by Alex Gerlis
‘The vieille ville’.
‘They’ll be carrying a copy of the previous day’s edition of the Tribune de Genève. In reply to their question, you’re to ask them if they’d prefer to walk or to take the tram. They’ll tell you they’d prefer to walk if you can point them in the right direction. You’ll explain you are walking that way and they’re welcome to follow you. Take any route to the Old Town. At some point after entering it, they’ll overtake you. You’re not to acknowledge them, just carry on walking at the same pace, but now you’re following them. When you see them place the Tribune de Genève in a waste bin outside a building, you are to enter the building and wait. If no-one has approached you after five minutes, you leave the building and return home. But if someone joins you and introduces themselves as Marc, you are to go with him. He will take you to meet your main contact. At that moment, your new career will have begun. Please repeat all of this to me Henry.’
***
Edgar’s briefing finished just after 1.00 and Henry was escorted back to his room. Edgar urged him to try and get some sleep: it was going to be a long night and he shouldn’t count on being able to sleep on the boat. In his room he saw a case had been carefully packed for him, along with his two briefcases. A change of clothes was laid out on the bed. Edgar explained that everything had been carefully checked to ensure nothing incriminating was in his possession in case he was searched.
He was woken at 4.00 and the soldier who had been looking after him told him a bath had been prepared. By 4.30 he was back in the office where his briefing had been held that morning. The soldier carried his bag and Henry carried his own briefcases. Edgar was nervously fiddling with his leather gloves.
‘There’s a train from Cherbourg at 10.15 in the morning, which you’re to take to Paris. You’re to go to the telegram bureau inside Gare Saint-Lazare as soon as you arrive and send a telegram with the following message to this address.’
He handed a slip of paper to Henry. The message read: ‘Arrived safely Paris stop regards to all stop.’
‘Memorise that and destroy the paper. Then go to find a hotel and, the next morning, take the train to Geneva. You know your way around Paris?’
Henry shrugged. ‘I’ve been once or twice.’
Edgar pointed to the table. ‘Here are your British and Swiss passports, which we’ve been looking after for you. Here’s a receipt for the guesthouse in Fulham to show you’ve been staying there since the middle of August. In this envelope is more paperwork than you could imagine from various firms of solicitors and the Midland Bank relating to the release of money from your aunt’s estate, including a terribly helpful letter from the bank explaining the money can only be transferred legally to a foreign country in instalments. Can I ask, is your mother the inquisitive type?’
‘Do you mean, is she nosey?’
Edgar laughed. ‘Well, yes.’
‘She could not be more nosey, if I was honest. Always poking about in my things.’
‘Good. Don’t show all these letters and documents to her, then, just leave them for her to find. It’ll be much more convincing that way and she then ought to believe your account of why you were kept here for so long. It’s essential she never suspects what you’re up to, do you understand?’
Henry nodded.
‘Hang on, before you put all that in your briefcase, here’s some more money: twenty pounds worth of French francs which ought to be more than enough for your hotel tomorrow night and the ticket to Geneva, plus meals. And here in this envelope is fifty pounds worth of Swiss Francs, which ought to cover any expenses you may incur in the foreseeable future in Switzerland.’
At five o’clock a car pulled up outside the building and the two men left the office and walked quietly to it. Edgar helped Henry put his cases in the boot then joined him in the back.
‘I thought you’d like me to see you off.’
***
Henry Hunter boarded the SS Worthing in Southampton before the troops embarked and was taken straight to a tiny cabin in the officers’ quarters, which had a bunk and little else. The captain came in and told him he was to remain in the cabin for the duration of the voyage.
They docked in Cherbourg just after seven the next morning and at nine o’clock the captain came into his cabin. He was safe to leave now, all the troops had disembarked. A taxi was waiting on the quay to take him to the station.
Henry was shocked at how France had changed. Everywhere there were troops – British as well as French – and people looked pinched, worried and in a hurry. None of which were characteristics he’d usually associate with the French. Normally the train journey would have been jolly, with people chatting. Now, it was quiet. People stared out of the windows and said little. It was as if a whole nation was wrapped in its own thoughts, unwilling to share its fears.
The train pulled into Gare Saint-Lazare just before three o’clock: the journey had taken longer than scheduled due to a lengthy and unexplained stop outside Caen. If Cherbourg had been quiet and the train silent, Gare Saint-Lazare was not. Half of Paris seemed to be leaving through the station and the other half arriving into it. He found the telegram bureau and sent the message to London. He had little doubt he would be watched at the station: requiring him to send the telegram was a good way of ensuring that. He then walked out of the vast concourse of Gare Saint-Lazare and away from Clichy and its temptations.
The further you walk the harder it is for you to be followed.
So he headed south then east, down Boulevard Haussmann where the elegant shops and straight lines afforded him plenty of opportunity to observe every angle around him. He entered a leatherwear shop to look at wallets and a tabac to buy matches, and in Boulevard St Martin he joined a long queue in a patisserie to buy an almond croissant. The ten-minute wait allowed him enough time to be certain no-one was following. He decided to look for somewhere to stay around Republique and found a small hotel by the Canal Saint Martin, where he took a comfortable room with its own private bathroom overlooking, as requested, the front of the hotel. He then spent an hour sitting by the window, behind the half-open shutters, observing the street below. When he was as certain as he could be that no-one had followed him and no-one was watching from the street, he closed the shutters and drew the curtain. After a bath and a rest he left his room at six thirty.
