Agent in the shadows, p.1
Agent in the Shadows, page 1
Agent in the Shadows
Cover
Title Page
Main Characters
The Wolf
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Victims of the Gestapo raid on the Jewish orphanage at Izieu, 6 April 1944
About the Author
Also by Alex Gerlis
Copyright
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
Main Characters
British (and US) Characters
Jack Miller American journalist and British agent
Barnaby Allen (Barney) MI6 officer, London
Piers Devereux Barney’s boss at MI6
Roly Pearson British Intelligence chief
Basil Remington-Barber head of MI6 Berne
Noel Moore MI6 officer, Berne
Nicholas/Jeffrey Morgan British fascist
Tom Gilbey MI6 officer
Harold Dickson fascist recruit
Lawrence British radio operator, Switzerland
Stephen Summers solicitor, London
Cedric man at Hope pub
German Characters
Sophia von Naundorf British agent
Siegfried Schroth actor and British agent in Düsseldorf
Klaus Barbie Gestapo chief, Lyon
Konrad Busch SS officer, Berlin
Hannelore Busch wife of Konrad Busch
Heinz-Wilhelm Schütze man killed in Brandenburg
Klara Förster sister of Heinz-Wilhelm Schütze
Günther Förster husband of Klara
Johanna Brüderlin sister of Klara and Heinz-Wilhelm Schütze
Georg Lange Abwehr officer, Paris
Wagner Gestapo officer, Paris
Helmut Knochen SS commander, Paris
Luise Brunner secretary sent to work at Gestapo HQ, Lyon
Walter Möller Lyon Gestapo
Otto Winter Lyon Gestapo ADC to Barbie
Franz Boehm Lyon Gestapo
French Characters
Marcel Mars Resistance Network, Lyon
Maurice Mars Resistance Network, Lyon
Michel Mars Resistance Network, Lyon
Anna Rousseau Mars Resistance Network, Lyon
Madame Madelaine Mars Resistance Network, Lyon
René Dupont chef de centre adjoint, milice
Madame Faure café owner, Lyon
Doctor Hubert Mars Resistance Network, Lyon
Benoît Roux French Resistance in Geneva
Agnes Kléber office manager at Gestapo HQ, Lyon
Hugo Resistance, Strasbourg
Marie Resistance, Strasbourg
Georges Moreau traitor
Swiss Characters
Captain Gerber Berne police officer, contact of Basil
Harald Mettler clerk at Swiss Embassy, Berlin, British agent
Emile Jeanneret watch expert, Geneva
Rolf Eder MI6 agent Zürich
Russian Characters
A.I. Stepanov (Arkady) NKVD Commissar, Berne
Leytenant Mikhail Danielovich Marshak Red Army officer, Krakow
Polkovnik Krupkin NKGB officer, Krakow
Nikolai Soviet Legation, Berne
Polish Characters
Raisa Loszynski daughter of Roman Loszynski
Max Loszynski son of Roman Loszynski
The Wolf
In the closing hours of a wolf’s life, as it approaches the end of its final journey, look into its eyes to understand the life it has led.
It will have been a hard life, always alert to danger, burdened by the strain of constant vigilance: not knowing who to trust and where the enemy lurks.
And as its final days approach, the wolf will leave the pack, knowing it is now vulnerable and hoping it can fade away in peace.
France was always dangerous territory for the wolf. It was hunted to extinction there in 1933, the same year Hitler came to power in Germany.
Yet for many years after, including during the Second World War, throughout rural France one would often see three words painted in large red letters on country walls and bridges.
Mort au loup.
Kill the wolf.
Introduction
The historical context of Agent in the Shadows is set out in more detail at the end of the book. However, I thought it would be helpful to mention some important elements of the story at the outset.
France fell to the Nazis in June 1940. From then until late 1942, Lyon – France’s third largest city – was in the so-called Free Zone, the collaborationist Vichy regime. In reality, the city was under the Nazi yoke. It came directly under German control from November 1942 until its liberation at the beginning of September 1944.
On 14 September 1944 General de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French, visited the city and addressed the crowds on Place des Terreaux from the balcony of the Hôtel-de-Ville. Describing the city as ‘…la capitale de la Résistance Française…’ he went on to say: ‘How to tell Lyon all the emotion, all the gratitude I feel in this Gallic capital, which was the capital of the French Resistance and which is today a very large city in our France covered with wounds, shining in its honour and carried away by its hope.’
The question of the French Resistance is a complex one, not least because it tends to mask the significant collaboration – passive and otherwise – by large parts of the French population and officialdom. There is also no question that for a long period of the war the Resistance was little more than an annoyance for the German occupiers and limited in its effectiveness.
