End of Spies by Alex Gerlis (best free ereader txt) 📗

End of Spies

Cover

Title Page

Characters

Principal characters:

Other characters:

Prologue

Lincoln, England, September 1945

Chapter 1

London and Dijon, France, November 1943

Chapter 2

Nazi-Occupied Netherlands, May 1944

Chapter 3

Germany, March 1945

Chapter 4

Germany, July 1945

Chapter 5

Munich, August 1945

Chapter 6

London, September 1945

Chapter 7

England, September 1945

Chapter 8

Paris, September 1945

Chapter 9

Paris, September 1945

Chapter 10

London and Berlin, September 1945

Chapter 11

Berlin, September 1945

Chapter 12

Frankfurt, Germany, October 1945

Chapter 13

Germany, October 1945

Chapter 14

London, October 1945

Chapter 15

Germany, October 1945

Chapter 16

London, October 1945

Chapter 17

Berlin, November 1945

Chapter 18

England, November 1945

Chapter 19

Austria, November 1945

Chapter 20

Berlin, December 1945

Chapter 21

England, December 1945

Chapter 22

Austria, December 1945

Chapter 23

Germany, December 1945

Chapter 24

Austria and Italy, December 1945

Chapter 25

England, December 1945

Chapter 26

Trieste, Austria, and Berlin, December 1945

Chapter 27

Berlin and Austria, December 1945

Chapter 28

England, December 1945

Chapter 29

Italy, December 1945

Epilogue

Author’s Note

About the Author

Also by Alex Gerlis

Copyright

Cover

Table of Contents

Start of Content

Characters

Principal characters:

Richard Prince British intelligence agent, detective superintendent

Hanne Jakobsen Danish police officer, British agent. Married to Richard Prince

Tom Gilbey Senior MI6 officer, London

Sir Roland Pearson Downing Street intelligence adviser

Kommissar Iosif Leonid Gurevich NKGB officer

Friedrich Steiner Gestapo officer, aka ‘the Ferret’,

Wolfgang Steiner Senior Nazi official, father of Friedrich

Other characters:

The Admiral British Nazi sympathiser

Major Tom Barrow US Counter Intelligence Corps, Munich

Bartholomew MI5 officer

Kenneth Bemrose British Liaison Office & MI6, Berlin

Benoît Officer at Fresnes prison near Paris

Roland Bentley Senior MI6 officer, London

Hauptsturmführer Klaus Böhme SS Officer, Berlin

Martin Bormann Head of the Nazi Part Chancellery, Berlin

Mr Bourne Owner of art gallery, London

Branka Slovenian partisan

Christine Butler SOE agent, Dijon (Thérèse Dufour)

Myrtle Carter British Nazi sympathiser

Peter Dean SOE agent, Enschede (Pieter de Vries)

Edvard Slovenian partisan

Frau Egger Housekeeper in Villach, Austria

Evans Field Security Section, Trieste

Charles Falmer Courier in Frankfurt

Kapitan Leonid Fyodorov NKVD officer, Berlin

Charles Girard Aka Alphonse Schweitzer, Gestapo Paris

Giuseppe port worker in Trieste

Hon. Hugh Harper Senior MI5 officer, London

Captain Wilf Hart Field Security Section, Austria

Paul Hoffman Berlin detective

Joseph Jenkins Intelligence officer, US Embassy, London

Jožef Slovenian partisan

Kiselyov Soviet officer at Hohenschönhausen prison

Willi Kühn Man in Berlin

Major Charles Lean F Section, SOE

Anna Lefebvre Prisoner at Fresnes near Paris

Ludwig Soviet agent working for Gurevich

Marguerite Former resistance fighter, Paris

Marija Slovenian partisan

Frieda Mooren (Julius) Resistance fighter, Enschede

Frau Moser farmer in Bavaria

Orlov Soviet officer at Hohenschönhausen prison

Edward Palmer (Agent Milton) Escaping British Nazi

Kenneth Plant SOE radio operator, Dijon (Hervé)

Franz Rauter former German intelligence officer

Mr Ridgeway Man at art gallery, London

Tim Sorensen US Counter Intelligence Corps officer

Captain Christopher Stephens F Section, SOE

Major Laurie Stewart Field Security Section, Austria

Ulrich Nazi in Frankfurt

Wilson MI6 officer, Paris

Frau Winkler Shopkeeper in Villach, Austria

Prologue

Lincoln, England, September 1945

Richard Prince stood nervously in the shadow of the Gothic splendour of Lincoln Cathedral, a flurry of leaves gathering around his feet in a premature burst of autumn. He glanced around uncomfortably and retreated to the canopy of the Judgement Porch, Jesus Christ and the angels looking down on him in a quizzical manner as if wondering what he was up to. He didn’t blame them. He wondered that too.

He’d never particularly liked the cathedral: it held a sense of foreboding and he’d always felt that for a place of worship it was too replete with imagery of the devil. As a small child he’d been told the cathedral’s grounds had been used as mass burial pits for the city’s victims of the Black Death, and the fear instilled then had lasted into adulthood. As a young police constable, he’d dreaded the night-time beat that took him anywhere near the darkened mass of the cathedral.

It hadn’t been his idea to get married here. In truth it hadn’t been his idea to get married at all: it seemed so rushed and unnecessary, and they’d hardly had an opportunity to get to know each other in normal circumstances. But Hanne was keen, and young Henry in particular was thrilled at the idea. He had no memory of his mother, and the prospect of his father marrying excited him. Only two weeks after Hanne had moved in with them, Prince had overheard his son call her ‘Mummy’.

But the person who seemed most keen was Tom Gilbey, his erstwhile boss at MI6. ‘You’ll be able to make a decent woman of her, Richard.’ He only called him ‘Richard’ when he was trying to flatter him, when he was about to ask a favour or make a demand of him.

‘You don’t think she’s decent enough already, sir? She risked her life for this country – she spied for us in Copenhagen, was arrested by the Gestapo and ended up in a concentration camp. I’d say that’s the mark of a pretty decent person.’

‘Just a turn of phrase, Prince, you know that. But on balance, perhaps the right thing to do, eh?’

Prince would have been happy with a discreet ceremony in a register office, or if it had to be in a church, then one of the smaller ones dotted around the city would have been fine. But from the first moment Hanne saw the cathedral, she’d been captivated by it, and when he’d told her – in the way one does when showing your home town to a visitor – how in medieval times it had been the tallest building in the world for more than two centuries, she’d announced that that was where they’d have their wedding. Prince had told her it was highly unlikely they’d get permission.

‘Ask Mr Gilbey then – he seems so keen on us getting married.’

So he’d asked Tom Gilbey, more in passing than anything else, the question preceded by an ‘I don’t suppose…’

He ought to have known better, because inevitably it turned out that Gilbey had been at school with the bishop. ‘I’ll telephone him now!’

Prince had said it seemed quite unnecessary to go to that effort and it was only an idea, but Gilbey said not at all, and within