Vogel spent the rest of the morning reading about Peter Jordan. When he finished he removed a pair of files from one of his cabinets, returned to his desk, and read them carefully.
The first file contained information on an Irishman who had worked as a spy for a short time but was cut loose because his information was poor. Vogel had taken possession of his dossier and placed him on the V-Chain payroll. Vogel was not concerned with the bad reviews the spy had received in the past--he was not looking for a spy. There were other qualities about the agent Vogel found attractive. He worked a small farm on an isolated stretch of Britain's Norfolk coast. It was a perfect safe house--close enough to London to make the journey by train in three hours, far enough away so the place wasn't crawling with MI5 officers.
The second file contained the dossier of a former Wehrmacht paratrooper who had been barred from jumping because of a head wound. The man had all the qualities Vogel liked: perfect English, an eye for detail, a cool intelligence. Ulbricht had found him at an Abwehr wireless listening post in northern France. Vogel placed him on the V-Chain payroll and tucked him away for the right assignment.
Vogel pushed the files aside and drafted two messages. He added the ciphers to be used, the frequencies at which the messages were to be sent, and the transmission schedule. Then he looked up and called for Ulbricht.
"Yes, Herr Captain," Ulbricht said. He entered the office, limping heavily on his wooden leg. Vogel looked at Ulbricht an instant before speaking, wondering if the man was up to the demands of an operation like the one he was about to launch. Ulbricht was twenty-seven years old but looked at least forty. His close-cropped black hair was flecked with gray. Pain lines ran like tributaries from the edge of his one good eye. The second eye had been lost in the explosion; the empty socket was hidden behind a neat black patch. A Knight's Cross dangled at his throat. The top button of Ulbricht's tunic was undone because the exertion of the most simple movements caused him to become overheated and perspire. In all the time they had worked together, Vogel had never once heard Ulbricht complain.
"I want you to go to Hamburg tomorrow night." He handed Ulbricht the transcripts of the messages. "Stand over the radio operator while he sends these. Make certain there are no mistakes. See that the acknowledgments from the agents are in order. If there is anything out of the ordinary I want to know about it. Understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"Before you go, I want you to track down Horst Neumann."
"He's in Berlin, I believe."
"Where is he staying?"
"I'm not certain," Ulbricht said, "but I believe there is a woman involved."
"There usually is." Vogel walked to the window and looked out. "Contact the staff at the Dahlem farm. Tell them to expect us tonight. I want you to join us there when you return from Hamburg tomorrow. Tell them we'll be there for a week. We have a lot to go over. And tell them to rig the jump platform in the barn. It's been a long time since Neumann jumped from an airplane. He'll need practice."
"Yes, sir."
Ulbricht went out, leaving Vogel alone in the office. He stood at the window for a long time, thinking it through once more. The most closely guarded secret of the war and he planned to steal it with a woman, a cripple, a grounded paratrooper, and a British traitor. Quite a team you've assembled, Kurt, old man. If his own ass wasn't on the line he might have found the whole thing funny. Instead, he just stood there like a statue, watching snow drifting silently over Berlin, worrying himself to death.
6
LONDON
The Imperial Security Intelligence Service--better known by its military intelligence designation, MI5--was headquartered in a small cramped office building at 58 St. James's Street. MI5's task was counterintelligence. In the lexicon of espionage, counterintelligence means protecting one's secrets--and, when necessary, catching spies. For much of its forty-year existence, the Security Service toiled in the shadow of its more glamorous cousin, the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6. Such internecine rivalries did not matter much to Professor Alfred Vicary. It was MI5 that Vicary joined in May 1940 and where, on a dismal rainy evening five days after Hitler's secret conference at Rastenburg, he could still be found.