Prince of Spies

by Prince of Spies (retail) (epub)

  ‘Nur Tiere, denke ich.’ ‘Just animals, I think.’

  More footsteps joined the group, and then an older voice – one used to giving orders – said something about there being too many trees in the way. Someone else replied, suggesting they move on, and Gunnar and Inger heard movement towards them before the man who seemed to be in charge of the patrol said they should carry on further up the hillside.

  * * *

  After that it was quiet, although Gunnar and Inger restricted their defeating the Nazis to watching out for the RAF plane and further German patrols. Around ten o’clock they could make out dozens of German troops moving in the fields below them, and then soon after eleven, there was the low roar of an aircraft approaching from the west. It was a cloudy night, with little light from the moon, so it was hard to make much out, but the shape of the aircraft soon became apparent. It descended to just a few hundred feet, swooping low over the fields, and Gunnar whispered something to Inger about how he hoped the engines wouldn’t stall.

  The tip of the starboard wing almost brushed the trees on the side of the hill, and then the plane climbed again rapidly, disappearing as suddenly as it had arrived.

  The hill seemed to come to life. The patrol that had moved to the top descended quickly and noisily, and at least one other patrol was shouting out to them. From what Gunnar and Inger could gather, they were trying to ascertain whether anyone had seen a parachute. An officer called that they’d seen nothing up there; they’d all need to move down to the fields.

  Gunnar and Inger remained in the woods for the rest of the night, using the time to help defeat the Nazis. At first light they returned to the village, through the hidden paths and along the hedgerows they knew like the back of their hands. They noticed German patrols moving through the fields and spotted more than one roadblock. Gunnar arrived home to find his father waiting anxiously for him. He told him what he’d seen, and then his father disappeared to a nearby barn to transmit a radio message to London.

  * * *

  It did not take Hendrie long to regret his impulsiveness. He had, he decided, acted quite improperly: one simply did not wander uninvited into the office of someone so senior in the Service. That it was out of character would hardly count as mitigation, and he assumed Gilbey’s politeness merely masked his displeasure. Hendrie had little doubt that Gilbey’s disapproval would work its way down to Bentley, his own boss. He was certain Bentley didn’t like him. There’d been talk of a transfer to India, where they were beefing up the Service operation, and he didn’t think he’d cope with the heat.

  A week later, an ominous message arrived from Gilbey’s secretary: please could he remain in his office after work? Mr Gilbey would like to speak with him.

  Hendrie ensured his own office door remained wide open so Gilbey would know where he was. By a quarter to eight, he feared Gilbey had forgotten about him, which might not be such a bad thing. He’d wait until eight and maybe look up and down the corridor.

  Gilbey appeared silently in his office, his elegant woollen coat buttoned up, a silk scarf visible at his neck, his dark trilby in place and leather gloves in the process of being adjusted, finger by finger.

  ‘I presume you’ve not eaten, Hendrie?’

  Before Hendrie could reply, Gilbey had made a come with me gesture with his head and walked out of the office. Hendrie hurried after him.

  ‘We’ll eat at my club. If we get a move on, it might not feel quite so chilly out there.’

  It was a pleasant enough dinner, accompanied by a surprisingly sweet Bordeaux. Gilbey talked about his dogs and his wife’s family’s farm and asked Hendrie just enough questions so as not to appear rude. After dinner, they retired to a room on the upper floor, where an alcove had been reserved for them with a large fire roaring and a bottle of port waiting on the small table between two large leather club chairs arranged close to each other.

  ‘No one will hear a word we say, as long as we don’t shout. In any case, if you can’t trust members of the same club, who can you trust, eh? This is a rather splendid port, Hendrie, fifty years old. Help yourself.’

  Both men settled into their chairs and drank. Then Gilbey leaned forward, the reflection of the flames bouncing around his face.

  ‘Ten out of ten, Hendrie – well done.’

  Hendrie appeared confused: was Gilbey talking about the port? ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

  ‘Prince. We’ve checked him out and he seems splendid, everything you said he was. His speaking Danish – well, about time we had a stroke of luck like that. Your intuition about him being right for us was spot on. His Chief Constable is fighting to keep him, of course, but he doesn’t stand a chance. I thought it only fair to tell you I’m taking him on, and obviously you’ll mention his recruitment to no one.’

