Agent in the shadows, p.26
Agent in the Shadows, page 26
René Dupont was off the case.
The following week was the one before the rescue attempt at Fort Montluc. As well as planning the rescue, Sophia and Siegfried were also under pressure from Mars to find out what they could about Source Armand while they still had the chance.
Sophia frantically scoured as many Verified Source Reports as she could, but found no reference to Source Armand. She concluded that since he’d come under the direct control of Barbie, the security around him had been tightened up. The contents of one of the Verified Source Reports she came across shocked her, although it was nothing to do with Source Armand. It seemed urgent and would need to be dealt with. She made a mental note and resolved to raise it with Agnes Kléber.
The breakthrough came early on the Wednesday evening, around six-thirty when there was a lull in Section 4A: the secretaries and the officers on duty during the day had mostly left and those on the night shift weren’t due to arrive until closer to seven. Luise Brunner didn’t want to remain in the office too late and draw undue attention to herself.
It was then that René Dupont came in, looking as if he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, sighing and shaking his head as he put his bag on his desk and removed his raincoat. She remembered Knochen’s telex: I no longer want him run by that Frenchman. That could explain his mood.
Dupont’s German was quite reasonable so she asked him how he was and he pulled a face and shrugged his shoulders as if to indicate things were not so good and she said she hoped the night shift wouldn’t be too difficult and he muttered something about it probably being the usual, adolescents writing Resistez! on walls to impress girls, and she asked him if he’d like a coffee and he seemed very grateful.
His desk was close to hers, easily within earshot in a quiet office and it was then the thought occurred to her. She was surprised she’d not thought of it before. She lifted the telephone, discreetly keeping a finger on the button to suppress the dialling tone in case Dupont heard it.
‘Hello – is that Registry? I hoped I’d catch you before you left… of course… this is Luise Brunner from Section 4A: we had a request on Monday to send you any files relating to a Source… hang on, just let me check… here we are: Source Armand. Is that correct?’
Out of the corner of her eye she caught Dupont staring at her and leaning forward to catch every word. She nodded, as if listening to someone on the other end of the line.
‘I know, I do realise that: we sent the files through, of course, but I’m just checking if you have them all now? I went through our outstanding files today and couldn’t find any more but if you want me to keep looking… no, absolutely – I understand. Thank you. I wish you a pleasant evening. Heil Hitler!’
René Dupont didn’t so much as take the bait as snatch at it. No sooner had she replaced the receiver than he appeared at her desk, thanking her so much for the coffee and she said it was a pleasure.
‘I hope you will excuse me, Fraulein Brunner, but I couldn’t help overhearing your telephone conversation with Registry and am I correct in thinking you were referring to Source Armand?’
‘That is correct.’ She was tidying her desk, preparing to leave.
Dupont nodded, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, a forlorn expression on his face. ‘Source Armand was originally my agent. And now…’ He snapped his fingers like a magician making a handkerchief disappear. ‘And now, he’s been taken away from me. Into Registry so it would seem!’
Sophia smiled and said she really didn’t know about such matters and she just did what she was told.
‘Of course. Do you happen to know what has become of the Source Armand files? I only ask because if I happen to come across any in my possession then I can ensure they are sent to the correct place?’
‘As I understand it, Registry are collating them and they are then being sent to Herr Barbie’s office. Maybe if you were to—’
‘No, no, no… no need, I was just wondering. To be honest, Fraulein Brunner, it’s one less informer for me to worry about. I’m busy enough as it is, though I can’t help feeling a bit resentful that an informer I recruited – perhaps the most important one in Lyon, if not in the whole of France – is no longer mine and, of course, I receive no credit.’
‘That is the way of the world, Monsieur Dupont: one rarely gets credit for what one does.’ She smiled sweetly, which seemed to encourage him. He pulled up a chair next to her desk and sat down.
‘I hope you don’t think I’m speaking out of turn, Fraulein Brunner, and I know these are not matters for you, but… these are difficult times for a patriotic Frenchman such as myself. Our motives are all too often misunderstood. We are called collaborators and even traitors would you believe, yet it is people such as myself who are upholding true French values: what could be more patriotic than defending France from the Jews and the socialists and the communists, I ask you?’
‘I can certainly see your point.’
‘When it comes to loyalty, they’re the worse of the lot, I can tell you from personal experience.’
‘Who is that, Monsieur Dupont?’
The door opened and someone entered, heading for the other side of the room. Dupont looked uneasy. ‘The communists, Fraulein Brunner. They only have loyalty to the Soviet Union. Yet no one pillories them as they do the likes of us. They call them defenders of France, the great resistants, all of that nonsense. He’s one of them, you know?’
‘Who is one of them?’
‘Source Armand, the man we’ve just been talking about. We were at school together: right up until we left at the age of fifteen – we even shared the same desk in our last year would, you believe? That’s why he approached me: because he saw in me a kind of loyalty too – to a different cause, at the opposite end of the political spectrum, but at least I have my own determined point of view and I think he respected that. Neither of us just follows the crowd. Maybe he used me, maybe it was because he knew me and preferred to deal with a Frenchman so it wouldn’t feel like he was collaborating… I don’t know but… but what I do know is he chose me to pass on information to.’
