They were, however, singularly unsuccessful. The life of a Soviet agent leaves little time for romance. My day was far too full with contacting my sources, coding, decoding, and transmitting, for me to have any time for amorous dalliance. Any spare time I had I spent in a vain attempt to catch up on my arrears of sleep. I was also not such a fool as to meet my contacts in my flat, so that this little effort was almost useless from Lorenz's, or rather the Abwehr's, point of view. Not quite, however, as they obviously now knew my address and name as well as having my photograph.
Previously Lorenz had made one other effort to get me out of the way. After my arrest I learnt that the Swiss police had received a denunciation from the French Consulate General in July. The denunciation, as my name was then unknown to Lorenz, merely consisted of my photograph with a statement that the original of the photograph was an important Soviet spy who was working a radio transmitter from Lausanne. The police took no notice of this as they received hundreds of such denunciations each day, and it was only later that they connected this up with Rado and his network. This denunciation had obviously come from Lorenz, since only he had my photograph and he also had good connections with the French Deuxieme Bureau. The reason why Lorenz was anxious for me to be arrested by the Swiss, and only in the last resort by the Germans, was obvious. It arose from no nice feelings about shedding blood, but from a very lively sense of self-preservation. Not only was he being financed by the Abwehr but also he had been receiving large sums of money from me- none of which he had thought fit to declare to the Germans. Also he knew that if I were arrested I could give a fairly- complete picture of his past (which I had learnt from Moscow before I first contacted him), which details he was not anxious for the Germans to know. Over and above this he was living in Switzerland on Swiss papers and wished to go on living there after the war- a war which at that time he could see it was unlikely that Germany would win. It was therefore in his interest to keep his hands as clean as possible and get me safely shut up in a Swiss prison where I could do him no harm; but this must be arranged in such a way that he was kept out of it, or there might be awkward questions as to how exactly he knew all the facts. Hence the anonymous denunciation via the French.
After these efforts in the summer of 1943 Lorenz and Laura faded out of the story. I ascertained after my release that they were still living in their villa and for all I know may still be doing so. When in Moscow I was told that an N.K.V.D. man was being sent to Switzerland who would have, inter alia, the task of interviewing them. I can only hope that they enjoyed it and are still in a position to enjoy their handsome villa and their luxurious mode of life. I somehow think it unlikely that they are still in the net in the espionage sense of the word. If they returned to Russia the net would be more likely to have a literal rather than literary connotation with a strong flavour of labour camp about it.
I informed Moscow of this visit by Lorenz and Laura, and they replied that I must at once move and set up somewhere else in Switzerland. Easier said than done, as at that time I was again in constant radio touch with the Centre and to find another place and to get police permission to move there would take a very long time.
The reason for my daily contact with the Centre was that I was ordered to renew my contact with Rado. He also had been having Abwehr trouble and was anticipating more. In his case it had been partially sheer bad luck. One day in a restaurant he had come face to face with a former Soviet agent who before the war had gone over to the Germans. The agent recognised him and after this Rado believed that he was being watched by the Abwehr. He said that he thought that Margarete Bolli ("Rosie") was being watched also, and he had therefore taken her transmitter away for the moment. He gave no reason for Rosie's having fallen under suspicion and it was only later that I learnt that he had been committing one of the major espionage sins of mixing business with pleasure and had been having an affair with Rosie and that she had been in the restaurant with him when he was spotted.
Another cause for disquiet was that, during the time I had severed contact with Rado, two persons had gone to see Cissie (Rachel Duebendorfer, one of Rado's principal cut-outs), stating that they came from me, and had given both my real and my cover name, Jim. The latter meant nothing to Cissie as she did not know it and anyway we had never met- though we knew of each other's existence. She refused to have anything to do with them and stated that she had never heard of anybody called Foote, and "Jim" conveyed less than nothing to her. I can only assume that this was yet another attempt by the Abwehr to get into the network. Cissie was an old hand at the game, so they may have got her name as a result of interrogations of other captured agents elsewhere.
The Abwehr were not slow to take advantage of the lead given them by the accidental encounter of the traitor Soviet spy with Rado. They decided that Rosie was probably easier game and so concentrated their efforts on her. A handsome blond Aryan Abwehr agent, one Hans Peters, was put on the job. He managed "accidentally" to scrape an acquaintance with the girl and the acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship and more. Time lay heavy on her hands during the day, as she had nothing to do save transmit several nights a week, so she was not averse to having an attentive youth at her beck and call. He was able to take her out and give her a good time; and the Abwehr were not averse to paying for it.
In view of the recognition of Rado and the Cissie incident, Rado and I agreed to limit our contact to the minimum and meet only under cover of darkness. He also contacted the Swiss Communist Party and asked them to have hiding places ready for us if it became necessary for the organisation to go underground. From this time, the end of September, things moved swiftly forward to a crisis.
THE "DOCTORS" DECIDE
The position then, at the end of September 1943, in the "cold war" between the Abwehr and ourselves showed a marked improvement in the Abwehr's score. They had made appreciable progress in their investigations into the network. They knew my name and address and that I was running a network and a transmitter in Lausanne. They knew Rado's name and address and had an agent well in with one of his organisation. They knew that Cissie had something to do with the network. They did not know of any connection between Rado and me.