by Wilbur Smith
“Oh, we will sir, don’t you worry. We’re getting closer. He can’t keep getting away from us for much longer.”
•••
The following morning, when she went into work at the VNV offices, Saffron was greeted by a beaming Hendrik Elias.
“I have excellent news, Miss Marais. We have been invited to take part in a conference of political parties from the Low Countries—the legal parties, that is. It will take place in The Hague, at the Binnenhof, the headquarters of the German administration.”
“How exciting!” Saffron replied. “What’s the reason for the conference?”
“To discuss the role of the Low Countries within the new Europe that will arise after the war. Our German friends will be arranging the event and I am assured that they will be informing us about the latest thinking in Berlin on the subject of the Greater Netherlands and the forging of bonds between the Flemish, Dutch and German peoples.”
“How fascinating . . . It is a great honor, Dr. Elias, for you to be honored in this way. I’m sure no man deserves this more than you.”
Elias puffed out his chest and lifted his chin to adopt a more statesmanlike pose. “That’s kind of you, Miss Marais. One feels very humble, even to have been considered worthy of an invitation, which comes, I might say, from the highest echelons. But I am not alone in the honor. I have been permitted to bring a deputation of eight party officials. I would be delighted if you could be among them. We must remember that women will form part of our future too, and you should represent your sex in The Hague as you do so ably in Flanders.”
Saffron gasped and lifted her hand to her mouth, as if overwhelmed by such a sign of favor. “Thank you, Doctor Elias. This means so much to me, I can’t put it into words. I won’t let you down, I swear.”
“I’m sure you won’t, my dear. Just be your usual charming self, leave the men to do the talking, and the Germans will form a very favorable opinion of you, and thus the party itself will benefit.”
“I will do my best. And I would not dream of interfering in the men’s deliberations.”
“Well said. Now, I have a meeting to attend in my office. Bring me a cup of coffee, there’s a good girl.”
“It would be my pleasure.”
Marlize Marais went off to make her boss’s coffee, knowing how he liked it, having performed the same task many times before. When she brought it to him, the two other men in the room decided that they would like coffee, and she made it for them, too.
“You’re very cheerful this morning, Miss Marais,” one of Elias’ guests said, when she handed him his drink.
“I’ve been able to give her some good news,” Elias explained. “And in a moment I will share it with you. That will be all, dear. You can go now.”
Saffron smiled and departed. She was indeed as happy as that man had suggested. Too many Special Operations Executive agents had seen the insides of various Nazi headquarters when taken there as prisoners. She was about to walk in as an invited guest.
•••
They took the train to The Hague, in a carriage whose compartments had been set aside for the Belgian participants in the conference.
It’s like a school outing, Saffron thought. The men from the fascist factions even acted like bitchy schoolgirls. There was the same sense of people who had known each other for years, almost indistinguishable from one another to a stranger’s eye, yet divided by bitter rivalries, and ambitions that meant everything to them and nothing to anyone else.
The different groups pointedly arranged themselves in separate compartments, making no attempt to mingle. This separation persisted until the train arrived at The Hague, where Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the man Hitler had appointed as ruler of the Reichskommissariat Niederlande, as the Netherlands was now known, had set up his headquarters. But the moment they set foot on the station platform and greeted the Germans who had come to take them to the conference, the visitors discovered that their factions were of no interest in Holland. They were Flemish and they were fascist. No one gave a damn about the subtleties.
They were led to a small bus and driven a short distance to a hotel, located on a square near the Binnenhof. They passed under a banner, hung across the street that read: V = Victory! Germany winning on all fronts for Europe. She saw a vacant shop with the Star of David daubed in whitewash across its window and “Filthy Jew” scrawled beside it. A mother hurried by, head down, crouched over the three children she was herding down the street. They all had yellow stars sewn onto their coats.
One of the VNV men pulled down the window beside his seat and shouted, “We’re coming for you, little Yids!” and sat back to hoots of laughter and slaps on the back.
