Peter followed the path through the woods and soon arrived at a frozen lake. He walked around the perimeter under the snow-covered trees. In the quiet of the winter morning, Peter soon relaxed and lost himself in speculation about the Soviet source of intelligence. The source must have a contact in Stockholm and, if Peter could get exclusive access to this material, MI5 might be able to hunt down the Soviet moles in their services.
Peter followed the track around the lake near several summer cottages locked up for the season. Suddenly, out of the woods appeared two men in trench coats and trilby hats. One of the men was armed with a Suomi submachine gun.
“Mr Faye, this way please,” the man said.
“Hello,” Peter managed.
“Good day to you, sir,” the second man said. “We’re going north. Our car is parked nearby.”
Peter followed the two men through the woods to their car. They got in and drove away. The driver turned to address Peter in the back seat.
“Mr Faye, I’m Mads, this is Hendrik.”
“You are Finns, right?” Peter asked.
“Yes, sir. We’re from Helsinki. We should arrive in about ten minutes.”
The British Legation car returned to Stockholm with Bernie and Saarson. Off the road, two cars hidden in a copse of trees observed them drive by. A moment later, the first car driven by Evdokia Petrov drove back onto the highway going towards Kapellskar, followed by a second car with three NKVD men on board.
Evdokia drove slowly, looking for a turnoff or track into the woods. She stopped several times to look for traces in the snow left by the British Legation car. After a while, she pulled over near a snowy forest track and got out. She examined some fresh footprints in the snow, heading off into the woods and went to talk to the agents in the second car.
Mads and Hendrik headed north and brought Peter to a rambling old cottage with a red tile roof overlooking the Baltic Sea. They climbed out of the car and followed Peter up the steps to the house.
An older and strikingly handsome man stepped out of the cottage. He wore the uniform of a senior officer in the Finnish army. He fixed Peter with a penetrating gaze.
“You must be Mr Faye from the British Legation. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
“The pleasure is mine.”
“I am Colonel Reino Hallamaa, Mr Faye. I’m in charge of Finnish radio intelligence in my country. RTK, Radio interception and cryptanalysis. You’ve met my adjutants, Mads and Hendrik.”
“Why the subterfuge, Colonel?” Peter asked.
“We are Finns and friends of Sweden, but we have many enemies here. I believe your Estonian friend had a run-in with the NKVD recently. We are at war with the Soviets.”
“And the British, I might add.”
“Yes, but we never wanted war with Britain. It was only because you were allied to the Soviets that you had to declare war on Finland.”
“We tried to help you during the Winter War in ‘39 with our French allies, but if I remember correctly, Sweden wouldn’t allow our troops to cross their territory.”
“A very sad story. Let’s go for a walk. Then we will have a nice meal here before my men take you back to Stockholm.”
Peter waited a moment as the colonel entered the rustic cottage to fetch his coat. There was a log burning in the fireplace and the room had an excellent view of the sea and a dock jutting out into the water.
Peter remembered the Winter War, which began on November 30, 1939, when the Soviets invaded Finland. On December 14, the League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from the organization.
The Finns put up a vigorous defence of their country against impossible odds. The Soviet Union had three times as many soldiers, thirty times as many aircraft, and a hundred times as many tanks. The Red Army, however, was ill-equipped for a winter war, both in regard to their clothing and their vehicles which couldn’t cope with the cold. They were obliged to fight on a small front since large parts of the border were impassible. The Finns attacked the Soviet convoys on the roads by using their knowledge of the terrain to get behind them, blocking their retreat. So the Soviets had to dig in and were often surrounded.
There was an outpouring of support for Finland across Europe. A Franco-British expeditionary force was organized with a plan to disembark at the Norwegian port of Narvik and proceed by rail toward Finland, passing through the Swedish iron ore fields on the way. The request to travel across Norway and Sweden was sent to the government authorities on January 6, 1940, but was rejected six days later when Germany threatened to invade Sweden to protect its access to Swedish iron ore.
After several months of desperate battles, Finnish resistance collapsed and a peace treaty was signed with Moscow in March 1940. The Finns were forced to give up a large swath of land in the Karelian Isthmus, including Finland’s second largest city Viipuri: approximately 11% of their territory.
Colonel Hallamaa and Peter walked along the snow-covered beach near the grey and forbidding Baltic Sea. Breaking waves crashed among the ice floes, creating a thunderous noise.
“We have made our peace with the United States and we will soon do the same with Britain. Germany has been helping us with our war against the Soviets, but that is coming to an end.”
“Aren’t you negotiating a peace treaty with the Soviets?” Peter asked.
“There have been some discussions, but there can never be peace with Stalin. We will need your help to stand up to Stalin.”
“I am not sure what help we can give you. The war has been a disaster for everyone.”
Colonel Hallamaa pointed towards the horizon.
“You can just see Finland from here. See those clouds over there? Those are the Aland Islands, a distance of about sixty kilometres. They’re an autonomous state under Finnish control.”
Peter could just barely see the islands shrouded in mist.
“Mr Faye, I believe you are looking for moles in your intelligence services?” Hallamaa asked.
“Yes, we are. London was impressed with your Soviet-sourced material.”
“Of course they were. Your intelligence service is riddled with Soviet spies. The GRU collects intelligence daily from numerous sources in Britain.”
“The GRU has sources at the very highest levels of the British government, Mr Hallamaa,” Peter said. “This is causing great concern within our intelligence services.”
“I remember you British have a saying when things are going terribly wrong. You say: ‘Let’s close it down and start from scratch’,” Hallamaa said, grinning at Peter. “That would be my advice to you, start from scratch. Your intelligence service is hopelessly compromised.”
“I’m not sure our government would agree with that.”
“Your plans for an atomic bomb are now well known, so you can be sure that the GRU will redouble its efforts for nuclear intelligence both in England and in America.”
Peter was astonished by the depth of the colonel’s knowledge.
“Finnish code-breakers have broken Soviet military and NKVD cipher codes. We can read almost all of their communications. We are also reading American, British, and German codes. It’s not a problem for us, Mr Faye.”
They walked around a large chunk of ice brought in by the tide.
“We can help you identify the spies by their code names, but we want a commitment from your PM to stand up for Finland when peace with Germany comes.”
Peter looked at Hallamaa in disbelief.
“Let’s go back now and have some food. You must be hungry and this wind is picking up,” Hallamaa said, turning his back to the wind.
Colonel Hallamaa and Peter were served a meal of codfish and pickled herring by an elderly Swedish cook. Mads poured copious amounts of aquavit for the colonel and his guest.
“We started in 1927 with radio interception and cryptanalysis of Soviet material, Mr Faye. So we have always had an advantage over you British. We started earlier. Before the Winter War, we had some 75 employees and now we are close to 1,000 people working on codes. Your people at Bletchley Park have done very well in a short time, but RTK is in a class of its own. We read everyone’s code without exception and we can provide fast decryption services for our friends.”
“You have contacts at Bletchley?” Peter asked.
“Of course, we exchange information whenever we receive a request. We are also helping your American colleagues who are only just getting started in code-breaking.”
Mads got up and went outside to check on his colleague. Suddenly shots were heard from the front of the cottage as Hendrik and Mads rushed back inside. The colonel and Peter hit the floor as a volley of bullets slammed through the bay window at the back of the house.