by John Gardner
They ate almost in silence, Fenice breaking hunks of bread from a crusty baguette, handing them to Caspar.
The bacon was thick and full of flavor. Caspar commented on how good it tasted.
‘That was Gretchen.’ Fenice smiled. ‘I call them all by German names. The Boche killed my father and his brothers. I have reason to dislike them.’
Caspar nodded. It would take time to test the man’s reactions, but the geographical portents were good: the small house was unlikely to be commandeered or pillaged by any advancing army – except for the pigs. But a man like Fenice would be clever enough to do deals with any military authorities. Lord, Caspar thought, I hope it doesn’t happen. Silently he prayed that none of those he had already recruited would be needed.
It was during their first guarded conversation that Caspar detected what worried him about Fenice. The man held himself like someone with military training, yet there was a disadvantage, for it became increasingly obvious that he was more used to obeying orders than giving them. If he was to be recruited it had to be as a leader. The man would need further training. He had already volunteered a hatred for the Germans. Caspar did not always respond well to people who gave that kind of information freely on a first meeting. Recruiting agents required patience, playing them like fish, even seducing them over a long period.
They talked late on the first night, though afterward Caspar realised that he had done most of the speaking, to establish beyond doubt that he was on the side of the angels, and not what Fenice called ‘a fox in lamb’s wool.’
In turn, the Frenchman told his own story, using few words but providing evidence by way of photographs and documents.
The house had been his father’s home, and it was from here that Fenice senior had gone to war in 1914, never to return. Jules was brought up by women – ‘There are two aunts still living. One here, the other in Orléans.’ He had chosen his own bride from the village, but she was a flighty girl whom his mother did not like. ‘This house was a battlefield between Annette and my mother, until the old lady died. Then it was a battlefield for me.’
The girl was a scold, and had a lover, the son of a prosperous builder who lived in Orléans. One day both Madame Fenice and the builder’s son disappeared. The police searched, and had Jules in for days at a time, questioning him. Nobody ever heard of the lovers again, and soon the police grew tired, though the locals kept their distance. For Fenice, though, it became difficult. A friend accepted the offer of the house and pigsties for an unspecified time. ‘I left and went where so many criminals go – to the Foreign Legion.’ He grimaced. ‘There were times when I wished I had stayed here, I can tell you. The Legion is not for the faint-hearted. I gave it five years. It gave me my life and respect.’
He talked occasionally of hardship and brutality, but never in any detail. Caspar observed that the man was intensely proud of having served with the Legion, which meant he was also proud of his country. Sitting, on that first night, drinking Cognac in the flagstoned room by the light of oil lamps, it soon became plain that Fenice should be wooed, possibly won, and, if so, given further training.
Before retiring, Caspar asked to see around the house – it was something he usually did as soon as possible when priming a possible recruit. He did not like to sit in a strange house without knowing if anyone else was there, but in this case he waited for the moment. Fenice was, by the very look of him, a hard man. To upset him before gaining confidence could be fatal to the final outcome.
There was no electricity, so they did the grand tour by oil lamp – the long passage upstairs was uncarpeted, as were the wooden stairs themselves. It was difficult for two men to pass one another along that passage, and all the rooms, except for the large one downstairs, were like boxes. He could sleep four at a pinch, and there was loft space in the roof which might prove useful. But there had to be electricity. That was Caspar’s first and only concern about the house.
In all, he visited Fenice six times before the Fall of France. The first visit lasted for three days while the men fenced back and forth about the true reasons for the Englishman’s visit. But when Caspar left, he knew there was a fair chance of opening up a cell here, just outside Orléans, should there be a real disaster.
War came, and, during the bitter winter of 1939-1940, Fenice allowed himself to come under discipline and put it about that he had to visit friends in Paris. In reality he went to London for ten days where, under Caspar’s guidance, he refreshed his memory of weapons and skills. He also learned something about signals, together with simple tradecraft. Caspar also tried to expand the Frenchman’s attitude towards leadership. Alone with Caspar, Fenice committed various passwords and code names to memory, so that they played games, tossing simple phrases or initials back and forth like jugglers as they sat in a quiet Hampstead basement.
