All the King's Men (29 page)

Unfortunately, just when Déricourt had begun to think the whole thing was becoming too easy, Henri Frager raised his head again. Hugo Bleicher, still masquerading as Colonel Heinrich, continued to meet with Bardet and Frager. At one of these meetings he told Frager that he’d seen copies of some of his July mail which had passed across from Avenue Foch. It was mail that Frager had given to GILBERT to send to London. Frager exploded. He resolved to go to London and blow the whistle on Déricourt.

By October the bar in Rue St André des Arts was now functioning as planned. Three homeward-bound agents had approached Besnard and asked if GILBERT could get them back to London. Besnard gave each of them a password that would identify them to Déricourt. At one of these rendezvous, Déricourt was surprised to discover that one of the passengers was none other than Roger Bardet.
He was delighted with the prospect of shovelling this one onto an aircraft to London. He told Bardet to catch the evening train down to Angers where he would be met at the station at about nine.

Having inspected the field first, Déricourt and Clément cycled back to Angers and their rendezvous. Bardet and four others stood waiting inside the Angers station doors: Francis Nearne, brother to the more famous Jacqueline Nearne; Alexander Levy who was a chief engineer with the French Public Works; N. LePrince, a Gaullist agent; and Bardet.

Déricourt liked to kill time before operations at a little café in the town square. As the party walked across the square, Déricourt noticed that Bardet seemed to be lagging behind. He stopped to wait for him to catch up and then noticed that behind Bardet, lurking in the shadows, was Henri Frager. There was nothing Frager could do, but shuffle forward and be confronted. As the two Henris glared at each other, Déricourt accused Frager of stalking one of his operations. Frager denied it, but then admitted that in fact he was the one meant to be flying to London, not Bardet.

Déricourt put it all together in a flash. Because Frager didn’t trust him, he’d sent Bardet to make all the arrangements and then had hoped at the last moment to slip himself onto the aircraft in Bardet’s place.

Déricourt was furious. ‘How dare you tell someone else the password!’

By this stage Clément had stopped to see what the disturbance was about. He ushered the other passengers into the restaurant and then approached the belligerents. He had never seen Déricourt lose his temper before and it must have been a sight to behold. Through clenched teeth, Déricourt explained the situation to Clément who was equally infuriated but had the presence of mind to realize that the middle of the town square was not the place to discuss it. Levy now joined the scene, intervening just at
the point when fists were about to be thrown and the police called.

The group of hotheads moved inside the restaurant and sat silently through their meal, during which time Déricourt had gathered his thoughts and tried to rescue something from the fiasco. He suggested that as both men knew the password, both should be transported to London. Bardet nearly spilt his soup. The argument flared up again and the patron despaired lest the police should arrive. The other passengers too had become distressed at the apparently unremitting dispute. Bardet had no intention of setting foot on British soil.

As far as the other passengers were concerned, this was a battle between Déricourt and Frager over protocol and passwords. They were completely unaware of the delicately balanced game of bluff that hinged on what each knew – or did not know about the other. There was a great deal more at stake than simply the success of the operation.

Having reached a stalemate again, Déricourt changed the subject and instructed everyone where to assemble, close to the field. Three hours later, six figures stood together at the break in a hedge that bordered the field. Clément dashed off across the open space to organize the torches when from behind him he could hear drifting voices. The row had errupted once more.

It was interrupted by the drone of the Hudson, banking away to the west. After the great machine had thumped and thudded its way to a halt, Déricourt helped first Levy, then LePrince and Nearne into the aircraft. Then finally Frager helped himself aboard. Suddenly Déricourt took hold of Bardet and heaved him bodily towards the doorway. It was hopeless; the door was some two or three feet above the ground and it would have taken two men to hoist him up.

