All the King's Men (18 page)

At the back of Déricourt’s mind sat the quiet dark figure of doubt about his arrangement with Boemelburg. With the noise of the Lysander just a memory and the merest
whisper now seeming to travel to the other side of the field, he just did not know whether or not they were being observed. It was quite possible his arrangement with Boemelburg would be worth nothing and the SD had decided to take advantage of the situation. In which case, all he wanted was to be rid of these four marked men. But Frager would not be charmed into submission. There was no alternative; they mounted their bicycles and set off for Tours.

It was about 3.30 in the morning when Dubois led them to a small schoolhouse at Tours, where his mother-in-law, Madame Menon, was the headmistress. They all went inside for a rest and something to eat. At about 7.30, the party at the schoolhouse were disturbed at their breakfast by an early-morning visit from the SD. The Germans apologized for the intrusion and, demonstrating every courtesy, explained that they were part of a commission that was obliged to inspect the school’s library for works the occupying authorities felt might be incompatible with the Nazi view of history. Having browsed through the library for some thirty minutes, the gentlemen from the SD thanked Madame Menon for her assistance and departed.

Everyone let out a great sigh of relief. It had been one of those remarkable accidents of fate which were bound to happen in an occupied country. They were all secretly proud of themselves for having kept so calm and collected. All except Henri Frager. He found the experience deeply unsettling and was immediately suspicious.
¹⁵
He worried at it, like a dog with a bone, suspecting that somehow Déricourt was responsible. But his was a lone voice; these visiting commissions were a fairly common event. Though it must be said, it was not work the SD were usually concerned with. Normally it was one of those tedious tasks left to the Feldgendarmerie led by a representative of the German occupation authority. Frager’s instincts were probably correct, the men who called at the schoolhouse probably were Kieffer’s. Though Boemelburg’s orders
were clear enough, it was more than likely that on this first operation for which they had details of time and place, Kieffer just couldn’t resist putting his people on the spot.
¹⁶

Déricourt was just as surprised by the visit as everyone else. Clearly, the arrangement needed a lot more refinement before it could be said to be working properly. For that reason, he hadn’t told the SD anything about the operation he was to conduct the following night. Déricourt and Clément took leave of the others, took the train up to Vendôme and then travelled cross country to the tiny village of Pont-de-Braye, about mid-way between Vendôme and Le Mans. There they rendezvoused with JuJu who was on her way to London. If she was going to be in constant touch with PROSPER’s people, then SOE insisted she be put through a training course and be properly established. The day before, there had been a nervous little scene at Charles Besnard’s flat in Rue Malakoff. Julienne (he never called her JuJu) had anounced that she was going away for some time: ‘A tour of duty in the provinces.’ Besnard suspected she had something to do with the Resistance, but didn’t press her on it. The evening had ended in silence and Julienne left before he woke the next morning.

At Pont-de-Braye, Squadron Leader Hugh Verity brought his Lysander (‘J’ Jiminy Cricket) down and badly damaged his tail wheel on what must have been a cart track across the flare path. He knew nothing about it until his return, when it went down in the book. He off-loaded two agents from the Gaullist section who had no need of Déricourt’s assistance and departed the scene. Meanwhile the young JuJu climbed half-way up the ladder, gave Henri a big hug, and was sent on her way.

With the arrangement now fairly neatly poised, though perhaps still needing a few refinements, there developed an unnecessary complication – a political problem that threatened to jeopardize Boemelburg’s operation unless it was nipped in the bud. The problem, at this stage a mere
ripple flowing out from Berlin, had been caused by the hostility that raged between the Nazi Party security machine, the Sicherheitsdienst and German military intelligence, the Abwehr. The head of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris, was not only unsympathetic to Nazi ambitions, he was downright hostile. This mercurial doyen of the German intelligence community was secretly engaged in a plot to remove Hitler and attempt to negotiate peace with the Western Allies. Since Churchill’s declaration at Casablanca that the Allies wanted nothing less than Germany’s complete surrender, that idea had run into sand. Nevertheless there were a great many young turks in the SD who harboured the darkest suspicions about Canaris and the Abwehr in general. One in particular, Horst Kopkow, had made it his personal ambition to destroy Canaris. Consequently, the Abwehr were engaged in a life-and-death struggle for control of German intelligence and counterespionage operations.

