by John Lodwick
His presence there excited no suspicion: on one day he would call to arrange some difficulty concerning his army allowances, on the second to complain that the shoulder-padding of a French suit issued to him was excessive, on the third to present a supplement to the report of his escape.
Unnoticed, he prowled the long uncarpeted passages, sat in the waiting rooms and there, shyly admiring, engaged in coy conversation men who, with folders outspread upon their knees, would yet spare time to listen.
In this work—which was certainly most dangerous—Sluys was served at once by luck and by his own natural audacity. The trained agent, uncommunicative at normal times, is most liable to indiscretion upon the eve of his operational departure. Even then, of course, he will reveal nothing of the first importance, but emotional disturbance, the too long suppressed desire to boast and the craving for friendship may draw from him in those last hours, through tactful enquiry, his field name, for example, and a general indication of the area to which he is going.
Sluys, well placed to enquire, and even better placed to win confidence, was able to secure seven such names; including three of quite exceptional importance. His memory for faces being excellent, he now needed only an operation which would take him back to France.
Nor was this slow in forthcoming: upon several occasions, notably at the time of the North African landings, it had been thought in London that the Germans might attempt their long-prepared invasion of Spain. Plans had been laid . . . plans involving the despatch of a single sabotage group to wreck railway lines leading south from Bordeaux, Agen and Toulouse. The job was the sweeter, the more worth while of performance, because the railway lines in question were electrified.
The derailment of a train, and the destruction of even a dozen electrical pylons on either side of it, might well hold up traffic for a week.
At the time of which we are writing, however, the totality of France lay under enemy occupation, an offensive was in progress against Rome, while, in the West, the invasion seemed imminent. The question of a breach of Spanish neutrality by the Germans no longer arose.
Nevertheless, the authorities, having had their plan in the pending file for so long, decided, at this late juncture, to bring it out . . . perhaps because they desired to see how it would work, perhaps because it represented an excellent training exercise for inexperienced men, of whom greater things would soon be required.
The operation involved less than normal risks to the personnel involved, for all three objectives chosen lay close to the Spanish front, while the surrounding countryside of Landes and Basses-Pyrénées was thickly wooded, confused of contour, and most difficult to search. Also, French resistance in that area was weak, and in need of encouragement.
Rumbold, with seven companions, dropped near Morcenx, between Labouheyre and Dax on the Bordeaux-Bayonne line. Of the seven men who went with him only one—Sluys—possessed previous experience, and he was obliged to leave the party immediately, having been chosen to execute a subsidiary operation between Mont-de-Marsan and Orthez. This selection, very fortunate for Sluys, since it enabled him to proceed without hindrance to the nearest German Headquarters, resulted in the surprise and near extermination of the main party before their attack had been made.
Lying up in pine woods not far from the railway line, they were surrounded by a company of Field Gendarmerie, with armoured cars and dogs. Five men were killed outright. Rumbold, wounded in the hip by a grenade burst, survived to be taken by his captors to Dax.
Here he was confronted with Sluys: a dramatic scene, in its way, but of the circumstances of which neither, perhaps, made full advantage.
“So your career with us is over, I take it?” said Rumbold, after formal evidence of identification had been taken.
“It is,” replied Sluys. “And I am sorry it had to involve you, Rumbold. I’m genuinely sorry about that.”
“Well, I must say I admire your nerve,” said Rumbold. “How much do you get paid, if the question is not indelicate?”
“I have not yet been paid at all,” said Sluys. “But I shall look into the question when I get back to Paris.”
“And also denounce a number of people, I take it,” said Rumbold. “How many, if you will pardon my curiosity?”
“Oh, not many,” said Sluys. “But one thing leads to another, you know. The labourer is worthy of his hire. As for you, Rumbold, I could make things quite easy for you, if you cared.”
Rumbold replied that he was too old to change his allegiance at that stage of the game.
Sluys said that there was no question of Rumbold being offered alternative employment, but rather . . . thanks to his past kindness to Sluys . . . of his having an easier time in prison, and of escaping the death sentence.
Rumbold remarked that he was glad to hear this, as he was accustomed to a life of comfort, and had no desire to die. This concluded the conversation, which was held in the presence of several German officers. The pair never met again.
Rumbold was taken, under escort, from Dax to Toulouse. On the way, somewhere near Auch, he jumped the train while it was travelling at reduced speed, by the ancient but simple expedient of asking permission to relieve nature, and then flinging open a door and himself out of it, while his escort stood undecided.
Escaping further capture, he made his way slowly up-country towards the mountainous and inaccessible department of the Ardèche. He was without contacts, without money, without food tickets and without identity cards, and for the first few days—until a patriotic doctor gave him lodging—suffered acute pain from the wound in his hip.
Arrived in the Ardèche, Rumbold took refuge in the small town of Lamastre, where he was known, having spent fishing holidays there before the war when an employee of the bank in Paris. Lamastre was unoccupied, and but rarely visited by the enemy. The townspeople were safe, and those of them who might have been inclined to talk intimidated by the presence of a large and successful maquis in the near-by hills.
