A Reluctant Spy
A RELUCTANT SPY
Miller Caldwell
Dedication:
The novel is dedicated to Larry, a friend for almost five decades. The former Dr Larry Bart, clinical psychologist, Vermont, continues to be a gifted musician, a raconteur and one of Alzheimer’s many victims.
In bello, parvis momentis magni casus intercedunt.
In war, great events are the results of small causes.
Caesar in Bellum Gallicum
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
About the author
Foreword
Preface
The novel
Chapter 1 The Funeral
Chapter 2 The Letter
Chapter 3 The Gestapo demands
Chapter 4 The Voyage Home
Chapter 5 Confrontation
Chapter 6 German agents provide a Delphin 7 secret radio
Chapter 7 A Dying Secret
Chapter 8 Handel. German or English?
Chapter 9 Return to Germany
Chapter 10 Meeting Reinhart Heydrich
Chapter 11 Otto finds the award
Chapter 12 Baden-Baden – the spy training school
Chapter 13 A pupil of the dark arts
Chapter 14 Cape Carvoeiro
Chapter 15 Meeting villagers – sending co-ordinates
Chapter 16 Death in the Atlantic
Chapter 17 Hilda drowns
Chapter 18 The flight to Northolt
Chapter 19 Forgiveness
Chapter 20 London and a celebration
Chapter 21 A gruelling interview and a new assignment
Chapter 22 A chance meeting at Bletchley
Chapter 23 Preparing to return to Hamburg
Chapter 24 Hilda returns to Hamburg
Chapter 25 Death, devastation and sorrow
Chapter 26 Romance
Chapter 27 Engaged
Chapter 28 The Nuremberg Trial
Chapter 29 Death and New Life
Chapter 30 The Wedding
Press cutting of Vera’s escape from Germany in August 1914
Postscript
Letter from Hilda
Stamps and Embassy envelope
The gazebo in the grounds of the hotel where Hilda received instructions and a short-wave Delphin 7 secret radio
The Bunchrew House Hotel
The German Eagle Silver Civilian Medal
Hitler’s plans to invade northern Scotland in 1940
Hilda’s oboe
Acknowledgements
Other books by Miller Caldwell
Copyright
About the author:
Miller Caldwell is a Scottish-based writer of novels.
He graduated from London University, having studied African industrial development, traditional African religions and the colonial history of West Africa. He has had articles published in health magazines and The Scottish Review.
Following a life of humanitarian work in Ghana, Pakistan and Scotland, he has gained remarkable insights into human nature. He brought an African president to tears in West Africa in 2000, and he confronted Osama bin Laden near Abbottabad, in the NWFP of the Islamic State of Pakistan in 2006. He was, for ten years, the local chair of the Scottish Association for the Study of Offending. He also served on the committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland as its events manager.
Miller plays a variety of brass, woodwind and keyboard instruments, which provide a break from writing. Married, he has two daughters and lives in Dumfries, in southwest Scotland.
Foreword
Occasionally you find yourself reflecting on history. Such opportunities often lurk in innocuous places. When explored, an intricate tale often emerges. For some it is mere history, a lesson to learn. For others, it is a lesson to celebrate.
Tentatively based around the remarkable life of my great-aunt, Frau Hilda Richter (née Campbell, 1889-1956), this story merges her life with the great events of World War 2. Her niece, and my godmother, Vera Wild (née Caldwell, 1900-1992), revealed the story of Hilda’s life to me in her penultimate year. My uncle, Dr A. Stanley Caldwell (1920-2013) gave me some of Hilda’s personal communications, stamps and the story of her initial espionage for the Nazis in 1938. The novel fills in the voids I have in Hilda’s life, focusing strongly on Vera’s memories of a most unusual and courageous great-aunt.
