Simmons Agent Cicero

Hitler's Most Successful Spy
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5729-8
Verlag: The History Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

ELYESA BAZNA WAS THE HIGHEST-PAID SPY IN HISTORY. Working for the British ambassador in Ankara in 1943, Bazna photographed top-secret documents and sold them to the Nazis. So started his career as a 'walk-in', a freelance spy whose loyalties lay with the highest bidder. His codename was Cicero. But a beautiful woman was to end it all. Cicero was compromised by an American-controlled agent working at the German Embassy, who obtained his codename and discovered that he was working at the British Embassy. He fled and narrowly avoided being captured by the tipped-off British. Finally free, he realised his money was worthless - most of it was counterfeit, produced by the Nazi scheme Operation Bernhard. In Agent Cicero: Hitler's Most Successful Spy, Mark Simmons weaves together personal accounts by the leading characters and information from top-secret files from MI5, MI6 and the CIA to tell this astonishing story.

MARK SIMMONS was born into a family with a long tradition of service in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. In the 1970s he served in the Royal Marines with 40 Commando RM, 3 Commando Brigade, and with the Commando Logistics Regiment. He has written over 130 articles, primarily on military and travel subjects. His other books include The Battle of Matapan and The Rebecca Code.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Simmons, Mark

Leseproben

1

FIRST CONTACT, OCTOBER 1943

The insistent ringing of the telephone brought Ludwig Moyzisch quickly back from the sleep he needed so badly. It was 26 October and he had gone to bed just after ten, reading for a while before switching off the light.

Moyzisch was of slim build, with dark hair; he was a quiet and conscientious man. He was not overly annoyed because the telephone, his line to the outside world, had not been working for days. This happened often in Turkey, and was a point he had discussed with his wife before going to bed.1

He was still half asleep when he answered the call: it was Inge Jenke, the wife of Albert Jenke, who was first secretary at the German Embassy.

‘Would you please come round to our flat at once? My husband wants to see you.’ There was tension in her voice.

Moyzisch asked what the problem was.

‘It’s urgent. Please come immediately.’2

Moyzisch got up and dressed. The call had woken his wife as well, and both felt that, whatever it was, it could probably have waited until morning. However, Inge Jenke was the sister of Joachim Von Ribbentrop, the Reich’s Foreign Minister, and she is described as a ‘nervous, ambitious woman in her middle forties’. It was therefore wise to humour her.3

It was a short drive from where Moyzisch lived to the German Embassy compound in Ankara, known by the Turks as the Alman Koy, the German village. The Turkish caretaker opened the gate to allow him in, before Frau Jenke opened the front door of their apartment. She was sorry for having to call him from his bed, and told him that her husband had now retired for the night, but would see him in the morning.

‘There’s a strange sort of character in there,’ she said pointing at the drawing room door. ‘He has something he wants to sell us. You’re to talk to him and find out what it’s all about. And when you go, do please remember to shut the front door after you. I’ve sent the servants to bed.’4

It is odd that, in Moyzisch’s account at that time, Inge Jenke did not reveal she knew the character behind the door prior to the visit that night, and that he had worked for the Jenkes, although this fact was revealed to him by the Jenkes the next day.5 Maybe they did not wish to unduly influence Moyzisch in any way on that first meeting.

Franz Von Papen, the German ambassador, commented:

The whole business began in a rather puzzling way. Herr Jenke, one of my two ministers, came to me one day to say that a man-servant whom he had employed at one time had rung him on the telephone with an offer to provide us with important information.

At first Von Papen turned down this offer, feeling any spy worth his while would not approach potential employers on the telephone. However, the man first known as Diello by Von Papen ‘… became insistent, so I gave instructions for Moyzisch to look into the matter’.6

Moyzisch entered the room; the curtains were drawn and two table lamps provided light. In an armchair next to one of the lamps sat a man. He got up and spoke in French, asking who Moyzisch was and whether he had been told of his proposition.7 Moyzisch shook his head and did not reveal his name. The man before him appeared about 50, with thick black hair swept back from a high forehead, already showing signs of balding. His eyes were dark and ‘nervous’, darting around at every sound in the sleeping house, and below the eyes was a bulbous nose above a firm chin.8 While the half shadows of the room gave his face a darker complexion, Bazna says he was 38 in April 1943, although Moyzisch never seems to have revised his estimate.9

Moyzisch sat down, inviting the man to do the same. Instead, rather theatrically, he went to the door and put his ear to it for a moment, before jerking it open. The hall was empty. He shut the door and returned to his seat. Then, before outlining his proposal, he first insisted Moyzisch should give his word that, whatever the result of their meeting might be, what was said would go no further than his chief. Moyzisch agreed, but, becoming irritated, he made a show of consulting his wristwatch, doubting the man before him had much to offer.

