Agent of Death (42 page)

EPILOGUE

Old Friends:

Eleven years later when the Germans were shriven and forgiven and enrolled on our side in the cold war, Helmut Sohler began a distinguished career in the Bundeswehr Marine. He was only in his early forties and they needed submariners. Huth served with him, and they both rose to high rank.

Helga Karlsson did even better. She went to America and, by 1946, she was a citizen, and a senior test pilot flying prototypes of the F 86
Sabre
fighter. She even flew ‘unofficially’ against Mig 15s in the Korean war, and she had notorious affairs with film stars: women as well as men. She later worked for NASA in the manned space program. But she didn’t come near me again aboard
Saint
Mihiel
, because she was piqued that I’d got her Me 262 off the deck and into the air, when she’d said it couldn’t be done.

The
Freiherr
Erik Manfred von Bloch was not so fortunate. He survived the war but his estates in East Prussia were confiscated by the DDR government and, in 1947, he stood trial for his part in SSA war crimes in Estonia. He was sentenced to fifteen years but served only three days before being killed in a prison brawl that was never explained, despite a claim by the investigative magazine,
Der
Spiegel
, that some of the prison guards had Karoling accents.

Nobody was ever punished for the killing.

Decorations:

One of Stalin’s lackeys must have been unsure what the Boss meant when he said: ‘Make him a Hero of the Soviet Union and a Cavalier of the Order of the Red Banner.’ So it wasn’t just the valiant Colonel Ulitzky that was honoured, but me too.

As I got into the Zis, bound for the airport the morning after I met Stalin, an NKVD officer pushed the medals into my hands. They were in neat black boxes lined with white silk and very nice they are too, in red and white and gold. I’ve still got them and I take them with me when I go to Russia. Since they’re equivalent to the Victoria Cross and a Knighthood, Russians are amazed to see them on a foreigner and, when I explain who gave them to me, then
I’m
amazed how many of them will quietly tell you that Stalin was the best leader they ever had and how much they’d like him back. But they never met him. They’re all too young.

Still, if you wear the medals on your jacket when you go out – as Russians do – then everyone smiles, and they hold up the children for your blessing, and they push you to the front of the queue and you get first class on Aeroflot and the trains, and the best seats in a restaurant. That’s the Russians. They appreciate their veterans.

I got the pension too until Stalin died, at which time the payments stopped. I suppose someone always knew there’d been a mistake, and never dared put it right until the Boss was gone. Before that, I always sent the money to Ulitzky’s wife. I kept in touch generally, and later on brought his grandson and granddaughter across to England, where they’ve settled and are doing very well. They’re Latin and Ballroom dancing stars on TV, both in the US and UK. But they don’t use the name Ulitzky.

Fiesler Fi 103 MT-2:

Urban myths are common in the USA: there’s the one about the truck driver who picked up a young hitchhiker – nice college kid – on a lonely road, dropped him off in the next town, and later learned the kid had been killed a year previously on the same road. Then there’s cannibalism in the Ozarks, the soda clerk with no face, and so on.

One such story says that a German V1 flying bomb crossed the Atlantic and appeared over New York in 1944 and was seen by thousands of people, but the government suppressed all reporting, and said the noise was jack hammers on First Avenue and the aircraft was a midget racer that got lost.

So it’s just another myth, and that’s official.

Uncle Jack
: Professor Sir Jacob Comings, K.C.B.E., O.M., F.R.S., C.G.M., Chev. L. H., D.Phil., B. Sc., Hon. Ph.D. (Heb. Univ. Is.), etcetera:

He never forgave Margaret or me. Not in any family or friendly sense. But he was a sharply intelligent man who could put aside personal views for the greater good, such as trying to prevent London or New York being sprayed with Mem Tav. So, not only did he refrain from using his very considerable influence against me, but furthered by all means my career in the military and intelligence field. I suppose he appreciated my odd talents and saw me as a useful tool to have in the box.

I equally suppose that I have him to blame for some of the bloody awful things I’ve seen and done, and the double-bloody awful places I’ve seen and done them in. So perhaps he was taking revenge after all? I don’t know.

In addition, I think he has stood behind me secretly on countless occasions causing classified information to be placed into my hands. To close this book, I add one such gem, received by me in 1952 and declassified only in 2015. Please note that the estimated molecular structure of Mem Tav was blacked out before the document was ever sent to me.

MinDef doc C/R 45.67.9888. 13/7/52.

PortDown SpecOps Unit 23

Clearance Level AAA/1* Numbered copy: 3 of 5

No further copies to be made.

This copy
MUST
be stored in a MinDef Cabinet (type 9) allowing instant destruction.

Mem Tav LCt50:  L. Jones Report

‘LCt 50’ is the standard measurement of gas toxicity. It is the concentration of a gas (in milligrammes per minute, per cubic metre of air breathed) that would kill approximately 50% of men exposed to the gas. The smaller the LCt50, the more deadly the gas.

Chlorine

As the pure element,

LCt 50 =19,000

Phosgene

carbonyl chloride,

LCt 50 = 3,200

‘
Lewisite’
Mustard Gas

dichloro (2-chlorovinyl) arsine,

LCt 50 = 1,000

‘
Sarin’
Nerve gas

isopropyl methyl phosphonofluoridate,

LCt 50 = 70

‘
VX’
Nerve gas

O-ethyl-S (2-iisopropylaminoethyl)

methyl phosphonothiolate,

LCt 50 = 10

‘
Mem
Tav’

See below for estimated molecular structure, believed

to have a molecular weight of c. 200

LCt 50 = 0.0000000000000000000000003

Mem Tav Estimated Molecular structure

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