The Best of Our Spies

by Alex Gerlis

  ‘No. It all hinges on whether you think that you can pull it off?’

  ‘Yes, I think we can. Do you agree, Nicole? We train our agents at Wanborough Manor initially. Those that get through the three weeks there are sent to Beaulieu in the New Forest. We’ll obviously have to keep her well away from these places. Can’t risk her meeting other agents or even too many of our own people. We’ll have to take over a country house we have never used before and are never likely to use again and get some army boys to help us with a few weeks’ training. We can fly her in by Lysander, not having to train her on how to use a parachute will save time. Any idea where you want to send her in the Pas de Calais?’

  ‘Around Boulogne.’

  ‘Nicole?’

  ‘The FTP is very active around there. There are some small cells that are very quiet. It’s deliberate while we wait for D-Day; idea is only to activate them when we need them. We could certainly find one to send her to – as long as we can be sure that we can get a warning to them the minute they are in danger. You’ll understand that we could not possibly be associated with a plan that deliberately sacrifices any of our units. We must be satisfied that they will have some protection.’ It was the first time Nicole had spoken at any length. He still could not place her accent, which was certainly not French. In the strange half world in which he now lived, he knew better than to ask.

  ‘And do we know her true identity?’

  ‘No. She is called Nathalie Mercier, which is not her real name. Of course, now she is known as Nathalie Quinn. She says she is from Paris, but we rather doubt that. She did meet the French wife of a colleague, who said she did not think she had a Parisian accent. Of course, it is all rather tricky to check these things out nowadays.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nicole, ‘we are going to need to give her a new identity anyway. By the time we have finished with her, she will not be sure who she is.’

  ‘I would not be so sure about that,’ said Edgar. ‘So I can rely on you to call her in?’

  Newby escorted Edgar downstairs. Together they stood in the mews courtyard, the cobblestones feeling incongruous in the midst of the busy city. Newby was filling his pipe with tobacco.

  ‘Nicole rather rules that place for me. Quite brilliant. She can’t abide smoke though, so I have to sneak out. I’ll get her to look after Magpie. One question though, Edgar.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Your chap Quinn is going to be devastated when he finds out that you chaps have married him off to a Nazi agent, isn’t he?’

  Edgar moved to the other side of Newby to avoid the cloud of tobacco smoke drifting towards him. He pondered the question as if it was one that until now had never occurred to him.

  ‘I imagine he will, but I daresay that he will get over it.’

  ooo000ooo

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  December 1943

  Nathalie Quinn had been hiding in the ditch beside the railway track for over an hour. Face down in the wet gravel; flecks of sharp stone pitting her face. The damp shrub that she had uprooted earlier from the hedgerow behind her was covering her, but the moisture was now beginning to work through her clothing. When she had set out two hours previously, the night seemed surprisingly warm for the time of the year and the moon bright enough for her to find her way across the fields.

  But now the chill of the December night air was eating through her and she was regretting not taking the extra sweater that she had been offered just before she set out. Enough cloud had drifted over the vast sky to obscure the moon and cast pitch darkness all around. She was grateful for that now. The last half mile before the railway line had been the most perilous. She had waited in the copse at the top of the hill for ten minutes, checking that there was no movement below. She then crept down, making sure she kept in the cover of the trees where possible. At the bottom of the hill she hid behind a high hedge for just long enough to catch her breath and check that the road was clear.

  This is where they’ll get me. There’s a bend in the road. They’ll be waiting behind that bend and come out once I start to cross the road.

  But you could wait all night and still not be certain there was nothing there, so she crawled through the small gap, scratching her face in the process, then dashed across the road and jumped over the ditch into the field on the other side.

  She had slipped as she landed in the field, covering herself in the chalky mud and slightly spraining her wrist — ‘merde’. But at least she was clear. She had decided beforehand that the road was the riskiest part of the journey and now that was behind her. She had a choice now: either take the shortest route by going diagonally across the field, but risk being seen in the open, or take the long route by using the cover of the hedgerow along the perimeter. Crouched in the mud, she looked up at the sky. The moon was quite obscured now by the cloud. She would risk going across the field. ‘Time is never on your side,’ they had told her.

  At the other side of the field she came to the mesh wire fence at the top of the railway embankment, exactly where she had been told it would be. She waited for five minutes, just in case there were any patrols on the line below. The wire was difficult to cut, much thicker than she had expected and the wet steel caused her cutters to slip. Her hands were freezing cold. She had to cut through the wire in a dozen places to make a big enough hole for her to climb through. She then tied the wire back to the fence. It would be easy enough to spot close up, but from a distance it would look like the fence was intact. She threw the shrub she had collected into the ditch and slid down into it. She covered herself as best she could and waited.

  Now it was gone midnight. In the past hour she had counted the two trains she had been told to expect. Her whole body shook as the trains rushed by, just inches from her. They moved these trains at the dead of night, so that the chances of anyone spotting the amount of tanks and the equipment they were moving were minimised. Any minute now, the third one was due. If what they told her was correct, then it would be an empty train with just three carriages. She had been trained to recognise the differences in noise. After the third train, there would be exactly six minutes before the target train was due. Six minutes to emerge from her cover, make sure that the track was clear, lay the charge and be at least the other side of the wire fence and behind the hedge when the train came past when she pressed the detonator. She would then have to rely on the confusion to give her enough time to make it back up the hill and safety.