Having said that, as D-Day approached and thereafter, the Resistance was of considerable importance. Indeed, after the war, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Dwight Eisenhower, famously described the French Resistance as having been worth ‘an extra six divisions’. While this may have been an exaggeration, it would be wrong to underestimate the eventual scale of the Resistance and the enormous courage displayed by the resistants.
And finally, a brief mention of Klaus Barbie (there is more on him in the Author’s Note at the end).
Barbie was just twenty-nine when he was sent to Lyon in November 1942, although by then he’d already acquired a reputation as a particularly brutal Gestapo officer. He soon became known as ‘The Butcher of Lyon’, a reputation based on his uncompromising brutality and effectiveness. Despite running the Gestapo in the city, he often personally carried out raids and tortured prisoners. It is estimated that he was personally responsible for the deaths of at least four thousand people and indirectly responsible for the deaths of at least twice as many more.
* * *
The story which follows is fiction, but based substantially on fact.
Chapter 1
London
August 1933
‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!’
The small landing at the top of the winding staircase was dark and fusty, with a pale shaft of light seeping out through the half-open doorway in front of him. He’d paused to catch his breath and the man who’d uttered these words was so short he’d not noticed him at first. He glanced down to spot him close to his elbow, just five foot if he was very lucky. He was craning his neck as he looked up, large eyes twinkling in the gloom.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Harold Dickson didn’t want to sound rude, but he’d been in two minds about coming along to this place as it was and the last thing he needed was this odd little man talking nonsense.
‘Dante – you’ve heard of Dante, I presume?’
He didn’t reply: he wondered whether he’d got the date wrong. The monthly meeting of the Bloomsbury branch of the Lunatics Association, maybe. Perhaps he ought to leave now.
‘Dante Alighieri, Italian poet, wrote The Divine Comedy in 1320: heard of him?’
‘Who?’
‘Dante!’
Harold Dickson said he was afraid he’d not and started to enter the room, but the man clutched his sleeve tightly with one hand and grabbed his right hand with the other and shook it vigorously and introduced himself as Cedric.
‘In The Divine Comedy Dante describes being at the entrance to hell, with an inscription above the gates which translates as “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!” Now perhaps you understand why I greeted you with that classical reference?’
Harold Dickson wasn’t sure he did but nodded and tried to pull away from Cedric, who was still gripping his sleeve.
‘Very apposite, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I’m not sure I understand, to be frank.’
‘Not classi cally educated, are you? You sound northern to me! The reference to abandoning hope is apposite because of where we are – the Hope public house. Fancy that, eh?’
Harold Dickson said fancy that indeed and yes, he did now see what he meant and it was very good to meet him but he really didn’t want to miss the start of the meeting so if Cedric didn’t mind, he…
Harold Dickson freed himself from the little man’s clutches and entered the room, which was oppressively warm and foul-smelling. The summer of 1933 was particularly unpleasant in London and when he’d set out from Whitehall a quarter of an hour earlier it had been a dry if humid early August evening. As he crossed Trafalgar Square a light drizzle started and by the time he’d reached The Hope in Kenton Street in Bloomsbury the drizzle had turned into a downpour.
This accounted for the atmosphere in the room, the fug hanging over it, the few people in there reeking of the unpleasant odour warm rain seems to release from clothes.
Again, he wondered how wise attending a meeting like this really was. What would happen if his employers found out? The encounter with Cedric had thrown him – what if they were all such oddballs?
But he was here now and maybe it would be fine, so he selected a chair towards the back of the room and looked around at the dozen other people, all sitting apart, all men, all in their forties or older, all looking slightly forlorn with sallow complexions and unhappy, angry eyes and evidently carrying the weight of the world on slumped shoulders.
He hoped he didn’t look like any of them.
There were forty-eight chairs laid out for the audience and at the front of the room was a table facing the audience, a frayed Union Jack flag draped over it. Behind it sat a tense-looking couple, both short and rotund. Behind them was a banner tacked to the wall, drooping at one end.
The British Union of Fascists.
Taped to the front of the table was a large card.
For Britain!
The couple kept glancing at their watches and muttering to each other and then looking up anxiously at the door. At seven o’clock precisely a man entered the room, striding purposefully to the front. He was wearing a trilby and a raincoat and despite the time of year wore leather gloves, which he carefully removed – one finger at a time – as he surveyed the room. Only one or two more people had joined the audience, but if he was disappointed, he didn’t show it.
