by John Gardner
Arnold was a tall man, broad as a football player, and with a face that was more battered than attractive. The slightly bulbous nose tilted to one side where it had been broken a dozen times, and his smile was lopsided. The eyes were his best feature – sea-grey and relaxed. They said of Arnold Farthing that nobody could ever tell the truth, or his next move, by looking at his eyes, which had in them a permanent twinkle, as though life was a constant series of amusing episodes.
The eyes smiled down at Naldo now as he spoke. ‘Hail and farewell?’ Railton queried.
‘We’re moving out, old friend. Going. Washington’s rolled us up.’
‘What?’ He genuinely could not believe it.
‘It’s true. OSS is disbanded. They’ve given Wild Bill the old heave-ho, and most of his buddies with him.’ Wild Bill was General William Donovan, head of the OSS and would-be architect of a major U.S. Intelligence community.
‘But why? It’s crazy. Your people’re needed here. Needed all over Europe – ’
‘You know that, Naldo, and I know it. But nobody appears to have shared the knowledge with President Truman. The scuttlebutt says we’re too expensive, and Wild Bill’s been trying to build an empire. Things’ll go on much as before, and will be the foundation of something called CIG – Central Intelligence Group. But around a quarter of us are being sent home. The shit hits the fan as from 23:59 hours tonight; and I’m one of the guys being shunted back to a desk in Washington.’
Naldo dropped into a chair – a relic from the thirties, black leather, split and cracked, with horsehair pushing its way out of several slits. Somehow he had thought of the OSS as a permanent fact of his life. He had spent a fair part of his career in SIS working and liaising with the Americans – swapping favours and information. In the few months spent in Berlin, the communications were even closer. Change he had foreseen, but not this sudden eclipse, for the United States had never boasted an active Intelligence organisation until ‘The Outfit’ arrived on the scene. To Naldo it was madness to throw away people like Wild Bill Donovan and the many others who had built such an efficient, cohesive team. Within his own Service, Naldo was in a minority of officers who thought the OSS was worthwhile. ‘What do you want with me, Arnie?’ he asked at length.
‘Thought you might like my one and only asset.’
‘You’re down to asset stripping? Doesn’t this other crowd – the, what d’you call them? CIG – ’
Arnold shook his head. ‘They want no part of my asset. I’ve tried to explain his usefulness, but Dick – Head of Station – figures this one’s too young to handle. Too hot as well. So I come bearing a gift. Dick’s clinging on to assets like a leech, but for some reason he wants no part of this one. Difficult to understand, because he’s hot to go. I guess it’s possibly his age.’
It had started to sleet outside, the cold frozen spikes hitting the window like shrapnel.
‘Tell me?’
‘He’s fifteen years old and has the instincts of a trained snoop and the making of a natural Intelligence operative. He’s German and speaks English none too well, but he’s already put up seven Nazis for me. Hates ’em. Blames ’em for his daddy’s death. Daddy was a Luftwaffe pilot. Bought it in the Battle of Britain, but this guy blames the Nazi Party in general and Hitler in particular.’
‘You sure he’s not working his ticket?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Swinging the lead. Nazi-hunting because it’s the fashionable thing for him to do and earns him a dishonest crust?’
Arnold slowly shook his head. ‘Any fifteen-year-old who looks almost thirty, and could easily kill with his bare hands would not be doing the job this guy’s been doing for me if he wasn’t for real. Hell, Naldo, he’s been living in the POW and DP camps, sniffing out SS guys and Party members like a gundog.’ He gave a brilliant smile. ‘I’ve been moving him around. If I thought they were likely to get wind of him, I pulled him out, fed him for a few days, then socked him back into another camp. This guy’s a Wunderkind. I promise you.’
All over Europe there were still camps, not as sinister as the Nazi concentration camps, but some unpleasant people hid in them. There were camps for DPs – displaced persons – for prisoners of war; even for displaced prisoners of war. Many wanted Nazis hid among the inmates of these camps.
‘At fifteen?’ Naldo was far from convinced. ‘How the hell does he do it?’
