The remark was not unusual these days. Since the arrest of several members of the Abwehr's executive staff on charges of treason, morale at Tirpitz Ufer had sunk to a new low. Vogel sensed that Germany's military intelligence agency was dangerously adrift. He had heard rumors that Canaris had fallen out of favor with Hitler. There were even rumors among the staff that Himmler was plotting to bring down Canaris and place the Abwehr under the control of the SS.
"Tell me about Scorpio," Vogel repeated.
"I had dinner with him at the home of an American diplomat." Muller threw back his round head and stared at the ceiling. "Before the war, 1937 I believe it was. I'll check his file to make certain. The fellow's German was better than mine. Thought the Nazis were a wonderful bunch of fellows doing great things for Germany. Only thing he hated worse than the Jews was the Bolsheviks. It was like an audition. I recruited him myself the next day. Easiest snare of my career."
"What's his background?"
Muller smiled. "Investment banking. Ivy League, good contacts in industry, friends with half of Washington. His information on war production has been excellent."
Vogel was folding the memo and putting it back in his pocket. "His name?"
"Come on, Kurt. He's one of my best agents."
"I want his name."
"This place is like a sieve, you know that. I tell you, everybody knows."
"I want a copy of his file on my desk in an hour," Vogel said, his underpowered voice barely a whisper. "And I want everything you have on the engineer."
"You can have the information on Jordan."
"I want it all, and if I have to go to Canaris I'll do it."
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Kurt. You're not going to go running to Uncle Willy, are you?"
Vogel stood and buttoned his jacket. "I want his name and I want his file." He turned and walked out of the office.
"Kurt, come back here," Muller called out. "Let's work this out. Jesus Christ."
"If you want to talk, I'll be in the Old Man's office," Vogel said as he walked down the narrow hallway.
"All right, you win." Muller's doughy hands were digging in a cabinet. "Here's the fucking file. You don't have to run to Uncle Willy again. Jesus Christ, you're worse than the fucking Nazis sometimes."
Vogel spent the rest of the morning reading about Peter Jordan. When he finished he removed a pair of files from one of his cabinets, returned to his desk, and read them carefully.
The first file contained information on an Irishman who had worked as a spy for a short time but was cut loose because his information was poor. Vogel had taken possession of his dossier and placed him on the V-Chain payroll. Vogel was not concerned with the bad reviews the spy had received in the past-he was not looking for a spy. There were other qualities about the agent Vogel found attractive. He worked a small farm on an isolated stretch of Britain's Norfolk coast. It was a perfect safe house-close enough to London to make the journey by train in three hours, far enough away so the place wasn't crawling with MI5 officers.
The second file contained the dossier of a former Wehrmacht paratrooper who had been barred from jumping because of a head wound. The man had all the qualities Vogel liked: perfect English, an eye for detail, a cool intelligence. Ulbricht had found him at an Abwehr wireless listening post in northern France. Vogel placed him on the V-Chain payroll and tucked him away for the right assignment.
Vogel pushed the files aside and drafted two messages. He added the ciphers to be used, the frequencies at which the messages were to be sent, and the transmission schedule. Then he looked up and called for Ulbricht.
"Yes, Herr Captain," Ulbricht said. He entered the office, limping heavily on his wooden leg. Vogel looked at Ulbricht an instant before speaking, wondering if the man was up to the demands of an operation like the one he was about to launch. Ulbricht was twenty-seven years old but looked at least forty. His close-cropped black hair was flecked with gray. Pain lines ran like tributaries from the edge of his one good eye. The second eye had been lost in the explosion; the empty socket was hidden behind a neat black patch. A Knight's Cross dangled at his throat. The top button of Ulbricht's tunic was undone because the exertion of the most simple movements caused him to become overheated and perspire. In all the time they had worked together, Vogel had never once heard Ulbricht complain.
"I want you to go to Hamburg tomorrow night." He handed Ulbricht the transcripts of the messages. "Stand over the radio operator while he sends these. Make certain there are no mistakes. See that the acknowledgments from the agents are in order. If there is anything out of the ordinary I want to know about it. Understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"Before you go, I want you to track down Horst Neumann."
"He's in Berlin, I believe."
"Where is he staying?"
"I'm not certain," Ulbricht said, "but I believe there is a woman involved."
"There usually is." Vogel walked to the window and looked out. "Contact the staff at the Dahlem farm. Tell them to expect us tonight. I want you to join us there when you return from Hamburg tomorrow. Tell them we'll be there for a week. We have a lot to go over. And tell them to rig the jump platform in the barn. It's been a long time since Neumann jumped from an airplane. He'll need practice."
"Yes, sir."
Ulbricht went out, leaving Vogel alone in the office. He stood at the window for a long time, thinking it through once more. The most closely guarded secret of the war and he planned to steal it with a woman, a cripple, a grounded paratrooper, and a British traitor. Quite a team you've assembled, Kurt, old man. If his own ass wasn't on the line he might have found the whole thing funny. Instead, he just stood there like a statue, watching snow drifting silently over Berlin, worrying himself to death.
6
The Imperial Security Intelligence Service-better known by its military intelligence designation, MI5-was head-quartered in a small cramped office building at 58 St. James's Street. MI5's task was counterintelligence. In the lexicon of espionage, counterintelligence means protecting one's secrets-and, when necessary, catching spies. For much of its forty-year existence, the Security Service toiled in the shadow of its more glamorous cousin, the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6. Such internecine rivalries did not matter much to Professor Alfred Vicary. It was MI5 that Vicary joined in May 1940 and where, on a dismal rainy evening five days after Hitler's secret conference at Rastenburg, he could still be found.
The top floor was the preserve of the senior staff: the director-general's office, his secretariat, the assistant directors and division heads. Brigadier Sir Basil Boothby's office was there, hidden behind a pair of intimidating oaken doors. A pair of lights glared down from over the doors, a red one signifying the room was too insecure to permit access, a green one meaning enter at your own risk. Vicary, as always, hesitated before pressing the buzzer.
Vicary had received his summons at nine o'clock, while he was locking away his things in his gunmetal gray cabinet and tidying up his hutch, as he referred to his small office. When MI5 exploded in size at the beginning of the war, space became a precious commodity. Vicary was relegated to a windowless cell the size of a broom closet, with worn bureaucratic green carpet and a sturdy little headmasterly desk. Vicary's partner, a former Metropolitan Police officer named Harry Dalton, sat with the other junior men in a common area at the center of the floor. The place had a newsroom rowdiness about it, and Vicary ventured there only when absolutely necessary.