Rumbold did not join this maquis. He had no further interest in the war, and no desire whatever to reach Spain for the fourth time and certainly none to return to his own country. His wound healed slowly. To the curious he explained that he was a bomber pilot who had been shot down, adding, with rather more truth, that he now considered his nerves unequal to further strain. He gained a living, at first, by serving as a kitchen hand in a hotel. When he had sufficient money put by, he bought forged papers and, moving to Marseilles, embarked upon the career of which some hint has already been given. His fate remained unknown in London, and until he came forward to demand passport facilities it was thought that he had perished with the rest.
For many . . . very many had perished in that last summer before the Liberation. Sluys did his work conscientiously and well. Of the seven men whom he had been able to identify, six were located and captured, their capture leading through the breaking down of cells, the interception of couriers and the neutralisation of radio operators to a degree of a disorganisation of which the Germans had good cause to pride themselves.
Strangely . . . yet not so strangely when one comes to consider his twofold position . . . Sluys remained for a long time unidentified as the root of these disasters. Enlightenment came much later, and, as might be expected, accidentally.
One day, in the early spring of 1944, a young woman who had had the misfortune to be arrested in Paris during an incident outside the Metro Station, Porte-Maillot, while carrying certain documents, was brought into the presence of a very senior German official. The interview was of an exploratory nature, for the documents carried by the young lady, while of a curious and equivocal complexion, were not in themselves absolutely compromising.
Towards the end of the interview, the German official turned suddenly towards a young man in S.S. uniform who had been seated upon the window-sill throughout it, and who, so far, had said not one
word.
“Do you know this lady?” asked the German official.
“No,” replied the young man briefly and—as it was later to turn out—most inadvisedly.
For if the young man did not know the young woman, she at least knew him, having seen him several times in the flat behind Selfridge’s. The young man was Sluys and the young woman, released upon the recommendation of his single negative, was later to return to London: there to expose him.
Sluys, of whose subsequent movements a constant tally was kept, was arrested in Hamburg in the last days of the European war. He was tried by summary court-martial and shot. He died bravely, and to this day his relatives are unaware that he lived other than as a Belgian patriot.
For to Sluys’ credit let it be said that, his choice once made, he never again attempted to get in touch with his English mother.
In this story, confined to bare facts, the motives which inspire men have been most deliberately relegated to a secondary plane. Sluys produced Rumbold as he was later to become . . . and of that dark career we must now again speak.
Three
The train, although theoretically a rapide, made slow time. At Tarascon half an hour was wasted, at Sète another half hour. Rumbold, who had no intention of enduring the tiresome rigmarole of customs examination by night, abandoned his corner seat at Narbonne and booked accommodation in a local hotel. He ate his dinner, drank two glasses of Armagnac, and wandered down by the canal. The evening was very clear. He could discern the Pyrenees and the bald peak of the Prats de Mollo, fifty miles away.
He had stood in this same spot, by the drifting weeds of this canal, nearly four years earlier, upon the occasion of his second clandestine visit to France. Diverted from his normal escape route, he had been sent here to attempt the rescue of a colleague held in Perpignan prison. This colleague, an amateur photographer, demanded that crystals of sulphate of chrome be sent to him concealed in a package of tobacco. With the aid of a pin he would then prick raw a portion of his leg muscle equal in area to the size of a postage stamp, and rub in the chemical. The leg would swell and a sore would develop, indistinguishable in nature from a syphilitic outbreak of the tertiary period. The imprisoned man was the more certain of these facts because he had already escaped once while under remand before the war in Mexico City by the employment of this same subterfuge. On that occasion he had been transferred to the prison hospital, where supervision had been slack, and departure easy. He hoped to be transferred to the prison hospital again now. The hospital was near Narbonne.
Unfortunately, Rumbold had been unable to procure any sulphate of chrome. He had sent copper sulphate instead. The prisoner, dosing himself with this, had observed that his symptoms were less those of counterfeit syphilis than those of genuine leg gangrene. He had died in considerable agony after the emergency amputation of the affected limb.
Rumbold, who had not learnt the reason for the miscarriage of his plan until his return to London, some weeks later, had been shocked.
He gazed at the Pyrenees now, and gazed at them with a certain irony. To-morrow he would pass through Perpignan. From the train he would even see the prison . . . the last prison in France, and the last link with a period of his life which it was Rumbold’s earnest desire to forget.
Yet he knew very well, even in the secret formulation of the wish, that it was impossible of realisation; that he was chained and tied to views and opinions concerning existence which he had not willingly made his own, which had been thrust upon him by circumstance, never to be withdrawn.
His health was good. His liver, his bile ducts, his bowels functioned better than those of most town dwellers. There was no history of hypochondria in his family—what better proof of this than his endurance, when very young, of three years of life as a bank clerk?—nor was he emotionally exercised by religious questions or the fear of hell fire. Tall, well built, even handsome in an austere manner, he had never lacked women, never been obliged to return, by way of compensation, to the habits of his boyhood. Of moral scruples he had few, and of principles no more than those which exercise at Christmas time the minds of men who pass from the nappy to the coffin in the belief that the acquisition of wealth is the sole justification of life.
