Читать книгу Secrets of German Espionage - Bernard Newman - Страница 12

The British Secret Service still remembers the exploits of one of these international or traitor spies, whom I will call Schiller. To reveal his real name might, even now, involve numerous people who were among his victims. He was a German, an officer of one of the crack Prussian regiments. He had been a valuable staff officer, but was unable to resist the attractions of the young wife of a high German military authority, and was found out. Cashiered from the army, like so many of his kind, he was forced to live by his wits.

His staff experience, however, still had its value; he found a ready market in other countries for some of his knowledge, and from the outset he sold to the highest bidder. Even when his own information was exhausted he was able to have some access to his country’s military secrets, and he soon became a thorn in Germany’s side. The counter-espionage men were instructed to arrest him, and he was eventually caught by the Gestapo after he had stolen some military papers relating to a small but vital part of the plan, then highly secret, for occupying the Rhineland.

The papers were found on him, but he persuaded his captors that a photostat copy had been made and was even then on its way across the frontier. He frankly blackmailed not only the Gestapo, but even the Wilhelmstrasse itself. If he were given his freedom and a sum of money, the photostat could be recovered! The Gestapo verified his statement; there seemed little doubt that this other copy was on its way to undesirable hands and could be stopped only by the spy himself.

The bargain was made, and Schiller was cunning enough to see that it was properly made, for the documents were not handed over until he was safe on Dutch soil. That was the first, but by no means the last, of such bargains that Schiller made in various parts of Europe.

At last he came to England, under another name and as an apparent sponsor of an Anglo-German friendship association. Here he stole some plans which related to the early experiments with radio-controlled aircraft which eventually produced the Queen Bee aeroplane. The theft, a particularly audacious one, was one ably assisted by the almost incredible carelessness of a group of naval and air force officers. It is amazing, the reader will agree, how many important documents are left in unattended cars!

No attempt was made by the Special Branch to arrest him, and he was allowed to board a boat and leave for Germany. This in itself astonished him, for he had reckoned on being arrested, and then, with the usual photostat deposited in some place known only to him, striking one of his celebrated and profitable bargains. But, of course, the British are proverbially stupid.

This time the laugh was on him. The plans relating to the radio-controlled aircraft were fakes. From the moment that Schiller had begun his journey to England, the British Secret Service and the Special Branch had been warned. He got into the country without difficulty; he was even surreptitiously helped to steal the papers. He returned to Germany only to find that he was offering incorrect information. He was arrested: no one knows, but we can guess his fate. (Incidentally, his folly reveals an essential difference between the expert spy and the agent or adventurer, or even the spy of technical experience who ventures out of his depth. A specialist would never have been taken in by the spurious plans!)

So objectionable do these international parasites make themselves that on more than one occasion a country has warned even one of its rivals about them in the hope of breaking their power.

Although spies of the mercenary type can often command very high prices for real information, there is generally a limit imposed by their own circumstances. Nearly all of them are desperately hard-up. Time is vital, and they cannot afford to hold out for the price they know their information to be worth.

Although they are among the lowest principled types of mankind, they seldom resort to actual crime. On the other hand, it is curious that the criminal classes, no matter how highly skilled or cunning they may be, seldom or never make successful espionage workers. Those highly coloured stories, by the sensational novelist, of the spy who employs a crack thief to open up the Embassy’s safes and strong-rooms are for the most part fiction.