by Alex Gerlis
Then there was her radio operator, a man with a Yorkshire accent whose personal hygiene left much to be desired and who she was shocked to find spoke virtually no French, which made his code name of Hervé sound all the more implausible. She had raised this with the Captain, the enigmatic man who ran Tractor circuit, but he’d told her not to worry, and said that in any case, that was why she was there. She was the first to acknowledge that Hervé was a skilful radio operator, quick to encode and decode, fluent in his transmissions and the rest, but he was beginning to get on her nerves. They’d met up near Auxerre, and after a week had been moved south, where they were based in a woodsman’s cottage close to the River Brenne near Montbard. They’d remained there for another week, Thérèse doing her best to carry out London’s orders and bring some sense of order to the resistance in the area, an awkward mix of urban communists and rural Maquis.
Then came the orders to head south again, an abstemious journey through Burgundy to the city of Dijon. Once Hervé had become aware of their destination, he’d expressed the hope that they’d cut the mustard, which Thérèse acknowledged was mildly amusing, but not when he used the reference as an accompaniment to every conversation.
The final annoyance was a far more serious one. Her training as an SOE agent had been rushed through in a month, but they’d said she was an excellent student, and of course her French was fluent. They’d also said she needn’t worry too much because Tractor was a good circuit and most of the resistance cells within it were watertight. That was the word Major Lean had used, ‘most’. She had pointed out that ‘most’ rather undermined the whole business, a chain only being as strong as its weakest link, et cetera, but that condescending man Stephens had told her there was a war on and nowhere was perfect. Once in France, and especially since they’d arrived in Dijon, it was clear that the groups in the circuit were anything but watertight, but when she’d raised this with the Captain, he’d told her there was nothing to worry about, and in any case it was being dealt with, which all seemed to be rather paradoxical.
Fortunately, Hervé – whose real first name turned out to be Kenneth – shared her view, and they decided to split up. Hervé moved south of the city to the village of Fauverney, where the River Ouche forced a path through the trees crowding both of its banks. Thérèse remained in the city, on her own in a stuffy attic overlooking Dijon-Ville station.
After a few days, she was satisfied she’d found a reasonable modus operandi. Every other day she’d go to Parc Darcy, and after circumnavigating it to be sure it was clear would check the benches for the various safety signals the Captain had arranged. Once satisfied, she’d walk through the old centre of the city with its distinctive multi-coloured tiled roofs to Saint-Bénigne cathedral, where she’d meet the courier.
But on one visit to the park something was not right. The park looked fine from its perimeter, but there was no chalk mark on the first two benches she checked, and as she approached the third one, she caught a glimpse of two men looking towards her from behind the bushes. Beyond the bench a couple were embracing in a most unconvincing manner, and past them, at the entrance to the park, she could make out three black cars parked together.
It was a trap, and she realised it was one the Captain must have led her into. She thought of his unscheduled visit earlier that morning.
What time will you go to the park?
What route will you take?
Her only possible means of escape was across the lawn into the wooded area, where she might be able to lose them. For a brief moment she thought of her husband, Nicholas: she had been forbidden to tell him about the mission, and he’d seemed hurt when she’d said she was going away somewhere but he wasn’t to worry. She was sure he thought she was having an affair.
She turned onto the wet grass but hadn’t taken more than a step or two when she was aware of being surrounded, a dozen men encircling her, none of them saying a word as her hands were pinned behind her back and something reeking of stale sweat was placed over her head.
* * *
When the hood was removed about an hour later, Christine Butler was in a brightly lit windowless room. She assumed it was in the headquarters of the Gestapo in Dijon, on rue du Docteur Chaussier, which happened to be near the cathedral.
She was tied to a metal chair, the straps around her ankles cutting into her skin. Her wrists were attached to the chair by handcuffs. The man sitting opposite her seemed out of breath.
What is your name?
‘Thérèse Dufour.’
Where are you from?
What do you do?
How did you get here?
His French was poor, and he didn’t follow up any of her answers.
‘You have my handbag: you’ll find all my papers are in order,’ she told him.
Finally he stood up, and she realised quite how overweight he was. ‘Never mind: your interrogation will start soon. You’ll soon have the pleasure of making the acquaintance of my friend das Frettchen!’ He laughed loudly, and was still doing so as he left the room.
She was left on her own, still strapped to the chair. When a gendarme came in to check on her, she asked him who das Frettchen was.
‘He means the interrogator: le furet.’ He bent down beside her, his mouth so close to her ear his moustache brushed against it. ‘Le furet has a terrible reputation. Don’t resist him.’
When she was once again alone in her cell, she remembered what le furet meant.
The ferret.
* * *
It was a few hours before the Ferret arrived. In that time she’d imagined a man who resembled one, perhaps with a long neck or a pointed nose, maybe beady eyes. She preferred that to an assiduous hunter and an efficient killer.
