by James R Benn
“Yes, I understand what is at stake, particularly with the latest rocket attacks. Am I to understand my reward shall be in heaven, so to speak? Nothing more practical?” Tiltman said.
“How about a chance to avoid some bad publicity on the international stage?” I said, my eye on Gubbins.
“Always of interest to the Foreign Office, if a bit vague,” Tiltman said. “But what about General Gubbins? What have you for him?”
“Basil Snow,” I said.
“Who?” Gubbins said. I didn’t think he was stalling. Snow wasn’t high up in the SOE command, and Gubbins couldn’t be expected to know every operative.
“Security officer at Saint Albans, General,” Vera said. “Captain Boyle was at our office this morning, warning us that Major Snow was on his way to kill Colonel Blackford.”
“Not an impressive security man,” Gubbins said. “Dead bodies in piles from what I hear. But hard to believe one of our own is the killer.”
“He’s left three dead in his wake,” I said. “All because of that postcard.”
“Colonel Blackford left to meet Major Snow this morning. Both are now missing,” Vera said. Gubbins picked up the postcard, turning it over in his hand.
“Exactly how did you come by this postcard, Boyle?” Gubbins said, studying it carefully for the first time.
“From Snow. It was given to him by a Bonzo. A relative,” I said.
“Ah,” Gubbins said, beginning to understand. “Is that who revealed the nature of Operation Periwig?”
“No. Snow learned that on his own. He’d planted bugs throughout Saint Albans and overheard a conversation, enough to piece together what was in store for your German anti-Nazi volunteers.”
“This is a dangerous game, Captain Boyle, if I understand you correctly,” Gubbins said, drumming his fingers on the table.
“We live in dangerous times, sir. You will have Snow in hand by the end of the day, and Blackford as well, in one piece. All I want is an assurance from everyone in this room that those two names will be on the prisoner release list.”
“And if I say no?” Tiltman asked.
“Snow gets his time in the sun. He wants to speak to the newspapers. He wants the world to know about Operation Periwig,” I said. “The whole truth.”
“Careful,” Gubbins said, his eyes narrowing as he gave me a grim look.
“It’s you who should have been careful, General. Those were your men, brave men, whom you sent to a terrible death,” I said. “I don’t much care for Basil Snow, but at least he thought he was righting a wrong. Maybe the truth should come out. It’s up to you.”
“I take it this Periwig business is something SOE would prefer never to see the light of day?” Sandys said, looking to Tiltman who betrayed nothing.
“Yes,” Gubbins said, his voice a low growl. “There would be repercussions if it got out.”
“The Foreign Office is aware of this operation,” Tiltman said. Gubbins looked at him in shocked surprise. “Even diplomats have their sources, General. I can tell you we have grave concerns, especially about how this would be perceived postwar. One day in the future, we shall need decent Germans on our side. Pity if you’ve sent the best of them to their deaths.”
Gubbins said nothing.
“You can deliver Snow? That’s a promise?” Sandys asked.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Alive.” Back at Saint Albans, I’d realized that nobody knew where we’d found Blackford and Snow. SOE would get around to searching there sooner or later, but for now, no one had any idea where Snow was. I’d set up a twenty-four-hour lock on communications with Clarissa and Robinson, who seemed to be the only two staff who’d kept their heads about them. Snow was in one of his own padded cells, out of sight and silenced.
Gubbins looked at the others.
“I could have you arrested,” he said, turning his hardest stare on me.
“Go ahead. If I don’t make a telephone call within the hour, Snow will be singing like a bird,” I said. “After that, I don’t care what happens to me. I’m sick of all these lies and betrayals. Either put those names on the list or deal with the consequences. I’m ready to do the same.”
“I want my agent back,” Vera said.
“I want a chance to talk to anyone who’s been in the Siemens facility. I’d kill for it,” Sandys said.
“I can handle the Swedes,” Tiltman said, and puffed out his cheeks in a sigh. “Two names can be done.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” Gubbins said to me, as he pocketed the postcard.
“You can,” Vera said. “He’s almost one of us.”
“A conniving, dirty fighter, eh? Well then. If you can’t trust a right bastard, who can you trust?” Gubbins said.
“I fully agree, General,” I said. He shook my hand in a crushing grip before he stalked out.
“I have a favor to ask,” I said to Tiltman. “Maybe Sandys can help.” The three of us put our heads together, and the discussion ended with Duncan Sandys telling me to wait by the telephone.
“Do I want to know what this Periwig business was all about?” Vera asked as we filed out.
“What Periwig business?”
“Ah, you are, indeed, one of us, Captain Boyle. God help you.”
Chapter Forty-One
The BOAC flight from northern Scotland to Stockholm, Sweden, took several hours, most of it spent watching for German fighters. It was a neutral Swedish airplane, manned by members of the Royal Norwegian Air Force. The Germans didn’t know that, I hoped, but that didn’t mean some trigger-happy Fritz wouldn’t want to bag a lumbering, unarmed transport.
