by Alex Gerlis
De catastrophe.
And they had good reason for forming this opinion. Over an eighteen-month period, the SOE network in the Netherlands had been so thoroughly penetrated that every agent parachuted into the country – more than fifty of them – had been captured. By late 1943, operations there had been suspended.
It took the SOE until the spring of 1944 to work out the extent to which its activities in the Netherlands had been compromised. They realised that the Germans had discovered all the British codes and ciphers, and that N Section radio operators in London had inexplicably failed to pick up a series of secret security checks in the radio transmissions of captured agents.
But by April 1944, the SOE was satisfied that matters had been rectified and they could once again resume operations in the Netherlands. They were still wary, though, so much so that SOE headquarters decided to send in an agent of which N Section was unaware.
They’d found Peter Dean by chance. When he’d tried to enlist in the Royal Navy, he’d mentioned in passing to a recruiting officer that he was born in the Netherlands and spoke fluent Dutch. His details ended up with MI6, who passed them on to the SOE – though fortunately not its Dutch section.
Peter Dean’s Dutch name was Pieter de Vries. He was originally from Rotterdam but had lived in England since his family had emigrated when he was ten. Despite his age – he was now fifty-one – he turned out to be good agent material: an intelligent man, physically fit and he passed all the rigorous security checks. They decided he should use his original name and place of birth: Rotterdam had been so badly bombed that they were able to give him a home address in a street that no longer existed.
Pieter de Vries travelled across the North Sea by trawler to a rendezvous point just north of the West Frisian Islands, where he transferred to a Dutch trawler that took him on to the port of Harlingen, from where a trusted resistance cell transported him to Enschede in the south of the country, close to the German border.
There was a resistance cell in the city that had survived because London had managed to suspend its activities just in time. Now they wanted to revive it and gather what intelligence they could from the area. Pieter de Vries arrived in Enschede with instructions to meet up with the leader of the group, who went by the code name Julius.
Julius turned out to be Frieda Mooren, a resourceful woman in her early twenties, and for a few weeks the group flourished. They amassed intelligence from across the border on all the transport links in the area, and particularly on the airfield, which was a target for the RAF.
De Vries was adamant the group should be highly disciplined. Its members were to keep a low profile, lead their lives as normal and do nothing to draw attention to them. They all adhered to this, apart from one member: a retired schoolteacher called Johannes, who cycled round the city in the same shabby suit whatever the weather. Johannes had a neighbour, a man who openly collaborated with the occupiers and was widely believed to have betrayed a Jewish family hiding in the town. For over a year Johannes had developed a seething hatred of this man but was powerless to do anything about it. Now the group was becoming active once more, he saw his opportunity.
De Vries was unaware of this. In fact he was so satisfied with the group that he sent a message to London informing the SOE that they were ready to move on to the next stage of their operation.
Two important railway lines passed through Enschede: one to the west that led to Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, and a separate line going east into Germany, both lines vital to the German war effort. De Vries’s instructions were to blow up both lines simultaneously.
The RAF dropped a consignment of weapons and explosives in Overijssel, to the north of Enschede, and de Vries started to prepare the team. The arms drop had included a dozen handguns – Spanish Llama pistols – and he gave one to each member of the group.
The night before the planned sabotage, disaster struck. As far as de Vries could gather, Johannes had gone round to the collaborator’s house and shot him with the pistol he’d just been given. The collaborator’s wife had managed to raise the alarm, and Johannes was arrested. It didn’t take the local Gestapo very long to break him, and within hours of the shooting they’d begun to round up other members of the group. One person they failed to find, however, was Frieda Mooren. She’d managed to slip out the back of her house and had gone straight round to where de Vries was living. They left immediately and went to the farm just outside Enschede where they’d stored the explosives.
The word from the city was that the hunt for the two of them was gathering pace: extra troops had been drafted in, along with a senior Gestapo officer from Amsterdam. They decided to attempt to blow up the railway line heading west. After that, they’d go north, to Amsterdam.
Because of the concentration of troops searching for them in the area, de Vries decided to sabotage the railway line further away from Enschede, close to Tusveld, north-west of the city. The farmer drove them to the area one morning on his way to market, stopping outside a small wood for the two of them to climb out of the back of his truck. They hid in the trees until the very early hours of the morning, when darkness wrapped itself around the countryside and not a sound was to be heard. De Vries whispered to Frieda that it was time to move, and began to crawl out of the undergrowth where they were hiding. She placed a hand on his back to stop him.
‘Something’s not right.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Listen.’
‘I can’t hear a thing.’
‘Exactly. It’s unusual to hear nothing in the countryside: this is too quiet.’
They waited another half-hour before de Vries said it had been long enough and they needed to move. Half walking, half running in a crouched position, they hurried out of the woods and across the field leading to the railway line. They were just feet from the bank dropping down to the line when night turned to day, and when their eyes finally adjusted to the searchlights trained on them, the field was swarming with troops emerging from the hedgerow.
