The Best of Our Spies

by Alex Gerlis

Well, thought Owen, he was so bloody clever that he had made a bloody stupid mistake, didn’t he!

  Owen’s emotions were all over the place: he was pleased with himself for spotting the mistake, but fearful now that he realised what it meant. Of course, they had not been looking for ‘meat and other produce’. Stopping him had been no coincidence. They were onto him. There was no question about it.

  It was thinking about going back to work that had done it and more specifically his Royal Navy identity card, which he had shown to the policeman. The name on the card was Lieutenant Owen Quinn. But that was the thing. He had not yet got round to getting a new card to reflect his promotion a few months ago to Lieutenant-Commander. They had been nagging him at work to get it changed.

  But what was it the man in the black coat said a few hours ago in that desolate lane in Lincolnshire?

  ‘You can go now, Lieutenant-Commander Quinn.’

  If they weren’t looking for him, how on earth would they have known that he was really a lieutenant-commander rather than a lieutenant, as stated on his ID card?

  The shivers were still running down Lieutenant-Commander Owen Quinn’s spine when he arrived back in Surrey just before midnight.

  ooo000ooo

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Paris

  January 1945

  Georg Lange.

  Georg Lange.

  Georg Lange.

  As soon as he had the name of his wife’s Abwehr controller, Owen had felt the urge to go straight to Paris to find him. But the realisation that he had been followed in Lincolnshire had a sobering effect. He now knew for certain that Edgar was not far behind him. He needed to be cautious.

  André had replied to Owen’s letter by return of post. He would need time to trace Lange, he wrote. When Owen did come to France, he should allow at least a week for his visit, said André. Possibly longer.

  Owen devised a plan based on the assumption that Edgar would soon enough find out that he had gone to France and would follow him. He realised that he needed to steal at least a day on Edgar, ideally two.

  He was certain that Edgar knew nothing about André Koln. He realised now just how lucky he had been to get the lift with the Americans from St Omer to Paris, gaining precious hours on Edgar. If he could get to Paris this time without Edgar realising straight away, he stood a chance. So he booked a week’s leave at the end of January, telling colleagues that he was going to play golf in Scotland. On a visit to his parents, he borrowed the passport of a cousin with a different surname, but a decent enough resemblance. He explained that the Admiralty needed to see it to get him to the next level of security clearance. It seemed an implausible story to him, but it appeared to play well enough in Surrey.

  He knew that word would soon get back to Edgar that he was going away, so he avoided telling colleagues at work that he was going on leave until Friday, the twenty-sixth itself. He had no idea who at work was Edgar’s source, but he was determined to make it as difficult as possible for them. He had actually booked the whole of that Friday as holiday, but came into work as normal in the morning. He was thus able to disappear at lunchtime, take the train to Folkestone and he was in Boulogne before half the office had retired to the pub at the end of the day and realised they had missed Owen leaving.

  He had thought of calling in on Françoise and Lucien in Boulogne. Their loss had haunted him and made him ashamed of his own self-pity. But he knew he needed to keep moving, so caught the train straight to Paris instead.

  André greeted him like an old friend when he met him at the Gare du Nord that evening. To Owen’s slight embarrassment he found himself being embraced by André on the platform.

  ‘How are you, Owen?’ Despite wearing a woollen hat, a heavy overcoat and what looked like at least two scarves, André appeared to have lost weight. ‘Excited?’

  ‘Yes – and nervous.’

  The station was busy and as they walked to the Metro he had to lean close to André to catch his words.

  ‘The war has not improved this city, Owen. We’re having a terrible winter. There’s a shortage of everything, food, fuel – and even women! Food and fuel are one thing, but the… women! For Paris, that is a problem.

  ‘The worse thing though, Owen, is the atmosphere. You would have thought people would have learned something from the occupation, they would have realised how fortunate they are. But, no. The atmosphere here is terrible; it’s like anarchy but without the revolution. So many people are denouncing so many other people, the accusations of collaboration... it makes the air… poisonous.