‘Don’t ask me, but he does. He’s like a ferret. This guy can smell SS or real baddies a mile off. You put him into a camp; he cosies up to one or two people, and the next thing you know, he’s got names and faces. I tell you, Nald, he’s a natural. Put him in and you get results.’
‘When do I get to meet him?’ Naldo was impressed by Arnold’s passion. The man would not talk like this unless the German boy really did have an inexplicable gift.
‘He’s outside. In the car. Lying crunched up like a dinosaur’s fetus in the back. This guy is really big.’
‘Get him up here then.’
Arnold held up a hand, palm facing Naldo Railton, to stop him. ‘In a minute. He’s turned up someone who might be very important to you. You in person.’
‘Why me?’
‘Look, like all of us, I read the circular about Klaubert and anyone with connections to SOE’s Tarot network. The Enquiry’s in a few weeks, yes?’
Naldo nodded, the smile wiped from his face.
‘Who have you got so far? Apart from the people involved in London.’
‘One of the “pianists” has been found.’ A pianist was a radio operator. ‘One who was with Tarot for six weeks. He got out and went to work elsewhere. And there’s one of the Romarin team, one of yours. Injured but talking.’
‘Yeah? Well, my guy’s got Klaubert’s second-in-command. How would you like him?’
‘Very much.’
‘He might also be onto a Frenchman, posing as a German. This guy claims to have been around the Orléans area and knew people.’
‘What kind of people?’
‘You know what kind of people, Nald. People-people.’
‘Bring him up. I’d like to talk to – what’s his name?’
‘Kruger.’ Arnold was already at the door, pulling on his gloves. ‘Eberhardt Lucas Kruger. I call him Herbie for short. He answers to it, anyhow.’
The youth who returned with Arnie was tall. Very tall. The Farthings had always bred men with long bones, as indeed had the Railtons, but neither family had anything on those who produced Kruger. Not only was he tall and emaciated, but also, through the gangling undernourished frame, Naldo could detect the boy was broad-boned. He would be very large when properly fed and fit.
He gestured to a chair near the stove, and Kruger sat eagerly. Arnie had been right, he looked more like a man in his late twenties than a lad of fifteen. He also had that attribute Naldo was aware of in many good Intelligence officers. He was quiet, the big body used in sparse movements, the eyes calm, giving nothing away. For a second he wondered if this art had been learned from Arnold.
‘You want a drink?’ Naldo spoke carefully to him, spacing the words as if he would to a very small child.
‘Coffee, maybe?’ The voice was that of a man, and the two words in English came out haltingly.
‘Not whisky? Gin? Brandy – Schnapps?’
A broad smile crossed Kruger’s face. ‘If I am drinking the Schnapps I become drink, yes?’
‘Drunk, Herb. The word’s drunk,’ Arnold prompted.
‘Say again.’ Kruger looked up at the man as though he was an object of love. Case officers and agents, Naldo thought. Tied together like man and wife. Sometimes like man and wife who wanted a divorce: but not these two. Arnold Farthing was going to be a very hard act to follow.
‘Drunk,’ Arnold repeated slowly. ‘You get too much liquor in you, then you get drunk. Okay?’
‘Okay. Drunk.’ Kruger smiled as though proud of learning his lesson.
‘So, do you want a drink?’ Naldo asked.
&nb
sp; ‘Coffee please. Only coffee. Else I am getting… drunk.’
‘Otherwise I will get drunk,’ Arnold said automatically. ‘Look, Herbie,’ he paused as Naldo went into the tiny cubicle that doubled as a kitchen. ‘Herbie, this is Mr Railton.’
‘Railton?’ Kruger repeated like a parrot mimicking its owner.
‘He’s a very good man, Herbie. I want you to tell him all you’ve told me.’
‘Why?’ As though he sensed already that he was going to lose Arnold.
There was a long pause – Arnold wrestled with his conscience. Should he tell the boy now or later? Naldo settled the matter, ‘I need to know about the officer you say was second man in the Orléans-area SS. I need to know about the Frenchman pretending to be a German.’
Kruger looked at Arnold, as though waiting for a sign that it was correct for him to repeat the information.
‘Mr Railton’s a good man, Herb. He’s the best. Better than me. You must tell him everything.’ Arnold smiled.
