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. In Chapter 9 (KTB #158) ERICH gets the shock of learning that Billy has taken all the money and the diamonds, and deserted not only the mission, but ERICH as well. In the first part of Chapter 10 (KTB #159) ERICH is trying desperately to find Billy - and get his $60,000 and diamonds back. In the balance of Chapter 10, we see how ERICH outwitted Billy and got his suitcases, filled with money and spy equipment back - at Billy’s expense but in the meantime to nobody’s surprise, ERICH has found another woman. In chapter 11, ERICH is doing well with this new woman, an old contact is going to tell him about the Manhattan Project - but his time is running out and Billy is about to betray him to the F.B.I. In Chapter 12, ERICH was happily spending Christmas with Joan, but his tour of duty as a spy – and his life, were almost over.

Chapter 12 (II): Love -- and then Arrest!

“Will you stay with me always?” asked Joan.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“Will you just forget me?”

“No,” I said, “that I can promise you; I shall never forget you.”

“It’s strange,” she continued. “I always seem to know just what you are going to say.”

It was midnight now. The bells were ringing on the radio and the carol-singers were proclaiming Christmas Day. We drew close together. I was happy that things had turned out like this, that I was holding Joan in my arms instead of hunting British agents in Holland or lying with a heap of drunken men in Spain. The night enfolded us in its embrace. A clock was ticking. The sound was painful to me. If only there were no clocks......The feeling of happiness to which I had surrendered became ever more poignant.

Joan had fallen asleep. She was smiling. She lay quite still, her face turned towards me. I had opened the window, and the cool night air was wafting into the room. I covered her with a rug so that she would not feel the cold.

And then once more the secret agent in me gained the upper hand. Uncompromisingly he reported for duty. For an hour, two hours I struggled desperately against the dictates of my conscience. Life has not dealt gently with me. I have witnessed the death of friends. I have felt the clammy hands of the hangman measuring my neck. I have known the silent despair of a prison cell, the inevitability of the passage of time measuring our life slowly, day by day, hour by hour. In all these situations my role was a passive one, the inevitable result of circumstances beyond my control.

Now, however, I had to anticipate the grim drama. I had to leave Joan, sleeping, smiling Joan who would be looking forward to a joyous awakening at my side. I had to cast behind me all the joy of this evening, all the spirit of Christmas, all recognition of our mutual love. I had to pick up my bag and baggage and step out into the chill of the metropolis, into the heart of the enemy. I was an enemy of the people who were now celebrating Christmas. I was a spy, a spy for a country which had already lost the war.

I would have to wake up Joan and explain everything. I was sure she would never denounce me. But therein lay her own undoing. She would be charged with having harbored a German spy. The law of welfare knows no love, no pity. She would be executed. Militant, uncompromising patriotism, that monster produced by war, would make no concessions.

No, I could not do it. No, not as long as a glimmering of understanding was left to me. Not so long as I had any sense of responsibility. No, not as long as I loved her. She turned in her sleep and what light there was enabled me to study her face in every detail. I imprinted her features upon my memory. I would never see her again, and I would never be able to explain to her why I had slipped away. It was my lot to wound her. Perhaps she would never understand. She might weep, she might be embittered, she might curse the fate that had brought us together. She might hate the happiness that had united us for a few hours.

No, I could never do that! I crept quietly up to her. I would have to wake her. I would have to stay, I would have to risk everything to guard our happiness. The war was already as good as over. I would tell her what my part in it had been. She would understand and would say no more about it. I had money, I could speak Spanish, I knew my way around South America. I knew where I could go and not arouse attention. I knew the places where no one would think of looking for me. She would come with me. There would be two or three days; uncertainty before our getaway was finally accomplished, before we would be safe. We would travel separately. For Joan anyhow there would be no risk, and I knew how to go about it, how to cross frontiers and keep my nerves under control. For once in my life my training would be of some real service to me.

She knew nothing of the inner battle I had to fight, the despair I had to endure. She did not know that her problematical future was already my past. I got up and packed my belongings. I pulled my case out from under the couch on which she was sleeping. A light sleeper would’ve been disturbed. I hoped she would wake, hoped that the terrible, fateful decision would not be left to me alone.