With the exception of identified historical personalities and significant world events, this novel is the product of my imagination and knowledge of my remarkable great-aunt. Netherholm Dumfries
2019
Preface
Hilda Campbell was born in 1889 in Forres, in the north of Scotland. She studied modern languages at Aberdeen University and in 1911 went to Germany to further her knowledge of the German language and culture. At a concert at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Hilda met Dr Willy Büttner Richter, a local general practitioner. They married in 1913 and spent their honeymoon in Scotland visiting relatives. They also met my godmother Vera Wild (née Caldwell) and invited her to come to stay with them in Hamburg the following summer.
Vera arrived in mid-July with the promise of a six-week visit before she returned for her fourth year at secondary school. The First World War broke out on 4th August 1914 and found Vera trapped behind enemy lines in Germany. Through a network of friends, Vera returned home via Harwich after an eventful trip. An account of her return to Scotland appears in the Forres and Nairn Gazette of 2nd September 1914. Copies of this document are available by courtesy of the Forres Library Educational Services. A report of Vera’s travels under war conditions is contained in the appendices.
Hilda occasionally taught English privately in Hamburg as she fulfilled her duties as a mother to Otto and wife of a busy family doctor. Further details of her life were unknown until…
Chapter 1
The Funeral
1938
As she checked her black hat in the mirror in her bedroom, for the second time in her life Hilda realised war with her homeland seemed inevitable. This time, however, she would be on her own.
The funeral party gathered around the grave beneath the branches of sycamore trees that caressed each other in the spring breeze. The Hamburg sky hung low and the light was grey and dull for mid-morning; the clouds struggled to hold on to their moisture. Beyond the wall of the Friedhof Ohlsdorf cemetery, the traffic on the Fuhlsbüttler Strasse was a distant rumble. It was 11.30 a.m. on Friday 12th March 1938, a day all Austrians and Germans would remember, while in this city graveyard the Richter family congregated, each with their personal thoughts and memories as Dr Willy Büttner Richter’s coffin descended into the grave.
Grateful patients gathered around. Many were in tears to see such a relatively young man deprive them of his caring attention at their popular medical surgery. There were also many mourners from the professional ranks of the city. For the moment, the exciting news of the Anschluss, which was developing that morning, had to take a back seat.
Hilda Richter, the doctor’s widow, resplendent in her black fur-lined overcoat, took comfort holding the hand of her son Otto, smartly dressed in his Hitler Youth uniform.
‘Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.’
The tall, lean young Lutheran pastor closed his prayer book of common order and invited Hilda and Otto to step forward and sprinkle the sunken coffin with a dusting of earth. Hilda did as he bade her and passed the trowel to her son. Otto brushed away a tear as the earth left the trowel a little ashamed to show any weakness, especially in his uniform. He stood back as Hilda opened her handbag and took out a sprig of heather. She kissed it then dropped it on to the centre of the coffin. Unintentionally, it masked Willy’s
brass nameplate.
A breaking twig alerted her to an approaching footstep and a hand gently tapped her right shoulder.
‘Willy would have liked that touch.’
She turned and smiled at her brother-in-law Karl, who had been as shocked as anyone on hearing of Willy’s sudden fatal heart attack. They had been close brothers.
‘We loved our holidays in Scotland,’ she said.
‘I know you did Hilda. Those were happier days, much happier. The gathering clouds this morning… seem so menacing.’
‘Karl… shhh.’
She looked over her shoulder. Sympathetic eyes met hers, and she felt uncomfortable. Like Otto, she was embarrassed to show any emotion and schooled her expression to mask her sadness.
Shortly after noon, the dignified group of mourners entered a reception room at the nearby Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel. A black paper cloth with a central motif of the swastika covered a table at the side of the room. There were sandwiches, fruit and biscuits galore and a coffee urn percolated happily at the far end of the room. In the middle of the table, the party emblem remained uncovered for everyone to see and appreciate.
A man in a dark green suit approached Hilda.
‘My condolences, Frau Richter.’ He wore the party emblem on his lapel and was a little overweight, exaggerated by a ruddy round face. He shook her hand, bowing his dark bushy eyebrows as he did so.
