by Ted Allbeury
‘I could warn him, Henri.’
‘Yehia, Yehiay what good can that do? It’s too late already. Who knows who else he has told?’
Souidan shook his head. ‘I don’t have your conviction, Henri. I want what you want, but slowly, peacefully.’
Curiel smacked both his hands on his thighs in exasperation. A slow and peaceful revolution, Yehia? And of course we can have a slow and peaceful war afterwards.’ He shook his head. ‘You disappoint me. You frighten me.’
Souidan looked at Curiel’s face as he stood up.
‘What are you going to do, Henri?’
Curiel looked at him with anger. Til do what has to be done, but remember tonight, my friend. Because Moscow will remember too. It won’t be long.’
And Curiel walked angrily from the room and the house. It was past midnight when he reached Sharia el-Muiz Lidin Allah. He rang the bell at the silversmiths’ workshop and waited in the silent street. The blind man who eventually came to the door gently touched Curiel’s hand and the half-sovereign that lay in his palm.
In the small back room he waited patiently with the old man while the old man’s grandson fetched the two young men. Curiel gave them their instructions, and three golden sovereigns each from the purse on his canvas belt. They were surprised and faintly amused that he insisted that the body should go in the Nile. The traditional last resting place of police informers. They wondered briefly what Anwar Fawzi, a rich merchant, could have told the police to warrant such an end.
HOLLAND 1940
By midnight the whole of Rotterdam was burning. Twenty-six thousand houses had been destroyed by the Luftwaffe in two hours of indiscriminate bombing. The city was virtually undefended so there was no resistance. The small Dutch garrison in Rotterdam had refused to surrender and the bombing was the Nazis’ response. And in that single attack thirty thousand civilians had been killed or wounded. The Dutch government surrendered that night to avoid further useless slaughter.
Catherine Gertui Behar and her two daughters were still at the house in Scheveningen on the day the Germans invaded. On the advice of an English friend she abandoned all her possessions and, with her two daughters, made her way to the Hook of Holland. They were taken aboard one of the three Royal Navy destroyers sent to pick up the Dutch royal family and those members of the Dutch government who had been able to make their way to the Hook. Her son, George Behar, still at high-school in Rotterdam and living with his grandmother, had had to be left. All communication with Rotterdam had been cut.
He had made his way through the rubble and ruins and raging fires to his grandmother s house at the edge of the city. It had been hit, but two rooms were still standing. The seventeen-year-old boy and the arthritic old lady had slept that night amid the rubble under the stairs.
The following day young George Behar had walked into the city to try to buy some food. The whole of the centre of Rotterdam had disappeared, and in the ring of the suburbs the fires still raged, the roar as they burned as frightening as the flames themselves. The stench of burnt flesh hung over the city, and wounded women and children lay unattended, those who were conscious pleading for help. But there was no help to give. The hospitals that were not already rubble were still burning.
It was dark when he got back to the ruins of the house, an iron-hard loaf his only booty. The two Gestapo men were waiting inside. A neighbour had reported that he was a Britisher to the round-up squads searching for aliens and suspects. He spent that night and the next two months in an internment camp near Alkmar north of Amsterdam.
On the sixty-third day of his internment, his eighteenth birthday, he escaped from the camp and made his way to his uncle’s house at Warnveld in Gelderland. Twice the Gestapo had come searching for him and he moved to a safer hiding place on a farm.
LONDON 1943
The man on the other side of the table pushed the two buff files on one side and tore off the top page of his notepad. A Field Security sergeant stood by the door.
‘My name is Captain Holmes and I want to ask you some questions. Please relax, and if you want to smoke, please do:
He pushed across an open tin of Army ration ‘Gold Flake’ and a box of matches.
‘First, your name?’
‘George Behar.’
‘Where were you born?’
‘Rotterdam, but I’m a British subject. My father was British and I have a British passport. ‘
The officer nodded and tentatively touched one of the files.
‘You say in your statement that you worked with a Dutch Resistance group. Where did it operate?’
‘In Limburg and Gelderland.’
‘How old are you?’
‘I’m twenty.’
‘What did you actually do yourself in the Resistance group?’
‘I was a courier. And I helped receive SOE parachutists.’
‘You say a British intelligence officer told you about the escape line. What was his name?’
‘It’s in my statement.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Child. Commander Child.’
‘How did you come to know him?’
‘He was a friend of my father.’
‘You say in your statement that the Gestapo had put a price on your head. How do you know that?’
‘I saw the posters with my photograph and my name. My cover name. ‘
‘What was your cover name?’
‘Max van Vries.’
‘Why did you choose that name?’
‘I don’t remember. I think I just liked the sound of it.’
‘You said in your statement that your mother and your two sisters came to England as soon as the Germans invaded Holland. When was that?’
‘The Germans invaded the Low Countries on the tenth of May. My mother and sisters left on the eleventh.’
‘Why didn’t you leave with them?’
‘I was in Rotterdam, they were in Scheveningen. Commander Child told me that he had advised them to leave immediately. He took them to the Hook and vouched for them himself.’