  ‘You know me. If I think someone is a collaborator then they should be dealt with. I have dealt with some myself. But Noisy-le-Sec, Santé, Fresnes – all the prisons, they are full of people who have been denounced as collaborators. But the officials, the people who allowed the Germans to carry on as normal, they are still around. You understand?

  ‘I saw my friend Pierre the other day. He said that Paris has become a city of denunciations. Before the liberation people were being denounced and there was hardly a pause after it for those denunciations to continue. The only difference is who they are being denounced to.’

  They took the Metro to Notre Dame de Lorette and were walking to André’s apartment in Rue Taitbout. Owen could see what André meant. He sensed that with the New Year, the city appeared to have lost some of its charm and replaced it with an unpleasant edge. When he had last visited in October, the city was still drunk with the euphoria of the liberation two months previously. Now it appeared to be suffering from the hangover. The short days hurriedly merged into dark nights, giving the city an ethereal quality that was not altogether peaceful. The vents set into the side of buildings and the drains and Metro outlets sent up small plumes of steam. Walking along the cobbled streets and boulevards, slippery with ice and slush, it felt as if tiny clouds had descended to the ground and were then gently bouncing up again.

  The apartment was much less chaotic than he remembered it. The table was clear and possessions now neatly stacked into large boxes. There were still no photographs on display, but the apartment looked as if an attempt had been made to tidy it. André showed Owen into a small room.

  ‘You can sleep in here. It was Daniel’s room. We had a spare mattress. It is safer than staying in a hotel. I won’t ask you to register.’ He smiled. He put his arm round Owen’s shoulder and led him back into the lounge. He sat Owen down on the sofa and he turned an armchair round to face him. As he lit a cigarette he poured red wine into two large glasses which appeared to have been rinsed rather than washed. He handed a very full one to his guest. Owen tasted the wine and noticed the bottle.

  ‘Pétrus. Isn’t that meant to be rather decent?’

  ‘You could say that.’ André paused while he held the wine glass back to admire it and then sniffed it appreciatively. ‘I think it is probably the best Bordeaux. The collabo we removed it from was not so decent, I can tell you. Some friends of my parents had been hiding in the Dordogne. When they returned to Paris they found that their former book-keeper was now living in their apartment and was refusing to move. He told them that he had bought the apartment legitimately. He had a document. It turned out that he had developed a very lucrative business redistributing the possessions of Jewish families. Of course, he never imagined them returning. So I visited the apartment with some colleagues from the FFI...’

  ‘What is the FFI?’

  ‘Sorry. Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur. It was the main resistance body. It is still very active. As you can perhaps imagine, it still has a lot of influence. Anyway, we visited the apartment. It was a very successful visit. My parents’ friends got back their home, the FFI got their hands on another collabo and I got a case of very good wine. The apartment was a treasure trove of things he had stolen. Maybe this was from a good restaurant. Your health, santé.’

  ‘And what would have happened to the collabo?’

  ‘Who knows? Who cares? The jails are full of them at the moment
, all pleading their innocence and telling anyone who’ll listen that they love France and how it was a terrible misunderstanding. The big collabos? Some of them are being put on trial, but not many of them. The ones just below them, like the one who had taken the apartment, some of them are being dealt with. People say that many have been killed, perhaps hundreds maybe even thousands, but who knows what to believe. But I daresay that in a few months most of them will have crept back into society. It may be a bit uncomfortable for some of them for a while, but it will soon be forgotten. You’ll understand if I sound cynical, Owen, but I saw what happened when the Germans arrived. Life for most people here carried on as normal. Unless they were directly affected, the majority of people did not really care. The collaborators, yes, of course, they were a problem ‒ but the real problem was the silent majority who quietly went along with the occupation and suddenly appeared on the side of the resistance on the sixth of June.’

