Prince of Spies

by Prince of Spies (retail) (epub)

  ‘Wait here,’ said Shaw. ‘It could be any time now.’

  He left the cabin and went to the wheelhouse. There was the noise of activity on deck and Prince could sense the trawler’s speed being cut. More activity in the wheelhouse: from what he could tell, Shaw was now in charge. ‘That’s them, it’s the right signal!’ he heard the young Royal Navy officer shout.

  A few minutes later there was a knock on the cabin door and Sid Oliver popped his head round it. ‘Come on, Tom, it’s time now.’ He looked behind him and quickly thrust a small flask into Prince’s hands. ‘Rum: drink that and everything’ll be fine.’

  When Prince reached the deck, Jack Shaw was coming down from the wheelhouse. He led him to where the deckhands were hanging tyres over the side of the trawler. Out of the darkness, a shape loomed into view. As it came closer, he could see it was a Danish trawler: Lena, Esbjerg.

  The skippers of the two trawlers took five minutes to manoeuvre the boats alongside each other. The tyres ensured they came together smoothly, and then ropes were lashed at the bow and stern, held in place by deckhands on either vessel.

  ‘You’ve got everything?’ A wind had picked up and Shaw was shouting to be heard above it. Prince said he had, and with that, he was helped over the side of the Northern Hawk and then more or less hauled onto the wet deck of the Lena. Even before he’d clambered to his feet, the two trawlers had separated and the Northern Hawk was pulling fast away from the Danish boat. One of the Danish crew pointed to an open hatch. ‘Down there – quick.’

  * * *

  They arrived in Esbjerg a few hours later on the high tide. Prince was uncomfortable from being kept in the hold throughout the journey, and he reeked of fish. He was grateful for the rum Sid Oliver had given him. He waited below deck while the fish was unloaded. A period of silence followed, and he wondered if they’d forgotten about him. Then one of the crew came down, opened a door and led him into the engine room. Another pointed to a small hatch. ‘Go in there: just a few minutes. Not a sound.’

  It was the shape and size of a coffin, the air limited and suffused with the smell of diesel and fish. Prince could hear people walking past and talking. He could make out that they were speaking Danish, although not what they were saying; he could also have sworn he heard some German. Half an hour later, the hatch door opened.

  ‘Out you come.’ It was a man in his sixties, distinguished-looking, with an irritated air about him. ‘I trust you had a successful trip. What fish did you catch?’

  What fish did you catch? Prince knew he was safe. This was Niels, his contact in Esbjerg.

  ‘Only haddock, I am afraid.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Haddock is more plentiful than cod at this time of the year.’

  Prince felt relieved. Niels looked at him expectantly, his eyebrows raised: Carry on…

  ‘Oh, yes… and no plaice either.’

  ‘Good,’ said Niels, ‘but you mustn’t hesitate like that. Your safety – and ours – depends on it. You need to be more fluent. Anyway, welcome to Denmark. I’m Niels.’

  ‘Were some Germans here before?’

  ‘They were, yes. A routine search apparently.’

  ‘Do they search every trawler coming in?’

  ‘Sometimes. Still, they found nothing. We’ll take you to your safe house soon. Let me see your identity documents, please.’

  Prince passed over his Jesper Holm identity card and the other papers. Niels studied them carefully.

  ‘This is the only identity you have?’

  Prince nodded. Niels shook his head.

  ‘I’m not happy with this. They really should have given you more than one identity: one for your journey, one for when you reach your destination. I’ve told London this so many times, but as usual they ignore what I say. Stay here while I sort out a new identity card for you. I’ll come back soon to take your photograph and we’ll have the card ready by lunchtime. That will be a better time anyway to take you to the safe house – it’s always busy then.

  ‘This card,’ he handed the legitimationskort back to Prince, ‘keep it safe. We’ll sort out somewhere to conceal it soon – and don’t use it until you arrive in Copenhagen.’

