Elyesa Bazna - End of Spying Career

End of Spying Career

In the meantime, Bazna found it increasingly difficult to carry out his spying activities. A new alarm system in the British Embassy required him to remove a fuse whenever he wanted access to the ambassador's safe. In addition, Moyzisch hired a new, shapely secretary named Nele Kapp (known in the book as Elizabeth or Elsa for short), the daughter of a German consul and anti-Nazi who had spent most of her early life in Calcutta and Cleveland. Nele was neurotic and difficult to work with and Moyzisch decided that she had to go. What he did not know was that this was actually an act. Nele hated the Nazis and had been supplying information to the British and the American OSS. She eventually defected and was helped by an OSS agent to board the Taurus Express from Ankara to Istanbul, but alighting before the city, she was taken to an air base that the RAF was then building in Turkey. From there she was driven to Izmir and then by Greek caique to Cyprus and thence to Cairo, where she was furious to learn that she was to be interned as a German. She eventually reached America where she settled in California and married an American. Fearing Miss Kapp would pinpoint his operation, Bazna left Sir Hughe's service. Although she knew that he telephoned the German most Fridays when the code room doors were locked so that he could report to Berlin, she knew him only as 'Cicero' and that he had a British connection.

Fritz Kolbe, a German diplomat and courier based in Berlin who had become an American spy after a meeting in Bern, Switzerland with the OSS, also provided information about 'Cicero'. It seems clear that MI6 would have had all the information that they needed in order to identify Elyesa Bazna, if they had wished to do so.

By April 1944, Nazi forces in the Crimea were in full retreat. The Turkish Government worried that the advancing Red Army might drive through Bulgaria and seize the Turkish Straits, which the Russians had always coveted. Turkish policy had been to wait and see which side would win, before making any move. Now that they saw the need to reach some accommodation with the Allies, the Turks replaced their pro-German army chief Fevzi Çakmak with Kazım Orbay who was pro-British.

In August 1944, Turkey severed diplomatic relations with Germany and by February 1945 had declared war on her, when Cicero's usefulness had already ended.