‘Thank you,’ she replied politely, wondering who he was. Their eyes danced around with caution. It was an awkward moment for both of them as she tried to place him. Not knowing this man, or how he knew her late husband, left her struggling for words.
‘Do forgive me. I am Herr Gerhardt Eicke. I am your son’s training officer.’
Instantly she recalled this man was the individual who impressed Otto so much. Her smile emerged reluctantly. He seemed briefly embarrassed by her cool response and turned away to the nearby table to lift a coffee cup. Then he returned.
‘Otto is a fine young man, one of the best in the Hitler Youth without a doubt. He is a credit to you and of course to his late father.’
There was a ring on the hand holding the coffee; it matched his lapel badge and was on his marriage finger.
‘I see,’ Hilda said. ‘So Otto is doing well?’
His demeanour oozed confidence now.
‘These are exciting times. The Fuehrer has taken Austria into Greater Germany today. He has wedded us to the German-speaking Austrians. It is a bittersweet day for you I am sure, Frau Richter. Otto will be a great comfort to you at present.’
‘You must forgive me. I had not heard the news,’ she lied. As it broke that morning, she had been preoccupied and had failed to understand fully the consequences of the Anschluss. Now concern prickled in her mind.
He nodded understandingly. ‘I appreciate your thoughts have been elsewhere. The twelfth of March will go down in history. I can assure you of that,’ he said pompously.
‘It will be a day I shall have no difficulty in remembering, certainly,’ she said, looking away.
‘Indeed.’ Eicke shuffled uneasily. ‘If there is anything I can do for you now, or indeed any time, I hope you will not hesitate to get in touch with me. I have resources at my disposal.’ He peered at her over his glasses with a smile, which struck her as artificially sincere. It seemed he was willing to use trickery to gain an advantage.
‘I will bear your kind offer in mind, Herr Eicke.’ She could not warm to this self-opinionated party man.
He gulped down his last mouthful of coffee and smacked his lips together. She was glad to see him return his cup to the table; this was surely the end of a sticky conversation. However, he approached her once more, fumbling in his side pocket then holding out his hand.
‘Here, my card. Again, my condolences, Frau Richter. I must leave now.’
He bowed to her and her smile was one of relief.
‘Certainly… you must have much to do,’ she said, feeling her shoulders relax.
As Herr Eicke walked smartly to the hotel exit, she placed the card in her black handbag and turned to find her brother-in-law standing nearby. Karl was quite different from Willy, perhaps because he was six years younger, and would have mixed with different people. He had a slightly cynical sense of humour that did not lie deep under the surface. Hilda was fond of him.
‘I hope you would come to family first,’ he said with a troubled brow.
Hilda wondered how much of her conversation with Herr Eicke he had heard. He smiled, and slipped a hand under her left elbow ‘I saw he gave you his card. My advice, should you take it, would be to pay little attention to him.’
Hilda smiled; she had reached the same conclusion, and that was reassuring. ‘You know him personally?’ She was keen to hear more of the man who had influence over her son.
‘I find Herr Eicke rather narrow-minded – dogmatic, even. He is a Gestapo officer when he is not training the Hitler Youth. He’s a man on the up, from a very lowly base indeed.’
Karl’s assessment did not surprise her. ‘He is Otto’s training officer.’
‘Yes, that’s true, I know. We cannot change that. Caution is required, Hilda. That’s all I am saying.’
She nodded. That was sound advice. ‘I think you may have to speak to Otto from time to time, for me.’
Karl nodded. ‘If you feel that would be appropriate?’
Without a father figure for her son, Hilda felt she would be leaning more and more on Karl. She knew he recognised that fact.
‘Otto has loyalties beyond the family,’ she said. She knew it was something which troubled Willy. Nevertheless, what could Otto do? He would have stood out, or worse, been ostracized if he had not joined the Hitler Youth along with his friends. The wolves would have devoured him if he had stayed apart. She clutched her handbag in both hands, and her shoulders tensed.
