Agent in the shadows, p.24
Agent in the Shadows, page 24
Basil Remington-Barber did think of going to Moore’s apartment himself with a couple of security officers from the embassy but decided to ask Captain Gerber.
It was a quarter to nine when he heard back from him.
Noel Moore’s apartment was empty. It appeared he’d left it in a hurry, with an open suitcase in the hall. A neighbour said he’d heard him leave less than an hour ago.
Chapter 26
Lyon
February 1944
They met in the cellar below a furniture shop on Place d’Helvétie on the Thursday evening, two days after Jack’s arrest and the shocking discovery that Source Armand was alive after all.
Place d’Helvétie was at the very northern end of Avenue de Saxe, easy enough for Sophia and Siegfried to reach by tram after work. It was on the right bank of the Rhône, close to Pont St Clair, which led into the Croix-Rousse. Madame Madelaine had been given the news the previous evening and insisted they needed to be even more cautious for this one, so those attending arrived one by one over a period of two hours.
There were ten of them altogether: Madame Madelaine was joined by Marcel, Maurice, Michel, Agnes and Anna while Emile and Gilbert acted as lookouts. Sophia had been the second person to enter the cellar, Siegfried the last.
When she began to speak, Madame Madelaine’s voice was hoarse, in the manner of someone who was exhausted and for whom even speaking was an effort.
‘There’s a saying – that bad news comes in threes.’
She left it at that for a few moments, leaving Sophia and Siegfried to wonder what the third piece of bad news could possibly be.
‘Even before Jack was arrested, the communications with Geneva have been difficult for at least two weeks. Jack felt that the person he was communicating with in Geneva was not as forthcoming as he’d been before. He got the impression Barney wasn’t directly involved.’
‘Jack didn’t mention anything to me?’ Sophia looked uneasy.
‘And nor should he have done,’ said Madame Madelaine. ‘I’m told a good radio-man has an innate sense of the person and the mood at the other end, even when communication is in Morse code. He felt it wasn’t as it had been when he first starting transmitting.’
‘And he was using the safety words?’
‘Yes, of course – the agreed safety words from him at the beginning and end of transmission and likewise from Lyon. But this brings me to the third piece of bad news. When Agnes told me the news on Tuesday night, I decided to send Anna to the border. Anna, please…’
‘I travelled yesterday morning to the farmhouse near the village of Échallon and luckily found the guide who was able to get a message to Benoît. He came to the farmhouse last night. I’m afraid that Barney Allen was killed in Berne just over two weeks ago, around the seventh of February. Benoît is running matters from Geneva as best he can with the help of the radio operator. He says he knows very little about what happened to Barney because the British in Berne won’t tell him, but he thinks it is something to do with a traitor who’s now escaped to Germany.’
Sophia and Siegfried both gasped in shock.
‘Do we know who this traitor is?’ asked Siegfried.
Anna shook her head. ‘Benoît thinks it could be someone British, but he isn’t sure. I explained the developments here to him as Madame Madelaine instructed me and he said we should continue with our operation at Avenue Berthelot. The priority remains finding Source Armand. If we discover who he is then we should send a messenger to the border with the news.’
‘There we are then,’ said Madame Madelaine, her voice still hoarse but now sounding more matter-of-fact. ‘I told you it was more bad news. But for the time being, you remain at Avenue Berthelot. I cannot understand how we managed to identify the wrong person as Source Armand, but this is no time for a dispute over it. Our priority now is to find him and—’
‘Our priority now surely is to rescue Jack,’ said Sophia, her voice angry.
‘Of course.’
* * *
They didn’t lay a finger on Jack Miller until much later that Tuesday evening. Up until then the questioning had been nothing like he’d expected – and feared: it was long and very repetitive but he got the impression they were merely warming up.
