The Winter Agent

by Gareth Rubin

  ‘The police have been going door to door,’ the woman told Parade the moment she let him in that evening. ‘They were here two days ago.’

  ‘CID?’

  ‘No. In uniform.’

  ‘That’s better.’ He set down a bag of groceries by the front door. ‘What did they say? Tell me exactly.’

  ‘They said a constable on this beat hadn’t returned to the station on Friday. Had I seen or heard anything? A fight or anything like that.’

  He nodded. ‘And what did you tell them?’

  ‘I said I hadn’t seen anything at all. But they’ll be back, I know they will,’ she said, her voice straining. They began to climb up to the attic.

  ‘Don’t worry. They have no idea he was here.’

  She lifted her hands in supplication. ‘I want to move. I can’t stand it here any more.’

  ‘You can’t move. This is where you’re staying.’

  ‘Then I want to go out sometimes. And I want money to do it.’

  ‘All right, all right.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She sounded relieved.

  ‘Now stop talking about it.’

  ‘This business, it feels like we’re –’

  ‘Don’t think about it. Just do your job. This one’s priority channel, you understand.’

  ‘Of course I understand.’

  They reached the attic and she assembled the transmitter. And then it was time for the message Parade wanted in SD headquarters immediately: Op at Hemsall Sands good success. 6 of 9 LSTs sunk. Estimate 1800 dead of 3600. Discovered captured SOE agent Maxime briefed Churchill on invasion landing beaches. Real name Mark or Marc Reece. Captain ex naval intelligence. Ends.

  Parade spent three hours smoking cheap gaspers and struggling to read a book about English mediaeval history by the light of the cheap bulb above them. He couldn’t concentrate; his mind was too active, thinking about Maxime. The man in France who, after five years, seemed to be the key to final victory.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of the reply, which the woman took down: Personal congratulations Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler.

  He read through the words a few times and wondered what those congratulations would be worth when the war was over; what he could buy with them. He called to mind seeing Himmler that night in Nuremberg at the 1933 rally. A little man, he had seemed. No smaller than Hitler himself in sheer size, but without the power and fury of his master. Men would listen to Himmler, respect his orders, but they would never follow him as they would follow the Führer.

  ‘You said you would do something about me being cooped up.’ The woman was talking to him. He snapped back to London in 1944 and his mission now. ‘I want some money. And to go out sometimes. I’m going mad, staying here all day and all night.’

  ‘It’s not safe.’

  ‘I tell you, I’m going mad. Let me go out. I’ll be discreet.’ She sounded as if she really were on the edge.

  ‘All right. All right. I’ll see what I can do.’ He went downstairs and out to the telephone box at the end of the street. He asked the operator for a number in London that rang only once before it was picked up.

  ‘Hello?’ he heard a tinny voice rattle through the line.

  ‘It’s Huw Evans,’ he said. ‘We’ve had some trouble. My wireless operator wants to go out on the town. I need a bit of cash.’

  There was a distorted sigh. ‘Or what?’

  He pushed another gasper between his lips and lit the end. The glow flickered in the misted-up telephone box like a lantern. ‘Or it’s all over, really.’

  CHAPTER 20

  Clothes

  These should either fit the locality (e.g. seaman’s jersey near docks) or be inconspicuous by their neutrality. In any case, they should be dark rather than light in colour. It is advisable to anticipate any change in the weather. It is sometimes very useful to change all or some clothes en route.

  17 February 1944

  Klaussmann rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t slept well. It was 8 a.m. and he had spent the night at a hotel in Amiens, rather than go to and from Paris while the spy was being interrogated. The bed had been softer than he was used to, and his back had been in pain half the night. He cursed the prison commandant, who had refused to allow the spy to be taken to Paris – he had got a sniff that the man might be important and wanted to keep the prize close.

  Again, without meaning to, Klaussmann thought of those few seconds on the train when the British agent had evaded him to put a knife through Schmidt’s neck. He suppressed a tide of anger and frustration that threatened to rise and interfere with his rational thoughts.