Whereas in the past, the division of labour between the Nazi security police and the Abwehr’s own counter-intelligence departments had proved very effective, by the turn of 1943 that spirit of co-operation was dead. The SD demanded complete responsibility for what they referred to as ‘war winning intelligence operations’.
¹⁷
Kopkow had ordered that the SD’s operations in France were to have absolute priority over anything the Abwehr was engaged in, and that there should be no interference whatsoever in those operations. His wishes had been communicated before the end of 1942 and had recently been re-affirmed in the light of Boemelburg’s reports on PROSPER.

Unfortunately, Kopkow’s threats of fire and brimstone were made a long way away, in Berlin. In Paris, the Abwehr felt that the SD’s methods, though they produced results, were crude and distasteful. At the headquarters in the Hotel Lutetia, Colonel Reile held command over a young and brilliant group of officers, none more audacious than Sergeant Hugo Bleicher, who was engaged upon
an operation that would allow him to penetrate right into the centre of the PROSPER organization – and into direct conflict with the Avenue Foch. The Abwehr were aware of the development of a new network in the north and their reports indicated it had some significant strategic importance. At that stage, however, no one – not even the SD – had the vaguest inkling of its true size.

Unlike Boemelburg, the Abwehr had no easy entrée into this new network, but Bleicher did have an asset ready to exploit – the list of names they had stolen months before from a member of the CARTE network. In November the previous year André Marsac, one of the CARTE couriers, had been followed onto a train to Paris by an Abwehr agent and while he was asleep the contents of his briefcase, a list of co-conspirators, was removed. Bleicher had presumed that CARTE’s legions and PROSPER were one and the same – a fair assumption. In fact, his first use of the list led him not to Suttill, but to Henri Frager.

Through various deceptions Bleicher made contact with a number of people in what was the DONKEYMAN network. One of these was a Roger Bardet whom Bleicher had succeeded in recruiting to work for him. Bardet, apart from being a key figure in DONKEYMAN, was also Frager’s lover. By the time Frager had returned from London, Bardet had become Bleicher’s agent. The young Hugo had also got control of a number of SOE wireless sets down in the Yonne and was using them in what was known as a
Funkspiele
or radio game. Essentially, when a set was captured, preferably with the correct codes, then a skilled operator could play that set back to London leading the British to believe their agent was still free, and that way feed them a lot of false intelligence. In essence it was the reverse of what the British XX Committee were doing with German agents sent to Britain, though without the co-operation of the operator.

Through the radio monitoring centre at Boulevard Suchet, the SD discovered Bleicher’s radio game and
mistakenly presumed that the ‘little sergeant’ from the Hotel Lutetia had already penetrated the PROSPER network.
¹⁸
Boemelburg was furious. Slamming his hand down onto his desk he demanded Bleicher be stopped. No one had any right to PROSPER but himself. Kieffer was given the added responsibility of keeping the Abwehr out of the game. Soon after they had learnt of the radio game, Kieffer kept an appointment with Colonel Reile at Abwehr headquarters, where he gave the Colonel the full benefit of SS Sturmbannfuhrer Kopkow’s views regarding PROSPER. By that stage, Reile (and his ace, Sergeant Bleicher) knew they hadn’t yet penetrated PROSPER, but a group they called ‘the St Jorioz Terrorists’ – Frager’s group DONKEYMAN. He reassured Kieffer they had no knowledge of PROSPER.
¹⁹
Kieffer did not believe him.

In the meantime, a very sophisticated operational structure was created at Avenue Foch to deal with the GILBERT operations. Dr Josef Götz, an interpreter and linguist, was given administrative responsibility for building up the surveillance teams. Josef Placke organized recruitment. It was decided to draw upon the infamous Bony–LaFont gang, a gangster-like outfit created by Inspector Pierre Bony and Henri LaFont, largely out of crooked ex-policemen and criminals. Götz went through long and detailed briefings, explaining how important it was to select the right people for each operation, where they should hide themselves, how to remain inconspicuous on a country railway platform and so on. The whole operation took on the look of a well-planned military manoeuvre.

