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. He was arrested by the F.B.I. and headed for the gallows.

Chapter 13
Grilled by the F.B.I.

“Interrogations are always pleasant,” I said. “They make the time pass so quickly.”

Two officers returned from the Pennsylvania Hotel bringing with them my whole espionage equipment, diamonds, photographic apparatus, money, invisible ink, revolver & parts of my transmitter

“You’ve got a nice collection there,” said Connelly. He seated himself at his desk. Behind him hung a portrait of Roosevelt, almost life-size, in a silver frame. The picture was slightly hazy which made it look as it the President were perspiring. I gazed at him searchingly and imagined I saw him wink at me with his left eye

Connelly turned round to the portrait and smiled. “The President knows all about it already,” he said. “He was informed half an hour ago by Mr. Hoover. Mr. Hoover is the Supreme Head of the F.B.I. You know that, of course.” He offered me a cigarette and lit it for me. “You certainly cannot complain of lack of attention. Actually no German agent has ever before got as far as you did.”

He rose from his chair and paced up and down the room. “Would you like another glass of whisky?” he asked. I nodded.

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what you would like and you shall have it. Not only today either. You’re in the best hands. When you’ve had something to eat we’ll continue our conversation,” he said. He motioned to an officer who led me out into another room which had been set up as a sort of provisional cell.

“I’ll have some grilled steak and pommes frites (French fries). After that ice cream and a glass of Bourbon. Perhaps you can also bring me some sweets and couple of packets of cigarettes.”

“It shall be done,” answered the officer and carefully locked the door behind him.

I sat on the bunk and listened as two men conversed sotto voce just outside the door. It was night. On the horizon I could see some improvised fireworks going off. Jumping crackers, rockets and Catherine wheels. The New Year was on the way.

“Here’s to the New Year,” I said to myself and beat my fists upon my forehead. As I waited for my steak I felt only a mixture of scorn and pity for myself. In the last analysis it was all the same to me whether I was executed with courtesy or without it. However correct the proceedings might be, the outcome was inevitable.

Death is the penalty for espionage in wartime the world over. Every secret agent knows that and every secret agent has only one defense against it - not to get caught.

The pommes frites smelt tempting. The steak was tender and underdone as I liked it, but every mouthful stuck in my throat. Perhaps now the Third Degree was about to begin. That horribly cruel method of interrogation attributed to the F.B.I......I ate slowly to kill time. They certainly allowed me plenty.

An officer poked his head around the door. “All right?” he asked.

“First class,” I replied.

I was now on the ice cream. I was thinking of Joan and could see her before me. He eyes, her lips, her brow. She had moist eyes, red-rimmed. She could not understand what I had done to her. She knew nothing of the work of a spy; thank God, she knew nothing of that. I must concentrate on shielding her at all costs. She and Santi, Brown and the contact men in South America who were probably at this moment trying to cross the frontier.

It was all over. I had been caught. I was lost, betrayed.

Operation Elster had come to an end, but half-completed, on Times Square, right in the heart of New York. On the busiest spot of that vast metropolis.

Mr. Connelly, deputy head of the F.B.I. would probably allow me another five minutes. I lit a cigarette........... Damn and blast Times Square! It had a bad name in the files of the German M.I. and it had got me now! Of the serious losses the German Secret Service had sustained on this spot I thought of the Osten case. At any rate it helped me to forget my own troubles for a while........

In 1941, Major von der Osten, one of the shrewdest officers of the German M.I. was commissioned to reorganize the network of German secret agents in the USA. It was a few months before Pearl Harbor, and America had not yet entered the war. The Major traveled with a Spanish passport, calling himself Lido, and reached the States via Honolulu and San Francisco. His papers were as expert as his experience, and he aroused no suspicion. He got as far as New York without the American Secret Service becoming aware of his presence in the country.

