Agent in the shadows, p.12
Agent in the Shadows, page 12
‘She says that her brother was very clever, very interested in history and details like railway timetables. He was also very good at art: she says his ability to do complicated drawings was extraordinary. He could copy a picture with remarkable accuracy. When she went to his apartment, she discovered he’d turned one room into a studio and he’d evidently devoted a lot of his time to working on diagrams and drawings. She made the point that he’d have made a fine draughtsman, if only people had concentrated on his abilities rather than his problems.
‘It took her a few days to sort everything out. According to her there was box after box of his papers – cuttings from newspapers, notebooks, diagrams she couldn’t understand. Then in one box – it was under another box – she found an envelope at the bottom, wrapped in tape. And when she opened it up there was the kennkarten and other paperwork for seven people.
‘Frau Brüderlin says they are quite extraordinary. She believes they are fake because she found some notes about the identities he’d created or stolen in various notebooks, but she says as far as she’s concerned, it’s impossible to tell. Each of the five men and two women had a life, as she says, and that life was in that envelope.’
‘And where is all that now?’
‘She brought it all back to Zürich. She disposed of almost all of his paperwork and everything else, but managed to smuggle these out with her: she had some framed photographs of her brother’s and she hid them in the frames.’
‘And Basil wasn’t interested in this?’
‘I wasn’t able to give him all the detail about the identity documents: I wanted to do it properly, give him the background – the proper context.’
‘And where are all these documents, Rolf?’
‘Frau Brüderlin has them: she showed one of the kennkarten to me and it looked authentic, but of course I’m no expert. I did, of course, express an interest in them – they’d be invaluable to us, wouldn’t they? I even offered money, but she said she wants various assurances and wanted to see someone important from Britain, that’s how she put it. I think she meant she wants to deal with someone who’s British rather than Austrian!’
‘And you say she’s in Zürich, Rolf?’
‘Correct.’
‘Tomorrow morning, I am attending this private watch auction. Can you arrange for me to meet her later in the afternoon?’
* * *
Johanna Brüderlin was a nervous woman in her late forties, eyeing them suspiciously in Rolf’s apartment on Basteiplatz and clearly unsure of whether she was doing the right thing.
Rolf had introduced her to Mr Mallory, who he explained was a very important man from England. What clearly helped was that Sophia was also there. She was introduced as Mr Mallory’s assistant and translator. Once Sophia began to speak, Frau Brüderlin began to relax. The two women smiled at each other and Frau Brüderlin asked Sophia if she was from Berlin and Sophia said many years ago and Frau Brüderlin nodded and said she thought she recognised the accent and Sophia laughed and said she thought she’d managed to lose it – nowadays people say I sound Swiss!
And then Frau Brüderlin told her story, much the same as Rolf had recounted it, but it took much longer and was accompanied by a good deal of emotion. On reflection, the family had never made much effort to understand Heinz-Wilhelm, she said – to help him.
‘It was all about doing what we could to minimise the embarrassment. My parents felt comfortable if he was in the house, but when he wasn’t they felt awkward. My sister and her husband were the same.’
‘You say there are seven identity documents?’
Frau Brüderlin nodded. She explained how her brother had created wives for two of the men. ‘I don’t know why he did that, it was always hard to work out Heinz-Wilhelm’s mind. Maybe he felt that having proof of their being married gave the identities added credibility, who knows? But it does mean that I possess seven excellent German identities. I did wonder whether at some point they’d be of any use to me – but the more I thought about it the more I realised I have no intention of returning to Germany while this ghastly war is going on. So…’ She turned to face Barney Allen. ‘They are yours if you want them. I don’t want to know what you plan to do with them, not that I imagine you’d ever tell me.’
Barney Allen thanked Frau Brüderlin very much, stopping quickly when he realised he’d spoken to her in German. Sophia explained he spoke a few words and said how sorry she was at the dreadful circumstances of her brother’s death and then Barney asked her to ask what she would like in return. Money, perhaps?
Frau Brüderlin waved away the suggestion, as if insulted by it. ‘I just want to feel that by handing them over to you I’m in some small way getting justice for Heinz-Wilhelm.’
Barney Allen had thanked Frau Brüderlin profusely and promised he’d do what she asked. Rolf returned with her to collect all the documents.
Barney and Sophia walked back to the hotel, a pleasant early evening now in Zürich, a gentle breeze from the Zürichsee.
‘I take it you’re not going to tell Basil about these identities, are you?’
Barney said of course not and they both laughed. He remembered what the man called Oliver had told him during his briefing.
…have your own secrets: if you get a new contact, think twice and then again about who you need to tell about them…
He had his own secrets now.
And he was feeling altogether more confident about what lay ahead.
Chapter 13
Lyon and Geneva
November 1943
They were always distrusting of anyone who approached them: it was a lesson drilled into every member of the group by Madame Madelaine. Even if it was a person that a member of Mars already knew and trusted, she was nevertheless insistent they should be treated with the utmost caution and wariness.
You never know… it could be a trap… look what has happened to the other groups… we have a traitor in Lyon, don’t forget! It’s why we’ve survived intact.
