But that is enough of Lorenz and Laura for the time being. From the time of our first contact in the late summer of 1941 until the summer of 1943 Lorenz continued to act in most respects like a normal Soviet agent. Not a very satisfactory one, as his reports were verbose in the extreme and when boiled down to essentials often contained remarkably little information, and the twenty new recruits that he put up to further his schemes were all turned down flat by Moscow. The Centre argued, quite rightly, that money was tight enough and to take twenty new and untried sources on the pay roll was not only impossible but also flatly against the canon of Soviet espionage law.
For nearly two years, from the summer of 1941 to the summer of 1943, my life fell almost into a routine - if anything can be routine in a career where the unexpected is always coming up, and is usually dreaded. As regards the daily espionage round, late rising was an understandable rule when one was often up at all hours getting the material over to Moscow. Having breakfasted leisurely at about ten, the rest of the morning was one's own. Unless, as so often, it was one of the days to meet Rado or one of his couriers, or Lorenz at his villa, or one of the cut-outs. I tried, however, to make all these appointments in the afternoon so that I might have some time to myself and at the same time try to keep up my pose of the leisured émigré Englishman. The afternoon rendezvous were invariably tedious, as they meant a long journey to somewhere so that the contact could be on unsullied ground. Having returned, I usually had a long evening's ciphering before me. According to the rules all ciphering should have been done after dark and behind locked doors. But needs must when the Centre drove and in the more hectic times I was enciphering in all my spare moments.
My transmission time was usually about one in the morning. If conditions were good and the message short I was through in about a couple of hours. If, as frequently happened, I had long messages to send and atmospherics were bad I had to fight my way through and send when and as conditions allowed. Often on such occasions I was still at the transmitter at six and once or twice I "signed off" at nine in the morning. The nights that conditions were bad always seemed to be nights when Moscow had particularly long messages to pass back to me, which also lengthened proceedings greatly. To be on the air for that length of time broke all the normal precautions against radio monitoring. But it was a chance which had to be taken if the intelligence was to be passed over, a risk which the Centre took despite frequent admonitions by Rado and me. As regards the service intelligence, mostly Lucy's material, we were told that we must take every risk to get it over and damn the consequences. Rather cold comfort to us as we were the people who would take the consequences rather than the Centre.
In addition to the normal hazards of atmospherics the Luftwaffe added to our difficulties in getting through to Moscow. Whenever there was a German bomber raid on the Russian capital the station went off the air until the raid was over. I remember that in September and October 1941, when the Germans were hammering at the gates, we could get contact only on rare occasions and for only a short time. This got worse and worse, and on October 19 Moscow went off the air in the middle of a message. Night after night Rado and I called, and night after night there was no reply. Rado was in despair and talked of going over to the British. I was desperate as the radio silence had occurred in the middle of one of my financial deals with America and I was being pressed by my intermediaries for news and/or money- preferably the latter. Weeks passed, a month passed, and the whole delicate structure of a spy ring working at high pressure was in very real danger of disintegration. Fruitlessly we still tried every night to get contact and all we got were the derisive howls of atmospherics. Suddenly one night at the scheduled time - and six weeks after the break - the Centre piped up. As if nothing had happened, they finished the message that they had cut off halfway through, a month and a half before. Not one word of explanation or apology (not that that was expected, but a kind word would have been appreciated). When I was in Moscow I learned that this interruption had been caused by the move of the whole of the Centre's communications to Kuibishev. This move had been done at twelve hours' notice to the senior staff and none to the junior, so that the unhappy operator had been practically wrenched from his set and put in a lorry for the long trek eastward.
With such occasional alarums and excursions the months passed swiftly. As most people know, a regular and ordered life makes the time pass extremely fast and if the excitement of war is added, the whole of time seems to flow and merge in a kaleidoscopic medley. Most people I know have the greatest difficulty in sorting out exactly what they were doing at any particular moment of the war. For this reason I trust that I will be forgiven for an occasional haziness of date or blurring of recollection. Twice-weekly meetings with Rado and Lorenz, my financial deals, and the incessant grind of enciphering and transmitting occupied my life. So things went on till the crisis in the summer of 1943 which in a few months broke up the organisation and landed me in jail.
"SHOEMAKER'S" HOLIDAY
This chapter concerns a facet of my espionage career which does not really fit in neatly anywhere chronologically, so it must appear as an independent story on its own. The chapter heading refers to that most essential adjunct of any well-conducted spy ring- the forger. In the jargon of the Centre, a forger of passports was known as a "shoemaker" or "cobbler" and we had a very able and efficient one working for us in Switzerland.
The disadvantage of most forged passports is the very fact that they are forged. That may sound obvious but it is a very real difficulty. However good the forger may be and however complete the technical aids at his disposal, there is always the risk that some small change or some foolish mistake may land the carrier of the document in trouble. Despite the boasted efficiency of the German Secret Service and their undoubted technical ability, their forgeries during the war were often beneath contempt and were veritable death warrants to the unhappy holders. Our network avoided this difficulty completely by arranging to have our Swiss passports made by the Swiss themselves.
In the latter part of 1941 the Centre put me in touch with one Helena Schmidt (cover name "Anna") in Basle. She was an old hand, as she had been in the net for some twenty years. Before the war she had been in touch with another Soviet network which had been in existence in the country; but ever since the outbreak of war she had been out of touch with the Centre and had received no orders. I do not know exactly which network she had been working for, but suspect that it was one which had been run by the resident director who preceded Rado. Anna was a motherly old soul who looked like a superior charwoman, and I have little doubt that in the past she had acted as one. Her looks belied her; and, respectable old body as she appeared, she was deep in the network and had one most useful contact in the country. She was the cut-out between the network and a corrupt official in the Swiss Passport Office in Basle.