Déricourt and Bardet struggled bitterly, their voices drowned by the roaring engine, while the pilot waited for
the thumbs-up. Bardet kicked and screamed, flailing his arms in all directions until finally he managed to get away from Déricourt. Clément didn’t know what to do. Déricourt turned back to the aircraft and looked up at Frager, now standing in the doorway – hand outstretched; not to help someone aboard, but to shake Déricourt’s hand. He had won. Déricourt turned away. Clément rushed forward, clasped Frager’s hand and, having checked everyone inside was secure, closed the door.
¹⁰

Meanwhile Déricourt’s attention had switched to Bardet, now a receding figure in the gloom. His hand closed round his pistol; he would never have a better opportunity to be rid of him. But he paused – Déricourt had realized in time that Bardet’s death would mean his own end. There was nothing he could do about Frager now and so long as he remained in London, Bardet was insured. After all, there were the three incoming agents to be looked after and the sight of someone being shot would hardly have been an advertisement for Déricourt’s services.

Frager’s debriefing by security officers at Baker Street began the day after his return to London and lasted four days. He began at the beginning, describing the very first operation where his party were disturbed at Madame Menon’s schoolhouse, then expanding he described how over the summer a number of operations to recover dropped arms and equipment were foiled by the presence of Germans, apparently alerted to the location of the drop-zones. Then, closing in on the meat of his subject, he introduced and described the enigmatic figure of Colonel Heinrich and the information that Déricourt was an agent of the SD and was giving them the mail that SOE’s agents had entrusted to him. The clincher for Frager was that Heinrich had learnt that Bodington had warned GILBERT immediately after his meeting with Frager and that somehow the SD were aware that Déricourt’s codename had been changed to CLAUDE. Following Frager’s lengthy de-brief, SOE’s security section decided to instigate a
proper investigation into Déricourt. The security section was headed by an MI5 officer called John Sentor, seconded to the SOE to provide a little professional expertise in that department.

Before him was Déricourt’s entire SOE file, beginning with MI5’s initial report received 23 November 1942 stating they would not recommend him for employment. That of course had been countered by Bodington’s own personal recommendation. Subsequently there was the report from MI5 in April, which stated that Déricourt was known to have had contacts with the Germans in Paris after the French Armistice and to which MI5 had commented, ‘This seems very dangerous.’ Bodington had dealt with that one by dismissing it as ‘typical French backbiting’. Then another report dated 11 June, from a Belgian source, stating that when Déricourt was in London he talked freely of his work in France. Then on 18 June MI5 sent yet another report, which again came from the French and which claimed that the Gestapo knew about Déricourt and were going to try and use him. This was quashed by Déricourt and Bodington between them. Finally there was Bodington’s stirring testimonial delivered in the report of his trip to Paris. If Sentor appreciated that any pattern had developed between the MI5 reports and Bodington’s comments, he chose not to express it on paper. (There now began a long struggle between SOE’s security section, which was simply trying to do its job and protect SOE operations, and various forces ranged against them. Some of these were innocent, others were not.)

Sentor’s principal difficulty with the case was that Buckmaster considered
both
Frager and Déricourt completely reliable. In fact Déricourt’s record had been particularly good, given all the chaos of the PROSPER collapse. To Buckmaster especially, Déricourt had shone like a beacon of light while all around was dark and destroyed. In his final analysis, Sentor was forced to conclude, in the absence of any evidence to substantiate
Frager’s statement, that it was just ‘one agent’s word against another’s’. It was formally noted that the matter of Frager’s statement would constitute not an accusation, but a denunciation. However, Sentor perceptively concluded, ‘If he is a traitor, he won’t cause any substantial casualty. The enemy won’t want to lose him so won’t compromise him.’
¹¹
Sentor passed the report to Archie Boyle, the man who had sponsored Déricourt into the SOE. Boyle annotated it, ‘Most disturbing.’

