The Best of Our Spies

by Alex Gerlis

  In a café one morning she watched as a young SS officer deliberately barged into two local women who were negotiating their way towards a table, causing them to spill their drinks and plates over a group of young Wehrmacht soldiers.

  ‘You animals!’ the SS officer shouted. He was in his early twenties and his face was flushed and sweating as if he had been drinking. With the back of his hand he lashed out at the women, connecting with the one nearest to him, causing her to stumble and then crumple to the ground. One of the Wehrmacht soldiers put his arm out, to stop her falling further.

  The SS officer was incandescent.

  ‘You,’ he said to the women, both of whom were white with shock, ‘will pay for this damage. Give me your purses.’ They handed them over and he emptied the contents of both straight into his jacket pocket. ‘Now go away. And you...’ he was pointing to the soldier who had helped the woman up ‘… come with me. Now!’

  On the Thursday evening of her third week in Lille she had given up on sleep early. The house was hot and the top floor unbearable. The landlady was shouting at her husband and a band seemed to be rehearsing nearby. The aroma of dinner rose up through her window, which was by far the most disconcerting sensation of all.

  She was not due at the hospital until nine and by the time she reached the small café on the corner it was only just seven thirty. She had more than an hour to kill, but she found solace in these small cafés, where she could always find a seat alone and an obliging patron who would allow her to move the food around on her plate for an hour and sometimes refill her drink with a wink and a smile. And then she would talk to Owen. His imagined presence would comfort her. She had decided on the first night in Lille that Owen would forgive her. He would be angry, perhaps even furious, but in time he would understand. So on those evenings in the cafés of Lille she would revisit their relationship; the little things he had said, the questions he had asked but she had not answered, the nuances that would have made another man uncertain or jealous and the episodes of affection.

  Alone with these thoughts, on this night she was startled by the patron, a large man with an enormous moustache who had decided that the price of an occasional free drink was that he could confide in her.

  ‘Not long now,’ he would say. ‘They’ll be running with their tails between their legs before the autumn, mark my words,’ he would mutter at German soldiers on the other side of the glass.

  ‘Another drink?’

  Shocked, she glanced at her watch. Ten to nine. The hospital was a fifteen minute walk away. She paid and left in a hurry, running across the cobbled streets, straight across the Grand Place and towards the hospital. She was no more than five minutes’ walk away when she passed an abandoned industrial building. There was not a soul in sight.

  ‘Hey. Pretty girl. Come here.’

  She looked round. In the doorway of the building was a young soldier wearing the black uniform of the SS. She looked around, maybe he meant someone else, maybe there would be other people around.

  ‘Yes, you. Come here.’

  If she took her shoes off and ran fast, she might make it to the main road before him. But the ground was scattered with debris and she remembered her condition. Any thoughts of escape ended with the distinctive metallic click of a catch of a gun being drawn.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘And where have you been?’

  ‘At work. I’m a waitress at a café in the Grand Place.’

  She realised she was panicking. Maybe she should have told him the truth about where she worked. She was so used to avoiding the truth that to lie was now her natural response.

  ‘And where is home?’

  She panicked. She did not know Lille well enough to know what to say. She pointed in the opposite direction that she had come from.

  ‘Change of plan. Follow me.’ He was pointing his long barrelled Luger revolver straight at her and then using it as a finger to wave her towards him and into the building.

  He waited until she was inside the building before opening a door off a dark corridor and pushing her into a dim room. It must have been an office at one time. The only windows looked out onto what would have been a factory floor. A desk had been pushed against the wall, with a half full bottle of brandy on it and an empty one next to it. A torn leather office chair was in the centre of the room, circled by a collection of empty beer bottles. A calendar had stopped at January 1943 and there were the remains of a dead pigeon in the fireplace. In one corner was a large pile of sacks with two or three torn blankets on top.

  ‘Over there.’ He was pointing to the sacks with his revolver. ‘Get over there and get undressed.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Really?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘And why is that?’

  She opened her jacket to show him her swollen stomach.

  ‘Oh don’t worry. That really doesn’t bother me. If anything, it adds to the pleasure. It would be my first time with a woman in your condition!’ He was leering at her, slightly unsteady on his feet.

  ‘Look...’ She was breathing heavily and could feel herself panicking. She was not thinking rationally. Should she tell him that she was on his side really, that he was making a terrible mistake? I have the name and telephone number of someone important in Paris who would vouch for me. But she knew it was hopeless. He would not believe her and, anyway, she was no longer sure whose side she was on now. And if he did believe and act on what she said, she would be in even worse trouble than she was now.

  Having been in the unusual position of having been trained by both the Germans and the British, she felt she was prepared for this. Not prepared for being raped in an abandoned building or for the extreme fear that she felt now, but prepared for a confrontation of this nature. Treat it like an interrogation, she thought. She tried to remember her training.

  You are an attractive young woman. There may be occasions when men may try to take advantage of you. If so, appear to go along with them. Do not encourage them, but do not antagonise them either. Do anything to take the edge off a situation. If a man tries to rape you then he will not be thinking about his own security during the act. This will be when he is at his weakest. That is when you must act.