Both de Vries and Frieda sank to their knees and held their hands high above their heads. A young man in a Gestapo regulation trench coat had just climbed up from the railway line and was walking towards them, a pleasant smile on his face and his hand outstretched as if greeting old friends. He shouted in German for the pair to be separated and followed de Vries as he was dragged to a waiting truck.
‘What kept you? We’ve been waiting so long – I’m chilled to the bone!’ He smiled pleasantly once more and threw back his head, his blonde hair falling into place. He spoke surprisingly good Dutch. De Vries didn’t reply, trying to work out who could have betrayed them. He wondered about the farmer.
‘We are going to Amsterdam,’ the German said, rubbing his hands together as if he was looking forward to the outing. ‘What is your name?’
De Vries said nothing, pursing his lips in case he uttered anything involuntarily. The German shrugged as if it didn’t terribly matter.
‘Ah well, there’ll be plenty of time for you to tell me when we get there, eh? I’ve not introduced myself, have I?’
Another smile as he edged closer to de Vries, who picked up a strong smell of cologne. ‘I’m known as das Frettchen. Do you understand German?’
De Vries shook his head.
‘In Dutch, it’s de fret, but I don’t know if you prefer English. It translates as the Ferret.’
* * *
In the normal course of events the Ferret would have been punished after managing to kill the British agent in Dijon the previous November without extracting any useful intelligence from her. He’d ignored instructions to bring her back to Paris, where there were plenty of people at 84 Avenue Foch perfectly capable of doing the job for him.
It was his last chance: his combination of an explosive temper and sheer incompetence was not ideal for the Gestapo, which liked to pride itself on efficiency and discipline. The Ferret had arrived in Paris with a bad reputation, and it never improved. His bosses
were also bothered by what was described to them as ‘psychopathic sexual behaviour’. It wasn’t that they cared about the well-being of French citizens, but they were concerned when such behaviour impeded his ability to function effectively.
Of course the Ferret would never have been in Paris in the first place had it not been for the influence of his father, a senior party official who was part of what was known as the Österreichisches Clique – the Austrian clique.
After the death of the British agent in Dijon, the Ferret was banished from Paris. His superiors there rather hoped he’d be sent to the east, where he’d do less damage and might even learn a lesson or two. He was sent east, but only as far as Amsterdam, thanks to his father’s intervention with two more members of the Österreichisches Clique: Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who as Reichskommissar was effectively the ruler of the Netherlands; and Obergruppenführer Christian Winkler, who ran the Gestapo there.
For a while the Ferret behaved. He spent most of his time keeping his head down in the Gestapo headquarters on Euterpestraat, just about smart enough to realise that a period of avoiding trouble was advisable. Out of hours was a different matter, when he frequented the brothels around the canals, always looking for the youngest prostitutes and always doing his best to avoid paying.
By the end of April, he was told that he needed to impress with some cases of his own. He hadn’t broken any Dutch resistance cells yet, or caught any British agents. Perhaps he’d like to get a move on. So when he heard about a resistance member being arrested in Enschede after trying to kill his neighbour, he headed straight down there and much to the chagrin of the local Gestapo took over the interrogation.
He seem to be vindicated, as the elderly schoolteacher called Johannes broke down under torture and gave the names of the other members of the group, even revealing that they’d recently been joined by a British agent. He also admitted – though he only revealed this minutes before his death in unimaginable agony – that the British agent and the woman called Frieda had explosives and were planning to blow up the railway lines east and west of Enschede.
Once Johannes died, however, it became clear that this pair had gone to ground, and now Amsterdam was on the Ferret’s back: how could he have allowed a prisoner to die before he’d extracted the information they needed?
But then he had a stroke of luck. A farmer was arrested after his truck tried to turn round as it approached one of the many roadblocks round Enschede. There was nothing on the truck, and the farmer’s story about returning from market seemed plausible enough, but evading the roadblock was suspicious and there was no question that the man was particularly nervous. The Ferret insisted on conducting the interrogation himself, and even he had to admit it was hardly the most difficult of tasks. The farmer was clearly not cut out for this: in return for a promise of freedom the Ferret had no intention of keeping, he told them everything: where the British agent and the woman were hiding, and the exact stretch of railway line they intended to sabotage.
And now the Ferret was back in Amsterdam with the two prisoners in cells in the basement on Euterpestraat. It was suggested that a more experienced officer should conduct the interrogations, but he was having none of it, appealing directly to Obergruppenführer Winkler: he’d sorted out the mess in Enschede, he’d been responsible for capturing the group and stopping the sabotage; he’d be the man to do the questioning.
* * *
His first mistake had been to underestimate the young woman and he certainly didn’t believe Johannes’ claim that she was the leader of the cell, giving little credence to the possibility that a seemingly meek young woman could be in charge of such a group. His interrogation got nowhere. She revealed nothing and he couldn’t work out whether this was because she knew nothing or was unexpectedly obdurate.
His senior officer suggested they should at least allow the Gestapo’s most experienced interrogator in Amsterdam to have a session with her, and as Obergruppenführer Winkler was away, the Ferret felt he wasn’t in a position to refuse. He did think about telephoning his father in Berlin and asking him to speak with Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart in The Hague, but he didn’t want to try his father’s patience, which even he recognised was wearing thin.
