Debut for a Spy (44 page)

If you enjoyed
Debut for a Spy
by Harry Currie you might be interested in
The Enemy Within
by Michael Dean, also published by Endeavour Press.

Extract from
The Enemy Within
by Michael Dean

1

It
was a world, the market was - Waterloo Plein Market in Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter. A five-days-a-week, precarious, self-contained, noisy, laughing, stinky world of canvas-roofed stalls forming higgledy-piggledy thoroughfares.

There were stalls selling foodstuffs, flowers and trees, manufactured goods, garments, furniture, household articles, toys, iron, jewellery, tyres, tools, wood, tobacco, wirelesses, medicine, perfume, books, clocks, spectacles, musical instruments, bicycles, second-hand articles and bric-a-brac. Among other things.

Each stall was the lifeblood of its barking trader, standing outside it as crowds milled and jostled by. Every now and again, a face in the crowd peeled off to buy, to trade. It was trade that made the market a world, thought Hirschfeld, and made the world a market. Trade, the forger of contact, the enemy of war.

Trade implied a code of morality, which its prophet, Adam Smith, had set out in
The
Theory
of
Moral
Sentiments
. Hirschfeld had read it for the first time when he was seventeen, at Rotterdam Trade Academy. It had been a revelation to him. It had set him on the path to where he was now – Secretary General for Trade and Industry.

Hirschfeld nodded to himself, as he stood on the edge of the market, assailed by the smells of human-kind. The main one was rotting fruit. But you could always smell water in Amsterdam, borne on the breeze: the blue smell from the Amstel River, the brown smell from the canal – the Niewe Heerengracht. And the faintest odour of herring, wafting over the Oude Waal and Rapenburg from the IJ harbour, where the international ships came in.

Holland was a tiny dot on the map, but it was at the hub of trade, the centre of the trading world, at the mouth of the Maas and Rhine. It treated all countries the same - well, varying only with their ability to pay and with what they could supply.

Holland was neutral – a neutral country. That was fundamental, as much part of Dutch identity as the colour orange, as the blessed Queen, Wilhelmina …. Except that Wilhelmina was now in London, and the colour orange, while not yet banned, was strongly discouraged by the Occupying Authority.

Weaving a practised way through lines of bicycles, ridden at walking pace, Hirschfeld made his way into the market. A young
Orpo
, in the green uniform of the German police, brushed lightly against his arm as he passed. The
Orpo
stopped, apologising profusely in passable Dutch, his fresh face twisting in annoyance at himself for his unintentional rudeness. Hirschfeld blinked and smiled. In perfect, unaccented German, he told him everything was fine.

*

The Secretary General picked his way fastidiously over the carpet of squashed and rotting fruit, and walked down the middle lane of stalls. The crowds were so thick he eased his way through them sideways. To his right, a man was selling gramophone records from a broken hurdle converted to a stall, morosely growling out his wares in Jewish Dutch. He sported a thick, boot-length coat and flat cap, despite the sunshine pearling the high Dutch sky.

Of the 191 traders in the Waterloo Plein Market, Hirschfeld recalled, 181 were Jews. The statistic pleased him: like all statistics, it created shape and proportion; painted a picture, so to speak. Statistics gave structure and context to life.

The clock mounted on a lamp-post ahead of him showed ten o’clock. His meeting with Rost van Tonningen and Rauter was not until midday. The Secretary General had planned a detour first via Batavia Straat, to visit Tinie.

Tinie … Tinie’s sex … The smell … The smell, the sex, always took him back to Berlin. Eight years ago now, his first time back. He had been born in Germany. He had a German name – Hans-Max Hirschfeld. That’s why he was there, in Berlin, as the Netherlands’ chief economic negotiator with Germany.

That fellow with the cough, Walther Schellenberg, was in charge of entertainment for the Dutch delegation. Hirschfeld could hardly wait. He had sat in the luxurious pagoda of the Adlon Hotel, half-an-hour early, nursing a throbbing erection. They went to a cat house on Giesebrecht Strasse; cleared of all other clients.

Lisette, her name was. She’d do anything, say anything, be anything. Hirschfeld found out what he wanted that night. He thought of Tinie again. He had stopped, lost in prurient dreams of her.