‘Yes, it’s true. Though I may come to regret these reservations I have. I’m as keen as anyone for Germany to regain its rightful place in the world.’ Karl took out his handkerchief to catch a sneeze. ‘Excuse me,’ he said wiping his nose. ‘It’s possibly the right policy, with the wrong leader.’
Hilda was concerned about who might be listening to Karl’s observations, so she moved a few paces from the table. Then for the first time since they arrived at the hotel she spotted her son. With an egg sandwich in his hand, Otto looked lost amid the adults sharing their memories of his father and dipping into political conversations. He approached her.
‘These people, mother, I don’t know many of them.’
She placed her hand on his shoulder. ‘I am not surprised, Otto. Many were your father’s patients. You know how popular he was.’
He raised his arm to remove her hand. ‘Yes, I know.’ He lifted his eyes to hers, seeking her full attention. ‘You saw Herr Eicke? I’m glad he came to show his respects.’
She seized the opportunity to gauge Otto’s view of this enigmatic man. ‘Did you know he was coming to the funeral?’
‘No. But I hoped he would.’
‘Your father did not know him.’ Her voice seemed to carry into the room. She walked to the quiet bay window so that they could talk in greater privacy.
‘Herr Eicke is fun, honestly. He is in the Gestapo, you know. That is his day job. We learn many skills from him and he gives us sweets. He is firm but good to us. He’s a good leader, he really is.’
‘Maybe so Otto, maybe so. However, remember you are the man of the house now. You must study hard at school and make your father proud of you.’
For the time being, Otto had all the conversation he wished to discuss. He nodded to his mother and left to find more juice. Hilda returned to the centre of the room where her in-laws were talking in a circle. They opened the arc to accommodate her.
‘Have you a headstone, Hilda?’ asked Karl’s wife, Renate.
She was on comfortable ground now, not only with the question but also with her dark-haired sister-in-law. She and Karl were a perfect match.
> ‘Yes, I have a grey granite stone. I also have an inscription in mind and in keeping with Willy’s ideals without all the trappings of nationalism and banner-waving.’
Karl turned towards her. ‘Need any help with the wording? If you like, I could lend a hand.’
Renate smiled. ‘That might be a good idea, Hilda.’
Hilda gave a little smile to them both. ‘I already know how it will read.’
‘Really?’ Karl’s eyebrows raised an inch or two. Renate tilted her head to the side, obviously keen to learn more.
Hilda held the floor. ‘It will read: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of His saints.” Then his name, profession and dates of birth and death will appear, leaving enough space for me and Otto to add ours in due course.’
‘I like that, Hilda,’ said Renate, patting her arm.
‘Yes,’ said Karl. ‘Without any flag-waving, as you said.’
She smiled at them. ‘Yes, I’m pleased with it. However, the words are hardly mine.’
Both Karl and Renate appeared perplexed.
‘Then whose fine words are they?’ asked Renate.
Keen to reveal the source, Hilda smiled. ‘The Psalmist. As always, the Psalmist says it perfectly.’
That night Hilda tried to relax after the stress of the funeral. However meeting Gerhardt Eicke filled her with unease. This man, who had control over her son, epitomised the very worst of the bellicose regime which surrounded her.
Chapter 2
The Letter
Widowhood had its highs and lows: on the one hand freedom, on the other loneliness and mild depression. Kind words from former patients did a lot to increase her confidence, but she could not depend on many of them for long-term friendship. In her memory lurked the pain and anguish of being an alien during the last war. If a second war broke out, as many considered inevitable, it would be a war to defeat communism on Germany’s eastern border. There would be no Willy to support her now. As the weeks progressed these thoughts grew more powerful. Her blood was not German and never could be. Yet if it was Scottish, it was certainly diluted.