Had anyone checked in since his arrival, he asked the patron at reception? He was not sure if a colleague was joining him or not. The patron shook his head. He understood, he said, with a knowing and even conspiratorial look. Henry wasn’t sure what it was the patron understood, but he slipped him a generous few francs for what he said was an already excellent service and explained he may be back late, perhaps very late. Would the patron be so good as to let him have a key? Of course. And would he also be able to perhaps slip a note under his door to let him know if his friend arrived, or indeed if anyone else checked in or even asked for him? Naturally, said the patron. It would my pleasure. Henry knew that, this being Paris, the patron would assume that Henry was conducting an affair: in such circumstances it would be his pleasure, indeed his duty as patron to do whatever he could to assist.
Henry walked out into the bitter Parisian night air, where a wind had swept up the nearby Seine and was settling over the city. He waited in the entrance of the hotel for ten minutes and, once he was certain he was alone, he headed south, turning up the collar of his coat as he did so.
The real danger of being a spy is that which you court yourself.
He headed in a south-easterly direction, away from his destination. On the Rue de Crussol, just before it crossed Boulevard Voltaire, he found a telephone kiosk. The call lasted no more than 30 seconds, much of which was taken up by a pause by the person who had answered the phone.
Very well. You know where to come. Give us one hour. Be careful.
So he walked down Boulevard Voltaire then found a tiny café in the Passage Saint-Pierre Amelot. There were four two-seater tables, crammed into a s
pace where three would have been a tight squeeze. One of the tables was occupied by a young couple. Henry took a vacant one, making sure he faced the door. He remained there for half an hour: dinner was a bowl of soup with bread and an excellent omelette.
It took him 20 minutes to reach his destination from the café. The Marais was once swampland, then home to the aristocracy and now, as far as Henry could tell, in an advanced state of decay. It was the kind of area of which people would say it had known better days, though no-one alive could remember those better days. But Henry liked the anonymity of the Marais, with its obvious edge of danger that meant people hurried along and avoided each other. It wasn’t relaxed and given over to enjoyment of life, like most other parts of Paris. It had its different groups; the Jews and their synagogues and little shops around the Rue de Rosiers; those too poor to have their own place and living with others in large crumbling houses; the prostitutes who couldn’t make it in Clichy; the gamblers, the drinkers and the anarchists.
He knew the area very well and picked up his pace, darting up and down little alleys, doubling back on himself, pausing in darkened doorways and making it impossible for anyone to follow him. He emerged into the Rue de Bretagne and slipped into the entrance of a large grey building with enormous shuttered windows and waited. On the wall inside the entrance was a series of bells, one for each of the 20 apartments. Under the bells someone had drawn a small circle in pencil. On the opposite wall they had drawn a square. It was safe. He pressed a bell and went straight up to the top floor.
***
‘You look very well. You’ve lost weight.’
‘Yes, thank you Viktor.’ Henry hesitated. He was about to return the compliment, but realised nothing could be further from the truth: the other man was bigger than ever, his face heavily lined and his large nose even redder. Viktor had greeted him with an embrace and had held him in it for a while, which made Henry feel less than comfortable. As he slowly emerged from the hug, the man held him at arm’s length by the shoulders – one hand on each – as if to admire him. For a moment Henry feared the man was about to kiss him on the cheeks, as he was wont to do. He was always nervous in the Viktor’s presence, not least after a long gap, as now. Anyone looking at him would have noticed that, for a brief moment, his thin smile had disappeared.
‘I wasn’t sure we’d ever see you again. Come, sit down. We have much to talk about.’
They were speaking in French, neither man’s native language, which added to a formal, even tense air in the room. Two other men stood either side of the window, keeping watch through half-open shutters. Another man entered the room and announced it was all clear: no-one had followed him. He was sure of that.
‘What will you drink? I seem to have everything here. Whisky?’
‘No, not for me, thank you.’
‘Really? That’s the first time I’ve known you to turn down a whisky. What have they done to you?’
The man’s look of concern broke into a broad grin as he poured himself a drink and pulled his chair closer to Henry’s. ‘This really has been a most unexpected development, most unexpected. And you’re certain they suspect nothing?’
‘I’m as certain as I can be,’ said Henry.
Viktor shuffled his large frame around in the chair to make himself comfortable. From a side table he picked up a large notebook, expensively bound in brown leather. He produced a pencil from his top pocket and sharpened it with a penknife that came from another pocket, allowing the shavings to gather on the front of his jacket. He made a few notes before looking up at Henry and smiling, as if checking on him once again.
‘We have two hours, maybe three. You need to tell me everything.’