He felt nervous, of course, and frightened too, but most of all he was angry with the British. Whereas on his previous clandestine mission into Germany he’d been well prepared with a solid identity and a good back story, now he felt that it was all rather second rate, a bodged job, as the English would call it. He’d always thought of British Intelligence as being like a Rolls-Royce car: unequalled and highly reliable. Now it felt like his father’s car when they were young and never sure it would complete the journey. They’d managed to send him in with a Belgian kennkarte when he obviously wasn’t Belgian, and the Johann Neumann back story wasn’t good enough. In fact, there wasn’t one. What he told them he’d had to make up himself.
They’d given him some boiled potatoes and carrots on a dirty metal plate and a mug of thin soup with a slice of stale bread and as soon as he’d finished that another officer came into the room and questioned him for a while, mainly going over questions he’d already been asked in the morning and then there was a knock at the door and a nervous-looking young Wehrmacht corporal entered and said he’d been sent for, and the officer introduced him to Jack Miller and said this is Jurgen and I’m told he’s from Bielefeld – ‘Is that correct, Jurgen?’ – and Jurgen said, yes, that was correct.
‘Jurgen and you can now reminisce about your home town!’
And Jack knew the game really was up now, though he did make something of an effort. Young Jurgen asked him a series of questions – the names of parks… and cinemas, where different shops were, which road came off this road and then where did that road lead to and which school did he teach at and where did he live?
After ten minutes Jurgen turned to the officer and shook his head and said wherever this man was from it certainly wasn’t Bielefeld and, in any case, he didn’t even have the right accent, and the officer thanked Jurgen and said he could go now and he then told Jack to stand up and he waited until the guard had handcuffed his hands behind his back before he was pushed roughly against the wall.
The first punch winded him badly and as doubled over he felt a heavy blow to his head which must have knocked him out briefly because when he came round, he was on the floor and that was when the officer kicked him in the face and he felt his nose crumple and a tooth break. He was hauled back to his feet and shackled to the wall and the officer told him he’d be given a bit longer to think about matters and decide when he was going to tell them the truth, because he should remember this: what had just happened to him was nothing compared to what would happen to him when he went to Fort Montluc.
* * *
Sophia had found working in the same building where Jack was being held prisoner to be almost unbearable. She remained in the Transmissions Office for the rest of that week and she was now glad at being on her own in the dark, noisy basement where the only visitor apart from Agnes was the messenger and, in the gloom, he couldn’t see her tears or sense her distress.
Agnes promised she’d do her best to try and find out what was happening to Jack, but they both knew she needed to be careful. The best chance of finding out would be through the Prisoner Transfer Forms, which were sent to her office to be processed every morning.
There was nothing on them on the Wednesday morning, which meant Jack was still in the dungeons at Avenue Berthelot, but on the Thursday morning his name – Johann Neumann followed by a question mark – was shown as being one of three prisoners transferred to Fort Montluc on the Wednesday evening.
She told Luise Brunner on the Thursday afternoon, not long before the meeting on Place d’Helvétie. She took the news surprisingly calmly, falling silent and nodding her head as if she was expecting it and then asking Agnes to help her persuade Madame Madelaine that they must make freeing Jack from Fort Montluc an absolute priority.
The only good news that week was that by the time Luise finished work on the Friday evening there’d been no further communications about them from Paris since the Wednesday morning. Agnes said this all made sense: it didn’t mean they’d been forgotten about, but the immediate danger was over.
On the Saturday morning Sophia and Siegfried met in his tiny apartment on Avenue de Saxe. They both agreed it was up to them to devise a plan to free Jack from Fort Montluc.
‘For Madame Madelaine, the priority is to discover the identity of Source Armand,’ said Sophia. ‘I understand that: she blames us for the death of André Martin. Jack is less of a priority for her: we know that Emile saw him arrested and that within minutes the radio was moved and the safe houses Jack was aware of were closed down. He knows very little if anything about the real identities of the Mars network, so they’re not in immediate danger.’
‘Whereas we are.’