But Joan went on sleeping. Scraps of white mist floated in through the open window. I closed it and again it was not possible to avoid making a slight noise. I carried my bag to the corridor. “At least you can leave a note for her,” one half of me said. But the agent remained obdurate. I made my way to the door. I turned once more and looked behind me............

I ignored the most elementary requirements of caution. It was all a matter of indifference to me now and I acted entirely without thought or consideration.

I summoned a taxi and drove straight to a hotel. As far as I was concerned the whole of the F.B.I. could be waiting for me at the reception desk. For all I cared they could have caught me there and then. All I wanted was to be free of the whole business.

I left my bag at the reception desk. They needed only to open it and they would have all the proof they wanted against me. Then I bought myself a bottle of whisky and took it to bed with me. On the following day I did the same thing. That was how I managed to live through Christmas Day. That day and during the days which followed, I forgot everything I had learned at the school for secret agents. Perhaps I could never have done what I eventually did if I had conducted myself like an expert.

The information from Brown gave me a pointer and I carried on without thought or care for the consequences. Not once did I look around to see if I was being followed. It was as if life had put blinkers one me. I visited libraries and reading rooms, I spoke with engineers and workmen, and I posed my questions without any inhibitions.

Needless to say, the Manhattan project was absolutely confidential, but no country could keep an atomic bomb entirely secret. The route of the uranium ore that came from Northern Canada - some of it also came from the Belgian Congo - could be precisely traced.

For the cooling of an atomic pile it is necessary to have vast quantities of water. I observed that a section of the Columbia River had been diverted. It also did not escape my notice that in Oak Ridge in the State of Tennessee a six-story works building had sprung up within the space of a few months.

I also investigated the matter of test flights. Two distinguished air force officers, specialists in B.29, the greatest American long-distance bomber of its time, had been drafted from the Pacific zone. They were now engaged in the seemingly pointless occupation of flying an exceptionally heavy mock bomb backwards and forwards in Arizona. The pilots themselves had no idea of the significance of what they were doing when I reported everything to Germany.

I gritted my teeth and again became more cautious. My report must get through. Perhaps a terrible disaster could be prevented if the German government could be warned in time, and if they took my warning seriously. If............

I assembled my transmitter. I had some difficulty in getting in to go at first, but I finally succeeded. At five in the afternoon, American time, all was ready. I formulated my message. It was too long. I shortened it and found I was able to save about fifty words. I coded the text, learned it by heart, then wrote it down once again and found I could cut another sentence. I would need eight to ten minutes. I seated myself at the keyboard, wondering if I would be located in New York, wondering if they still imagined that a German spy could possibly be transmitting a message from their very midst.

I tapped the keys. After a short time I received a reply. I was now quite calm. I was, so to speak, once more in my own element. My transmission took no longer than I had calculated. Reception had been clear; I received confirmation from the ether.

The first part of my mission had been completed. What would they think of my report in Berlin? I wondered whether they would simply throw in into the waste-paper basket as they had done with other important messages which they had not dared to place before Hitler. Or would they simply not believe what I had said? Would they think that I had fallen prey to pacifist feelings? Or would they think I had reported what I had reported just to make myself look important? Anything was possible. I realized all of this. When the war was over I was to know a good deal more besides............

The second part of my mission was - sabotage.

I was to marshal together a group of men who would carry out explosive attacks on the main works buildings of the American atomic industry. Men and money for this purpose were ready and waiting for me in South America. The only question was, to what extent were they dependable? It was quite within the bounds of possibility that both were counterfeit.

“What is the point of it all?” I asked myself again and again during this period. Was it all worth while? Was it all my duty to go on? Why didn’t I just throw the whole thing up? Why didn’t I just go under cover for a while? My colleagues and indeed my superiors were not to prove to be such sticklers for duty.

The arrangement was that I should get in touch with contact men in Peru by inserting an advertisement in a South American newspaper. Through the medium of a few innocuous words which I have since forgotten, was to inform them that they were to come to New York as quickly as possible.

