The Unlikely Spy(19)

Poor Vogel. I've made a shambles of your heart, haven't I?

The eyes in the photograph of his family were boring into him. It was obscene, looking at them, remembering her. He stood up, went to his desk, and locked the picture away in his drawer.





"For God's sake, Kurt!" Muller exclaimed as Vogel entered his office the following morning. "Who's cutting your hair these days, my friend? Let me give you the name of the woman who does mine. Maybe she can help you."

Vogel, exhausted from a night of little sleep, sat down and silently regarded the figure before him. Paul Muller was in charge of the Abwehr's intelligence networks in the United States. He was short, tubby, and impeccably dressed in a shiny French suit. His thin hair was oiled and combed straight back from his cherubic face. His tiny mouth was sumptuous and red, like that of a child who has just eaten cherry candy.

"Imagine this, the great Kurt Vogel, here in my office," Muller said through a smirk. "To what do I owe this privilege?"

Vogel was used to the professional jealousy of the other senior staff. Because of the special status of his V-Chain network, he was given more money and assets than the other case officers. He was also allowed to poke his nose into their affairs, which made him extremely unpopular within the agency.

Vogel removed his copy of Muller's memo from the breast pocket of his jacket and waved it in front of him. "Tell me about Scorpio," he said.

"So the Old Man finally circulated my note. Look at the date on the goddamned thing. I gave it to him two months ago. It's been sitting on his desk gathering dust. That information is like gold. But it goes into the Fox's Lair and never comes out again." Muller paused, lit a cigarette, and blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. "You know, Kurt, sometimes I wonder whose side Canaris is on."

The remark was not unusual these days. Since the arrest of several members of the Abwehr's executive staff on charges of treason, morale at Tirpitz Ufer had sunk to a new low. Vogel sensed that Germany's military intelligence agency was dangerously adrift. He had heard rumors that Canaris had fallen out of favor with Hitler. There were even rumors among the staff that Himmler was plotting to bring down Canaris and place the Abwehr under the control of the SS.

"Tell me about Scorpio," Vogel repeated.

"I had dinner with him at the home of an American diplomat." Muller threw back his round head and stared at the ceiling. "Before the war, 1937 I believe it was. I'll check his file to make certain. The fellow's German was better than mine. Thought the Nazis were a wonderful bunch of fellows doing great things for Germany. Only thing he hated worse than the Jews was the Bolsheviks. It was like an audition. I recruited him myself the next day. Easiest snare of my career."

"What's his background?"

Muller smiled. "Investment banking. Ivy League, good contacts in industry, friends with half of Washington. His information on war production has been excellent."

Vogel was folding the memo and putting it back in his pocket. "His name?"

"Come on, Kurt. He's one of my best agents."

"I want his name."

"This place is like a sieve, you know that. I tell you, everybody knows."

"I want a copy of his file on my desk in an hour," Vogel said, his underpowered voice barely a whisper. "And I want everything you have on the engineer."

"You can have the information on Jordan."

"I want it all, and if I have to go to Canaris I'll do it."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Kurt. You're not going to go running to Uncle Willy, are you?"

Vogel stood and buttoned his jacket. "I want his name and I want his file." He turned and walked out of the office.

"Kurt, come back here," Muller called out. "Let's work this out. Jesus Christ."

"If you want to talk, I'll be in the Old Man's office," Vogel said as he walked down the narrow hallway.

"All right, you win." Muller's doughy hands were digging in a cabinet. "Here's the f*cking file. You don't have to run to Uncle Willy again. Jesus Christ, you're worse than the f*cking Nazis sometimes."





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.