From Stockholm it was a small plane, then an automobile provided by the British embassy to the coastal port of Trelleborg, not far across the water from occupied Denmark.
I stepped out of the Volvo four-door and told the driver to keep the heat on. It was a windy day with cold sheets of rain and seawater blowing over the harbor wall. I buttoned my trench coat and pulled my trilby tight on my head. I was in civilian clothes, traveling on a phony passport, but there wasn’t much to worry about. Sweden knew which way the war was going, and no one was going to raise a fuss about who was meeting the noon ferry from Lübeck.
I watched the squat two-stack ship approach the harbor; it wallowed in the whitecaps, taking on a calmer course as it passed the breakwater. I walked onto the jetty, saltwater pelting my face, searching the crowd along the starboard side, all of them eager to debark onto neutral soil.
The gangplank went down, and passengers flooded off the vessel, most of them women dressed in rags, faint remnants of what once might have been summer dresses or nightgowns. Some wore pieces of cloth wrapped around their feet for shoes. They were drenched, pale, and painfully thin. Many smiled, a delirious joy palpable as they looked at each other, embracing and exulting in this final step to freedom.
Red Cross workers came forward, speaking in Swedish and Norwegian, directing them to a warehouse where hot soup and clean clothes awaited. The women broke around me as if I were a rock in a fast-flowing stream. I searched the faces coming toward me, fear in my belly as I tried not to think the worst.
Where was Diana?
There were about a dozen women left, walking slowly, some of them limping.
I saw her. She looked like a ghost, dressed in the white evening dress she’d been wearing when the Gestapo arrested her. It was gray and filthy now, hanging off her gaunt body like a burial shroud. Her honey-colored hair was chopped short, stiff and dirty even in the driving rain.
She had her arm around a girl with blond hair sticking out from a rag tied around her head. Every step looked torturous, but, with Diana’s help, she shuffled forward, away from the ferry, away from whatever horror had been inflicted on her.
Diana stopped in front of me, her head cocked to the side, and her eyes squinting as if trying t
o get a better focus, not believing what she saw.
“Billy. Billy. Help us,” she gasped.
Diana fell into my arms, the girl tottering and almost collapsing. I got one arm around her, and, between us, Diana and I got her moving forward.
“Billy, is it really you?”
I nodded. I could not speak. Tears mingled with rain and sea spray, stinging and salty. I was afraid to say a word, afraid to break the spell, terrified this was a dream that would vanish, sending me back to walk the endless paths of Saint Albans.
“This . . . this is Angelika,” Diana said. “How did this happen? How did we come here?”
“Later,” I said. “Come on. We’re almost there, Angelika.”
She looked at me, her face contorted in pain. “You are Billy. My brother’s friend?”
“I am, Angelika. I am.”
She stumbled, and I lifted her up, Diana grasping her hand. We came to the Volvo and the driver opened the rear door. Warm air wafted out and Angelika shrieked.
With joy. Kaz reached out and we eased her inside. They embraced, rocking back and forth, the last of their family, wounded, hurting, but desperately, against awful odds, alive. Together.
I helped Diana inside the warehouse, knowing Kaz needed this time alone with Angelika, as I did with Diana. Red Cross workers came with a blanket and towels, draping Diana as we sat together, embracing. Our hands intertwined in every possible manner, as if searching for a way to remain together, always and forever.
“I knew I’d see you again,” she said. “But I never thought it would be this soon.”
“We got lucky,” I said. “What happened to Angelika?”
“Medical experiments,” she said. “The so-called doctors took some of the Polish girls and cut them. Deliberately infecting them, breaking bones, cutting nerves, and other horrible things. Then assessing different treatments.” She shivered, even with the warm blanket around her. “They took her only about ten days ago. If she gets medical treatment immediately, she has a chance.”
“She’s safe,” I said. “You’re safe. There’s so much to tell you.”
A nurse brought Diana a cup of broth. She sipped it hungrily, burying her face in the steam that rose from it.
“I was there less than a month, Billy,” she said, her eyes fixing me through the steam. “I don’t know how those women have survived for so long. Poles, French, Danes, women from all over Europe. It was inhuman. Unspeakable.”
“They never realized who you were?”
“I am Malou,” Diana said, setting down the cup. “She saved my life. I think a part of me will always be Malou,” she said, one hand smoothing out the once-elegant gown. “They gave us the clothes we were arrested in for the voyage here. Isn’t that ludicrous? German efficiency. They had every item stored away. Bloodied, worn, and dirty, it didn’t matter. They saved it all. Even this.”
She produced my empty red, white, and blue tube of Pervitin tablets I’d left for her to find when she was taken. It was a sign that I knew, that I’d witnessed her arrest, that she wasn’t forgotten.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them,” I said, grasping her hands as if in prayer. “I am so sorry, Diana.”
