Lucas Delattre - A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich

The day before he was to leave for Bern, Fritz had narrowly escaped death. It was in the evening in the midst of an air raid. As a ministerial official, Fritz had a pass giving him the right to move around during curfew. He was coming back from the Charité hospital on his bicycle (he had gone to say goodbye to Maria) and was on his way to his office to file some documents. Sirens began to wail; it was an RAF attack. One could see the approach of white flares from the magnesium incendiary bombs. Just at the moment when the alarm began, Fritz was at the corner of Unter den Linden and Wilhelmstrasse. An armed warden ordered him to stop and not to cross the street. Fritz got off his bicycle and showed his pass. The warden examined the document with his flashlight. At that moment, a projectile fell less than fifty meters from the two men, a little further down Wilhelmstrasse, knocking them violently to the ground. After a few seconds, they staggered to their feet, stunned, covered with debris, but unhurt. Fritz warmly thanked the warden for having stopped him at the corner. Had he continued on his way, he would have been at the point of the bomb’s impact, where there was now a large smoking crater. He took one of the Havana cigars he had bought in Switzerland out of his pocket, gave it to the warden as a token of thanks, and went on his way to the ministry. The warden smiled with pleasure.

The next morning, he made preparations for departure. Fräulein von Heimerdinger, as she had the first time, gave Fritz a sealed envelope containing the diplomatic mail for Bern. After signing the registry indicating that he was now responsible for it, he went to his office to complete his packing with the personal documents intended for the Americans. This time, he had no wish to fasten documents around his thighs. It was a dangerous method and not worthy of him, he thought. But what else could he do? After returning from his first trip, in September, he had managed secretly to get hold of an official ministry seal, in exchange for a box of Swiss chocolates. Petty dealings of this kind were very common and attracted very little attention. The sealed envelope that had just been given to him could be slipped inside a slightly larger pouch containing the other documents. All he had to do was to properly seal the new envelope, even though it had become thicker than the original. Instead of a trunk with a false bottom, he had a pouch with a false top.

Fritz carried out the entire operation by manipulating the papers in a drawer of his desk hidden from prying eyes. Unfortunately, the wax caught fire and the operation almost turned into a disaster. He just managed to save his package and put out the flames. After wiping his forehead and opening the window to dispel the odor of burnt paper, Fritz went back to work with his heart pounding. Finally the package was ready. Fritz was not dissatisfied with the result: the seal marked with the eagle and the swastika had a rigorously authentic appearance. As for the weight of the package, he knew that diplomatic pouches were never weighed, neither going nor coming.

Fritz took the early evening train on Wednesday, October 6 from the Anhalter Bahnhof, as he did the first time (departure at 8:20). Ordinarily, the trip from Berlin to Basel took sixteen hours. But because of air raids, delays had become very frequent, and the trip might last as long as three days. Once he was in his compartment, he called the attendant of his car aside and, handing him a handsome tip, asked to be the first to be warned if there was an alert. “I am terrified of bombs and I would be a bit reassured if you were to warn me in advance,” he said. In fact, Fritz wanted to have time to get rid of his documents in case of danger.

At four in the morning, the porter rapped sharply on the door of his compartment. “Blue alert, sir,” he said. That meant that an attack was imminent. It was not yet a “red alert,” but he had to act quickly. The train had stopped. Fritz had kept his clothes on. He quickly got off the train holding his briefcase close to himself. The spot was deserted. They were in the middle of the woods, “probably between Frankfurt and Karlsruhe.” The moon lit up the rails. Then the other passengers began scrambling out of the train. A baby cried. A man yelled that he had lost something in the confusion. Fritz took cover in a ditch below the tracks.

At that point a plane headed directly for the train. It was a light English bomber, a Mosquito, an isolated plane flying low. The plane fired a few salvos at the locomotive. There was no answering fire: a passenger train like this one had no antiaircraft guns. The plane soon disappeared. But a few moments later, a huge explosion was heard a few hundred meters in front of the train. The plane had dropped a bomb on a trestle. Although not completely destroying it, the bomb had seriously damaged the track, making it impossible to continue the trip. There was a long wait before another train could replace the first one, on the other side of the trestle. Night passed, morning, and afternoon. Finally the journey could continue. The passengers had to cross the trestle over a precipice on foot, which took a long time. Fritz was irritated that he had lost an entire day from his schedule.

Going through customs in Basel was nerve-wracking. As much as, if not more than the first time, Fritz had violent stomach pains and was perspiring so profusely that he was afraid of attracting the attention of the customs agents. He knew that in the event of a thorough search, he would have no hope of escape. Nothing was worse than this precise moment. A German customs agent was looking at him with a particularly suspicious air. Did he suspect? Fritz tried to maintain all the composure at his command. He looked directly into the eyes of the man in uniform, attempting to keep his gaze as cold as possible, keeping his pouch in plain sight under his arm (“above all, appear to have nothing to hide,” he said to himself). The official motioned him through.

Even though he was still in the “German station” of Basel, Fritz was now in Switzerland. He headed for the men’s room and locked himself in a toilet. He tore open the outer envelope and removed the documents not intended for the German legation in Bern and put them in his coat. The official envelope was replaced in his briefcase. He burned the now superfluous envelope and flushed the ashes down the bowl. He went out and took a taxi across the Rhine to the Swiss station of Basel (Basel SBB), where he caught the train to Bern. Before getting on the train, he found a telephone booth from which he called 146 at Adelboden, Ernst Kocherthaler’s number. The Americans were immediately informed that “Wood” had arrived.

It was Thursday, October 7, late at night, when Fritz arrived in Bern. His friend Ernst was already in town. The next morning, after delivering the diplomatic mail to the German legation, he and Fritz met at a café, as they had the first time. Ernst informed Fritz that the Americans had impatiently been waiting for his return and that they wanted to see him that very evening. “At 11:30 tonight, Gerald Mayer will pick you up in his car on Kirchenfeld bridge. It’s a Triumph sportscar. You will wait in the shadows at the southern end of the bridge. To identify himself, he’ll switch on his headlights once he’s in the middle of the bridge. They are blue because of the curfew.”

That evening the meeting took place as planned. At 11:30, Fritz jumped into Gerry Mayer’s car. “Glad to see that you made it back again,” he said in a friendly voice, adding that they were going to see Mr. Douglas. Fritz admired Gerry Mayer’s handsome Triumph, wanted to talk to him about the Horch that he had had to give up because of the war, but unfortunately the trip was very short. After taking a few narrow cobblestone streets in the old city, Mayer steered his car onto a road along the River Aare. The Triumph was going very slowly, with no lights. Soon it reached a point below the Kirchenfeld bridge whose metal outline could be seen forty meters above. The height seemed dizzying. Mayer turned off the engine. At this very dark spot, there were few passersby and it was easy to pass unseen. Mayer asked Fritz to get out alone and explained how to get to Dulles’s house through the garden in back, up a steep path through dense shrubbery. “Go on alone. I’ll rejoin you up there in a little while. You’re expected.”