The advertisement appeared. The next step was for the contact men to confirm through an advertisement in the same newspaper that everything was proceeding according to plan. I had therefore to buy this particular paper every day. It was obtainable only at the largest newspaper stands in New York, and unknown to me that was where my fate lurked in wait for me..............

The last day of 1944 began for me like any other day. My room was over-heated, the wallpaper was grim. I shaved and had some coffee in a snack bar. I was in a bad mood, but I had been in a bad mood ever since I had left Joan. All the time I longed to go back to her. I wondered what she was doing, and what she was thinking of me. I wondered if she had somehow got over the ghastly surprise of the morning when she woke to find I had disappeared.

I knew the little dress shop in New York that she ran. I had walked past it a few times. I wanted to see her once again. I hadn’t even a photograph of her; it would indeed have been wrong of me to have had a photograph her. I saw her face, her eyes, always before me. It was enough to drive me crazy. Meanwhile I was acting as errand boy for an idiotic war..............

I lunched at one o’clock on a double portion of steak and the usual pommes frites (French fries). I was suddenly terribly hungry. Then I bought myself a few newspapers. Passing over the war reports, I read a speech of Roosevelt’s. I couldn’t stand the man. Then I turned to a murder case.

There was a cinema close to the restaurant and I went in. The film was a Western of the worst kind and I left the cinema after half an hour of it. I had once again accustomed myself to take a good look around me. I was sure no one was following me. New York was busy preparing to celebrate New Year’s Eve. I would have to celebrate alone; I still had no idea where I should go. I walked on towards Times Square. It was a dreary afternoon. There were hundreds of people hanging about in the square, people actively wanting to enjoy themselves, people who were bored or people who were out on business. On the right side of the square was a newspaper stand which carried the paper I had to see.

I walked past the stand first. I always did this when I was buying newspapers. There were a good number of people about, always three or four at the stand putting their cents in a dish and picking up the paper they wanted. A few people were standing about near by but that’s something you always see by a newspaper stand. Some people just can’t wait to satisfy their curiosity and stand and look at their papers in the most unsuitable places.

I walked past the stand once more. There were two teenagers behind me giggling over something that had happened at a dancing class. In front of me a wounded man in uniform was walking along on crutches. The people coming towards him looked pained and embarrassed. Cars were driving across the square in a continuous stream. A woman dropped a parcel and I picked it up for her. She thanked me with a smile. I went up to the stand. A glance to the left, and one to the right. It looked as if the coast was clear. Nowhere near could I see two men together; two men together spelled danger for me.

I had to wait a few seconds and looked meanwhile at various magazines as if I were undecided which to take. I bought two and then asked for the South American paper. The man hesitated for a moment then nodded knowingly.

“One moment, sir,” he said. He riffled through a stack of papers then he found it.

“I don’t get asked for this very often,” he explained. “If you need it regularly, let me know and I’ll put it on one side for you.”

“I’m only a visitor here,” I replied, “but thanks the same.” I gave him a dollar.

“Haven’t you anything smaller?” he asked.

“Sorry, I haven’t,” I replied.

He gave me twenty-five cents change, counting it out to me carefully. I unbuttoned my overcoat and dropped the change into the left breast pocket of my jacket. It was an odd habit of mine; my mother had in fact often taken me to task about it when I was a boy at home.

Never put your change in your left breast pocket – with the F.B.I. watching you.

I put the papers in my overcoat pocket, the South American one wrapped round by the two magazines so that it could not be seen. I strolled on a few paces further. A man near me lit a cigarette. His eyes were on the match. Then he approached nearer. The crowd tossed up a group of young soldiers who passed by three abreast, making a great deal of noise.

“One moment, sir,” said the man with the cigarette. In the same second another man appeared at his sides as if he had been conjured out of a hat. “Edward Green, I believe?”

“No,” I said, “My name is Frank Miller.”

“Well, whatever your name is,” replied one of the two men, “you are under arrest.”

Frank Miller, Edward Green, Erich Gimpel – they are all under arrest in the same person, and this holiday season appears to be just about finished for ERICH………..as is his life. More of this exciting story next month in KTB #165.

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)