  As soon as Klaussmann had fulfilled his promise to the Reich by extracting as much information from the spy as he possessed, he would allow the anger to surge up and cause the man as much suffering as he could take. Yes, he told himself, sentence was a necessary part of judgement.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door to his suite. A young Gestapo officer was waiting with another message – one from Berlin’s secret source, it became apparent. This one had been circulated to all Gestapo offices. Klaussmann opened it and lay it on the table to read as he lifted a cup of tea to his mouth. As the china was about to touch his lips he stopped. The cup hovered in mid-air before he placed it back down on the table. ‘My God,’ he muttered, taking the message in his hands and running faster and faster through the lines.

  ‘Good news, sir?’

  Klaussmann allowed the man the indiscretion of asking questions of him. ‘We might have a very important man in our custody.’

  Reece opened his eyes. All he could see was blurring water. The sting of the ice would have made him wince, but his muscles had failed. He tried to remember if he had been awake minutes or hours.

  He knew that, deep down, he was someone; he had a name and a place and a home and a country and he was somewhere other than in this freezing water where his muscles were unable to work. He was spinning, sick, afraid of what was happening to him, what would come next.

  And then something was grabbing him, pulling him out into cold air, dragging him upwards from the point of death. He felt himself strapped into a chair.

  ‘You have been awake for three days, Captain Reece,’ said a voice through the darkness of his failed vision. ‘You want to sleep, don’t you?’

  He did. He wanted to be unconscious and to sleep and then remember who he was. And he realized that this man in front of him knew his real name. It was bewildering.

  ‘I can do that. I have power over what happens to you. You can sleep in a bed. All you have to do is talk to me.’

  At the edge of his mind, in the twilight of thought, he could feel memories slipping in. Days without sleep, hours in cold water, submerged until his heart stopped beating and cold fingers wrapped around his hands and feet to drag him away into death. Then lifted up into the shivering world and his own muscles shaking him back to life. A painful and dreadful life.

  Each time it happened he felt that another part of him had been taken away, a tiny grain of himself that he had clung to drifting out of his grasp. Whether it was hours ago or days ago he didn’t know, but the grains of resistance had slipped from his fingers and he feared that the man doing this to him knew that.

  ‘Winston Churchill. You spoke to Winston Churchill. What about?’

  Reece’s mouth opened and strings of water cascaded from it, some entering his throat to make him cough. His mind had divided into confusion. Delaney said you’re going back. Recce the harbours. The invasion.

  ‘I … no,’ he mumbled, his tongue too cold to work, his lips blue and frozen in place.

  ‘Again.’

  And he was plunged back in. His eyes closed and darkness turned black. He was there for hours, it seemed, before he was up again, his brain suspended in ice. Delirium seemed to wrap its palms around his mind.

  ‘Winston Churchill. You spoke to Winston Churchill. What about?’

  And then a new vision entered his head. Charlott
e in the sewer below Paris talking about Parade One. ‘I know they need two things … your army Order of Battle and where you’re going to invade.’

  ‘Please. Please.’ Distract him. Deter him. Keep it to yourself. Feed him something. The circuit. Their lives, your life. Worth it. Worth the secret. ‘I’ll … tell you about the network.’

  ‘I’m not interested in your petty crimes. I want to know what you spoke to Churchill about.’

  ‘Beggar. Luc …’

  ‘Again!’

  ‘No!’

  And he clutched for that grain of himself again. Lie. Make it up. Trick him as long as you can.

  ‘Liberation. We talked … liberation of Paris.’

  There was a pause. ‘When you tell me the truth this will end. Again.’

  And Reece was back in the water, feeling his veins wrenching out of his flesh. He became nothing but water. And then he was being spoken to again in the air.

  ‘Now, the truth.’

  The scene before him faded into blank. He felt himself vomit, his chest heaving as if it had been jerked by an electric current, but all that cascaded down his chest was more filthy water.

