The Scarlet Nightingale

by Alan Titchmarsh

  ‘Just one?’ asked Rosamund.

  ‘It is the one that is most crucial to their war effort. It makes the turrets for tanks. Without it, they are – as you would say – “scuppered”.’

  ‘How do we know which one it is?’

  ‘The manager of the factory will show us.’

  ‘And how do we convince Monsieur Peugeot to let us do that? Surely it will reflect badly on him if he is seen to be colluding with “the enemy”.’

  ‘We have worked that out. Eric and I saw him this morning. Henri set up a meeting.’

  ‘And he was happy for you to do it?’ asked Rosamund disbelievingly.

  ‘Oh, he took some convincing, of course. He is on the side of the Allies but he knows that if it appears he is sabotaging the work then there is a real danger that he and his workforce will be removed to Germany and used as forced labour. They build in deliberate faults as often as they can, but if they go too far the Germans will lose patience. I explained to him that if he allowed us to sabotage the press, apparently with no connection to him or to Peugeot, then we could stop the RAF bombing raids – the factory is one of their prime targets; they know what it is producing – and his factory and staff would be safer as a result.’

  Rosamund’s eyes widened. ‘And did he agree?’

  ‘Not without conditions. He wants proof that we are not agents provocateurs – and that we are who we say we are.’

  ‘How can we do that?’

  Thierry looked across the table. ‘Eric came up with the idea.’

  Rosamund looked questioningly at the radio operator.

  ‘Yes, well. It seemed obvious, really.’ Eric cleared his throat, and began the explanation. ‘There is a relatively simple way to convince Monsieur Peugeot that we are indeed bona fide saboteurs and that we have no ulterior motive. As Thierry said, we need to be able to assure him that when we have completed our mission satisfactorily, that bombing will stop. He and his factory, and all those who work within it, will be safe, and there will be no recriminations.’

  ‘So?’

  Eric continued. ‘I suggested that Monsieur Peugeot give us a phrase – a sentence, a quotation – that we can arrange to have broadcast on the BBC on a given day at a given time, and that will prove that we are British agents and that we mean what we say.’

  ‘And did he agree to cooperate?’

  ‘Eventually,’ said Thierry.

  ‘And can we do that?’ asked Rosamund of Eric.

  ‘We can. But I will have to insist that they take special care when they are decoding the message so that every single word is exactly as Robert Peugeot instructed.’

  ‘Can The Outfit get the BBC to cooperate?’ asked Rosamund.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Eric. ‘We have connections. I used to work there.’

  Rosamund sat back in her chair. ‘So when will all this happen?’

  ‘Tomorrow night at 7 p.m. French time,’ replied Thierry, ‘provided Eric can get his act together in time.’

  Eric shot him a withering look. ‘I will be sending the message tonight. It will air twenty-four hours later. They won’t let us down.’

  Rosamund was curious. ‘And what was the message? The quotation or whatever that Monsieur Peugeot wanted you to use?’

  Eric frowned. ‘It’s here somewhere,’ he said, rummaging through his trouser pockets and finally withdrawing a crumpled piece of paper. ‘Yes, here we are.’ He handed the note to Rosamund and she read it out loud:

  ‘In 1815, Monsieur Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Digne.’

  ‘Rather appropriate, don’t you think?’ asked Thierry. ‘You recognise it, of course?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It seems vaguely familiar. Victor Hugo?’

  Thierry smiled at her. ‘Very good. They are the opening words of Les Misérables.’

  He was, she thought, rather patronising in his praise. Rosamund folded the note and handed it back to Eric. ‘You’d better get on then,’ she said, realising that perhaps she had sounded rather sharp. She shot a glance at Thierry.

  ‘Yes. Off you go to your radio. Let us know how you get on.’

  Eric left the table and went upstairs to transmit the message.

  Rosamund took a sip from the glass of deep red wine that sat in front of her, musing on the fact that even in wartime the French still managed to lay their hands on a decent bottle. But then, she reasoned, it did not have far to travel.

  She nibbled at a crust of bread and then said absently, ‘You said there were two problems. What’s the other one?’

  Thierry glanced across at Henri who had been slowly eating his supper and barely looking up from his plate. ‘We have, as you would put it in your country, a bad apple.’

  ‘A bad apple? What do you mean?’

  ‘Someone who is probably aware of Henri’s role in the Resistance and who, if given the opportunity, could give us away,’ Thierry elaborated.

  Rosamund’s eyes widened. ‘How? I mean, how do you know?’

  ‘Information from London – and confirmation from Henri.’

  ‘So … do we leave? Now?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘What should I think? If we are about to be arrested, shouldn’t we get out of here?’

  ‘Without doing the job?’

  ‘But if we can’t do the job? If we are stopped from doing the job?’

  ‘We hope that will not be the case. But it is a risk.’

  Rosamund looked across at Henri who looked up to meet her eye. ‘It was small things at first,’ he said. ‘Things which could have been coincidences. Then we started transmitting false information, and when that was acted upon we knew that someone was intercepting our messages. We changed our tactics and our last transmissions were not intercepted. Now you have arrived we have stopped transmitting ourselves, but we all need to be careful.’

