Handbook for Spies

by Foote Alexander

Late in February 1947 I left Sehjodnya and returned to Moscow. Here I was put through an intensive interrogation by the Political Department of the Centre in a last final check-up of my political reliability. All was apparently well, and I passed this, my final examination at the hands of the Russians, with flying colours.

There was one final banquet for me at which the director, Victor, and the chief political instructor of the Centre were present, and then one morning early in March I left Moscow for the airport and Berlin. I was travelling this time as Major Granatoff and was accompanied by a courier whose job was to steer me through the controls and customs in Moscow and Berlin and to ensure that all was done with the minimum of publicity.

As I flew over the endless, dreary wastes of Russia, at last travelling westward for the first time for over two years, I comforted myself with the thought that I had at least left the frying pan and was within measurable distance of being out of the fire. Unless unforeseen circumstances prevented it, or I bungled things at the last moment, there now seemed every chance that shortly I should be able to cut myself loose from the Centre forever.

BERLIN AND FREEDOM

A copy of Foote's false German passport with a photograph

It seemed reasonable to hope, after all the discussions and delays in Moscow regarding my assignment abroad, that when I finally arrived in Berlin something might have been done to enable me to take up my new role at once. Such hope was, however, in vain. The inefficiency of the Russian Intelligence Service in matters of detail and administration was a perpetual source of amazement to me. It would seem impossible to an ordinary person that a service run on such inefficient lines could ever achieve any results. Any ordinary intelligence service would have fiddled itself into inanition long ago. That the Red Army Intelligence continues to function and to function efficiently is due, I feel, far more to the efficiency of its agents and organisers in the field and to the facilities offered by the local Communist parties than to the driving and organising power of the Centre.

I was met at the Berlin airport by a Captain Smirnov, the Berlin representative of the Centre, who stated that though he had received instructions that I was to adopt the role of Albert Mueller at once he frankly had not the first idea of how to set about it. The Centre had stipulated, for obvious security reasons, that there must be no trace of Soviet help in obtaining my documentation, as this might be checked up by a future German government. Poor Smirnov did not know even how to begin on such a task. As a result I was given a flat at Grellen - strasse 12, in the Soviet Zone of Berlin, and lived there in my role as Major Granatoff.

After a series of talks with Smirnov, who could not have been pleasanter and could not possibly have had less idea how to set about things, it was obvious that if ever I was to get papers at all I would have to set about doing it myself. I therefore started off on the long and wearisome process of getting myself documented with no assistance, official or unofficial. For anyone trying to do the same thing in Berlin I can give the only two infallible ingredients for success: endless patience and an inexhaustible supply of cigarettes. With these two assets anything can be done in Berlin - in time.

My only documentary asset was a certificate of release as a prisoner of war which Smirnov did manage to supply. Each morning I started off on my tour of the municipal offices in the Soviet Zone and by the time I had achieved my object I had interviewed most of the officials in the burgermeister's office, the Housing Office, the Labour Exchange, the Food Office, the Health Office, and of course the police. I had to get documents not only to prove that I was Albert Mueller but also to allow me to live in Berlin. The former was a great deal easier than the latter as Berlin was grossly overcrowded and many genuine Berliners who had been evacuated during the war were clamouring to come back, and they obviously had far more right to live there than did Mueller, a former resident of Riga. By design both Riga and my later notional domicile, Koenigsberg, were in Russian hands, and the archives of the Wehrmacht, which would have shown a significant absence of any mention of Albert Mueller late of a transport command, were also in the hands of the Allies and not available to the German authorities.