Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1941-07-25

ports to cover my sojourn in
England. There was a Dutch
passport in the name Of Ger
hart Smett, which l was 10
use for entry and for registra-
ton with the London police.
A Norwegian passport in the
name of Alison Peterson was
TO serve as my Identification
for the British Communist
Party.
l kept in reserve an Ameri-
can passport, originally issued
TO one Kurt Peter. TO be used
only in an emergency or for
sudden flight from arrest. The
description in all of these
passports fitted me perfectly.
The only items which had
been changed were the photo
graphs and the bearers Sig
nature.
In addition, I carried bust
ness credentials introducing
me as the representative of a
wholesale fish merchant in
Rotterdam. The fish merchant
actually existed; he was paid
to acknowledge this letten of
recommendation in case of an
inquiry. All these documents
were issued by the Comintern
counterfeiting center, which
had its offices in Berlin
SW6S-72 Lindenstrasse.
Taking the plane for Croy-
don from Hamburg Fuhlsbuet-
tel, I carried only the Dutch
passport and the fish mer-
chants letter. The other pass
ports, addresses and the
Comintern credentials were
then brought to me by two
maritime couriers who han
died our secret communica-
tons to and from England.
Both were engineers serving'
on the British weekly boats
Teal and Lapwing.
l babe Firelei farewell and
flew to London on a crystal
clear day. The examination
at Croydon caused me some
uneasy moments. Passport
officers on duty perused every
page Of my Dutch passport.
Then they began to thumb
leisurely through their suspect
list. A few questions fol-
lowed. / passe A bus
brought me into London.
MEETS COMMUNIST LEADEI
/ met Harry Pollitt, Com
munist leader of Great Brit
ain. at the Bras erie
Universelle in the Piccadilly
district. He was a handsome,
well-built and eleg y
attired man in his late thirties,
an excellent and tireleSs
talker. with q very high
opinion of his own abilities.
He received me with a
forced joviality which gave me
the impression that he looked
with hidden disfavor on my
presence in London.
Something In rotten In
Denmark" / thought. "Com-
rade Pollitt must not be per-
mitted to obscure the facts"
From the first we were
enemies. Pollitt's resentment
was sugar-coated. To him L
was an ignorant interloper in
British affairs. But no one in
any Communist Party dares
openly to question the au-
thority of "the man from
Moscow"
When Pollitt offered me
quarters with a Communist
family, I declined. The nature
of the business ! had come TO
do was unpleasant. The hazard
of residing at an address
known to functionarieS Sus-
pected of corruption was
obvious.
/ also declined to make use
of a girl secretary Pollitt Of
fered to assign to me. l was
quite certain that she would
be a spy Of the central COM
mittee.
"She's a good-loolSing chit"
Pollitt tempted.
Don't bother" I said. I'll
have my own apparat."
The British Party chief
seemed to sniff the air eau
tiously. He thought 1 was a
Russian.
I took lodgings in one of
the innumerable boarding
houses around Euston Station.
Then 1 proceeded TO gather a
nucleus of reliable assistants
whose names and addresses
had been transmitted, with
other material. by the courier
aboard the Teal.
My aides were Joe keenan,,
a hard-boiled little Australian
and a veteran of many Comm
tern enterprises; Red" Nc
Grath, the lanky New
Zealander with whom / had
co-operated in Antwerp in the
years following the Hamburg
instruction of 1923; Patrick
Murphy, one of the few hard
drinking, hard-fighting Irish
men in the GPU service, and
a girl namel Cilly.
CILLY Is GERMAN
Cilly was young and tall
and dark. coldly independent