by Alex Gerlis
‘When was that?’
‘Hard to say, but perhaps towards the end of 1943 – maybe early 1944. I used to have to go into that office quite often, because I work in the finance department and Girard often needed help sorting things out to do with money. Because I was always looking to gather intelligence, I pretended to be friendly with him. One day he was complaining about the Ferret, who’d apparently taken a large sum from the cash box, and Girard had to find a way of accounting for it. He said this man was making his life very difficult; he was constantly creating problems and didn’t do what he was told. He said he couldn’t do much about it, as the Ferret’s father was an important official in Berlin. When I asked him what his real name was, he said he couldn’t tell me – he said he’d be in trouble if he did.’
‘So Charles Girard knows the Ferret’s real identity?’
Irène nodded and pulled her raincoat tight round her.
‘And does the name Anna Lefebvre mean anything to you? Apparently she worked for the Gestapo at rue de Saussaies, their headquarters. There seems to be some connection between her and Girard.’
‘She was there sometimes. I think she may have had some type of affair with Girard: there were rumours she’d had an abortion because of him. Later on, Girard became far more active – as a Gestapo agent. He seemed especially interested in communists; it was as if he was obsessed with them – far more than with Jews actually, which was unusual. He put all his energy into finding them – he’d come across an old list of party members from the 15th arrondissement, and he spent hours trying to track them down and arrest them. The worst thing he did was arrest the parents of one of the senior party members who’d fled to Moscow before the war. As I understand it, the parents weren’t even communists, but Girard shot the father and then had the mother sent to Auschwitz. He kept this behaviour up until the middle of June last year – then, about a week after Normandy, he disappeared.’
‘What – altogether?’
Irène shrugged, and then waited as an elderly couple shuffled past the chapel towards the front of the church.
‘Certainly from the mairie, but he may have gone to work at Avenue Foch or rue de Saussaies. He was certainly in Paris at the start of 1944.’
‘How can you be sure of this?’
‘My aunt runs a bar on rue de Vignes, on the right bank of the Seine, and sometimes I help her out there. I was working there on New Year’s Eve at the start of 1944 and to my horror, I noticed he was there with a group of friends and they were all speaking an odd German dialect. When I asked my aunt about them, she told me they were Alsatians; she said they behaved like dogs too. People from Alsace can appear to be both French and German at the same time – you are no doubt aware it’s on the German border and many of its residents would see themselves as German rather than French, which would explain much about Girard.
‘I didn’t want him to see me there, so I asked her if I could work in the kitchen for the rest of the shift. According to my aunt, his real name is Alphonse Schweitzer. I think he must have felt safe because the name Girard was his collaborator identity, if you see what I mean. No one would have realised that Schweitzer and Girard were one and the same.’
‘If only we knew where is now.’
‘Aha – I can tell you! When the Communist Party leaders returned from Moscow, I told the man whose parents had been caught by Schweitzer exactly what had happened, and he was put on a wanted list. It took the FTP a while to find him, but I’m told they eventually tracked him down a few months ago in Colmar, which is a city in Alsace, on the border with Germany. They handed him over to the Russians.’
‘Why to the Russians?’
‘They’re good communists.’
‘And where is he now?’
‘Berlin. During the war, Alsace was annexed into the German Reich, so the Russians claimed that the proper course of action was to try him in Berlin.’
Prince and Hanne looked at each other and nodded. ‘If we go to Berlin, we can question him and find out the true identity of the Ferret,’ said Prince.
‘If Schweitzer’s still alive,’ said Irène. ‘Last month there was a report about his trial on the front page of L’Humanité: they’d sentenced him to death!’
Chapter 10
London and Berlin, September 1945
‘Berlin, you say?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Tom Gilbey shook his head and didn’t look nearly as pleased as Prince and Hanne did sitting in front of him. Shafts of late-morning sunlight caught their faces, enhancing their bright demeanour.
