The story Continues
Chapter 19
I was the only woman in the dining room, apart from those working as kitchen staff. The eyes of the sky blue airmen sat at tables looking in my direction from time to time. I tried to ignore them. It wasn’t easy. Perhaps I reminded them of their mothers? I looked at some of them and thought they were probably contemporary combatants like Otto.
I had had a restless night. A night in which I held back sleep as I tried to place in order what I had observed in Germany and Portugal. I’d be sure to be asked about all I could remember. I knew I was not at my best when I sat with cupped hands over a cup of tea. Nor was I refreshed. I had not discovered a wash room other than the one used by shaving airmen. How long might I be here? What would happen next? Surely they would not send me back to Germany now, even if I longed to see Otto again?
I made myself ready for my interrogation. I kept an eye out of the window to the forecourt where cars would arrive. It was some twenty minutes after nine that they appeared. We greeted each other and asked the usual pleasantries. We then walked over to a hut in the grounds.
It was a carpeted hut. When I entered I saw the toilet facilities on the right and through a door I saw the room where I would share my knowledge. A table stood in the centre of the room and a coal fire had been lit an hour or so ago. A full coal bucket lay beside the fireguard.
We sat down at the table. It was rectangular. I sat on one side and Dynes and Thornton sat at the other. The ends were left clear.
‘I must say finding you in Portugal was a surprise. I look forward to you telling us about that. But first, when you left to return to Germany, that should be a good start,’ said Dynes.
Recalling the early days was a little unclear. It was the atmosphere I recalled. It gave them an indication how National Socialism had grabbed the nation’s attention and Hitler seemed to have the answers. His annexation of the Sudetenland was popular and the invasion of Poland too. Many Germanic peoples were in both countries and it was their excuse to invade. But at that time they felt Britain was all bluff, more interested in protecting its own commonwealth countries. I opened my handbag.
I showed them my Iron Cross, second class. I saw the expression of utter astonishment in their faces. They bent forward and held it. ‘Presented by Reinhardt Heydrich himself, I might add.’
‘By God, Heydrich. .....Do you know about Operation Anthropoid?’
‘Anthropoid? No can’t say I’ve heard of it.’
‘Last month, Heydrich was assassinated on the instruction of the exiled Czech government,’ Thornton advised me.
‘Marvellous, I detested that man.’
‘It was not a wholehearted success. The reprisals have been brutal. Anyway, tell me. You seem to have been appreciated by the Reich. How the hell did that come about?’ asked Dynes.
Of course I told how my late husband had served the Heydrich family well. ‘He also wished to honour me to ensure I stayed loyal to them.’
‘Think twice about who you show this to, won’t you?’ requested Dynes.
I nodded. ‘Only for your eyes. Just imagine I had not shown it to you and it fell out of my bag. Or was discovered? I suggested.
‘As ever, you are covering your tracks well,’ smiled Thornton.
I told them about the training camp where I had met Nancy Krause, the New York airline office official, Carl Jaeger the Baltimore taxi driver and Max Becker, the Bronx cafe owner.
‘It was from them I was receiving signals to relay to Berlin,’ I said my voice cracking towards the end of the sentence.
I could fight it off no longer. My shoulders began to quake and soon the tears filled my eyes and sobs were heard. For the first time in a stressful year I had no energy left to fight the truth it seemed.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Thornton while Dynes offered his white pressed handkerchief.
‘I’m a murderer,’ I sobbed shaking my head. I had embarrassed my interrogators. They were unsure how to react. I could not stop the flow of tears. ‘A murderer. I murdered so many people. I sank the S S Athenia...the Athenia..... I murdered the crew.’
My eyes were red. All the pent up anxiety of keeping my identity secure had come undone. Yet this was the right place for it to off load. They should see the strains I had been under playing for each side. I hoped their interpretation would be favourable.
‘I think we should have a break,’ said Dynes. I thanked him as I wiped tears from my face.
Half an hour later, Dynes brought a tray bearing three cups of coffee. I had composed myself and welcomed the beverage. It felt good to hold a warm cup in my hands again and sniff the aroma.
