“That’s a nice job, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I replied, “very nice.”

“I wonder if it’s any good?” he continued.

“You can’t tell just from looking at the outside,” I replied.

He pulled his cap forward again and placed it once more at the regulation angle.

“Perhaps I’ll treat myself to it for Christmas,” he said, and wandered slowly off. “I’ll have to see what the wife says about it.”

My nerves were jangling, but I waited until he was out of sight, then I took a taxi. There were still one or two surprises in store for me that day. I changed from 12th Avenue into 50th Street. At Pier No. 88 lay that luxurious ocean-going giant, NORMANDIE, half submerged. In 1941, she’d been set on fire by German saboteurs.

We drove on. It’s no fun driving through New York. You have to stop every hundred yards or so. I had had enough and had just made up my mind to ask the taxi driver to stop, when it happened.

At a road junction, at the top of 28th Street, I think, the lights changed to green. The driver, a short, stout man of about fifty, put his foot down and drove off with a jerk. At the same moment a woman pedestrian who had not paid attention to the traffic lights, ran straight into the car. The driver jammed on his brakes and did a quick turn to the left. But he hit the woman with his right mud-guard. He put his foot down hard on the foot brake; there was a screech and the car came to a halt horizontally across the road. The woman had been thrown against the pavement with the force of the impact and lay there unconscious. It all looked terrible.

The driver was nearly green with excitement. He turned round to me and said in a shaking voice: “You saw it, sir, didn’t you? It wasn’t my fault, was it? The woman stepped straight in front of the car. I did everything I possibly could to avoid hitting her.”

“Yes,” I replied.

A crowd began to form. The driver pulled up by the pavement on the right. More and more people came rushing up to the scene of the accident. A young man took his jacket off and laid it under the woman’s head. Two policemen arrived on the scene. The street was sealed off. The crowd was getting bigger every second.

“Clear off!” I said to myself. The slightest hesitation on my part and the police would register me as a witness. They would check up on my papers and all my personal details. They would notice my foreign accent, and would ask questions, dangerous questions. I went the first few yards slowly and when I had got free of the crowd of onlookers I ran as fast as I could. A woman was the first to notice me; she took me for the driver, and assumed that I wanted to run away.

“There he is,” she called shrilly. “Catch him!”

Police whistles sounded behind me; passers-by called out; a man barred my path and I elbowed him out of the way.

I was now four to five hundred yards from the scene of the accident. I turned into a side street, ran to the left, then to the right, then once more to the left. I took a taxi and drove for two minutes. I got out, rode for three stations on the underground, got on a bus, took a taxi, got out of the taxi, went into a department store, bought some lemons, a wrist watch and a new hat and ate some steak.

No one was following me. Once more I had got away...

Cautiously I returned to my hotel. Billy was not there. There was a note on my bed: “Just gone to have a drink. Hope you don’t mind. Back in two hours.”

I lay on my bed. I had already put my radio parts together. I sat up and decoded the address of a New York businessman who was to put me in touch with people in the atom industry. I learned the address by heart and burned the note. I paced up and down the room. I ordered a whisky, but it did nothing to still my disquiet.

Obliquely opposite my hotel was a cinema. I went in. It was frightful. For an hour and a half I sat through a film, which purported to show how German soldiers were mishandling Russian civilians. A Russian woman who had given shelter to a partisan lay on a dung heap and gave birth to a child. Meanwhile German soldiers stood around making jokes. Then came the heroine. A blonde Russian put her arm round her lover, who was a Captain in the German Army, and indicated who should be shot. This piece of trash could hardly have been surpassed for lack of taste and for the hatred it tried to inspire. It was the American counterpart of Veit Harlan’s Few Süss. I went back to the hotel, drank a few more double whiskies and went to bed.

Suddenly I was awake. I looked at the clock. It was three o’clock. The other bed was still empty. Billy was missing. I was immediately wide awake. I sat up and dressed without turning on the light. Had he been arrested? Would he have betrayed me intentionally, or unintentionally? What methods did the F.B.I. have of getting a man to talk?

I left the hotel. No one noticed me, at least I hoped not. I walked over to the other side of the street. There was a house which was not locked up. I stepped inside and observed from the passageway what was happening in front of my hotel, wondering what the F.B.I. would do if.........

Perhaps they would send Billy back to me alone. Perhaps detectives would come and search the hotel. Perhaps they had men posted on the other side to keep an eye on me from close quarters. I smoked one cigarette after another, holding the lighted end to my palm to conceal the glow.

