The Best of Our Spies

by Alex Gerlis

  The three of them gathered as close as they could to the radio, the volume so low that they could only just hear it. If the Germans were going to detect them, it would be because of the radio’s signal rather than any noise, but old habits were hard to break.

  The dial of the radio threw up just enough yellow light to catch their faces. Pierre’s lined and tanned, someone who had spent a lifetime catching the sea breeze. Jean was tense, chewing his fingers, his dark hair dropping over his eyes as he listened to the broadcast. Geraldine still wore the scarf she had been wearing outside, her hair flowing from under it, her dark eyes managing to pierce through the gloom.

  The broadcasts comprised of a series of coded messages to the French resistance. Each of the messages would be meaningless to anyone else listening, even to other resistance groups. But for the particular group that each message was aimed at, the meaning would be very clear. Tonight, the messages were preceded by an announcement:

  Today the Supreme Commander directs me to say this: in due course, instructions of great importance will be given to you through this channel, but it will not be possible always to give these instructions at a previously announced time. Therefore, you must get into the habit of listening at all hours.

  The list of messages then followed. Normally, this would last five minutes, certainly never longer than ten. But tonight, the list of messages lasted for an unprecedented twenty minutes. The final message caused hairs to stand on the back of necks and tears to well in eyes throughout occupied France:

  Bercent mon cœur

  D’une langueur

  Monotone.

  It was the next lines of the Verlaine poem: ‘Wound my heart/With a monotonous languor.’

  The two men clasped each other’s right hand. Pierre bit his lower lip and inclined his head away from the other two. Jean put his left arm round Geraldine, gently caressing her shoulder and pulling her towards him. She looked at him with her piercing black eyes and with her long fingernails, carefully flicking a tear from his face. She nodded and spoke one word.

  ‘Demain.’ Tomorrow.

  From the vineyards of Bordeaux to the arrondissements of Paris, from the coalfields of the north east to the chateaux of the Loire, from the Pyrenees to the restaurants of Lyons and from the villas of Provence to the great cathedral cities of Chartres and Rouen, groups of résistants who had kept the flame of France flickering, some for as long as four years, knew the same as the small group crammed in the attic in the Pas de Calais.

  The liberation of France would begin tomorrow.

  ooo000ooo

  Paris, 5 June 1944

  The résistants were not the only people in France listening to the BBC broadcast that night and understanding its deep significance. One hundred and seventy miles south of where the little group in the Pas de Calais were gathered round the radio in their attic, a slight, bespectacled man was doing the same in a more comfortable room in the lee of the Arc de Triomphe.

  Avenue Foch was one of the twelve avenues branching out from the Place de l’Étoile in the centre of Paris and 72 Avenue Foch housed the substantial headquarters of two much feared organisations: the secret police, known as the Gestapo, and the Sicherheitsdienst – the security service, known to its few friends and many enemies as the SD. As head of the SD’s radio monitoring section, Karl-Heinz Gratz was certainly no admirer of the BBC, but for the past few weeks, even months, he had been doing little else but listen to its broadcasts. Fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. He was now starting to hear the broadcasts in his sleep. Even when he was awake, he found it difficult to get the annoying di-di-di-dah refrain from Beethoven’s Fifth that the BBC used to announce the broadcasts out of his head.

  Ironic, he thought, using the music of a good German like that!

  The Gestapo and the SD had tortured just enough information out of captured resistance fighters in the dungeons below Avenue Foch for Gratz to be aware of what to listen for. Tonight he had sat through the twenty minutes of coded messages, scribbling furiously on his note-pad as he did so. The messages had never lasted so long. That morning he felt he had reached a point of exhaustion, now he knew that he would certainly be up all night and probably well into the next day. He could feel a sense of excitement which he did not really understand, tempered by a feeling of fear, which he did.

  For one brief moment he pulled off his headphones and yelled ‘Jürgen!’, but his young assistant was probably asleep, again. No stamina, these young people. His heart was beating so fast that he had to turn up the volume on the radio. He could hear the sound of laughter in the corridor and there seemed to be some kind of party or gathering in a nearby office. That would all end very soon.

  When the broadcast ended, Gratz pulled off his headphones, sat still for a moment and then banged the desk with his fist, shouting:

  ‘Ja. So ist es. Das es bevorstehend.’ So that is it. It is imminent.

  Within minutes, 72 Avenue Foch had sprung into life. People ran from office to office, shouting at one another, desperate calls were made to try to raise senior German officers from the beds of their French mistresses. Most Urgent messages were sent to Army Headquarters in Berlin and to the different German Army groups in France. Gratz stood in the entrance to his office, watching the chaos take hold around him. He was like a schoolboy who had mischievously pressed a fire alarm, not imagining what the consequences would be. Two SS colonels pushed past him. Field Marshal Rommel, it seemed, was back home in Germany, celebrating his wife’s sixtieth birthday. The invasion is imminent. Some present.

  At eleven o’clock that night Gratz stood at the large window in his office, looking down Avenue Foch towards the Arc de Triomphe in the centre of the Place de l’Étoile. The great symbol of French republicanism now had long been replaced by an enormous swastika hanging inside the arch. The flag was picked out by the spotlights trained on it, swaying awkwardly in the breeze as if it knew it was an imposter. Paris was the favourite posting for Germans. Gratz knew that it could soon be over.