‘The sinking of SS Athenia was not your fault, Hilda.’
‘But I was not diligent. I did not interpret the numbers in time,’ I said still showing the guilt in my forehead’s creased rows.
‘Yes, but when you did discover what they meant, you said you gave a false reading to save others. Think of those you saved.’
‘I had to cut short my time or I’d be sending many more ships to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean.’
‘You left at the right time,’ said Dynes.
‘It was a good ruse to leave suspicion that you drowned. That was quick thinking,’ said Thornton.
I was glad to be appreciated as I had accomplished my disappearance without a trace. I informed them about the information I had right up to the time I left the airport in Lisbon.
‘I have left behind a confused cat, a bicycle and a radio, all of which I had become very fond,’ I said.
‘Tell me about Eicke again,’ asked Thornton making me concentrate my thoughts once again.
‘Eicke won’t leave Hamburg. He’s now in charge of cleaning the city. I suspect you know what that means?’
‘Deporting Jews?’ clarified Dynes.
‘Exactly. That must have been the subject of his meeting with Heydrich. He was the director of cleansing Germany of Jews. That means also, he has less control over where Otto might be.’
‘No bad thing perhaps,’ said Dynes.
‘By now Eicke may have been told I drowned in the Atlantic waves. That would suit me fine.’
‘It suits us even better,’ said Dynes.
I was not following what he meant. I asked for clarification.
‘We have no intention of sending you back to Germany,’ said Thornton.
I gave a sigh of relief. ‘Then it seems my work with you is over?’
‘Almost, I’d say. Hilda, ......I have .....some bad news for you.’
I could not think what the source of this could be.
‘I feel now is the right time to inform you. Your mother.....died six weeks ago.’
The news had a strange effect on me. Thoughts spun round in my head. In a way it meant she would not have the anxiety of the war anymore. Her fears for me and her grandson were no longer playing on her mind. That was a small compensation. Her death however might make me the resident hotel owner. Then the reality hit me.
‘Oh dear, you said six weeks ago? She will have been buried by now.’
‘Yes, she was buried next to your father in the Elgin graveyard. Hilda, go up there. Sort things out. I suppose you can either sell the hotel, or let someone else take it over.’
‘I’m not really an hotelier. Perhaps when the war is over, I may return to Germany to live. First, I suppose I’ll have to sort this out with the family lawyer.’
‘When you have decided Hilda, please get in touch. I have some work which I think would suit you. You could make a substantial impact,’ said Thornton.
‘And what would that be?’ I asked in anticipation.
‘Not today. That’s for later. Highly secret work is all I can say.’
The following day, with back pay in my handbag, I took the overnight train to Inverness. In the morning I went to the Nethybrig hotel. It had not changed and its vestibule seemed to welcome me home as ever. Fergus was not around. A hotel cleaner informed me that he had joined the Highland Light Infantry and left more than four months ago.
I called a meeting of the hotel staff. I told them I had decided to put the hotel up for sale with a provision that the present staff remain in post. I gave long standing Mrs Creanor the responsibility to keep the hotel running meantime. She received the news in a fluster. I reassured her that she had costing abilities and a most pleasant nature. She was well suited to follow Mum’s role.
The following day, I made an appointment with Mr Adam Gates, mother’s solicitor. His oak panelled office had stained tobacco walls with his family of lawyers long since gone kept in perpetuity, overlooking the present generation’s professional affairs, strung up on picture rails. It wasn’t the friendliest of greetings he offered.
‘It was disappointing that you could not attend your mother’s funeral.’
‘I was out of the country. I did not hear of her death until a couple of days ago, Mr Gates.’
I thought his comment was less than civil, rather harsh.
‘I tried to contact you of course, but out of the country......Germany you mean?’
‘No, not Germany I assure you but my business here today is not about me. I have come to give instruction not seek an enquiry,’ I said with my pulse rate rising. ‘The hotel, it is my wish to sell it as a hotel and retain the current staff. Can that be arranged?’
