by Alex Gerlis
‘The new prime minister…’
‘Clement Attlee.’
‘…what class is he?’
‘I imagine he’s middle class. We’re not too far from London now, Hanne; you’ll see the city building up around us.’
‘What is that building?’
‘That’s Alexandra Palace. As I was saying, this sense of obligation extends to other people, the people the upper class would regard as being of an inferior class, although they’d never express it in those terms. They would consider it wrong, for instance, to be rude to people: they regard themselves as having obligations towards us and us as having obligations towards them. Have you heard the French phrase noblesse oblige?’
She shook her head.
‘Essentially it means that the nobility, the gentry and the upper class have an obligation to behave decently and properly. It recognises that their position in society comes with certain responsibilities.’
‘Just two words mean all that?’
Prince nodded. The noisy brakes indicated that the train was slowing down.
‘It wasn’t a phrase the French prisoners used at Ravensbrück.’
‘I wouldn’t imagine they had much cause to – I don’t think noblesse oblige applies to Germans, in any case. But it does go some way to explaining how Gilbey, for example, treats me: perfectly properly, probably somewhat patronisingly, but he has an expectation of how I should behave. He sees it as my – our – obligation or duty to serve this country, just as he does. He doesn’t need to order me to come and see him, but it is bred into him to ask in such a way that there’s an expectation I will.’
‘And what do you think he has in mind, Richard?’
‘I have no idea. The war’s over, after all.’
‘So we can always say no.’
Richard Prince looked at his wife as if she was being naïve. ‘I suppose we can,’ he said in a resigned manner, ‘in theory.’
* * *
Tom Gilbey couldn’t have been more charming. His manner was effortless and he came across as utterly sincere as he greeted Prince and Hanne like they were his own children returning after a lengthy absence.
In turn, they thanked him profusely for the Royal Doulton dinner service he’d given them as a wedding gift, and Gilbey responded that it was the least he could do, but perhaps best not let young Henry play with it, and the three of them laughed, which went some way to relieving the tension not too far below the surface. Gilbey dutifully asked how Henry was, and Hanne said he was very sweet and she was pleased they’d decided to keep his nanny on as he needed continuity in his life, and he then asked how she was, and she replied that she was much better, thank you.
‘Probably not my business, Hanne, but now you’ve married an English police officer, what do you intend to do?’
Prince bridled. It was indeed none of Gilbey’s business, but he’d managed to ask the question in a charming way, and Hanne said something about getting to know her new husband and his son, and that after more than two years in a concentration camp she didn’t want to rush into anything, and Gilbey said of course, of course in an almost apologetic manner.
There was a period of silence as a tray of tea was brought in and Gilbey somewhat awkwardly poured it out. ‘And you, Richard: enjoying being back on the beat?’
‘I’m hardly on the beat, sir. There’s some talk that I may be promoted to chief superintendent next year. I may get the Lincoln division if the wind’s in the right direction.’
Gilbey said jolly good and passed round a plate of biscuits. ‘I have a job for you two, if you’re interested.’
Hanne smiled politely and looked at her husband, who remained impassive. Gilbey coughed nervously, and when he spoke again, it was in a louder voice, as if making an effort to sound confident.
‘It would require you going to Germany, for a week or two at the most. The brief is to find a German fugitive who’s wanted for murdering British agents and others in France and Holland.’
He paused and looked at them with raised eyebrows as if expecting an answer.
‘I think you may need to tell us more, sir.’
‘I was about to, Prince. Hanne, excuse me if you are already aware of this, but there is an organisation called the Special Operations Executive, or SOE. It grew out of MI6 – our overseas intelligence service – with a brief to conduct espionage and coordinate resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe. It’s been a remarkably successful organisation: mixed results in some countries, outstanding in others. It sent many hundreds of agents into Europe, and now it’s being wound up, but not before it accounts for all those who’ve gone missing. It is regarded as a matter of honour that we find out what happened to all our agents and where necessary mete out justice to the people who either betrayed them or harmed them. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a biscuit?’
Hanne didn’t reply. Her head was bowed.
‘I say, are you all right, darling?’
When she looked up, her eyes were filled with tears. ‘I knew some of those agents.’
‘Really – in Denmark?’
‘No, no – in Ravensbrück. Three women, British agents, were executed there. I remember their names: Violette Szabo, Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe. They were extraordinarily brave. One of them managed to talk to another prisoner and told her they worked for the British and that they’d been dropped into France by parachute.’ Tears streaked down her cheeks and Prince noticed that Tom Gilbey had placed a knuckle between his teeth in an effort to control his own emotions.
‘Fritz Suhren, the camp commandant, supervised their executions himself.’ She pronounced the name through gritted teeth. ‘If you ever catch him, I shall be a witness.’
Gilbey nodded, then continued. ‘One agent we flew over was a woman called Christine Butler. She was sent to France in December 1943 to organise the resistance in the Dijon area. Her group was betrayed and most of them were arrested. As far as we can ascertain, she was interrogated by a young Gestapo officer from Paris, who tortured her and – I’m sorry to have to say this, Hanne – raped her so badly she had to be transferred to the infirmary at Dijon prison.
