Web of Spies
Page 102
The massacre of the Czech miners at Lidice as a reprisal for Heydrich’s assassination was well publicised by the perpetrators who knew the value of terror. The letter from the Templer’s friend in Prague is my own creation based on what are usually regarded as the most reliable accounts of it.
At the time Lidice seemed to be an isolated incident. By August 1942 rumours of the systematic killing of Polish and Jews were beginning to circulate but were constantly greeted with scepticism by people who were no friends of the Nazis. When, towards the end of that year, Jan Kozielewski, a clever and courageous Polish Catholic who had smuggled himself in and out of a death camp, came to New York via London and told Judge Felix Frankfurter his story the judge found even this eyewitness testimony totally incredible. “I did not say the young man was lying,” Frankfurter said some years later. “I said I couldn’t believe him. There’s a difference.”
Zionist terrorists in Palestine tried at least six times to assassinate Sir Harold MacMichael, the British High Commissioner. Sir Harold survived them all though, in their last attempt, his ADC and driver were crippled by gunfire. Three months later Lord Moyne, Secretary of state for the Colonies and Leader of the House of Lords, was murdered in Cairo. His killers turned out to be deserters from the Jewish Brigade, a British army unit recruited in Palestine that served in Italy during the last months of the war.
It has never been established whether the Messerschmitt pilots who killed Strafer Gott knew the general was on board the Bombay transport they shot down.
Some years after the war Squadron Leader Hugh ‘Jimmy’ James met some of the German pilots responsible for the Distinguished Flying Cross he won aged 19 for getting his blazing aircraft down more or less intact. As these things tend to be, it was an affable meeting of men in late middle age bonded by curiosity, mutual respect and the knowledge that they belong to an exclusive club. Yet among veterans of a campaign noted for its reciprocal chivalry James could not find out why they had continued to shoot at his aircraft when it was down and burning. Perhaps it was simply that the desire to finish off a crippled enemy aircraft was irresistible to fighter pilots whose blood was up, something hard to admit over a drink with one of the survivors some thirty years later. Perhaps not.
I am indebted to the late Major Hugh Skillen, a Scots schoolteacher and linguist who patiently went through his wartime signals intelligence and direction finding techniques with me. His Spies of the Airwaves must remain the seminal work on the subject. If I have made mistakes it is not because Hugh did not try and keep me on the straight and narrow.
In the summer of 1948, as Israel was forged and the first Palestinian refugees already streaming eastwards, the Palestine Police force stowed its colours in St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem and disbanded. Geoffrey Morton, the man who shot Avraham Stern, wrote a lively anecdotal account of his career called, Just the Job - Some Experiences of a Colonial Policeman. (Hodder & Stoughton, 1957). But much of my material on life in the force was given to me by two other veterans: Alec ‘Sandy’ Ternent, one of the bodyguards Morton needed after he shot Stern, and Colin Imray who in 1995 published an autobiography of his time there entitled, Policeman in Palestine (Edward Gaskell Publishing). Both were generous with their time, not to mention their food and drink and I consider myself lucky to have met them.
But my Palestine Police Force is not an exact replica of theirs. Although its plot has a factual basis, Let Us Do Evil is fiction. With the exception of well known historical figures such as Sir Henry MacMichael, who died in his bed aged 80, all the main characters are made up. Calderwell, who first appears among Allenby’s yeomanry cavalry in my Spies of Jerusalem (originally published by Sinclair Stevenson in 1991 as The Last Crusade) is not based on any of the Palestine policemen I came across during my research.
Nor is David Hare though the problems he encounters while evacuating his Jewish civilians from wartime Egypt into Mandate Palestine when Rommel was only 60 miles away from Alexandria existed. They are briefly recounted by the historian and biographer Christopher Sykes, himself a wartime intelligence officer, in his Crossroads to Israel (Collins, 1965). German speaking Jews employed in Cairo by British Signals Intelligence were refused entry because they did not have the proper immigration papers.
I confess that the impudent escape described in Chapter Nineteen was inspired by a true story though not in Mandate Palestine and its hero was not a German agent. Curious readers should consult M.R.D. Foot’s history of the Special Operations Executive’s activities in France.
Table of Contents
Collateral Damage
Colin Smith
Prologue
PART ONE
1. Delivery
2. Preparation
3. Dove
4. Emma
5. Rush-Hour
6. A Theft
7. Safe Houses
8. New Clubland
9. A Sensitive Matter
10. A Country Call
11. A Loose Net
PART TWO
1. A Meeting
2. A Sad Tale
3. Last Suspects
4. Beirut
5. Peace Talks
6. Contact
7. Training
8. Before They’ve Finished Dying
9. Fitchett and the Funny
10. Just Fade Away
11. Desdemona’s Island
12. No Shrines for a Terrorist
13. A Hero Perishes
Spies of Jerusalem
Colin Smith
Prologue
PART ONE: Even In Our Time
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
PART TWO: The Waters of the Nile
1
2
3
4
PART THREE: The Book of Daniel
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
PART FOUR: The Plain of Philistia
1
2
3
4
5
6
Epilogue
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Let Us Do Evil
Colin Smith
Prologue
1 - Sunday Lunch at the Forsters
2 - The Funnies
3 - Some Thoughts on the Hill of Muses
4 - A Hill Country Ride
5 - Haifa
6 - The Templer
7 - The Djinn on the Hattin
8 - The Flap
9 - ‘It’s the tobacco that counts’
10 - An American Perspective
11 - The Man in the Middle
12 - A Demonstration
13 - The Narkover Connection
14 - Some Recent Templer History
15 - The Widow Jessica
16 - Some Inquiries
17 - The Intercept
18 - On The Beach
19 - An Interrogation
20 - Close Calls
21 - A Bumpy Ride
22 - Making Their Luck
23 - A Discussion
24 - A Frontline
25 - Radio Traffic
26 - That Good May Come
27 - If you prick us…
Afterwards - June, 1943
Author’s Note
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