The Winter Agent

by Gareth Rubin

  ‘Poor lambs,’ Thomas agreed loudly. ‘Wet in the rain.’

  As Richard and Thomas returned to the van to collect a three-metre string of caltrops – brutal barbed spikes that would burst the tyres of anything driving over them – Hélène spoke to Reece under her breath: ‘Are you certain they’ll come this way?’

  ‘No, but they’re short of fuel and this is the direct road. So long as they stick to their normal schedules, they should be here within an hour or two.’

  ‘You think we can take them on?’

  Reece didn’t want to answer the question – he hated lying to his comrades – and yet the truth was that he knew the op was as likely to fail as to succeed. And if it failed, then they were probably destined for the same cells as Luc. So he helped Richard carry the caltrops towards the road. ‘We’ll have to get in place soon,’ he said. ‘Let’s start building the firing positions.’

  On the second floor of a dull building on the rue des Saussaies, close to the Élysée Palace, where ageing and venal French presidents had enjoyed near-mediaeval trappings of power until a few years earlier, Sturmbannführer-SS Siegfried Klaussmann was reading a letter from his wife. An ornate clock from the last century melodically chimed half past two as he placed the final pink page on the desk before him and smoothed his palm over it. Over the course of six sheets, her tight handwriting had described life at her cousin’s country estate. They had much better food than they had had in Bonn – as much mutton or pork as they could eat – and she prayed every night that Siegfried would soon be able to kiss his second child goodnight.

  He too wanted to tuck his children into bed. He picked up his pen and held the nib above a sheet of notepaper. It hovered there for a while as he decided on the reply – how best to assure her that all would be well, that it was less than two months before he would have a week’s leave, and that, ultimately, he could do more for their safety and well-being from his small office in Paris than sitting alongside them in the Rhineland countryside drinking Riesling.

  There was a light rapping on the door. He screwed the top back on his pen and placed the letter in the drawer of his desk.

  ‘Come in,’ he called.

  A bright-faced Gestapo officer in shirtsleeves entered. Kriminalassistent Karl Schmidt saluted and addressed Klaussmann by the SS rank that he held and preferred to his Gestapo title. ‘Something has come in, Herr Sturmbannführer,’ he said, standing stock still on the threshold. ‘Urgent, from Berlin.’

  ‘All right, give it here.’ The younger officer strode in and handed over a yellow-brown sheet of paper. A message typed on to strips of white paper had been glued to it: An English cell will hit your prison transport today.

  Klaussmann was instantly alert. A previous message that had arrived in the same fashion had informed them about the SOE spy they had arrested in a bar in Montmartre the previous night – Luc Carte, that was his name – and it had been a good pull. The message had given no more than his name and location, but the interrogators would draw a torrent of information out of him.

  Klaussmann was used to receiving anonymous notes from the public – usually informing him of the presence of Jews or Resistance safe houses, even one or two suggesting the location of downed Allied airmen. Half of them turned out to be false reports, the settling of petty scores of the type that wartime threw up by the hundred each day. The French, he was more than aware, had an image of the Gestapo as an all-seeing, all-pervading clandestine organization cleverly and ruthlessly pursuing fragments of information. The reality was that it was frustratingly understaffed for the job it had been given and virtually all its information came from local informants pursuing their own agendas. But notes such as this one and its precursor, apparently from a highly secret source in contact with Berlin headquarters, were something he had not previously encountered.

  When the first one had arrived, Klaussmann had enquired where this information was coming from. ‘Don’t ask,’ his superior had informed him. ‘I’ve also been told not to ask.’ That had been an interesting response – certainly, the Reich was full of secrets, but few of them were kept from senior Gestapo officers.

  He opened the window. Spots of rain entered, but he appreciated the promise of frost. He was Prussian, despite his Saxon fair hair – light grey now – and a Prussian winter was something to behold. The chilly air helped him think. So one of their prison transports was a target. Why? He considered: the note was from the same source that had informed on the man taken in Montmartre. ‘The prisoner we brought in after the last message. Luc Carte. What’s happening to him?’