  ‘Fine, if you won’t help yourself, we have to do something different.’ Klaussmann beckoned to one of the guards at the door. There was shuffling and the sound of whimpering. Through the icy fog, Reece could make out more bodies shuffling in front of him. The mist began to lift and he saw a young face that he recognized. Hélène stood before him, her blouse and skirt torn away and her hands shackled. Her mouth was gagged with a dirty rag.

  ‘What you are going through is nothing to what my men will do to her,’ Klaussmann said simply. ‘You will be in the same room, as it happens.’ Hélène’s eyes opened wide and she began to implore Reece as best she could, unable to speak. Hélène, who had volunteered to come to France so that her son would never grow up in a world where the Nazis smothered other people’s lives. ‘You will watch her face as it happens. You will choose then to tell me the one thing I am asking. But by then it will be too late; she will have suffered such harm she will never recover. And then we will cut her so that she bleeds to death in front of you.’ Hélène sank to her knees and lifted her bound hands to Reece, and then to Klaussmann. ‘Save her from that. She’s a good person. You can save her from that. The information is information we have anyway. We only want it confirmed. You can save her.’

  Reece shook his head.

  At that, Klaussmann nodded to one of the guards. The man untied the gag in Hélène’s mouth. As it was removed she began pleading.

  ‘Please, Maxime, don’t let them –’ she cried.

  ‘I can’t …’

  ‘My son! He’s two. Don’t let him lose his mother. Please. Please, Maxime!’

  He looked into her eyes and clutched for that grain one last time. It was telling him that he must not speak. That the words would cause something terrible, far more terrible than his or her death. That truth would kill them both a thousand times over, it would lay waste to nations and turn the soil to whirlpools. He tried again to control his own thoughts, but something had happened that last time his mind had been frozen in the water and at the sight of Hélène on her knees the truth of who he was, was out of his reach.

  The word dripped from his mouth, so quietly that only Klaussmann could hear it. Little more than a breath.

  ‘Invasion.’

  And Reece knew that deep within himself a fracture had opened.

  ‘What about the invasion?’

  Reece could feel ice rush through his stomach. Then something else. A blow from something metal, doubling him up, making him cough out more words.

  ‘A recce.’ He could see nothing but figures in a blue mist.

  ‘Speak to me.’

  There was something comforting about the voice.

  ‘I had to survey the harbours.’

  ‘Where?’ Klaussmann demanded.

  Reece shook his head.

  ‘Where? Tell me now.’ He paused. ‘Do whatever you want to her.’ Hélène cried out as the material was stuffed back into her mouth. ‘Then hold his head up so he can watch as you cut her throat.’

  ‘No, please,’ Reece begged.

  ‘Where will the invasion arrive, Captain Reece?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I swear I don’t know. I don’t know!’

  A knife was pressed to her throat, the point breaking through the skin to leave a prick of ruby blood, and she screamed his name. ‘Maxime! Maxime!’

  And at the sound, echoing through his mind so that nothing else existed, he split in two. In a single breath, in a moment when he seemed to fall from the cliff, he spoke. He told them everything he knew or had guessed: where. How strong a force. The ships they would use. Each word burned in his mouth and spilled from his lips. Each sentence was treason to himself.

  All that he had suffered – the months of hunger and isolation and suppressed fear; the hours when he told himself the end justified the means – all had been turned back on him, weapons now for his enemies, not for his friends. It was an immolation.

  With all that he was, he wished for it to be over – for everything to end, for God to lift his hand and sweep it across the world, turning it all to darkness.

  He knew that it was night outside.

  CHAPTER 21

  18 February 1944

  At 6 a.m. a tannoy sounded in the pilots’ sleeping quarters at RAF Hunsdon in Hertfordshire, forty kilometres north of London. The two-man crews of 140 Wing of the 2nd Tactical Air Force were heard to swear when the order was given for them to assemble in the briefing room at 8 a.m.; only the appearance of the messing assistant with cups of tea quietened down their complaints.

