Atomic Spy by Nancy Thorndike Greenspan

Author:Nancy Thorndike Greenspan [Greenspan, Nancy Thorndike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

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The Watchers swiftly garnered facts on Russell Harper were accurate; he was the scientist he appeared to be. He earned a phone tap and a few days of observation because Fuchs and Erna had stayed at his house, but that was the end of it. Eliezer Yapou was different. Robertson quickly discovered that the Registry held a security file on him. According to that dossier, he was the Israeli press attaché in London and had contacts with the Russians, including journalists. He directed “the intelligence activities of the Israeli Legation, and was especially interested in acquiring information concerning Arab affairs.” He and his wife, Edith, an Austria-born art historian and friend of Erna’s, occupied the Lancaster Close flat in the Russian section. Robertson wrote to MI6 that it was time to intensify the investigation on Yapou.

Erna’s friends concerned Robertson. It was she, he noted, who had initiated the few “contacts of any security significance” on the trip. Her somewhat bohemian circle was not well suited to the wife of the deputy director of a top secret research facility, disturbingly so. He requested the Registry to open a file on Erna and her friend Vera Pohle, who had suddenly turned up on another joint trip to London by Fuchs and the Skinners shortly after the one for the conference.

Vera was about forty-five, from Berlin, and recently naturalized. She had trained in liturgical research and antiquarian literature and held several librarian positions in the U.K. For the last six months, MI5 learned, she had been “a domestic help and companion” to Erna. Erna had been diagnosed with anxiety, the main symptom of which was her craving for company and her panic without it. No specific cause was established, but it’s not hard to imagine why a Jewish woman living during the Nazi era might have developed “a case of nerves.”

Vera Pohle was a new target for MI5, but a friend she shared with Erna had a security file. This was Tatiana Malleson, an actress who was originally from Russia, had lived in Germany, and was possibly a former member of the German Communist Party. Before leaving Germany, her then husband had been in touch “with a small Communist Party group within the Reichswehr [the German army], which included Hans Kahle.” She lived close to the “pro-Russian” Eliezer Yapou.

Knowing nothing about MI5’s information, Arnold kept an eye on the visitors drifting in and out of the Skinners’ household. Because of them, he had his own doubts about Erna; moreover, he always kept in mind that “she is of German/Austrian origin.”

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