  ‘Naturally, sir.’

  There was a long silence. Gilbey poured them each another port and leaned forward, staring into the fire, addressing the flames as if he was talking to someone behind them. ‘Apart from this being an opportunity for me to express my appreciation to you, Hendrie, there is something I’d like your help on. I’ve told Bentley he’s to release you for a while. A special project. Are you interested?’

  It was a rhetorical question, barely even that. Gilbey didn’t wait for an answer. ‘When you asked me about Denmark, I may have mentioned how it doesn’t feel safe sending people out there at the moment, how too many of the SOE chaps have been captured. There is an undeniable pattern of the Germans expecting our agents, and this is clearly a concern. I need to get Prince out to Denmark – we have a potential first-class intelligence source out there and he is the perfect chap to assess and run them – but I’m not sure we can risk sending him in at the moment. We need to know,’ he stretched his feet out so the soles of his shoes were just an inch or so from the fire, ‘whether our agents being intercepted by the Germans is simply bad luck, or if there’s a problem with our Danish friends or an informer inside the Danish section of SOE here.’

  ‘So how can I help, sir?’

  Gilbey straightened himself up and turned to face Hendrie, leaning close. He spoke quietly, and Hendrie had to lean forward too to catch what he said.

  ‘You’re being transferred to the Special Operations Executive. As you know, the SOE was formed out of the Service, though it’s more or less autonomous now. Nonetheless, we work very closely with them and relations are not bad at all in the circumstances. They tend to operate more with resistance groups, while we concentrate on intelligence-gathering, but obviously there’s an overlap and they’ve tended to be responsible for getting our agents into German-occupied countries. I’m sure you know all this, but you may be somewhat less familiar with the structure of the SOE.’

  He slapped Hendrie on the knee and beckoned him even closer. ‘The SOE has various departments, but its main work is done through its country sections. The headquarters of the European country sections is at Noresby House on Baker Street. Have you ever been there?’

  Hendrie shook his head.

  ‘A few chaps you’ve worked with in the past are there now – that dreadful so-and-so Arnold, who used to look after our accounts, he’s one of them. However, for obvious reasons of security, the actual sections themselves are based in separate buildings, most of them around Baker Street. The Danish section is not far away in Rodmarton Street. That, Hendrie, is where you’ll be based.’

  ‘Running Prince?’

  ‘No, no, no… I don’t want the Danish section to have even the slightest inkling of Prince’s existence, let alone the fact that we’ve recruited him. Looks like we’ll have to rely on the SOE to get him into Denmark, but I don’t want to ask him to step out of a plane a few thousand feet above the country until we can be sure there’s no informer in Rodmarton Street who’s arranged for the Gestapo to be expecting him. If there is an informer, your job, Hendrie, is to try and find them.’

  Hendrie felt a surge of excitement. No longer would he be at Bentley’s beck and call, being dispatch
ed around the country to check out every rumour of a German spy. He’d been personally selected for this mission by Gilbey himself.

  ‘Won’t it be a problem, me not speaking Danish, sir?’

  ‘Not at all. Half the people there don’t speak a word of it, and I’m told the place has plenty of young Danish ladies who do translating and suchlike.’ Gilbey winked at him.

  ‘And what’s my story? There must be a reason why I’m transferring from the Service to the SOE.’

  Gilbey hesitated, looked down at the floor and then up at Hendrie.

  ‘You’ll be going there under something of a cloud, I’m afraid. You’ll need to adopt the persona of a rather embittered former employee of the Service.’

  * * *

  Two days later, Hendrie met his new boss at Noresby House. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Webster ran the SOE Danish section. He had, Gilbey assured him, fought in most of the major battles on the Western Front and there was no question as to his loyalty. ‘He’s the only one we’ve confided in about you; he’s been very worried himself about the possibility of there being a German agent in his section. Not terribly happy that we’re coming in to sort out his mess, but he knows that’s the way it is. But even he doesn’t know about Prince.’