  He took a deep breath and as he exhaled, allowed an ironic ‘Heil Hitler!’ to pass his lips, although not before carefully glancing over his shoulder to be certain that he was alone in the room.

  ooo000ooo

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  London

  6 June 1944

  Owen Quinn woke with a start from a deep sleep on the morning of that first Tuesday in June. He would not sleep properly again for the next eight months.

  Bright shafts of light pierced through the blackout and the curtains. He had overslept and the two thirds empty Talisker bottle on the floor by the bed was part of the reason why.

  According to the bedside clock it was just after a quarter past nine. The alarm had not been set for its normal time of a quarter to seven. He should have been in work over an hour ago.

  As his body reached that moment where it was more awake than asleep, he began to remember. Yesterday had seen a never-ending stream of charts and weather reports, a sense of growing urgency, whispered conversations in the corridor, all hands to the pump chaps, even more photographs arriving by the hour.

  Unfamiliar faces appearing in the office, little time to chat with those he knew. Security at the highest state of alert. On Monday, he had been stopped three times by security from when he entered the building to arriving in his office. A military policeman outside all day. And the WRENS. With their smart uniforms and busy manner they were a sure sign something was up. He and the others weren’t to waste precious time gathering files. The midnight finish. The office had filled with uniforms during the evening and it was the familiar one of Captain John Archibald who took him aside as he was about to leave.

  ‘Good work today, Quinn. Not long now. Looks like we may have cracked it. Top brass happy. Done our part. You’ve been splendid. Lieutenant-Commander Quinn before you know it!’

  Archibald always talked a bit louder than necessary and in short phrases rather than proper sentences. It was a result of years at sea, w
hen it was hard for someone to hear you, so he had learned to be spare with words. Owen Quinn knew the feeling. Archibald had a noisy cough and had to pause to catch his breath.

  ‘Take this, Quinn, and enjoy it. You’ve deserved it. Late start tomorrow. Need to let security check the place out, so best keep out of their way until noon.’ Archibald had pressed a bottle into his hands.

  Quinn glanced down and saw it was whisky. He was grateful, but suspected he would drink far too much of it. He checked the label. Talisker. A malt meant it was serious.

  As Quinn turned to leave, John Archibald did something which at the time struck him as unusual. It would be some hours before he began to realise the true significance of it.

  The elder man gently held Quinn by the elbow and guided him towards the empty cloakroom, looking over his shoulder as he did so. When he spoke, it was in an unusually quiet voice.

  ‘Good luck, Quinn.’ He was shaking his hand now, placing his left hand over Quinn’s wrist as he did so.

  ‘I may not be around here for a few weeks, but all the very best, Quinn. Whatever happens, remember you’ve played your part.’

  In the two and a half years that he had known him, Captain John Archibald had always behaved in a proper manner, but was spare in his emotions. Not exactly cold, but not very far from it either. But tonight, as he released his grip, Quinn could have sworn that he detected a catch in Archibald’s voice.

  Realising now that he had not overslept, Quinn’s panic subsided. He stretched out, his right arm swinging over to the empty side of the bed, a cold reminder of her absence. The pillow next to him was still plump. For a few weeks after she had gone, he could smell her on it. Now, he could not be sure if the increasingly rare hints of her scent were just in his imagination. There had been times during the torment of a restless night when he had sunk his face into her pillow and would wake up in the morning to find it still damp.

  He waited for the pain in his back and his leg to ease before slowly getting up. That is what the doctors had told him. Your first movements of the day will be critical. Stretch out when you wake up, wait and then get out of bed. Slowly. No sudden movements. When the bed wasn’t empty there had been less chance of that in the mornings, when Nathalie had been at her most attentive. He had even fallen into the habit of setting his alarm twenty minutes early. Since she had gone, his back had felt much better and he always arrived at work on time.

  He started to run the bath in what he expected was the forlorn hope that there would be hot water actually coinciding with the time when he wanted a bath. You took your chances when you could with the hot water, in the same way that you did with everything else that was in short supply. After nearly five years of war, that covered most things.

  The water ran cold. Quinn pulled on his dressing gown, unaccustomed to this enforced relaxation on a weekday morning.

  This was when he missed her most, the unplanned moments when there was little to do. He was fine when he was busy, which was most of the time, or exhausted, which often accounted for the rest of the time. As long as he had a schedule to work to, he could cope. But quiet moments like this, on his own in the flat, walking by the river or awake in bed — they were the hardest. Then, he could not avoid his thoughts; there was nothing to distract him, nothing to stop him reflecting on what he would have said had she been there and how she might have replied. She had only been away for a matter of weeks, but it was beginning to feel as if it was far longer than that. At times, he struggled to remember the tone of her voice, the way her eyes dazzled as she came into a room and the scent that lingered long after she had left. He was worried that his memories of her were fading away. He would then get angry at himself for being irrational and maudlin; it was uncharacteristic. Then he’d shrug it off and get on with life. It won’t be long now.