‘I last had physical contact with Felix,’ he told the Board of Enquiry, ‘in April 1940. We already knew of movements within the Wehrmacht and had a good picture that Fall Gelb – Case Yellow, the battle plan against the West – was being altered. But, as we all know to our cost, the Allied Supreme Command preferred to believe Fall Gelb had not been altered one iota. With the permission of the CSS and, I am told, a grudging nod from the military, I set out to do the rounds of five possible cells within Belgium and France. In the end, only one of those cells became switched on in its original form – Tarot, led by Felix. I arived at St Benoît-sur-Loire on April 3rd.’ Jesus! he thought as he said it, Tarot was the only network I managed to run from afar. My other recruits were swallowed up by different networks, many of which came unstuck, like Prosper and the penetrated Interallié. If Tarot really was an undiscovered disaster, he might even be linked in to the other blunders. Pushing the thought to one side, Caspar continued his narrative. He painted more word pictures, and his visits to St Benoît-sur-Loire and Orléans during that first winter of the war came into the mind as those icy, snowdrift paintings by Bruegel.
*
The house had been connected up to the electricity mains just before the long, hard winter set in – Caspar had pulled strings through the military, then covered his tracks so that anyone investigating the possibility of Fenice getting preferential treatment would put it down to a deal between the military authorities and large quantities of pork and bacon finding their way into army messes. He even suggested to Fenice that this ploy should be used with the Germans if they came.
On this, last, visit, Caspar sat opposite Jules and saw him clearly in the light from the one bulb which dangled above them. There, over one night, he told Felix of his final fears, and what would have to be done.
‘The battle’s coming, my friend, and I don’t think the military, however courageous, realises what kind of war is going to be unleashed.’
Jules shrugged. ‘It was ever thus. Merde. We’re in for it.’
‘Let’s see.’ Caspar gave details of arms and explosives caches, already set up, and the possibility of the first couriers. Going through the passwords again, he said casually, ‘Oh, don’t be surprised if your two nieces from Paris decide to come and stay here.’
‘Ah. But I have no nieces.’
‘You might have. If that turns out to be the case, their names will be Catherine and Ann Routon.’ Caspar’s eyes almost mocked him.
‘Homework well done.’ The twinkle appeared around Jules’ lips. ‘They come from my late wife’s side of the family. I hope they’re pretty.’
‘Very pretty, but they don’t know about you yet. To us, as you will be called Felix, they will be recognised as Maxine and Dédé.’ He made Felix repeat the names and thought of the passports and documents secreted in the false bottom of the glove compartment in the car outside.
After a while he asked Felix whether he had yet started to recruit any friends.
‘No, but I have my eyes open.’
‘Your open eyes, Jules; whom have they rested upon?’
There was distinct hesitation before he spoke. Jules Fenice
could never put his trust lightly in any fellow man. It was the one thing that still concerned Caspar. Would he have the strength to take an active lead? Getting facts from him was like pulling teeth.
‘Well,’ he said eventually, ‘there’s the butcher, Henri Villar – he’s loyal, fat, and fancies the widow Debron. I think he would be trustworthy, but I shall be careful. Not too fast with him. The Abbot and his monks should be left alone, but the Curé Sicre would be reliable; the doctor – Monsieur le docteur Clergue; and an advocat in Orléans who does work here once a week – Maury. Jean Maury.’
‘If it comes, good luck, my friend.’ Caspar held Jules Fenice’s hand in a tight grip. He had come a long way toward knowing, even respecting, this secretive, introspective man over the past months in lengthy face-to-face sessions, both at St Benoît-sur-Loire and in London. Yet, as he drove away from the strange rectangular house, he admitted to himself that he really knew little of the true man. Only the bare facts – that he may have murdered out of passion or jealousy; that he had served his country, could keep his mouth closed, was quick with a pistol and unconcerned when handling explosives; that he had a good memory. It was probably just enough to forge the bond between agent and handler.