  ‘He’s one of those you wanted sent to Amiens.’

  Klaussmann grunted. ‘So I did.’ As the Second Front edged closer, his colleagues had been doubling their efforts, filling up the prisons of Paris to stave off the danger of an internal revolt. But too full, and there was danger of the prisoners rising up, which could be very dangerous indeed. So some had been sent outside Paris. ‘It must be that transport. When does it leave?’

  Schmidt checked his wristwatch. ‘It already has, sir. Half an hour ago.’

  It was a frustrating answer. ‘Are we in radio contact?’

  ‘It would depend, sir. They might have a field radio.’

  ‘Find out.’ Schmidt departed to find a transport officer, leaving Klaussmann to wonder about the message, and its sender, again.

  He returned to his soft leather chair and drummed his fingers on the desk’s polished teak. The SOE networks and the French terrorists were a personal grievance for Siegfried Klaussmann. He had seen what they could do to his brother officers when their guards were down and he knew well the effect they were having, draining Germany’s resources by diverting men and vehicles from the encroaching Eastern Front and preparing the ground for the Allied invasion.

  He had lived through the catastrophe and hunger of Weimar’s dying days and he never wanted his nation to go through that again. He didn’t want his sons to go through it. So here he was on the ground, using what ability and experience he had to prevent it happening, and that meant tearing the spies apart before they could reduce Germany to chaos once more.

  Schmidt returned after a few minutes with a Wehrmacht sergeant. ‘Feldwebel Krepp, Herr Sturmbannführer,’ Schmidt announced.

  The man saluted.

  ‘The prisoner transport to Amiens this evening,’ Klaussmann said. ‘Can we contact them?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Herr Sturmbannführer. They don’t have a radio.’

  Klaussmann silently cursed in irritation. ‘What vehicles are they in? How many men?’

  ‘A motorcycle with sidecar in front; the van with the prisoners and two guards …’

  ‘What sort of van?’

  ‘An actual prison van. Enclosed, metal.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And another motorcycle with sidecar behind.’

  ‘How far will they have got?’

  ‘They’ll be outside Paris by now.’

  ‘They’re about to be attacked by British spies. What troops can you send after them?’

  The soldier looked flustered. ‘Fastest would be motorcyclists, sir. Outside the city, they could run at perhaps eighty kilometres per hour. Twice the speed of the transport.’

  ‘How many could you despatch?’

  ‘Four with sidecars. Eight men in total.’

  Klaussmann calculated the odds. The spies would probably number fewer than half a dozen men and their weapons would be light – but they would have the element of surprise and would be in good hidden firing positions. They might even have called on a réseau to add to their numbers. No, he didn’t want to risk failure. ‘We need more force.’

  ‘We have a 222 Leichter Panzerspähwagen on standby,’ the man volunteered. ‘It’s armed with a heavy machine gun and cannon. We can send a full platoon after it in another vehicle.’

  ‘How fast is the Panzerspähwagen?’

  ‘It’s a four-wheeler, so sixty kilometres per hour. Seventy, perhaps, if the road i
s good. It should catch the transport in an hour. We can send a motorcycle with it.’

  ‘Where would that put them?’

  The sergeant went to a map on the wall and moved his finger along the road crawling north from Paris. ‘Before Beauvais. The countryside or one of the villages on the way.’

  Klaussmann considered. Yes, it sounded like the right move. ‘Good. Send your men. Tell them to order the transport to turn around. Then your men go on to look for an ambush.’ The edges of his mouth twitched up. ‘The spies will be expecting a van and a few guards. They’ll get a full platoon with armoured support. Now, we want them alive if possible, but don’t let them scuttle away back under their rocks. When you have them, bring them straight to the cells here. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then go now.’ The sergeant saluted and rushed away.

  The only concern would be that the spies might see the troops coming and melt away like cowards. But so long as the 222 was fast, Klaussmann was confident of success. This could be a big deal, he thought. Previously, when just one member of a spy network had been arrested, it had often led to the capture of the full circuit within forty-eight hours – when the right physical pressure had been applied to the man. If the troops could capture three or four of them, the outcome would be assured.