‘Exactly, Siegfried: we need to rescue Jack before it’s too late. He could break down under torture or even be killed and Agnes said some of the prisoners are sent to concentration camps, hundreds of miles from here.’
They talked for hours, but no idea they came up with amounted to anything approaching a plan. It seemed hopeless. Fort Montluc was a fortress, its high walls impenetrable and well-guarded.
Then Siegfried said, hang on… maybe he did have an idea after all and insisted Sophia listen carefully and when he’d finished, she sat silently, trying hard to think of a reason to dismiss it out of hand, which she clearly couldn’t.
‘It may work,’ she said eventually.
‘Of course, if you can think of something better then I—’
‘No, no – I admit it’s a clever idea, Siegfried.’
They discussed the plan with Madame Madelaine on the Sunday. Her reaction was similar to that of Sophia: she tried to find flaws in it but had to admit it was a good one.
‘Your role in this, Luise, what you’re being asked to do – you realise how dangerous that is, don’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘If we pull this off, you’ll both have to disappear. You’ll need to go into hiding with Jack until we can smuggle you across the border, which means we no longer have the two of you inside Avenue Berthelot to find out who Source Armand is. So, what I ask is this: please wait one more week – you’ll need that long anyway to prepare the rescue, won’t you? One more week to try and find who Source Armand is and then I’ll ensure my network does all it can to make the rescue succeed.’
‘But a week… Jack could be killed in that time, or sent to a camp?’
‘I have news on Jack,’ she said quietly. ‘I was about to tell you. Gilbert’s brother, Gilles, sometimes does work for us so is trusted, absolutely. There is a seventeen-year-old boy who lives on his road who was arrested for throwing manure at a German soldier – foolish boy, he was lucky not to be shot. They kept him in Montluc for a month, roughed him up and then realised he was nothing more than a hooligan, as they saw it. He was released yesterday, a bit shaken, but regards himself as a hero. Gilles saw him last night and the boy remembered that a foreign prisoner was brought in a couple of days ago from Berthelot. He said someone in his cell talked about the prisoner being an Englishman. They said he was a spy flown in by Mr Churchill. He said he’d heard Barbie himself was supervising his interrogation.’
Chapter 27
Lyon
February and March 1944
Fort Montluc was in Lyon’s 3rd arrondissement, just off Cours Gambetta on the right bank of the Rhône. It had begun its long existence as part of the fortifications of Lyon before becoming a military prison. Its 122 four-metre square cells were spread across two wings and the Vichy authorities probably assumed they were being ruthless by forcing up to three prisoners into each cell. But when the Gestapo took over the prison in February 1943, they clearly saw that as an indulgence. By early 1944 there were as many as 850 prisoners – women and men – crammed into Fort Montluc.
Jack Miller had been taken to Fort Montluc from Avenue Berthelot late on what he assumed was the Wednesday afternoon, the day after his arrest. By then he was beginning to get confused and unwell: his mouth hurt from where he’d been kicked and his nose was painful and throbbing. He was hungry and above all thirsty but at the same time quite nauseous.
This wasn’t the first time he’d been a prisoner of the Gestapo. He’d been arrested by them in Dortmund the previous April and although he remembered the all-consuming fear and the utter terror – feelings which had never fully left him and which often returned in his sleep – somehow now it felt worse. At least then he felt he had a better cover story. And he was soon rescued from the prison by one of his former agents, a doctor in the Dortmund prison infirmary.
But now his predicament appeared hopeless from the outset. The chances of him being rescued were remote and in any case, he had mixed feelings about any rescue attempt because it was bound to involve Sophia in some way and the thought of her being put in even more danger made him feel worse. The hope of somehow surviving this and the life together they’d promised each other was the one thing that kept him going. Her liberty being jeopardised even more was too terrible to think about.
