Horst Goltz - My Adventures as a German Secret Service Agent

The Spaniard laughed.

"An excellent business! So simple. Boom! And our dear Alfonso..."

Some element of caution must have come over him, for his voice sank so that I could no longer hear his words. But I had heard enough to make me assume a good deal.

Someone was to be assassinated! And that someone? It was a guess, of course, but the name and the accent of the speaker were more than enough to lead me to believe that the proposed victim must be King Alfonso of Spain.

I sat there, undecided for the moment. It jvas really no affair of mine. I was on another mission, and, after all, my theory was merely a supposition. On the other hand, the situation presented interesting possibilities and, as I happened to know, Alfonso's seemingly pro- German leanings had made him an object of friendly interest at that time to my Government.

I decided to look into the matter.

It had been difficult to keep from stealing a glance at my talkative neighbours, but I restrained myself. I must not turn around, and yet it was vitally necessary to see their faces. All I could do was to hope that they would leave before I finished my vermouth; for I had no mind to risk my clearheadedness with more than the glass I had already had.

They did leave shortly afterwards. As they passed my table I took care to study their faces, and my intention to keep them in sight was immensely strengthened. The Spaniard I did not know, but his companion I recognised as a Russian and one of the very men I was after.

I had been in Geneva long enough to know where I could get information when I needed it. It was only a day or two, therefore, before I had in my hands sufficient facts to justify me in reporting the matter to my Government.

Alfonso was in England at the time and presumably safe; for I had gathered that no attempt would be made upon his life until he returned to Spain. So I wrote to Berlin mentioning what I had learned.

A telegram reached me next day. I was ordered to Brussels to communicate my information to the Spanish Minister there.

Mark that! I was ordered to Brussels, although there was a Spanish Minister in Switzerland. But my Government knew that there were many, factions in Spain, and it had strong reasons to believe that the Spanish Minister to Belgium .was absolutely loyal to Alfonso. And in a situation such as this, one takes as few risks as possible.

I followed my instructions. The Spanish Minister thanked me. He was more than interested; and he begged me, since I had no other direct orders, to do him the personal favour of staying a few days longer in the Belgian capital. I did so, of course, and a day or so later received from my Government instructions to hold myself at the Spaniard's disposal for the time being.

One night, at the Minister's request, I met him and we discussed matters fully. He wished me, he said, to undertake a more thorough investigation of the plot. I was already involved in it, and would be working less in the dark than another. Besides, he hinted, he could not very well employ an agent of his own Government. Who knew how far the conspiracy extended?

I was not displeased to abandon my chase of the Russian revolutionaries, for whom I felt some sympathy. So, as a preliminary step, I went to Paris, where, through the good offices of one Carlos da Silva a young Brazilian freethinker who was there ostensibly as a student I succeeded in gaining admission into one of the fighting organisations of Radicals there. They were not so communicative as I could have wished, but by judicious pumping I soon learned that there was an organised conspiracy against the life of Alfonso, and that the details of the plot were in the hands of a committee in Geneva.

Geneva, then, was my objective point. But what to do if I went there? I knew very well that conspirators do not confide their plans to strangers. And I dared not be too inquisitive. Obviously the only course to follow was to employ an agent.

Now "Cherchez la femme "is as excellent a principle to work on when you are choosing an accomplice, as it is jvhen you are seeking the solution of a crime. I therefore proceeded to seek a lady and found her in the person of a pretty little black-eyed "revolutionist, "who called herself Mira Descartes, and with whom I had already had some dealings.

It is here that accident crosses the trail again. For if a certain official of the Okrana had not been murdered in Moscow three years before, his daughter would never have conceived an intense hatred of all revolutionary movements and I should have been without her invaluable assistance in the adventure I am describing.

Mira Descartes! She was the kind of woman of whom people like to say that she would have made a great actress. Actress? I do not know. But she was an artist at dissembling. And she had beauty that turned the heads of more than the "Reds" upon whom she spied; and a genius for hatred: a cold hatred that cleared the brain and enabled her to give even her body to men she despised in order the better to betray them.

I was fortunate in securing her aid, I told myself; and I did not hesitate to use her services. (For in my profession, as must have been apparent to you, scrupulousness must be reserved for use "in one's private capacity as a gentleman.")

So Mile. Descartes went to Geneva and, armed with my previously acquired information and her own charms, she contrived to get into the good graces of the committee there, and surprised me a week later by writing to Paris that she had already contracted a liaison with the Spaniard whom I had overheard speaking that night in the Cafe de PEurope.

Soon I had full information about the entire plot. It was planned, I learned, to blow up King Alfonso with a bomb upon the day of his return to Madrid. The work was in the hands of two South Americans who were then in Geneva.

But far more important than this was the information which Mile. Descartes had obtained that a high official of Spain a member of the Cabinet was cognizant of the plot and had kept silent about it.

Why, I asked myself, should this official a man who surely had no sympathy with the aims of the revolutionists lend his aid to them in this plot? The reason was not hard to discover. Alfonso's position at the time was far from secure. His Government was unpopular at home; and the pro-Teutonic leanings of many officials had lost him the moral and political support of the English Government and Press facts of considerable importance.

So it seemed possible that Alfonso's reign might not be of long duration. And the new Government? It might be Radical or Conservative; pro-English or pro-German. A man with a career did \vell to keep on friendly terms with all factions. Thus, I fancied, the Cabinet Minister must have reasoned. At any rate he said nothing of the plot.

But I went to Brussels and reported all I had learned and did not forget to mention the Cabinet Minister's rumoured share in the plot.

There my connection with the affair ceased. But not long afterwards a little tragi-comedy occurred which was a direct result of my activities. Let me recall it to you.

On the evening of May 24, 1910, those of the people of Madrid who were in the neighbourhood of the monument which had been raised in memory of the victims of the attempted assassination of Alfonso, four years before, were horrified by a tragedy which they witnessed.

There was a sudden commotion in the streets, an explosion, and the confused sound of a crowd in excitement.

What had happened? Rumour ran wild throughout the crowd. The King was expected home that day he had been assassinated. There had been an attempted revolution. Nobody knew any details.

But the next day everybody knew. A bomb had burst opposite the monument a bomb that had been intended for the King. One man had been killed; the man who carried the bomb. But the King had not arrived in Madrid that day, after all.