  ‘Is it just radio messages then?’ asked Rosamund. ‘They have not identified who was transmitting them?’

  ‘We don’t think so. But we cannot be too careful.’

  ‘You think someone knows why we are here?’ she asked Thierry. ‘Someone outside the family?’

  ‘We are not sure. We think that certain people who are not sympathetic to the Resistance might be suspicious of Henri, so he is going to take a back seat for a while. He’ll have no involvement. We’ll operate from here independently of the farm. Henri will stay there and get on with … farming. Eric is an experienced radio operator; we’ll have to rely on him to regularly change his frequencies and his locations to keep us safe.’

  Rosamund pushed the glass away from her. Somehow it seemed irresponsible to enjoy a glass of wine under such circumstances. ‘Be honest with me,’ she said. ‘How likely is it that we will be discovered?’

  Thierry smiled at her. ‘There is always a danger of being discovered,’ he said. ‘But if we are careful, and vigilant, then we might be lucky.’

  Chapter 20

  SOCHAUX

  NOVEMBER 1941

  ‘Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because … it is the quality which guarantees all others.’

  Winston Churchill, Great Contemporaries, 1937

  The coded message was transmitted, as planned, by the BBC, Robert Peugeot was consequently convinced of their credentials, and one evening in late November, Thierry Foustier and Marcel Clemont (aka Eric Ridley) set off for the Peugeot factory in their battered van. They would park it a few streets away and walk up to the factory gates with their accreditation as insurance personnel, examining machinery and evaluating the cost of maintenance. The plan had been gone through in meticulous detail and the details rehearsed at the house much of the day and late into the night; every possible eventuality was accounted for.

  The explosives, detonators and timing device had been provided by Henri and left in a sack in their barn. They would not be taken to the factory in the van, for fear of being discovered; instead, they would be taken there on the train, carried in a holdall, by Rosamun
d.

  It might seem cowardly on the part of my two male colleagues that I was the one to carry the explosives, and that I was made to go by train rather than travelling with Thierry and Eric in the van. But women travelling by train attracted far less attention than men. Yes, there was a chance that I would be stopped and searched, and if that happened, I knew that the game would be up and that I would be imprisoned or … worse. But this was the risk I would have to take. And you must remember that I was the one with the expertise when it came to demolition. Not that at Wanborough Manor I had realised just how useful that facility would become – or how soon it would be needed.

  To be fair, Thierry was very unhappy about the arrangement, being a gallant Frenchman who felt that he should take the risk himself, but it was I who volunteered for the task and I who insisted that it was safer for me to take charge of them. After all, I would be the one to use them. Should anything go wrong with the setting up or timing of the explosion, I would have only myself to blame.

  With the fear of discovery – and the previous interception of radio transmissions – it was decided that the three of us would operate with no further personal communication with Henri and his family. It was not that we did not trust them – we did – but we were uncertain of the support of those around them, their friends, their acquaintances, and the watchful eyes of neighbours who might not be so well disposed to the activities of the Resistance.

  In the days before the operation we kept ourselves to ourselves; Thierry had already arranged with the production-line manager where and when we would be met, and under what pretext we were to enter the factory.

  Thierry and Eric would be insurance inspectors and I would be a bookkeeper, my bag filled – on first glance – with nothing more interesting than account books, even though what was hidden underneath them was more likely to set the world on fire, or at least part of a factory.

  The train from Fesches-le-Châtel to Sochaux was small, airless and rattled along the lines in such a way that I thought there was a chance that my explosives would detonate before I reached my goal. If all I managed to demolish was a railway carriage I could become the unluckiest saboteur in the war. It was only a short journey, but it seemed to take an age. When finally we reached the station at Sochaux, I disembarked, clinging tightly to my bag, and walked to the factory gates, where I showed my papers to a uniformed security official. There were soldiers everywhere, rifles slung over their shoulders. The factory was just closing for the evening. On many days it worked through the night, the German army being desperate for more tanks to win the war, but on this particular evening some maintenance work needed to be done and the machines had to be switched off to undertake the necessary servicing.

  I kept calm; my papers were examined and my face scrutinised. Then the guard pointed at my bag.

  ‘Books,’ I said. ‘Account books.’ I opened the bag and showed him the ledgers that lay within.

  For one moment, I was certain that I would be found out; that the books would be removed and the bottom of the bag examined. If that happened, it was all over.

  The guard picked up a telephone and spoke, half in German, half in French, to someone on the other end of the line. He put down the phone, looked at me again and, after what seemed like forever, my papers were handed back to me and I was motioned through the gates. I was instructed to go with a man in a grey coat and not, on any account, to leave his side. I was in! Now, all I had to do was meet up with Thierry and Eric.

  I was shown into an office – where any bookkeeper or accountant would have been expected to be deposited. The man in the grey coat departed and there I sat, ostensibly poring over ledgers that made absolutely no sense to me and which, being in a state of high tension, I could not see clearly anyway. But I turned pages, and made what I hoped were, to anyone watching me work, appropriate marks in column after column. Occasionally a guard would walk past the office window and glance in. I gave the impression of concentrating fiercely on my task, all the while my mind racing.

