It was a perfectly ordinary front door. Its shining brass knocker, its neat but slightly faded green
paint did not distinguish it from thousands of others of its kind. But that door was my entrance to
espionage. Beyond that door lay the dim passageway leading through a twilight labyrinth of
international intrigue. Once past that door, my feet were set on the road which led me to
Germany, to Switzerland and a Swiss jail, beyond the Iron Curtain to Moscow, and back again to
Berlin and
freedom. When the door closed behind me there began a ten-year episode which was
to end with my being condemned as a spy by the courts of one country and sentenced to death by
the decrees of another.
It was an autumn day in October 1938. The leaves were still on the trees lining that pleasant road
in St. John’s Wood, and there was still something of summer in the air as I walked toward the
house with the green door—the door of the flat where I was to be recruited into the Russian
Secret Service.
As a result of my call I was for three vital years of the war a member and, to a large extent,
controller of the Russian spy net in Switzerland which was working against Germany. The
information passed to Moscow over my secret transmitter affected the course of the
war at one of
its crucial stages. I was a key link in a network whose lines stretched into the heart of the
German high command itself; and it was I who sent back much of the information which enabled
the Russians to make their successful stand before Moscow.
This story is entirely factual; every incident and every character is true and genuine. The result
may prove disillusioning to those who believe that every brunette is a spy and every blonde a
virtuous woman in distress. Actually, of course, the life of a spy is often extremely dull and
prosaic. It is the ambition of the good spy to be as inconspicuous and ordinary as possible.
Anything out of the ordinary is liable to attract attention or, worse still, arouse suspicion. A
suspected spy is well on the way to being an arrested spy, so it can be understood why a spy has
a liking for the cloak of mediocrity.
No one trained solely on spy fiction would recognise a spy. It would be possible to parade the
whole of the Swiss network before such a man and he would not give them a second glance.
What was unusual in wartime Switzerland about a respectable publisher, a well-known military
commentator, and an
embusqué
Englishman? Yet these three were the essential core of the
Russian spy net against Germany. Nowadays,
in peacetime England, the businessman from
Canada, the little tobacconist round the corner, or the hearty commercial traveller on the eight-fifteen are far more likely to be Russian spies than any dumb blonde or sinister baron met in
Grand Hotel.
It would
be equally wrong to regard every Communist as a paid and trained member of the
Russian Secret Service. Yet it would be highly injudicious to whisper the secrets of the atom
bomb into the ear of a pretty Party member at a cocktail party. She would probably
pass the
information on as a matter of Party discipline, but she would not be a Russian spy. Spies will
have no obvious links with the Communist Party. If they ever were Communists, you will find
that they dropped out some time ago—at the time of their recruitment. If this seems
unbelievable, it is only necessary to look at the various Soviet agents mentioned in this book or
in the report of the Canadian spy case. On the face of it they are, or were, nearly all highly
respectable members of society with at
most only vague leftish leanings. The danger of the
avowed Communist lies not in his espionage activities but in his divided loyalty. He is perfectly prepared to be recruited as an agent or to pass on any information which he thinks the Party
should know.