  The tiny kitchen was just a galley area off the lounge, so Quinn was able to sit in the elderly armchair that had come with the flat and would remain long after he and Nathalie had left it. As he waited for the kettle to boil, Quinn turned the radio on. For a while, the noise of the kettle struggling to the boil blended with the crackle of the radio as it tuned to the BBC Home Service. For a few seconds, it merged into one confusing sound.

  The kettle whistled and the music on the BBC flooded into the room and Quinn began to feel relaxed. The pains in his leg and back were still there, but the stiffness after a night’s sleep was easing off and soon he would be able to take the first of his tablets. He made a large mug of tea, shovelled in two teaspoonfuls of sugar, hesitated and then added a third. The toast could wait. He would listen to the radio, have his breakfast, shave, try the bath again and stroll into work with plenty of time to spare. He began to feel relaxed. From what Archibald had hinted last night, from all the activity he had seen around him and from what he had heard, it felt that the war could be over soon. Not as soon as everyone hoped and some expected, but possibly by the end of the year and certainly within a year. By then Nathalie would be back and they could lead a normal life for the first time.

  The hot, sweet tea was making him feel quite optimistic and even happy. On the radio, the music was fading and a familiar voice taking over. Quinn placed his mug on the small table in front of him and turned up the volume on the radio.

  This is the BBC Home Service – and here is a special bulletin read by John Snagge. D-Day has come. Early this morning the Allies began the assault on the north-western face of Hitler’s European fortress. The first official news came just after half-past nine, when Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force issued Communiqué Number One. This said: ‘Under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France.’

  Quinn could not be sure how long he had sat there. Certainly by the time he reached for his mug, the tea had turned stone cold and an unpleasant film had appeared on the surface. ‘D-Day has come.’ Those words were going round in his head. He should have been euphoric, but instead he found himself feeling uneasy at first and then confused. D-Day was what he had been working on for more than a year. He had devoted most of his waking hours to its preparation and for the last three months his wife had been even more deeply involved in it. But any sense of relief or excitement was dampened by a sense of unease. The Allied assault, the broadcast had said, was on the ‘north-western face of Hitler’s European fortress’. What did this mean? Could they really have made a mistake in such an important broadcast? It could be a deliberate mistake. Maybe he was reading too much into the broadcast. After all, the statement had gone on to say that Allied forces had landed ‘on the northern coast of France’, but the northern coast of France stretched from Dunkirk on the Belgian border across to where Brittany fell into the Atlantic. The north -western edge of Nazi-occupied Europe. Every word of the first official announcement of D-Day would have been carefully weighed and considered and referred to a sub-committee. Quinn had a good idea of how these matters were dealt with. Why would they say ‘north west’ when, as Quinn knew only too well, the real assault was taking place many hundreds of miles further up the coast, in the Pas de Calais?

  There was no point in worrying, he decided. He worried too much. The important thing was that it would be over soon.

  The boiler in the large house in Alderney Street was evidently aware that it was D-Day and Quinn found he had enough water for his first deep and truly hot bath for weeks. He shaved, made himself some toast on the grill that hadn’t been properly cleaned since she left, had another mug of sweet tea and put on his dark blue naval uniform.

  Owen Quinn left his flat in Pimlico just before eleven and set off on the two mile walk to Duke Street in St James’s. When he first began this job, he had been told at his security briefing to vary his route to and from work. It was advice that Quinn happily adhered to. He preferred to walk, the exercise helping his back, though he would take the bus if it was raining. Depending on when he left the flat, he cou
ld take the more direct route through the heart of Victoria, across St James’s Park and then over Pall Mall. Or he could take a more roundabout route, heading for the river, down Millbank, past the Houses of Parliament and then down Whitehall. This was the route he was most likely to be stopped on, especially if he tried to cross St James’s Square. Sometimes it would be for a security check, or because the road was closed, but Quinn’s pass usually saw him through. Or he could take a middle route. Or a combination, sometimes doubling back on himself just to be absolutely sure he was not being followed and then occasionally darting into a turning he had never used before just to vary the routine. He was, after all, a navigation expert.

  By the time he set off, any doubts caused by the wording of the broadcast had dissipated and there was a spring in his step. Even though it was the same way as he had taken the previous day, Quinn broke the habit of a year and used the same, direct route. That morning he arrived at the office in Lincoln House twenty minutes before midday.

  There was no familiar face among the guards on the ground floor of Lincoln House that morning. That was unusual, but not unprecedented. Sometimes they would bring in a new unit, so Quinn thought nothing of it at first. So there was none of the good cheer and bonhomie from the familiar faces, no ‘good morning, Lieutenant, not too much of a cross-wind I hope, sir’, which he would affect to be amused by as if it was the first time he had heard it. Instead the lance-corporal who took his pass handed it straight to a corporal who asked him to ‘wait here a moment if you don’t mind, sir’ and who then disappeared in through the door of the guardroom.

  After five minutes, Quinn became mildly irritated. Never before had he had to wait in the reception area of the building where he worked and his enquiry of the lance-corporal if there was any problem was met with a dismissive ‘I wouldn’t have thought so, sir.’