by Peter Watson
Although Parliament debated security issues in secret in wartime, members who thought certain key issues should be made public could appeal to the Speaker to allow the press to print the proceedings without waiting the usual fourteen days.
“The member for Newcastle, Easington.”
I didn’t know his name either, but he was a tall, lanky individual with a mop of dark hair and rough skin. He was about fifty-five and a Labour Party member.
“Mr. Speaker,” he said. “Mr. Speaker, I am astonished and saddened by what we have heard in this House today. For an organisation like SC2 to be penetrated…Well, such things, though regrettable, do happen in wartime. I fought in the Great War of 1914 to 1918 and that was known for terrible mistakes. So I am not going to stand here and condemn an organisation that, for all we know—and it is not our job to know—has done excellent work over the past four or five years.”
He turned from addressing the Speaker, Douglas Clifton Brown, to the government front bench, where Anthony Eden, the secretary of state for war, was seated.
“But what I cannot forgive, and do not forgive, is the fact that no one—no one—spotted the penetration. This dereliction of duty, this appalling complacency, all the more abject since it took place in the dangerous run-up to the invasion, defies belief—as my learned colleague has just said.”
He turned back to the Speaker.
“As you know, Mr. Speaker, this House is very divided on how much of our proceedings should be made public. Personally, I do not think you can make hard-and-fast rules about what the public mood will bear and what it will not. But I fall into the camp which holds that you cannot hide everything from our fellow citizens, who are sacrificing so much in this war. Had the invasion in France not gone so well—so well that His Majesty the King has been able to visit our troops in Normandy—then I am not so sure that it would have been a good idea to release information about German penetration of our secret services. But, since our forces are now, as I understand it, about to cut off the Cherbourg peninsula, I concur with the honourable member for Stafford South and urge you to lift reporting restriction on this debate.”
Competing cries of “No! Rubbish!” and “Hear, hear!” spread around the chamber.
“Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker…” The member for Newcastle, Easington, remained standing and the noise died away. “I give two reasons for taking the view that I do. One, unless we are prepared to release the bad news with the good—as His Majesty’s Government have done throughout the war—our propaganda loses its bite. The citizens of Britain expect to be treated as adults and this is no time to change that stance—”
“Hear, hear!”
“Secondly…secondly, Mr. Speaker, at the same time as we announce this failure publicly, the minister for war must also announce that heads have rolled. Only if heads roll, only if the relevant officials are shamed, only if someone bears responsibility for this fiasco, will performance improve in the future—and I remind honourable members of the House that although the invasion is going well for the moment, the war is a long way from being won.”
The member for Newcastle, Easington, drew himself up to his full height and buttoned his jacket. “So I say, Mr. Speaker, lift the reporting restriction on today’s debate, but I also call upon the secretary of state for war to exercise the powers of his office and relieve of their duties those responsible for this shambles.”
He sat down.
“Hear, hear!”
“The minister for war!”
The Speaker, Douglas Clifton Brown, was the MP for Hexham. He was difficult to make out under his copious wig of office, but from what I could see he looked terrified that he might soon have to make a decision.
The secretary of state for war, Anthony Eden, stood up. Good-looking, debonair, with a small, immaculate silver moustache, he oozed self-confidence.
“Mr. Speaker, as honourable members will have seen, I have listened to the debate today closely, following my opening statement. I have to say that I regret that members opposite have concentrated on the failures of SC2 which, after all, I did highlight in my opening remarks. At the same time, they have ignored and overlooked the fact that, thanks to some nimble thinking on the part of certain members of SC2, we were able to use the fact that some circuits had been penetrated by the Gestapo to mislead our enemies about where the invasion would take place. That is no small achievement, and I would like to pay tribute here to the men and women who have made the work of SC2 so profitable in the past. I…yes…?”
Another member was standing up, and the minister for war, in parliamentary terms, “gave way,” and sat down.
The man standing was small and fat and sweaty. I had no idea which constituency he represented.
“On a point of information, Mr. Speaker, the minister for war refers to ‘men and women’ of SC2. The fact that women were being used at all by SC2 is news to many of us. Can the secretary of state tell us why women were being used in such dangerous circumstances and how many of them, in total, have been used as agents in the field—and, as a result of Gestapo penetration, how many are missing?”
“Hear, hear!”
The minister of war was on his feet again.
“I am obliged to the member for Salford North,” he said. Parliamentary protocol always amused me. From the minister’s tone of voice there was no love lost between him and the member for Salford North, but you would never be able to tell that from Hansard, the official report of proceedings in Parliament, when it was eventually published. “Women have been used in SC2 since 1942—”
“No!”
“Really?”
“Extraordinary!”
A ripple of excitement went around the House. This was news.
I was surprised. Had these politicians no idea about how the real world worked?
“Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker.” Eden waited for the hubbub to die away. “Mr. Speaker, they are used for the simple reason that, in France, all men, all males between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five, must either work in war-related industries, or in the fighting forces on the enemy’s side. They are forcibly sent by the Germans to Germany, again to work in war-related industries. It follows, therefore, that women find it easier to act as couriers, as wireless transmitters, even as sabotage agents. They don’t stand out.”
He looked directly at the member for Salford North.
“To answer the honourable member’s specific point, Mr. Speaker, there are, at this moment, exactly thirty-seven women agents in SC2, three of whom have been killed and fourteen of whom are missing.”
There was a silence in the chamber. The honourable members did not know how to digest this news.
“One other point, Mr. Speaker. I agree with the member for Newcastle, Easington, that the penetration of SC2 by the Gestapo was a catastrophe, an unacceptable disaster. But I also reiterate that the situation was, to an extent, turned around. Thanks to the swift thinking of several senior people in the French section of SC2 command, some of our penetrated circuits were used, as I have said, to send false information to the Germans about where, exactly, the invasion would take place. We have evidence that, as a result of this misinformation, many German troops were kept in areas of France well away from Normandy—on the Atlantic coast, for instance—and were therefore not on hand to help repel our forces. To an extent, we managed to turn a catastrophe into partial victory.”
Other members were getting restive, and he went quickly on.
“I conclude by saying this, Mr. Speaker. His Majesty’s Government will not oppose the lifting of restrictions on the reporting of today’s debate. I agree—the government agrees—we should stand ready to live with the bad news as well as the good, provided we don’t wallow in the bad. But in this case the press should note the successes of SC2 as well as its failures. I do assure the House that, but for the misinformation we were able to feed the Gestapo over the past weeks, via those penetrated circuits, the Resistance by the Germans in and around the beaches of Norm
andy would have been far stiffer.”
In the press gallery the reporters were preparing to leave. This was a rare day for them, with the fourteen-day rule lifted.
“So there need be no vote tonight, Mr. Speaker, but I have one other thing to add.”
The reporters sat down again.
“I can report to the House that General Frank Grieves, the co-opted member of the war cabinet, who has had responsibility for SC2, is being relieved of his post. He is to be replaced by Lieutenant General Christopher Crichton, with immediate effect.”
—
THAT NIGHT I DID SOMETHING I had never done before. I don’t mean that I took a whisky to bed, along with all that day’s newspapers, in an effort to catch up on the invasion news, and tire myself out in the process so that I could sleep. And I don’t mean that I helped myself to another whisky, and several cigarettes, when sleep wouldn’t come. I was still smoking too much.
I mean that I invited Zola on to the bed, in Madeleine’s place, so that it didn’t seem so empty.
He was missing her, too—I could tell. He made a show of sniffing the places where she used to leave her shoes, her bag, her wash things in the bathroom.
I lay on my back and rested my hand on his fur, feeling the beat of his heart and hearing the sound of his breathing. He had never been allowed on the bed before and couldn’t believe his luck.
From time to time, now, when I lit a cigarette, I took two out of my cigarette case without thinking. That had been my habit before she left, lighting two cigarettes at the same time. When I did that, and realised what I had done, my tonsils seemed to swell in my throat, I swallowed, and my stomach formed itself into a solid something.
The invasion news was good, up to a point. There was still fierce fighting inland from the beaches where the troops had landed, but when you looked at the map, the narrow strip of land which the Allies had captured was such a very small part of France and a good way—hundreds of miles—from where Madeleine was. Or had been when she had sent her last interrupted message.
I held the newspaper map in front of me and stroked Zola. What was happening in France away from the fighting? Understandably, perhaps, the papers had nothing to say about that. Had there been any uprisings among the French? Our own agents might have kept us informed, some of the time, but their job now—those who hadn’t been compromised—was to help with sabotage, to keep as many German forces as possible from converging on Normandy.
From all that, I could conclude nothing about Madeleine’s fate.
I put down the paper.
It had been several days now since we had heard from her. Other agents had reported in during that time, though by no means all. It began to seem that quite a few of them had been rounded up as news of the invasion spread. Maybe the Gestapo had been keeping them under surveillance, in case they revealed details of the invasion plans. But once our troops had landed, there had been no point in leaving them in place.
Had that happened to Madeleine? She had seemed to be doing so well, but perhaps she had been spotted days before and was discreetly followed. And then…? Had she used her cyanide pill?
There is nothing worse than not knowing. On the other hand, no news is…not the worst news.
Zola turned his head and licked my hand.
I took my hand away.
I didn’t feel like playing.
AUGUST
· 15 ·
THE WINDOW IN MY OFFICE WAS as ugly as a window could be. The glass panes were held in place by stark strips of flat metal welded together in oblongs. There were no curtains and just one pane, hinged at the top, which opened to let in air. It did, however, have a wide sill and that is where Zola found it comfortable to perch himself.
Since I had allowed him on to the bed at home, I had taken to bringing Zola into the office. No one seemed to mind—in fact, he quickly made friends with everyone—and I couldn’t bring myself to leave him in Hamilton Place. We had still heard nothing from Madeleine, and it was now more than ten weeks since her interrupted message.