‘It’s always complicated, isn’t it? This is what I meant when I said how Europe is changing so fast and we don’t appear to be keeping up with whatever’s going on. I rather hoped that once the bloody war ended, life would be somewhat more straightforward, but instead it feels as if the rules have suddenly changed in the middle of a game. Now we have the Soviets to worry about, and Europe is still teeming with Nazis. It’s like the game’s over and now we’re into extra time. We had a games master at school who used to do that: kept adding on time to a match if his house was losing.’
He paused and held up his hand in apology, aware that he’d been rambling. He pushed his reading glasses down from his forehead and once again scanned the report they’d submitted on their return from Paris the previous day.
‘So it all seems to hinge on what this Irène woman says, eh? Seems rather tenuous, if you ask me.’
‘Marguerite checked her out and she is genuine. She was a member of a communist resistance group operating in and around the 15th, and supplied valuable intelligence from inside the mairie. Her husband was deported to Auschwitz and murdered there. Marguerite couldn’t find anyone who had a bad word to say about her, which is saying something in Paris.’
‘There is no question she’s telling the truth.’ Hanne had rested her hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Remember I spent more than two years in a concentration camp. There you have to rely absolutely on your instincts as to who you can trust and who you can’t. You learn to spot the stooges and know who’s telling the truth and who’s lying, and more to the point, you also learn to know when people are telling the truth for good reasons but exaggerating, telling you what they think you want to hear. Irène was genuine.’
‘Let me get this straight then – and you’ll no doubt correct me if I get something tangled up along the way. Wilson has a contact in the resistance…’
‘Marguerite.’
‘…yes, yes… who found there was a woman in Fresnes prison called Anna Lefebvre who told you that a chap going by the name Charles Girard might know the identity of the Ferret. So you visited the mairie and—’
‘It’s all there in the report, sir. We met Irène and she told us Girard’s real name is Alphonse Schweitzer and he knows the real identity of the Ferret.’
‘Yes, thank you, Prince, I can read, though I’m not convinced these damn spectacles help. And Schweitzer is a guest of the Soviets in Berlin.’
‘Yes, sir, if he’s not been executed yet.’
‘I’m still not clear why he allowed anyone in Paris to know his real identity.’
‘Nor are we, sir, but he’d obviously been leading a double life for some time, and perhaps he became a bit too confident.’
‘I think,’ said Hanne, ‘that we need to go to Berlin – it’s urgent we find Schweitzer before he’s executed.’
‘Well I agree that’s preferable to seeing him after he’s executed, but I’m not sure we can have you two gallivanting all over Europe, can we? It’s not as if you’re on the Grand Tour. We have liaison chaps in Berlin who can take this up.’
‘With respect, sir, I’m not sure how good an idea that is.’
‘Really, Prince?’
‘I know Berlin, and—’
‘Under the Nazis.’
‘But that’s the point, sir, not just under the Nazis. On my last mission, when I was working for Hugh Harper, I was in Berlin after the Red Army captured it. I
know my way around and I have an excellent contact there with whom I have a good relationship. He could be of enormous help. If it wasn’t for him, I doubt I’d have found Hanne alive.’
‘And who is this contact?’
‘Iosif Leonid Gurevich,’ said Prince, as if he was announcing the man’s arrival. ‘He’s a senior officer in the NKGB, which is their security organisation, and…’
‘I do what the NKGB is, thank you, Prince.’
‘…and he’s a podpolkovnik, which is like our lieutenant colonel rank.’
Gilbey looked impressed.
‘And of course, sir, I did file a contact report when I returned.’
‘Naturally.’
‘So if I – we – can get over to Berlin as soon as possible?’
‘We’ll need to see how—’
‘The RAF have taken over an airbase at Gatow in the south-west of the city, sir. I’ve already made some calls, and we can get on a flight there first thing in the morning if you approve it now.’
‘Both of you?’