  Webster was well into his sixties, possibly even pushing early seventies, and was one of a legion of senior military and intelligence officers who’d been pulled out of retirement to help in the war effort. He had the slightly irritable air of someone who’d been woken early from an afternoon nap.

  ‘Gilbey’s told me everything, Hendrie, no need to repeat it all.’ He ran his hands through silver-grey hair slightly longer than most men of his age would wear it, then looked at Hendrie as if, despite telling him not to repeat it, that was nonetheless what he should do.

  ‘My brief is to poke around, sir, as Gilbey no doubt told you. I’m good at being discreet, just observing from the sidelines. It may well be that you’re just having an awful run of bad luck with the agents you’re dropping in. But if there is someone passing on information to the enemy, I would hope I could spot them.’

  ‘So I understand. You start at Rodmarton Street on Monday. I’m putting you with Llewellyn Tindall; he’s our logistics man. There’s not much going on in the section he doesn’t know about. It’s up to him to ensure everything’s sorted out for our operations. Awkward character at times, bit of bad luck in France during the Great War, but damn good at his job.’

  * * *

  In the three days before he started at Rodmarton Street – there was a weekend in between – Hendrie had drawn a mental picture of Llewellyn Tindall: Welsh, obviously, no doubt short and with a loud voice, probably a socialist of the Methodist variety. He might try to convert Hendrie to socialism or Methodism, or even both.

  He turned out to be nothing of the sort. He was tall, with an almost aristocratic bearing, slightly stooped, and he walked awkwardly, as if he were in pain. He spoke with a cut-glass English accent, the words he used sparingly so carefully selected and enunciated they sounded affected.

  Lieutenant Colonel Webster had taken Hendrie into Tindall’s office on the Monday morning and left him there after the briefest of introductions. Tindall said nothing, nodding his head more in resignation than greeting, and pointed to a small desk opposite his own.

  ‘Miss Poulsen is my Danish secretary: she comes in late and stays late. She sits there.’ He tapped a large pane of frosted glass behind him, on the other side of which was a narrow outer office that Hendrie had entered through. ‘There are some files for you: read yourself in. It really isn’t terribly complicated here. There’s a briefing document on Denmark there too. You’ll need to look at that. Just remember that Danes are a variant of Germans and you won’t go far wrong.’

  For an hour Hendrie sat awkwardly, the only sound being the turning of pages, the slight groans made by Tindall every time he moved, and a constant clearing of his throat. Every ten minutes or so he got up and took a few paces around the room before carefully lowering himself back into his chair.

  ‘My mother-in-law was Welsh,’ Hendrie said eventually. It was an attempt to break the silence, but as Tindall slowly looked up at him as if he were mad, he immediately regretted saying it.

  ‘Really?’ said Tindall. ‘I have no Welsh blood in me, thank Christ; never even been to the bloody country – avoided it like the plague. My parents spent their honeymoon there, a week in Aberystwyth. Some years later, when drink had taken a premature but permanent hold on her, my mother confided in me that it had been the worst week of her life. She said it was as if my father were raping her. Can you imagine, her telling me that? She never allowed him in her bed after Aberystwyth. His revenge was to name me Llewellyn when I arrived nine months after the honeymoon: not even a middle name she could use as an alternative. So trying to establish a Welsh connection between us is probably not wise. But tell me, Hendrie, what did you do to queer your pitch at Broadway? Must have been something to be demoted to this forsaken outpost.’

  Hendrie remembered Gilbey’s instructions. Obviously don’t own up to having done anything wrong as such. That would be too suspicious. They’ll wonder why you’ve not been booted out altogether. More a clash of personalities than anything else, six of one and half a dozen of the other in a row with Bentley and he pulled rank, hence you having to move on. You felt you weren’t treated with enough respect; I’ll square the story with Bentley in case anyone ever asks him. Perhaps there was a row, raised voices…

  ‘Well…’ said Hendrie, allowing a long pause, hoping to signal a reluctance to discuss the matter. ‘I’m not sure this is a demotion, as such. My section head and I didn’t quite see eye to eye, and I regret to say a discussion intended to clear the air rather got out of control. Obviously, I apologised, but it was difficult to stay on after that.’

