The Winter Agent

by Gareth Rubin

  Part Two

  * * *

  CHAPTER 10

  Reece checked the peeling café sign. LA CYGNE. The bistro was his emergency contact point for the Fisherman circuit in Amiens and he needed to get word to London as soon as he could of the disaster that was engulfing Beggar.

  The establishment was in one of the town’s lively squares, and all around there was a constant tapping from the articulated wooden soles that had replaced leather due to the shortages. Reece glanced at the sign as he stepped into the café, ambled to the bar and took out a copy of Le Matin. He pulled it apart and left the front page on the seat beside him as the initial recognition signal.

  He ordered an egg sandwich, having realized that he hadn’t eaten since the previous day, handing the waiter his ration book to have the coupons neatly clipped out. He wondered what his fourteen-year-old self would have made of such an age, when France, the world’s great nation of gastronomy, was reduced to hunger en masse. It was hardly the worst of the privations the country was enduring day by day – indeed, one part of him felt guilty that he could afford to eat at all, with his forged rations coupons and bank notes dropped by London – but there was something talismanic about food. Many of his warmest memories of his adolescence were formed around meals with his family, watching their penniless artistic friends stuffing down canapés and gulping champagne before staggering home to unheated attic rooms. France in all her ludicrous glory.

  ‘Not much custom today?’ Reece asked.

  ‘Not much,’ the waiter replied, wiping the bar.

  ‘Times are tough.’

  ‘They are that. They are that.’

  ‘I have to look after my brother’s family too, while he’s working in Germany,’ Reece told him. ‘The Obligatory Work Service.’

  ‘We all face it, though I’ve been lucky so far.’ The waiter sighed as he served another customer.

  ‘Well, good for you. It’s tiring, I hear.’ He looked up at the waiter. ‘I’m so tired today I can’t stand up.’

  The man noted the second code and glanced at the front page of Le Matin on the seat. ‘You’re not alone. A friend of mine was telling me that his business is doing so badly he’s exhausted himself with any work he can find, just to keep going. And he’s a mechanic. A skilled job.’ Reece recognized the counter-signal.

  ‘Poor man. I could put some work his way.’

  ‘Well, be my guest. I could give him a call.’

  ‘I would appreciate that.’

  The waiter went out to the kitchen and Reece returned to his newspaper. This was always a tense time. He had made contact with a stranger whom he hoped was a friend in the struggle. But that man could be an imposter, he could have switched sides, he could be incompetent or under surveillance. Reece watched all around for anything out of the ordinary – a pair of customers with lots of coupons or too well fed for their poor clothes – or something so deliberately banal that it cloaked something more dangerous. All he saw was a young family outside, pressed together as they waited for a gas-powered bus. The youngest child was screaming and his mother was trying to cuddle some warmth into him.

  The newspaper front cover carried a leading article denouncing the prostitution of French society that had been ended by the arrival of the German troops in Paris: ‘That clear day in June, 1940.’ France had become effete and lowly, the article said. The people had been secretly and invisibly enslaved by a corrupt ruling class. But all that had changed now and true patriots were signing up to help their German protectors by joining the militia. That clear day in June, 1940. Even the weather was up for revision, it seemed – the day had been anything but clear, Reece knew. It had been a day when the air was heavy with soot, the Germans having bombed a petrol depot outside the city. It had been months before the trees and buildings were clean again.

  He hadn’t seen it, of course, but he had heard. The first reaction had been shock – for months, the French authorities had spun stories about the under-nourished German soldiers who existed on eggless omelettes; how they would crack under pressure due to the psychological effects of their brutal training methods.

  And then the Wehrmacht had driven up the boulevards, fully equipped, well disciplined and revelling in their victory over the people who had defeated their parents twenty years earlier. It had taken them mere hours to fan out and take over the city. Reece sat wishing that time could somehow turn back. That the French army deserters would this time stay at their posts. He was glad he hadn’t seen it. There would have been something even more galling for him about watching the jackboots march towards the Louvre than seeing them now mill around it. Nowadays he knew the soldiers and Gestapo thugs to be worthy of his contempt more than his fear.