‘He then turned up there and had her carried on a stretcher to the pavement outside the prison, where he shot her dead.’
Gilbey paused and sipped his tea.
‘We have a good physical description of the chap, which I’ll let you have, but what we don’t have is his name: he was apparently only known by his nickname – das Frettchen.’
‘The Ferret.’
‘Indeed: a nasty, mean little animal, a close relation of the weasel and the polecat – we had no end of trouble with weasels on my in-laws’ estate. My father-in-law took it personally, but then he takes everything personally. Anyway, we understand that after Christine Butler’s murder, the Ferret was transferred to Amsterdam, where he was involved in the death of an SOE agent and a young woman who ran the resistance group there. We don’t know what happened to him after that: he was transferred elsewhere, but we lost track of him. The man responsible for finding him is an old school chum of mine, Charles Lean… Did you say something, Prince?’
‘No, sir, it just seems that you went to school with an awful lot of people.’
‘It’s a large school, Prince. Charles ran agents for one of the SOE’s French sections and was the man who recruited Christine Butler. As the first officer to lose an agent to the Ferret, he has overall responsibility for bringing him to justice – that’s the way it works in the SOE. He put the Ferret’s details on a watch list, and lo and behold, a couple of weeks ago the American military police in Munich contacted him to say the man was in the city.
‘Charles had a jolly good chap working for him, a Guards officer called Christopher Stephens who served in Europe during the war – rather like you, Prince. Stephens volunteered to go to Munich and bring the Ferret back, but I’m afraid it all went dreadfully wrong.’
‘What happened?’
‘As far as Charles can gather, Stephens was lured to a bar
by a man who told him he knew where das Frettchen was. Clearly, he failed to take the right precautions: he had some Americans waiting on the street outside the bar, but he ought to have had cover inside and also made sure they were watching the back of the place. When the Americans found him in the yard behind the bar, he’d been stabbed to death. One doesn’t want to criticise a dead man, but I can’t believe he was quite so… incautious.’
‘It’s the end of the war, sir.’
‘What do you mean, Prince?’
‘I experienced it myself, sir, on my last mission – both in this country and in Germany. On my previous missions, when the war was still going on, my alertness and concentration were constantly operating at one hundred per cent. Not once did I relax or take my eye off the ball. But when the war ended, I reckon my concentration level dropped slightly, and maybe it was the same with this chap Stephens.’
‘It sounds as if you’re interested…’
‘We’ve not said yes as such, sir.’
‘Let me tell you something first about Charles. I mentioned I was at school with him?’
‘You did, sir.’
‘We were quite close chums actually: same year, same form and house – for a while we even shared a dorm. We’ve remained friends. Charles was a bit different from a lot of us: not terribly ambitious, and not sporty at all, bullied quite a lot when he first went there. He loved nature and was forever going on rambles and finding all these insects. Matron used to get furious. For a while his ambition was to be a country vet, but I don’t think his science was quite up to it, and he ended up working at his uncle’s stockbroking practice in the City. He wasn’t terribly happy there, so he joined the army, which I suppose is one way of seeing nature. Look, are either of you two going to have this last biscuit?’
It was already in Gilbey’s hand, and he eagerly bit into it as his guests shook their heads.
‘Good enough career, and well placed when the war started. Was never going to make colonel, but his French is decent so he went to work for the SOE. It had two main sections covering France: RF, which was linked to de Gaulle, and F section, which Charles worked for, the non-Gaullists. The point I’m trying to get to is that the war has been a bloody strain for him, and I’m afraid it’s all got on top of him now. He was responsible for sending over dozens of agents, and many of them didn’t make it. Now that the war’s over, he’s beginning to find out what happened to many of them – a number of them were betrayed, tortured, killed… it’s dreadful. Of course, Charles is no exception. I’ve sent over agents and lost some of them, and nearly lost others, like you, Prince.’
‘And Hanne too.’
‘Of course! It’s a bloody strain, but we all react differently. Charles has taken it very badly, and I think losing Stephens like that was the final straw. On top of it all, his son was killed at El Alamein in late ’42 – he was in the Eighth Army – and Charles had what I suppose was a bit of a breakdown: not one of those where you shout at neighbours and then end up in one of those awful hospitals, but still, he’s not coping awfully well. So he’s asked me to help, and just as the SOE owes a debt of honour to its dead agents, so Charles and I have a responsibility to each other.’
‘Couldn’t someone else at the SOE take over the case?’
‘They could, but for better or worse, Charles thinks they’d see that as a sign of weakness and it would count against him. He wants to stay in the forces for a few more years and doesn’t want to blot his copybook. So we’ve come up with a perfectly plausible tale that I too have an interest in the Ferret and have asked to take the lead on it, and the SOE seem happy enough with that. Charles meanwhile has gone off to Scotland to have a good rest. This file here is everything we know on the Ferret – description, dates, places, the deaths of the agents. You need to get over to Munich as soon as you can. I think with you two on the case, we ought to have this wrapped up in a week or two.’
