Hitler's Lost Spy by Greg Clancy Read Free Book Online Page B

1939  until February 1940 when she boarded the MV Gorgon to return to Madagascar and her husband, little is known of Annette. She did not return to the radio, but may have written and produced programs for others. It is quite possible, perhaps even probable, that Annette had belatedly realised the game was up. Surveillance on her by security agents had been intense: her movements were observed, her visitors noted, her phone tapped, her mail intercepted and her associates monitored. By October 1938 her façade was under suspicion and the near-perfect cover she had successfully developed since arriving in Australia had been severely compromised –  without her being aware of it.
    Annette’s Finances
    Relocating to a foreign country usually incurs obligations  – the most obvious being financial. This may be satisfied from funds brought into the country, employment, or remittances from overseas. Annette was the recipient of all three. Her income from radio, while presumably at the outset not substantial, had been supplemented, she said, by regular payments from the estate of a late relative.
    Annette had also arrived in Australia with 150 British Pounds, equivalent to about 6,750 pounds today, or about 11,000 Australian dollars. These estimates are calculated on the currency indexes 1939–2014. Her cousin, Gertrude Ridgley, who ‘adopted’ Annette, passed away in 1932, leaving in her will 100 pounds to Annette (the will referred to ‘Anne Schneider’), payable after the death of her husband, Harold Ridgley. He passed away in 1937 when Annette was living in Madagascar, but in his will she is not mentioned. The money may have been transferred to her at any time following the death of Gertrude, or possibly not at all.
    Annette received regular payments to the credit of her account with the Commonwealth Bank, and these present a mystery. Her parents had both passed away and it would be highly unusual for beneficiaries of estates who are not immediate family members to receive regular cash payments. Estates need to be wound up, not complicated and drawn out by periodical payments to a beneficiary who is not a direct family member. It is highly likely that the payments she received did not derive from a personal estate. However, a successful investigation to determine the source of the funds would have been very difficult to achieve.
    In 1939 a detailed search of the payments to Annette would probably yield no more than the bank from which the payment was arranged and the name of the payer –  who could be anyone or any organisation. In this situation, a foreign spy payment plan would rank as more than a possibility.
    German intelligence organisations established bank accounts outside Germany for the purpose of paying their international spies. The ‘friendly’ neutral countries in Europe were often used to ‘launder’ the payments to agents abroad. An account at a Swiss bank, for example, could remit funds to Annette without suspicion. Any detailed examination of the transactions would have been protected by the bank’s secrecy rules, and Annette’s personal Swiss connection could be argued as a legitimate reason to justify the payments’ origin.
    Therefore, the most likely source of the funds Annette received would not be an estate, but a bank account controlled from within an intelligence branch in Berlin. Annette’s financial support from her German employer was immune from exposure. Other features of her espionage activities in Australia did not carry that same level of protection. The spy industry is as imperfect as any other, and Annette, although talented and proficient, was not an exception.
    Annette’s Typhoid Fever – A Convenient Condition?
    In the process of attempting to lay bare Annette’s undercover façade, a useful tool would, at first sight, be to examine her assertion that she was confined to a hospital in Madagascar for