by Alex Gerlis
Both men began to speak at the same time. With a generous gesture of his arm, the Dutchman allowed Captain Edgar to continue.
‘Indeed, sir. Another triumph for Colonel Visser if I might say. Quite masterful. The Belgian was a miserable wretch but he held out on us for far longer than anyone could have expected. That damned policeman in Oxford. We were quite possibly yards and even minutes away from catching Vermeulen red-handed with the transmitter. Then Vermeulen goes and throws up in the street, policeman arrests Vermeulen and the whole operation is up the spout. Without the bloody transmitter, if you’ll excuse my language, we have nothing on Vermeulen. Tricky job we had on our hands.’
‘You see, Professor Newby,’ Colonel Visser was speaking now, cutting across Captain Edgar and directly addressing the large man in front of them, ‘he had been well trained. To a point. They always are well trained; the Germans know what they are doing. But what matters is where that point is. Vermeulen knew that we had no evidence on him and his confidence increased as the interrogation went on — and not without reason. Without the transmitter we had a Belgian national who had been living openly in this country for just under a year and who had no contact with the enemy in that time. All of his possessions had been checked when he entered this country and they had been cleared then. He had no reason to suspect that we had anything on him now. He had enough wit about him to do as they had told him to do. I come across it all of the time. Stick to your story. If they have anything against you, you will know soon enough. You can almost see their lips moving as they repeat that to themselves.’
The Dutchman cleared his throat. He desperately wanted a cigarette but he had been warned of the professor’s aversion to them.
‘They even used a classic Abwehr technique by deliberately building a flaw into his story. The idea is that we think we have spotted something against him, but he is prepared for that and eventually owns up to it and then it appears not to be so important. In his case, it was pretending to be a lawyer. We made him admit that he was just a clerk. He claims that this was his opportunity to be somebody, that no harm was intended and we are then meant to think that maybe he is not really a spy after all, just a fool.’
The Dutchman could feel the packet of Players Navy Cut getting heavier in his shirt pocket.
‘So, a week into the interrogation he must have felt confident. And as he felt more confident, the more anxious I became. I was certain that he must have brought something incriminating with him into England. The transmitter would have come separately in a parachute drop or by some other route and then cached for him, but he would have carried some kind of codebook in with him. It was impossible that he could be so clean. Our information from Brussels was so good that we knew he was an agent. So I went through all of his possessions myself. Every night after the interrogations, I went through everything, even though my men had already searched everything twice over. The bible was the last item I looked at. It was clever. The pinpricks did not begin until halfway into Exodus and I believe that I only spotted the first one because I still had my desk lamp on as the sun rose through the window and that combination of light somehow picked out the marks. Divine providence.’
That reference did not appear to be appreciated by the professor of theology sat opposite him.
‘There we have it. We confronted him with this evidence and then it really was just a matter of time.’
‘Will he work for us then?’
‘Oh yes indeed, Professor.’ Captain Edgar was speaking now. His tall frame leaning forward in the low chair, edging him closer to the other three and placing him in front of Colonel Visser.
‘Colonel Visser’s description of a judicial execution was masterful. It certainly did the trick. I thought Vermeulen was going to pass out there and then. Good job the chap doesn’t have a weak heart.’
Professor Newby continued looking at Captain Edgar for some time after he had finished. He turned to the Frenchman on his left.
‘Jean-Louis. We are called the “twenty committee” because of the two Roman numerals, XX. They represent the words double cross, hence the two XXs, which also signify twenty in Latin as I am sure you are aware. Vingt. Our role in the Double Cross Committee or “twenty committee” as you may sometimes hear it referred to, is to identify German spies whom we can turn into double agents. Colonel Visser is our best source of new recruits. In other words, find them and then persuade them to work for us. So what I need to know from Colonel Visser and Captain Edgar is whether we can turn Arnold Vermeulen.’
Captain Edgar spoke first. ‘You can turn Arnold Vermeulen in any direction you want, Professor. Left, right, upside down, inside out. You name it. He’s yours to do what you want with.’
‘Do you share this assessment, Colonel Visser?’
There was a hesitation from the Dutchman, who was weighing his words in marked contrast to Captain Edgar’s enthusiasm. ‘Indeed, Professor. But I would have a significant concern.’
‘Which is?’
‘Which is that in himself, Vermeulen is only of secondary interest. There is very little that we can get directly from him. He has not been involved in any espionage since his arrival in this country. His only real interest to us is as a way of getting to the primary agent, whom he refers to by the code name Magpie. We must do nothing that would jeopardise our chances of getting hold of her. To do that, we have to handle Vermeulen very carefully.’
‘What kind of a chap is he?’
‘He is, as Captain Edgar says and as is all too obvious to any observer, a weak and pathetic individual. He is a loner. A small man, consumed and possibly motivated by resentment and envy and prejudice. He saw the German conquest of Belgium as an ideal opportunity to be someone for perhaps the first time in his life. However, we must not make the mistake of underestimating him. This man is not a complete fool, as much as we would like to think so. He has his strengths. Apart from his fluency in English and his ability with radios, he has a certain stubbornness, he has a commitment.’