The man took in the gesture and asserted that, once he knew why he was there, he would have plenty of time for him:

I can give you extremely secret papers, the most secret that exist. They come straight from the British Embassy. That would interest you, wouldn’t it?

In spying terms, the man was a ‘walk-in’ – an informant or agent who, without prompting, contacts an intelligence organisation with the offer of information. Moyzisch remained non-committal, still feeling he was dealing with a petty crook.

The man carried on that he would want a lot of money for the documents; after all, he pointed out, the work was extremely ‘dangerous’. He wanted ‘twenty thousand pounds. English pounds Sterling’. Moyzisch responded that it was ‘quite out of the question’. The embassy did not hold such sums of sterling, and the documents would have to be exceptional to command such a price. He would have to see the documents first. Did he have them with him?

‘I’m not a fool,’ said the man, a superior smile spreading across his face; Moyzisch was annoyed, but remained silent. The man continued by saying that he had spent years preparing for this. They would meet his terms or, he pointed toward the window, he would take the documents to the Soviet Embassy.

‘You see I hate the British,’ he said.10

He then continued to outline his proposal, but still not did not reveal his name. He would give them time to consider his offer, since Moyzisch would need to consult his superiors. He would phone him at 3 p.m. on 30 October in his office and would call himself ‘Pierre’: if they turned him down, there would be no further contact; if they agreed, he would come and see him at 10 p.m. that same day, at an arranged meeting place, where he would supply two rolls of film of photographed ‘Top Secret’ British documents, for which they would pay him £20,000. Should they be pleased with what he supplied, they could have more, with each additional film costing them £15,000.

The ball was now in Moyzisch’s court, and he was ‘inclined’ to think the ‘offer might be genuine’. They seemed to have little to lose, although it might be a British trick. Moreover, he had doubts his superiors would pay the high price demanded and felt ‘the offer would be turned down’. He agreed to what the visitor had outlined and, should the offer be approved, they would meet that night near the gardener’s tool shed in the embassy garden, where it was dark and secluded.

At the visitor’s request, Moyzisch switched out the lights as he saw the stranger out. As he passed by him, the unknown man gripped his arm and whispered close to his face: ‘You’d like to know who I am. I’m the British ambassador’s valet.’ Thus ended the first meeting.11

After leaving the Jenkes’ flat, Moyzisch left his car in the embassy compound and walked home. It was a pleasant, cool autumn night, and no doubt he wanted the time to think over what had happened.

The month before he had been in Berlin and had found the capital a grim place. So far it had not suffered greatly in air raids, but the mood was tense and people were apprehensive. The war was going badly: Sicily had fallen, the Allies were now on the Italian mainland, and the situation was critical on the Eastern Front. It would seem that Moyzisch was there for some sort of dressing down. The meeting included those working in foreign embassies for the RSHA, headed by SS Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner, under Himmler, and operating under the control of Amt VI. Their job was to gather foreign intelligence. Moyzisch’s immediate superior was Walter Schellenberg of the Sicherheitsdienst (security service), the SD.12 It was pointed out they had failed to identify the Allied landings in North Africa or the Italian collapse, and their role in the embassies was a waste of time. They had to start supplying good information – ‘hot stuff’ – and not merely living the good life in foreign cities, or they would be sent to a fighting front.

Just before he left, Moyzisch was given a ‘pep talk on all the secret weapons that were being built’, and that these would soon restore the fortunes of the Reich. However, he felt such talk would not impress the Turks, and he returned to Ankara full of foreboding for the fate of his homeland.13

The Ankara that Moyzisch walked home through on that starlit night had only been capital of Turkey for some twenty years. German and Austrian architects had designed the great boulevards and squares of the city in a Fascist style, while it was the energy of Kemal Ataturk, father of the nation, that had ensured its development.

In the First World War, Ankara had not existed; at that time it was still known by its Byzantine name of Angora, from the Slav word ‘gora’. It was a hill town of a few thousand inhabitants: a poor watering hole on the main road east across Anatolia into Asia; an oasis town on a bone-dry empty plateau, very different from the old capital of Istanbul, influenced so much by the western Greeks. A ruined Byzantine fortress overlooked the town from its hilltop perch. Its only claim to fame had been the famous breed of cat named after it.14

It had...