Courtney's War

by Wilbur Smith

  “I briefed the agent in question not four weeks ago. He was dropped over Holland shortly afterward and he began transmitting a week after that. If all his communications have, in fact, been coming from the office of Herr Giskes, the Abwehr’s man in The Hague, then that suggests the agent must have been picked up on arrival, or soon after.”

  “You mean, they knew he was coming?” Saffron asked.

  “Yes, that’s what I was implying. Which in turn can only mean one of two things. Either there is a double agent here in the Dutch section telling the Germans everything that we’re up to, which I do not believe, despite my almost total lack of faith in the wit or imagination of some of the officers concerned.”

  Marks glanced at Gubbins and, before the brigadier could reprimand him, added, “Sorry, sir, can’t help myself sometimes.” He then continued, “Or, which I believe, the Germans knew because they were receiving all the messages to Holland setting up the drop, the landing zone, the date, the time . . . every detail of the operation, in fact.”

  “So they’ve captured and turned previous agents, too.”

  “I’m sure of it. Even if others are not.”

  Gubbins sighed. “I’ve told you before, Marks, there’s room in this organization for eccentricity, but not for insubordination. I am aware of your ability and of your value. But there are limits to my indulgence. Watch your tongue.”

  “Yes, sir. But you know I’m right, sir. You may not say so, but I know you agree with me.”

  “I agree that there are questions to be answered,” Gubbins conceded. “That is why I want you, Courtney, under Major Amies’s supervision, to try and get us those answers. Now, if Marks here is correct, then there may be an unreasonable level of risk attached to sending you into Holland. It may also be unwise to use the normal channels of communication to set up a reception for you.”

  “Not unless you want to be met at the landing point by a bunch of nasty-looking chaps in coal-scuttle helmets, smelling of sauerkraut,” Marks interjected.

  Gubbins ignored the remark and continued, “You will therefore be dropped into Belgium blind, without anyone in the Resistance being told in advance. Major Amies will give you contact details for those members of the Belgian Resistance in whom he has absolute faith. You are not, under any circumstances, to follow the example of far too many agents and write these details down. An agent should not require a damn crib sheet with you on their assignment.”

  “No, sir.”

  “On making contact, you are to ascertain, as best you can, the situation currently pertaining in Belgium. Communicate that situation to Major Amies. You are then to cross over into Holland. Once there, you will undertake a similar reconnaissance, acting on the basis that no one you meet, or attempt to meet, is to be trusted. You will be given contact details for Holland, just as for Belgium, but you must treat them with suspicion. Observe individuals and their premises, both professional and domestic. Do not make any contact unless you are satisfied that they can be trusted.”

  “I won’t, sir.”

  Now Amies spoke up for the first time. “Remember, Courtney, it’s just as important for us to be aware of any doubts you have about our agents or local contacts as it is to know about those who can be trusted. So keep me posted, either way.”

  Gubbins nodded in agreement, then said, “If you decide that our network has been broken, then you must try to find out what has happened to our agents, in as much detail as possible. We need to know how many the Germans have got, and what they are doing with them.”

  Gubbins paused, knowing that he was coming to the greatest of his demands, before he said, “The only people in Holland who know all the information we require are the senior officers of the Abwehr, and above all Herr Giskes. I have a great deal of respect for Giskes as an adversary. He’s not some caricature Nazi bully-boy. He’s a clever, ruthless intelligence officer, who may be laughing at us now. I must tell you, Courtney, it would give me great pleasure to wipe that smile off his face.”

  “I’d better get close to him, then,” Saffron said.

  “If you can, yes. Work your way into the pro-Nazi movement in Belgium. Find an excuse to get to Holland. Then find out what in God’s name Giskes knows about us and our agents.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gubbins looked at Leo Marks, who was fidgeting in his seat like a bright schoolboy in class, desperate for the chance to show how much he knows. “Anything you’d care to add, Marks?”

