Fox from His Lair

by John Harris

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘Perhaps they weren’t homosexuals? Or spies. Perhaps, like us, they were looking for our friend, Fox.’

  Iremonger looked through narrowed eyes at Pargeter. ‘It’s an idea,’ he said grudgingly.

  Pargeter frowned. He looked like a schoolboy who’d just won a prize, but there was nevertheless an air of aggressive maleness about him, an air of ancient wisdom that belied his youthful manner. At that moment his face wore a disapproving look that amused Iremonger, and he seemed angry.

  ‘It’s my belief,’ he said grimly, ‘that there are people around who aren’t playing square with us. I think it’s time someone did.’

  Eight

  The man who met them at the Ministry of War was a faceless sort of individual – pale, uninteresting-looking, plump and spectacled – but he appeared to know what he was talking about and when Pargeter put his ideas about the murdered officers to him, he rubbed his nose, said ‘Wait just a moment,’ and vanished from the room.

  ‘Just a moment’ turned out to be an hour and a half, during which time Pargeter and Iremonger sat trying to sum each other up. By now, Iremonger was beginning grudgingly to admit to himself that Pargeter wasn’t such a fool as he looked, while Pargeter was conceding that, even if Iremonger’s manners didn’t come up to his own impeccable standards, at least he moved fast when he started.

  By the time they were beginning to wonder what to say next, the pale-faced man returned. ‘You’ve been summoned to Widewing?’ he said.

  ‘What the hell’s Widewing,’ Iremonger demanded.

  The pale-faced man didn’t blink. ‘General Eisenhower’s headquarters,’ he said. ‘Bushey Park. He’s recently moved there. More than likely Tedder, Montgomery, Leigh Mallory, Bradley, Ramsay and Bedell Smith are there as well. You’re moving into exalted circles. For most of us, those people are so high up they’re out of sight.’

  A car was laid on and, as it moved off, Iremonger, who’d been sitting in silence, suddenly lifted his head. ‘Second Officer Wint,’ he said.

  Pargeter turned, a small knowing smile on his face, and Iremonger went on earnestly. ‘She’s enough to make a man make last stands.’

  Pargeter smiled. ‘She’ll be pleased you’ve noticed.’

  ‘She got any boyfriends?’

  ‘Why? Think they might kick your teeth in?’

  ‘I’m serious. Has she?’

  ‘Only me.’

  ‘You engaged to her?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘You sleeping with her?’

  ‘Seemed a good idea. Especially to her. Suspect there’ve been others, of course. Sex is an occupational hazard in wartime.’

  ‘Does she mean anything to you?’ Iremonger persisted.

  ‘How can you tell whether someone means anything to you until you lose them?’

  ‘Think she might?’

  ‘Does it bother you?’ Pargeter said, stiff-faced.

  Iremonger shrugged. ‘Hell, no,’ he said. ‘She seemed a nice dame, that’s all.’

  ‘Suspect she’s shameless.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Pargeter nodded and the discussion was dropped.

  The car was now passing endless caravans of drab army trucks loaded with war supplies, huge dumps of stores and strings of murderous-looking tanks parked nose-to-tail just off the pavements with heavy guns, ammunition caissons and other military hardware. Headquarters was a sprawling hutted camp in a wide park where the grass had already been worn thin by tramping feet. There seemed to be staff cars everywhere, and they were escorted inside the building by a full colonel and passed on to a slim blunt-faced officer who introduced himself as General Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s chief of staff.

  They were shown into a room where four men were standing at a table and immediately they recognised them as General Omar Bradley, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, and Eisenhower himself. Eisenhower turned as they entered, gestured towards a door and they followed him into an inner office. Bedell Smith took up a position with his back to the door.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Eisenhower said, and there was no hint on his grave face of the wide smile that had won everybody, both civilians and servicemen alike, to his side. ‘I’ve had you brought here deliberately. In just a few moments, you’ll be taken to see General Hardee, of Intelligence, who’ll put you in the picture. But you’re here first because you’ve gotten yourselves involved in something that reaches right to the heart of what we’re doing. I just want you to be fully aware of the importance of it, to stress to you the need for absolute silence and secrecy, and to let you know that if there are difficulties you’re to come right back here to me.’