‘By which you mean what, Colonel?’ This was the man to the Professor’s right, who up to this point had been busy taking notes.
‘Despite what we think of him, he still volunteered to help the Germans. Maybe he did not envisage risking his life as a spy in this country, but he was still motivated by some kind of an ideological commitment to the Nazi cause. We have to trust him if we are to get our entré to Magpie. She is our real target. And I am not sure how far we can trust Arnold Vermeulen.’
Colonel Visser gestured towards Captain Edgar on his right. ‘We have done well to obtain a confession from Vermeulen. But without Magpie, it will mean nothing.’
‘What do we know about Magpie?’ This was the Frenchman to the left of the professor.
‘We know Magpie is important,’ said Edgar. ‘We know she is a woman and that she is French. Other than that, we know nothing. Nothing.’
‘Narrows it down somewhat,’ said the professor. The others smiled briefly. There was a long silence. The sun had dropped now, but the room was still too warm and perfectly quiet. Professor Newby was the first to speak.
‘Correct me if I am wrong, Jean-Louis, but was there not a mass exodus of population after the Germans conquered France?’
Jean-Louis spoke in a resigned manner, lowering his head, which less kind observers than those in the room may have imagined was in shame. ‘The population of France is forty million. We estimate that up to a quarter of the population left their homes around the time of the German invasion. The population of Paris was three million before the Germans marched in on 14 June. Less than a million were still there when they actually arrived. Cities like Chartres where my wife’s family is from, like Troyes and like Évreux in Normandy, they just emptied.’
‘A picture of chaos, you see,’ said the professor. ‘Utter chaos. A quarter of the bloody population on the road, no civil order, tens of thousands of French refugees end up over here and for the Germans to slip one or two agents in among them ...well, it was the easi
est thing in the world and Visser has indeed caught some of them. Apologies Jean-Louis, but you get my meaning. We are searching for a needle in a proverbial haystack.’
‘How do you propose we find her, Visser?’ asked the Frenchman.
At this point, both Visser and Edgar smiled and eased back in their chairs.
‘Oh we know how to find her all right.’ Edgar was smiling and removing a map from his jacket pocket.
‘You see,’ Visser added as Captain Edgar got up and spread the map out on a table near the door, ‘Arnold Vermeulen has been a good deal more helpful than I think we may have given him credit for.’
ooo000ooo
The following day began particularly early for Arnold Vermeulen. He had been alone in his cell at the Royal Victoria Patriotic School since his interrogation had ended the previous day. Apart from the guards checking on him twice an hour, sometimes more, he had been alone in his thoughts.
At first, he had felt a sense of utter relief: that the constant interrogations were over; that they had promised to spare his life in exchange for him agreeing to work for them and relief that his war was over. He had never meant it to go this far. He just wanted to show those Jews that they could not run things their way any more. In his worst nightmares, he could never have imagined that they would ask him to become an active spy for them. In England. It was a ridiculous notion. His health was not up to it. He had spent the past year waiting for a knock on the door.
The sense of relief had allowed him to have his first proper sleep since arriving here, but it had been a brief one. He woke up drenched in sweat and overwhelmed by terrible thoughts. What if it was not true? What if they had deceived him? Could it be a trick? He spent the next couple of hours reassuring himself that without Magpie, he was useless to them and he was the only person who could give them Magpie. He relaxed and even managed to eat all of the stew they brought him early in the evening, along with bread that didn’t taste like bread and a dry pudding. This time he fell into a truly deep sleep, which he remained in until the cell door burst open at five in the morning.
The small cell, with its pervading smell of new concrete, was filled with two guards, two other men wearing a different military uniform and the tall Englishman who had sat in on all of the interrogations. He spoke.
‘Get up, Vermeulen, we are moving you.’
The Belgian stood in the centre of the cell. Two of the guards had moved behind him. One of the men in the uniforms he had not seen before threw some clothes on the bed.
‘Get undressed and put those on.’
Vermeulen was dazed. He looked around the cell, smiling in the forlorn hope that one person in the cell would return his smile. Slowly, he started to remove his own clothes, which he had fallen asleep in and which were the ones he had been allowed to wear since his arrest and after they had examined them. He removed the cardigan that his mother had knitted for him a year before she died, the shirt and the trousers from which they had already removed the belt. He stood there in his underpants, vest and socks, shivering in fear and the cold of the early morning.
‘Carry on.’
Vermeulen peeled off the socks, hoping no one would notice the holes in the heels and then the vest, his spindly legs, small pot-belly, hairless chest and pock-marked shoulders exposed.
‘Everything.’
Vermeulen could not remember the last time anyone had seen him naked. He felt totally humiliated. He turned round hoping for some privacy, but the guards behind could see him now. He was sure that one of them was grinning at him. He removed his underpants and tried to put on the new trousers as fast as possible in one movement, but only succeeded in slipping on the bed and exposing himself to everyone in the cell, so prolonging the embarrassment. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes again, his humiliation complete.
He stood in front of the men in the doorway, in the rough grey trousers and matching shirt and clog-like shoes without any socks. The guards handcuffed his arms behind his back and the Englishman spoke in an almost casual manner.