New York was the center of the German espionage which was under the direction of a German-American whose name began with L. The results it had so far achieved were meager and that was why the Major had been sent to New York; he was to inject some life into the proceedings. Von der Osten was tall and slim. He spoke English with an irreproachable American accent and could drink and swear with the best of them.

Von der Osten looked up L. who gave him maps, plans and a list of all the contact men, and von der Osten put the documents in a briefcase. L. and the Major took a taxi and drove through New York. At Times Square the lights showed red, the taxi stopped and the two men took the opportunity to get out. They paid off the driver, L. stepped out on to the street and von der Osten followed. The lights changed and the traffic moved forward. A sports car, the driver of which was drunk, shot forward like lightning straight at von der Osten. The Major leapt to one side and landed right in the path of a Cadillac.

There was a crash, a scream, and a crowd began to form. L. acted swiftly. He took the briefcase out of the hand of the seriously injured man and disappeared into the crowd. One or two people noticed him and informed the police.

They took the Major to hospital, but he died on the way. They inspected his passport and became suspicious..........

This grim accident in Times Square in 1941 cost the German M.I. fourteen trained agents. The F.B.I had L.’s description, they went after him, and they found him. L. broke down under interrogation and the F.B.I. made its swoop. One motorcar in Times Square had played a decisive part in the course of the war. It should have been a warning to me....

“If you’re ready.........” An F.B.I. official came for me. “Mr. Connelly would like to see you in his office.”

“Yes, I’m ready,” I replied. I only had to go down a short passageway. Three officials were waiting for me.

“Make yourself comfortable,” said Connelly. “It’s going to be a long job.” I sat down and put a cigarette in my mouth. The officer threw a box of matches across the table to me; they had taken my lighter away. I had also been relieved of my braces, and my shoelaces had been removed from my shoes; my tie had likewise found its way into the property room. Precautions against suicide are the same world over.

“You are a German?” asked Connelly.

“Yes.”

“You have been going under the name of Edward Green?”

“Yes.”

“You made an illegal entry into the United States five weeks ago?”

“Yes.”

“By means of a German U-boat?”

“Yes.”

“What was the name of the U-boat commander?”

“I don’t know.”

Connelly nodded. “Do you not know or do not wish to tell me?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

Nelson laughed. “You don’t expect us to believe that, of course?”

“You can do what you like with it,” I replied.

“That’s fine,” replied Connelly.

“You are an agent of the German M.I., are you not?”

“Yes.”

“You were trained for the work at the German schools?”

“Yes.”

“At which schools?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“Just as you like.”

Connelly got to his feet and paced up and down in the room. Then he said: “My job is to investigate the case, nothing more. You’ll be handled decently here, you’ll discover that. We’re not the Gestapo. I even have a certain understanding of the fact that you should wish to shield your associates.......But don’t get me wrong. I mean I have a certain human understanding for it; as an officer of the F.B.I. I must do my duty.” He sat down and lit a cigarette.

“I just had to make my little speech,” he said. “You know, of course, that we Americans like making speeches.”

“Well, I’ve nothing against it.”

“What were your instructions in America?”

I remained silent.

“Do you deny that you intended to gather information about the American armament industry?”

“No,” I replied.

“You know, of course, that that is called espionage.”

“Yes.”

“Therefore you don’t deny that your are a spy?”

“No.”

“But you will not tell us what you have been spying upon.”

“Have you ever met a spy who’d tell you that?” I asked.

“Oh,” said Connelly with a smile, “we’ve had a whole host of amateurs here.” He roared with laughter.

“I haven’t much to tell you,” I said. “My own story isn’t of much interest to you or to me....I came to America with a citizen of the States - that’s no news to you. There’s no one apart from him who had anything to do with this undertaking. I just had to find what I could about the capacity of the American armament industry. I tried but I did not succeed.............Any questions you may care to ask me which concerns me personally I will answer willingly. You know, of course, that a secret agent is only one small cog in a great machine, and that he himself is kept in the dark as far as possible about the picture as a whole.”

Connelly nodded.