He decided to sort things out himself before this could happen. He went back to Euterpestraat at midnight and ordered the guards to bring the woman to the man’s cell. There he held a pistol to her head and forced her to kneel in front of de Vries, who was ordered to reveal everything. She started sobbing and shook her head. When the Ferret pulled the trigger, she moved so the first shot only grazed her skull. He was so angry it took him another three shots to finish her off.
Only then did he realise that the British agent was slumped in the chair he’d been strapped into. When he pulled his head back, it was evident something was wrong: the man had turned grey and wasn’t breathing. The medic confirmed he was dead.
When Obergruppenführer Winkler returned to Amsterdam, he found it hard to conceal his anger.
‘I see you managed to kill two birds with one stone?’
The Ferret muttered something about the woman trying to escape, and the Obergruppenführer told him to shut up. ‘I’ve spoken with your father: you’re being moved again. Fortunately you’ll be many hundreds of miles from here.’
The Ferret stared at the ground. He felt tears well in his eyes and his throat tighten. They’d send him to the east. He’d only been trying to do his best. He bit his lip so hard it started to bleed.
Chapter 3
Germany, March 1945
The young SS officer was waiting in the doorway of Wolfgang Steiner’s outer office, unsure exactly where he should stand. It was lunchtime, which had traditionally been a quiet period of the day, but that had been when life was normal, which it was now anything but. Indeed, the very notion that people would take a lunch break was a fanciful one: for a start, Wilhelmstrasse had been so badly bombed there was nowhere to go, and then there was the added complication of there being precious little to eat.
Steiner beckoned the officer in. He was an Obersturmführer and seemed nervous, which was also something new: SS officers, even younger and more junior ones, had always manifested a confidence bordering on arrogance, even when dealing with an official as senior as Wolfgang Steiner. But this Obersturmführer forgot to greet him with the Heil Hitler salute as he entered, and apologised profusely. As he moved in front of Steiner, the light fell on the man’s face, one side of which was badly scarred. Steiner wasn’t surprised; there were very few fit SS officers of that age and rank in Berlin. The city was being run by old men and invalids.
‘What is it?’
The young officer saluted again. ‘I have come straight from the Führerbunker, sir.’
Steiner nodded and waited for the man to continue. When he turned his head to reveal the part that wasn’t burnt, he looked younger than Steiner’s own son.
‘Yes, and?’
‘I have a message for you, sir, from the Reichsleiter.’
Wolfgang Steiner felt a sensation in his stomach. Although he got on well enough with Martin Bormann, he was always nervous about any dealings with Hitler’s deputy. For a couple of years they’d worked very closely in the Nazi Party headquarters – Bormann’s office had been just across the corridor from his – but for the past few months Bormann had spent most of his time in Hitler’s bunker, and Steiner hadn’t heard from him in a while. The rumours were that Bormann was more or less running the country.
‘Perhaps you’d like to give me this message?’ He held out his hand.
‘There is no letter, sir: a car will collect you from the front of this building at nine o’clock tonight and take you to a meeting with the Reichsleiter. He asks that no mention is made of this to anyone.’
Even allowing for his propensity to worry, Wolfgang Steiner realised this sounded ominous. Rather typically, too, he was bothered about a minor detail. ‘How will I know which car?’
‘I will find you, sir. Heil H
itler!’
* * *
Wolfgang Steiner’s secretary had brought him a plate of herring and a few slices of proper black bread, but he had no appetite that afternoon. He picked at the bread and sipped some water and wondered about having a schnapps or two but decided against it because these days once he started he’d never stop, and Bormann wouldn’t appreciate him turning up in any kind of drunken state.
He did think about whether he should leave the city – it was over seven hours, after all, before the car would be coming for him – but quickly decided against it. His plan had been carefully constructed and he wasn’t ready yet. It would all be a rush and something was bound to go wrong. And he knew how shrewd Bormann was: he had informants and confidants throughout the Parteikanzlei. He wasn’t even sure about his own secretary; she fussed over him unnecessarily, always wanted to know what he was up to and where he was going.
By the middle of the afternoon, he’d decided that if he was in trouble, then Bormann would hardly have left him alone in the Party headquarters; he’d have been pulled in straight away. But on the other hand – there was always an ‘on the other hand’ with Wolfgang Steiner – it was a rather formal summons. He and Bormann were on first-name terms after all, and Bormann was in the habit of sending hand-written notes. Using an SS officer as a messenger seemed to be making a point.
He’d been so careful and so meticulous he’d be amazed if Bormann had any evidence against him. As nine o’clock approached, a strange calm fell over him. Whatever was going to happen would happen, he told himself. Berlin would fall soon anyway, so it wasn’t as if the future looked especially bright. His only concern was Friedrich: his son wouldn’t cope.
Always his only concern: Friedrich.
The Obersturmführer was waiting in the reception area and led him to a black Daimler waiting with its engine running in front of the building on Wilhelmstrasse. Steiner was relieved to see that the curtains in the car weren’t drawn, and nor was there any kind of escort other than the officer and the driver, who greeted him with a ‘sir’, which boded well.