‘It can be sold of course but the buyer could employ whomsoever he wishes, even knock it down and build for himself.’
‘Even so, my request is for it to be sold as a commercial property and that the same staff remains in post is made in good faith. I trust these employees who have been with us for some years to run this hotel.’
‘Very well Frau Richter, I shall make a note of that.’
‘May I say I call myself Hilda Campbell, my maiden name, for obvious reasons? I urge you to inform your acquaintances, I wish that to be my name.’
‘Very well, as you wish, Mrs Campbell. After the funeral I attended to your late mother’s wishes as follows. Her estate is divided 75% to you and 25% to........Otto Richter. That will have to be held back of course. I can provide you with a cheque for £7,000 pounds sterling. I suggest you bank the cheque as soon as possible so that it earns interest. The sale of the hotel will be notified to you in due course unless you wish to personally conduct the sale.’
’Thank you Mr Gates. I shall leave that in the good hands of your office and be glad to pay the fee due, in the fullness of time.’
The lawyer nodded his approval. Then he stood up to put away a file into a wire tray on a nearby table. I thought it rather rude. Was this a signal that I should leave? I was not ready to do so.
‘Did you attend the funeral?’ I asked to break the growing silence.
‘Did I attend? Who didn’t? The whole town came to pay its respects. The hotel is at the centre of our community, not only was your mother well known she was very well respected.’
‘I am pleased to hear that.’
There was a moment’s silence as we each recalled my mother. I felt he was also using the time to show a more friendly face.
‘Will you be staying long?’
‘No, I will be heading south soon.’
‘And you will give me a forwarding address?’
‘I will, of course.’
That should satisfy him that I intended to remain in the country, I thought.
‘Your mother’s grave. It is beside your late father’s grave.’
‘Thank you that is my next obligation.’
He opened his desk drawer and sat back to let the drawer open.
‘Before you go, this is your inheritance.’
He handed me the cheque which he had prepared in advance. I placed it in my handbag.
‘Thank you. Now I must not interrupt your work. I should take my leave,’ I said rising up from the seat.
‘Will you be...seeing Otto in the near future?’ he asked out of curiosity.
‘That depends doesn’t it Mr Gates, doesn’t it?’
He nodded also wondering how long the war would last.
‘I can assure you I will not be returning to Germany in the near future.’
‘Of course not,’ he replied.
That afternoon I set off to the churchyard. I knew exactly where I would find their graves. Chrysanthemums lay withered by Mother’s grave. I placed them in a nearby bin and returned to stand between the graves. Together again I thought, at rest and oblivious to the unfolding war. This had been their community. It was no longer theirs and certainly no longer mine.
My thoughts recalled my childhood with loving parents and how I asked questions and sought answers of my father’s time in Africa, during the Gold Coast wars at the turn of the century. That inspired my spirit of adventure I suppose. So Germany had chosen me as much as I had chosen it. I loved their language, wholehearted food, song and dance. The dance was now macabre and I no longer wished to be associated with it. Perhaps one day Otto might find a way to reappear but now I had no way of communicating with him. Tears filled my eyes. Tears of sorrow now that I no longer had parents. Tears for the tender moments with mother, which brought security and peace when we talked. Tears wondering if I would ever see Otto, Karl and Renate ever again. I knew my parents were there in their graves physically but their spirit was loose, who knew where? Perhaps it was following me, perhaps guiding me? It was a thought I valued and took from that moment of reflection. As clear as a mountain stream I knew now, that after I had cleared out their possessions, I could no longer live in Elgin.
I lay out mother’s better clothes and the Hotel staff ladies took what they wished. The auctioneer came to take away surplus heavy wooden furniture from my parents’ bedrooms and some small artefacts. My father’s roll top desk was dismantled to be sold and as I helped to do that, I came across a letter. It seemed to have got wedged under the front drawer. I tore part of the envelope as I eased it out. I opened it.
The note, for it was not addressed to anyone, had been written by my father. It was dated 3rd January 1901. The paper was brittle and thin with stained water marks, which I presumed may have been dried tears. I opened the sheet carefully and read.
