The Best of Our Spies (26 page)

Apart from himself, there were Newby and Nicole from F Section, along with that frightfully self-satisfied Major Edgar who was still acting as if he was winning the war single-handed and another chap from the London Controlling Section. Leigh had not met Captain Archibald before, but he seemed a very different kettle of fish altogether. Quite charming. Appeared to possess manners. Very distinguished Navy man in his time, apparently.

‘Rider has been in France for three weeks now. Thought it would be a useful opportunity for us to have a catch-up. See how she has been getting on.’ Leigh was flabbergasted.
He
had called the meeting because SOE had concerns about the whole operation. Now Edgar was trying to take it over. In
his
office. It was
most
irregular.

Leigh cleared his throat. He was determined to be very calm.

‘Major Edgar, Captain Archibald. As you know we have had to put ourselves out
considerably
to accommodate this operation. We had to find a country house we had never used before, nor will be able to use again. We had to bring in a French officer to do the training and escort her over to France. Nicole here was the principal contact with Rider, which restricts her opportunities for working directly with agents again. And we could not even fly her out from our normal base, we had to use a special airstrip.’

‘We are, as you are aware, Dr Leigh, most grateful ...’

‘But what most concerns myself and F Section now is the
extreme
danger posed to the resistance in Nord Pas de Calais. The occupation there has been especially brutal. I am unsure if you are aware, but that region is actually run from Brussels by General von Falkenhausen and they have suffered greatly. Notwithstanding that, the FTP have ...’

‘FTP?’ Captain Archibald asked.

‘I do beg your pardon. Stands for Francs-Tireurs et Partisans. Key resistance organisation even if many of them are communists. As I say, they have been very active in that area. Very well organised and disciplined. Typically they work in detachments of around thirty-five men ... and women. But within each detachment, they are organised in cells and the cells do not have contact with each other. That way, we cut down the risk of people betraying other cells if they are captured. Usually, two cells of four come under a
chef de groupe
. The chief will command one group of four and his or her
adjoint
, or assistant, will command another cell of four.

‘Clearly we did not want to risk the whole resistance structure in Nord Pas de Calais, as important as this Rider operation is. So what we have done is create a new cell, which was not too difficult as the FTP is especially strong in the Boulogne area. The cell is four strong, so Rider makes it five. And that cell now has no contact with anyone else in that detachment. The
chef de groupe
has been told this is because Rider needs to be kept isolated for reasons of D-Day security. So we believe that we have managed to protect the rest of the detachment. But in doing that, we have effectively cut that cell of four loose. That means, gentlemen, that four gallant resistance fighters are at very great risk ...’

Edgar shifted impatiently in his chair and interrupted. ‘But as we keep telling you, Dr Leigh, they are perfectly safe as long the Germans need them. If they touch them, then they expose Rider and if they do that, then they will stop getting all of the information that she provides.’

‘Oh, we do understand that, Major Edgar. But at what point will the Germans decide they don’t need Rider? An hour after D-Day starts? What is going to happen then? Will they realise that they have been deceived and arrest her along with the four people in the cell?’

Captain Archibald noticed that Dr Leigh was getting red in the face and somewhat excited. He attempted to calm things down.

‘That will not be the case. Rider has already been given information alerting the Germans to the possibility that the initial Allied attack on D-Day itself will, in fact, be a feint. As soon as D-Day happens, we will reinforce that message to her. The longer that we can keep that going, the better. Anything, to tie the Fifteenth Army and Panzer Group West down in the Pas de Calais for as long as possible. We know from Ultra that the Germans are anticipating a feint, so we believe that they will swallow this information. If we can keep them believing that for at least a week then we will be buying valuable time, but frankly even if it buys us a day or two it could save thousands of Allied lives.’

‘And are the Germans really still buying into Pas de Calais?’

Leigh was trying hard not to sound too sceptical.

Edgar nodded.