He was distracted by Old Mother Bril, appearing from a cross-lane between the stalls, pushing her vending cart through the crowd. It had, Hirschfeld estimated, around 30 apples in the pannier which held 240; plus plums, cherries and oranges. From the small range of produce left on the cart, the Secretary General deduced that she was on her way back to the produce market, at Marnix Straat, for her first refill of the day.

Old Mother Bril wore a knee length garment, which could have been anything, and stubs of gloves which left her fingers free. The old lady kept moving, inching her cart forward. The peddlers were forbidden to stop their carts to trade – that would have made them stall-holders. Police from the station on Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein moved them on, if they caught them stopping, then noted the transgression. After a few breaches of the rule – nobody knew exactly how many – they would be called to the magistrate and fined.

Old Mother Bril gave him a gap-toothed smile – yellow teeth appearing at the bottom of her leathery face. ‘Good morning, meneer Hirschfeld! Some fruit for you today?’

‘Good morning, Mother Bril.’ Hirschfeld doffed his hat.

The Secretary General did not particularly like fruit, but he bought an apple, paid with a
stuiver
, nodded to her to keep the change. He bit into the apple with evident enjoyment before she moved on, in her perpetual motion to stay legal. Slightly embarrassed at eating in public – and the apple was a juicy one, a credit to Mother Bril’s suppliers – Hirschfeld continued his way along the stalls. He pushed his thick horn-rimmed glasses up his nose; eating the apple had made them slide down.

Hartog Mof, the rag dealer, was bawling his wares the loudest; you could hear him the length of the lane. Tijpie was selling her eggs, hard-boiled or soft-boiled, four for a
dubbeltje
– ten cents. On the other side of the lane there was Cross-eyed Ko, selling watches and clocks, all piled up anyhow. Hirschfeld doubted that many, if any, of Ko’s timepieces could be relied on.

Hollander had the stall next to Ko. He sold toothache pads – leek chopped up fine and put in tissue paper. As Hirschfeld drew level with his stall, Hollander’s cousin, Marinus Glim, a great bull of a man, was roaring in pain and demanding relief from toothache. Glim was Hollander’s
shill
, his accomplice, paid to be the first to buy. Hollander sold him a pad. Glim loudly regaled the passers-by with the sweet salvation, the blessed relief from toothache, the pad was affording him.

As the smiling Hirschfeld walked on, Hollander made three more sales as a result of this charade with his
shill
. How gullible and in need of care the populace was, thought the Secretary General.

The crowds were even more solid here, towards the middle of the lane, and the noise unabating, as the stallholders competed in bawling their wares: ‘Nougat here, two cents a brick!’ ‘Max’s fabric, seventeen cents a yard!’ ‘British sailors’ jackets, made in England’ - this was followed by a stream of ‘English’, which was mainly Yiddish, in praise of the goods.

‘I suppose you would be tempted if the price was right.’

Some of the traders didn’t just bawl a pitch, they told long stories or quick fire jokes, anything to pull people in. Professor Kokadorus was a master of the shaggy-dog story. He’d tell these long involved tales, with no point or punch-line, about how he’d had tea with the King of England. He was selling shoes – nothing to do with the King of England.

In a gap between two stalls, Karel Polak had drawn a curious crowd to his tyre demonstration. Polak, as everyone called him, was a tall, cadaverous figure with black hair and a ginger moustache. He was known as a character, even in an area thick with characters. He had tyres by Dunlop, Heven and Engelbrecht, all second-hand. He was demonstrating the efficacy of the patches he had put on them. He pumped one up:

‘Look at that! Last you a lifetime that will! Ride anywhere you want on that. Where d’you want to go lady?’

He was addressing a tubby matron in a sage green coat and felt-brimmed hat, at the front of the crowd. The matron turned to her friend in delighted confusion, arms outspread, indicating that she had no idea where she wanted to go. She shrieked incoherently, to confirm this.

‘How about England?’ suggested Polak. This drew a roar from the crowd. ‘Put you on the handlebars,
mevrouw
,’ Polak offered. ‘Over the Narrow Sea. You won’t fall off, not with my arms round you. I’ll give you a smooth ride. I’ve never had any complaints.’