Gilbey stood and walked over to the window, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. ‘Europe’s changing by the day; it’s increasingly hard to know what to make of it, to be frank with you. The Soviets seem to know what they’re doing, and the Americans too, but I’m really not sure we do. There’s certainly a role for MI6 over there: we need to know who’s who, who’s on whose side, where the power is – the usual meat and drink of intelligence – but I fear we’ve not adapted to that new world as yet. We’ve been a bit slow off the mark. You two going out there could be useful for me – help me to establish contacts and start some kind of network. And the place is still teeming with Nazis: we’ve rounded up a number of the more prominent ones, but there are still thousands of nasty types we need to get our hands on. I believe this could be our way in, so to speak.’
‘I’m confused, sir. Do you want us to find this chap whose name we don’t know, or set up a network for you?’
‘Your mission would be to find the Ferret, Prince. But what I’m saying is that that ought to give you an entrée into the world of escaping Nazi war criminals, which would be useful for me to plug into. Everyone here at the Service is talking about what job they’ll be doing now the war’s over: this could be a role for me. The younger chaps are learning Russian; I fear I’m too old for that.’
‘I think it will take us more than a week or two to find this Ferret,’ said Prince.
‘And in any case, it doesn’t make sense…’ Hanne was shaking her head as she spoke.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Going to Munich makes no sense.’
‘In what way, Hanne?’ Tom Gilbey had turned to face her.
‘If this man is on the run and was caught in Munich before being released, then surely the last place in Europe where he’ll now be is Munich? He’ll know it’s too dangerous for him.’
Both Gilbey and Prince nodded.
‘I see your point, but I thought if you rode into the city and let your dogs have a good run around the place, then sooner or later you’re bound to pick up his scent.’
Prince turned to his wife. ‘Mr Gilbey is using hunting metaphors. I’ll explain later. In any case, sir, I agree with Hanne: we might not only be wasting our time in Munich, but given the nature of the city, we could alert people that we’re searching for this man’s real identity. Odd to have nothing but a nickname to go on – maybe it’s an indication of how important he is.’
‘You said the last place we know where he was during the war was Amsterdam: is that right?’
‘Yes, Hanne. You could go there.’
‘And before that it was Paris?’
Gilbey nodded.
‘Maybe if we start off in Paris… There are bound to be plenty of people there who’ll be able to help us.’
‘Don’t overestimate the gratitude of the French, Prince.’
‘I still think that will be a more productive place to start.’
‘Fair enough, and I suppose you do have a perfect cover story, don’t you?’
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘Your honeymoon!’
* * *
‘You look confused, Richard – as if you’re not sure.’
They were on the train back to Lincoln and had a compartment to themselves. Before they left, Tom Gilbey told them that as they were now on a new mission, they could start claiming expenses, so they’d decided to travel first class.
‘I’m not confused. I just thought we’d want time to think about it. We’ve got Henry to consider too, remember. And also – well, I am surprised at how keen you are to go. After all, we’ve only been married for a week, and what… four months ago you were in a concentration camp. I’d have thought running round Europe after Nazis would be the last thing you’d want to do.’
‘But that’s the point, Richard.’
‘What is?’
‘That I was in a concentration camp until May. I nearly died. I saw suffering and cruelty I could never have imagined – the way prisoners were shot for just looking at an officer, and the dreadful medical experiments. I suffered
terribly myself and yet I was one of the lucky ones. Before the war, and for part of it, I was a senior police officer in Copenhagen, as you know. Although I knew I was taking a risk when I became a British agent, I never envisaged I’d see what I did. I’m haunted by what I encountered and I know I’ll continue to be unless I do something about it – and this is my opportunity. That’s why I am so keen to go on this mission. We are both highly experienced agents, Richard. You know we can catch this Ferret. And it will be an opportunity for revenge.’
‘Revenge is not necessarily the best motivation.’
‘Ha!’ She waved her hand dismissively. ‘It’s the best one I can think of. At my lowest points in the camp I would motivate myself by thinking of what I would do to those bastards after the war. I lost count of the number of women whose hands I held as they slipped away, with me promising them that they wouldn’t be forgotten and their death would not be in vain…’
‘Yes, but…’
‘…and this is my opportunity to be true to my word.’
Chapter 7
England, September 1945
He’d been released from prison at the end of 1943, though for six months after that he’d been obliged to stay at a boarding house in south London, just down the road from the police station where he was required to report once a day.
The duty sergeants were invariably hostile to him, making it clear they knew who he was and what he’d been imprisoned for. They’d make him wait for up to an hour, alongside the filth, the cheap criminals and the strays of the district. Most days he’d hear the words ‘traitor’ or ‘Nazi’ and look up to see heads turned in his direction. And it was quite common for them to use his rank when they loudly called out his name, the word ‘Admiral’ laced with as much sarcasm and malice as they could muster. Often as he approached the desk the sergeant would remark, ‘Defence Regulation 18B, are you?’ and then no one would be in doubt as to who he was: a person of ‘hostile origin’, as the hateful regulation called it, ‘concerned in acts prejudicial to the public safety or the defence of the realm…’