  André shook his head and was lost in thought, finally lighting another cigarette and finishing his glass of wine. He had never tasted anything quite like it. He felt good. He had reached the magic moment which always came to him just after halfway through the first glass of wine when things begin to feel better.

  ‘I want to know, André. Why are you doing this to help me?’

  André leaned back in his chair, balancing himself on his heels.

  ‘Because I like you. Because you have had your child taken away from you and I had mine taken away from me. Sure, the circumstances are very different, but I know how it feels and if there was ever anything that anyone could do to get my son back for me, I would expect them to do it. And because it gives me something to do. Look,’ he was gesturing around the apartment. ‘I’m on my own here. My only company is my memories and I can promise you that they are not good company. So I keep busy. I go for long walks. I have projects that interest me. Yours is one of those.’

  André looked around the apartment, which showed all the signs of a life interrupted. For a while, he was lost in his thoughts, looking down at the ground, this forearms resting on his thighs, his feet bouncing restlessly up and down. He glanced at his watch, coughed and composed himself. ‘We’ll go and get something to eat soon, Owen, but first, let me tell you what has happened since I got your letter.

  ‘It was a good job you got that new information. Before that, I realised that it was going to be impossible to find your wife, we had no proper information. The cameo brooch ‒ I have shown it to jewellers and they cannot help. The strange thing is that it is gold, but there is no hallmark. But it is not going to help us find her. The possibility that her accent may have been from Alsace... that would narrow it down a bit, but only a bit. Alsace is a big region and it was only liberated from the Germans in November. It makes some sense, many people in that area regard themselves as more German than French, but do you think she would have gone back to Alsace in July, when it was still under German control? I don’t know. I could have gone to Alsace, but it would have been very difficult. The fighting there has only just stopped. I’d have needed some more information to help me there anyway.

  ‘But Georg Lange, that is different. Very different!’ He leaned forward and slapped Owen on the knee. The wine swayed violently in his glass.

  ‘Getting that name made all the difference. I have made a lot of progress. We know that Lange was an Abwehr case officer, his job was to recruit and then look after various agents. We know that he was based at the German Embassy here since 1937, so was probably recruiting agents as far back as then ‒ certainly before the war started. At some stage during the war he moved from being based at the German Embassy in the Rue de Lille to the headquarters of the SD and the Gestapo in Avenue Foch. That would certainly have happened last year when the SD took over the Abwehr, but he may have gone before. Anyway, it is absolutely feasible for him to have been the person who recruited your wife and would then carry on as her case officer. It all fits very nicely. Have some more wine.’

  André leaned back in his armchair and lit another cigarette.

  ‘And how do we find out for sure, André, whether there is a connection between Lange and my wife?’

  ‘It is simple, Owen. We go and ask him.’

  André was now smiling. It took Owen a few moments to realise that he was being serious.

  ‘And when do we do that?’

  ‘Tomorrow!’

  ooo000ooo

  Early the next morning they were waiting in the street outside André’s apartment for a contact of his from the resistance who had helped him track Lange down and had made the arrangements for going to see him. Gaston, André told him, had been a leading member of the resistance in Paris and was now involved in the FFI.

  ‘He escaped from the Gestapo twice, he is a very brave man. It is important that we have him with us,’ André told him as they waited outside the apartment building at seven o’clock, the early morning chill eating into them with a surprising speed.

  ‘As I told you last night, the FFI carry a lot of authority here. Lange is now being held by the French authorities. They look into the background of all German prisoners. If they are not senior officers or are not suspected of any war crimes or are not members of the Nazi Party then they will be the first to be released when the war ends. Otherwise, we would have to hold too many German prisoners for too long.’

  A silvery-grey Renault with a long bonnet and wide running boards pulled up. A large man wearing a dark coat and scarf got out, embraced André and shook Owen warmly by the hand. Before they got in the car Gaston spoke to them on the pavement.