  “Only that you won’t have to worry about learning a poem, Saffron. I have a much better coding method. One the Germans cannot break . . . If Brigadier Gubbins will allow me to employ it, of course.”

  The glance that Gubbins flashed in Marks’ direction told Saffron that this was one of the issues that had caused trouble between the two men.

  “That’s a matter for another time,” the brigadier said. “The priority is for you, Amies, to brief Courtney on the various pro-Nazi groups and work out a plan of attack. Let me have your thoughts by the end of the week.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good show. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Ensign Courtney, Mr. Marks, there are a couple of matters I must discuss with Major Amies in private. Margaret will show you out.”

  •••

  Gubbins waited until the door had closed behind Saffron and Leo, allowed a few more seconds for them to make their way through the outer office, where Margaret and the other secretaries worked, and then asked Amies, “Do you think she’s up to it?”

  “Honestly, sir, I’m not sure that anyone in Baker Street is up to what we are asking.”

  “Are you saying we should abandon the mission?”

  “No, it’s too important. And, to be blunt, it’s worth the risk of a single agent’s life.”

  “Which brings us to my question: is this the right agent?”

  Amies gave a half shrug, pursed his lips in concentration and replied, “Ensign Courtney’s linguistic fluency is greatly improved, and we’ve never had a woman with her fighting skills.”

  “This mission doesn’t really call for that.”

  “It may do, sir, if things get tricky. But it’s more than that. This girl has got a cool head. Some might call it cold. I’d pay good money to see her go fifteen rounds with Herr Giskes. He might discover that he’d met his match.”

  “It would be nice to see him get his comeuppance,” Gubbins conceded.

  “And then there’s her advantage: the power of seduction. Whoever undertakes this mission has to make some nasty, mean-spirited individuals want to help them. They must identify someone on the other side who possesses crucial information about our agents and then beguile them into revealing it. I can think of few agents, of either sex, better equipped to do that than Saffron Courtney.”

  Gubbins grimaced. “Bloody awful, isn’t it, the way one has to think in this job? Here we are, agreeing that a young woman’s life is worth risking to obtain information we want, and now you’re saying that we’re going to prostitute her in the process.”

  “I suppose I am. I apologize, sir, it was bad form.”

  “Maybe . . . but I agree with you. Courtney may have to seduce a man, and she has the attributes to do it. I am convinced that she is the best agent we have for this mission. But I want to give her a fighting chance. I’m not going to give the green light unless I’m certain that we have come up with the best plan and the greatest chance of success. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Amies.

  But as he left the room he found that he was torn. He wanted to come up with something that would satisfy Brigadier Gubbins. He knew that Saffron would want that too. But part of him hoped that they would fail, if only to prevent the awful moment when he had to send her to what, by any rational calculation, would be almost certain death.

  •••

  That evening as she left work, Saffron picked up a copy of the Evening Standard from one of the newspaper sellers on Baker Street. The front page was filled with news f
rom North Africa. General Montgomery had won the British Army’s first major victory of the war, defeating General Rommel and his elite Afrika Korps at El Alamein. Now American troops had landed on the Atlantic coast of North Africa. They were attacking Rommel’s forces from the rear, as Montgomery’s Eighth Army was pummeling them on the front line.

  Winston Churchill had told the country a day earlier, after all the years of hardship and defeat, “the bright gleam of victory” was finally visible ahead. “Now this is not the end,” the Prime Minster had declared. “It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

  A tear came unbidden to Saffron’s eye as she suddenly thought of Gerhard. If there was victory ahead there would be a vanquished people, and more death and cruelty and hatred. How could he survive? Gerhard would be destroyed in the tide of vengeance. But their love transcended the everyday, the dirt and the rubble; it was a spiritual coupling, it could surely never die. Her throat constricted, and she sobbed, turning away to hide her tears from passers-by, from her own doubt.