My cases were in the hotel room. I had with me only a small wallet containing some money and a revolver. My observation post was by no means ideal. At any minute someone might come out of the house or enter the house, and a strange man, who at three in the morning stands in the unlit passageway of a house, is already half arrested.

Half-past three. Four o’clock. The night seemed to stretch itself endlessly. There was no sign of Billy. In my imagination I could already see him being put under pressure by the police. I could see his face quite close to me, white with sweat, uneasy, tormented. Then I visualized him sitting in a bar with a blonde woman on his lap and stuffing five-dollar bills down her dress. What was true and what was false in these workings of my imagination? Five o’clock. A mist descended over New York. I wondered whether I should leave my hiding place and walk up and down the street. But I told myself that that would certainly be a mistake. The whole street, not only the occupants of the houses, would notice me then. The seconds passed slowly by; sixty seconds one minute, sixty minutes one hour. You can’t have any conception of how long an hour can be if you have never stood motionless and fearful on one spot, waiting, waiting, smoking, staring into the night until your eyes burned, until you’ve seen movements that were not there and experienced things which existed only in the imagination.

Half-past five. The mist was lifting slowly. Traffic on the road was becoming more dense. Soon the early risers would be getting up. I had now been in America for four days. I stood there waiting, hoping, trembling, with my eyes fixed on the entrance of the Kenmore Hall Hotel. I realized that I could remain in my observation post for only a few minutes more. The patches of mist had disappeared, and it was growing lighter with every minute.

I would have to leave this entrance and I had to make up my mind either to leave my suitcases where they were or wait in the hotel room for Billy and thereby risk arrest. I looked at my watch. “I’ll stay another three minutes,” I said to myself. Then two minutes were left. Then only one minute remained.

Traffic was increasing; workers on early shift were passing along the street. I gave myself another two minutes, and then another four. I was just about to leave the house when I heard Billy. I heard him before I saw him. He was not alone and he was not sober. He was laughing uproariously as he staggered slowly nearer. I could now see him. Whisky was written all over his bleary face. He was propping himself up against a woman who was also drunk. The two of them had their arms around each other supporting each other, and were laughing and giggling.

Was it a trap?

I remained in the background. In the shadow of a house. Billy and his companion came nearer. If they were putting on an act for my benefit on instructions from the F.B.I., they were brilliant performers. But no, it was genuine. It must be genuine.

They stood in the hotel doorway, he clutching on to her. She had trailing peroxide-blonde hair, which fell in untidy locks over her shoulders, a face that had once been pretty and a figure that was still good to look at.

“Come along up with me,” said Billy.

“You alone?”

“No,” he replied, “a friend’s with me.”

She muttered something to herself. Then I thought I heard her say: “Why don’t you move out?”

“That’s just what I will do,” said Billy. “Just wait and see.”

“And then come on to me,” she said. “Why don’t you come with me straight away?”

He was standing twenty yards away from me hanging on the hall. I wanted to step forward and jerk him back to his senses, but I did not want his girl friend to see me.

“No,” answered Billy. “Not until tomorrow...but tomorrow I’ll come baby. You can depend on that.”

She went on her way alone, staggering along the street. I shadowed her. I wanted to see if she still staggered when she was out of sight of Kenmore Hall. I followed her for ten minutes and no longer had any doubt that she was really drunk.

Billy had already undressed when I got back. There was no point in trying to talk to him there and then. I would wait a few hours. In fact, I could now take a few hours’ sleep myself.

I woke up at nine o’clock, pulled Billy out of bed, dragged him to the wash-basin and held his head under the cold water tap.

“Leave me alone!” he cried.

“The devil I won’t,” I replied. “I’ve just about had enough of your nonsense. You stay with me now & stop drinking.”

“I’ll damn well do what I like,” he answered.

He sat crouched in front of me looking as if he’d have liked to hit me. “Six weeks on that damned U-boat,” he went on. “then that hell of a landing with the rope nearly round your neck...........and then when we get here you start lecturing me like a bloody schoolmaster.”

His jacket was thrown over a chair. I took the wallet out. He still had 3,500 dollars. In three days Billy had spent 1,500 dollars. Anyone who goes around town spending money like that attracts attention and for us to attract attention to ourselves was as good as the end. What was I to do? I needed him, but I could not chain him to myself with handcuffs. Later, some weeks after this episode, an official of the F.B.I. was to say to me:

“You made only one mistake.......you should have given Billy a shot between the eyes as soon as you landed.......”

