I communicated my suspicions, as best I could, to the director and requested that, owing to my feelings of disquiet, I should be allowed to maintain contact with the couple through a cut-out- thus obviating any possibility that they might discover the real identity of their contact, which they had been trying to do so assiduously for the past months. In reply I received what can only be described as a "rocket" from Moscow. I remember the message well, because it came over to me in the spring of 1943 when my fears about Lorenz were at their height. As soon as I started decoding I realised from the reference number that the Centre was referring to my signal full of doubts and fears- and full of doubts and fears I decoded the answer, which did little to increase my peace of mind.
The director informed me that I was entirely mistaken and hinted strongly that I was suffering from "outstation suspicions" (a convenient phrase to cover any deficiency by the Moscow section concerned). He added that both
Lorenz and Laura had worked faithfully over a long period of years and that their information was regarded as vital. I was told that it was essential that I maintain personal contact with them as only in that way could it be ensured that their information reached Moscow early. I was not impressed by this. By no stretch of imagination could their information even begin to compare with that produced by Lucy, and anyway most of it struck me as turgid, verbose, and unimportant in the extreme. However, the orders of the Centre were the orders of the Centre and as a result I continued to have contact with them until one particularly blatant incident which caused me to sever contact with this couple once and forever.
It was in the early summer of 1943 that Lorenz and Laura made their last attempt to discover my identity. Normally I visited their villa in the late evening (as I have stated, they refused to rendezvous elsewhere) because I hoped that in the dusk my visits were less likely to be observed. On this occasion, however, I received a message that Lorenz wished to see me urgently; that the evening would not do and I must come up to his villa at lunch time. It was a broiling day, one of those days when one wishes passionately to be out of all this intrigue, to go and walk in the cool hills. I toiled laboriously up to the villa, cursing the day I was born and the fact that I had ever succumbed to the bait hung out to me in London. Espionage is not good for one's condition; in fact it might be called sweated labour if long hours in an enclosed atmosphere are criteria.
Lorenz greeted me warmly on my arrival and took me into the lounge, which was curtained and shuttered and as a result stiflingly hot. This Lorenz airily explained away as a precaution against eavesdropping. He handed me a long message which he stated was the most important information Lambert and Barras had produced to date. It dealt with troop movements and contained a certain amount of military information which, if true, would have been of some importance. It was, however, of immense length and extremely verbosely written. In the course of a long interview I went over it with Lorenz and attempted to cut it down into manageable length. After a few minutes of this, in the Turkish-bath like atmosphere of the lounge, I was dripping with sweat and on Lorenz's urging I removed my coat.
After we had dealt with the message as best we could Lorenz suggested a turn in the garden and we went out through the long french windows onto the lawn. As we stepped out Lorenz "absent-mindedly" closed the window, which was fitted with a self-locking Yale lock, with the result that we were locked out and had, after our stroll, to go round to the front of the house and ring the front doorbell - which was opened by Laura after a long delay. I was quite certain that this was yet another attempt to discover my identity by going through my coat pockets, which they thought might yield more profitable dividends than my overcoat. Of course these efforts were abortive as everything was still in the "pouch" pockets in the front of my trousers. I was busy congratulating myself on having avoided the trap, but was that moment stepping into yet another neatly contrived one. The front door was set at an angle to the front of the building and as I stood outside the door with Lorenz waiting for Laura to open the door she was busy photographing me through a hole in the shutter. This of course I did not know at the time and only learnt it when I was in Moscow. The Russians had discovered the whole story from captured German documents.
What in fact had happened was that Lorenz and Laura had gone over to the Germans some time before, probably before the war. Their handsome villa and expensive mode of life was made possible by Abwehr finance. The information that they had been supplying had been in its turn supplied by the O.K.W. and was a clever mixture of truth and fiction. Most of the truth consisted of unimportant facts which there could be no harm in the Russians knowing, or facts concerning troop movements, etc.. which could be of no use to the Russians as they would not affect the eastern front. The information they had given me that evening was false and was designed to affect the course of a battle being fought at that time.
On looking back at it all afterwards I realised that it had once been suggested, indirectly, that I also should work for the Germans. It was at a dinner party at the villa. The service, food, and silver were well up to the standard of luxury of the rest of the place. I congratulated Lorenz on having such pleasant things and he told me that if I liked I, too, could be in a similar position. He had been at Leningrad University with the head of the Russian Counterespionage Department and naturally as a result he had the complete confidence of Moscow. He suggested that I should suggest to Moscow that I work under him and hand over the communications network to him. In return he, Lorenz, would guarantee me five hundred dollars a month and five hundred dollars' expenses over and above what I was getting at that time and in addition would have no work to do as Lorenz would do it all for me and I could lead a life of leisure allegedly "talent-spotting" for the network. I passed Lorenz's statements on verbatim to Moscow and added that I did not like the idea at all. The Centre told me to tell Lorenz that they would have nothing to do with it and added that it would be useless anyway as I knew the code and would still be able to check up on Lorenz's material and that they had no intention of sending out another code to the Swiss network.
It is obvious what Lorenz, or rather his German masters, wanted. With me out of the way and the code in their hands they could not only pick up the remainder of the network at their leisure but also use the channel for deception purposes if they wished. The Centre had prevented that plan from working, and so the Germans had to fall back on identifying me and then abducting me so that they could extract the necessary information from me by torture.
The Abwehr are nothing if not efficient and they put two operations in hand- both of which were successful. One was probably planned in Paris and the other in Switzerland and it was thanks to this separate planning that, though successful in their primary aim, that of identifying me, they were not successful in their ultimate aim, that of getting me into their power.
Early in June I received instructions from the Centre to meet a courier from France and hand over some money to him for the French network. I was given four different days as rendezvous. The first two inside the entrance of the funicular station at Ouchy, and the last two inside the main entrance of the Botanical Gardens at Geneva. All meetings were to be at midday and I was given the necessary passwords and control questions and also descriptions as to how both the courier and I were to be dressed. No one contacted me on the first three days and it was only at the last rendezvous, the second time I was at the Botanical Gardens, that an individual came up to me and we exchanged the correct passwords and I handed over the money.