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His escapades had continued in spectacular fashion and his star had been in the ascendant until he had fallen foul of Admiral Erich Raeder who had blocked his promotion in the conventional Navy, thereby setting him on course for espionage.
Ironic, mused Sinclair, that Raeder had advocated defeating Britain before attacking the Soviet Union.
On January 1, 1935, on his forty-eight birthday, Canaris had become head of the Abwehr.
He was 5 feet 3 inches tall. He had pale blue eyes. His manner was mild. He had difficulty in sleeping. He was a hypochondriac although his only known complaint was bad circulation which accounted for the coldness of which he continually complained.
He was a pessimist. He detested Hitler because of his persecution of the Jews and he feared for his country because he believed its leader was a madman.
He was subject to fits of melancholia.
In Lisbon the approach would have to be circumspect. Canaris was co-operating with British Intelligence but he certainly would not co-operate to the extent of bringing about Germany’s downfall.
So he would have to be persuaded that Churchill genuinely wanted to settle for peace; that, with the spectre of war on two fronts removed, Hitler would be able to concentrate on crushing Russia.
But Canaris was a sly old fox. What if he still had lingering doubts about perfide Albion? Well, there was one way in which the admiral could be persuaded that it was in everyone’s interests to tell Hitler about Britain’s change in policy. Blackmail.
From the kitchen came his wife’s voice. ‘Dinner’s ready, dear. Spam fritters and scrambled eggs – dried eggs, I’m afraid.’
*
Old Whitehead winced at the first scream.
He abhorred cruelty. But then he reminded himself that the man being beaten up in the adjoining room was a draft-dodger and felt a little better because he also abhorred that particular brand of cowardice.
But who are you to moralise? Admiral Canaris asked himself, sitting in an easy chair and picking up a copy of Signal, the Services’ propaganda magazine. You with your double standards.
His hands trembled as he turned the pages of the magazine. What a mess he had become since the death and glory days when he had been a U-boat commander and then captain of the cruiser Schlesien; since he had been diverted into espionage.
But perhaps that is your true vocation, intrigue, because you even intrigue with yourself. Deceive yourself, manipulate your conscience, trade secrets with the enemy, assuring yourself that it is for the good of the country you love …
Furthermore you are a pessimist, Canaris. Your punishment? The admiral turned a page of the magazine and stared at a photograph of a sailor with his arm round the waist of a girl with her hair in braids; the sailor’s face was bold; like mine once was in those far off days of youth and optimism.
He turned another page and Adolf Hitler stared at him.
From the room next door another scream and a voice shouting in English: ‘I don’t know! I … tell you … I … don’t … know.’
A thud, followed by the sound of a body falling.
Canaris glanced at his wristwatch. Another couple of minutes and he would call it off because in all probablity the Englishman was telling the truth.
He was one of the many informants who during the past couple of weeks in Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden and, indeed, in London itself, had reported a dramatic change in Britain’s policy.
According to the reports Churchill, despite his swashbuckling oratory, wanted to do a deal with Hitler because he realised that the position of his bombarded and besieged islands was hopeless.
In his offices in Tirpitzufer in Berlin Canaris had studied the reports with scepticism. There were too many of them all at once.
Then two highly plausible sources had come up with the same information in Lisbon and he had flown to the Portuguese capital.
But before confronting them he had decided to put a lesser informant to the test. A dispensable informant such as the draft-dodging Englishman – of whom there were quite a few in Lisbon – who was at this moment having his teeth knocked down his throat in the basement of the German Minister’s residence.
Canaris shivered despite the heavy leather overcoat he wore. He felt cold. But then he always felt cold. From a silver pillbox he took a white tablet to aid his circulation.
He opened the door to the adjoining room and told the two shirt-sleeved inquisitors to put down their rubber hoses.
The Englishman who had been propped against a wall of the bare room slid to the floor. Just as they did in the movies, Canaris thought. Although unlike movie interrogators the two sweating Gestapo bully-boys did not appear to have been enjoying themselves. Presumably they preferred more refined and less exhausting methods of extracting information which he didn’t permit – that was the domain of Reinhard ‘Hangman’ Heydrich, Himmler’s deputy and head of all SS security, which included the Gestapo.
Perhaps one day men such as this will interrogate me, Canaris thought, and felt even colder.
He said to the Englishman: ‘Get up.’
The body on the floor moved. The bloodied head turned. Eyes slitted between swollen flesh regarded Canaris. With hatred or gratitude? With a face in that condition you couldn’t tell.
To one of the interrogators Canaris said: ‘Bring him a chair.’ When the Englishman was sitting on the kitchen chair beneath a naked electric light bulb Canaris gave him a cigarette and lit it for him.
The Englishman, whose name was Spearman, inhaled and coughed and inhaled again as if the smoke was a medicament. He was young, about twenty-three, with fair wavy hair and a face that, before the beating, had been half-saint and half-delinquent. According to Abwehr records in Lisbon he was a homosexual.
To one of the interrogators, Canaris said: ‘What was it he didn’t know? What was the question?’
‘He didn’t know whether it was true or not.’
‘Whether what was true?’
‘The information he brought, whatever that was,’ the man said sullenly.
So the Gestapo, who unfortunately handled all interrogations in Lisbon, were learning at last: don’t tell your inquisitors too much, thereby keeping risks to a minimum.
To the Englishman he said: ‘Why aren’t you fighting for your country?’
Spearman spat out blood. ‘This is a neutral country and I shall report you to the authorities.’