‘Do you know where they live in England? The Dutch embassy has no record of a family named Behar.’
‘Why should they? We are British, not Dutch.’
The captain took a photograph from one of the files and slid it across the table.
‘Do you recognize that person?’
‘Yes. It’s Commander Child.’
‘And that photograph?’
‘It’s a lady named Renee. I don’t know her other name.’
‘How did you know her?’
‘I was sent by the escape line to see her in Lyon. She was something to do with the United States Consul there.’
‘What can you remember about her?’
‘She had only one leg.’
‘Have you been interrogated before you got to England?’
‘Yes. In Gibraltar.’
‘Who interrogated you?’
I think his name was Major Darling. They called him Donald.’
‘Why did you come to England apart from getting away from the Gestapo?’
‘To fight the Germans. ‘
Holmes noticed the flash of anger at even the vague hint that he was escaping from the enemy.
‘What had you in mind as your activity? ’
‘I am at your disposal. I have experience and talents that could be used. ‘
Holmes pushed the files together and stood up.
‘We’ll talk again tomorrow, Mr Behar.’
In fact they had’talked’ every day for three weeks and two or three times a week for a month after that.
Holmes opened the file and read the top sheet again before he looked around the table. There was another Intelligence Corps officer, a Special Branch representative, an officer from the Immigration Office and a FANY secretary.
‘George Behar. Aged twenty years four months. He doesn’t know it but he came down Guerisse’s “Pat” escape line. I don’t think there’s any problem. He is British. His fath
er was British. Awarded an OBE in fact. He did work with a Dutch Resistance group. We’ve checked and can confirm all this. He didn’t do as much as he would like to think he did, but what of it? Very much resents being under suspicion. A touch self-important but he’s only a youngster.
‘Child confirmed advising the mother and him. Gives him and them a good write-up. Only two problems. There’s no trace of the family being over here, so maybe they went on to Canada or the States . . .’
‘We’ve traced them, Frank.’ It was the Special Branch man who interrupted. ‘She changed her name to Blake when she came over here. She and the girls are living on a farm near High Wycombe. Said she changed her name to be more English. Nice woman. No adverse information.’
‘Did you tell her he was here?’
‘No. But she identified the photograph.’
‘Welly it seems like we can release him.’
‘You said there were two problems.’
‘Ah, yes. I sent a signal to Darling in Gib and he’s got no record of interrogating a George Behar or a Max van Vries.’
The Special Branch man shrugged. It isn’t that important, is it?’
‘I suppose not. I’ll fix for him to be released tomorrow and provide him with an identity card and ration book et cetera.’
He reached for another file and said, ‘Now this one is a real stinker, it’s the Belgian from Liege and . . .’
George Behar, now George Blake, and living with his mother and sisters, was bitterly disappointed at his reception in England, and even more disappointed that after his release there was so little interest in employing him. Early in November 1943 he joined the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman. A few months later his superiors, having finally realized that he spoke fluent Dutch, French and German, as well as English, recommended him for a commission. Early in 1944 he was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in the RNVR.
Eventually he was transferred to the Dutch section of Special Operations Executive and finally as an interpreter to SHAEF HQ. In the official photographs of the German surrender to Field Marshal Montgomery on Lüneburg Heath Sub-Lieutenant Blake is standing beside the Field Marshal. Shortly after he was posted to Hamburg on intelligence duties Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands awarded him the Order of Nassau, Fourth Class, and George Blake was a happy young man.
6
Lawler sat in the soundproof room, the headphones around his neck as Silvester fitted the big spool on the tape recorder.
‘This tape goes from March first to the thirty-first. My guess is that he started back-tracking on the seventeenth or maybe the sixteenth. It’s hard to tell. Listen for yourself. The second tape is from April first to the fourteenth, which was when I realized we weren’t getting anywhere. I’ll be in my office for the rest of the day.’
Lawler put the headphones over his ears and pressed the button on the tape recorder, pulling the notepad and pencil towards him. He listened for a few moments and then reversed the tape back to the fourteenth.
Petrov was describing the layout of the Soviet Embassy building in Kensington. SIS had meticulous drawings, and details of every brick in the embassy buildings, so they would merely be double-checking Petrov’s memory and truthfulness. He wouldn’t be expected to be strictly accurate because he had never worked at the embassy beyond a few flying visits of a day or two at a time. He was doing quite well and Lawler pushed the tape on. It was three hours later and Petrov was covering the details of the radio equipment at the embassy. He was going strong when the interviewer called it a day. The interrogator’s voice registered the fifteenth of March as a Sunday and no interview, and the tape rolled until the interrogator’s voice registered the date as the sixteenth. He was taking Petrov back over the embassy stuff. There were two sessions for that day. An hour in the morning and seventy minutes in the afternoon. They were still on the embassy and Petrov was still responding, but at minute forty-one there was a noise as if somebody had touched the microphone. The interrogator said, ‘Sorry,’ and carried on. But from that interruption Petrov’s replies were vague. Facts and details that he had already given were diluted. After ten minutes the interrogator switched to Russian, but Petrov’s answers were positively evasive. If you hadn’t been waiting for it, listening for it, it could have been evaluated as tiredness. But even the voice was slightly different. Harsher, tighter.
