Handbook for Spies

by Foote Alexander

The original intention had been that I should return to Spain- though not as a fighting member of the I. B. The Party had decided that I was a suitable person to run a Red Cross truck which was to go to Spain from England at regular intervals, carrying medical supplies and comforts. This part of the assignment was highly respectable. The organisation which ran the service was non-Communist and the funds were raised by public subscription. This was to be only my "cover." My real job was to have been as a courier between King Street (the headquarters, then as now, of the British Communist Party) and the Communist command of the British Battalion of the brigade. I was also to have acted as a passeur for unauthorised persons who wished to enter Spain (it will be remembered that by this time non-intervention was in full swing and frontier control had been tightened up) and as a smuggler of unauthorised goods. I was also to ensure that the lion's share of the goods in my truck went to the politically enlightened. This job, however, fell through.

To this day I do not know whether it in fact ever existed or whether it was merely put up to me to see my reactions to employment which was, to say the least, not quite what it seemed and definitely illegal Party work. Whether the offer was genuine or not does not really matter. The job was stillborn and that particular move in the undercover game of chess was over. It was Red's turn to move again and another pawn was put out temptingly. I accepted the move and the real game began.

After the Congress in Birmingham and a few days' leave, I returned to London and reported to King Street to discuss the Red Cross job. I was there met by Fred Copeman, who told me that the whole project had fallen through. Fred was an old friend, as he had been at one time commander of the British Battalion of the I. B. He invited me to his flat in Lewisham for a meal with him and his wife. After supper the next move was made.

"Springhall has been asked to recommend someone for an assignment. We have discussed various people and think that you might fit the bill. I know nothing about the assignment save that it will be abroad and will be very dangerous. "

I think that was all Fred Copeman did in fact know. He was in this case merely acting as the mouthpiece for Springhall. Though the latter remained in the background, his role as talent spotter and recruiter was clear. I always- and events have so far not proved me wrong-regarded him as the contact man for the Red Army in the British Communist Party. Gossip in Spain went so far as to state that he had held Red Army rank in his time. As far as his part in my recruitment went, I know no more than I have already stated. As any reader of the newspapers will remember, Springhall was later tried and convicted for a similar offence during the war. Fred Copeman's part in these preliminary flirtations was obscure. He was, I believe, merely on the fringe of the Soviet net and was used by Springhall and the others as an innocent cover for their contact work. Certainly my subsequent questioning of him seemed to show that he was as much in the dark as I was. Later, of course, Cope- man split with the Party and joined the Oxford Group.

Despite the vagueness of the offer I jumped at it. Looking back on the whole affair in cold blood, it is a little difficult to understand why I should have accepted such an assignment with no notion that I was working for or for what purpose. If someone had told me at the time that after six months at the work I should still have no idea as to the identity of my masters, I should have laughed at them. But such is in fact the case, and I think that many of those who were on the fringes of, for example, the Canadian case must have found themselves in a similar predicament.

However, I soon realised that the work for which I was destined was illegal, and very soon afterwards it became clear to me that I was ultimately intended for espionage work. It was soon apparent that I could not be working for the British Communist Party. I thought that perhaps I was working for the German Communist Party (K. P. D. ) or perhaps for the Comintern (as regards the inner workings of the latter I knew little more than did the average reader of the papers). But here I am slightly outrunning events. I may ultimately have been a good spy, but as regards my early career I was certainly an innocent abroad.

After my acceptance of the offer Copeman told me to go to an address in St. John's Wood. There I went one fine October morning and duly found myself inside the flat with the green door.

I have already related the instructions that I received there. They were not illuminating, and I learned no thin, much more from the respectable housewife with a slight foreign accent who interviewed me. Her name I never knew for certain, though I have my own ideas on the subject. She was certainly friendly with, if not actually related to, my contact and spy master, or rather spy mistress, in Switzerland. Our business was done with briskness and despatch. I do not suppose that I was in the house more than ten minutes. I was dealt with by the lady of the house as briskly and impersonally as she would have engaged a housemaid.

Apart from the directions as to where I was to go, I also received a few further instructions to enable me to make contact with the person who was to deal with me in the future. I was to present myself outside the General Post Office in Geneva. (A favourite rendezvous, as a G. P. O. is easily found and provides an admirable excuse for loitering. ) I was to be wearing a white scarf and to be holding in my right hand a leather belt. As the clock struck noon I would be approached by a woman carrying a string shopping bag containing a green parcel, and holding an orange in her hand. One would have though: that this would have been sufficient to enable anyone to contact anyone, even an unknown, in the middle of a Swiss street. But to avoid any possibility of error the whole rendezvous was made even more precise. The woman would ask me, in English, where I had bought the belt; and I was to reply that I had bought it in an ironmonger's shop in Paris. Then I was to ask her where I could buy an orange like hers, and she was to say that I could have hers for an English penny. Hardly sparkling dialogue, but sufficient to ensure that the meeting was foolproof and an example of the usual thoroughness of my employers. For a similar type of rendezvous I refer the reader to the details of the contact which Professor Nunn May was to make with an unknown outside the British Museum. The technique and indeed the choice of locale are exactly parallel.