‘We think so. Had a bit of a scare in February when Canaris was arrested. He seemed to believe the Pas de Calais line, mainly we think because that’s what his agents like Garbo and Magpie were telling him. So as long as he was running the Abwehr, then we knew that the Pas de Calais was a favourite inside German military intelligence. It’s still a bit unclear about what happened in Berlin in February. Most likely thing is that Himmler finally had enough of Canaris and got Hitler to dismiss him. Canaris is now under house arrest, so he appears to be out of the picture. We’d be surprised if he re-emerges. A chap called Walter Schellenberg who runs the SD is also looking after the Abwehr. But we don’t think that this is affecting the Pas de Calais intelligence we’re sending them. The most important factor is that Hitler remains convinced that the invasion will be in the Pas de Calais and so long as he thinks that, then the Pas de Calais is odds on favourite in the Berlin bookies, so to speak. Having said that, I’m not sure what the Nazi line is on gambling.’

‘And how long can you – we – keep this pretence up?’ The sceptical tone was still apparent in Leigh’s voice.

‘Well,’ said Major Edgar, ‘there will be a point after D-Day – probably a few days after, possibly a couple of weeks – a bit longer if the Gods are with us, when Ultra and everything else will tell us that the Germans no longer believe that Normandy is a feint. Then they will know that there is going to be no invasion in the Pas de Calais. At that point, we tell you and you somehow get the message to the cell to go into hiding. With some luck, that should only be for a few days.’

‘And what are they meant to do with Rider?’

‘That,’ said Edgar, ‘is up to them. If she is still around.’

Silence in the room. Leigh knew what Newby from F Section was thinking, he saw the rationale of it himself. They had taken every precaution they could, but there was a very good chance that the cell of four
résistants
in Boulogne would have to be sacrificed. Greater good and all that.

‘Very well. We shall proceed on that basis.’

‘And how,’ asked Captain Archibald, ‘is she getting on over there?’

Leigh waved his open hand in the direction of Major Newby.

‘Major Newby is handling the case personally. Major?’

‘She has taken to it rather splendidly. The new cell was a bit of a hotchpotch, to be honest. We weren’t going to risk anyone very experienced, but she seems to have knocked them into shape. We’re getting all your messages through to her loud and clear but, of course, we don’t know what she is doing with them once she gets them. We assume that it is fairly easy for her to make contact with the Abwehr over there. One of our chaps is watching them from a distance so to speak. She seems to have rather taken a shine to a young man in the cell. How is her husband, by the way?’

‘Missing her. Poring over his charts and drinking rather too much whisky,’ said Archibald. ‘Convinced they’ll be back together soon and strolling arm in arm down the Champs Élysées.’

ooo000ooo

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Pas de Calais
5 June 1944

By nine o’clock on the evening of Monday, 5 June 1944, the unseasonal storms that had been whipping down the Channel from the Atlantic all week and battering northern France had begun to relent. It now felt a bit more like the typical seasonal bad weather common to all coastal areas.

It was not just to the sea that anxious residents of the Nord Pas de Calais region would glance. For the past few weeks, the Allied bombing of the region had intensified. ‘
Bientôt
’ was the word with which locals now tended to greet each other when they were certain they were out of the earshot of any Germans. ‘
Il sera très bientôt
.’ ‘
It will be very soon
.’

In the village of Hesdin-l’Abbé, five miles south of the port of Boulogne, a young man and woman were walking arm in arm by the side of the Rue du Mont de Thunes. Although the road was normally quiet, dozens of German troops were billeted in the village and their lorries and cars had a habit of speeding along with their lights too dim, so the couple chose to wheel their bicycles along the side of the road. To their right, the grey steeple of the seventeenth-century church of St Leger loomed in the distance. To their left was Château Cléry, where the villagers swore that Napoleon had once stayed, though it would be an unusual French village if there was no property to claim a visit, however brief, from the Emperor. Now, the chateau was the residence of German officers. The village began to merge into the countryside and opposite one of the rich ploughed fields that sustained the area was a row of five detached houses, more substantial than the others in the village. The couple paused and fell into each other’s arms, holding the embrace just long enough to be able to observe over each other’s shoulders that all was clear. Satisfied that it was, they turned sharply into the narrow driveway of the second house, which was shielded from the road and its neighbours by tall rows of conifers.