Caspar was confident that his agent knew what was to be done if his area became occupied by Nazi troops. ‘Havoc! Chaos! That’s what we want. Little things like trains being held up for hours; transports with sudden problems – their engines or tyres.’ In London they had told Fenice, ‘Don’t run amok. That’ll just draw attention to your people. Better to injure a couple than kill a hundred. Injuries mean hospital treatment and paperwork. Injuries complicate matters and cause more work.’ Caspar had advised of yet another way. ‘If you discover a girl is infected – and the doctor could help you there – let her infect a few of them before she gets treatment.’ His grandfather, Giles Railton, whose ruthless ways were legend, came into his mind.
So Caspar drove to Paris in order to drop in on his nieces, Jo-Jo and Caroline, where he gave them money for ham, bread, and wine, then told them stories which made all three laugh in the Rue de la Huchette. After that, over the space of four hours, he seduced them to work, if need be, with Felix. It was easy, for they were both Railtons, and the world of secrets ran in the Railton blood like strong wine. There had even been a Railton who worked gathering intelligence concerning the Spanish Armada during the reign of Elizabeth I. To recruit Railtons was as simple as falling from a log.
He felt no guilty conscience; yet, once more, thoughts of his grandfather Giles hurled themselves into his head.
When Caspar returned to London he could not understand why, on the night of his homecoming, ‘old Phoebe’ – as the family called his wife – had to shake him, sweating, from a nightmare, recalled clearly on waking. A man dressed in a bloodstained white robe, with gore running from his misshapen legs, together with a deformed woman in black, beckoned him down a narrow cobblestoned street. The stones were hot under his feet. He followed. They turned the corner. He still followed, and at the corner dropped, screaming, into a crevasse of fire.
Three weeks later, on May 10, the shooting war began. For Belgium and Holland it lasted a bare five days. For the rest it was over in only six weeks.
Caspar could hear the traffic from nearby St James’s as he told the Board how his first courier – a Swiss called only by a street name, Night Stock – had made contact with Felix and reported that Maxine and Dédé had arrived. He also brought a message in cipher which said that Tarot now consisted of eight people and the weapons were secure.
‘It was a start. A beginning,’ Caspar told them, and the six members of the Board looked back at him with hungry eyes. He could not divine whether they were now ravenous for more of his tale or for his blood.
Chapter Seven
Outside, in the real world of the present, other things were happening. Naldo Railton, son of James and nephew of Caspar, had been removed from Berlin Station and given the task of handling his own agent – the lad Kruger.
The results Kruger had obtained regarding the Tarot affair had so pleased C that he had given the order himself, in spite of counsel against the action from the Deputy Chief and two Heads of Departments.
Naldo handled Herbie Kruger with skill, running him through two of the DP camps in West Germany before moving into Austria. This did not please the Resident – or Head of Station – in Vienna. Vienna was regarded as ‘most sensitive,’ and the handful of SIS people there took great umbrage at Naldo Railton’s arrival with his lumbering, youthful, and clumsy-looking agent.
They were less happy when the agent produced results in the form of two senior SS men and a particularly brutal woman SD guard who had disappeared from the terrible female camp at Ravensbrück.
Things appeared to be going very well. Naldo and Kruger even had an operation name, Weed Killer, with Herbie Kruger known, in all signals, as Digger. The names were obvious, but, a handful apart, the nucleus of SIS in London was not known for brilliant mental agility.
Then the unthinkable happened. Weed Killer was closed down.
Naldo had the news from a young, haughty SIS type, straight from the head of Vienna Station’s office, just after breakfast one drizzling Thursday morning. It came on heavy stationery emblazoned with the Foreign Office crest. Most insecure, Naldo thought.