  But had Charlotte secretly wished the French army’s defeat? Was she one of those who had lined the Champs-Élysées for the Germans’ daily victory parades? He couldn’t tell. He searched for clues in the days and nights they had spent together. There had been no spark of triumph in her eyes when he talked of the fall of France. There had been tiredness only, he was certain. When she had returned his touch it had been unflinching.

  It was two hours before the waiter spoke to him again. ‘We were talking earlier about a friend of mine,’ he said. ‘He’s over there.’ He pointed to a man in his twenties wearing a cap and overalls, pushing counters around a backgammon board. Reece had seen him enter some time ago and had wondered if the man were Fisherman’s organizer but had been careful not to pay undue attention.

  ‘Thanks.’ Reece paid the bill and sauntered over.

  ‘Mind if I play?’ he asked.

  ‘Please do,’ the man replied. Reece drew up a chair and they played silently until the last customer had left, half an hour later.

  ‘It’s been years since I was here.’

  ‘It’s a nice town when you get to know it.’

  ‘I’m Maxime.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ replied the man. Reece looked at him properly now. There was something very English in his bright blue eyes and blond hair. The Nazis, of course, would have claimed him as one of their own. But now that Reece listened for it, there was a slight Anglo-Saxon deadness to his French accent. ‘I’m Sebastien.’

  ‘I need to get a message to London. My wireless operator’s gone.’

  ‘Gone? They got him?’ Sebastien’s eyes flicked up in concern. It was a shared worry; every agent felt for every other one. Reece was grateful for the unintended gesture of solidarity.

  ‘Her. I don’t know. She’s gone.’

  ‘You’ll forgive me if I ask you a few questions,’ Sebastien said.

  ‘I’d expect nothing less.’

  ‘Who trained you in hand-to-hand combat?’

  ‘Silent killing?’ he said it quietly, in English. ‘Eric Sykes.’

  ‘What was your final test at Beaulieu?’

  ‘We had to plant dummy explosive under the 9.24 to London just outside Brockenhurst station.’

  ‘Seen any British films lately?’

  Reece thought for a second. ‘I saw Shadow of a Doubt when I was back on leave for a week.’

  ‘Tell me about the plot.’

  ‘It’s a Hitchcock. A girl thinks her uncle’s a killer. Kills women for their money.’ Sebastien nodded. ‘Can you put the safety catch back on?’

  ‘It doesn’t work anyway,’ Sebastien said, withdrawing his hand from his pocket. ‘Spanish crap we were handed by some comrades from the Civil War. As likely to blow up as fire an actual round.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why they lost.’ Reece was bitter about the defeat. The Republicans had their faults, but the loss to Franco had paved the way for Mussolini and then Hitler; if only Britain and France had seen where it would lead. Time was a litany of missed opportunities to hold back a tide of mud.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Sebastien said. ‘My pianist’s next sked will be tomorrow 11.15 a.m.’

  ‘I need it sent now. Priority channel.’

  ‘OK.’

  Reece was begi
nning to feel more confident. This man, Sebastien, seemed efficient. Testing Reece, even after he had come out with the recognition pattern, was a sensible added layer of security. He appeared to be a man whose lightness of manner masked a sharp judge of character. ‘And there’s something else. I need to get a message to one of my men who’s in the prison here. It’s top priority.’

  ‘I sympathize, old man,’ Sebastien said. Reece believed him, but sympathy was free; what he needed was action. ‘But the chances of getting a message to someone in the prison are pretty much nil. We’ve tried before.’ It was an answer Reece had been hoping not to hear. ‘He’ll be in the Gestapo section. After they’ve interrogated him, they’ll probably execute him.’

  ‘We have to try,’ Reece said. He was resolved. He had lost Richard; he wasn’t going to lose Luc too.

  ‘We’ll give it a go, but it’s like I told you. And, well, God knows what state he’ll be in.’ He paused, giving Reece time to take in what he had said.