  ‘No hand in the till, then?’

  ‘Good Lord, no!’ Hendrie had little trouble sounding genuinely aggrieved, even angry. ‘Nothing like that. You may have heard of Bentley, my section head? Rather smart, very well connected; his wife’s the youngest daughter of an earl who owns half of Worcestershire. He was at Balliol and is a lawyer, no real record in the Service – didn’t even fight in the Great War. Treated me rather like a dogsbody at times and I’m afraid I let my frustration build up. But you know… here I am, a new start and all that.’

  Tindall stood up slowly, wincing as he did so. He straightened himself up and walked over to the window, turning his back to it so he was in silhouette when he addressed Hendrie.

  ‘I imagine you and I are somewhat alike, Hendrie: dogsbodies, not really appreciated, taken for granted. This office here, Webster calls it logistics. We’re more like a travel agency. Once an agent is selected to be sent to Denmark, I arrange their journey with the considerable help of Miss Poulsen. But Webster takes me for granted, rather as you have been by the sounds of it. You know, he’s a lucky bugger is Webster, if you’ll pardon my language. Fought on the Western Front throughout the war, front line, trenches and all that, and came through unscathed. Not just physically: if a car backfires, he doesn’t even jump. Whereas I…’ He was now walking slowly back to his desk. ‘I was based at army HQ in Montreuil-sur-Mer, miles from the action. I looked after logistics there too, ensuring supplies reached the front. My one trip forward was in late 1917, when I was sent to Cambrai during the fighting – there’d been a problem with ammunition backing up at a forward depot and I was supposed to sort it out. I was still a few miles from the town, which was taking quite a battering, I can tell you. As we were leaving, heading back to Montreuil, our convoy was hit by shellfire. Lorry in front of the car I was in was destroyed and we were peppered with shrapnel. Not to put too fine a point on it, Hendrie, a piece lodged itself in my balls. I’ve been in constant pain since that day. Still, probably kept me out of trouble, eh?’

  * * *

  At the end of his first week in Llewellyn Tindall’s office, Hendrie was summoned to a meeting in Gilbey’s office at MI6
. He walked to Broadway, south through Mayfair and St James’s Park, and when he arrived there, Gilbey and Lieutenant Colonel Robert Webster were waiting for him in reception.

  ‘We’ll pop across the road to St Ermin’s,’ said Gilbey. ‘No reason why we can’t do this over a decent drink.’

  They found a table at the end of the Caxton Bar, overlooking the tree-lined courtyard entrance. ‘You know we’ve got one of the floors here, don’t you, Hendrie?’ Gilbey was looking up at the ceiling. ‘I tried to get my office moved here, but somehow didn’t manage it. SOE have a floor to themselves too, don’t they, Webster?’

  Webster joined the other two peering wistfully upwards, all of them wishing they were based here rather than in the more utilitarian premises that the rest of MI6 and the SOE had to make do with.

  ‘Robert has been of the view,’ said Gilbey, ‘that the fate of the agents we’re sending into Denmark is either an unfortunate coincidence or else the source is in Denmark itself. He has been reluctant to concede that the information is coming from within his own section. I think that is fair, Robert?’

  ‘That was my view, certainly. I have nonetheless come to accept the possibility – no more than that – that perhaps the source may be in Rodmarton Street.’

  ‘What do you make of Tindall?’ Gilbey was studying his Scotch as he asked the question. Webster looked uncomfortable.

  ‘If you’re asking what I think of him as a person… well, he’s not my type. Bad-tempered, unfriendly, not exactly clubbable, clearly has a chip on his shoulder: most of which can be explained by what happened to him in the Great War. But if you’re asking my opinion on whether he is a Nazi informant inside Rodmarton Street – no, I really don’t think so.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s too obvious, too convenient, wouldn’t you agree? He’s the man organising the dispatch of our agents to Denmark. He’s in far too exposed a position. Certainly if it was him, then he’d make an effort to be more agreeable. Being so unpleasant and openly resentful only draws attention to himself.’