When they arrived at the hotel, Saffron stood on the pavement by the bus, waiting for her case to be unloaded, casting her eyes across the square. White wooden signs on stakes had been placed at regular intervals around its perimeter. They said the same thing: Voor Joden verboden. Forbidden to Jews.
The only item on the agenda that day was a “familiarity” session for the delegations from Flanders and the Netherlands. They were walked to the Binnenhof, a complex of buildings at the heart of which stood a structure whose facade could have been taken from a medieval Gothic cathedral, complete with a magnificent rose window, surrounded by other stained-glass windows. Two thin, round towers, with tall pointed roofs, stood either side of the main entrance, and from each tower hung a scarlet Nazi flag, with the white circle and black swastika at its center. Here, at the heart of Dutch democracy and independence, was an unmissable symbol of the way things were now.
The Dutch national socialists were awaiting the arrival of their Flemish brethren in the main hall. A buffet of sandwiches, pickled herring, local cheese and pastries had been laid out, and white-jacketed waiters stood behind tables laden with beer and wine. Saffron realized that she was the only woman in the room. The men ignored her as they got down to the business of bragging and backslapping. The leader of the Dutch National Socialist Movement stepped up to a podium at the end of the room and gave a long speech filled with sycophancy toward the Nazi Party and insults toward its enemies. Saffron found it loathsome, but knew that Marlize Marais would lap it up and so applauded heartily at every opportunity.
Not to be outdone, Hendrik Elias replied with an oration whose prejudices were slightly less repellent, but which was even more tedious. Once again, Marlize was moved to raptures of enthusiasm.
The event seemed to be drawing to its conclusion when one of the few Germans present made his way to Saffron. He was over six feet tall and his SS uniform jacket strained to contain his shoulders and barrel chest. He had pale skin, white-blonde hair (even his eyebrows and lashes were so pale as to be near-invisible) and small, blue eyes. His face was fleshy, his lips full enough that as he got closer to Saffron his resting mouth appeared to be pouting. She could see that his uniform bore the insignia of a Hauptsturmführer, the equivalent rank to an army captain.
He stood opposite her, clicked his heels and said, “Good evening, fräulein. I hope you will allow me to introduce myself. My name is Schröder . . . Karsten Schröder.”
“Marlize Marais,” Saffron replied.
“Enchanté,” Schröder said. He took her hand and bent to kiss it, though, to Saffron’s relief, his rubbery mouth did not make contact with her skin.
He stood up straight again, cast his eyes around the gathering and remarked, “This is hardly the most amusing way for a beautiful woman to spend a Saturday evening.”
“On the contrary, I found the speeches both fascinating and inspiring,” Saffron replied, judging that it was more important to establish her pro-Nazi credentials than respond to his efforts at flirting.
Schröder smiled. “Then I commend you on your judgment and political understanding. Now, I fear I cannot stay and talk. I have other matters to attend to. May I ask, will you be attending the proceedings tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Very good. I hope we have the chance
to talk at greater length then . . . and not only about politics.”
•••
Marlize was a devout Christian. Saffron made a point of going to church the following morning, dressed in her Sunday best: a cheap cotton summer dress and a baby-blue cardigan. She wore white cotton gloves on her hands and her hair was covered by a straw hat, held on with a pin. Any good Reformed Church girl knew the words of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoreth her head,” and she always wore a hat or scarf when she stepped inside the Lord’s house.
Afterward she made her way back to the Ridderzaal with the rest of the Flemish delegates. Chairs had been laid out in rows in front of the podium. More speeches were on the agenda. The first was given by a senior official of the German administration called Gruber. He was a small, thin, intense man, whose Nazi zeal extended to a toothbrush mustache that made him look like an actor, or even a comedian impersonating Adolf Hitler. Not that the suggestion of wit or good humor pierced the ironclad seriousness of his delivery.