  Saffron stood at a bus stop, her overcoat buttoned-up, the collar raised against the cold and drizzle, listening to the cheerful chatter all around her. What a contrast the Londoners’ good-humored confidence made to the grim faces and anxious minds of the senior staff at Norgeby House.

  The half-dozen people waiting at the stop pressed close to the edge of the pavement as a bus, its interior lights switched off because of the blackout and only the faintest sliver of headlight showing emerged from the murky darkness. It was a 74, her bus, and Saffron stepped onto the platform at the back, handed a three-penny bit to the conductor and said, “Single to Knightsbridge, please.”

  The conductor turned the handle on his ticket machine, tore off the sliver of paper and handed it to Saffron. “Cheer up, love, it might never happen. Mind your step,” he said, reaching up to ring the bell that told the driver to depart. He stood on the open platform like an operatic tenor preparing for his big aria, and in a voice which reached to every corner of the double-decker bus, called out, “All aboard the number seventy-four bus, going all the way to Benghazi, via Mersa Matruh, Sidi Barhani and Tobruk . . .”

  The passengers laughed, for the names of those obscure spots on the North African map had become as familiar to them as any English city over the past two years. The battle lines had ebbed and flowed across the desert as the same places changed hands time and time and again. Now, though, the tide had turned for good.

  Someone a few seats ahead of Saffron shouted, “Three cheers for Monty!” and she found herself joining in as lustily as everyone else as each “hip-hip!” was answered by an even louder “hooray!.”

  As the mood calmed, however, Saffron’s mind turned to something that had been bothering her about her meetings with Gubbins and Amies, one aspect of the plan they had in mind that didn’t make sense to her.

  She contemplated the problem as she cooked herself an omelet of powdered eggs and cheese, followed by a slice of bread topped by her greatest luxury: raspberry jam made by her cousin Marjorie Ballantyne from fruit grown in the walled vegetable garden of her home in the Scottish Borders.

  It was only when she was lying in bed that night, reading the latest Agatha Christie, that, with the same pleasure that she would have received from working out the killer’s identity, the solution popped, fully-formed, into her mind.

  •••

  The following morning she presented herself in Hardy Amies’ office and asked for a few minutes of his time.

  “By all means,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “It’s about the Low Countries plan, sir. Something about it was bothering me last night.”

  “I’m not surprised. It’s a risky scheme. Anything in particular?”

  “Yes, sir, I was concerned about how I’d introduce myself to the local fascists. Suppose I pitched up at their party offices and introduced myself as a young woman who wanted to do her bit for National Socialism . . .”

  Amies leaned back and looked at her through a puff of cigarette smoke. “Ye-e-s . . .”

  “Well, wouldn’t they wonder what took me so long? I mean, the war’s been going on for more than three years, and the Germans have been in Belgium for most of that time. What have I been up to?”

  “Well, I’m sure we could come up with a cover story. You’ve been nursing an aged relative, or running the family business in the absence of all your menfolk, who’ve gone off to fight in the Belgian divisions of the Waffen SS, being just as ardent as you are. Something like that.”

  “That’s what I thought too. But then it occurred to me that even the most blockheaded pro-Nazi party official might be a little suspicious and think he ought to check to see who my family were. At the least I’d have to produce papers backing up my story.”

  “I can see the problem. I’m sure we can come up with an answer, though I don’t have time for that now.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. There’s no need. The way for me to be convincing—” she hesitated a fraction for dramatic effect—“is to arrive in Belgium with the Germans’ help. Under their protection, in fact.”

  That startled Amies. He stubbed his cigarette, leaned forward, frowned at Saffron and said, “Are you seriously suggesting that you are going to use the Germans to get you into Occupied Europe?”

  “Yes, sir . . . but first I’ll have to go to Africa.”

  “And how do you propose to do any of this?”

  “I can’t tell you yet, sir, not exactly. But I’m working on it.”

  •••

  Two minutes later, Saffron was walking down the corridor when she saw Leo Marks up ahead.