***
Henry returned to the hotel just before one that morning. There was no note under the door from the patron. Despite his exhaustion, he slept only fitfully and woke at seven o’clock. He checked out of the hotel an hour later, stopped for a coffee and croissant nearby then caught a tram on the Boulevard du Temple down to the Gare de Lyon. He managed to book a good seat on the ten o’clock train to Geneva where he found himself in a carriage with six other passengers: a formally dressed Swiss businessman who tutted loudly if anyone came too near him; an elegantly dressed, elderly French lady who spent most of the journey smiling wistfully out of the window and did not remove her leather gloves once during the journey; and a couple with their son and daughter who were, as far as Henry could tell, a year or two either side of ten. They seemed to be overburdened with suitcases and other bags, some of which they had to keep in the corridor. When the children spoke, which was not very often, they did so with strong Parisian accents. The parents spoke to the children in accented French, but to each other in what sounded to Henry like Polish and also a strange version of High German he’d never heard before. From what he could tell, they were anxious about crossing the border. The wife kept asking the husband if all the paperwork was in order. I hope so. Who knows? Whenever one of the family spoke, the Swiss businessman looked annoyed. On more than one occasion he caught Henry’s eye, hoping to share his disapproval with him.
The journey was uneventful until around a quarter to six when the train pulled into Gare de Bellegarde, the last station in France before the Swiss border. For around ten minutes, the train just stood still, with no apparent reason for the delay. The businessman looked at his watch and shook his head. The French lady continued to look out of the window, smiling. Then they heard voices, working their way slowly down the train. Through the window Henry could just make out the shape of gendarmes patrolling along the tracks. The voices grew nearer and the parents looked even more anxious. Everything will be alright?, the wife asked the husband, in the strange German dialect. I have no idea the husband replied. Speak in French now: only in French.
Five minutes later, two Swiss border guards and a French gendarme entered the carriage. ‘Papers please,’ he said. ‘A routine check: we’ll have you on your way in a minute.’
Henry showed his Swiss passport. One Swiss border guard showed it to the other and they both nodded. ‘No problem Monsieur Hesse.’ Nor was there any problem with the businessman and the elegantly dressed lady. But for the family, it was different. Both guards looked at the papers in some detail and shook their heads, passing various documents to the bored-looking gendarme behind them.
‘These papers are not in order,’ one of them said to the father.
‘But I was assured there would be no problem.’
‘Well, there is. You have no valid papers here allowing you to enter Switzerland. It is not possible.’
The husband and wife exchanged glances; the wife nodded. Do it.
‘Perhaps I could have a word with you in the corridor?’ He gestured towards the children. Away from them, please.
Henry could just make out the man pleading with the guards, both of whom looked stone-faced. ‘Perhaps I could pay for the visas now, I have the funds?’ Henry could see the man open his wallet and attempt to press a wad of banknotes into the hand of one of the guards, who refused to take it.
‘You are denied entry to Switzerland. You have to leave the train now,’ he heard one of them say. Henry noticed the other guard grabbed the banknotes.
‘You are in illegal possession of Swiss currency. We are confiscating it.’
The gendarme shrugged. This is not my problem. The father came back into the carriage, crestfallen and defeated. His wife was doing her best not to cry and the children looked frightened, as if they knew what was happening. The gendarme helped them to remove their cases. The elderly lady looked shocked and the businessman annoyed as baggage was removed from around him. A minute or so later, Henry watched as the family emerged onto the deserted platform and the train slowly began to move again. The businessman shook his head and muttered the word ‘juifs’. The lady had stopped smiling.
The train pulled into Gare Cornavin just before seven o’clock. On the short walk home Henry was hit by the icy blast from the nearby Alps, bounci
ng into the city from the lake. Despite this and the burdens he now carried, he had the most unusual sensation of arriving somewhere he could call home.
***
At around the same time that Henry Hunter’s train was leaving Gare de Lyon, Edgar took a call on a secure line in his office. It was Hurst from the Paris station.
‘Well done Edgar, you’ve found a bit of a star there. He didn’t half give my chaps the run-around.’
‘You didn’t lose him, did you Hurst? There’ll be all hell to pay if you did.’
‘Come on Edgar, you ought to know my boys better than that. He’s very good, but in the end he made the mistake of assuming one can only be tracked from behind. We managed to keep tabs on him all last night, but only just.’
‘Where did he end up?’
‘The Marais, as we suspected he would.’
‘And the people he met up with: you’re sure of who they are?’
‘Yes sir, we’re absolutely certain. No question about it.’
***
Chapter 4: from Marseilles to Moscow, December 1939
Early in the afternoon of the first Monday of December a large man wearing a long, dark coat and a smart black fedora marched with surprising agility up from the vieux port in Marseilles to his pension overlooking the port and the Mediterranean beyond it.
He was Russian, but for the purposes of his visit he was a Swedish shipping agent from Gothenburg. He had been hanging around the vieux port for a few futile days, hoping to make contact with an Algerian who had apparently contacted a Communist Party official in the city with the promise of some secret documents of an unspecified nature. The Party official had now disappeared and the Algerian never showed up. It was the nature of the job he reflected, as the pension came into sight: unlike the fishermen he had been watching that morning selling their catch on the Quai des Belges, a spy had to become used the prey only occasionally succumbing to the bait.
