INTRIGUE IN EUROPE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 May 1940, Page 8

INTRIGUE IN EUROPE

A MILLIONAIRE DISAPPEARS. SWIFT ACTION BY SECRET SERVICE. International events often are as thrilling as E. Phillips Oppenheim imagines them in his novels. It can now be told, states the “Sunday Chronicle,” London, why Sir Paul Dukes, former Chief of the British Intelligence in Russia, made a mystery flight from Germany in the British Ambassador’s plane’ five days before war was declared. Sir Paul had gone to Germany to outwit the Gestapo. He was lucky to escape. The story began with the disappearance of a Czech millionaire when the Germans marched into Czechoslovakia. A group of prominent men in the City of London had arranged for him to escape to England, but he did not arrive. Then a man was found headless on a railway line. Rumours began. People said the dead man was the missing millionaire. But the Gestapo buried him, and there was n<? means of establishing identity. Then the men in London sent Sir Paul to Germany to find out the truth. He made investigations, then faced the Gestapo officials. He forced them to exhume the body and proved from means of identification he had discoved that the dead man was, in fact, the missing millionaire. Sir Paul discovered that the millionaire had been in a position to play off the German Gestapo against the Russian Ogpu. His knowledge of the activities of the two secret police forces had grown too dangerous for Germany. That was the end of him. Suddenly a new political development affected Sir Paul’s investigations. The Russo-German pact was signed. Sir Paul’s own knowledge put him in danger. Sir Neville Henderson, British Ambassador in Berlin, viewed the situation so gravely that he packed Sir Paul off to Britain in the machine that had carried Sir Neville to Berlin with the British Government’s last message before the declaration of war.

The plane took off from the Tempelhof Airport at 11 a.m. on Tuesday. August 29. With Sir Paul was another mystery passenger.

■Flying on a specially set course, at a height ordered by Nazi officials, the machine crossed Germany. It was under observation the whole way.

Anti-aircraft guns were trained skywards, ready to open fire if the aeroplane deviated from course or height. Sir Paul was not safe until he was across the frontier.

Now he is revealing the whole story of this adventure in a book, to be published shortly by Cassells.