The Winter Agent

by Gareth Rubin

  There had been a noise – not a single sound but a mixture of small thuds and murmurs. Somewhere in the building there was movement, and it seemed to be coming closer to him. It was approaching from the short corridor he had come down, thus shutting off his primary exit route. He hurried to the sliding door leading to the exterior. There might be guards outside, but he didn’t have much choice. He tried to force it, but it was locked. He could hear voices now, and the door behind him began to open.

  His only chance was a ladder that led into the metal gallery above.

  He had just enough time. He scrambled up the rungs, emerging through the walkway the same second the door pushed open. He pressed himself against the wall. The gantry was a little below the ceiling, perhaps ten metres from the floor. It had wide safety bars at knee and waist height and was strewn with debris from whatever use the building had been put to before the Boche had arrived: boxes, lumps of wood, spools of used and dusty cable. He gently placed one of the spools across his midriff and a tin canister in front of his legs as he turned to watch the entry of whoever was coming in.

  A single man, dimly lit by electric lights in the corridor, walked into the room. He stopped, reached into his trouser pocket and pulled something out. A moment later he was lighting a cigarette, and the glow provided just enough warm yellow light for Reece to see that the man’s uniform wasn’t feldgrau. But then he flicked the lighter off, and all that he could make out was the cigarette’s smouldering tip as the man went to the side of the room. Reece watched him move into the shadows. And then there was a metallic thump and a line of bright bulbs suspended from the ceiling blazed on. For a moment, Reece was dazzled by the sudden brightness, but his vision adjusted and he looked down to where the man had thrown the master switch. His clothing, indeed, was far from the German grey: it was the olive-green jacket and tan trousers of an American infantry major. The major removed the cigarette from his mouth. ‘Get a damn move on, soldiers!’ he shouted out into the corridor, in English and with a wealthy New England accent.

  Reece’s mind raced between possible explanations for the American’s presence. It could hardly be some sort of behind-enemy-lines op if the man was in uniform, so was he a POW? There were no camps in Paris. Whatever it was, the prospect of an ally raised Reece’s spirits.

  Slowly, more men, dressed in the uniforms of American enlisted soldiers, filtered in, babbling in a variety of American accents. They were dragging their feet, bored with their surroundings.

  Cautiously, Reece began to stand. But the entry of another man into the room made him freeze. This one was in German uniform and he had a sub-machine gun slung over his shoulder. A guard, it seemed. Yet he was mixing freely with the Americans, who didn’t seem bothered by his presence. His suspicions piqued, Reece slunk back to the floor of the walkway and kept watch.

  He counted around twenty Americans by the time they were all assembled. Five, in tank crew uniforms, ignored the others and wandered over to the Sherman. They sprawled on it without interest while the others assembled, chatting among themselves. After a minute or two the major called them all together. He seemed to be issuing orders that Reece couldn’t hear. Most went over to the command post and discussed the maps. Others went to the arms station and busied themselves dismantling, cleaning and reassembling the weapons. All the time, Reece watched, calculating the risk of waiting or of asking for their help in overpowering the guard and running.

  Before he could come to a conclusion the door opened again and another man entered, this time wearing the uniform of a Waffen-SS officer. In an instant Reece recognized Otto Skorzeny. And a new explanation for the Americans’ presence began to form in his mind.

  Skorzeny nodded to the American major, who commanded his men to halt and stand at ease before beckoning over the tank crew’s sergeant.

  ‘Where are you from?’ Skorzeny asked, in precise but heavily accented English.

  ‘A state called Utah, sir.’

  ‘Ah, is that where your Mormons are from?’

  ‘Yes, sir, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints is very important in our state. But I’m a Catholic myself.’

  ‘Do you have anyone who misses you?’

  ‘You mean a girl, sir?’

  ‘Yes, a girl.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been going steady with Anne for about a year and –’

  The American major interrupted. ‘Does Schwartz pass the test, Colonel? Every man has his backstory well practised. Each one is individual and unique to that man.’