Kruger nodded very slowly. ‘Okay,’ he said, though not sounding pleased. ‘Okay, you tell me. I work for this Mr Railton now, eh? I get the kick from your people.’
There was another pause, with the hail clattering at the window. The wind gusted outside and the lumps of ice splattered ever harder. The three men looked at each other – a strange dueling of eyes, each of the three pairs flicking from one to another.
Naldo broke the silence. ‘Herbie, you are not getting the kick, as you call it. It’s the other way around. Mr Farthing’s getting the kick. You must know this now, before you tell me anything. Mr Farthing’s organisation, the people you’ve been working for are going – or at least Mr Farthing’s people’re going. I am staying. I do the same job as Mr Farthing. He’s asked me to look after you. He cannot protect you any more. No money. No food. Work for me and you’ll still get paid and fed.’ He wanted to add clothed, for Kruger wore a varied form of dress – German army boots, a pair of GI trousers, a mongrel shirt, and a couple of pullovers that needed darning. Over these last items he had a jacket that was much too small for him. His arms sprang from the grimed sleeves like thin extensions of a telescope. He looked, in fact, what he was supposed to be – a DP, a displaced person from one of the camps. It was very good cover.
‘This is true?’ Kruger looked, almost spaniel-eyed, at Arnie, who nodded, reaching out, and patting the boy’s shoulder. ‘It’s true. I’m only trying to help you, Herb.’
Kruger nodded again, very slowly, then began to talk. What he had to tell Naldo Railton could be dynamite as far as Tarot was concerned. It was the first information Herbie Kruger ever passed to the British, and certainly would not be the last.
There would be much to do from a point of logistics. Naldo knew he was going to have to sell Kruger to his Head of Station, for Arnold had a whole system of covert action working for him – officially and unofficially. He had been flying Kruger in and out of Berlin for over six months, taking him into West Germany and going through a whole magic circle of tricks to place the boy into one or another of the camps. It required a lot of cooperation and some fancy footwork that neither Victor Sylvester nor Arthur Murray could teach in the time he had to spare.
In the end, Naldo did what so many intelligence men caught up in arcane rituals had done before him. He called in sick, dressed Kruger in a decent suit, got papers for him, and flew with him out of Berlin. Then he took the boy to the camp about which he had spoken, explained the situation to the British Commanding Officer – omitting that he had no official sanction for what he required – and arranged for Kruger to view men in the camp without being seen.
Herbie identified both of them. Naldo interrogated the pair for two days, with either the Commanding Officer or his adjutant present. In the end both men broke down. The Frenchman’s true name turned out to be Fenice – Jules Fenice, known to SOE as Felix. He sobbed out a story of fear, saying that he had never collaborated, but knew things had gone very wrong with Tarot. ‘I was afraid of reprisals – in the end I was the only one left. Who’d believe me? I spent almost four years trying to find out what was wrong; who was meddling with Tarot. I knew vengeance could fall only on me.’
The German was not Klaubert’s second-in-command, but an SS-Sturmbannführer – a man in his middle age, who had been posted to Orléans only a few months before the invasion of Normandy. His name was Otto Buelow, and when he heard Naldo’s real name he talked for the best part of twenty-four hours.
Naldo then did the only thing possible. He telephoned his father, and when James heard the name Buelow he jumped like a scalded cat. ‘Don’t leave the place! Don’t leave those two unguarded for a second,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll fix your Head of Station, Naldo. Oh, and keep this fellow Kruger around. Don’t lose him, he could be useful.’ He put down the phone and rang Caspar. ‘Cas, old dear,’ he said very quietly. ‘Your man Felix has turned up.’
‘Good God!’
‘And another member of the family with him. The Otter’s surfaced.’
Chapter Four
‘The Otter’ was old Railton family history, and known well enough to the Farthings also, for the Otter was, in his way, a small scandal.