“But you’re no ordinary secret agent,” he replied. “You were working for Germany when you were in Peru. You were a layman then, of course, but after that you received your training. You served under Canaris and you did so well that you were transferred to Reich Security, a department of the S.S. There you developed into one of Germany’s most dangerous spies. Then I could tell a few things from your time in Spain...........Oh no, when they send a man like you across the Atlantic they know what they’re doing.”

EDITOR NOTE - Out of some 20,000 Abwehr agents, ERICH was Agent #146 so he apparently had some stature in the M.I. service. Before the war, he went to South America as an ‘electrical technician’ for Telefunken, a large German radio company. There were many ‘electrical technicians’ working for Telefunken in South American and other places where the German Government needed information. And if we remember the ‘Intelligence Page’ of earlier issues of the KTB Magazine, we should remember Swedish industrialist Dr. Axel Wenner-Gren, wealthiest man in the world, owner of Bofors Armament Company, founder of the Electrolux Vacuum Cleaner Company – and one of Hitler’s lead agents in the Western Hemisphere. In the mid-1930’s, Wenner-Gren headed expeditions to Peru and they had an abundance of very long-range radio equipment. The ‘other shoe’ had dropped.

We conversed politely enough but continued to talk past rather than to each other. We told each other only what we knew already. The interrogation was being conducted in an almost leisurely manner, but it was just therein that the danger lay. The F.B.I. was first of all applying the ‘soft’ method; when would they bring the ‘hard’ into play? When would they start using noise, loud music, floodlights, shouts and blows? When would they come at me with an outstretched revolver and threaten to shoot me? When would they promise me my freedom? When would they describe the execution? When would they try the sexual methods? When would they use the lever of religion? When would they get brutal?

It had to come. Perhaps not today, but certainly tomorrow. Then it would start. They would hold a photograph of my mother before my eyes and threaten reprisals against my family. I knew exactly how everything would be done and I knew that there was small chance of my surviving these methods of torture and keeping quiet.

The officials were relieved every ten minutes. New faces appeared, new names cropped up. Some of the men looked rough and brutal but they spoke gently and courteously. No, I certainly would not fall for the ‘soft’ methods...........

They brought me coffee. I was chain-smoking and my fingers were getting quite brown. The morning descended on New York and I could hear the bells ringing in the New Year. The city awoke, milk churns clattered and newspapermen called out the headlines upon the morning air. The people shouted New Year greetings to each other. The postman got his tip, and those who clung to their beliefs went to church. Those who had drunk too much the night before were taking headache powders, and anyone who had a day off from work would certainly go on sleeping.

“What were the names of your contact men in America?”

“Don’t lie.”

“What were you doing with so much money?”

“Just tell us the names of the people with whom you had dealings and then you can sleep for two days.”

They brought me ham and eggs and wonderful coffee. There were cigarettes on the tray. Nothing was spared.

Another crop of new faces. It was hot. I took my jacket off and unbuttoned my shirt. My beard was growing and my face was irritating. I passed my hand over the stubble once or twice.

“Oh, would you like wash up?” said one of the officers, interrupting the interrogation. “I’m sorry. We’ll pause for half an hour.” I was taken back to my cell.

“What’s the time?” I asked.

“Nine o’clock,” answered the official.

The interrogation had already gone on for eleven hours. That was quite enough for me, but it was to continue.

At twelve o’clock, Connelly appeared again. “Just tell us what you’d like to eat, and we’ll order it from the hotel. You can have whatever you like. You must be tired. I wish I could leave you in peace, but you understand I have my duty.”

ERICH is experiencing an old but highly effective method of interrogation known to the F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies as ‘the Third Degree’. When the Chinese communists used it against American prisoners, it was called ‘Brain Washing’. It boils down to simple sleep deprivation & constantly hammering on the same questions until the subject becomes disoriented, defenseless and just wants to sleep more than anything – then he will talk. This exciting story continues in KTB #167 next month.

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)