  Chapter 5

  Denmark, November 1942

  Days later, on the train from Odense to Nyborg, Prince had fallen into a deep sleep when he was woken up by a loud voice shouting for tickets a few rows behind him. For a moment he had trouble remembering quite where he was, the rocking effect of the train creating a hypnotic sense of confusion. And then he spotted Henry in a seat diagonally opposite, smiling and staring straight at him.

  The sense that his son was opposite him was so intense, Prince leaned forward to speak to the boy. The words were half formed, but just as he opened his mouth, the ticket inspector appeared in the aisle and the spell was broken. By the time he’d checked the tickets, the boy had turned round. He no longer looked like Henry.

  At that moment, Prince would have happily betrayed the whole world just to spend five minutes with his son.

  * * *

  In Richard Prince’s first year at grammar school, morning lessons were spent in a classroom overlooking the main entrance, where from his window desk he’d watch the almost ceremonial arrival each day of Mr Marquis, one of the classics masters.

  Towards the end of the first period, a dark car would appear on the school’s improbably long gravelled drive and proceed at almost funereal pace to the front entrance. A woman Prince assumed was Mr Marquis’s wife would emerge and help him out. He would spend a while sorting himself out, checking his briefcase and adjusting his hat, before she guided him by the elbow the short distance to the steps at the entrance of the school, where a boy from the Lower Sixth would be waiting to take over. He would lead Mr Marquis up the steps and into the school, from where he would be taken to a classroom for the start of the second period.

  On Wednesdays, this would be Prince’s class. Mr Marquis would be handed over to the teacher from the previous lesson, who would take his hat and coat and help him with his briefcase before placing him in the right position facing the pupils.

  Mr Marquis would remain in that position for the duration of the lesson, his only apparent movement being that of his left hand across the papers spread out on the table in front of him as he spoke in a near-endless monologue. He paused only to ask an occasional question of the class, and gave the impression of being thrown off track if a pupil asked anything of him. He could spend a whole lesson reciting the poetry of Homer, switching without a pause from ancient Greek to the English translation, his head tilted back as he spoke in a quiet voice the boys strained to catch, his unseeing eyes darting from left to right, sometimes filling with tears: the blind teacher reciting the words of the blind poet.

  At the end of the period, another Lower Sixth boy would appear to escort Mr Marquis to his next lesson, and that would be the pattern of his day: being led from place to place, never quite sure of where he was, his journey always in the hands of someone else, his destination taken care of.

  Prince now had some appreciation of how the teacher must have felt. Since being sent to Derbyshire, he’d had to entrust every stage of his journey to someone else, unsure of where he was going next. It was as if he was blindfolded. Now Niels had told him to be ready to leave Esbjerg first thing in the morning.

  ‘Am I going straight to Copenhagen?’ He assumed Niels was in charge of the resistance group in the port: he had an undoubted air of authority about him and he was the only person he’d seen on more than one occasion.

  ‘It’s best you know nothing about your journey. You’ll be told as much as you need to know at the right time. It’s safer that way.’

  A woman around the same age as Prince arrived early the next morning at the tiny attic flat in the shadow of the port. She busied herself making breakfast before joining him at the table.

  ‘You have your new legitimationskort?’

  Prince nodded and handed the card to her. ‘I’m Hans
Olsen, a sales representative from Aarhus. Do I look like a Hans Olsen from Aarhus?’

  ‘Well you certainly look like a sales representative. Listen, we have no time to joke. Your other identity card is sewn into the top part of your rucksack. When you get to Copenhagen, switch to that one and destroy the Olsen identity. Understand?’

  He assured her he did.

  ‘Here are your tickets. I’ll travel with you on the train for the first part of your journey, as far as the ferry port. When the ferry docks, there’ll be buses waiting: take the one to Odense. When you arrive there, head towards the train station. It’s only a short walk. Remember what Niels has told you: act normally, don’t keep turning round, and walk at an even pace. Assuming you’re not being followed, a man will approach you and ask if St Canute’s Cathedral is worth visiting. You are to reply that it dates back to the eleventh century. Then you will accompany him. If you suspect anything, apologise and say it is your first time in Odense.’