He stopped speaking suddenly, as if realising he’d already said too much. Sophia said she could quite understand his position and it was so unfair that people like him who were acting in France’s best interests should be criticised.
‘Are you still in contact with this Source Armand?’
‘I’ve been told not to. You know something, Fraulein Brunner: the information I passed on was the best the Gestapo had ever received. Herr Barbie himself admitted that. But I understand Source Armand’s motives better than the Gestapo because I’m a Frenchman.’
Someone else had entered the office now. Dupont stood up and moved the chair back. He leant over Sophia’s desk, his face inches from hers. ‘In the so-called Resistance, they hate the other groups almost as much as they hate the Nazis. As far as some of them are concerned – especially the communists – the end justifies the means. I was smart enough to exploit that.’ René Dupont stood up straight, his arms folded and a knowing smile on his face.
‘Who is this man, then, this Source Armand? He sounds a complicated character!’
René Dupont shook his head as he backed away. Another of the French Gestapo officers had come to sit in his desk close to them.
* * *
Sometime on the Wednesday morning Jack Miller opened his eyes – or as much as his swollen left eye would allow him – and looked around the bedroom in the apartment on Boulevard du Nord.
When he saw Sophia, he smiled and held his hand towards her and she grasped it and leant over to kiss him on the forehead. Siegfried passed a glass of water, which he sipped, and then he allowed himself to be helped up into a sitting position.
Doctor Hubert took Jack’s blood pressure and temperature. For the first time since Sunday, he didn’t look so worried. The previous evening he’d arrived at the apartment after visiting Hôtel-Dieu hospital.
‘I managed to get hold of Prontosil,’ he said, tapping his briefcase. ‘It’s a sulphonamide: it’s by no means certain if it will work but I’ll give him the maximum dose. It’s the best antibiotic available to us. I’m not sure we have any alternative.’
It had the desired effect.
By the Thursday Jack was still weak and feverish, but was well enough for just the three of them to remain in the apartment with a member of Mars coming in once a day. Gilbert had been to check on them on the Sunday morning. In the evening Sophia and Siegfried were sitting in the lounge when the door of the apartment opened and Madame Madelaine entered.
They knew immediately something was not right.
* * *
This would be Agnes Kléber’s great triumph.
No longer would she be the reliable and accommodating person, steady and boring, someone who once the war was over would be easily disregarded and forgotten about.
She could see as well as anyone else the way the war was going – perhaps better than them, to be honest – and if she were lucky, she’d be regarded as just one of the many thousands who’d assisted the Resistance and she’d end up back in Alsace, or here in Lyon, or wherever – but she’d still be the spinster who people viewed with a mixture of pity and disinterest.
But once the war was over, she wanted to be seen as a hero of the Resistance, without the faintest trace of a question mark over her motives for working at Avenue Berthelot.
And this was her opportunity.
On the Thursday, Luise Brunner had recounted what René Dupont had told her the previous evening: that he’d been at school with Source Armand, they’d left school at the age of fifteen and had shared a desk in their final year at school. They agreed that nothing would be done about that until after the rescue attempt on the Sunday.
Agnes Kléber said to leave it to her and Luise Brunner said obviously you’ll pass all this on to Madame Madelaine and she said of course, naturally. It was then that Luise Brunner had remembered something and handed her a piece of paper in her own writing.
Izieu.
‘I found this place referred to in a Verified Source Report: I think you need to have a look at it, something from an informer. It looks urgent to me. Maybe Mars will know who to warn.’
She nodded and promised to find the report and slipped the piece of paper inside a notebook on her desk. She’d check it out in the morning, she said.
But she never did.
She had a more pressing matter on her mind and she had no intention of sharing the glory that would come from that with anyone else because she knew if she did so her role in exposing the great traitor of Lyon would soon be forgotten. She alone would find out their identity and she would present Source Armand’s head on a silver platter to the Mars Network.
She waited until the Monday, the day after Jack’s rescue from Fort Montluc. In the Personnel Department at Avenue Berthelot, she found Dupont’s file and on it the name of the school he’d been at and the year he’d graduated.
She telephoned the school and was told that all records from before 1935 were stored in the basement of the Hôtel de Ville, the headquarters of the council in Lyon. She had to wait until the Wednesday to find a pretext for visiting the Hôtel de Ville on Place des Terreaux. There was a small Gestapo liaison office based there and she timed her visit for the start of their lunchbreak. She been sent to collect some housing details, she told them, from the records department.
‘I’m happy to go and look myself, if that helps you?’
It took her an hour to find the correct records. The document listing those leaving the school in 1918 was divided into four classes. The class with René Dupont’s name had twenty-six pupils, listed in alphabetical order. She studied it carefully, trying to see if there could be any clue as to which of the other twenty-five names was that of Source Armand.