In fact das Frettchen looked nothing like a ferret. He was far younger than she’d expected – perhaps even in his twenties – with blonde hair swept back and bright blue eyes that seemed to twinkle. He smiled at her briefly and spoke to the guards in German, which she didn’t understand. She was unstrapped from the chair and taken over to a wooden chair in front of the desk where he sat. A glass of water appeared in front of her, and he gestured for her to drink as if they were acquaintances meeting in a bar. Despite all this, she was mindful of the training she’d had in England on how to handle interrogations, when a man who reminded her of the priest who’d married her and Nicholas only a couple of years before had told her how easy it was to be lulled into a false sense of security. You have no idea how frightened you’ll be. Even someone smiling at you will throw you off your guard. Be alert all the time.
‘Your papers tell us you’re Thérèse Dufour from Paris and that you’re a schoolteacher with permission to travel to look for work.’
He’d addressed her in French and she was surprised that he used the familiar tu for ‘you’ rather than the more formal vous. She nodded and smiled, which he didn’t return.
‘Which is all of course nonsense!’ He was speaking English now and swept her papers off his desk with the back of his hand. ‘So please don’t waste my time and cause yourself avoidable suffering. Tell me who you really are and what you are doing in France.’
She blinked and felt her throat tighten. He spoke good English and sounded as if he was trying to mimic an upper-class accent. Her training had made it very clear that she should endeavour to hold out as long as possible and not speak in English until it was impossible to avoid doing so. She replied in French.
‘I beg your pardon, I’m afraid I don’t understand. My name is Thérèse Dufour and I—’
He held up his hand as if stopping traffic. For a few moments he looked carefully at her before standing up, stretching himself and then strolling towards her. He bent down and she noticed he smelt of cologne and toothpaste; he must have nicked himself while shaving, as there were flecks of dried blood on his collar.
‘One last time, please: your name, those of everyone you work with and the location of your radio operator.’
She shook her hea
d, which she immediately realised was a mistake because she wasn’t meant to understand English. The next thing she was aware of was her chair being kicked, and sprawling across the floor. Her shoulder seemed to take most of the impact. Other people were in the room now, and she was hauled to her feet, dragged over to the wall and pinned roughly against it. The Ferret moved in front of her, a wide grin on his face.
‘So they’ve insulted the great city of Dijon by sending us an amateur, eh?’ He thumped her in the stomach and she concentrated hard on not being sick. He stepped back as two of the guards manacled her hands and feet to rings on the wall. Her arms were fully stretched and her toes only just touched the floor.
The longer you hold out, the more time your comrades have to escape. Sometimes you may need to give them real information to buy time.
The fact that he’d asked about her radio operator was a good sign; at least Hervé hadn’t been captured yet. He’d get a message to London, and who knows, maybe the resistance would rescue her. She doubted he would be making jokes now about cutting the mustard. She reckoned it was early afternoon, and thought if she could hold out for a couple of hours and then begin to answer in English and give them titbits of information, she could drag things on until night came. By the following morning, the others in the circuit would have escaped and she wouldn’t be betraying anyone.
There is no easy way of saying this, but sometimes the physical pain is not the worst part of being tortured. Often the psychological approach is far worse – especially the humiliation.
* * *
She was ashamed of herself.
She’d been sure she could hold out for longer, but as soon as the humiliation began, she felt she caved in almost without resistance. It wasn’t that she wanted to be physically tortured, but she’d been told during her training that the purpose of torture was to get information out of you rather than kill you, and if the pain was too bad the body would shut down, by which they meant become unconscious.
Once she’d been manacled to the wall, the Ferret ordered the guards to undress her, which they began to do. She immediately spoke in English, falling back on her emergency cover story far sooner than planned.
‘My name is Audrey Manson, from Bristol. I was arrested a year ago for committing fraud and was facing a long prison sentence. Then they discovered I spoke fluent French – my mother was French – and made me an offer. If I came to France on a secret mission then the charges against me would be dropped. Otherwise I would go to prison for ten years. I very reluctantly agreed. I must tell you I’m not in favour of this war. I think there should be peace between our countries so we can fight the real enemy, the Soviet Union. I was flown to France and landed by parachute north of Dijon and made my own way into the city. I rented a room near the station and was told to go to Parc Darcy, where someone would give me a package and instructions on what to do next.’
The Ferret looked as if he was unsure what to make of her. He hesitated, and then went to his desk, where he made notes on a sheet of paper. The only parts of her story that were true were that she was from Bristol and that her mother was French. She thought that was what they would concentrate on. She would tell them her mother was from Nice; it would take them a few days to check that out. The city was still in chaos apparently after the Italians had left it.
‘I don’t believe a word.’ He was lounging back in his chair, his feet on the desk. He continued to stare at her as he lit a cigarette. ‘Do you know how much we pay for information about the resistance?’
She shook her head.
