COMMUNICATION NOTED: June 20, 1940. June 4, 1940. by cable via Washington to Wilde, Thomas, Cambridge, England. TOM. JUST HEARD. CONGRATULATIONS ON THE ADDITION. I KNEW YOU HAD IT IN YOU. LOVE TO LYDIA AND JOHNNY. JIM

COMMUNICATION INTERCEPT: January 4, 1941. by letter via Washington to Wilde, Thomas (see separate file), professor of history, Cambridge, England. CONTENTS UNKNOWN.

And so it went on. The communications were all stamped and signed as read with the Sicherheitsdienst Berlin heading on each file. They were all either ‘contents unknown’ or the banal chatter of one friend to another. What made them different was, firstly, the intimacy of the subjects and, secondly, the discovery that there was a separate file held on Thomas Wilde.

He would like to see this file, but could only do so with Spahn’s asistance. However, the very fact that there was a separate file on Professor Wilde told a story in itself; Kalt was sure that the SD did not, as a rule, keep tabs on innocent university professors in foreign lands.

*

An hour and a half later, Spahn returned with two coffees.

‘Still working, old friend?’

‘You have a lot of papers here.’

‘Oh, you know, we have to be thorough. Have you found what you are looking for?’

‘I believe I have, Horst.’

‘Good. Well, I am most pleased to have been of assistance. Now then, how about another little Schnapps with our coffee, eh?’

‘You know me too well, Horst.’

They sat drinking and chatting about old times back in the 1920s and the fun they’d had beating up Communists and Jews.

‘Ah, those were the days, Otto. What times we had!’

‘All washed down with foaming steins of wheat beer.’

‘So give me a little clue, what exactly have you discovered in our valuable files?’

‘A name. I can say no more.’

‘An American?’

Kalt did not like this one bit. He was not dumb; he knew when he was being interrogated. He grimaced at Spahn.

‘You will get me shot!’

‘But an American man, yes? You owe me that little clue, surely.’

Kalt tapped his nose. ‘Please, Horst, you know I can tell you nothing.’

‘But Otto, we are on the same side!’ Spahn told the lie with practised ease. No one was on Bormann’s side. He shrugged. ‘Oh well, old friend, I must admire you for your loyalty to your master.’

After Kalt had left, Spahn went through the file. He knew from Kalt’s reaction that he was looking for an American, but of course there were many of those because James Vanderberg was in continuous contact with the State Department in Washington.

One name, however, stood out to him, just as it must have done to Kalt: a professor of history named Thomas Wilde, from Cambridge University in England. There had been letters and telegrams to America, before these avenues of communication had been shut down.