He hardly slept on the Tuesday night in his dungeon in Avenue Berthelot and when he did drop off, he was soon woken by a guard who’d come in to check him. The following morning, he was taken back to the interrogation room. It was the same Gestapo officer from the previous day, the one who’d beaten him up so badly.
‘Have you had time to reflect on your situation?’
Jack winced as he held the mug of lukewarm tea to his lips. His mouth felt as if it was full of shards of glass. He shook his head.
‘Allow me to be clearer. You say you are Johann Neumann from Bielefeld. We know you are not. We don’t believe you’re German. Or French, or Belgian for that matter. So, my question is this: are you going to tell us who you are and what you are doing in Lyon?’
Jack repeated that he was Johann Neumann from Bielefeld and… and his voice trailed off and he asked him to repeat the question but the Gestapo man shook his head and called him an idiot and said he didn’t know if he’d heard of Herr Barbie who was in charge of the Gestapo in Lyon, but now he was going to have the pleasure of meeting him and he’d soon bitterly regret being so difficult.
Barbie had turned up much later that morning – a guard had explained to Jack that he was delayed, sounding almost apologetic, in case the prisoner may be inconvenienced by the delay.
When Barbie did arrive, he was younger and shorter than Jack had imagined, business-like, as if he were a doctor in a hurry because he had a long list of patients to deal with. He removed his jacket, which he handed to an assistant, and rolled up his sleeves and then asked Jack who he really was because his story so far was total nonsense.
Jack repeated his story. Barbie sighed impatiently.
‘Look: we know you’re neither German nor French, which makes us convinced you are a British agent. Assuming that is indeed the case, let me say this: people in your predicament believe that if they confess, they will be horribly tortured and then dragged into a courtyard and shot against a wall.’
He stopped and leant back in his chair and studied the prisoner in front of him carefully. Jack did his best to remain impassive, but actually Barbie had described his feelings quite well and he felt himself shaking. The nausea swept all over him and he felt it rise into his mouth.
‘I’m correct, eh? But let me disabuse you of this. The sooner you co-operate and the more you tell us, the less likely we are to treat you in the manner I’ve just described. You’ll be surprised at how many British agents are being held in prison camps in the Reich: I’m not saying they lead a life of luxury, but they’re alive. All you need to do is co-operate: I appreciate that what you would see as betraying your comrades may be an anathema to you, but it is your opportunity to remain alive.’
Jack realised he’d been biting his tongue so hard that blood was dripping from his mouth and when he spotted Barbie looking confused, he let his head drop and he drooled and began muttering before slumping in his chair and he didn’t react when the German slapped him hard across the face. They brought a medic in who said the prisoner was fine and the next thing he knew a bucket of cold water was thrown over him and he was shackled to the wall once more and at that stage he decided to talk.
Most of it was gibberish, a stream of nonsense peppered with bouts of violent coughing and hyper-ventilating but there were enough facts to keep Barbie interested: addresses where he’d been hiding because he knew Mars would have abandoned them by now and he recounted a long story about a man called Claude who he met in the middle of the Pont de la Guillotière every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at eleven thirty-five precisely in the morning and, yes, of course he could describe him – which he did, at length. In his training he’d been told that in such circumstances you should have in mind someone you knew well so Jack’s description of ‘Claude’ was in fact of his former maths teacher, an overweight, unpleasant man with a penchant for sadistic violence against his pupils.
This lasted for what must have been an hour, interspersed with beatings, but he could tell Barbie’s interest had been stirred. And then he decided to tell them about the radio because he thought that by now the network were bound to have got rid of it.
It was a Type Three Mark Two B Two he said. And from somewhere in his memory, he remembered the tedious stuff Lawrence had told him about the tubes whatever they were having thirty watts of power and the heterodyne set, though how he’d managed to recall that he had no idea, but at least now Barbie looked almost impressed and said very well, they were getting somewhere, but it was late now and we’ve a lot more work to do.
‘By which I mean, work on you!’ Barbie laughed and said that would happen at a place where they were better equipped for that.