‘It depends on the quality of the information, of course, but for a British agent we pay up to one hundred thousand francs. We paid a bit less for you. We know you landed by Lysander near Chaumont around three weeks ago and made your way to Auxerre before arriving here a week ago. You’re helping to run the British circuit operating in the area. The British, I can assure you, don’t send over thieves, however good their French is.’
She was sure the Captain was the only person who knew all that information, so she decided to tell them about him, embellishing considerably to imply he couldn’t be trusted by anyone. She even went off at a tangent about how he had been a bank robber in Lyons – she had no idea where that came from, but she hoped it sounded plausible: Lyons was after all a centre of resistance activity. She described the stuffy attic near Dijon-Ville station and told them she’d been trained at a country house near a town called Harpenden in Hertfordshire, going to great lengths to describe it, right down to a damp basement and an extensive herb garden. The house had been used by the SOE and closed the previous month after a security breach, and she’d been advised to tell them about it so she knew she was on safe ground. As for the radio operator, she wasn’t sure what to say. It wouldn’t be credible to deny his existence, so she told them he was Belgian, from Liège, she understood, and she had no idea how to contact him because he was always the one to find her. He had bad hygiene, she added, and a poor sense of humour.
From that point on it was a series of horrendous events, one after another. The Ferret laughed and told her he didn’t believe a word and announced he’d now lost patience with her, at which point he himself removed the rest of her clothing, which was humiliating enough, but then the cell filled with a dozen or so men who’d clearly been invited in to have a look, and they laughed and leered at her, a couple of them pawing her as if she were at a livestock market.
When they left, it was just her and the Ferret. He said she had one last opportunity to tell him the truth, and she did try to, but she found herself unable to speak, such was her state of shock. Her lips moved, but no words came out of them. She would have told him anything he wanted to know; she’d even have betrayed Nicholas. If only she’d had the words.
What happened next was too dreadful to recount, but when it was over, she lay on the cell floor in a pool of blood and tried to speak, anxious to tell him everything in case he was minded to start again: Major Lean, the man called Stephens, the woodsman’s cottage near Montbard, Hervé, otherwise known as Kenneth, the village of Fauverney. She couldn’t take any more.
She must have drifted into unconsciousness, and was woken by shouting in the corridor. It was in German, and by the sounds of it someone was telling her interrogator off. Soon after that, she heard two gendarmes speaking. He had a real go at le furet, told him it wasn’t his job to kill prisoners!
A doctor came to see her that night and said she needed to be in hospital. She was taken on a stretcher to Dijon prison on rue d’Auxonne, where there was a rudimentary infirmary. She was aware of little for the next day or so, but when she came round, an orderly told her she was lucky to be alive.
Le furet has such a terrible reputation… Apparently you told him nothing and he got even angrier than usual. Take this medicine and pretend to be unconscious. With some luck they’ll take you to Fort d’Hauteville.
‘What’s that?’
It’s a prison just outside the city and they have a proper hospital there. After that they’ll take you to one of their camps… not nice places, but at least you’ll be away from le furet.
The orderly returned the next day, whispering urgently as he cleaned the floor around her bed.
They’ve arrested so many résistants… now they’re looking for the rest. They found an Englishman down in Fauverne… Apparently he managed to get a message out and destroy his transmitter and then burn all his code pads before killing himself. So brave…
* * *
The following night, she woke with a start: in the gloom she made out a man in a large coat standing silently at the foot of her bed, arms folded. She asked in French who was there, and when a nurse turned a light on, she saw it was the Ferret.
‘No one,’ he hissed, ‘gets the better of me.’ He snapped his fingers and two orderlies appeared with a stretcher, which she was bundled onto. Pain seared through her body and she felt the bleeding start again. She was carried into the prison yard, where a warder stopped them. F
rom his uniform he looked quite senior.
‘Not here, sir, please not inside the prison.’
‘Who says?’
‘There’ll have to be an inquiry.’ He was wringing his hands.
‘Very well.’ The Ferret snapped at the orderlies: ‘Take her outside and put her on the pavement.’
Her main regret was not having written to Nicholas. She’d thought about that in the hospital, but was too weak, and also worried what would happen to him if they found the letter. It was agony when the orderlies dumped the stretcher on the pavement before hurrying away. She watched as the Ferret removed a revolver with a long barrel from his coat and pointed it at her. It was a strange way to end one’s life, she thought, lying on a wet pavement in a foreign country hoping the man who was about to kill would hurry up.
An annoyance, as her mother would have said.
Un dérangement.
Chapter 2
Nazi-Occupied Netherlands, May 1944
Het ongeluk was how the work of the Dutch section of the SOE was described around Baker Street.
Het ongeluk – the disaster.
In fact by late 1943, some senior officers in the Special Operations Executive were of the view that to describe N Section as a disaster was a serious understatement. It was less a disaster, more like a catastrophe.