  They were both feeling a little dazed as they were led by Bedell Smith out of the room and down a corridor. The room they entered was part of another large suite and General Hardee looked more like a professor, with heavy horn-rimmed spectacles and a deceptively quiet voice. He waved them to two chairs which had been set ready for them.

  ‘Okay, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Let’s get down to it. First off, no note-taking. What I tell you stays only in your heads.’

  He sat back in his chair, offered cigarettes and lit one himself. ‘Right away,’ he said, ‘let me congratulate you. You’ve reached a point in your enquiries that we’ve been trying to reach for some time, so under the circumstances, we’re dropping everything in your lap. You’re to turn over everything you’re engaged on to someone else and concentrate solely on this. I suggest you make your base at Portsmouth so that you’ll be handy both for this place and invasion headquarters, which will eventually be set up down there. You’ll be given another officer – a Frenchman who speaks Polish, Czech and Slovak, with a little Hungarian and Ukrainian on the side to take care of any odds and ends. Okay, so far?’

  Pargeter and Iremonger glanced at each other, aware that for better or worse they were finally tied together. They nodded towards Hardee.

  ‘Slapton Sands,’ Hardee went on. ‘Captain Dunnaway, Lieutenant-Commander Jensen and Lieutenant Jacobson. As you’ve guessed, they were connected, but, as you also seem to suspect, Dunnaway, Jensen and Jacobson were neither homosexuals nor informers for the Germans. They were British agents who’d been on to a German spy we’ve been seeking since January. I need hardly point out that he’s obviously very clever and clearly ruthless.’

  Neither Iremonger nor Pargeter spoke.

  ‘We have reason,’ Hardee continued, ‘to suspect that Dunnaway, Jacobson and Jensen were all close on his tail when they were killed and, since you seem to have picked up the trail from them, from now on it’s your responsibility. It’ll be a great deal easier than briefing someone else, and the less people who know what’s going on the better.’

  Hardee leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. ‘Now listen carefully, gentlemen, because you’re going to hear some secrets which must never be repeated outside this room. You could read them all in a book we have, but anyone who’s instructed to read that book is locked in a room until he’s finished – even if it takes days – because it contains the strategic plan for Overlord, which is the code name for the invasion of France. It covers everything we’ve been doing for months already, up to the actual day of invasion and months afterwards. It shows the whole shebang, until we reach Germany itself and gives the estimated times and dates of each move. But, since it takes so long to read and you’ve not that much time, I’ll fill you in myself. You’ll need to know what I’m going to tell you to do your job properly.’

  Hardee smiled. ‘I don’t have to stress that you’ve both been checked and re-checked,’ he went on. ‘And that you’re expected to keep your own counsel and not discuss with anyone but each other what I’m going to say – not even with the French officer who’ll be attached to you. Least of all with him, because we’ve already had too much cause to believe that de Gaulle’s people are a little careless with security. If you wish to talk together, I suggest that you bor
row a boat from the navy and talk in the middle of Portsmouth Harbour. Understood?’

  He sat back and grinned suddenly. They smiled back at him, at ease. Then his face grew harder and they wondered what was coming.

  ‘I’m stressing all this,’ Hardee went on, ‘because there have already been a few scares. Some of ’em were sheer coincidences – most of ’em to do with newspapers, and not all British newspapers either, because our American correspondents sometimes have big ideas about their own size and consider that the date of the invasion’s of prime importance to the folks back home. There have been other leaks. One idiot actually posted our plans by mistake to his sister in Chicago and the parcel burst open in the mail office there. Another guy left a briefcase in a train. Fortunately, the porter who found it had the horse sense to take it straight to his boss. Then a gust of wind blew a dozen documents through an open window in Whitehall and only eleven were recovered. The twelfth was handed in later by a civilian who didn’t leave his name, and we’ve had to assume he’s an honest man and a patriotic Britisher.’

