In the meantime I received further news from Hamel through the "fellow-travelling" warder in the jail. Hamel had been told by his interrogators that there was another transmitter working in Lausanne and that a posse of army technicians had been sent out to track it down.
I informed the Centre of this and was told that Lucy's information was still so vital that I must risk everything and continue to transmit. In the meantime, until other transmitters were available and I was able to move my residence, I was to send no information at all save for Lucy's material.
At this time I was seeing Rado twice weekly- or as near as we could make it, having regard to his fears and to my other appointments. The only point of these meetings was for Rado to pass on Lucy's material and any messages he might have about the reconstruction of the network. At our rendezvous we used to check up carefully to see whether we were being followed and this paid good dividends. On one occasion towards the end of October we had arranged to meet just inside the Pare d'Eaux Vives in Geneva. Rado arrived by taxi and entered the park. I noticed that the driver of the cab, as soon as he had been paid, drove off but stopped almost at once at a telephone kiosk into which he hurriedly shut himself. I told Rado and we decided at once that, trivial as the incident might be, we had better play for safety and we left the park at once by separate gates. We went just in time. I learnt later that the police had circulated a photograph of Rado to all cab drivers in Geneva. The driver in question had recognised his fare and rung up police headquarters. A hurry call had been sent out to the various squad cars prowling round the town and they covered all the exits. But they were too late, for Rado and I had left and arranged a somewhat less disturbed rendezvous elsewhere.
This little incident put the finishing touch to Rado's fears. From that time on it was impossible to lure him out of his hidey-hole with the local Communist Party. In fact he remained underground until he left the country a year later, and took virtually no further part in the network. His nerve had been going for some time. Small blame to him as he had been working under a strain for many years. This strain had been increased by the fortuitous addition, through the accident of war, of a number of other networks to his own. He had coped manfully with the dribs and drabs of heterogeneous networks thrown at his head and succeeded up to a point and for some time. I prefer to remember him at the height of his power as the genial cartographer to the world at large, and the successful spymaster to the favoured few, rather than as the hunted rat of his last Swiss days or the frightened, broken man of Paris and Cairo. Only the Centre knows his fate. He certainly cheated many out of their just dues, but equally he drove them to obtain the best results. He had been faithful to his masters- after his fashion.
To make matters worse, at that time the network was very short of money. Our cash reserves were down to five thousand dollars. Rado himself was completely broke and in addition had borrowed five thousand dollars from the local Communist Party and a further five thousand from Pakbo. At that time the network was costing some ten thousand dollars a month in salaries and expenses alone- quite apart from extras such as bonuses. To make financial matters worse, the director had authorised me to spend ten thousand dollars to finance a plan for the escape of the Hamels and Bolli from prison. This sum was needed as a bribe to the "fellow-traveller" warder and his colleagues. The director set great store by this plan as he was apprehensive lest Bolli, the least experienced of the three, should break down under interrogation. She knew Pakbo's and my real names and, of course, a great deal about Rado. The Hamels were not so important as they knew the names of none of the network save that of Jean Beau- champ, who had recruited them, though they knew Rado and me by sight.
I need not have worried unduly about the financial side, as matters were swiftly taken out of my hands. On the night of November 19/20 I contacted Moscow at the scheduled time, which was then half past midnight. I passed over a short message to them and then began taking down a long message which they had for me.
Three quarters of an hour later there was a splintering crash and my room was filled with police. At one-fifteen in the morning of November 20 the "doctors" took the matter into their own hands. I was arrested and the last link between the Centre and Switzerland was broken.
"HOSPITAL" AND AFTER
The arrest did not go quite according to plan, and as a result I was able to save something from the wreck. The door was meant to give at once under the axe and fly open so that I could be caught in the act. In fact the lock did not give and it was the doorframe itself which went. As a result there were about three minutes while the police were prising their way in, which breathing space I put to good use. I managed to put my set out of commission and burn the few documents I had in a large brass ash tray which I kept handy for the purpose. The conflagration was helped by the judicious addition of lighter fuel from a handy bottle- also kept for just such an emergency.
My first reaction to this somewhat unceremonious entry was that it was the Abwehr who had arrived, and the notion was not dispelled by the first remark made by the uniformed figures who poured in. A voice shouted "Hande Hoch!", and the comment was emphasised by a most pointed demonstration with an automatic pistol. A second glance reassured me that I was still in the hands of the democracies.