  So she calmly removed her jacket, taking care to fold it and remove a handkerchief from the pocket which she used to dab her face and she sat down on the coarse sacks. Her tactic seemed to be working. The young SS man smiled and removed his own jacket, placing it with his cap and revolver on the chair. He took off his boots, undid his belt and lowering his trousers, crawled on top of her. He was breathing deeply now, his hand inside her skirt and beginning to hurt her. She could smell the alcohol on his breath as he became rougher. If he carries on like this I am going to miscarry. With his other hand he had been holding her down, but now he paused while he removed his trousers altogether and started to pull down his pants. Her head was pushed back against the rough skirting board, its dull green paint peeling, revealing damp wood underneath.

  ‘Don’t be so rough,’ she whispered, ‘there’s no need’.

  And with that she pulled him closer to her, feeling the skin of his back hot and clammy through his shirt. She kept one hand, with the handkerchief inside it, on his back, stroking him with it. With the other hand she started to caress him. He reacted straight away, breathed in sharply and started to moan, his body relaxing and tensing at the same time.

  With her fingers expertly working at him, she carefully moved the handkerchief to her other hand. Now was her chance.

  At first he didn’t realise what was happening and for a very brief moment carried on moaning as before. She pushed the nail file in far as it would go and then twisted it. As his moan turned into a childlike high-pitched wail she rolled him over and crawled away from him as fast as she could. He was already doubled up into a foetal position, his face white and his body shaking. She had seconds to act before the immediate shock wore off.

  She gathered u
p her shoes and jacket. He was starting to react now. Blood was pouring through the hand that was clutching his groin and he was trying to get up. She grabbed the revolver from the chair and thought about using it, but feared that the noise would attract attention. As long as he doesn’t have it.

  She fled the room, taking time to jam a plank of wood against the outside of the door. It would buy her a few seconds. The Luger disappeared through a hole in the floorboards. Before she left the building she put on her shoes and jacket and straightened her skirt. There was some blood on the hand that had plunged the nail file into him, but not enough to attract attention.

  She was almost twenty minutes late at the hospital, but the ward sister believed her story about being given a hard time at a checkpoint. Much later that night she was sitting alone in the canteen, as she always did. Two nurses moved to the table behind her, discussing their shift in casualty.

  ‘No more than twenty-five, I’d say.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. They had to bring him in here, he was so bad. Didn’t have time to get him to the military hospital.’

  ‘You don’t say!’

  ‘Surgeon operated on him straight away. They’ve had to remove both of them.’

  ‘He won’t be prolonging the master race then!’

  ‘We shouldn’t laugh really. There’ll be hell to pay when they find out who did it. Probably one of the prostitutes who hang around there.’

  The other nurse lowered her voice. ‘Or the resistance.’

  It was a monumental effort of will for her to remain at work for the rest of her shift. When she finished at six she returned to the guest house on a long route that kept her well away from the abandoned building.

  She lay still and wide awake on the bed until she heard the landlady stir at eight o’clock. Already packed she went down and explained that she had received some bad news. Her aunt in Amiens was gravely ill and she had to go to see her immediately.

  Grateful that she had so many aunts around France, she pressed a week’s rent into the landlady’s outstretched palm.

  The Germans were checking everyone’s papers at the bus station, but hers passed a quick inspection.

  When you have to escape from somewhere, get on the first bus or train out. Don’t wait for a preferred destination. Do not look around a station as if you are unsure of where to go. They look out for people behaving like that. You can plan where you go next on the journey. When you are queuing for a bus, try to get behind a family or an elderly person. The guards will be relieved to deal with someone straightforward. It is a good idea to act slightly annoyed at the delay, but blame other passengers, not the guards. If the situation allows, pretend you recognise someone on the bus or in a queue as your pass is inspected. It will make you appear more credible.

  She couldn’t remember which side had told her that, probably a bit of both.

  A bus was about to leave for Lens and her priority now was to get out of Lille.

  ooo000ooo

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  London

  October 1944

  ‘It just does not feel right to me, Edgar. I am afraid that I don’t see how we can help you. I’m sorry, but you have to understand that it’s a mess out there and I cannot see how this is going to help anyone.’

  A silence ticked away the seconds in Major Newby’s office in the mews house off Portman Square. Major Edgar had listened to what he had said and had yet to respond. He was sitting in a low chair in the corner of the room, still wearing his coat and trilby and staring intently at Newby through his hands, which were held together as if in prayer, his fingertips touching.

  Newby was unnerved by the silence and felt obliged to break it.

  ‘Look, Edgar. You have to agree that we did all that we could to help. We sent her out there, we linked her up with the resistance – we did all that you asked. We...’