I had the Lagonda back after its kicking, but no will to use it and no petrol for it anyway. I’d persuaded my doctor to give me some sleeping pills and I was probably still drinking more whisky than was good for me. I wasn’t going to pieces—nothing like that, I’m not the type—but I missed Madeleine and feared for her. I spent as little time in the flat as possible. I went to the theatre or cinema most nights just to keep my mind off her. I had also bought her one or two pieces of jewellery to spoil her with if and when she reappeared, and to cheer myself up.
Madeleine had got the better of me in Scotland. She was able and a quick thinker. Maybe she had broken off in mid-message to escape and had contacted the ratline that ran down the Atlantic coast. Could that mean she was, even now, on her way back home? If so, she wouldn’t be able to make contact and her journey would take time. That part of France was still under German control—that too could explain her silence.
But we were now well on into August. If she had found a ratline she should be home sometime very soon. And I couldn’t get the thought of that suicide pill out of my mind.
I studied the progress of the invading forces with keen interest. The German retreat had at last begun. Having taken Caen and the Cherbourg peninsula, our forces had pressed south, past Rennes towards Nantes. For a short time they were very close to where Madeleine had been, but now, heading east, they were only sixty miles from Paris. Eisenhower had felt confident enough to transfer his headquarters from the south of England to France.
None of us had liked the flying bombs that had suddenly materialised over London, and the hurried evacuation of women and children that had followed. We had all relished the news of the attempt on Hitler’s life. Maybe there would be other attempts before long, one of which would be more successful.
I had an added interest in the progress down the Atlantic coast, of course, but that was stalled for the moment while the push on Paris went ahead. We were still getting messages from circuits in the east of France that hadn’t been penetrated, but the situation on the ground appeared chaotic at best. There were isolated pockets of German resistance—in Brest, for instance, the westernmost tip of the Brittany coast—that were cut off from other German forces. The Allies left the German outposts where they were, since they could do little damage and fighting them would have risked lives unnecessarily and held up the main thrust.
The Atlantic coast was simply not a priority any more.
In the wake of D-Day we were—thankfully—busier than ever in SC2. Our duties were now slightly different in that—
The door to my office opened and G. put her ahead around the edge.
“Meeting upstairs, now. And before you ask: I don’t know what it’s about. Shall I look after Zola?”
Hearing his name, he perked up.
“Come on,” G. said, patting her thigh. He leapt down from the windowsill and followed her.
“Tart!” I said softly, smiling.
Upstairs, in the conference room, Hilary was already there, along with Christopher Crichton, his—our—new boss. The handover that had been announced in Parliament had only just occurred—the invasion had occupied every moment of everyone’s time.
Penny was in the room already, together with all the other section heads.
Everyone sat down.
Crichton was a tall man with a long neck and long fingers, some of them stained brown from the cigarettes he smoked constantly. He lit one now and didn’t offer them round. He was in uniform with a shiny Sam Browne leather belt cutting diagonally across his chest.
Arranging his cigarette packet and an ashtray neatly in front of him, he sniffed and tapped some ash from his cigarette into the ashtray.
“This morning I attended a war cabinet meeting,” he said without preliminaries and looking around without smiling. “Bad news, I am afraid.” He cleared his throat and looked at Hilary. “Following the debate—or should I say debacle—in the House of Commons the other
week, Hilary here and I had worked out a plan that was designed to do two things. It was decided, firstly, that someone from here—someone senior—should go to France, find out about everything that has happened to our agents, and if possible discover one or more of them alive, and so go some way towards rescuing SC2’s reputation.”
He looked at me.
“You, Matt. It was you we were going to send.”
This was news. It had crossed my mind, after the fiasco of the Gestapo’s penetration of SC2 had been revealed, that I might be dismissed, and maybe Hilary too. We had played some part in reversing the setback but…the army is a curious animal and you never could predict quite what would happen, who would take the rap.
I returned Crichton’s gaze.
“But not now?”
He nodded, finishing his cigarette.
“No. It turns out that we have as many opponents among our Allies as among our enemies. MI6 say they have had enough of our antics and ‘games,’ as they put it, and, as the older, more established service, they have petitioned the cabinet to support their view that they have enough experienced people on the ground in France to do what we were going to do. And, they say, they are more used to operating undercover than we are—”
As I went to interrupt, he waved me down. “And, in addition to them, the foreign secretary said that he had been approached by de Gaulle’s people—de Gaulle in person, I should say—more or less demanding that SC2 be banned from France. De Gaulle is about to move to France himself and he has his own agenda, as you know. But in this case, what with MI6 making the fuss they are making, the French argument fell on fertile ground.” He grunted. “Ground is the right word, I’m afraid. We’ve been grounded.”
“But…but…” I stumbled. “Are we just going to leave our agents to their own devices, make no attempt to rescue them, or even find out what happened to them? What will Parliament make of that?”