When the report reached Buckmaster there clearly developed a private struggle between what was implied in the report and what Buckmaster felt ‘in his guts’ – that Déricourt was completely reliable. All agents passing through Déricourt’s hands were advised to consider him a security risk and avoid all unnecessary contact. So long as he remained ‘a vital link in the transport system’ he would remain in place. If however any of his operations should result in the arrest of agents in the field then, ‘…he should be liquidated on the spot’.
¹²

But at precisely the same time as the security section were looking into Déricourt’s record, moves were afoot to quash any doubts there might have been about ‘
l’homme qui fait les pick-ups
’. Since the beginning of October there had been a sniff of a rumour that Déricourt was being recommended for a DSO. Later it was confirmed that, indeed, he was to be cited for the Distinguished Service Order. This was news of very great moment. The DSO was an award of extremely high merit and more to the point, it would be SOE’s very first DSO. Naturally the news generated a great deal of interest, enhanced Déricourt’s image somewhat and perhaps even cloaked his work in a kind of mantle of distinction. Now he really was a star. The question was, though, who had recommended him?

Colonel Buckmaster was not behind the recommendation, nor was Bodington. Indeed no one in F Section had anything to do with it. The actual recommendation was written up by Brigadier E. Mockler-Ferryman who was the
officer responsible for all operations in north-western Europe. Mockler-Ferryman, or ‘The Moke’ as he was known, was also not the instigator – he simply wrote it up ‘as instructed’. No doubt. But instructed by whom? Just what The Moke wrote is almost as intriguing as the question of its provenance. The citation recognized Déricourt’s excellent work in the field and that his technical competence had earned the complete confidence of the RAF’s Special Duties Squadron. In addition, it drew particular attention to the fact of his relations with the Germans. It referred to the ‘particular difficult and highly dangerous’ circumstances in which he operated.

This involves keeping up many very dangerous acquaintances, particularly [though not exclusively] with pilots of the Luftwaffe and Lufthansa. He has been successful in achieving this and in preserving the security of the other members of our organization.
¹³

Given the sacrifice of people like Francis Suttill (who received the DSO posthumously), Jack Agazarian, Andrée Borrel and dozens of others, this particular recommendation seems rather to oversell Déricourt’s significance within SOE’s operations, especially in the light of it being their
first
DSO. It seems perverse, to say the least, that it should have been drawn up at the same time that Frager was accusing Déricourt of working with the Germans. SOE’s files do not reveal ‘the precise origins of that recommendation’. According to Harry Sporborg, who later became intimately familiar with Déricourt’s case, the DSO recommendation did not come from within SOE. If nothing else, one has to commend Claude Dansey’s timing.

Despite news of the DSO the security section’s concern about Déricourt continued into November and involved Frager’s accusation that Déricourt might be passing SOE mail to the Germans. They memoed Buckmaster:

The constant tapping of courier [mail] yields the Gestapo in the long run a far higher dividend than the arrest of a few agents engaged in sabotage, or even the break-up of a whole organization which we can restart with entirely different personnel, unknown to the Gestapo.

Buckmaster, perhaps under the influence of the news that his star man in northern France was in line for the Section’s first DSO, dismissed Sentor’s argument, ‘I cannot agree…. The courier that might have been seen by the enemy is of very little practical value.’
¹⁴
When flight after flight, month after month everything Déricourt touched ran so smoothly, it would have been almost impossible for Buckmaster to exercise a rigorous examination of other people’s doubts. Emerging from the ruins of PROSPER, the like of which no one in F Section ever wanted to see again, all the section officers were united in their admiration for Déricourt. But the doubts continued.

In mid-November, a Gaullist agent named Yeo-Thomas returned from France and delivered another report on ‘the one who does the pick-ups’. In substance it seemed to be the same as Frager’s. When the security section interviewed Yeo-Thomas he told them, ‘Through his treachery two men and one woman were arrested in August.’ Security could find no evidence of who these might have been, and dismissed Yeo-Thomas’ report as ‘inter-service rivalry’. F Section were determined not to remove Déricourt from the field.
¹⁵

However the situation in Paris was changing dramatically. Given all the odds against him, it was remarkable that Déricourt had held out as long as he did, but by October the writing was on the wall. Significantly, it had nothing to do with Frager or any other denunciation. Déricourt’s mission began to draw to an end because of a decision made in Berlin.