Madame Madelaine had taken this approach with Madame Faure who owned the café next door to her boutique on Rue Ravat. It was she who’d approached her, but she still waited months before recruiting her to work for their Resistance group.
But the person who approached them in the autumn of 1943 was a different case altogether. She was someone they needed to be especially wary off. Someone who they had every reason to be suspicious of, but also someone who could be of enormous help. Someone they would never normally have dreamt of recruiting.
Someone who could be the best possible source of intelligence.
* * *
‘So what do you think? You shouldn’t look so shocked – I think it’s a great idea.’
They were in Barney Allen’s apartment on Rue François-Bonivard in Geneva, five of them: Barney and Benoît Roux on one side of the dining table, Sophia, Jack and Siegfried Schroth facing them. In between them was an empty bottle of wine and one that was half empty, or half full, depending on who was in what mood. Despite the wine there was a formal air in the small room, an undeniable tension.
No one had replied to Barney’s question for a while and then Jack said that – with the very greatest of respect – it was easy for someone who didn’t operate in enemy territory to think of it as a great idea but people like us – he’d nodded towards both Sophia and Siegfried at this point – who have operated clandestinely, we have to be far more circumspect.
Jack leaned back and looked pleased with himself. He’d started to learn that Englishmen like Barney and Basil – and Noel too – responded best to understatement and apparent good manners. Losing your temper could be quite counter-productive. He’d begun to understand that the phrase ‘with the greatest of respect’ could really be quite lethal.
‘And Sophia – Siegfried – what do you both think?’
Sophia said it would be helpful if Benoît himself could go through it, but this time in more detail.
Siegfried nodded in agreement and he would be the translator: it had turned out he was fluent in French, so much so that he’d even acted in France in the early part of his career. Benoît pulled his chair closer to the table and took one of the cigarettes offered to him. He waited until Jack had poured them each another glass of wine.
‘A few weeks ago, Maurice – one of the leaders of our group in Lyon – was approached by a woman.’
He paused briefly, as if to allow the others to wonder about the nature of this approach.
‘Maurice is a carpenter and a woman had asked him to come to her apartment on Rue Servient, close to Part-Dieu station. The door frame at the entrance to her apartment was warped and she needed it to be fixed. Maurice spent most of the day working on it and needed to return the following day and she gave him a key and said she’d return at lunchtime to check on everything.
‘When she did arrive, she was rather flustered: she said she’d been delayed at work and the trams weren’t working properly and so she’d had to walk and when Maurice asked her where she’d walked from, she replied from Avenue Berthelot. It seems she said it without thinking and appeared to have regretted saying it: Avenue Berthelot is where the Gestapo has its headquarters, in the old military hospital. Of course, Avenue Berthelot is a very long avenue – it runs from the Rhône to past the Guillotière cemetery and she could be working at any one of dozens of places, but somehow everyone in Lyon understands these days that when you talk about Avenue Berthelot you’re talking about the Gestapo. If she worked somewhere else, she’d have soon enough said so.
‘According to Maurice what happened next was quite extraordinary. The woman broke down. She started sobbing and then apologised and said she didn’t know what had come over her and everything was getting too much for her and so he suggested they go into her lounge and she poured a pastis and he had one too and the way he described it, the woman unburdened herself to him. Perhaps if I can have another glass of wine?’
Benoît drank half of it and lit another cigarette before continuing. ‘The woman’s name is Agnes Kléber: she told Maurice she works as an office manager for the Gestapo. She said she’s from Colmar in the Alsace and as with so many people in that area she’d thought of herself as more German than French – she spoke both languages.
‘At the time of the invasion she was working for the police in Colmar as a clerk and she was asked to apply for a posting in the Free Zone: French nationals from the Alsace found it easier to get security clearance. She found herself working for the Gestapo in Lyon.
‘It wasn’t a problem for her at first: she told Maurice she believed in law and order and despised what the French had done in Alsace and she was opposed to communists and socialists and, in any case, for her it was a job and one she turned out to be very efficient at. But apparently Klaus Barbie trusted her and she became more involved in their work, more familiar with what the Gestapo was up to. However, Agnes Kléber is a devout Catholic and the archbishop in Lyon is very opposed to the Nazis: the Church’s disapproval of them is very evident in the sermons. This resulted in a moral conflict for her and that had come to a head when she had to type up a report about a family where the parents had been caught distributing anti-occupation leaflets: the father was executed, the mother was sent to a concentration camp in Germany and the two young children were sent to an orphanage. She had to organise the documentation to give the children new identities and this was the final straw for her. That is why she broke down in front of Maurice.’
‘But how did this woman know she could confide in him?’ Sophia was leaning forward, looking directly at the Frenchman.
‘And more to the point, did it not occur to Maurice this could be a trap?’
‘Of course, it did, Jack, of course. But he said nothing, he just said he was sorry to hear what she had to say and suggested she find her comfort in the Church and left it at that. He told the other leaders of Mars and they decided to wait, to see what happened. They had Agnes Kléber followed from Rue Servient to Avenue Berthelot and it was clear she did indeed work there, and Maurice was extra careful to ensure he wasn’t being watched. They only had to wait one week. Maurice was contacted by Mademoiselle Kléber to say she had a problem with another door. Please could he come round.
