In September 1943 a second memo was sent from Istanbul to the Plead of London Special Operations Executive by a Major Robert Dugdale: CONFIDENTIAL/POE/236/9WOLP.
Am becoming concerned Operative Frisby. Very keen, good Turkish, but playing too close to the wicket. Keeping dangerous company. His contacts excellent, but drinks and gambles to excess, and in lowest places. Is attracting attention. Toby S has turned up — a true cowboy who treats Istanbul like a playground. Bad influence on de Vere. S’s pet protégé, Salak, is also concerning me. He plays poker for high stakes with S and de Vere, and both come to me with complaints that they need money. We have paid out rather more than ten thousand plus in less than a week. De Vere promises to repay it, but the Turk could become troublesome. There is too much skullduggery going on in this city, as it is. T S promises to behave himself, though I strongly suggest that if the situation continues, de Vere should be transferred. He is too open to blackmail. I also suspect that he has information which he is not divulging to higher authority.
The reply had come five days later: CONFIDENTIAL/POE/ 942/9DARG.
Contents of 236/9WOLP noted. Suggest if your concern continues, Operative should be transferred. TS’s loyalty cannot be questioned without definite proof. But keep careful tabs on the Turk. Must leave you to be the best judge of this. Am meanwhile arranging for de Vere to take a working vacation in Cairo where he will be subjected to vetting.
The next reference to Rupert de Vere Frisby was that he had been posted to the Consular Service in Vera Cruz, Mexico. There was no trace of his Vacation in Cairo, and of what he might, or might not, have told his masters in the Political Operations Executive.
But there was a further file on Imin Salak. It was dated early 1944, after Frisby’s departure, and written by a certain D. S. Frobisher, Commercial Attaché to the Istanbul Consulate: TOP SECRET. POE CAIRO. LE/942/WOLP.
This is to confirm that I am authorized to pay Imin Salak, a Turkish National, Resident of Istanbul, an increase of two hundred pounds sterling (£200) per month for his services to the British Government. His only contact is to be Major T. Shanklin. Any additional payments must be sanctioned by POE. The agent’s duties are to keep detailed observation of all vessels entering and leaving Istanbul. Ends.
Hawn ran a further check. Major Dugdale had been transferred himself three months earlier to France. So Salak seemed to have won the day — with the help of Toby Shanklin.
Anna had extended her holiday from the London School of Economics and was spending most of her waking hours working through piles of Photostatted documents, files from the LSE and the Petroleum Institute Library, and reference books from the British Museum.
Hawn had meanwhile restricted himself to reading all the standard books on the Second World War — trying to find anything that gave a clear indication of how the Germans had solved their fuel problem.
He was struck at once by two things. Firstly, the subject of oil was rarely mentioned, except in passing, and never as a major factor in the conduct of the war. The second was that the two men whom he would have expected to have been most concerned with this subject did not merely ignore it — they made light of it. The first was Albert Speer; the second, Adolf Hitler.
Speer’s memoirs were so detailed, so disarmingly frank, that Hawn was left with the strong impression that the former Minister of War Production was not covering up — it was simply that there were things he had not known about, but which, being a vain man, he was not prepared to admit. And if Mönch had been telling the truth, and a secret operation had been set up, independent of Speer’s Ministry, and under the code name ‘Bettina’, Speer might well not have heard of it.
But what of Hitler? Of all the books through which Hawn laboured the one author who diverted him most was Hitler, in his Table Talk 1341-43. This proved a fascinating and bizarre chronicle. Almost every night, and often deep into the morning — in the Spartan comfort of Berschesgaden, or the grey claustrophobia of the bunker — the Führer would hold forth. His select captive audience would range from the most powerful and deadly men in his empire, to long-suffering generals back from the Front, or hapless visitors like the head of the Danish SS Viking Division.
Hitler spared none of them. He talked about anything, everything, which captured his whim. To the Danish lapdog he talked at length about the ‘brutal and savage nature of women’; then his views on English public schools and the British monarchy — the former of which he deplored, and the latter admired — to his copious views on music. ‘The English like music,’ he announced: ‘unfortunately music does not like the English.’ At which his obedient guests fell about with laughter.
But perhaps the worst affliction of these dinners was the fact that no one was allowed to drink or smoke; and battle-weary veterans would constantly excuse themselves to go to the lavatory for a quick puff and a pull at their hipflasks.