  After half an hour or so, when the workforce had all dispersed, Eric put his head around the door. It was such a relief. Eric was not the sort of person who generally inspired elation at his presence, but on this occasion I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see him. He was accompanied by a short, nervous-looking man of sixty or so whom he introduced as the factory manager. He shook my hand and I remember it being particularly sweaty. He was clearly every bit as nervous as me. I picked up my bag and, leaving the ledgers behind on the desk, followed the two of them out on to the factory floor.

  The guards – and there were plenty of them, since the factory was undertaking vital war work – were scattered around in small groups of two or three. I could see the closest group at the far end of the production line, at some distance from the particular machine we had targeted and were led to by the factory manager. Most of the machines were switched off, but there was still a hum of engine noise from those that were being tested after maintenance, enough to cause anyone who spoke to raise their voice above the din. This, mercifully, would cover any small sound that I made while undertaking my task.

  Thierry was talking to three guards at the other end of the production line, keeping them occupied. I could see now why Eric had not been given that job, for Thierry’s command of language – he also spoke German – clearly made him the best man for it. Though I would rather have had Thierry watching my back than dear, boffin-like Eric. But this was no time for such thoughts.

  I realised that if I achieved nothing else in this war, now was the moment for me to prove myself. I should have been nervous – I was nervous – but something else took over as I looked up at the enormous machine whose diagrams I had been studying every evening in my room. So this was it. I had to get it right, and I had to be quick.

  Down at the end of the factory floor Rosamund could see that Thierry had positioned himself facing in her direction, so that the guards’ backs were turned away from her. The group was, she guessed, about fifty yards away from her. The machine in front of her, towering like some steel giant, was silent. She knew exactly where to position her charge, how to set the detonator and the timer. She acted swiftly, lifting the explosives from her bag with economic movements and concealing them in an aperture of the gigantic press where they would not be noticed should anyone make a cursory inspection before the machine was switched on early the following morning.

  Feeling the beads of sweat forming on her forehead, she wiped them away quickly with her sleeve, intercepting them before they ran into her eyes and impaired her vision. She breathed deeply, inhaling an atmosphere heavy with the smell of oil and grinding steel. The whole operation took less than two minutes. She glanced up to check that Thierry was still occupying the guards, then, satisfied that all was as it should be, she switched on the timer and nodded at Eric and the diminutive factory manager who was now glancing feverishly from left to right and seemed, if anything, even more nervous than before.

  Rosamund slipped the empty holdall under her arm and the three of them walked back towards the office as calmly as their nerves would allow. Safely inside, Rosamund picked up the ledgers and deposited them in the bag. Then, nodding at Eric, she picked it up and, escorted by their grey-coated accomplice, they made their way out of the factory towards the gate.

  They were stopped once more by the security detail, at which point the grey-coated man turned on his heel and disappeared with all haste back to the factory. It crossed Rosamund’s mind that if he were so inclined he could go straight to the guards, tell them what had happened and have them all arrested. And Thierry was still inside.

  Eric showed his papers and, after some moments, was waved through the heavy gates. He disappeared, as they all agreed would be the case. It was safer to operate individually whenever possible; if one was caught, the others were to make no attempt to intervene. To do so would endanger any mission and risk even more lives than their own.

  The guard on the gate – a thick-set, b
ull-necked individual wearing the grey German army uniform – took Rosamund’s papers from her and pored over them with more than usual interest. He was not the same guard who had questioned her on her arrival. He was new to his shift. Keener. More alert. She suppressed any outward sign of nerves over the moments that seemed to last an age.

  Looking up from her papers, he said, ‘Bist du buchhalter?’

  Rosamund shook her head and replied in French, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t speak German.’

  ‘You are a bookkeeper?’

  ‘Yes.’ She spoke as evenly as she could.

  The guard pointed to her bag. ‘Open it.’

  Rosamund did as she was bid, aware that her breathing was becoming heavier. Many things ran through her mind – not least, was she sure she had removed any traces of the equipment she had brought in with her? Detonators! The spare detonators! They were still in the bag. It was too late. She had no alternative but to put the now open holdall down on the wooden counter in front of the guard and let him inspect the contents.

  Her heart thumped beneath her coat as the guard began to lift out the books and ledgers. One after another, slowly and methodically.

  Her head began to pound now. Three books, four books, until finally the bottom was reached. He lifted the bag from the counter and turned it upside down. Nothing fell out. The bag was empty.

  Wondering what divine intervention had stepped in to protect her, Rosamund managed a weak smile, as if to show that she had expected nothing else.

  The guard put the books back into the holdall, fastened it and handed it back. ‘Guten abend, fraulein,’ he said, and motioned her through.

  Rosamund walked purposefully out of the gates and down the short road leading from the factory. She turned a corner and found herself in a deserted street flanked by a high brick wall, topped by barbed wire. She stopped, leaned against the wall and breathed deeply. It was done. She lowered the bag to the ground and stretched back against the brickwork, gasping for air as though it was her last chance to breathe. She thrust her hands deep into her pockets and felt – a detonator, one in each. It was all she could do not to laugh.