The next meeting between Déricourt and Boemelburg occurred sometime during the third week of April, following JuJu’s departure. The most important subject under discussion was the fact that Déricourt had been ordered back to Britain at the end of the week. Flying Officer McCairns’ report had placed the blame for the near-disaster at Amboise squarely on Déricourt’s shoulders.
Squadron Leader Verity felt that Déricourt was getting somewhat over-confident and that ‘perhaps he needed a strip torn off him’.
²⁰
At least he should come back for a week or two for a rest. It was not something Déricourt could avoid, he had been ordered back and that was that. Boemelburg wasn’t happy at all. Déricourt had become his key man and he didn’t like the thought of losing him – even for a few weeks. It was an awkward moment. There was even the outside possibility that he might not come back at all!

Déricourt’s answer was that he wouldn’t abandon his wife and Clément. Boemelburg didn’t have a great deal of choice in the matter. Clément’s and his wife’s safety was a guarantee for both sides. Before they parted Boemelburg gave Déricourt a warning not to involve himself with Frager or any of his contacts. They had been penetrated by the Abwehr and for that reason were highly dangerous.

Leaving Jeannot on her own in Paris was very difficult. Doubly so as he had left her, in a sense, as surety. In their little room in the ‘Col Moll’, Déricourt and Jeannot had found a kind of peace and security since moving to Paris. Though he found it impossible to be faithful, he was utterly devoted to her, as she was to him. She was not a co-conspirator, she was his sanctuary and he would do almost anything to preserve that state of affairs.

On the other hand, he was relieved to be returning to Britain. He desperately needed to talk to Dansey. The situation with the SD was escalating each week and he no longer felt in control. He was also beginning to have certain moral qualms about what he was doing, especially after having met Suttill. These feelings needed to be assuaged, along with a lot of doubts and uncertainties about his own security.

On Thursday the 22nd, the day before Good Friday, Déricourt bought a ticket for Le Mans and then visited one of his restaurant meeting places to wait for the evening train. Before he departed, news arrived of a disaster. Earlier
that day two elderly sisters, Germaine and Madelaine Tambour, had been arrested by the Abwehr. The news streaked around the PROSPER meeting places like lightning. Alarm bells were going off everywhere – especially at Avenue Foch. Germaine Tambour was an associate of Suttill’s. In fact she knew a great number of people. Bleicher had finally stumbled into PROSPER, probably through the list of old CARTE associates that had been stolen in November, long before Suttill had arrived in France. Germaine Tambour had worked for CARTE.
²¹

At first none of this was clear. Arrests had been made and for a while no one knew how or why. Déricourt tried to telephone Boemelburg but couldn’t get through. At the Avenue Foch, Kieffer could be heard bellowing down the corridors at his subordinates. He was telling them what he was going to do with Reile. Before he boarded the train for Le Mans, Déricourt finally spoke with Boemelburg who tried to reassure him that it had nothing to do with the SD, it was the work of the Abwehr. Nothing would happen, it would be all right.
²²

Hardly reassured, Déricourt stood on the field at Pont-de-Braye with Rémy, waiting for that familiar sound of the Rolls-Royce engine. Out of the moonlit sky, Verity brought down ‘Jiminy Cricket’, while above them Flight Lieutenant Bridger circled in a second Lizzie. In six hours Déricourt would be sitting down to eggs and bacon in the mess at Tempsford, hundreds of miles away from the chaos in Paris.

XI
The Other Game

At Tempsford, Déricourt changed into an RAF uniform and formally received his honorary commission as Flight Lieutenant in the Special Duties Squadron. He was not required to wear the shoulder flash that identified a foreigner’s country of origin; to all intents and purposes, he appeared British and was allowed the free run of the base. The dressing down he expected was, according to Verity, a pretty fierce affair and though Déricourt knew the incident with the tree had not been his fault, he was nonetheless suitably contrite. The refresher course wasn’t too gruelling and for the most part his trip was an opportunity to relax and unwind. About two weeks later, Déricourt travelled up to London and stayed with Boding-ton and Simon. He reported to F Section at Baker Street and gave them a brief report of his operations to date. But as he was more or less in Britain at the RAF’s behest, his time was pretty well his own. He also caught up with JuJu, who was coming to the end of her training course and was due to return to France in May. His most pressing priority, however, was to meet with Dansey.