He nodded to the couple and wished them a good evening and Dickson heard the woman apologise to the man and suggest that if they were to perhaps wait for a few more minutes she was sure the room would soon fill up, but the man said not to bother and he’d start and no, thank you, there was no need for them to introduce him and yes, please, a glass of water would be very much appreciated.
He spoke fluently, without notes, for the best part of three quarters of an hour. He wasn’t a great orator like Oswald Mosley, who Dickson had heard speak the previous year. But he spoke in calm, measured tones with the occasional clever joke, which Dickson seemed to be one of the few in the audience to appreciate. He spoke in some detail – arguably in too much detail – about the economy: of Keynes and the need to tackle the scourge of unemployment and of how to spend more money to help people. There was a lengthy section on supply and demand and then something about the gold standard, which Dickson didn’t understand but he nodded as if he did.
If he was honest, it was more of a lecture than an oration: too dry and academic. He found it interesting enough but then he made an effort to follow economics. He made a point of reading the office copy of the Financial Times in his lunch break.
Then the man stopped to drink some water. He paused for a while, as if gathering his thoughts, and then nodded, sure now of what he was going to say next. He swept his hand through his hair and his whole demeanour appeared to change and he began to speak more loudly, sounding angry and agitated as his voice rose and fell.
We all know who to blame for this mess we’re in, do we not?
There was some nodding of heads in the sparse audience, though people seemed unsure how to react to this sudden change of mood, slightly taken aback by it.
Does one perhaps need to spell out precisely who is responsible for the crisis Christian Europe finds itself in today, just fifteen years after the end of the Great War?
He paused and looked directly at the audience, expecting an answer. His shoulders were thrust back, an orator’s pose, as if in imitation of Mosley. There was more nodding of heads and mutterings of agreement.
Or is it not obvious – blindingly obvious – who is the cause of all our woes?
Someone started clapping, which Dickson thought didn’t feel right but other members of the audience began to join in, though it sounded sporadic and discordant.
The speaker then spelt out – at length – precisely who was responsible.
There are in excess of half a million Jews in this country and a similar number of communists: which makes one million enemies of the state!
He’d shouted the words ‘one million’ and then paused at the end of the sentence, allowing his audience to absorb the enormity of what he’d just told them. Dickson nodded enthusiastically. He didn’t doubt that these people – the Jews and the communists – were indeed the enemies of the state. That, after all, was the reason for his interest in this subject and for his attendance at the meeting. But he’d read up on this subject and his understanding was that there were considerably fewer than half a million Jews in the country and he very much doubted there were anything like half a million communists and many of them would be Jewish so were being double-counted.
But maybe a little exaggeration could be excused.
The point was still well made.
* * *
The meeting ended abruptly at eight o’clock. Harold Dickson assumed there’d be questions and had been making notes during the talk and had come up with what he considered were a couple of well-expressed questions.
But instead, the man said he had to leave now but he hoped it had been a useful talk and please could everyone ensure that they supplied their names and addresses to Cedric so they could be invited to future events. He pointed to the short man, now standing at the back of the room, grinning and raising himself on his toes so people could see him.
The man behind the table urged everyone to stay for a little longer. ‘Just a few minutes and then we can repair downstairs for some liquid refreshment!’ But Dickson didn’t fancy the idea of Cedric or indeed anyone else in the room buttonholing him at the bar. Once on Kenton Street he was relieved to see the heavy rain was now a light drizzle. He headed towards Kings Cross from where he’d take the underground home.
He was on Tavistock Place when he became aware of someone walking alongside him. He glanced across and was surprised to see it was the speaker. He said nothing for a while as they walked along in step.
‘I trust you found the talk interesting?’
Dickson said he had, very much so. The man continued walking silently next to him. By the time they came alongside Regent Square Gardens it had stopped raining and the man suggested they find a bench and have a chat.
‘I didn’t pitch it right, did I?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ They’d found a bench that was more or less dry and were facing a strip of grass where some boys were playing football in defiance of a sign warning them not to.
‘My talk: most of it was way above their heads. I tried to compensate for that towards the end, but I fear I ranted somewhat.’
‘I actually found it most absorbing: what you said about the economy was most interesting. I’m no expert, of course, but I do take an interest.’
‘So I could see: I always watch an audience most carefully and I can tell from their eyes how much they understand. You were the only member of the audience who seemed to comprehend what I was saying. I could tell you’re an intelligent man.’
He said thank you very much and proffered his hand, introducing himself as Harold Dickson.
The man shook it and said Harold could call him Nicholas and Harold replied that his brother was called Nicholas and what a small world it was. He could have kicked himself as he said that: he had an infuriating habit when in the presence of someone more important of nervously making inconsequential and frankly inane remarks.
