In the month or more that Cal had been gone Corporal Tosca systematically went through the entire contents of his Zurich office a few pages at a time, noting anything that she thought important, whether she understood it or not. When it was clear that Cal would not be returning, she sent a coded message to Moscow, on June 9th: ‘Stahl is US agent. Not dead. Probably escaped to GB. US and GB very anxious to find him. Can only conclude vital information at stake. No idea what. Cormack posted to Washington. What am I supposed to do now? Any ideas?
On the afternoon of the same day Reggie’s number two, Charlie Leigh-Hunt, used a dead letter box in London to send a message to his controller at the Soviet Embassy: ‘Hess mission authorised. H not mad. GB were expecting him. GB pressed him to confirm invasion of USSR. H did not. Talked incessantly of “common cause against the Bolshevik menace”. Conclude GB now thinks invasion imminent.’
Churchill issued his last warning on June ioth.
When this news reached Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, he did not wish to know. He had just dispatched the Artillery Corps tractors eastward, away from the front line, to help with the grain harvest – besides, he’d been warned already. Not only by the British Ambassador Sir Stafford Cripps, but also by Count Werner von Schulenberg, the Reich ambassador to Moscow, who had risked treason to warn the Soviet Union – nor would his treason be the last.
On June 18th, a Wednesday, Private Gunther Bruhns, recently demoted and posted to the Waffen SS on the Eastern Front by Heydrich for one cheeky remark too far, fearing that there was yet worse to come, chose a rash means of escape. He crossed the German lines into the Soviet Union, offering to trade information for sanctuary – his father had been a good communist and he’d always had some sympathy for the cause himself.
‘You’ll be invaded at dawn on the 22nd,’ he said. ‘If you don’t believe me, and the tanks don’t come, you can shoot me.’
Stalin did not wait for the tanks and had him shot at once.
On June 22nd, the shortest night of the year, 2,700 planes, 3,600 tanks and three and a half million Axis troops poured into Russia.
Barbarossa.