  Hardee paused. ‘Even American generals aren’t above reproach,’ he went on soberly. ‘One’s already been rocketed by Ike and another’s been demoted and sent home for guessing at dates at a party. A British officer, who told his parents what he knew, found himself being interviewed by our Security people because his parents had more sense of responsibility than he had. There’ve been other scares, too, but so far we feel confident nothing’s leaked across the Channel about the date and place of the invasion. Slapton worried us some, of course, but, with the recovery of all the bodies carrying Bigot papers, we feel that even there nothing leaked out.’

  Both Pargeter and Iremonger were tempted to glance at each other, but they felt somehow that such a movement might suggest they were types who would discuss later what they heard; so they both kept their faces expressionless and their eyes towards Hardee.

  Hardee paused again. ‘For your information,’ he went on, ‘the exact date of the invasion’s still to be decided, but, as you can guess, it has to take place when the tide will be low enough to expose the beach obstacles Rommel’s been erecting, and around dawn to enable follow-up troops to land on another low tide before darkness. We also need a late rising moon for the paratroops and glider-borne units to get in, and there are plenty of other considerations – among which, of course, will be good weather and a calm sea, which we can’t predict.

  ‘These are the main considerations, and since you could easily work it out for yourself from what I’ve said, I can tell you with the Supreme Commander’s approval that a provisional date’s been fixed and it isn’t far away. You can be sure, of course, that the Germans have worked that out too. In fact, we’re pretty sure they have. In other words, they know we’re coming, all right. They even know roughly when.’ Hardee smiled and ended in a flat voice. ‘The only thing they don’t know is where.’

  Nine

  During the silence as Hardee stopped speaking there was a knock on the door and tea appeared, carried by an American WAC sergeant.

  ‘We have American coffee at eleven,’ Hardee said, ‘and British tea at five. It makes for good relationships.’

  He smiled and remained silent until the WAC had vanished again. Then he picked up his cup and gestured to them to do the same.

  ‘Fortunately for us–’ his voice, as he started to speak again, was pitched low, almost as though he thought they might be overheard ‘–German Intelligence is in disarray at the present time. Himmler’s been trying to extend his influence by taking it over, so we’re being considerably helped in our countermoves by the sycophantic rubbish his people are putting out to lull Hitler into believing – as he wishes to believe – that all’s well. What’s more, to bring Hitler to his senses and kill the rubbish the SS are feeding to Führerhauptquartier, German Intelligence have deliberately been inventing allied divisions that don’t exist in the hope of making him afraid and more realistic. You needn’t know how we know, but we do. They claim we have fifty-five divisions available, and there are even hints that there may be seventy-five or even eighty-seven. As you probably know, we have nothing like that number, but there’s no reason why German GHQ shouldn’t go on thinking we have, and they’re already bringing their propaganda machine into high gear with stories of hospitals in England being emptied ready for casualties from the second front.’

  Hardee paused to sip his tea and shift the papers on his desk. When he continued there was a malicious glint in his eyes. ‘We’ve encouraged them to believe we’re going to a variety of places,’ he said. ‘For instance, there’s a big discussion going on in the newspapers about a landing on the Riviera and we hope it’s diverted a few divisions down there because, when we go, there must be not only enough manpower and equipment but an excess, so that our blow can be neither parried nor avoided.’

  Again Hardee paused. ‘We’ve been bombing inland France for months – to the north of the invasion area. The Germans think it’s because we’re going north, but in fact it’s to seal the invasion area off from the rest of the country. Meanwhile, British operatives in neutral countries have been enquiring in bookshops for copies of Michelin Map No. 51, which covers the Pas de Calais. You can be sure the Germans haven’t failed to notice this. To make confusion worse confounded, we’ve also striven to give the impression that the invasion might also arrive in Holland. Dutch documentary films are noticeably being made in London, Dutch-speaking wireless operators have been hired, postcards and photographs of the Netherlands have been advertised for, and Queen Wilhelmina was persuaded to broadcast to the Dutch that their ordeal will soon be over.’

