Sarah Helm

by Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins;the Missing Agents of WWII

  When the new files appeared in the National Archives, I hoped they would throw light on the affair of Déricourt, as well as the question of Bodington. The files spilled over with evidence showing Déricourt s various dealings with the Germans. They also revealed that at one point investigators seriously considered whether both Déricourt and Bodington were traitors, in part because the two men seemed to be protecting each other. The various episodes led the MI5 man handling the case to say: “This leads one to wonder whether Bodington was himself an agent in the pay of the Germans.”

  Particular suspicions arose directly out of Bodington's trip to Paris in the summer of 1943, during which several puzzling things had happened, including the capture of Agazarian and Colonel Heinrich's startling claim at the time to the SOE agent called Henri Frager that the Gestapo knew all along of Bodington's presence in Paris. Frager had taken the German's claim most seriously, he said, because he believed Colonel Heinrich to be an anti-Nazi who could be trusted. This same Colonel Heinrich, as Vera discovered, was the Abwehr's lethal counterin-telligence sleuth, Hugo Bleicher.

  The MI5 interrogations of Bleicher, now released for public view, ran to several pages, revealing, in mind-boggling complexity, his early penetration of British networks, including the story of how he turned a young Frenchwoman named Mathilde Carré, known as the Cat, who had worked for one of the earliest spy networks in France, run jointly by MI6 and Polish exiles. Carré became Bleicher's mistress, and by early 1942 she had betrayed every member of the British organisation, also putting Bleicher in touch with SOE circuits. When Carré was finally brought to London for investigation in February 1942, Vera was entrusted by MI6 with the task of watching over the Frenchwoman, which gave her a very direct and early insight into German methods of penetration.

  Bleicher was particularly closely questioned by MI5 about events in Paris in the summer of 1943. By that time, Bleicher explained, it was Hans Kieffer of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) who was largely responsible for rounding up British agents, with the Abwehr now forced to take a secondary role. Kieffer nevertheless still found his old adversary Bleicher useful, and they spoke from time to time. On one occasion Kieffer let Bleicher know that Bodington was in Paris. It happened like this, according to the MI5 interrogation report: “He [Bleicher] was informed of Bodington's arrival by Kieffer who personally told Bleicher that he had been informed of it by Gilbert.” The interrogator wrote: “According to Bleicher, Gilbert handed over many of our officers to the SD … he had, however, some scruple in regard to Bodington, and although he gave away his arrival said he did not know his address. Kieffer telephoned Bleicher in the hope he might know the address. And it was then that Bleicher warned Frager.” During the same interrogation Bleicher said he had also warned Frager in the summer of 1943 that several British wirelesses were being run by Kieffer, telling him that “ultimately there were about a dozen.”

  Within MI5 Bleicher s account obviously provoked intense suspicion, both of Déricourt and, by implication, of Bodington. What precisely Bleicher's own motives were in the affair, especially regarding giving information to SOE's Henri Frager, was, of course, far from clear. Dr. Goetz, speaking after the war, suggested that Bleicher was simply shopping Gilbert out of jealousy that such a valuable agent should be working for the Sicherheitsdienst and not for him. Certainly Frager's claim that Bleicher could be trusted—simply because he was an anti-Nazi—was just another example of F Section's tragic wishful thinking: in June 1944 Bleicher personally arrested Frager, who was later shot at Buchenwald.

  In their interrogation of Bleicher, MI5 then tackled the odd circumstances surrounding the arrest of Jack Agazarian, who attended the fatal rendezvous set up, supposedly, with Gilbert Norman. The interrogator asked Bodington the important question: why had he sent Agazarian, his wireless operator, to the rendezvous and not gone himself? Bodington's standard answer—that they tossed a coin—was not deemed satisfactory, but he offered no other.

  Why then did either go, if there was thought to be a risk? Bodington was asked.

  He told his interrogator: “They had, after all, to take some chances, otherwise they would have got nowhere with their mission.”

  One possibility MI5 evidently then considered was that Bodington had been warned by Déricourt that the Germans would be there, but Bodington could not possibly say he had been warned as that would disclose his source. So he sent Agazarian along instead.

  Suspicions of Bodington deepened when it emerged that among his many peculiar prewar acquaintances was Henri Déricourt.