  ‘How soon can your pianist transmit?’

  Sebastien pushed away from the table. ‘I would say about three minutes from now. This way.’ He led the way outside and around the back of the building to a rear entrance. Stairs led to the upper floor. ‘The weather’s good today,’ he called up the stairs. A rotund man in his thirties with wisps of brown hair over his ears peeped through the bannister before retiring out of sight. Reece and Sebastien reached the landing and entered the only room. It appeared to be a box room full of junk and broken furniture. The rotund man had a small revolver in his hand, which he placed on a footstool when he saw all was well.

  ‘We need to transmit, priority channel,’ Sebastien told him.

  Fisherman’s pianist made no reply but pulled a red leather briefcase from under a heap of broken wood. He cleared space on a rickety desk and opened it to reveal a transmitter of the same model as Charlotte’s. He took a pencil and paper, ready to note down and encipher a message, and waited.

  Reece had prepared a short message. It deliberately left out some of the details because the more details there were, the more likely it would be that the SOE leadership would want to start directing him; and he wanted to run this op in his own fashion.

  ‘“From Maxime, Beggar circuit. Photographs of document show German D-Day counter-op designated Parade One. Believe Germany has spy in British intelligence service name Parade. Op Beggar Sixteen to regain captured agent failed due to sabotage. Circuit may have a traitor.”’ That detail was too dangerous to conceal, painful as it was. Sebastien raised his eyebrows but said nothing. ‘“Charlotte missing. Request Charlotte real name and address. Understand security, but utmost importance.”’

  There might be something in the document that could lead them to the German agent. The chances of getting to Luc were slim and, even then, he would be able to provide them only with what he could remember from the document detailing the Germans’ counter-attack against D-Day. But Charlotte had the photographs themselves. Reece would find her and, if she were still loyal to SOE, she could give them to him and he would take them to London. But if – if – she were with the Germans, he could still force some information out of her. After all, she would have seen the pictures too.

  And he had his own reasons for wanting to find her.

  The wireless operator set about enciphering the message.

  ‘An op against the invasion?’ Sebastien looked grave. ‘What are they planning?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Reece shook his head in the grievance of failure. ‘Were you in uniform before this?’

  ‘RAF. I was here when the Krauts invaded.’

  ‘Then you saw what happened. They destroyed us by coming through the Forest of Ardennes when we weren’t expecting it. If they have another trick up their sleeve, it could mean another rout. How many from the Expeditionary Force did we lose in’40? Sixty thousand dead, almost the same POW. That’s one in three men dead or captured. And they weren’t making amphibious landings – whatever Parade One is, the invasion force is going to be far more vulnerable.’ There was a pause as they considered the consequences. ‘Do you have any sources who might have heard something?’

  ‘One or two who occasionally pass us bits of information, but –’

  ‘Ask them. Keep it as hush-hush as you can, but ask if they have ever heard Parade One mentioned. Anything at all. The clock’s ticking and right now we have nothing.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can turn anything up.’

  They were silent for a while, watching the rotund man enciphering the message and listening to the sound of the clicking wooden soles in the square outside, as if they could provide a comment on what had been said. Eventually, the wireless operator nodded, opened the window to string his aerial outside, and sat down to tap out the transmission. He said nothing when he had completed it but sat back and nodded again.

  ‘Do you want to wait for the answer?’ Sebastien asked, checking through the window. ‘We probably won’t get it before curfew.’

  Reece checked his watch. It was only 3 p.m. Curfew would be six hours away. ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘All right. What now?’

  ‘There’s something else. This set, can it tune to 40MHz?’ It was the frequency that Luc’s radio had been set to. It was worth a try.

  The pianist spoke for the first time. ‘Just about. But that’s nowhere near our frequency band.’

  ‘Do it anyway.’

  Sebastien placed his hand on the man’s shoulder to tell him to follow Reece’s instructions. ‘Fine, but there won’t be anyone there,’ he muttered. He placed the headphones back over his ears.