  Skorzeny thought for a moment then nodded again. ‘Beeindruckend,’ he said. ‘Viel Glück, Scharführer Schwartz,’ he told the tank sergeant.

  ‘Danke, Herr Obersturmbannführer,’ the sergeant replied in native German.

  ‘Sieg Heil!’

  ‘Sieg Heil!’ the sergeant repeated, clipping to attention and saluting. Skorzeny clapped the major on the shoulder and left.

  ‘Back to drill,’ the major announced in English.

  They went back to their tasks. Reece watched one of the men at the command post pick up the receiver on a field radio. ‘Hello USS Texas, hello USS Texas,’ he said in a perfect American accent. ‘This is Captain Hills of C for Charlie 7. Fire mission. Immediate suppression. Grid 331802. High explosive. Enemy infantry massing for assault at treeline. Two minutes. At my command.’

  Reece watched the German soldier impersonating an American officer; ordering a US warship to begin firing on land positions. And it became instantly clear why Berlin needed Parade to supply the army Order of Battle and the names of the Allied officers: the men before him would infiltrate the American command posts, cut those officers’ throats and then impersonate them on the Allied communication networks to sow crippling confusion within the landing operation. The transmissions Reece had just witnessed were the practice runs.

  Skorzeny had a record for high-risk infiltration raids. He would no doubt lead the op to kill the American officers and assume their identities.

  But what was their precise strategy? It wasn’t just general confusion, no. The warships’ fire missions were key. If the cuckoo officers were to claim the Allied positions were under attack, they could order the huge offshore naval guns to fire on the Allies’ own troop positions. It would decimate armour, artillery and infantry.

  The deception would be uncovered at some point but it could take hours, with each warning from a genuine Allied officer countermanded by one of the infiltrators. And even then, it would leave the Allied command unable to trust any genuine signals from its own units; since they too could be deceptions. The units would be cut off from the senior field command. That would leave them exceptionally vulnerable to a conventional attack. With big holes smashed in the Allies’ defensive lines by their own naval artillery barrage, and the surviving units unable to co-ordinate, a fast-moving conventional assault of the type Rommel favoured would devastate whatever was left. The second front, Reece realized, would be strangled at birth.

  The deception ploy wasn’t entirely new. The Germans had begun the war with an SS unit dressed as Polish soldiers pretending to attack a German border radio station, thus giving Hitler the thin excuse he wanted for the invasion of the neighbouring land. And in ’42 Reece had been briefed on a British raid on the Libyan port of Tobruk. An SAS platoon of German-speaking Jews from Jerusalem had slipped through Rommel’s lines disguised as Afrika Korps and armed with captured weapons, their mission being to open the harbour at night to a naval landing. To prepare for the op, they had used German POWs to check details of current slang and cultural references so that they could perfectly masquerade as Nazi soldiers.

  But what set the plan he was viewing on a different level to its SAS precursor was its ambition: by crippling the bridgehead at its most vulnerable moment the Germans could entirely prevent the liberation of Europe.

  Reece realized bitterly that when he had grinned at the tale in’42, he hadn’t considered the possibility that it could be turned on its head. This was the lega
cy of Parade’s treachery.

  The American major approached the five or six men who were familiarizing themselves with the weapons. ‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to a corner of the room. ‘We don’t have all day.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ an NCO responded.

  Reece shifted very slightly and was able to make out a makeshift firing range marked with chalk on the floor and three paper targets stuck to a bare brick wall. The tank crew, sitting a few metres away, got up off their vehicle and sauntered moodily to the other side of the room. The gunmen lined up in threes and dutifully fired the small arms – pistols first, then the rifles and sub-machine guns. Judging by their insouciance, they were all used to the feel of the guns and how they shot. In the enclosed space, each shot exploded and echoed over the last, resulting in a strange wave-like orchestra of percussion.

  From time to time the tank crew would clap a fine performance or grumble that they were sitting about doing nothing.