  When MI5 asked Bodington why it was that Déricourt always seemed to have so much money, Bodington replied that Déricourt had been a highly paid “trick aviator” before the war. In fact, as soon emerged, the two men regularly met at flying shows and dirt-track racing near Paris in the 1930s, when Bodington worked in Paris as a journalist.

  Even more suspicion was aroused when Bodington was asked how he thought the Germans knew of his presence in Paris in the summer of 1943. The unexpected and dismissive reply was that the German secret police had known about him since 1934, “when owing to certain journalistic activities of his, he had come to their notice.”

  One of the German secret policemen Bodington was referring to was almost certainly Karl Boemelburg. British intelligence had long held a file on Boemelburg. He had been the most senior Sicherheitsdienst officer in Paris for much of the war, based at the German embassy in Paris in the early 1930s as a quasi-diplomat. “Appearance of a Prussian officer. Speaks good French; homosexual,” said a note in the Boemelburg file. Boemelburg also met Déricourt and Bodington at the dirt-track racing, as Déricourt himself would later reveal.

  Rather than reach any conclusion from this plethora of incriminating evidence, MI5 appeared simply to give up and brought no charges against Déricourt or Bodington. So interwoven were the allegations of treachery involving SOE that the British security service men simply could not decide whom or what to believe—a state of affairs that may well have suited the former staff officers of SOE.

  All these years later it was still hard to know what to believe, not least because of the “weeding” of the files. What was clear, however, was first that Henri Déricourt was not only a traitor but also a brilliant con man. No sooner had the British acquitted him of treachery for a second time than he was arrested at Croydon airport in 1946, on his way to pilot a plane carrying a large amount of gold and platinum to France. The magistrate, in view of his “excellent war record,” let him off with a £500 fine.

  Second, it was clear that Bodington went out of his way to protect Déricourt. Déricourt had some sort of hold over Bodington, perhaps dating back to their prewar liaison, though what that hold was—financial, sexual, or something else—was anyone's guess.

  What was also clear from the files was Vera's own deafening silence on the question of Déricourt. She appeared not to have given her views— or her evidence—on him to the British inquiries at any stage, yet she had gathered more incriminating evidence against him than any other investigator. This reticence to speak out officially was in stark contrast to the way Vera made her abhorrence and distrust of Déricourt known unofficially. Anyone who broached the subject of Déricourt privately with Vera after the war was given a rundown on his treachery.

  “She had a feminine intuition he was a rotten apple. I was completely conned by him,” said Hugh Verity, the head of Lysander operations.

  Vera herself even told me when I met her at Winchelsea; “I knew he was rotten from the very start,” and as she spoke she suddenly raised her voice a little as if the very mention of the name had stirred long-buried anger. “When he came to us, the men were all thrilled to bits with the fellow, but I gave him one look and said I would not trust him across the road. They were furious with me. He seemed to do a very good job for a while. But he was motivated by money and intrigue.”

  “How did you know?” I asked, surprised by these forthright observations.

  “Instinct,”
she said, and blew one of those chimneys of smoke above her head. “Some people's instincts serve them well. Mine have always served me well.”

  Continuing her interrogation of Dr. Goetz, Vera now asked about the deception that was carried out in the north of France. Dr. Goetz said that Kieffer had instructed a second officer, Joseph Placke, to operate a captured wireless near Sedan, in the Ardennes, and by August 1943 the second deception scheme was successful.

  As Vera knew, Dr. Goetz was referring to the radio of John Macalis-ter, Frank Pickersgill's wireless operator. Vera had traced the victims of this fiasco to several concentration camps. Bodington had warned Buck-master that the Ardennes circuit “should be considered lost” in his report about the Prosper disaster, on his return from Paris in August 1943. But the Ardennes circuit then began to work well, so the warning was ignored.

  Dr. Goetz explained that the Ardennes circuit had been created from scratch by Kieffer. The French resistance in that area did not know the two new arrivals from London, so when the Canadians, captured just after landing, were impersonated by Kieffer's men, nobody knew the difference. Arms poured in from London to the new circuit, as did agents. Placke and Kieffer then drew up all sorts of plans for sabotage, which were approved by London.