Mary Anne Railton – in truth Jo-Jo’s half-sister – had been a nurse during the Great War. While working in a field hospital close to the Front, near Ypres, she had tended a man who wandered in one evening, almost naked, his clothes blown from him by the blast of shells. For weeks he could only say one word – ‘Ott.’ They called him ‘the Otter,’ and, not knowing who he was, nor even his nationality, they kept him safe. He was suffering from shell shock but his brain had not been damaged, so he was able to assist with light duties. Later he had saved Mary Anne when she was attacked and raped by a disturbed patient. In that moment of trauma the block cleared and he was revealed as a German artillery captain – Otto Buelow.
Buelow was brought to England and used, by the Secret Service, who put him in POW camps to spy on his fellow countrymen – rather as Arnold Farthing used young Kruger. Otto and Mary Anne kept in touch and after the war, when he was free to go home or stay, Otto Buelow opted to return to Germany, for he had a driving belief that he should try to rebuild his shattered country. Against the wishes of her family, Mary Anne Railton followed him and they were married soon after her arrival in Berlin.
The couple was all but ostracised – though, secretly, Sara wrote to Mary Anne often from Redhill, for Sara thought that one day the girl might need her help. But gradually Mary Anne’s replies became shorter and less frequent, finally petering out altogether in the late 1930s. Nobody knew what had become of her or the former artillery captain, until now.
When he heard the news that Fenice and the SS officer Buelow had been discovered, Caspar went straight to C – the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service – who arranged for the men to be brought back and interrogated by one of his special teams. Caspar was not allowed to see either of them, for his position within the Service would be under consideration until after the inquiry. It was always possible that he might be held responsible for the whole Tarot debacle – for the extent of the treachery within that network was now thought to have provoked a major failure in the British resistance setup.
The weekend before the inquiry was due to start, Caspar and his wife, Phoebe, went to Redhill Manor.
As they turned off the main road, through the gates and into the drive, Caspar thought that surely this was the most beautiful house in England – not the greatest, largest, nor the most splendid, but magnificently proportioned, its glowing Tudor stone well matched with that used in later additions to its buildings.
They stopped on the gravel within the squared U-shape of the building, before the large weathered front door. Sara stood in the doorway, smiling at them. To Caspar she looked now exactly as she did when he had first seen her. Then he was at the turn of adolescence, and he thought she was the most gorgeous creature upon whom he’d ever set eyes. ‘Lucky devil,’ he had said to James, ‘to gain a step
-mother like that.’ James had been the envy of the Sixth Form at Wellington College.
Now, at almost sixty-one, Sara Railton Farthing had suffered no horrific signs of aging. Naturally, there were some lines in her face, mainly at the corners of the eyes – tiny grooves, gouged out by the pain of the last years. She and Richard had suffered like so many in the land. Their only son, Giles, had died at Dunkirk, and there was the more recent unexplained disappearance of Caroline. Only Elspeth – named for a Farthing – remained.
Sara greeted them with warmth and smiles, kissing Phoebe and holding on to Caspar for a shade longer than usual, as if trying to tell him that he must not hold himself responsible for Caroline. But he felt the cloud of guilt hanging around him whenever he came to the Manor now, and it did not help to know that his own children had all survived the war – the eldest, Alexander, had been at the Government Code and Cipher School, later GCHQ, at the famous Bletchley Park Headquarters. Their second son, Andrew, was a lawyer, and, as such spent the war with the Judge Advocate General’s staff at the War Office. Their only daughter, Hester, had been in the WRNS – the Women’s Royal Naval Service, usually referred to as the Wrens. There was a sailors’ joke about being up with the lark and to bed with a Wren.
It was not until just before dinner that Caspar realised James was also in the house, with Margaret Mary. Dick was in a hearty mood at table, and there was no talk of the impending inquiry – except for a faux pas by Elspeth, who had clamped her hands in front of her mouth when Caspar arrived in the drawing room and blurted. ‘Oh Lord, Uncle Cas, I didn’t know you were coming. Ma never tells me a thing, and I shouldn’t really be here because I’m giving evidence at the Enquiry.’
Dick had sharply told her to shut up and not be stupid.
‘But he’s – ’ She stopped abruptly, seeing the look in her father’s eye. Elspeth had been with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry – the FANYs – who provided not only field agents for SOE, but also signals staff. At Bicester, not far from her home, she had been at No. 53A Signal Station and personally monitored many of the Tarot messages.