“We will stop them, Billy. I have scores to settle,” Diana said, raising the cup to her mouth and draining the last of the broth. “A month in that place was time enough to make enemies for life. And death.” There was hurt in that voice, pain that I couldn’t fathom. But there was spirit as well. I’d feared the worst, feared that Diana might come out of this as damaged as I was after Paris. It didn’t seem so. I prayed that would hold. For both of us.
“First thing, let’s get Angelika to a doctor. The embassy has it all arranged.”
“Yes. And then, my dear Billy, take us home. All of us. To somewhere warm, green, and peaceful.” Taking the cup from her hands, I embraced her, feeling the warmth of her breath on my cheek. My entire world was contained in the circle of our arms.
Historical Note
While Saint Albans Special Hospital is a fictional creation, the British Special Operations Executive did operate a facility dubbed “Number 6 Special Workshop School” at Inverlair Lodge, located in the remote Scottish Highlands. The purpose of this top-secret facility was to secure agents who had failed their training and possessed classified information, or who had been withdrawn from assignments in occupied Europe for various reasons and needed to be kept incommunicado.
The story of Inverlair Lodge fascinated an English writer named George Markstein. He was the cocreator of the classic television series The Prisoner, which imagined a much more elaborate retirement home for secret agents. Aficionados of The Prisoner might recall that Patrick McGoohan’s character is given the rank of Number Six, perhaps recalling the designation of the SOE facility. Markstein was inspired by Inverlair Lodge in this creation, and subsequently wrote a novel titled The Cooler, set at the Number 6 Special Workshop School during the Second World War.
My character George Markstein was named in homage to the original and creative Markstein.
Operation Periwig was a program of the Special Operations Executive to simulate the existence of a large-scale anti-Nazi resistance movement within Germany. The idea was primarily to fool the Nazi security apparatus into hunting non-existent resistance groups, and, secondarily, to create the illusion of such groups in the hopes that some Germans would be moved to resist Nazi rule and shorten the war.
German prisoners of war were recruited for Operation Periwig but never informed that the resistance organizations, such as the Red Horse, were pure flights of imagination. These volunteers were parachuted into Germany in the hopes that they would either surrender or be captured and reveal the supposed existence of widespread resistance activities.
Fifty-three men were sent into Germany in 1944 and 1945. Some survived and a few even managed to complete their sabotage missions and evade capture until the end of the war. Some disappeared, while an unknown number were captured and executed.
The story of the double agent Schiller and the faulty parachute was reported by SOE Signals Officer and code-breaking genius Leo Marks in his fascinating autobiography Between Silk and Cyanide. Marks did brief Schiller before his last jump.
Dr. Dwight Harken was a groundbreaking pioneer in heart surgery. He was forced to leave the Mediterranean Theater of Operations after the chief medical officer there forbid all surgical procedures to remove foreign objects in the area of the heart. Harken was sent to the 160th General Hospital in Great Britain, where he was allowed to operate on the heart, removing shrapnel in over one hundred and forty cases without losing a patient. He did have to overcome the widely held belief that a patient could not survive manipulation of the heart muscle.
This belief was so strong that Dr. Henry Souttar, who in 1925 did the first successful surgery to repair mitral stenosis, faced the censure of his colleagues and was not allowed to repeat his success.
Following his success with heart surgery during the war, Dwight Harken performed another groundbreaking procedure when he operated on a stenotic mitral valve in 1947. I have used creative license to allow the good doctor to perform this operation on Baron Kazimierz three years prior to his first recorded operation, and I hope readers will not mind this authorial sleight of hand.
There was a large-scale prisoner release program undertaken by the Swedish Red Cross and the Danish government which resulted in the freeing of over fifteen thousand inmates from the Nazi concentration camps. About half were Scandinavian. The initiative was supported by SS head Heinrich Himmler, who hoped the Swedish Red Cross would help in his bid for a separate peace treaty with the Western powers.
Most of the releases occurred in 1945, shortly before the end of the war. But in late 1944 there was a preliminary release of 103 inmates, which gave me the idea for the trial run envisioned in these pages.
The vast majority of releas
ed prisoners were transported on the white buses of the Red Cross. The vehicles were painted white with prominent red crosses to avoid misidentification with military vehicles. Over three hundred Swedish army troops and medical staff operated thirty-six buses and as many other vehicles in this humanitarian rescue, which was done in complete secrecy.
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to first readers Liza Mandel and Michael Gordon, for their scrutiny of this manuscript. It is a gift to have careful readers who can look at the story with fresh eyes as it nears completion; they see the forest and the trees.
My wife, Deborah Mandel, works on editing and proofreading these stories with an amazing diligence, helping to keep the story true through every step of the writing process. She also puts up with the occasional neurotic writer behavior with grace and patience.
The staff of Soho Press is a wonderful bunch. They make this work enjoyable, and I look forward every year to a new adventure with all of them.
Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the readers who have been with Billy Boyle from the beginning, and those who have joined the brigade of fans along the way. Hearing from them is a great joy, and without such devoted readers this fifteenth novel would not have been possible.
Thank you.