  The wing, made up of pilots from the New Zealand, Australian and Royal Air Forces, flew Mosquitos, the fast light bomber that carried out the nearest thing 2 TAF had to commando raids. The twin-engined Mossie could fly at 600km/h, precisely drop four 200-kilogram bombs and turn for home before the Luftwaffe knew it had arrived. The Mossie was an ugly machine – no one pretended otherwise; it wasn’t woman-sleek like the Spitfire. It looked like a bull, and it hit harder. The 2nd TAF had already carried out a precision hit on the Berlin radio broadcasting system, cutting off Hermann Göring’s speech halfway through his address to mark the tenth anniversary of the National Socialist German Workers Party seizing power. It had earned them the highest respect in Bomber Command.

  Even before they peered through the windows – steaming up again as they were wiped clear – the men knew the conditions outside. In fact, looking out hardly helped, since a cascade of thick snow was blocking out the sun and pitching the whole land into a winter half-light. They could hear the gale-force winds, though, howling the snow into something close to a blizzard. For the previous forty-eight hours all but the most urgent flights had been grounded; and those days had been clearer than it was now. It seemed the briefing they were being summoned to could hardly be for a mission – just going up in this weather would be far more dangerous than any German fighter patrol.

  The snow frosted their skin as they hurried to the mess then on to the bus that took them to the aerodrome a little more than a kilometre away. Desperate for the warmth of the hut, there was another barrier before they entered: for some reason, there were RAF police guards on the door and identification had to be presented before they could be admitted. They had already flown secret missions against V1 launch sites in France and now joked, uncertainly, about the additional security.

  Waiting inside the hut were their Air Officer Commanding, the Group Intelligence Officer and Group Captain Percy Pickard. At twenty-eight, the tall, blond, pipe-smoking Pickard was already a national hero, due to his starring role in Target for To-Night, a heart-soaring propaganda film that showed the bravery and level-headedness of the bomber crews. When the eighteen pilots and eighteen navigators of 140 Wing had assembled, still attempting to return the blood to their chilled limbs, Pickard
stepped to the front.

  ‘Your mission for today is a very special one from every point of view,’ he informed them. ‘There has been no little debate as to whether this attack should be carried out, and your AOC more or less had to ask for a vote of confidence in his men and his aircraft before we were given the chance of having a crack at it. It can only be successfully carried out by low-level Mosquitos and we’ve got to make a big success of it to justify his faith in us and to prove further, if proof is necessary, just how accurately we can put our bombs down.’ He opened a large wooden box and took out its contents. ‘This is a model of your target for today.’ The thirty-six airmen examined it. ‘It’s still snowing and the visibility is not so very good, but we can get off the deck all right. I’ve just had a final word with Group on the phone and they’ve given us the OK to go.’ He paused. ‘It’s a job of death or glory, boys. If it succeeds, it will be one of the most worthwhile ops of the war. If you never do anything else, you can still count this as the best job you could ever have done.’

  His words resounded through the room, but they all knew the difficulty involved and as the briefing ended they drifted to the tea urn or the windows and stared out. For two hours they did little but watch the snow pour down and tell each other that it had to clear.

  And yet, by 10.45 a.m., when the men hurried out towards their machines, their lips cracking, it had worsened. The gusts were threatening to rip the windsock from its moorings and dash the crates to the ground before they had even left the English coastline. The cloud was no more than thirty metres from the ground and there was something of a shroud about it. The airmen could barely believe the op was on, but they checked each other’s life jackets, climbed into the aircraft and set their minds to the task. Within seconds, thirty-six Rolls-Royce Merlin engines turned over and the planes trundled forward.

  With the sound of their engines for once engulfed by the roaring air around them, the aircraft of 140 Wing 2 TAF took off in three waves, their pilots praying that they wouldn’t crash into each other in the poor visibility. First the New Zealanders, then the Australians, then the RAF pilots, who were to be the reserve, in case the first two waves failed to achieve their precision-strike targets.