All the King's Men (34 page)

     They contained precise information about their activity in France, indicating their parachute drop fields, BBC messages for these drops, the names of direct colleagues and Frenchmen in charge of receiving these drops. Later I learnt that BOE/48 was none other than the above mentioned GILBERT or CLAUDE.
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For months Déricourt languished in Fresnes Prison without knowing what sort of strategy to pursue. The major problem was his admission to having had some kind of contact with the Germans. By doing that he had already signed his death warrant. Then about late February, he was contacted by someone from MI6. The contact’s name was simply ‘Robert’. He called on Déricourt at Fresnes and between them they began to reconstruct some kind of defence. ‘Robert’ told Déricourt to get Jeannot to enlist the services of the lawyer Maître Giafferi Di Moro, who had been de Gaulle’s Minister of Justice in 1944 and 1945. Di Moro was not cheap and Déricourt distrusted him, even accusing him of seducing Jeannot.
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But somehow, from this very unpromising start, they began to construct a defence.

Meanwhile Jeannot took the whole affair very hard. She had no idea what was going on and Henri would explain nothing. In her solitude she had begun to drink heavily and at that stage Henri was ready to throw in the towel. Just before he was about to appear before the Juge d’Instruction in April, Nicholas Bodington turned up on the scene. He made a habit of calling on Jeannot to see that she was coping and on every occasion asked if she needed any money. He usually produced an envelope containing bundles of notes, which Jeannot claimed she always
refused.
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Anyone familiar with Bodington would appreciate that the money was definitely not Bodington’s own.

Appearing before the Juge d’Instruction on 24 April 1947, Déricourt’s defence was built on the figure of Dr Götz. He elaborated on the story of being tricked by two German pilots to take a drive with their friend ‘The Doctor’, during which Götz said they knew all about his mission and that he would have to co-operate or suffer. Déricourt claimed that he gave Götz the details of eight out of his fourteen landing fields, which allowed him to continue his operations unobserved at the other six. It was a ploy that should have backfired, for Götz was also in French custody and had read Déricourt’s statement in some press reports. Three days later, in the waiting room of an examining magistrate, Déricourt and Götz ran into each other. Götz asked him why he had invented just a ridiculous story.

Déricourt replied ‘I was told you were in Spain.’
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Déricourt’s spirits began to flag. He felt the whole affair was outside of his control and that great wheels were being turned that he knew nothing about. He was right. He wrote to Jeannot:

The day before yesterday I had a visit from ‘Robert’ – neither good nor bad. He told me his colleagues were coming to see me and that’s all. He sounded me out, listened to what I said to him and left. Impossible to know what’s in his head. I don’t count very much on them before the New Year because time is so short.
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In his spare time he busied himself with the design of an advanced form of automatic transmission, based on the British classic ‘Hayes Selfselector’. He produced reams of highly detailed drawings and notes for what he called the VEGA 439. Jeannot spent almost as much time going back and forth from the Patents Office as she did visiting Di
Moro’s. In the end, the idea cost too much to patent and the scheme was dropped.
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The year 1947 dragged on. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of cases waiting to come to trial and the French were doing their best to put them in the correct order. So many testimonies depended on another’s corroboration. Two important developments occurred during the wait. The Government, sensitive to accusations that some of the trials had been conducted like kangaroo courts, passed a law requiring that in future mere contact with the enemy would not serve as sufficient grounds for guilt; a specific crime had to be proven. For example, that as a result of the passing of information an arrest had actually taken place.

The second development was the DST’s inability to get hold of a number of key witnesses who would have made their case rock solid: namely Boemelburg and Kieffer. They had learnt that Boemelburg was living somewhere in the American zone of occupied Germany, but could not get him out. This was not because of any American intransigence – Boemelburg really had disappeared. Two American officers tracked down Frau Boemelburg but she denied having had any contact with her husband since the end of the war.
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A story was spread that he’d been killed in Holland during a bombing raid.