As I read, a realisation came to the fore. Was this the substance which father had begged forgiveness on his dying bed? I thought it must have been for it spoke of an incident in the Ashanti village of Bekwai, in the Gold Coast. Father had been part in a detachment seeking out Ashanti warriors bent on saving their Golden Stool. They had come to a village and saw guns resting against a mud house. Father gave the command to shoot at the house with the most rifles. No sooner had the shots been fired when a young female child came out of the house screaming. She held her younger sibling brother in her arms. He had been shot, murdered. It was a death which would haunt my father all his life. He had never told me about this sad incident. Yet it seemed clear that this forgiveness he sought stemmed from that moment. My mind was put at rest. His guilt was gone now and I forgave him as one who also had death on my hands. The nature of war was largely responsible for our actions of regret. It was all I could accept while sharing in the grief of those families in the God Coast and in the homes of those lost in the Atlantic, through my intervention.
I would be leaving the town, my people, the hotel and the churchyard soon without looking back. I took with me their memories. I had a future to face, elsewhere.
I had been in Elgin for eleven days. I was anxious to leave. I telephoned London.
‘Hello, Mr Dynes?’
‘Yes Hilda. I hope you are well.’
‘Yes, and you?’
‘Busy, but well. So what news have you?
‘Only that I want to leave Elgin,’
‘Well, we’ve much better news for you. I can’t tell you on the phone. Can you come to London?’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Excellent. Come to our office.’
I took the overnight Inverness – London sleeper train. It was a journey of ten hours, most of which I missed being asleep with the soothing rattle of the rails for most of the way. An early morning cup of tea arrived at 6.30 am.
Chapter 20
I was pleased to be in a city again. Maybe I was more of a city person after all. There was urban activity in which to hide and be absorbed. My rural years were in childhood and adolescence. London to me, even in its darkest hour, was where I felt safe this morning. War however had created a visible intensity in the population. It seemed people walked around half expecting something evil to happen. That it hadn’t, for some time, surprised me even more as I knew how effective and eager the blitzkrieg over Warsaw had been. How soon would London experience this new and terrifying, incisive and destructive German airpower again?
I reached the offices, surrounded by sandbags at its entrance. I was led to a room where I saw Messrs Dynes and Thornton had been joined by a colonel. They smiled and gave me a warm welcome. It seemed that they were genuinely pleased to see me.
The Colonel wearing his Sam Brown belt, moustache and ruddy cheeks was first to step forward.
‘Mrs Campbell, I am Colonel Myers intelligence Corps. I’m very pleased to meet you.’
I smiled as I shook his hand. I was equally pleased that the designation of Mrs Campbell had been revived.
‘Hilda, take a seat,’ Thornton said.
Thornton seemed purpose driven. No handshake, perhaps not warranted as we had seen each other not so long ago. It must have implied to the Colonel that we were a team.
‘Hilda, Colonel Myers will now share some confidential news. News which I feel will please you,’ said Dynes like a proud parent at a school function.
‘Working in the field of counter espionage is fraught with danger, I need not tell you that,... er....Hilda, if you don’t mind me addressing you so.’
I shook my head warming to his developing information.
‘We have been sharing your intelligence with the American security services. They have made several arrests. Nancy Krause, Carl Jaeger, Max Becker, Barbara Hinks and Dave Simmons, they are all in custody,’ said the Colonel.
‘Hinks and Simmons, I’ve never met them,’ I said in surprise.
‘No an octopus has many tentacles,’ said Dynes.
I looked at him and he lowered his head in shame at his intervention, a better analogy could have been easily found.
‘The fact is we’ve broken a ring, the Duquesne Spy Ring. It has led to thirty three arrests in total, I believe. They are all German sympathisers feeding the Reich with information to harm the Allies. They will face the American Judicial process. This work was started by you Hilda. It is a tremendous achievement.’
An achievement? I had hardly done this single handed. The colonel seemed to be gilding the lily. ‘Thank you. I had no idea that it was such a well established large spy ring,’ I said.