  ‘Look, Émile is our driver today. Don’t think he’s rude or anything, but he doesn’t talk these days. Not a word. He had a terrible time in August and was in a clinic until a few days ago. He checked himself out and we need to keep him busy. Don’t worry, he’s reliable and very trustworthy. Just don’t expect him to be sociable.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ asked Owen.

  Gaston looked down at the pavement, his hands deep in his coat pockets.

  ‘One of tens of thousands of stories. He was in the resistance here in Paris. Émile was captured at the end of July and tortured in the Avenue Foch. Émile knew some of the details about one of our key cells in Paris liaising with the Allies, so they really needed him to sing, but he didn’t say a word. He had sent his family to the country, near Clermont-Ferrand. Someone told the Nazis where his family were, we have no idea who. So one evening Émile was taken to a cell and had to watch his wife being raped by four German officers. The last one, when he had finished, put his revolver inside her and shot her. Still, he said nothing. The next morning they took him to another cell. His two children were in there. His young son was hanging by the neck from a rope. He was dead. There was another rope next to him. They told Émile that unless he told them everything, his little girl would be next.’

  Gaston made towards the car. Owen started to speak, but André put his arm across to stop him.

  ‘Don’t... don’t even think of asking.’

  Émile turned briefly as they got in, a dark beret pulled down just above his hooded eyes, which surveyed them through the rear view mirror. As they headed south through the quiet streets of early morning Paris, Gaston briefed them.

  ‘We are going to a prison for German prisoners of war. Those that are cleared, that is the non-Nazis, will be sent to a holding camp. They will be released when it is safe, when the war is over. The others, those suspected of war crimes, they will face further justice.

  ‘We managed to track Lange down to this prison. He is being processed at the moment. I have to tell you though, it looks like he is in the clear. There is no evidence that he is a Nazi Party member or has committed any war crimes. He was probably a typical Abwehr officer – not a Nazi. He’s clever apparently. Smart is the word they used to describe him. He was wearing a Wehrmacht uniform when he was caught and there is no evidence against him. It is not going to be easy.

  ‘We used to have free
access to these prisoners. Straight after the liberation, we could even take them away and do what we wanted with them. If it was up to us, we could get the information you want out of him in an hour, probably far less. It would be no problem. But with the authorities, it is not so easy now. We can no longer have open access to the prisoners. That is why we are going early on a Saturday morning. The governor of the prison is away. The senior officer on duty today is very sympathetic to us. He will give us access to Lange, but on one very strict condition – we are not to harm him. Understand?’

  Owen had expected the prison to be on the outskirts of the city, but they had driven for some while with Paris long behind them. They passed Fontainebleau and soon after turned off the main road. The land was flat and covered in a layer of rolling mist, the open landscape broken only by islands of trees and isolated farm buildings. The road had narrowed and was now well above the level of the land on either side of it, which had taken on the appearance of soggy marshland. After about twenty minutes, a large grey building appeared out of the mist ahead of them. They slowed down for a police checkpoint and there were two more before they drove through the main prison gates.

  They were ushered into the office of a tall man whom Owen took to be Gaston’s contact. From the way they embraced, Owen imagined that they had been résistants together at some stage.

  He looked at André’s pass and nodded and then spoke in a fast Parisian accent to André, who translated.

  ‘He wants to remind you that there is to be no physical violence against this man. Lange is not expecting us by the way.’

  The senior officer led them through the warren of corridors. It appeared that the building may originally have been a castle, with various prison buildings being added at different stages. The overall effect was of a confusing collection of blocks and rooms, linked by gloomy corridors and courtyards. After walking down a corridor they came to a door which the senior officer unlocked. They were now in a courtyard, surrounded by high, grey walls. The air was damp and oppressive, the stone walls glistening. A group of German prisoners were milling around the courtyard, hunched against the rain, staying close to the walls and the little shelter they offered. They were guarded by three French soldiers.