  It was evident that by this time the German double-cross system had become a highly complex affair, as phoney plans were developed for each phoney circuit, all coordinated and planned so that London did not guess what was happening. Dr. Goetz even developed his own set of code words and radio plans to mirror the real ones. He would send messages asking for arms or arranging a landing, and London would reply with the details. The message on the BBC would come over signalling that all was ready to go ahead. Kieffer's men then charged off to the landing fields and formed reception committees. Dr. Goetz even set up his own letterboxes for his “agents” and sent the details to London. On occasion Dr. Goetz and Placke were asked by London to fix up meetings with agents who were still operating freely in the field.

  In August 1943 they received a message from Buckmaster telling the two Canadians, Pickersgill and Macalister, to meet up with Nora Inayat Khan (Madeleine) in Paris at the Café Colisée in the Champs-Elysées.

  Kieffer had been keen to locate Madeleine for some time, said Dr. Goetz, but although his men had been closely on her trail, she always got away. Now there was a chance for Kieffer to lure her right into the hands of two of his best men. Placke, whose English was fluent, was to be Macalister. To pose as Pickersgill, Kieffer chose another Gestapo officer, Karl Holdorf, who had a transatlantic accent from his time working on an ocean liner. It was assumed that Madeleine had never met Pickersgill or Macalister before and so would not guess the two men who met her were Gestapo officers.

  Now Vera learned what she had long suspected: that Madeleine had been sent by Buckmaster directly into Gestapo hands. But why, Vera now asked Dr. Goetz, did Kieffer not follow Madeleine after the meeting and arrest her? This, said Dr. Goetz, was another question for Kieffer and not for him. He supposed it suited Kieffer to have her run around a little longer.

  In the end, said Dr. Goetz, Madeleine was arrested after a denunciation. A woman had called up Avenue Foch offering to tell them the whereabouts of a female British agent in return for money. It was a story of jealousy. The woman who denounced Nora was Renée Garry, the sister of Nora's organiser, Emile Garry. When Nora arrived in Paris in June 1943, Renée was already in love with France Antelme, but during those terrifying weeks Antelme gave not only his protection but also his affection to Nora. In the autumn of 1943 Renée Garry “sold” Nora to the Germans in revenge.

  What Vera was more interested to know from Dr. Goetz was when exactly Nora's arrest had taken place. Dr. Goetz thought it must have been in September or October 1943. It was certainly early in the autumn, because he was already very busy with several “decoy transmissions,” as he called his “radio game,” and then he had to learn to play yet another radio—Madeleine's.

  I hunted through the new files for the original telegrams from Dr. Goetz to see just how he had tricked London, but almost none had survived. There was one interesting message, however, in Nora's file. It came from an agent named Jacques and was sent from Berne on October 1, 1943. In it he told London that, according to a source called Sonja (“Sonja” was garbled in transmission), Nora, or Madeleine, had had “a serious accident” and was “in hospital”—code for captured or in serious trouble. The telegram also mentioned a suspect agent named Maurice Barde, who worked with another agent whose alias was Ernest.

  CIPHER TEL FROM BERNE. DESP 13.57 1.10.43. REC 1820 2.10.43

  IMMEDIATE

  FOLLOWING FROM JACQUES.

  SONJ?A RETURNED FROM PARIS 25TH REPORTS ERNEST MAURICE AND MADELEINE HAD SERIOUS ACCIDENT AND IN HOSPITAL?. MAURICE IS BARDE. MADELEINE IS W/T OPERATOR.

  IF YOU GO AHEAD ON PICK UP PLAN I COULD TELL ON RECEIPT OF PHOTOGRAPH WHETHER GENUINE OR GESTAPO MAURICE.

  AM TRYING TO? GET FURTHER INFORMATION VIA SONJ?A.

  On the telegram were scrawled various initials showing that it was sent to “F”—Buckmaster. He replied to Berne the same day, saying: “Have had apparently genuine messages from Madeleine since 25th therefore regard Sonja's news with some doubt. Can you give us estimate Sonja's reliability?” Whether Buckmaster got such an estimate was not recorded.