“Heil Hitler!” he began. “The paper I am delivering to this symposium is entitled: Building a New Europe: The Low Countries and Their Role in the Greater Germanic Reich. I will describe the development of the idea of the Greater Germanic Reich as a product of the Führer’s genius, which will inevitably be made manifest as a political and territorial entity that will be the greatest of all the world powers.”
He did this in great detail for more than an hour, then took questions for a further forty minutes. Saffron said nothing. The task allotted to Marlize Marais was to do her best to understand what the men were discussing—Hendrik Elias had promised to explain anything she found too complicated—and then translate it into the simple, even childish terms that the women she worked with would understand.
Saffron took detailed notes. It gave her satisfaction that every word she jotted down was providing more intelligence for Baker Street. But what struck her most was how different she felt now, listening to Gruber, than she would have done a year earlier. Then his description of German efficiency and power would have filled her with fear, even despair. Now that the tide of the war had turned, it sounded like an absurd fantasy, a demented fairy tale that all the men in the room were going along with, which had no basis in fact.
In the afternoon, Schröder, the SS officer who had introduced himself to Saffron the previous evening at the Binnenhof, took his turn at the podium. His subject was: The solving of the Jewish question in the Netherlands.
Schröder’s speech was neither a fantasy nor fairy tale. It was a living nightmare.
“The Dutch have occasionally shown a distressing willingness to make futile gestures of resistance,” he said. “Politicians have been murdered by communist assassins. Workers have gone on strike. Events such as these must be dealt with. We have not been afraid to liquidate large numbers of hostages as a means of reminding the people of the folly of resistance. But I can assure you all, gentlemen”—Schröder paused and looked at Saffron—“and, of course, ladies . . . that Resistance efforts have in no way hampered our sacred task of ridding Europe of the taint of Hebrew influence.”
Schröder cast his watery blue eyes around the room. He ran his tongue around his puffy lips when his eyes found her out again, a gesture whose obscene intent, though not obvious to anyone else, was all too apparent to her. He looked at the room again as he spoke in slow, emphatic terms: “Thanks to the unstinting efforts of SS personnel, and our Dutch allies, I can now tell you, as a matter of fact, that no other Occupied Territory in western Europe can match our success in detecting, apprehending and resettling Jews. None!”
The applause rang out more loudly than at any time that day. Two or three of the delegates rose to their feet to make their point more emphatically. Schröder nodded, a self-congratulatory smile spreading across his features.
“When the Reichskommissariat Niederlande was established in 1940, there were some one hundred and forty thousand Hebrew scum within its borders. Now, that number has been reduced to below fifty thousand.”
A look of determination settled on Schröder’s face, the expression of a general steeling his troops for battle. His voice lowered. “I tell you now that within the next eighteen months—that is to say, by the end of 1944—all but an insignificant fraction of the Jews in the Reichskommissariat Niederlande will be transported out of this country for resettlement in the East. Holland will be Jew–free!”
Saffron forced herself to her feet to applaud, for she would have been the only person in the room who did not.
Schröder nodded, graciously accepting the credit for the achievement. He let the hubbub subside and the collaborators’ backsides descend to their seats before adding his punchline. “And may I say, since we are all friends here, that none of you need fear that these Jews will be occupying land that should belong to well-deserving Aryan folk. Nor will they be taking food from Aryan mouths. The Jew resettlement will be short-lived.”
As the men around her laughed, and she smiled uncertainly, as if not quite able to understand the joke, Saffron tried to come to terms with what Schröder had said. He was suggesting that Holland’s Jews were being taken away to be killed. And if that were the case, then so were all the other Jews who were being packed onto trains in Belgium and the rest of Nazi Europe.
But there must be millions of Jews in Europe, she thought. Are they really trying to kill all of them? Even the Nazis couldn’t be that monstrous . . . could they?
•••
When the day’s proceedings came to an end, the senior men in each party were invited to dine with Gruber, Schröder and the other speakers. As they were preparing to leave, Schröder approached Saffron.