  Six minutes. Three hundred and sixty seconds. When she first started, it had taken her twice that long to set the charge.

  The third train came past, travelling more slowly than the previous two. She waited until the sound of it had stopped reverberating along the track, before pushing her cover away, realising just how cramped and uncomfortable she had been. She had ended up in a foetal position because she was now having trouble straightening her knees. She crawled along the side of the track (‘keep as low as possible, all the time ... they will be looking for something with two legs, not four’), the shingle cutting into her. She rolled over onto her back and from inside her coat pulled out the explosives and with her hand scooped out enough gravel under the track to bury it. She connected the wire, covered the explosives with the gravel and crawled back to the ditch. She attached the wire to the detonator and then scrambled up the siding, digging her long nails into the cold earth to help her up the embankment. Untie the hole in the fence, pass the detonator through, climb through the hole, tie it up again and move along the hedge. As she started to do that, she could hear the low rumble in the distance of the train. She had done everything well within the six minutes. There was now maybe a minute in which to get as far as possible from the track. Crawling now on her feet and one hand, the other clutching the detonator, she moved far enough along the hedge, stopped and started to wind up the machine. She was covered in mud and her lungs ached. Her left hand was bleeding. She was breathing hard and could feel the sound of her heat-beat crashing in her ears.
Surely, if anyone was close by, they would be able to hear her. The train was closer now. Through the gap in the hedge she could see it approaching the point where she would press the charge. One, two, three ...

  An empty click. The train passed. And now the lights were shining on her. Not just torch lights as she had expected, but large searchlights, so she could see nothing and all she could hear was the shouting. The night had turned to day.

  She was hauled up by her elbows, not too roughly, and a man wearing a thick jumper and a beret was standing in front of her.

  ‘Not bad. Better than yesterday, but not yet good enough.’

  He handed her a flask of hot, sweet tea.

  From the trackside, a man shouted up.

  ‘It’s fine. A decent connection. Well concealed.’

  The man in the beret leaned over the hedge.

  ‘And it would have gone off?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  He turned to her and nodded approvingly.

  ‘You want to know your main mistake? You had clearly decided before you set out that the road was the most dangerous part of your journey. Do you know why that was a mistake?’

  She shook her head, sipping the hot tea.

  ‘It is a mistake because every part of your journey is the most dangerous part. Remember that. If you decide that one part is the most dangerous, then inevitably you will be a tiny bit more relaxed in other parts, which is what happened in this field. You took the easy route across the field, even though you had enough time. You were exposed for too long. We spotted you then. And you took too long with the fence. I told you to take gloves. But you did well with laying the explosives and you were well hidden in the ditch. We will try again tomorrow. Now, you will want a bath, no?’ His sharp Provençal accent cut through the thin night air.

  Nathalie brushed herself down. She knew she had done well. The man with the beret was a hard taskmaster and ‘not bad’ actually meant ‘very good’. She was almost there. She was exhausted. There would a car waiting at the road and she would soon be back at the house, where a hot bath and a clean bed waited.

  The small group trudged back through the quiet north Lincolnshire night.

  ooo000ooo

  Christmas in London.

  The man in the beret had informed her in the farmhouse when they finished the debrief late one night.

  ‘You’ll be driven to London this Friday, that’s Christmas Eve. You’ll be brought back here on the Wednesday. After Boxing Day.’

  ‘And how will I be able to let my husband know I’m coming?’

  ‘He’ll be told. A condition of you being allowed home is that you avoid seeing anyone you know, apart from your husband, of course. It’s too risky. Your husband knows that. He’s told his parents he is on duty over Christmas and can’t leave London.’

  She nodded, it would be best not to show too much reaction.

  ‘Do you have many friends?’

  ‘A few – not really though. I’m friendly with some of the nurses at the hospital and Owen sometimes sees people he was at sea or at school with when they’re in London, but no ...’

  ‘Keep it that way. One misjudged remark to one person could undo everything and we can’t risk that. Just keep yourselves to yourselves.’

  ‘I understand. What will you be doing for Christmas?’ she asked him, trying to break through his ever-present coldness.

  He carried on folding up a map. ‘You don’t need to know that,’ he snapped, as cold as ever.

  She had been subjected to mock interrogations for most of the past two days and she doubted whether the real thing could be much worse. Her cheek still smarted from where he had struck her earlier that evening, but that had been the least of her humiliations.

  The previous day she had been blindfolded, driven around in a car for what she thought must have been at least an hour before being dragged into a building. A male voice that she could not recall having heard before spoke to her.

  ‘I am going to give you a code-word. Under no circumstances must you reveal this code-word to anyone. Do you understand?’

  She nodded.

  ‘The code-word is “ploughshares”. Please repeat it to me.’

  ‘Ploughshares.’