Billy and I sat at breakfast. I had scrambled eggs and ham. He had soda water and headache powder. He looked pale.

“I don’t want to make trouble for you,” he said, “but you don’t understand. After what we’ve been through a chap must have a bit of pleasure.”

“I’ve nothing against that,” I replied, “but you can’t go around giving twenty-dollar tips for a couple of steaks and a bottle of wine.”

“And why not?” he asked. “Do you know New York, or do I? Either I’m the pilot on this trip or not. In New York it’s small tips that send the eyebrows up, not the big ones.”

I let him go on talking and he soon stopped on his own accord.

Everything was now ready. The transmitter was working and Billy was halfway towards becoming a reasonable human being. For the moment we had only temporary accommodation. For the following day we had new quarters in view, an apartment, not a hotel. At last I could conduct myself with some degree of confidence. I had deciphered the New York addresses. The first was the address of a Mr. Brown of 41st Street. It was a business home. Mr. Brown had apparently made himself useful to Germany a few years previously on matters of espionage. I decided to call him in the afternoon.

Billy wanted to stay in bed and I had nothing against it. I could not do with him around when I went to make my call.

I took a taxi and went the last six hundred yards on foot. Mr. Brown ran a stockbrokers’ office on the eighth floor. I went up on the lift. The business occupied only two offices, a reception room and the boss’s room. A red-haired secretary received me.

"What can I do for you?” she asked.

“I want to see Mr. Brown.”

“And what is your name?”

“Kenneth W. Smith.”

“And what do you want to see him about?”

“I want to see him on business.”

“He’s not in,” she replied, “but you can have a word with his wife if it’s important.”

“It’s not as important as that,” I replied. “When is he expected back?” She lit herself a cigarette and opened the window. “You can stay in the cinema until then if you like, or don’t you need any tips on how to kill time in New York?”

“No thank you, I don’t,” I replied. “I know my way around.”

She looked charming and I should have like to have invited her to have a meal with me, but it was not a good thing to have a girl friend who was the secretary of a ‘business friend’.

In Amt VI they swore by this Mr. Brown, but they had sworn by a good many people in Amt VI to no good purpose.

I bought myself a few papers and went slowly back to my hotel. I covered the first stretch on foot. The fresh air did me good. Once I had been able to get in touch with Mr. Brown on the following day everything would be in order. I would now go and have something to eat with Billy, then we would go to a cinema and then perhaps I’d go to a nightclub for two or three hours.

I covered the last stretch to the hotel in a taxi. I walked slowly across the foyer. The doorman looked up.

“Have you forgotten something?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’ve already moved out, haven’t you?”

“I don’t understand,” I replied.

“But the bill has been paid. Your friend saw to everything. He said you’d already gone away. That was why I was surprised when I saw you walk in again.”

I tried to conceal my consternation as well as I could. Billy had disappeared. Billy had flown.

“Is something wrong?” asked the porter.

“No,” I replied. “Everything’s fine.” I walked on a few yards and then turned round once more. “What did he do with the luggage?” I asked.

“He took it with him.”

“Both suitcases?”

“Yes. Both of them. I was going to call a taxi but he said it wasn’t necessary; he hadn’t far to go. He seemed to be in a great hurry.” I gave the man a few cents and went out into the street. The situation I now found myself in was indescribable. The transmitter, the revolvers, the diamonds, the dollars. All gone. All gone with William Colepaugh.

There I stood with my mission hardly begun and with about three hundred dollars in my pocket. Everything swam before my eyes. With three hundred dollars I had somehow to find Billy somewhere in America. If I did not find him within the next few hours it would be all up with me.

Spy for Germany

Chapter 7: To America by Submarine (KTB # 156)
Chapter 8: The Landing in America (KTB # 157)
Chapter 9: Tricked by Billy in NYC (KTB # 158)
Chapter 10 (I): I Work Out My Own Situation (KTB # 159)
Chapter 10 (II): I Work Out My Own Situation (KTB # 160)
Chapter 11 (I): Billy Betrays Me to the F.B.I. (KTB # 161)
Chapter 11 (II): Billy Betrays Me to the F.B.I. (KTB # 162)
Chapter 12 (I): Love -- and then Arrest! (KTB # 163)
Chapter 12 (II): Love -- and then Arrest! (KTB # 164)
Chapter 13 (I): Grilled by the FBI (KTB # 165)
Chapter 13 (II): Grilled by the FBI (KTB # 166)