  The soldiers were too far away for Reece to see the insignia on their uniforms. Instead, he tried to look for mistakes they made – signs that would give them away. But they seemed perfectly versed in the duties and behaviour of the men they were impersonating. The major noted actions on a clipboard. After the best part of an hour he called a halt to the exercise. ‘Good work, men. I’ll see Franks and Weber back at the barracks. The rest of you are dismissed.’

  They shuffled away without saluting. The major finished his paperwork and followed them out of the room, shutting down the lights. In the full dark once more, Reece listened to his own breath. It seemed so loud now. He waited to see if anyone would return then stretched out his arms to get rid of cramp.

  The blood seeped back into his numb legs and he climbed down. The torch’s thin beam played on the tank at the end of the room then back towards the command post, which looked far less real in the torchlight, far more like a child’s game.

  Reece walked quickly towards the door through which he had entered. He couldn’t let the SS know someone had been there and discovered the plan, so he crept up the stairs once again to the store room.

  Inside the office he dragged the heavy body of the dead rifleman from where he had stowed it, tugged the man’s jacket on to his body and poured some schnapps into the soldier’s mouth. He lifted the man upright and then, with all his strength, wrenched the man’s head to the side and back, snapping the neck. Checking there was no one outside the door, he pulled the corpse out to the stairwell, where he splashed some schnapps on the top step before hauling the body to the bottom of the stairs. He left the bottle a couple of paces away and slipped out the back. This time there was no guard in the courtyard. He descended into the foul drain, wound his way through and emerged at the other end. He tossed the lock picks and small microphone into the river. The camera would be unremarkable to a German patrol; the picks and microphone would not. He found Charlotte waiting two streets away. She threw a cigarette to the ground.

  ‘Success?’ she asked.

  ‘Complete. We’ll RV with Thomas and Hélène immediately.’ Hélène could have a message transmitted to London to warn them about the German plan. Then the Lysander would come for him and Charlotte to take them back and he could hand over the film of the documents he had photographed. The detail of Parade’s access to the naval Order of Battle would set 5 on his scent.

  They strode away, Reece feeling the flush of success but mixed with trepidation over what he had seen. In every street they paced through he knew there were people huddled in houses bare of heat or food, desperate for the war to be over.

  He had been in London for months, but Paris felt more like home and he wanted so much for the city to be free that he would have knowingly given his life for it. Would the contents of his notebook or exposing Parade be enough to win out over the Boche? No, no, it wouldn’t. It would take hundreds of thousands of men and tens of thousands of lives. But it would be his contribution. The steps he would take alone towards the German lines.

  By 9 a.m. the sky above Paris was black with clouds dropping a sea-like deluge on to the city. The streets ran with muddy water as people dashed from cover to cover. The wind was knocking down young trees and driving the rain sideways. Those caught in it feared the clammy onset of pneumatic fever and stayed in their homes, craving the shelter, even though they were hardly warmer than the town outside.

  In the midst of it all Thomas struck a match and lit his pipe as he hurried down a small, soaking passage in the working-class east of Paris towards his flat.

  ‘Hello, Thomas,’ Reece said, greeting him warmly from the end of the lane. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ Thomas replied, betraying only a hint of surprise. ‘You?’

  ‘The same. Anyway, I’ve got the drinks for later.’ He reached his former comrade and shook his hand. ‘It’s safe,’ he said under his breath, nodding towards the door. It felt so good to see Thomas again, to see him alive and well after the hell of the prison they had both lived through.

  ‘Come in. No time like the present,’ Thomas replied. Once they were inside, he threw his arms around Reece. ‘Mother of God!’ he said. ‘I didn’t even know if you had got out of the prison.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ he said. ‘Yes, you did! My God, when the bombs hit, I … Well, I don’t have any wine, but I do have some utterly foul schnapps I bought from a sweaty German at the town hall.’ He opened a cabinet. The door opened and Charlotte stepped in. Thomas wrenched out the drawer beside the cabinet and spun back. Reece saw the barrel of a Mauser extrude from his hand. They all held their breath. ‘Is she with you?’ Thomas demanded.