‘Yes, both of us,’ Hanne said. ‘My German’s far better than Richard’s.’
‘Very well then. Let’s hope this isn’t going to be something I end up regretting, eh?’
* * *
The Dakota of RAF Transport Command left RAF Northolt at seven in the morning, landing at RAF Gatow in Berlin nearly four hours later. A tall man wearing a trilby and a long gabardine raincoat was waiting for them at the bottom of the aircraft steps. Hanne gripped Prince’s hand as they descended.
‘Is that the man?’
‘I imagine so.’
‘He looks like Gestapo.’
‘I doubt Gilbey’s employing former Gestapo officers, but we’ll soon find out.’
The man was called Kenneth Bemrose and was the best Gilbey could find at such short notice. He wasn’t MI6, but he had some kind of civilian role in the British Liaison Office, and most importantly he had security clearance. Almost as importantly – certainly as far as Prince was concerned – he also had use of a car, a khaki-coloured Humber Snipe with Union Jacks painted on the two front doors. Bemrose sounded rather put out when he explained he’d not been able to get hold of a driver so would be doing the honours himself, as he put it.
‘Here are your papers.’ He handed them a large brown envelope. ‘Not much, I’m afraid, but hopefully enough to get you through the checkpoints. They’ll impress our side more than theirs, but then that’s always the case. Where is it you want to go?’
‘Behrenstrasse. I’ll tell you which building once we’re there.’
‘I’m not terribly good at finding my way round the Soviet sector.’
Prince said not to worry, he’d be able to navigate.
They crossed the border at Potsdamer Platz, where the NKVD Border Guards officer in charge seemed unimpressed with their papers. He explained very slowly in basic German that it was most unusual to let people across if it was not a routine visit or if they didn’t have an appointment. He shook his head, and Bemrose muttered something about having told them so and whistled something jolly from a musical.
Hanne then spoke in Russian: it wasn’t very fluent, with a lot of pauses and gesticulating, but she smiled as she spoke and when the officer – clearly impressed – asked her something, Prince distinctly heard the word ‘Ravensbrück’ in her reply.
She turned to him. ‘Remind me of the name of the man we’re hoping to see?’
‘Iosif Leonid Gurevich, Podpolkovnik Gurevich: NKGB. We want to go to his office on Behrenstrasse.’
The officer straightened up and shouted orders to his men, and the barrier was raised.
‘I didn’t know you spoke Russian?’
‘We had Russian prisoners at the camp; I picked up a few words and the odd phrase from them. He seemed impressed when you mentioned Iosif.’
‘Let’s hope he’s there.’
Since his last visit in June, the NKGB headquarters had been smartened up. Bemrose seemed annoyed when Prince told him to wait outside. They explained who they wanted to see and were shown to some seats, but less than five minutes later, there was a shout of joy and Prince looked up to see Iosif Gurevich bounding across the entrance hall towards them. The Russian grabbed him by the shoulders to look at him properly, and then enveloped him in a warm embrace, slapping him on the shoulder when he eventually released him. As he did so, he spotted Hanne.
‘Is this really you?’
She promised him it was, and tears streamed down his face. He kissed her on both cheeks and told her he’d done many good things in the war – along with one or two bad things, of course – but helping find her was undoubtedly the best.
‘Please, come with me. I imagine you want some favour?’
‘Why would that be the case, Iosif?’
‘Because why else would you come to this shithole?’
* * *
Iosif Leonid Gurevich occupied the same office where Prince had first met him, but he had some news, which he recounted with an air of considerable pride.
‘I’ve been promoted, my friends.’
‘Congratulations – to what?’
‘I’m now a commissar – a one-star commissar,’ he said, tapping the gold epaulettes on his green uniform.
‘Which means you’re a…’
‘A general! It was a big promotion, I didn’t expect it. They’re very pleased with how things have gone in Berlin. There have been some problems with discipline among our troops here and I’ve been effective in dealing with it; I seem to be able to get my way with you British especially – the Americans too. The French are more difficult, but… Imagine, after everything, a Jewish general in charge here in Berlin!’