‘Ooooh!’ went the matron, in mock outrage.

The threadbare tyre Polak was selling popped. There was a roar of laughter, the tubby matron pointing accusingly at her would be knight-of-the-bicycle, as if this was his just deserts for his cheek.

‘There!’ The unabashed Polak swept the crowd with his gaze. ‘That was to show you what it looked like inside.’

Many of the crowd, Hirschfeld included, had heard this line before, as the bursting of Polak’s threadbare tyres was a regular occurrence. The laughter was of recognition as much as amusement. As the Secretary General walked on, the popular Polak was raking in quarters as fast as he could shovel them into his apron pockets. Shoppers and browsers hung his tyres round their necks, or put them under their arms; walking off, with a smile.

Hirschfeld bought some cigars from one of the myriad cigar-sellers. The cigar-sellers didn’t bawl their wares. Tobacco was a serious business. But further on, there was the loudest yelling Hirschfeld had heard yet. It was a swimmer - a trader with all his wares on a tarp on the ground. This was poor stuff: broken jewellery, rusty pocket-knives, used razor blades, pieces of shaving soap. Hirschfeld’s disgust showed in the pursing of his lips – this was not worthy trade.

The Secretary General had finished his apple. He thought of throwing the core on the ground, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. He wrapped it carefully in his crisp handkerchief. Else, his adoring sister, four years younger than him, had lovingly starched it. Now it was wet from the apple core. What a waste! But still, he did not begrudge helping out old Mother Bril with his purchase.

A ripple ran through the crowd, ahead of him; there were some raised voices, a commotion. Hirschfeld shut his eyes for a second. He knew it would be NSB - the Dutch Nazi party. They were detested with a sharp, knife-in-the-guts loathing, more immediate and painful than the wary, dull fear the German conquerors inspired.

Sure enough, it was two NSB biff-boys from the WA, the
Weer
Afdeling
– their so-called military section - modelled on the German SA. They were in black uniforms with black peaked caps. A couple of young Jewish toughs had confronted them. The Jewish boys wore long, waisted jackets and caps – Hirschfeld thought they might be diamond workers. The NSBers were going the same way as Hirschfeld; they had their backs to him. The oncoming Jewish lads were facing him, close enough for Hirschfeld to see their faces.

Every time the NSBers made to go round them, skirting the crowds between the stalls, the two Jews stepped in front of them and blocked them. One of the Jews was grinning. The other one was tense with hatred, both fists clenched. He really looked like he wanted a fight.

‘Let us pass, will you!’ one of the NSBers shouted. He sounded scared. The NSB – including their WA thugs - did not carry guns. If it came to a fist fight, the two Jews looked as if they would beat the hell out of them. Hirschfeld thought of Rost van Tonningen, one of the men he was shortly due to meet. He was second-in-command of the NSB.

‘
Joden
niet
gewenscht
!’ called out one of the Jews, raising his clenched fists. It was the sign the WA put on public places throughout Amsterdam – ‘Jews not wanted.’ ‘We’ll show you who’s wanted here,’ the Jewish youth yelled out.

‘Leave it!’ Hirschfeld shouted, to the Jewish lads. The NSBers whipped round as he spoke; they looked relieved. Some of the passers-by were smiling at the scene. A few had stopped, in the hope of witnessing a fight. If any of them joined in, Christians or Jews, it would be on the side of the Jewish boys. Hirschfeld feared a riot.

‘Leave it,’ Hirschfeld repeated, softly, to the Jewish toughs. ‘They’re not worth it. Not worth the trouble.’

In his double-breasted suit of best English tweed, and his expensive Fedora hat, Hirschfeld exuded authority, despite his flabby physique and horn-rimmed spectacles. He was also, obviously from his appearance, a Jew himself. The bigger of the two Jews smiled at him. They walked on, shouldering into the NSBers as they passed.

‘Oh, well-done, Uncle Max! Maxie the Peacemaker! Pax Hirschfeldium!’

Hirschfeld wheeled round. His mouth fell open. The diminutive figure of his nephew,

Emmanuel
Roet, Else’s boy, wearing a costermonger’s apron, was standing in front of a stall. He was applauding ironically, his hands clapping above his head.