  “Leo! Leo!” she cried. “Wait!”

  Marks beamed cheerfully as she dashed toward him. “It had to happen,” he said. “You’ve finally fallen for me. I knew you would in the end.”

  “It’s all that lovely food you get me,” Saffron cooed, playing along. “These days the way to a girl’s heart really is through her stomach.”

  “What can I say? Whatever it takes to get the job done . . . Now, before we start planning our honeymoon, what can I do for you?”

  “I was wondering . . . suppose I wanted to get a message to the South African Interior Ministry in Pretoria, how would I do that?”

  “It depends what the message says. If it’s sensitive, I’ll have to send something in the standard Foreign Office code to our High Commission in Pretoria, and someone could then decode it and deliver the text, preferably by hand to the intended recipient. Alternatively, if it’s not a matter of strategic interest to Berlin, you could send a telegram.”

  Saffron told Leo what she had in mind. He considered it for a moment and said, “Telegram would be fine. The Germans have better things to worry about than the local politics of South Africa.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. By the way, my mother will want to know, do you have a date for the wedding?”

  •••

  Two days later, Saffron walked into a pub off Trafalgar Square, a stone’s throw from South Africa House. She looked around and saw a ginger-haired, mustachioed man with a ruddy complexion waving at her from a table in the corner. By the time she had walked across to him, he was on his feet, holding out a hand.

  “Howzit,” he said. “Eddie McGilvray. You must be Saffron Courtney, eh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You have some powerful friends, Miss Courtney. The Interior Minister himself, Mr. Malcomess, told me to answer any questions you cared to put to me. I’ll do my best.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And the minister’s right-hand man, Mr. Courtney, sent me a separate message. It read, and I quote: ‘Beware Saffron Courtney. Tough as rhino, mean as angry mamba.’”

  McGilvray waited for Saffron’s laughter to subside and then remarked, “I take it you’re related.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Right then, can I get you a drink before
we get down to work?”

  “Gin and tonic, please.”

  “Coming right up.”

  McGilvray went to the bar while Saffron spent an enjoyable few minutes contemplating the ways in which she could get her revenge on her cousin. He returned with the drinks, sat down and said, “So you’d like to know about our South African fascists?”

  “Yes please.”

  “Can I ask, how familiar are you with South Africa and its history?”

  “Reasonably. I grew up in Kenya, but I went to school for a few years in Jo’burg and I visited my cousins in Cape Town.”

  “So you know that what is now South Africa was settled by the Dutch and then the British.”

  “Of course. The Dutch became the Afrikaners. They fought against the British in the Boer Wars and a lot of them still hate us to this day. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Well, not all Afrikaners hate the rooineks . . .”

  McGilvray was testing her. “That means rednecks,” Saffron replied. “It’s their name for us. And I know that some Afrikaners argued for reconciliation with the British Empire Prime Minister Smuts, for one. Ou Baas is a friend, and hero to my family.” She smiled. “And that means the old boss.”

  McGilvray smiled. “Point taken, Miss Courtney. You know your stuff. So how can I help you?”

  “Tell me about the fascist elements in the Afrikaner community. I know they exist. I know they have a lot of the same opinions about the superiority of the white race as the Nazis. But I need to know who they are.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “You may . . . but I can’t give you an answer.”

  “Hush-hush, eh?”

  Saffron gave a noncommittal shrug.

  McGilvray drank some beer, wiped the foam from his mustache and began. “There are two main strands to the right wing of Afrikaner politics: the conventional and the extreme. The conventional wing can be found in the National Party. These fellows don’t like the British, refuse to accept the idea of equal rights for black people and did not want South Africa to side with the British Empire in the war against Hitler. But, for the most part, their opposition is a matter of legitimate political disagreement. It does not constitute any kind of subversion or treachery, and they are free to do and say what they please. I don’t vote for the National Party, but I have colleagues who do. It’s a free country.”