  Reece and Thomas each took a heavy axe from the van. They selected a couple of mature elms in the side road and swung their axes, the heads cutting deep into the moist trunks. Behind them, Hélène and Richard set about building screens for the firing positions from branches and mud-encrusted farm detritus gleaned from the field opposite. Blocks of wood should provide some defence against bullets.

  It was after 3 p.m. by the time the two trees had been felled. The van – which proved more powerful than it looked – dragged them into place across the narrow lane, blocking it. There they were bound together, and to other trees, with three strong iron chains. Nothing short of a panzer could now turn down that road. The van was left on the forest side of the tree-trunk barrier, ready to drive away into the woods; and the green car, which had been left at the entrance to the lane, was backed out on to the main road.

  Reece and Thomas assembled a Bren light machine gun and three Sten sub-machine guns, with five thirty-round magazines to slot into them. The Sten was a gun prized by agents for its light weight and for the fact that it could be easily broken into three parts for concealment or disguise. In the middle of the night, unable even to see their hands in front of their faces, Reece and his fellow SOE recruits had learned to identify, strip, reassemble and fire Stens, German Walther pistols, the British Vickers and the German Schmeisser MG 34/38 machine guns as well as a host of other guns. For some it had been something of an adventure. Reece had seen the reality of what these weapons did to men and for him it was no cheap thrill. He gave Richard and Thomas two magazines each. He took the fifth. Hélène would operate the Bren from the treeline.

  As well as the guns, Richard had a pair of heavy bolt-cutters and there was a Mills grenade apiece. ‘Pineapple, my friend?’ Thomas asked as he handed them out. ‘They can be very bad for one’s health.’

  Reece examined the road surface and selected a small pothole. Inside it, he carefully placed a metal tin with wires running out through a hole bored into the side then covered it all with grit. He hoped to God this would work. Then he retreated to the side of the road and watched his comrades, their earnest preparations for a fight that they might not survive but were committed to for the sake of their fellow agent. How many of them would live beyond the day, he couldn’t tell. They all deserved to.

  Thomas was twenty-nine and had been brought up in Aberdeen by a French mother. He had a talent for getting on with people and had introduced Reece to some useful sources. The Canadians had sent over twenty-five-year-old Hélène, a Québécoise. The rest of them laughed at her accent, saying she would blend in perfectly so long as they found a community of sixteenth-century peasants to hide her in. In idle moments she spoke of her husband and son. Her boy was the reason she had volunteered for this, she explained, so he would never grow up in a world where the Nazis ruled half the Earth.

  Then there was Richard – a cheery, strikingly handsome English boy in his early twenties with rosy cheeks. He had a degree in French and Spanish, and that was more than enough for SOE. Unlike the others, he actually seemed happy in France. He enjoyed French culture, books and frequent trips to the local cinema to see those films chosen to stir French nationalist sentiment: biopics of Napoleon or creaking old stories of the Three Musketeers. He had once revealed to Reece, with the extra pink of embarrassment in his cheeks, that after the war he wanted to be an actor. He had caught the bug at university and was sure he could make a go of it. Reece had assured him that if he could survive living in France under a false identity, appearing in a Wilde farce would be a walk in the park.

  Thomas handed the last of the grenades to Reece. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that these are as likely to kill Luc as our enemies,’ Reece said. The others silently concurred. ‘Use them only if you have to and you are sure – sure – that the only casualty will be the Boche.’ He looked at them, shivering and rag-tag in the winter wind. If something happened to one of them, it would be on him for life. He accepted that responsibility because he had no choice. ‘It will be hard going. We’re all at risk, but it’s worth that risk – not just for Luc, but also for our friends and our families at home. You all know what’s coming. It’s the liberation.’ He waited for a breath of hope to breeze around them. ‘We’re trained, we’re ready, the weapons are good and they don’t know we’re coming. So we’ll hit them hard and fast and we’re going to win. Are you with me?’