“Ah, fräulein,” he said, with a smile that did not extend to his eyes. “How nice to see you again.”
“And you too, Hauptsturmführer Schröder.”
“Ah, there is no need to be so formal. Please, call me Karsten. After all, the formal proceedings are over and now we can relax. I wonder if you would care to join us for dinner. I dare say you would find it rather boring to be struck in a room with a dozen old men . . .”
“You are far from old, Karsten,” Saffron said, forcing herself to be charming. Schröder might still be of use to her.
“That is why I too will be bored tonight. Unless, that is, you would join us. I’m sure your presence would be welcomed by everyone.”
Marlize would be thrilled by this offer, Saffron reminded herself. “Oh, yes, thank you . . . I mean, if you’re sure that would be all right?”
“Of course.”
“But I’m not dressed for dinner or anything.”
“Pah! This is not some high-society affair. You could wear an old potato sack and still look like Marlene Dietrich.”
Saffron giggled. “That’s a very nice compliment.”
“My pleasure. Would you care to accompany me to the restaurant? I have a car outside.”
“That would be lovely but . . .” Saffron leaned toward Schröder and whispered, “I don’t think meneer Elias would be happy. I think he would prefer it if I went with him.”
“Oh, I see. So that’s how it is, eh?”
“No! It’s not like that at all. Though I think he would like it to be . . .”
“Ah.” Schröder nodded. He put his head close to hers and whispered, “Then we will have to be discreet, won’t we?”
He placed a hand on Saffron’s buttocks, squeezed gently and then gave them a playful slap.
“I’ll see you at dinner, then, fräulein,” Schröder said, as if nothing had happened. He walked away, leaving Saffron feeling helpless and degraded.
Get a grip! she told herself. You’re a trained agent. You’re tougher than this!
But she was also a young woman of twenty-three who had been groped by a much bigger, stronger man, who had treated her as if she were a piece of meat.
Saffron had been taught the importance of staying c
alm under pressure. She forced herself to put her feelings of shame and vulnerability to one side.
Across the room, Schröder was talking to Elias. Saffron joined them.
“Ah, Marlize,” Elias said as she approached. “Hauptsturmführer Schröder was telling me that you will be joining us for dinner.”
She smiled. “Yes, he kindly invited me . . . if you do not mind, of course?”
“My dear girl, why would I object to your company at dinner?”
Saffron looked at Schröder as she said, “I’m so glad. I’m thrilled to have the chance to join you all.”
“Excellent, excellent . . .” said Elias, steering Saffron away from Schröder toward the rest of the VNV contingent.
Saffron glanced over her shoulder. Schröder licked his lips, just as he had done before. Saffron let their eyes meet before she turned away. It was her job to cultivate someone who might be able to provide inside information on SS activities in Holland. But inside she was thinking, That’s the last time you catch me unawares, Herr Schröder. And if you try it again, I’ll make you regret it.
•••
Saffron and the other guests were taken to a restaurant in a basement on Plaats, a triangular plaza, close to the Binnenhof. There was at least one man in German uniform at every table and it wasn’t hard to see why. The place was decked out in the style of a Bavarian bierkeller, with whitewashed walls and ceilings, two long rows of wooden tables and waitresses in low-cut peasant blouses, with their hair in plaits and their skirts swishing against the guests’ chairs as they walked by.
There were fourteen in the symposium group and several tables had been shoved together to make room for them. There was no need for anyone to order food for within minutes waitresses had appeared bearing plates laden with rookworst sausages, so stuffed with pork, veal and bacon that their skins were as close to bursting as a fat man’s waistcoat.
“They are made here on the premises, with our own secret mix of spices,” the proprietor, who was personally making sure that everything was to Dr. Gruber’s liking, assured his guests. “We smoke them ourselves over woodchips specially chosen for their aromatic qualities.”