A Taste for Treason by Andrew Jeffrey

Author:Andrew Jeffrey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

Chapter 7

The French Lieutenant’s Whore

This intercept has created a tremendous impression in the Deuxième Bureau and also in French naval circles.

Colonel Valentine Vivian, MI6, 19 October 1938

In January 1938, when MI5 Director General Sir Vernon Kell and Edward Hinchley Cooke met American Military Attaché Colonel Raymond Lee in London to pass on the information about Agent Crown’s plan to overpower Colonel Eglin, there was one crucial new piece of evidence that they did not share with the Americans. This was a letter, sent to Jessie Jordan from Prague in Czechoslovakia, that had been steamed open by Alexander Jack in Dundee at the same time as the Agent Crown letter. Translated from German, it reads in part:

Prague, 24 Jan. 38.

Very esteemed Mr S.

With reference to my brother G. who is active for the cause in the United States, I beg to offer my services in the same cause . . . I am studying chemistry at the German University in Prague and am therefore in the same branch of business as my brother . . . It has for ever been my wish to serve the German cause in any possible way. As far as the possibility exists to carry out such activities in this country I am gladly prepared to serve you.

Yours,

HANSJORG GUSTAV RUMRICH

PRAGUE 11. ZITNA 3-11.

c/o HOFMAN.

Had MI5 passed this letter, or even an edited version of its content, to Colonel Lee, it would have led the FBI straight to Günther Rumrich alias Agent Crown. But that would have brought the entire case to a swift end and MI5 would have lost Jessie Jordan’s intercepted mail as a valuable source on Abwehr operations that the British were keen to nurture, so a degree of reticence was understandable.1

The Prague letter would have been delivered to Jessie Jordan at Kinloch Street on 29 January and, forwarded to Hilmar Dierks, would have arrived in Hamburg on or around 3 February. The liner Europa arrived in New York early on 4 February and, as Johanna Hofmann recalled for Leon Turrou, she and Karl Schlüter went ashore to call on Ignatz Griebl and Martin Schade. They had then made their way to Rumrich’s apartment where, in addition to the venereal disease statistics from Fort Hamilton, they were handed two photographs of Gustav along with his home address in Zeppelinstrasse, Töplitz-Schonau, Czechoslovakia, modern day Kašparova ul in Teplice, and told of his interest in becoming a spy.2

According to Erich Pfeiffer’s post-war interrogation, on his return to Germany a week later Schlüter told the Bremen spymaster that

he had a most useful contact in New York, a Sudeten German working for Ast Hamburg. This man, Günther RUMRICH, had a brother in Moravia working in an arms factory, who would be able to supply useful information. Would PFEIFFER allow him to recruit this man? His great friend, Johanna HOFMANN, a hairdresser in the Europa, was the mistress of Günther in New York; he (SCHLUTER) would use her to contact Gustav RUMRICH in Czechoslovakia and ‘make a proposition’ to him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.