As the couple approached the side entrance of the house, the door opened. They were expected. They silently acknowledged the elderly lady behind the door, propped their bikes behind the curtained alcove in the hallway and climbed two flights of stairs. On the upper landing the man picked up a broom resting against a wall and gently tapped the trapdoor above his head. Two taps, a pause and two more taps.

The trapdoor opened and a ladder lowered to the ground. The couple climbed into the attic to join an older man in there. They nodded to each other.

‘You are both all right? Certain you weren’t followed?’ said the older man.

‘Pierre, trust us. You always ask.’

‘And I will continue to do so, Jean. Geraldine, how are you?’

She said she was fine as she made sure the trapdoor was firmly closed. Pierre fiddled with the dial on the radio in front of him, Geraldine adjusted the aerial in the rafters of the roof and Jean slipped the safety catch off the American Colt automatic pistol that they had only had for two weeks and were yet to use.

Within a minute they were tuned into the BBC French programme. Listening to this programme in a nearby house the previous Thursday, Pierre had heard the message:

L’heure des combats viendra.

‘The hour of battle will come.
’ The invasion was imminent. The message was telling the resistance that the invasion would take place in the next fifteen days. That night he had risked breaking the curfew to inform as many of the others as he safely could. From then on, at least three of them would listen to the broadcasts every night.

The following night, 2 June, they had heard the next message:

Les sanglots lourds
Des violons
L’automne.

It was the first three lines of a poem by Verlaine. The schoolteacher had questioned why the poem was not being quoted accurately. There are two mistakes, he said.
Don’t worry
,
Geraldine had reassured him.
You’re not in the classroom now.
They knew that when they heard the next lines of the poem, that would be the signal that the invasion would take place the following day.

Now, three nights later, they were crouched in the attic, the dusty history of a family’s life stacked around them. Tennis racquets, children’s toys, old clothes, a chair without a seat and, wrapped in brown paper, parcels of the resistance newspaper,
La Voix du Nord
.

The three of them gathered as close as they could to the radio, the volume so low that they could only just hear it. If the Germans were going to detect them, it would be because of the radio’s signal rather than any noise, but old habits were hard to break.

The dial of the radio threw up just enough yellow light to catch their faces. Pierre’s lined and tanned, someone who had spent a lifetime catching the sea breeze. Jean was tense, chewing his fingers, his dark hair dropping over his eyes as he listened to the broadcast. Geraldine still wore the scarf she had been wearing outside, her hair flowing from under it, her dark eyes managing to pierce through the gloom.

The broadcasts comprised of a series of coded messages to the French resistance. Each of the messages would be meaningless to anyone else listening, even to other resistance groups. But for the particular group that each message was aimed at, the meaning would be very clear. Tonight, the messages were preceded by an announcement:

Today the Supreme Commander directs me to say this: in due course, instructions of great importance will be given to you through this channel, but it will not be possible always to give these instructions at a previously announced time. Therefore, you must get into the habit of listening at all hours.

The list of messages then followed. Normally, this would last five minutes, certainly never longer than ten. But tonight, the list of messages lasted for an unprecedented twenty minutes. The final message caused hairs to stand on the back of necks and tears to well in eyes throughout occupied France:

Bercent mon cœur
D’une langueur
Monotone.

It was the next lines of the Verlaine poem: ‘Wound my heart/With a monotonous languor.’

The two men clasped each other’s right hand. Pierre bit his lower lip and inclined his head away from the other two. Jean put his left arm round Geraldine, gently caressing her shoulder and pulling her towards him. She looked at him with her piercing black eyes and with her long fingernails, carefully flicking a tear from his face. She nodded and spoke one word.