The three of them laughed and Gurevich opened a bottle of German brandy and handed it round. They toasted his promotion, followed by a toast to peace between their nations, and when they told him they were now married, he poured more brandy and toasted that before going over to a wall piled high with boxes, oil paintings stacked alongside them.
‘Please, you must choose a wedding present.’
Eventually they got down to business. Speaking in German but dropping in the occasional word or phrase in Russian, Hanne explained everything. When she’d finished, the Russian nodded gravely and glanced at the notes he’d been making. ‘So this Alphonse Schweitzer is a prisoner of ours?’
‘Have you not come across him?’
‘Ha! Do you know how many Nazis we have in custody – thousands of them, literally thousands. We’re running out of prison space. If I’m honest with you, not all of those we’ve captured have gone through the system, so to speak. Many of them have been dealt with in a summary manner, much as they treated our troops they took prisoner. We’re processing the rest as fast as we can and sending most of them to camps in Siberia, so I wouldn’t know about an individual such as this. You’re certain he’s in Berlin?’
‘Yes.’
‘And remind me where he was arrested?’
‘Colmar – it’s a French city in Alsace, but it was annexed into the Third Reich.’
Gurevich nodded. ‘Very well then: give me an hour and I will have some information. You say you have a driver waiting for you?’
‘He’s outside.’
‘Send him away: I’ll look after you. I’ll tell my aide to get you something to eat.’
* * *
Bemrose was dozing in the Humber when Prince tapped on the window. He seemed annoyed at being woken up, and even more so to be told he was no longer needed. He said he was going to tell Mr Gilbey that he wasn’t a chauffeur.
An hour later, Hanne and Prince were back in Gurevich’s office.
‘I’ve found him!’
‘Alphonse Schweitzer?’
The Russian nodded and looked pleased with himself as he opened a box of cigars and clamped one between his teeth. ‘Being a commissar unlocks many doors. I just have to ask a question and people fall over themselves to answer it. He’s in Hohenschönhausen.’
‘Here in Berlin – in Lichtenberg, to the east of Mitte. We’ve constructed a large prison camp there where we process prisoners before they’re sent to the Soviet Union. It also acts as a prison for people convicted here. Schweitzer faced a People’s Tribunal last month and was found guilty of being a Nazi agent in occupied France and of pursuing a campaign of vengeance against comrades from the French Communist Party and their families. He was sentenced to death.’
‘And did he plead guilty?’
‘Our People’s Tribunals perhaps work in a different way from your courts, my friend. He made a statement, and from what I understand, he said he was forced to work for the Gestapo. He claims he helped people, but… we had evidence, including that of the woman you mentioned.’
‘Irène?’
‘That’s right. Look, I only know this from a telephone conversation. We will go now to Hohenschönhausen.’
* * *
They drove north through Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg and then along Landsberger Allee into Lichtenberg. It was a slow journey: whereas Mitte was largely deserted and the roads were more or less clear, it was a very different matter once they left the centre. From then on the roads and pavements were still littered with rubble and dotted with potholes and bomb craters, and at times it was impossible to get through and they had to try another route. They were both shocked, not so much by the devastation around them but more by the atmosphere and the way the population moved around.
Despite the warm weather, most people were wearing coats and hats, many with blankets round their shoulders as they shuffled along. They looked nervous, doing their best to avoid the ubiquitous Red Army troops as they carried battered cases or bags, many pulling carts or pushing prams loaded with possessions. From almost every ruined building – and most of the buildings were damaged in one way or another – plumes of smokes rose high into the sky. On the pavement, people were cooking on piles of rubble, while others waited in long queues at what appeared to be makeshift shops selling a few vegetables with the odd tin here and there – usually little more than planks of wood balanced on chairs serving as a counter.