Kieffer was a different story. Initially, he was a prisoner of the French but had been taken from Strasbourg Prison in 1946 to Gagenau where he was interrogated by the British. The French made persistent requests for his return so that they could interview him, but were denied access. While at Gagenau, Kieffer was seen by Vera Atkins and by MI6 but not by the French. He was tried and hanged in March 1947 for the murder of some ten or eleven members of the SAS – an act he had carried out on orders from Berlin.

There was also a problem in getting hold of Ernst Vogt, Kieffer’s secretary cum translator. The DST had taken a very detailed statement from him (see extract above, page
262) on 3 March 1947, while he was a prisoner at Dachau. Since then he’d been passed back and forth between the British and the Americans and then finally to the British. By July, having failed to get hold of Kieffer, the French requested access to his translator, but were told there was no knowledge of his whereabouts.
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On 28 May 1946, the British handed over Feldwebel Josef Placke, another of Kieffer’s staff officers, to the DST for an agreed period of fifteen days and on 10 April they took a statement from him specific to Déricourt (see extract above, page 261). A few months later, when the DST requested access to him again, the British simply refused. The DST demands, and there were a series of them, went all the way up to the Foreign Ministers and still the French got no satisfaction. As of 26 March 1948, two years after his initial statement to the DST, Placke was still in British custody.
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By the end of 1947, the DST could see their case beginning to fall apart at the seams. Commissaire Gouillaud was completely frustrated while the Director of the DST, Roger Wybot, could see the hand of Albion everywhere. Even Déricourt sensed the DST’s case was crumbling. He wrote to Jeannot on 29 January 1948:

…they will have to release me for I have done nothing to be reproached for. The witnesses for the prosecution vanish one after the other and the accusations no longer have substance. Besides the judge doesn’t even know what to question me about because he says everyone lies in my dossier and everyone on whom one would wish to base an accusation declares themselves incompetent and tells the same facts in three different ways. I am the only reliable person who doesn’t change the grounds of defence. Still I can’t shake off the pestering bastards

Di Moro recommended Déricourt ask for a general hearing,
but ‘Robert’ advised against it. He told Déricourt to insist on a Military Tribunal. If he was found guilty, he would face the death penalty; if on the other hand he was found innocent, then the case was closed for good. There could be no further appeal and no one in France could call him a traitor with impunity. Déricourt elected for MI6’s advice.

Eventually the Déricourt affair had begun to collect a little notoriety, as the press began to take note of cases that seemed to be going stale inside Fresnes. The DST were equally aware of the delay, caused by their vain attempts to collect the witnesses they needed for the prosecution. Finally, the trial was set for 8 May and the DST were forced to present their case without Boemelburg, Kieffer, Placke or Vogt. They did have Bleicher, Bardet, Götz and Knochen. The press reports state that a mysterious British Colonel Bodington suddenly appeared, to take the stand. In fact Bodington had been around almost constantly, organizing Déricourt’s defence witnesses.
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Some few days before the date of the trial, Bodington heard that Vera Atkins was in Paris and went to look her up at her hotel. He feigned surprise when they ran into each other and proceeded to plead with her to have lunch with him. Atkins wasn’t at all pleased to see him and the prospect of lunch was not at all appealing, especially as he would probably leave her with the bill. His pleas became more persistent; Atkins took a deep breath and agreed. During their meal, Bodington brought up the subject of Déricourt’s trial. Atkins admitted she hadn’t noticed it was on.

‘I take it you’ll be a witness?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Nick.

‘I take it you’ll be a witness for Déricourt?’

‘Yes.’

Atkins thought for a moment. She had, after all, taken a very specific statement from Kieffer and was in no doubt what the outcome should be. She presumed Bodington’s
testimony would be in the form of character material with perhaps some reference to the trip he made out to Paris during August and September 1943.

Atkins spoke very quietly, making sure he understood the full measure of her feelings.