Yet for some time, for some months now, he had been considering the question of killing himself, restrained from this act, in the last resort, only by a certain latent curiosity, an unwillingness to leave the world without observing the fate which he believed to be imminent for it.
For this reason he was now travelling to Madrid, where memories would sap, to Lisbon, where they would carry by assault the last faculties which he retained for normal human intercourse. The grey horrors of London would achieve his ruin, and step by step he would descend, with aimlessness, lack of purpose and self-loathing his companions, to the level of gibbering imbecility.
“You have no luggage other than this one valise?”
“Nothing.”
“You are carrying neither oils nor spirits, gunpowder, cartridges, percussion caps nor other material of a dangerous nature?”
“Nothing.”
“Then be so good as to go into that room which you see on the right of the corridor.”
Six paces. A knock, a turn of the door handle.
“You have been in Spain before?”
“Yes.”
“Then why is the fact not marked upon your passport?”
“Because it is a new passport.”
“When were you in Spain?”
“During the war.”
“To which war are you referring? There are many wars. There was one here, if you remember.”
“I am referring to the more recent, and more general holocaust.”
The official wetted his finger. He opened the good book and turned the closely printed pages until he came to the letter R.
“What a lot of Rubinsteins you have,” said Rumbold. It was true: a whole column and a half lay devoted to bearers of this inoffensive name.
“You should see the Cohens,” said the official. He wetted his finger, flicked paper, peered.
“Ah, here we are . . . Rumgold. You are a trade unionist, a Marxist.”
“Excuse me, but the name is Rumbold.”
“To be sure, to be sure . . . I apologise. You have not been in the hands of the police but you have passed twice through Spain as an escaped prisoner of war.”
“Three times, to be precise. On the last occasion I changed my name.”
“You should have changed it the second time. Look at the trouble you put us to: there are no less than four lines about you.”
“It was not for me to draw attention to the situation.”
“Well, this time be more circumspect. In Madrid you must report to the Police Prefecture. You will not be permitted to leave Spain until you have done so. You understand?”
“I understand perfectly.”
Rumbold hired a porter and walked down the platform. There were not many travellers, and very few indeed who had booked first-class seats. Apart from two Civil Guards, who were whispering in a corner, Rumbold had an entire pullman coach to himself. He threw his valise on the rack and went towards the open platform at the end of the coach. He stood looking at the bomb-scarred villas on the hill. Beyond the hill lay Cerbère and France. With a shudder, a jolt, the train started. The hill became smaller, blending into perspective with the hills beside it. Rumbold returned to his seat, and ignoring the frowns of the Civil Guards, stretched out upon it. He slept.
At Gerona he awoke, cold and hungry, and went out to purchase rolls and coffee. A small boy pestered him to buy peanuts. He bought some and sat munching as the train rolled on again. He now regretted that he had seen nothing of Northern Catalonia, and blamed himself for having slept. He had always considered it the height of bad manners and boorish
ness in a traveller that he should ignore or remain indifferent to the country through which he passed. Not every field could be interesting, of course, but everywhere men lived and each hedge, each brook was the backcloth to a life.
Rumbold produced his map and examined the route ahead, noting the bridges, the level crossings, and checking them with satisfaction when reached. The wildness, the peculiar lush grandeur of Catalonia excited him. He did not like it quite as much as Navarre, but it was new, and his heart constricted happily at the thought of the long journey before him. In no circumstances would he have agreed to travel by air: rather, he determined, even at the cost of inconvenience, to enter Portugal by a longer route. Narvao might do: he would look up the time-tables.
Arrived at Barcelona, he ignored the appeals of taxi-drivers, hiring instead an open cab, and causing himself to be driven across the town towards the port. He was charmed and impressed . . . as all must be who enter it from Marseilles . . . by the spaciousness, the industry, the quiet of this first of Mediterranean cities. Consulting his guide, he discovered that he need not leave for Madrid until the evening. He ate his lunch on the balcony of a restaurant overlooking the harbour. His coffee finished, he made enquiries of the waiter concerning a suitable brothel. The waiter obliged.
There was a certain effervescence that evening, upon the platform, as the train for Madrid shunted backside-in from the siding. A party of Catalonian girl guides, smelling vilely of urine, were the cause. These girl guides were travelling to the capital, there to attend a conference. No compartmental reservations had been made for them, and in consequence they invaded the train at its entrance with all the agility of youth, dragging nuns, rosaries, valises, tennis racquets behind them, staking claims supported by schoolgirlish scowls to corner seats. Rumbold, pummeled between plump buttocks and vestal breasts, lunged forward through sweaty serge to secure a corner for himself. He had failed to secure a sleeper, failed to secure a first-class seat. He would spend the night and a portion of the forenoon studying three female Carmelites, and two adolescents, one of whom was a sufferer from acne in its encrusted form.