  ‘And again.’

  ‘Ploughshares.’

  ‘That is the last time you utter that word. Understand?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied.

  She was led down some steps and into a room where the blindfold was removed.

  The room was cold, windowless and harshly lit. She assumed that it was a cellar, certainly the ceiling seemed to be lower than normal. There was a damp, fusty smell. She was alone in it apart from a tall woman who was wearing a dark woollen coat. When she spoke, which was not until some time had passed, it was in French, with a distinctive Marseilles accent.

  ‘I am very experienced. Eventually I will persuade you to reveal the code-word. It will not reflect badly upon you if you let me have it now. It will show judgement.’

  Nathalie raised her eyebrows and laughed.

  ‘Really? Do you think I am stupid?’

  ‘Some of the methods I will use are not pleasant I can assure you. What does it matter if you tell me now or later?’

  It matters a lot, she thought. Everything I’ve been taught, both here and in Germany.

  Hold out for as long as possible.

  Give others a chance to escape. That is what they’ll be looking for.

  Even one hour can make a difference.

  ‘You know I won’t tell you.’

  Focus on something else. Maybe an object in the room, or an activity you remember like a bike ride or visiting an exhibition.

  Listen carefully to their questions. They will reveal how much they don’t know.

  Use delaying tactics: ask them to repeat a question or have a coughing fit.

  Try to avoid losing your temper, no matter what the provocation.

  Do not appear shocked at anything they say or do, no matter how upsetting.

  ‘Remove your clothes.’

  ‘Pardon?’ She knew from the tone of her voice that she sounded shocked, which she knew she was not meant to do.

  ‘I said, remove your clothes.’

  The woman was holding a large cane, the kind normally seen in gardens. She decided to think about the Tuileries Gardens in Paris which she had visited the day she first went to the German Embassy. Nathalie removed her cardigan and shoes and pulled her dress over her head, taking care to brush her hair back into place with her hands. The stockings followed. The cold bit into her now. The floor was uneven concrete, covered in sharp bits of grit.

  ‘Everything.’

  The cane was being waved menacingly in front of her. She removed the rest of her underwear.

  ‘Legs apart, put your hands behind your back.’

  The woman went behind her and tied up her hands.

  For what must have been an hour the woman walked in circles around her: sometimes very close, other times further away. Every so often she would ask:

  ‘Are you ready to tell me yet?’

  Nathalie would not reply.

  Another hour. One more hour, they’ll be happy with that.

  Once you go beyond an hour, every minute is a bonus.

  Buy time, it is your most precious commodity.

  The sound of heavy footsteps could be heard coming towards the room and then men’s voices outside the door.

  ‘Shall I let them in or do you want to tell me? It’s very easy, either for you to tell me or for me to let them in.’

  One word, what does it matter?

  In any case, surely she would not bring the men into the room. There had to be limits. She’d been subjected to something like this in Germany and even they hadn’t gone that far. One of the instructors had felt her breasts during a mock interrogation. But she was fully clothed then. He seemed more embarrassed than she was. He even apologised afterw
ards.

  The woman walked over, towering above her. She held the top of the cane under her chin. It was rough and nicked her chin.

  ‘You tell me the code and they don’t come in and you can get dressed. You have held out for longer than we expected. We will be pleased.’

  Nathalie was on the verge of breaking. Nervously she shook her head.

  ‘Are you sure?’ The woman looked surprised.

  The woman drew the tip of the cane down her neck, between her breasts and between her legs, holding it there. She could feel tears welling in her eyes and her face and neck reddening. The nick on her chin had started to bleed and she could feel a trickle of blood running down her neck.

  ‘One last chance? I don’t want to have to bring them in. Please tell me.’

  Nathalie spat at her in the face.

  The woman did not flinch. No expression crossed her face as a small line of spit rolled down her left cheek. She leaned close to Nathalie and whispered in her ear.

  ‘They are not good men, you know. They can be animals. I never expected we’d have to bring them in. The code-word?’

  She stepped back, waiting for Nathalie to spit again. Still no response.

  ‘Come in,’ she called out. Nathalie could detect a nervous reluctance in her voice.

  Two men she had never seen before entered the room. One of them much younger than her, the other much older. She had to stand there while they circled her, speaking in a language she did not recognise.

  Until then the room had been chilly and she had been shivering. Now she was burning hot and could feel the perspiration trickling down her back. The men were inspecting her as if she was an animal at market and they, prospective buyers.

  ‘Tell me the word and they will leave now.’ The woman sounded exasperated, even unsettled. Nathalie stayed silent.

  ‘Shall I leave you on your own with them or do you want to tell me the code-word?’

  Nathalie said nothing, defiant but also too terrified to speak. She could feel a leather-gloved hand run down the length of her back, move over her bound hands and rest at the base of her spine. The young man stood inches in front of her, slowly looking her up and down, more down than up, a cold smile on his face as he slowly licked his lips. He placed a cold hand on her chin, lifted it up and with the other hand ran his fingers through her hair. She could feel the rough hem of his coat brushing against the inside of her thigh.