  ‘And what will happen if he thinks I have been followed?’

  ‘Then he won’t approach you.’

  They took the second train of the day from Esbjerg to Lunderskov, and from there it was a short bus journey to the small port, where the ferry to Funen was already waiting to cross Kolding Fjord. Prince’s legitimationskort was checked twice on the journey: once on the train by a Danish policeman, who passed it on to a German plain-clothes officer; the second time at the port, when he was just one of three men in the queue asked to show their cards.

  The atmosphere in Odense felt considerably more menacing than that in Esbjerg or elsewhere on the journey. The station forecourt was swarming with German troops and there was a palpable air of tension as soldiers pushed through a crowd that was noticeably reluctant to give them clear passage. The Danes were not exactly impeding the Germans, but nor were they making things easy for them, and there was much pushing and shoving. As the passengers from Prince’s train joined the melee, matters seemed to get worse. Some of the younger German soldiers were beginning to look edgy; a woman in her fifties shouted to one of them in German that they were to show manners. Remember where you are!

  Before he realised it, Prince found himself in the midst of a group of Germans. He’d been too distracted by what was going on around him and hadn’t been watching where he was going. An officer stopped him by placing his palm against his shoulder.

  ‘Pass!’

  Prince produced it; the officer barely looked at it.

  ‘Search him!’

  A young soldier frisked him, pulling a packet of cigarettes out of a jacket pocket.

  Always carry a packet of cigarettes: decent ones, mind – ideally two packets, in fact. They’re a great way of relieving tension in difficult moments.

  Prince could feel his throat tightening. The officer had the cigarettes now and clearly didn’t want to let go of them.

  ‘Take them, please.’ As soon as he said it, he wondered if he’d gone too far, like he was obviously trying to curry favour. He was unsure whether to carry on, so he paused.

  ‘What the hell are you waiting for, your king to turn up on horseback?’

  The other soldiers laughed obediently and Prince thought it best to smile.

  ‘Go on, fuck off!’

  He hurried out of the station, everything around him giving the sense of being wreathed in gloom and fear.

  The thought of what he’d do if no one turned up in Odense had occupied him throughout the ferry crossing and the subsequent bus journey. He needn’t have worried: the man who eventually approached him near the station in Odense was smartly dressed and well-spoken and gave the impression of actually being pleased to see him. He told Prince to call him Marius and took him to a restaurant in the lee of the cathedral, where most of the diners were German officers. As they walked through the restaurant, he greeted some of them in German in a familiar, even friendly manner, stopping to share a noisy joke with one of them and slapping another on the shoulder. To Prince’s relief, they were taken to a small area upstairs where the only other diners were a table of elderly ladies, whispering as they picked at their food like nervous birds.

  ‘You’ll stay with me tonight,’ said Marius, pouring them each a glass of beer from a large bottle that had been waiting for them on the table. ‘You’ll find out where you’re going next just prior to your journey tomorrow. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Have a cigarette.’

  He lit one and handed it to him. It was a Danish habit and it gave the impression it would be discourteous to refuse. Prince had smoked more cigarettes since he’d been in Denmark than in the whole of the previous year. Marius gestured to the floor.

  ‘Don’t worry about what happened downstairs with the Germans.’ He leaned back and inhaled deeply, blowing the smoke out through his nose. ‘I supply them with luxuries that make their lives here a little bit easier. So they trust me, they think we’re friends. I pick up information from them and that information is useful to us!’ He laughed loudly, causing the elderly ladies to turn and glance disapprovingly in his direction. ‘Denmark is probably the easiest assignment anywhere for a German officer at the moment: even easier than Germany itself. You know…’ a pause while he finished one cigarette and lit another, then one for Prince, ‘this is barely an occupation. The Germans treat us almost as a neutral country rather than one they’ve invaded. We pretty much run our own affairs; you’re probably aware of that, eh? We have our own parliament, we have elections, the King is still the King, even our Jews are still at liberty and we hear such dreadful things about what is happening to them elsewhere in Europe. We have our police, our army… we’re even allowed to keep some of our own food. To be honest, I’m not sure how long this will last. Too many Danes are complacent about it all. You’ve heard about the King upsetting Hitler last month?’