‘Things did not work out as we had expected them to, Vermeulen. We are going to have to deal with you in a different way. Follow me.’
With that, the whimpering Vermeulen was virtually dragged out of his cell, across the courtyard, all of which he was seeing for the first time as he was without a blindfold, which he knew must be an ominous sign, and hauled into the back of a black van. He was placed on a small wooden bench which went along the side of the van, with the two men in the new uniform on each side of him.
They drove for well over an hour. At the very start of the journey he had asked his new guards where he was being taken, but the reply of ‘not a word’ was accompanied by him being pushed back in the bench. Not in an aggressive manner, but it did mean that his handcuffed arms were pinioned against the side of the van and that hurt. He knew what was happening. They had fooled him. The English were not supposed to act like this. They were going to torture him now and he had nothing more to tell them. He had told them everything he knew. ‘We are going to have to deal with you in a different way,’ the Englishman had said. He spent the rest of the journey imagining every way in which they were going to deal with him and each way was worse than the one he had thought of previously.
By the time they arrived at their destination, daylight had taken hold. The van had stopped outside enormous gates and Vermeulen was led round to the main entrance. The sign said ‘Wormwood Scrubs’ and Vermeulen recognised the prison from the bus. He lived just two or three miles from here and for a while he had a job in the hospital next door. A small side gate half opened and the tall Englishman walked ahead of them and his long gait meant that the guards had to hurry Vermeulen along to keep up.
They stopped at a guardhouse, where forms were quickly exchanged, quiet words spoken and shackles attached to his feet. They continued their progress through the prison, accompanied now by two armed guards in front and two more behind, as far as he could make out. He was able to walk in the shackles, but not without considerable noise and some discomfort as they chaffed against the rough material of his trousers. Down a long corridor with barred windows along one side, through a double set of locked doors and into an enormous room, which felt like an empty factory but in the gloom Vermeulen could make out no distinguishing features, although there appeared to be some large machinery against a far wall. The small group marched across the rough concrete floor to the centre of room, their footsteps and Vermeulen’s chains echoing against the distant walls. As they reached the centre, the tall Englishman turned abruptly and walked towards the Belgian.
He had a pistol in his right hand, which he slowly raised, holding the barrel against Vermeulen’s temple. The Belgian struggled, but the two guards had little trouble in holding him steady.
‘You are of no use to us now, Vermeulen. The truth is that we do not trust you. You have reached the end of the road.’
There was silence in the room, broken only by Vermeulen’s panicked breathing and the echoing sound of the safety catch being released. The Englishman waited. The Belgian’s eyes were wide open, as was his mouth. No sound came out. Vermeulen slumped to the floor.
The Englishman circled the body, prodding it once with his shoe before turning to the guards.
‘Take him away.’
ooo000ooo
When Captain Edgar came to visit Arnold Vermeulen later that morning, he found the Belgian lying on the metal bed curled into a foetal position. When he saw Edgar enter the room he instinctively moved away from him, so that by the time the door shut he had forced himself into the back of the bed, against the corner of the two walls. They were alone.
‘Please relax, Vermeulen.’ The Englishman spoke in a quiet voice, but Vermeulen had no trouble hearing it.
‘Didn’t quite go to plan before, sorry about that.’ He gave the impression of not being very sorry at all. He drew up a chair close to the bed, very close to Vermeulen. The Belgian was unable to get any further away from Edgar.
‘Plan was to pull the trigger, you would just hear an empty click and realise that the pistol was not loaded. I would then tell you this is what would happen to you if you did not do exactly as we ask of you. Any tricks, anything less than total co-operation and that would be your fate. Except, of course, next time the pistol would be loaded. Only thing, we didn’t count on you fainting down there, which is why I am making this little speech now.’
Vermeulen nodded eagerly.
‘I just wanted you to realise quite how serious we are. You told us on Wednesday that you have met Magpie once. So she knows who you are. That means that without you, we cannot get to Magpie. So you are working for us now. And that means no tricks, no using the secret warning signals that you no doubt have agreed, nothing clever. When you start your transmissions, you do it by the book. If you use any device like a warning word to let them know that you’ve been turned, we will find out. Just do everything that we ask of you. If you don’t, you now know exactly what the consequences will be.’
The Englishman stood up, looking around the room as he did so. ‘Bit grim in here. This is where you were going to stay but instead we have decided to move you back to your bedsit in Acton. We’re pretty certain that no one has been around there looking for you so the story will be that you went to visit a friend in the north. Don’t worry, for the first time in a long while, Vermeulen, you are not going to be on your own. You will have company. Your landlady has very obligingly made arrangements for my men to occupy the other three bedsits in the house. She thinks you are an important engineer and three colleagues are moving in.
The Englishman slapped his hand a bit too hard on Vermeulen’s leg and the Belgian jumped. ‘So you see, Vermeulen, for the first time in your life, someone thinks you are important! Now get ready, we’ve got a busy couple of days.’ To all intents and purposes the Englishman could have been describing the plans for the weekend to an old friend up from the country.
‘Today we need to go to Oxford, don’t we? Pick up the transmitter. And on Sunday ... we go for a walk in the park.’
