The couple received word that a friend from the Foreign Office, Otto Carl Kiep, had been arrested on January 12, 1944, in connection with his attendance at the Frau Solf Tea Party. The Gestapo summoned them to Berlin in connection with the case, but anticipating what was in store for them, they refused, and defected in early February 1944. In the hope that their families would be protected from "Sippenhaft" (detention for the crimes of a family member) as a result of their defection, their defection was made to appear to be a kidnapping by the British. The Vermehrens were smuggled to England via İzmir, Aleppo, Cairo and Gibraltar.