One morning toward the middle of June my telephone rang and a voice which I recognised as Rado's bade me, in the usual veiled phraseology, come to a rendezvous. When I saw Rado he was obviously worried and upset. He handed me a message which he had received from Taylor through Cissie that morning. It was from Lucy and from his source Werther. Curtly and baldly it stated that a general German attack on Russia would take place at dawn on June 22 and it gave details of the army groupings and the primary objectives. Rado could not make up his mind what to do. If the information was correct it was obviously of paramount importance that it be got off as quickly as possible. He himself inclined to the Centre's belief and thought that the whole thing was an Abwehr plant. I remember that he argued that we had not only sent the Centre intelligence of German troop movements but that Lucy had also reported what the Germans believed were Russian countermoves. These the Centre must have been in a position to evaluate and appreciate and if after so doing they continued to warn us against Lucy, then Moscow must have had cogent reasons for thinking that it was a German double-cross. I argued that it was not for us to speculate on the workings of the Centre's mind. If the information was false and we sent it, it could not do much harm- if Moscow knew it was false they would throw it into the wastepaper basket. If on the other hand it was true, it was obviously vital that the Centre should have it as soon as possible and it would be criminal for us to suppress it; far the best thing was to send it off and let the Centre do the worrying. In the end Rado agreed and handed me the message and I sent it off that night.
I learnt afterwards in Moscow that this was the first piece of Lucy's information that they did take seriously. It fitted in with information that the Russians had got from other sources and they took it into account in making their troop dispositions. For the first but not the last time Lucy had proved his worth.
The information I was sending grew increasingly ominous over the next few days, and I myself became more and more convinced that it was wishful thinking to imagine that the Germans could have put all that machinery in motion merely to frighten. I did not sleep well that Saturday night and on the Sunday morning turned my radio on early. I shall never forget hearing the hoarse voice of the Fuehrer announce the invasion of Russia. "Operation Barbarossa" was on and our real work about to start.
"OPERATION BARBAROSSA"
"Fascist beasts have invaded the Motherland of the working classes. You are called upon to carry out your tasks in Germany to the best of your ability. Direktor."
This was the message I received from the Centre over my radio that Sunday night. It was not a scheduled day for transmission or reception but, having spent the day listening to the strident and triumphal bellowings of the German radio, I tuned in that night to my receiving wave and at one in the morning received this message. My first from a Russia at war.
Apart from the message given above, I was also told that Moscow would be listening to me all round the clock. The whole machinery was geared to wartime production. For the next few days admonitions and instructions poured in on me from Moscow. They arranged, for the first time, a system of priorities. Messages marked "VYRDO" were exceedingly urgent and were to be decoded by the recipient at once- taking priority over all other work. "RDO" as a prefix stood for urgent and "MSG" denoted routine messages which could be transmitted and decoded at leisure. Owing to my being a one- man show, with the consequent saving of time, most of the VYRDO messages fell to my lot, and of these Lucy's material formed the major part. Gone now were the days when the Centre regarded Lucy as an agent provocateur. They were clamouring incessantly for more and more information- and Lucy produced it. Nearly every day new material from Werther on the grouping of the German forces which were smashing their way towards Moscow came in and was sent off by me. Olga gave the organisation and strength of the Luftwaffe squadrons which were blasting the way clear for the Wehrmacht. Frequently I was so rushed that I barely had time to read the messages before encoding them and as a result did not myself digest the information they contained. If I had had the time, or if I had broken the strict rule against keeping old material, I could no doubt myself have built up the complete German order of battle in my flat in Lausanne. Time did not permit, and anyway it would have been merely of academic interest to us. The interest was far from academic to Moscow, who were virtually fighting their war on the material.
Apart from my work as an operator I was also instructed to get into contact with the Swiss Communist Party in the shape of one of its leaders, Julius Humbert Droz (cover name Droll). The Centre gave me the name of a woman, "May," who was to act as an introductory cut-out. She was an old hand in the game and had been working long before the war in, I think, another network. Her husband was an eminent and extremely respectable Zurich citizen who had no idea as to his wife's secret activities and would have been horrified had he known. I went to her extremely respectable house and introduced myself with the passwords which had been supplied by the Centre. Accepted as a Soviet agent, May arranged a secret meeting between me and Droz.
Droz was then the leader of what might be called the "right wing" of the Swiss Communist Party, with Carl Hofmeier as leader of the "left wing." Droz himself had formerly been Secretary of the Comintern and an old and trusted worker. He was also a bitter political rival of Hofmeier's. Since the outbreak of war in 1939 Hofmeier had been in contact with Rado and had received all the instructions and finances (mostly instruction; the money moved the other way) which the Centre had sent but had kept them for his own faction and refused to hand anything on to Droz, which action had not unnaturally incensed the latter, who considered that he was being slighted- having regard to his position in the past.
To my meeting with Droz I took a telegram which I had received from the Centre and which was signed by Dimitrov. I think that there is little doubt that it was in fact composed by him. The style was entirely different from that usually employed and in it Dimitrov reminded Droz of various incidents and individuals that only they two could have known-dating back to their days together in the Comintern. Dimitrov asked Droz to cooperate with me in every way and give me all the assistance he could. Armed with this letter of introduction, I went off and met Droz in the house of one of his supporters in Lausanne. He was extremely cordial to me but still angry with Hofmeier and gave me a telegram for Dimitrov complaining of the treatment meted out to him. To this I received a prompt reply, also signed Dimitrov, telling Droz that nothing could be done about it at the time as Hofmeier was rendering valuable service to the Centre. Dimitrov urged Droz to devote all his efforts to the same cause with the aid of his own supporters in the Party and hinted strongly that it was the one who did the best work for the Centre who would be confirmed in the leadership of the Party after the war.
The director authorised me to pay Droz two hundred dollars a month and reasonable expenses and also any further sums necessary for the financing of the network that Droz was to set up. This was not a difficult task for him. Among his followers were many individuals who crossed the frontier daily in the course of their normal work. With these he quickly organised a courier service which kept him in touch with local German Communists, and his followers were also able, by intelligent use of their eyes and ears, to pick up a considerable amount of information. Most of this was of local interest only but the odd scrap of military gossip or fact let slip in "careless talk" was worth sending to the Centre. Droz was also attempting to work his people into factories over the frontier so that there might later be a possibility of some serious sabotage work.