  ‘I simply feel,’ interrupted Edgar, ‘that if we allow him to go over in a supervised and, above all, controlled manner, then hopefully he’ll get it out of his system. He can meet the people she knew, see where she lived, ask a few questions and then realise that he is never going to find her. If he goes over on a semi-official visit, so to speak, then we can control what happens. What we don’t want is him rampaging around the French countryside, shouting her name from every hilltop. We want him to realise that it is a hopeless task. Of course, we can stop him doing that while the war is still on and he’s in the Navy. But once it’s all over, then there’s nothing to stop him going over there and causing all manner of problems.’

  Major Newby walked over to the window and had to bend down to be able to look out of it. An unlit pipe was in his mouth, bouncing up and down as he spoke.

  ‘As I said, it is a bit of a mess over there, Edgar. You chaps had promised us that when she was no longer needed we would be able to get a warning to the resistance group. That never happened, did it, Edgar?’

  ‘No it didn’t, but then we didn’t know that she was just going to disappear – and from what we gather from the boys at Bletchley, neither did the Germans. Something probably spooked her and off she went. Wherever she is, my guess is that it is an awfully long way from the Pas de Calais, so he’s not going to find her.’

  ‘As I say, Edgar – it is a bloody mess out there. Gestapo moved in on her little group as she moved out. There are only two of them left now and I don’t think that they are going to welcome Quinn with open arms.’

  ‘Do they suspect that she was a German spy?’

  ‘No. They have enough on their minds as you will find out. They are just suspicious, but I think that they are suspicious of everything, to be frank.’

  Newby turned round to face Edgar.

  ‘And you say that he’s being a bit difficult?’

  ‘That’s a recent development. Up to a week or so ago he was as good as gold, in the circumstances. Remarkably so, actually. Took it much better than we could have hoped, to be honest. We have looked after him, of course; nice desk job at the Admiralty, promotion, comfortable flat. But something happened at the end of September. Don’t know what, maybe the enormity of it all just dawned on him. But something made him snap, in rather dramatic circumstances, as it happens. Read this.’

  From a thin briefcase Edgar had produced a sheet of paper, covered in dense type. He handed it to Newby.

  Belgravia Police Station

  202–206 Buckingham Palace Road

  Crime Report

  My name is Neville Priest and I am a police constable with eighteen years’ service in the Metropolitan Police. I am currently based at Belgravia Police Station in Buckingham Palace Road.

  On Wednesday, 27 September 1944, I was on a routine patrol in Pimlico Road. I was on the south side of the street, heading in a westerly direction towards Chelsea Bridge Road. The weather conditions were unremarkable: there had been some light drizzle around lunchtime, but visibility was clear.

  At around 4pm I was alerted by a passer-by to a commotion that was coming from a street on the other side of Pimlico Road. I made good haste to the scene of the disturbance, which I discovered to be halfway along Passmore Street.

  Upon arriving at the scene I saw that a small crowd numbering approximately seven persons had gathered outside number 25 Passmore Street, which is a residential building. I observed that a long ladder was on the pavement along with two empty buckets and a pool of water. A gentleman approached me to explain that he was a window cleaner who had been retained by the owner of number 25 to clean the windows of the house. He had placed his ladder against the small first floor balcony and gone to collect water. When he returned, he found that a man had used the ladder to climb onto the balcony and had then thrown the ladder down to the pavement.

  I then observed that a man in his mid-twenties wearing a Royal Navy uniform was on the balcony. His uniform was in a dishevelled state and he appeared to be distressed. I noticed that his Royal Navy cap was on the pavement. He was holding on to the wrought iron ra
ilings to the side of the balcony and appeared to be trying to climb onto the ledge.

  I asked him what he was doing and he shouted that he wanted everyone to get out of the way as he was planning to jump from the balcony and did not want people to get hurt when he did so. I urged him not to jump. The window cleaner, who I now know to be a Mr David Osbourne, thereupon shouted abuse at the man and said he would sue him for damage to his ladder. Mr Osbourne also told the man that he should go ahead and jump, but from that height he was unlikely to do much damage to himself.

  I told Mr Osbourne that were he not to desist he would find himself under arrest. A lady in the crowd asked the man on the balcony why he was up there. The man started shouting in an incoherent manner. He did, however, keep repeating the phrase ‘why didn’t she tell me?’ At this point I asked a young man in the crowd to go and find other police officers. I asked the man on the balcony to come down and he replied in an abusive and offensive manner which I do not intend to repeat verbatim in this statement. He then shouted ‘It’s not Normandy – they are all lying. Edgar is the biggest liar.’ He repeated this a number of times and I was able to write it in my notebook.

  The balcony railings must have still been wet from the earlier rain because the man slipped as he moved along them.

  I noticed that he was crying now and after a while he climbed down from the railings and sat on the floor of the balcony, holding his head in his hands. At this point three Canadian army officers passed by and with their assistance I was able to place the ladder against the balcony and climb up. The man did not acknowledge my presence; he was just staring ahead and not responding to anything that I said. I was able to escort him through the doors of the balcony into the house. At no time did I form the impression that the man was acting under the influence of alcohol. By this time assistance had arrived and I was able to arrest him for breach of the peace and take him to Belgravia Police Station.