  Prince shook his head, and they fell silent as the waiter placed plates of herring and potato salad in front of each of them. He couldn’t recall they’d even been shown a menu.

  ‘Hitler sent King Christian a lengthy telegram to congratulate him on his birthday. The King replied with just a few words – “My best thanks, King Christian”, something like that. Hitler was furious, and now he’s brought in a real Nazi called Werner Best to keep us in check and ordered all of our troops out of Jutland. Mark my words,’ Marius put his cigarette down briefly as he forked up some herring and continued talking as he chewed it, ‘next year, we’ll know what an occupation feels like.’

  Prince hardly slept that night. Marius was so friendly that in the early hours he decided – for no logical reason – that he’d actually been too friendly and this was suspicious. As a consequence, he lay awake most of the night, listening for every sound, convincing himself the Gestapo was about to hammer on the door.

  The following morning, Marius told him they were about to leave for the train station. ‘Here’s your ticket. You’re going to Nyborg. The train departs in twenty minutes. I’ll walk to the station and you follow me. When we’re on the main concourse, I’ll go to another platform. You’ll be travelling on your own; you won’t see me again. When you arrive in Nyborg, a woman will be waiting by the news kiosk in front of the station. She’ll be wearing a long dark red coat and a dark beret. Don’t speak with her or acknowledge her at any point. Only approach the kiosk if her handbag is in her right hand, understand? At the kiosk ask for a copy of the Berlingske newspaper and some chocolate so she will know who you are. Christ, this sounds like something out of one of those detective novels I used to read at university in preference to Old Norse. Did you read those kinds of books?’

  Prince shrugged. He thought it better to avoid the subject of detectives.

  ‘Where were we? Ah yes, then you follow her. She’ll take a bus to the port. Don’t follow her once you’re there. She’ll go into a café; you’ll buy a ticket for the ferry to Zealand.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘If someone calling themselves Egon approaches you, do what they say. No more questions, please:
everything is being taken care of for you.’

  The train had barely pulled out of Odense station before Prince dozed off, and it was when he was woken up by the ticket inspector that he imagined Henry was opposite him. That short encounter quite unsettled him: for the remainder of the journey he leaned against the cold window, staring at the Funen countryside rushing past him. He was thoroughly depressed, bitterly regretting agreeing to this mission, cursing his willingness to please people and his inability at times to say no. He should have stayed with Henry.

  At the ticket barrier in Nyborg station, his legitimationskort was checked again. This time he had good cause to feel singled out: as far as he could tell, no one else’s card was being checked.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Hans Olsen.’

  ‘Place of birth?’

  ‘Aarhus.’ Prince felt his heart beating fast. He couldn’t remember if the card said he was born in 1906 or 1908.

  ‘Occupation?’

  ‘Sales representative. I sell tools and—’

  ‘Off you go.’ The German soldier thrust his card back at him, a fleeting look of disappointment on his face.

  The woman in the long dark red coat and dark beret was waiting by the kiosk and he duly followed her to the ferry port. The voyage across the Great Belt, the narrow strait dividing the islands of Funen and Zealand, was a choppy one, the waves tossing the small ferry in every direction, and it was with some difficulty that Prince climbed below deck, where he found an empty table. He laid the Berlingske in front of him and began to read it, breaking off a piece of his chocolate as he did so. After a few minutes a large man with a full and messy beard joined him, his enormous arms resting on the newspaper and taking up much of the table between them.