  The “Sonja” message was an extraordinary revelation. It showed that London had received a serious warning of Nora's capture as early as October 1, 1943, and that there was reason therefore at least to suspect that her radio was in enemy hands from that date. Yet the warning was ignored. Perhaps Buckmaster simply dismissed the information because it came from a local recruit—Sonja was hired in Paris—and local recruits were never valued as much as London-trained agents. But Jacques, who sent the message, was Jacques Weil, a valued radio operator with a small Jewish SOE circuit known as Juggler operating near Paris. Weil, who had escaped to Berne after the Prosper collapse, had provided reliable reports before. Buckmaster's refusal to follow up this clear warning of Nora's capture was yet another stunning example of the tragic incompetence that littered these files.

  It was, however, the identity of Sonja herself that made this telegram particularly remarkable. Sonja was in fact Sonia Olschanesky, a Jewish Russian-born dancer who had worked as a courier for the Juggler circuit. She was also Weil's fiancée. Unknown to London, Sonia had refused to follow Weil to the safety of Berne and remained in place after the collapse of Prosper, taking immense risks by running messages between different SOE groups. She was herself captured in February 1944 and sent to Karlsruhe prison in the same convoy as Odette Sansom and the other British SOE women. She was then sent to Natzweiler, along with Diana Rowden, Andrée Borrel, and Vera Leigh. Sonia Olschanesky was, in fact, the woman drawn by Brian Stonehouse as No. 2 on the Lagerstrasse. Vera did not recognise her from Stonehouse s drawing because she had never met her. It was Sonia's name that Vera had found in the prison records at Karlsruhe. She did not recognise the name because, as Sonia was a local recruit, she had never heard it before. Having already decided that Nora had died at Natzweiler, Vera had assumed that Sonia Olschanesky was an alias for Nora. As Vera was to discover sometime later, however, it was Sonia Olschanesky who had died at Natzweiler and not Nora Inayat Khan.

  What this message showed for the first time was that the fates of Sonia and Nora were even more inextricably entwined than that. Thanks to the bravery of Sonia Olschanesky, London was first warned of Nora's capture on October 1, 1943, but Sonia was ignored. Had Sonia's warning been heeded at that time, Dr. Goetz's “radio game” would have been exposed and probably halted there and then, saving countless SOE lives. Sonia Olschanesky herself, arrested when another Prosper subcircuit was penetrated in February 1944, would probably not have been captured.

  Dr. Goetz said that very soon after Madeleine was caught, he was instructed to begin working her radio. She gave no help. “But we needed none,” said Dr. Goetz. Nora, he explained, was qu
ite simple to impersonate because German signals staff had been intercepting her traffic for a long time. Furthermore, she had written all her letters to London en clair—that is, not in code—so they had been able to acquire all details of her signal plan and of her style through the usual method, “the mail” handed in by the agent BOE 48. Dr. Goetz had also been given a notebook belonging to Nora, found in a drawer in her apartment. The notebook contained all her back messages carefully written out. “From that we could work out her code and all her security checks.” Dr. Goetz set up an entire fake circuit for Nora and gave her his own alias, Diana, for use within Avenue Foch.

  “When was Nora sent to Germany?” asked Vera.

  “I could not say. But she was one of the first to go,” said Dr. Goetz, who recalled that Nora was removed from Avenue Foch and sent on to Germany soon after being captured and certainly well before Christmas

  “I told Kieffer I didn't need her to work her radio.” Now Vera was hearing something entirely new. Her investigations into Nora's fate had concluded that Nora had been sent to Germany with Odette Sansom and the other six women on the transport from Paris to Karlsruhe in May

  But Dr. Goetz was telling her that Nora had been sent to Germany alone, probably in October or November 1943 and certainly many months before the other women. He did not know where Madeleine was sent, but it cannot have been too far away, he thought, because there had been a need to reinterrogate her at Christmas. At Christmas Dr. Goetz received a message for Madeleine from London, which was obviously designed to test her, so Kieffer sent a man to Germany to get the answers. The message Dr. Goetz was now referring to was composed by Vera and asked for certain information about Nora's family. Vera had received the replies from Dr. Goetz and judged them authentic.

  Madeleine, however, was as usual uncooperative, said Dr. Goetz, so he had had to guess the answers himself, relying on his wits. And though Nora refused to assist at all while at Avenue Foch, she had inadvertently passed on certain personal details that proved useful, said Dr. Goetz.