  ‘Leave them off. We want to hear too,’ Reece told him. The man shrugged and held the headset between the three of them. Reece could detect light static rustling from the padded earphones. The operator spun the dial to the right and the static became louder. The three of them crowded around, listening intently as the man searched for a signal. They watched for the needle on the meter to twitch. It stayed resolutely stable. ‘Nothing there. I told you,’ the man muttered again.

  ‘Keep trying.’

  ‘Nothing better to do today? All right.’ He gently moved the dial again, up and down, without any change in the sound of sea waves from the earphones. ‘How long do we keep doing this?’

  ‘Keep going.’

  The pianist shrugged at Sebastien and returned to cycling up and down the frequencies around 40MHz. Three hours later, Reece went down to the café to bring them some sandwiches and coffee. When he returned, he found the pianist in a state of excitement.

  ‘I thought I heard something. Just for a second,’ he blurted out.

  Reece put down the food and stared avidly at the set. He needed a breakthrough. He deserved one. For another twenty minutes the operator twisted the knob here and there.

  ‘There!’ Reece cried with elation, pointing to the needle. Sebastien woke from a doze. ‘It’s moving.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ the wireless operator said to himself as the black needle seemed to tremble just a millimetre and back. His brow furrowed, deep, fat lines appearing in the flesh as he tried to find the point that had latched on to the ghost of a signal. He turned back and forth, feather by feather. ‘There.’ And as he lifted his fingers away, the needle stayed put just above its resting point. It had found an electrical impulse in the ether. ‘Can’t hear a sodding thing, though.’ The lines in the flesh of his brow doubled in thickness. Reece could no longer hear the sound of static and could only watch as the pianist fiddled with the dial once more. Then the man’s mouth seemed to open a little in surprise. ‘What’s … here, listen to this.’ He offered the headset to Sebastien, but Reece took it from his fingers and pulled it on. Underneath a loud buzzing he heard what was unmistakably a human voice. The pianist turned up the volume to its maximum level and Reece pressed the earphones tight to his head, blotting out all other sound. Yes, a human voice, metallic and distorted by distance and electronics. It was coming in waves, becoming louder then fainter aga
in, but the needle was twitching up and the signal getting stronger. ‘USS Colorado, USS …’ The signal was lost again. Static. Reece waited, holding his breath to minimize any sound. The rain was pattering through broken windows.

  ‘Do you …’ Sebastien began.

  Reece held up a hand to hush him.

  And then the voice returned, louder now: ‘USS Texas. USS Texas. HMS Rodney. HMS Rodney. HMS Warspite …’ until it was overtaken by static.

  ‘What is it?’ Sebastien mouthed silently.

  ‘Lists of ships in English. Battleships. HMS Rodney – she’s a Nelson class, I’ve been on her. Warspite’s almost as big.’ He paused. ‘They’re just the ships that would spearhead the invasion flotilla.’

  ‘Just lists of them? Nothing else? No orders or questions.’

  ‘Nothing like that.’ Reece listened again. He caught only the briefest sounds.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Christ knows.’ There was no more. ‘Could the signal be coming from Britain?’ There was a chance that it was Parade himself sending his information to Berlin.

  ‘Possible,’ replied the operator. ‘But it would have to be a hell of a strong transmitter. More likely somewhere in France. And they’re speaking in Clear – they can’t be agents.’

  ‘So whatever their op is, it involves our battleships,’ Reece said to himself. ‘Listen, say you were Rommel looking to defend against the invasion. What sort of strike op could you mount if you knew the major battleships coming?’

  Sebastien pondered. ‘No idea. I mean, maybe you could attack them in port before they embark? But that’s a pretty tough mission for the Germans. Some other sabotage, maybe.’

  Without more information, they wouldn’t come up with a better idea than that. ‘It’s possible. Well, keep monitoring it. As much as you can.’

  Klaussmann and Schmidt, now wearing plain clothes, stood at the back door to the tabac in the rue du Haut Pavé. Klaussmann glanced up and saw a curtain in the flat opposite ripple; he would go around to speak to the owner later.