The colonel explained that the agents who formed the Duquesne Ring were placed in key jobs in the United States to get information that could be used in the event of war and to carry out acts of sabotage once the war had begun. One opened a restaurant and used his position to get information from his customers; another worked in a travel office so that she could report on Allied ships that were crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Others worked as delivery people so they could deliver secret messages alongside mundane letters and packages through the postal services. America was not at war, he reminded us. There was no need to intercept mail. Yet another spy was a hairdresser prising information out of seated customers. They were all controlled in America by Frederick "Fritz" Joubert Duquesne, an agent of the Reich. The Colonel adjusted his tie and turned towards Thornton who spoke briefly.
‘Now here’s someone in a different role. Someone more like you Hilda.’
‘He’s certainly a more interesting character,’ began the Colonel once more. He spoke of a native of Germany, William Sebold, who served in the German army during World War I. After leaving Germany in 1921, he worked in industrial and aircraft plants throughout the United States and South America. On February 10, 1936, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
‘They all seem to be naturalised Americans. Their accents very much so,’ I said.
‘Indeed they are. Sebold returned to Germany in February 1939 to visit his ailing mother in Mülheim. You see a similarity?’
‘Indeed, back to front but yes, the same maternal pull’.
‘On arrival in Hamburg, he was approached by a member of the Gestapo, Herr Gerhardt Eicke, who said that Sebold would be contacted in the near future. Sebold proceeded to Mülheim where he obtained employment,’ the Colonel informed me.
‘Hamburg; Eicke; contacted in the near future...words lodged in Eicke’s mind so familiar to me.’ I remarked.
‘Indeed.’ William G. Sebold we learned was an interesting and valuable individual. He had been blackmailed into becoming a spy for Germany, became a double agent like myself and helped the FBI gather evidence, but only after they had started to work on the information I had apparently given. When the war started in Europe, the FBI gave Sebold a shortwave radio for his flat in New York. He learned what information Germany was sending its spies in the United States and controlled what he sent to Germany.
I listened with great interest but wondered whether our work overlapped. ‘I thought my position in Portugal was designed to do this. Wasn’t I to get the messages from the States?’
‘This was a different set-up, Hilda. The messages from Germany came from U-boats lurking in the mid Atlantic. You in Portugal received the best intelligence by static radio,’ said the Colonel.
‘Incidentally, Sebold's success as a counterespionage agent was demonstrated by the successful prosecution of several German agents last week,’ said the Colonel.
‘I think this calls for some sort of celebration,’ said Dynes ringing a bell he had lifted from the table.
The door opened and an apron wearing lady came in with a silver tray on which three glasses of sherry were presented.
‘To more success and victory,’ toasted the Colonel.
‘Success and Victory,’ we said in unison.
I tasted the Spanish sherry. It was good but not a Portuguese glass of port. That symbol of success was premature.
Coffee followed and then Colonel Myers left with a further handshake all around.
MI6 was the heart of counter espionage and the surroundings fitted that austere yet functional department. A bookcase surrounded the room I was in. I strained my eyes to read their titles. Dynes caught my browsing attention.
‘By all means, do browse the library. Then when you are ready, you can leave your bag here. We will meet again at 2pm, prompt.’
‘So I have the freedom of London for a couple of hours, to find accommodation?’
‘No, find some lunch and..... here’s a gas mask in its box. I don’t suppose you have one?’
‘Not yet,’ I replied.
‘As for your accommodation, that will depend on our meeting this afternoon.’ Thornton gave one of his penetrating looks which defied any further question. I knew I had to wait till he was ready to share his thoughts. It seemed lunch took precedence at that moment for us both.
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Chapter 20 ended with the anticipation of what Hilda's next assignment might be. It was fascinating to read about Sebold and the breakup of the Duquesne ring prior to war starting in the United States. I hadn't heard of that.
I had to chuckle at a couple of flaws… I don't think you meant the "[God] Coast" and and if the group were served three sherries, one of them had to be a teetotaler or was left out. ;-)
Ron