The Secret Agent Read Online Free

better, it was exactly what Henry had asked him to do. But his brother had accused him of high crimes, and having his name removed wasn’t going to appease Erickson’s shame. He needed to show Henry and his family and everyone else that they’d underestimated his capacity for atonement.
    â€œI want to go further,” Erickson told Tikander. “I want to go to Germany.”
    Erickson volunteered to become an Allied agent. His target would be the Nazi oil industry. Henry had accused him of being small and greedy, so he would reply with an audacious gamble. Beyond the rightness of the work—helping to defeat Hitler—it was the size of the bet that appealed to Erickson. There was one other thing: He’d accept only $1 for his services. His detractors thought he’d gotten rich off blood money, so Erickson would work for practically nothing.
    After a thorough interrogation, Tikander allowed Erickson to audition as a spy. He put the oilman in touch with two diplomats at the embassy, Walter Surrey and Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Sweden Herschel Johnson. These men, along with Tikander, would be Erickson’s link to the OSS and Allied Bomber Command.
    Together they outlined a mission that would send Erickson all over Germany and central Europe to locate the sources of the magical elixir with which Hitler was obsessed: the synthetic oil plants.
    Erickson’s response to Henry’s letter would be stark: either his redemption or his death.

Chapter Four
Cover
    To fool the enemy, Erickson needed two things: acting skills and entree. A Brooklyn-born Nazi wasn’t going to be an easy sell. He’d attended one of America’s finest universities, his brother had fought the Germans during World War I, and most of his wife’s family spoke out against the Nazis. Erickson was going to have to convince the people of Stockholm and beyond that he’d sincerely converted to fascism. His survival depended on it.
    In the early 1940s, Stockholm was an insular city whose social life still revolved around age-old traditions. Local worthies wore silk top hats to public gatherings, and it was almost de rigeur to own a boat and sail the archipelago. But the capital was undergoing a schizophrenic reaction to the war. Pro-Nazi parties openly advocated for a Hitler-friendly government, their rallies in the local concert halls drawing thousands of supporters. At the same time, many Swedes were firmly against Hitler and the Nazis. The country had given asylum to some 8,000 Danish Jews destined for Berkinau and Auschwitz, and did its best to protect them throughout the war. King Gustav V sent letters to Berlin, pleading with the Reich to treat its Jews more humanely. Many Stockholmers wanted England and its allies to win the war. One popular joke said that “when it rains in London, Stockholmers immediately pull out their umbrellas.”
    There were clear social and political boundaries between the two camps, and in the early ‘40s, Eric Erickson was inching farther and farther across the invisible line that separated the liberals of Stockholm from the Hitlerites.
    In the beginning, to build his new identity and to spread his name among the German expat community, the spy orchestrated several small deals with Berlin businessmen living in Sweden. He attended receptions and parties at the German embassy—glittering affairs where he chatted up luminaries like Wilhelm Kortner, a high-ranking official who was rumored to be the personal representative in Sweden of Heinrich Himmler. Before long Erickson could be spotted at Stockholm’s best restaurants, giving Hitler salutes to his new friends as they joined him for dinner. He was heard laughing at their viciously anti-Semitic jokes (including the ones that referred to Jews as Judesvin , or “Jewish swine”) and making unconscious “slips” where he revealed a growing enchantment with Mein Kampf . Erickson