Lawler marked the spot on the tape from the LED display and moved the tape back.
Half an hour later in Forensic he looked at the zigzags on the long paper chart as the audio man stood beside him. The man pointed with a pencil to the chart.
The big peaks and troughs last about a second. The interruption is the part between the two vertical red lines. To the left of that you can see the voice waves. The dotted line is the mean pitch in cycles. The other two lines in chain dots are the peaks and troughs. The same on the right-hand side. But you can see the change. The pitch is a consistent ten to twelve cycles higher and the peaks and troughs are smaller.’
‘What’s all that mean?’
‘It means the pitch of his voice went up and his voice range was more restricted.’
‘And?’
‘He was either ill or scared.’
‘There couldn’t be any other reason?’
‘Only one.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Some men’s voices do that when they are highly aroused sexually.’
‘You mean thinking about sex?’
‘No, it would have to be more than that. He’d have to be very near the point of orgasm.’
Lawler half-smiled. ‘I don’t think Tony Reid’s likely to arouse those kind of pressures.’
‘Is the guy a queer?’
‘No.’
‘
‘It’s impossible to be sure what caused it without more data but I’d say he was scared.’
Thanks. Will you shred the chart for me?’
‘It’s over there, you can do it yourself, the flat yellow button on the panel.’
After shredding the chart Lawler signed the two tapes into the audio archives and went up two floors to General Archives and checked the catalogue. He made out a slip for Blake, G., signed it and passed it to the girl.
She came back with the brown folder tied with pink tape.
There are four files. This is number one. It’s got the index. You can have one at a time. There are seven pages extracted and you need a department head’s signature for those.’
She gave him the docket to sign and the key to a vacant reading room.
They were in one of the new interrogation rooms. The décor was more Architectural Review than Foreign Office Gothic. Rumour had it that somebody had authorized a study by one of the redbrick university psychology departments into The Relationship between Response and Environment in Conflict Situations’ and that the six new interrogation rooms were the result.
There was a table in the centre of the room. Swedish and stark, in teak, with two straight-backed chairs on each long side. A curved arrangement of settee modules took up one corner faced by three leather armchairs. A well-grown Monstera deliciosa in a large clay pot stood in one corner and the colour scheme was pale and dark browns. There were no windows and no visible hardware of recorders and microphones. All that was dealt with now by a miniature hand-control operated by the interrogator and using remote radio control instead of wires and plugs.
Lawler sat waiting for Reid, and as he waited he used the hand control to listen to the tape again and again. Then he saw the green light go on over the door and he pressed the entry button.
Tony Reid was one of SIS’s most experienced interrogators. In his late forties, he looked more like an antiquarian bookseller or a schoolteacher than an intelligence officer, and that was part of his success. He specialized in long-term interrogation, where it was necessary to build up a relationship with the subject. They played examples of his tapes for students at the training school in Surrey. His technique was only used when it was necessary to unwin
d a mass of information from a man’s memory, or to lead an uncooperative and aggressive subject to the stage where he would at least talk. Only top subjects got the Reid treatment.
He sat down opposite Lawler, pushing his glasses back up his nose.
‘I gather from what you said on the telephone that you’ve got some query about the Petrov material.’
‘Yes. Was it you who first noticed that Petrov had stopped being co-operative or was it Silvester?’
‘So far as I know it was me. But I reported on it to Silvester.’
‘How long have you been talking to Petrov?’
‘Nearly three months, off and on.’
‘Did you feel that it happened slowly or quickly?’
‘It was quite marked.’
‘Did you have any feeling as to why it happened?’
‘No, not really. We had been going over material we’d gone over several times before, so it wasn’t the subject matter that put him off as far as I could tell.’
‘I’ve listened to the tapes and I think I’ve spotted where his attitude changed, but I’d like your opinion. I’ve got the tape concerned set up for you to hear.’
Reid leaned back. ‘Go ahead then.’
Lawler ran the tape for the fifteen minutes before the interruption and fifteen minutes after, with a few minutes of random material twenty numbers further on. Reid asked to hear one portion again before he put up his hand.
‘You can’t really be precise on these things but I’d say you’re about right.’
‘I had a voice pattern done, and his voice is higher-pitched and restricted after that noise. Audio say it’s a typical fear pattern.’
‘Have you talked to Petrov about it?’
‘No. I daren’t be that direct.’
‘What’s Silvester’s view?’
‘He thinks Petrov wants to go back.’
Reid shrugged. ‘They all do at some time or another. It generally passes in a couple of days.’
‘Do you remember that particular interview?’
‘No. I’m afraid not.’
‘What do you think the noise was? The interruption?’
‘I’d say a knock against the microphone bracket. Subjects sometimes give it a knock if they start gesticulating. I do it myself sometimes. If I happen to knock it with a pencil it sets up a howl, so it must have been a hand.’