  ‘We’re with you.’ It was Hélène’s voice, barely audible as dusk and rain began to fall. Despite the danger to their lives, he was glad it was these people he was with. What they had already been through meant that he knew them and trusted them more than his oldest friends.

  ‘Good. Then good luck. Let’s get into position. Richard, we’ll wait for your signal.’ Silently and quickly they wiped their faces on their sleeves and filtered to their firing points.

  ‘See you all soon,’ Richard told them as he took up his Sten, the bolt-cutters and a pair of binoculars and walked briskly to the front position to act as look-out.

  Ditches ran along both edges of the road, separating it from the fields on one side and the forest on the other. The agents were distributed at three positions on the forest side, each hidden from the road by the rough screens.

  Richard was in the first position in the forest-side ditch. Twenty metres along the road, Hélène manned the Bren, hidden at the edge of the treeline. The third position, in the same ditch, contained Thomas and Reece. In Reece’s hands was a metal box about the size of a football, with wires running from it to the other tin buried in the road. A few metres beyond them was the supposedly abandoned car, left in the road at a crazy angle with its doors open, as if it had skidded. The full line stretched around sixty metres.

  As soon as the entire prison transport had passed Richard, he would pull the caltrops, hidden on the other side of the road, across by means of an attached rope, so the vehicles couldn’t reverse. The abandoned car would block their way forward. The Germans would therefore have to halt in a short stretch of road, leaving them exposed. The gunners would simultaneously fire on the army escort: Thomas and Reece would take out the driver of the van and anyone sitting beside him while Richard and Hélène would focus on any outriders. They would then outflank and kill any survivors. There was a high chance the Germans would outnumber them at the beginning, but the agents’ momentum, surprise and superior firing positions should triumph, Reece calculated.

  Once the men were down, Reece and Richard would cautiously approach the van and free the captives, using the bolt-cutters if necessary.

  Thomas tried to settle himself beside Reece, attempting to hide from the wind. ‘It’s freezing,’ he said.

/>   ‘You don’t need to tell me.’

  ‘I’m unable to feel a vital part of myself. Much more of this and I’m in severe danger of a very quiet social life when I get back to England.’ A farm truck passed them.

  Reece crouched lower in the ditch. The pin-pricking rain was running down his face in cold rivulets and his limbs were so stiff he couldn’t be certain they would move when the moment came. For half an hour he listened to Thomas attempt to make conversation and jokes. At least it took their minds off what was to come.

  He was beginning to wonder if he had got it all wrong – if the transport had taken another road after all – when he saw Richard’s arm lift up. ‘Get ready,’ he said.

  ‘I’m ready,’ Thomas replied under his breath. Within moments Reece heard something closing in. One, or perhaps two engines. Light buzzing like mosquitoes muffled by the drizzle. Motorcycles. It had to be the transport. He wanted it to be the transport. ‘Don’t wish it too soon,’ Thomas said quietly. Reece met his eye then turned back to the road.

  A second later, something burst around the bend further up. A motorbike with sidecar, ridden by a gust of grey.

  Reece pressed himself down. The rider would have the standard-issue rifle slung across his back and the sidecar passenger would be armed with a sub-machine gun. Sweat mixed with the rainwater coursing down Reece’s back.

  Behind the motorbike something bigger – the square, grey-painted van – loomed. There could be up to thirty men and women crammed inside, shackled, beaten, part of the Gestapo’s lethally successful hollowing out of the Resistance and SOE networks. And after it, a second bike and sidecar appeared. Good – it was what Reece had been expecting. He glanced at the Sten at his feet. The bronze bolt was back, the selector switch set to automatic firing and the safety on. But what he held in his hands was far more vital at that moment: the wire in his right hand and the metal box in his left that would detonate a measure of plastic explosive in the tin buried in the road surface. He had spent an hour checking and rechecking his calculations for the right amount and angle for the plastic: enough to disable the vehicles without killing the men imprisoned inside. But: chance. Chance was always the unwanted element.