Now Nick. So long as you limit your evidence to the fact that you got back safely, and explain the reasons why you got back safely, because you know why. Had you not got back safely it would have been the end of Déricourt’s line. And you know that. You must in fairness to other people who did not return, give your evidence, I fear, only in that sense.
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She had put it in a nutshell. If Bodington had not got back to London in September 1943, SOE would have thought the worst of Déricourt – and Boemelburg knew that too. Bodington took the measure of her words.

At 10 am on 8 May 1948, Henri Alfred Eugene Déricourt entered the courtroom at Ruilley Barracks on the eastern side of Paris. From the moment the courtroom was brought to order, it was evident there was a singular lack of enthusiasm on the part of the prosecution to pursue its argument. Most significant was the testimony of people like Götz and Knocken which bore virtually no resemblance to that which they had each given twelve months ago. This can be partly explained by the fact that the prosecution for some reason failed to ask the right questions. But even so:

Q: What exactly were the revelations made by Boemelburg concerning the agent Gilbert/Déricourt? And can you tell us the exact role that Déricourt played in Prosper’s and Archambaud’s (Gilbert Norman) arrest.

Götz: The expression ‘revelation’ doesn’t correspond with my memory of these things. At the time Boemelburg
spoke to me of an agent, but at the time I didn’t know who he meant – Prosper, Archambaud, Valentin (Macalister), Bertrand (Pickersgill), Culioli or Déricourt? It’s impossible to say who provided the basis for the arrests.
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Later the good doctor claimed not to have known whether BOE/48 was Déricourt, that he never actually saw any documents marked BOE/48, that he didn’t actually know about Déricourt until July, long after the PROSPER arrests (he knew of him in May), and that he was only concerned with his radio game. But the problem still remained, that Déricourt did have contacts with the Germans and unless it could be explained why, he still wasn’t off the hook. Then, straight after lunch, up stepped Nicholas Bodington. It was to be his last great scene in the story and he would make it a memorable one. The press described him as laconic, mysterious, even enigmatic.

I had to return to France in July ’43 to check on several points in the PROSPER network. I saw Déricourt constantly, I was in permanent contact with him. I know the Germans had learnt of my arrival in Paris but I was never bothered. I had total trust in Déricourt and recommended he maintain his contacts with the Germans.
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As the reporter from
Le Parisien
put it, ‘From then on, the other testimonies lost all significance.’ The unanimous verdict of the French Press was that Déricourt’s connections with the Germans was not something undertaken as a contingency measure, but an authorized operation conducted for definite objectives.

Bodington left everyone in no doubt that he spoke for ‘British Intelligence’. A classic double bluff? The Foreign Office immediately disavowed any knowledge of his actions. Bodington took the job knowing how exposed he
would be and how much disapprobation it would attract. Those are the rules for ‘unattributable acts’.

At 58 Rue Pergolese Jeannot and Henri toasted each other with champagne as they fought their way through the crowds of well-wishers in their tiny two-roomed apartment. ‘
L’affaire Déricourt
’ had been embraced by the press as something almost akin to a cause célèbre. It was a very popular acquittal. After all, French honour had been reprieved, he had acted under orders. And who could say they were wrong? Friends and old acquaintances whom he had long forgotten were suddenly there to embrace him. For Jeannot, it was all over, all the emptiness and loneliness and doubt. Henri was home again and would never ever leave her. Rémy was drunk and so relieved that all his doubts had been dispelled. Charles and Julienne Besnard hugged Henri and Jeannot and talked of buying a chicken farm. Everyone was so blissfully happy. It was all over.
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And Bodington? The would-be MI6 man, the spy-
manqué
, the hero of the hour, Dansey’s éminence grise – well, he was drunk too. Many months later, Bodington ran into Vera Atkins again and very Nick-like greeted her warmly. Atkins stared at him coldly and simply said, ‘I’m sorry, Nick. But I don’t know you anymore.’
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