  Hardee finished his tea and lit a cigarette – slowly, as if to give himself time to think before going on. ‘Crates of carrier pigeons have also been dropped by parachute in north-west France and Belgium,’ he said. ‘Only five or six birds have come back and the information they brought was largely useless, but, as we thought they might, the Germans found some of the crates and, plotting the drops, noticed that they were all north of the Somme and the Amiens-Abbeville line, which once more indicated the Pas de Calais. A signal we picked up which indicated that von Rundstedt also believes we’ll invade by the shortest route was used to bolster up these views. In all this, we’re helped by the fact that almost every one of their agents in England have either been arrested or “turned round” so that they’re now sending back to Berlin exactly what we want them to send. However, we do suspect there are still two uncaught – one of them in the south watching the build-up for the invasion and one over in the Eastern Counties keeping an eye on the bombing offensive.’

  Hardee hesitated, frowning. ‘More of that in a moment,’ he said. ‘The Germans’ firm belief in our extra divisions and the fact that they think they’re all in East Anglia ready for the crossing to the Pas de Calais area ties in very nicely with the information we have that they’ve built sites up there for the launching of pilotless aircraft for the bombing of London – what they call V-weapons – so that the Pas de Calais once more would seem the obvious place to invade.’

  As he stopped, Iremonger and Pargeter were silent, then Iremonger drew in a deep noisy breath.

  Hardee smiled. ‘As you also seem to have discovered, we’ve gone along with German thought and filled all those empty camps in the south-east of England with a phantom army group – Army Group Number One – and we’ve even put General Patton in command. Since he’s senior to General Bradley, it would be natural for the Germans to assume that he would have an army group, and it’s a card we must play for all its worth.’

  He paused to light another cigarette and glance at his notes. Pargeter was aware that Iremonger was looking at him and, as he turned his head, he saw Iremonger give him a nervous smile as though he, too, were awed by the secrets that were being laid bare to them.

  Hardee sat back, blew a few puffs of smoke and started again. ‘Fortunately,’ he said, ‘since we have command of the air, Luftwaffe reconnaissance only occurs
when we allow it to, and where they are getting through is only in the east. They’re not getting through in the south and west, and what they’re seeing in the east are dummy ships and landing craft and dummy army units. Even the people living in those areas believe there are troops and planes there.

  ‘False airfields have been set up, movements of landing craft have been taking place ostentatiously in the North Sea, balloons are drifted over Nazi outposts to give the impression of forces moving about the northern channel, and buoys with special electrical apparatus inside are floated down to simulate large fleets on the German radar screens. To encourage the deception, the bomber boys have been smashing German radar installations to the south but have left those in the north untouched, and in the meantime we keep the cookhouse fires in Kent and Essex stoked up so they can see the smoke. We expect Army Group Number One to pin down the German XV Army Group for some time after D-Day, and I dare wager when we go ashore they’ll strip Brittany, southern France, Norway and Denmark for reserves, but keep their divisions opposite the Pas de Calais intact in case we’re only feinting.’

  Hardee seemed to have finished, but he turned over more sheets and looked up with a smile. ‘You’re getting a heavier briefing than some generals,’ he admitted. ‘But we have to make it all work. Otherwise a lot of lives are going to be lost. Which is why your job’s going to be to find the man who killed Dunnaway, Jacobson and Jensen and told the German navy of Exercise Tiger at Slapton. If he finds out that Army Group One exists only on paper, the obvious conclusion he’ll draw is that we must be going to Normandy and since that’s where we are going, gentlemen, such information would be disastrous if it went to the Germans. Any questions?’

  ‘One obvious one, General,’ Iremonger said. ‘This agent you mention: Do you have any information on him?’