‘When he did so she had information for him. She gave the name of a school in Les Brotteaux where she said there was a teacher suspected by the Gestapo of being a courier for a Resistance group. She gave Maurice the name of the teacher and told him the woman’s apartment was to be raided the following day and so was her locker in the school: they suspected she was using that to keep Resistance material. Maurice asked why was she telling him that and she said she believed he may be involved in the Resistance and…’
‘Hang on, hang on – she works for the Gestapo and suspects Maurice of being a resistant?’
‘Let me finish, Jack. According to her she’d come across a list from 1938 of members of a Communist Party branch in the city. There were only a dozen names on it and she was meant to check it – to see if the names and addresses matched the current records – and then pass it on for investigation. She kept it. I think it coincided with her beginning to have doubts about the morality of her job.’
‘It took her that long to realise there may be a problem working for the Gestapo?’
‘I agree, but people are different, aren’t they? Maurice went to see Madame Madelaine and despite normally being so cautious, she decided they had to act. Anna was sent to see the school teacher that evening. It turned out she was indeed a courier for one of the Combat group cells in the city. She was able to remove all incriminating evidence from her apartment and the school. Sure enough the Gestapo did turn up the following day, but found nothing.’
‘So, Agnes Kléber is to be trusted?’
‘Yes.’
‘And this information she has – that Barney was telling us about?’
Benoît briefly closed his eyes, as if trying to ensure he remembered exactly what he’d been told. ‘According to Mademoiselle Kléber, Klaus Barbie increasingly distrusts the French administrative staff and has requested some Germans to come and work for him. She says that they’d just been told that a woman called Luise Brunner was being sent to Lyon from Berlin. This woman had been based at the Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. She has all her details and passed them on to Maurice.’
There was a long silence in the room. Both bottles of wine were now empty, as was the cigarette packet on the table. No one moved, no one said a word, but Jack and Sophia exchanged worried glances and Siegfried looked confused, unsure what was going on. Barney Allen was the next to speak, consulting a pocket diary as he did so.
‘Today is the seventh of November. From what we’re told, Luise Brunner is due to finish work at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse on this coming Wednesday, which is the tenth. The following day she travels to Lyon. According to the information Mademoiselle Kléber has, Luise Brunner arrives in Lyon on the Friday – the twelfth of November – and starts work at Avenue Berthelot on the Monday, the fifteenth. She’s been allocated a small apartment on Avenue de Saxe, just north of Place Jean Macé. Is that correct, Benoît?’
The Frenchman said it was: no more than ten minutes’ walk from the Gestapo offices on Avenue Berthelot.
‘We know she’s travelling by train,’ said Barney, ‘because she is due to arrive at Part-Dieu at twenty past one on the Friday afternoon – Mademoiselle Kléber has been told to meet her at the station with a car from Gestapo headquarters and take her to the apartment and give her all her paperwork.’
‘If she is travelling by train and leaves Berlin on the Thursday,’ said Benoît, ‘and arrives in Lyon at twenty past one on the Friday then we can work out her route. It is most likely she’ll take the early morning train from Berlin to Frankfurt and then change to catch a train to Strasbourg. There is a train which departs Strasbourg at five to nine on the Friday morning and arrives at Part-Dieu station in Lyon at twenty past one.’
‘Which means she’ll stay overnight in Strasbourg,’ said Barney.
‘Where we have very good contacts,’ said Benoît. ‘The Germans use two hotels in Strasbourg for visiting officials: the more important ones stay at the Maison Rouge on Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, close to the canal. More minor officials stay at a pension on Rue de la Course, which is a short walk from the station. That is where we think Luise Brunner will stay on the Thursday night. But we have a contact in the pension: we will be able to confirm it twenty-four hours before.’
Barney and Benoît both looked at Sophia who sat calmly and nodded her head in anticipation of what they were about to say. Jack reached out for her hand and held it tightly.
‘The plan is, Luise Brunner will arrive in Strasbourg at around seven o’clock next Thursday evening on the train from Frankfurt. She will depart at five to nine the following morning on the Lyon train.’ Barney paused. ‘But the Luise Brunner who arrives on the Thursday will be very different from the Luise Brunner who leaves the following day.’
Chapter 14
Strasbourg and Lyon
November 1943
They knew they had to move very fast: the operation was so finely choreographed there was no room for even the slightest mistake.
Four of them had travelled to Strasbourg from Lyon. Madame Madelaine and Anna – posing as a demanding mother and her dutiful daughter – were scheduled to arrive at Strasbourg station just twenty minutes before Luise Brunner arrived from Frankfurt. Maurice and Michel arrived in the city separately on the Thursday, meeting up at a café close to Notre Dame cathedral at a quarter to two that afternoon. Shortly before two o’clock a young couple entered the café and moved to the back, totally engrossed in each other, their bodies pulled close and their faces touching. They didn’t look at anyone else as they approached a door at the rear. Michel was the closest to them and watched as the boy pushed the girl against the door to steal a kiss while the girl slipped her hands behind her to surreptitiously unlock the door.