Running his eyes over the document, Naldo made up his mind to report the insecure method. It was flagged as ‘Confidential,’ though not ‘Classified,’ and contained every last detail – passport and papers collection, times of travel, mode of transport, right up to the fact that they would be met on arrival, for they were to return to London: Naldo and Herbie both. To cap it all, the orders had C’s personal sanction.
Kruger, naturally, was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing London, while Naldo could not shake off a sense of foreboding.
They were flown into Northolt by the RAF and met by two teams: a pair of heavy men from ‘The School,’ as they called the Training Department; and three smooth, wary types who Naldo identified as ‘Staff.’ The heavies took Kruger off in a plain white van, while Naldo was driven into London in an old Daimler, flanked, in the rear, by two of the smoothies.
The first held out his hand. ‘We have to take your passport, old boy.’
‘What’s going on?’ Naldo asked grittily.
‘C’s instructions. Ours not to reason why, and all that rot.’
Naldo handed over the passport they had given him before leaving Vienna. ‘And the real one.’ The first smooth operator smiled, showing perfect teeth.
‘I presume I can keep the rest of my ID.’ Naldo fished in his pockets.
‘’Course. Only temporary.’
‘Indefinite leave, old chap. But you mustn’t go out of London.’
‘So where can we drop you, old horse?’
‘Corner of Exhibition Road, Kensington,’ Naldo snapped.
‘C says he’ll be in touch,’ they chorused as the car stopped near the entrance to Kensington Gardens. Naldo hefted his small case in his right hand and turned in the direction of the house he called home.
As well as Redhill Manor, the Railtons had a number of London properties, but home for Naldo was none of these – not the grand house in Cheyne Walk, nor the property in Eccleston Square, where his Uncle Caspar now lived, but the three-storey house in which he had been brought up. The place belonged to his father, who had bought it during the First World War as a home for his wife and children.
He had not been back for weeks. The last time was shortly after Arnie Farthing had bequeathed Herbie Kruger to him, and then only for a weekend. It smelled musty and a little damp, but everything else appeared to be in order.
At thirty-one, Naldo was not married. There were plenty of girls, for he was a big, fine-looking man in the Railton mould: tall, muscular, and with a distinctive bone structure – strong jawline, high forehead, and the ‘Railton nose’: straight, patrician, and flaring slightly at the nostrils.
There w
as a woman who came in to clean twice a week – more often when he was there – so the living room fire was laid. He set a match to it, rubbing his hands and thinking that if C had given him leave there was no point in worrying about the why and wherefores. Sufficient unto the day.
He went to his small study where he unlocked a desk drawer and took out his ‘little black book.’ Might as well have some fun. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow…
But London was almost empty of his friends. It was Saturday and the girls he took out when on leave all seemed to be in the country or otherwise engaged.
At lunchtime he put on a coat, went out, hailed a taxi, and headed for the Ritz – the grillroom, which was still full of uniforms, male and female. He felt like a shirker and, indeed, was almost treated as a pariah. The staff in the grill had become used to ranking officers and their ladies, and, even though the war was over, they still kept up a kind of snobbery where civilian clothes were concerned.
He ate a mediocre meal and was about to order coffee when someone spoke from just behind him.
‘Naldo? What the hell’re you doing here?’ It was the last person he wanted to see, ‘Buzz’ Burville, sporting the crown and pip of a lieutenant colonel and the flashes and badges of the Airborne. They had been at Wellington together, then Cambridge for a while, and Buzz was not only a prize bore, but one of those career officers who knew of Naldo’s occupation and was given to pumping him so that he could boast secrets in the Mess – secrets that usually emanated from his own brain.
‘Hallo, Buzz,’ Naldo greeted him flatly. ‘You okay? I heard you got out at Arnhem. And a gong as well!’ He stared at the white and purple ribbon above the breast pocket.