  Reece lifted his hands away from his pockets. ‘She’s with me. We’re not armed.’

  ‘Take a step forward.’ Thomas carefully patted down Reece’s clothes then nodded to Charlotte. ‘Now you.’ He checked her clothes, then the bag she was carrying. ‘Sit down. There.’ He pointed to a half-collapsed sofa. ‘Keep your hands up.’ They did what he said. ‘What is this?’

  ‘No different to what you were expecting.’

  ‘Are you crazy? You turn up with her in tow.’ He paused. ‘Someone betrayed us in Amiens. You must know how it looks.’

  It must have looked like Reece had been the traitor all along. ‘I had myself arrested and beaten?’ he suggested.

  ‘That can be staged.’

  ‘Not so easily.’

  ‘Easily enough,’ Thomas retorted.

  ‘No, you’re right. Of course the Gestapo could do something like that. But look, I can show you the scars, if you like. Where they whipped me in Amiens.’

  Thomas pursed his lips. ‘All right, do that. Stand up.’ Reece did so. ‘Take off your jacket. Slowly. Don’t go near the pockets.’ Very hesitantly, Reece peeled away his blue workman’s jacket. It fell to the floor with a soft sound. He unbuttoned his shirt, peeled it sopping from his skin, tossed it to the side, placed his hands on his head and twisted around. The long white weals through his flesh stood out like lightning. Thomas winced in empathetic pain. ‘All right. Yes. But what about her?’

  ‘You were right,’ Charlotte said. ‘I was working for the Abwehr.’ Thomas’s finger tightened on the trigger. ‘Many of them hate the Nazis and want to wash their filth away. There’s a network inside the service. I was one of them.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Reece added. He outlined what Delaney had told him of Canaris’s Janus-like dealing. ‘The SD have an agent in London. He has a source in SOE, or 6, or somewhere else. He’s been keeping track of us. He was the one who led the Gestapo to us. Not her.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘No one in the circuit knew about the planned op against the prison or where the safe house was. Not her, not you, not Hélène. The SD’s spy could only have got it from a source in London. Everything we were planning we told London in advance. That’s how it got to Berlin.’ Reece could see Thomas’s resolve wavering. ‘London sent us both. They checked her story from every angle. We’re here to
reactivate the circuit. You know how close it is.’

  Thomas stayed still for a while, his eyes flicking between them. Eventually he seemed to come to a decision. ‘All right, all right,’ he said. He put the safety back on the gun. ‘Jesus.’ He seemed tired. Reece knew that feeling.

  ‘It’s exhausting, isn’t it? Being constantly on edge.’

  ‘You’re right there.’ Thomas glanced at a cheap clock on the table. ‘Radio Londres will be on now. I need to listen for any more coded messages.’

  He turned on the radiogram in the corner and it began to burble out strange sentences that would make sense only to the intended recipients in the réseaux and SOE circuits: Angélique has new shoes. Angélique has new shoes. Five and five make ten. Five and five make ten. To dance …

  Thomas sat back down. ‘What do you need from me?’

  ‘We’re going out tonight by Lysander, then you need to keep a location under obbo. It’s a warehouse in Billancourt, 2, rue de l’Église. The Waffen-SS are using it as a training base. Keep London updated as often as it’s safe – at least twice a day. Send a message through Hélène. Can you contact her now?’ Reece asked.

  I want to see the spring. I want to …

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We need to RV. Where do you suggest?’

  ‘A friend runs a café bar in the fourteenth arrondissement. Café Reine in rue du Moulin Vert.’

  ‘Fine. Can …’

  … with a monotonous languor.

  ‘Wait!’ Thomas held up his hand and stared at the radiogram. They all fixed on the words drawled out from London. ‘That one!’

  Wound my heart with a monotonous languor.

  Thomas jumped up and swept his hands over his head. Reece didn’t know the meaning of the code, but from Thomas’s reaction, he could guess. All across France, men and women were listening to those words and looking to their hidden guns and magazines wrapped in rags.