But she did notice written in pencil alongside each name – in brackets and preceded by b/ – was a number. There were thirteen numbers. Against Dupont’s name was (b/8).
It must be his desk.
The other pupil with (b/8) against his name was called Georges Moreau.
Agnes Kléber had found Source Armand.
She found Georges Moreau’s family address in the same school records. She was able to check it with the most up-to-date directory for Lyon: his mother still lived at the same address in Montchat. The following day she found a file for Georges Moreau in the Registry in Avenue Berthelot. It contained a single sheet of paper, with two typed lines: one saying he was believed to have been a member of the Communist Party youth wing in 1919. The second line said he had been observed handing out leaflets for the Communist Party candidate in the legislative election of 1924.
Written underneath in pen was ‘Refer RD: 4/11/1942’, which proved he was handled by René Dupont. And she suspected that they had no idea that Georges Moreau was his original name. Had they done so, that file would have been removed.
Georges Moreau would have a different name now. Only Dupont would know he was now Source Armand.
And now she knew too.
* * *
Georges Moreau knew his past would catch up with him one day. He didn’t labour under any illusions about the depth of his treachery and nor did he attempt to diminish it in his own mind by seeking to justify it. It was something he’d had to do, and all his attention and energy now needed to be devoted to ensuring he remained above suspicion. It was not as if there was a shortage of people who’d want their revenge on him. It could be people within his own organisation or those seen as their allies in the Resistance, but who were still political opponents. And then the Germans: he knew sooner or later they’d turn on him.
But Georges Moreau also knew how hard it would be to find him. He’d been careful in concealing his identity. He’d not used the name Georges Moreau since 1929 when he’d changed his name and then disappeared underground for three years. When he emerged, he used another identity until 1936 and then changed that one two years later to the name by which he was known now. Georges Moreau had been – to all intents and purposes – dead for the best part of fifteen years.
But Georges Moreau did emerge once in a while, like a creature in the depths of a dark forest emerging for a brief period only to disappear again. Now he only emerged to visit his mother in Montchat in the east of the city. For many years his mother understood that if anyone ever enquired after him, she was to deny all knowledge.
She knew what to say.
Georges? I’ve not seen him for years. I’m told he’s been sent to work in Germany. If you see him tell him to write to me!
But in recent months he’d begun to worry: he’d noticed how forgetful she was becoming, how she could be so vacant at times. He doubted he’d be able to risk visiting her for much longer. He cut his visits to once every five or six weeks, unannounced, slipping in through the back door and staying no more than half an hour.
When he turned up on the morning of Saturday 11 March his mother looked more confused than usual. ‘Every Sunday, Georges, you arrive at nine and take me to church and then we come back here and we sit down to lunch with your father! So why have you come today rather than tomorrow?’
He sat in silence as he pondered the situation: his mother had imagined everything. ‘Now you won’t see the woman!’
‘What woman, Mother?’
‘The woman who came yesterday. She was asking for you. She said she knew you from schooldays and mentioned a few other boys I remembered from your class and she wanted to say hello, though to be honest, Georges, she looked older than you, but then the years do that to women. And I—’
‘Did you get her name?’
‘No, but don’t worry: I told her you’re here on Sunday morning to take me to church and I invited her for lunch!’
* * *
It was only as she walked down the path to the house that Sunday morning that it occurred to Agnes Kléber that perhaps she wasn’t as well prepared as she ought to have been. She’d been concentrating on finding out Source Armand’s identity and then tracking down Georges Moreau and had been so pleased with herself at doing this she’d not really thought of a plan of what to do now.
She had thought about telling the Mars Network what she was doing, perhaps leaving a note to say she’d identified Source Armand and giving his mother’s address in Montchat, but then there was the chance that somehow she’d lose control of the situation and others would take the credit.
This was going to be her triumph. She decided the best course of action would be to confront Georges Moreau. She had a pistol, after all.
* * *
Georges Moreau had spelt it out very clearly to his mother. The woman who she’d invited for lunch was not coming. Instead, he told his mother, she was to go round to her cousin’s and remain there for a few hours.
Moreau waited alone in the house that morning, concealed behind a curtain upstairs as he watched the street. At a quarter to one he spotted the woman, walking nervously down the street, hesitating outside the house before heading for the front door. She remained there for five minutes, knocking and then peering through the front window and at once stage calling out, ‘Madame Moreau!’
When she left the way she’d come, Georges Moreau hurried downstairs. He left the house through the back door and ran down the alley at the rear, which ran parallel to their road. When he followed a turning of the alley he emerged onto the road, at a reasonable distance behind the woman. She headed east and turned into Boulevard de la Part-Dieu and he knew he’d have his chance when they passed the railway sidings, deserted on a Sunday.
It had occurred to him that there could be an innocent explanation to all this, that maybe it was someone from his past who did indeed want to catch up, but he doubted it. He couldn’t recognise the woman who’d come down the path and who he was now following. And in any case, it was a risk he couldn’t take. Georges Moreau disappeared fifteen years ago and he intended for it remain that way.
