On October 9 I was sitting in a cafe drinking my morning cup of coffee when I saw in the first edition of the Tribune de Geneve a small announcement that a secret short-wave transmitter had been discovered in Geneva and its operators arrested. This item was removed from all subsequent editions of the paper and it was mere chance that it caught my eye. That night I heard the Centre vainly calling the Hamel transmitter, and feared the worst. The next morning my telephone rang and I heard Rado's voice at the other end. "You will be sorry to hear that Edward is much worse and the doctor has been called in. He decided after consultation that the only thing to do was to take him to hospital." I made suitable sympathetic noises to keep up the pretence, but my mind was working furiously. This meant that the only firm link with the Centre was my transmitter, with the possible doubtful use to which we might put Bolli's (here I was overoptimistic). Rado's agitation, though suitable to the tenor of the conversation, was also perfectly genuine. With the "doctor" looking after Hamel, Rado felt the "hospital" looming unpleasantly near for him also.
A day or so later he telephoned me again and said that he was coming over to see me in my flat under cover of darkness, a thing he had never done before and an action symptomatic of his agitation. He arrived and told me that not only had the Hamels been arrested but the police had also simultaneously raided Margarete Bolli's flat and arrested her as well. Hamel had been caught flagrante delicto, sitting working the transmitter; Margarete had been caught equally in the act but in rather a different sense as she had been found in bed with Peters, the Abwehr agent, who had succeeded only too admirably in his task of getting into the girl's confidence. A complication, slightly embarrassing to the Abwehr, was that Peters had been arrested also as an accomplice!
We never understood why the Swiss, having held their hands so long, acted in the end with such precipitancy.
They had not kept the buildings under observation; but if they had they could have scooped the whole gang, including Rado. As it was, Rado had a narrow escape as he went round to see Hamel a few hours after his arrest and while the police were still searching the flat. Luckily he happened to glance at a clock which Hamel kept in his shopwindow and the hands showed danger. It had been agreed that the hands of the clock should show midday when all was clear. During transmission times or if danger threatened the hands were changed to some other time. As Hamel was transmitting at the time of his arrest the signal showed danger, and Rado was warned before he knocked and fell into the hands of the police.
All this was reported to the Centre over my set- which was now the only link the network had with Moscow. The director expressed concern, but stated that Lucy's information was so important that we must continue working despite the arrests, and he ordered Rado and me to make every effort, with the aid of the local Party, to recruit new operators and construct new sets.
Rado was frantic with worry and anxiety- worry over the breakdown of the organisation and anxiety concerning his personal safety. He had cause for anxiety, for he had broken practically every security precaution in the espionage code. Fearing that he was being tailed, he had, some time previously, deposited all his records with Hamel, who had a secure hiding place built into his flat. These records contained not only all the financial details of the network but also copies of telegrams which had been sent, often with the encoded version attachéd to them. As if this were not sufficient, he had also been idiotic enough to leave a copy of his code book there, and this, too, fell into the hands of the police. He feared, not without reason, that his code was compromised and that, with the material captured, the Swiss would be able to read all the back traffic that he had sent, which they had picked up through their monitoring of the sets. This meant that not only was I the only physical link with the Centre but also that my code was the only one which could be used.
The police haul had been even better than this. Among the messages that they discovered was one giving the details of a new Swiss Oerlikon cannon which was still on the secret list, and from the messages the Swiss were able after some study to discover that the source of much of the military information was none other than their trusted military evaluator, Lucy himself. Thus not only was Rado guilty of espionage against Swiss interests, which would make the Bupo doubly anxious to get to the bottom of the affair, but his ill-considered actions had imperilled our most valuable source as well. I also shrewdly suspected that, among the other miscellaneous financial papers, the police would find clear pointers towards me and the rest of the network. My fears were not ungrounded as subsequent events showed.
A few days later Rado reported that the Geneva Communist Party had been able to make contact with the Hamels and Bolli through the agency of a prison warder who was a secret member of the Party. Hamel told us that he had been shown a photograph of me and told that the original was the head of the entire network. They did not know then of the existence of Rado - or so it appeared. (The photograph of course was the one supplied by Lorenz.)
Rado had gone to ground in Berne, but soon after he plucked up courage and went back and lived openly at his flat. He noticed, however, that it was under observation, or he thought it was, and went to ground again in the flat of a couple of Party sympathisers in Geneva.
All this was reported back to the Centre, who ordered me to take control of the entire group, and the director stated that he had given orders to Rado to put me in touch with his two main cut-outs, Pakbo and Cissie. Although Rado had now ceased to use his cipher, the Centre still sent occasional messages in it for him. They regarded their codes as unbreakable unless the key fell into the wrong hands and could not believe that an old hand like Rado had been so foolish as to hand the whole thing to the Swiss on a plate- as he had done.
Rado agreed to put me in touch with Pakbo, but said that Cissie declined to have any contact with me. He said that owing to the visit of the two presumed German agents to her flat a month or two back she feared that she would be compromised if she was in direct touch with me. That was Rado's story; but I learnt after my release that it bore little relation to die truth. In fact, Cissie had asked to be put in touch with me but this Rado had refused to do. The reasons were not difficult to understand. Rado wished at all costs to keep control of the organisation and in order so to do was prepared to disobey the director's orders. He also knew that it would be extremely embarrassing to him were I to meet Cissie and compare notes- especially on finance. Rado had been indenting on me for large sums of money to pay Cissie and her agents but had been keeping a large proportion of this money for himself. This discrepancy would immediately come out when we met- as it did a year later.
As a result Rado stated that he would continue to receive the Lucy information through Cissie and pass it on to me through a cut-out. He also said that he would act as cut-out between Jean Beauchamp and me. Jean was the son of a Communist leader and was busy recruiting wireless operators for the time when we could once again start up new sets. We also arranged for a place of conspiracy for Jean and me in case of emergency.