‘Really? What authorities, I wonder? The Portuguese? We Germans really are calling the tune here, you know, and their police won’t risk upsetting us. The British? I don’t think so, do you? They would lock you up or, worse, make you fight. But you didn’t answer my question. Why aren’t you helping to defend your country? You see I am a patriot and the reasoning of a traitor interests me.’
‘I’m not a traitor.’ The voice was slurred.
‘What are you then?’
‘A pacifist.’
‘Then you should have registered as a conscientious objector in England.’
‘I prefer the sunshine,’ Spearman said.
‘Where did you get this information?’
‘At the Casino at Estoril, where else?’
‘A hundred and one places,’ Canaris said. ‘The Aviz or the Avenida Palace, in Lisbon, the Palácio or the Hotel do Parque in Estoril …’
‘I like to gamble.’
‘Who gave you the information?’
‘I gleaned it.’
He spoke beautiful English. Perhaps he had been to Cambridge where the Russians were so assiduously recruiting agents.
‘Who from?’
Spearman put two fingers inside his mouth. They came out holding a tooth. Then the spirit seemed to go out of Spearman, so often the case when a homosexual realises his looks have been damaged.
Sensing that the moment had come to change the approach, Canaris dismissed the two Gestapo thugs. They hesitated, unsure of Canaris’s authority.
Without raising his voice, Canaris said: ‘Get out.’
They went.
Canaris sat down opposite Spearman, gave him another cigarette and said in a friendly, almost paternal, tone: ‘Come now, stop being so obstinate. An admirable quality, I agree, and very British, but entirely misplaced at the moment.’
Tears gathered in Spearman’s eyes. ‘I just don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I pass on information, that’s all. I don’t pretend it’s true, I never have. And what happens …?’ His voice trembled and he brushed at his eyes with blood-stained fingers; Canaris felt almost, but not quite, sorry for him. ‘This is what happens … It isn’t fair.’
‘If you co-operate it won’t happen again. Believe me, I don’t want to see you hurt.’ True enough. ‘And if you do help us we might even increase your reward.’
Spearman stared at Canaris beseechingly. ‘But I have co-operated; I don’t understand …’
‘Your informant, who was he?’ Canaris hardened his tone a little.
‘I told you it was only hearsay.’
‘A homosexual?’
‘Does that make it more suspect?’ a little spirit returning to him.
Canaris shook his head. ‘It makes no difference. Gossip is gossip. It’s up to us to process it.’ He handed Spearman a handkerchief. ‘Who was he?’
Spearman pressed the white silk handkerchief to his eyes. ‘Yes, he’s queer all right.’
‘Your … friend?
Spearman nodded.
‘British?’
‘Swiss.’
‘You move in exalted circles, Mr. Spearman,’ because there was no such mortal as a poor Swiss here, or anywhere else for that matter.
‘I move in influential circles.’
‘You mean, I think, that for reasons we won’t pursue you are briefly admitted to the fringe of such circles. Among the fugitive kings of Europe reigning in Estoril.’
‘And bankers and businessmen and diplomats and spies, of course. There are more spies in Estoril than whores in Piccadilly.’
‘And your friend … what is his profession?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Oh yes,’ Canaris said, ‘it matters very much.’
‘Very well then, he’s a businessman.’
‘You’re not giving very much away, Mr. Spearman. I understood you were going to co-operate.’
‘I thought it was an unwritten law,’ Spearman said, puffing away at his cigarettes, ‘that informants weren’t obliged to give away their source of information.’
‘I just re-wrote that law.’
‘Very well, his business is cork.’
‘Along with every other businessman in Lisbon. But hardly a profitable enterprise for a Swiss. After all, they don’t produce that much wine, and none of that particularly memorable. Are you sure it’s cork, Mr Spearman?’
‘I understand he’s a middleman.’
‘Ah, but he wouldn’t be anything else, would he?’ Canaris touched his grey eyebrows, a habit of his; his wife had clipped them for him at their home on Lake Ammersee in Bavaria just before he left for Portugal; he wished profoundly that he was back there now. He unbuttoned his overcoat, leaned forward and snapped: ‘His name please.’
‘I can’t give it to you. You’ll have him beaten just as you’ve beaten me.’
‘A Swiss businessman? I doubt that, I doubt that very much,’ Canaris said. ‘British draft-dodgers, yes, we beat the hell out of them. But not Swiss businessmen. In any case we might need his cork, if cork it is, for some of our Rhine wines. He is German Swiss?’
‘No, French … Shit!’ Spearman stamped on his cigarette butt. ‘That was bloody clever.’
‘At least it narrows the field. You might as well tell me his name, I’ll find out soon enough. If you die during further interrogation,’ his voice still pleasant, man-to-man, ‘then it will merely be a process of elimination.’
Spearman began to shiver. ‘If I do, you won’t —’
‘Reveal the source of my information? Certainly not. I am an officer and a gentleman, although that may have escaped you.’
Spearman gave him a name. Cottier. Canaris stood up and began to pace the floor. Cottier? It meant nothing to him.
‘… in any case,’ Spearman was saying, ‘he only heard it indirectly at a party. You know those Estoril parties …’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Canaris, thinking of France, Belgium, Holland bleeding from the wounds of war. ‘And who was his informant, for God’s sake?’
The transfer of responsibility seemed to cheer Spearman up a little. He uttered a name which stopped Canaris in his tracks because it was the name of one of the two sources that had brought him to Lisbon.
*
Half an hour later Canaris lunched with Fritz von Claus, head of the Abwehr operation in Portugal, in his small terrace house overlooking the flea market.
