Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins & the Missing Agents of WWII (22 page)

Rose Cordonnier, who cleaned the fifth floor of 84 Avenue Foch, where the prisoners were held, and was the mistress of one of Kieffer's aides, had been interrogated for hours in the hope that she would identify who had been held there and when. In the end she had produced a confused jumble of names and aliases, but tangled in her memory was a clear recollection of a British agent named John Starr, whose alias, she said, was “Bob.” Bob, she claimed, had a German mistress inside the building and worked on the third floor sending wireless messages on sets captured from British operators. Rose Cordonnier also referred to “a dark English girl named Madeleine who gave nothing away under torture, except that she was working for her country.”

When Vera entered Kieffer's office on the fourth floor, she observed the chandeliers and the views over grassy lawns where, one of the returnees said, a German officer arrived each day on horseback in full army riding gear. Kieffer, on the other hand, favoured informality around the building and always wore “civvies.” Kieffer was not a remarkable figure; he did not impress his prisoners with any great sophistication or even with any particular love of Hitler. Rather he gave the impression of being a somewhat
bluff professional policeman. He did not even speak good English or French and always used a translator. Yet he had certainly won the trust of many of his prisoners.

The testimony of the Avenue Foch survivors showed just how each of them had been lulled into a sense of security, encouraged to feel that they were privileged and sometimes even on equal terms with their captors. The prisoners ate the same food as Kieffer and his men. The agent Maurice Southgate (Hector) arrived at Avenue Foch “to find myself taken to the guardroom on the fifth floor and fed with a large piece of pain de fan-taisie in the morning, with butter and jam or cheese, hot black coffee, with two pieces of sugar. Lunch consisted of meat and two vegetables and dinner of soup, cold German sausage with bread and coffee.”

Southgate also recalled how, as he ate for the first time on the fifth floor, he heard, coming from a nearby cell, an English voice singing the words of “It's a Long Way to Tipperary” to the tune of “Rule Britannia.” He commented: “I must say this cheered me up a lot.” According to Rose Cordonnier, Kieffer's secretary “seemed to fall in love with Southgate.”

More than one of the returnees told their debriefers that they had been treated as gentlemen, and one added that this was “despite being without any of the normal attributes of [a gentleman] such as necktie, shave or a clean shirt.”

Southgate was invited one evening to join Kieffer and his men for dinner, and when he refused, they made promises to be “honourable.” “They said I would be treated as a prisoner of war and that I had no real reason for refusing food from other soldiers.” This time he recalled being fed with “real chocolate, Spam and American K rations,” adding, “I must say that their ways were most polite and gentle, pumping me up with English cigarettes and English coffee. We were treated extraordinarily well.”

Interrogations in Avenue Foch were “never about business,” said Southgate, who was led to understand that the German officers were interested only in preventing arms and supplies from getting into the hands of Communist maquisards—or “bandits,” as they called them. The British officers and the German officers were really in the fight together, Kieffer had suggested, and had a common interest in stopping the Communists.

Above all else, it was Kieffer's grasp of the workings of SOE that had
so clearly stunned many agents and thus weakened their resolve. His knowledge went far beyond the details of F Section shown on the wall chart at Avenue Foch. Kieffer's man Ernest would greet new arrivals with a knowing smile. “How about it, Mr. Hector?” he cajoled Southgate, deliberately using his alias. And a little later: “Well, Mr. Southgate, the game is up.”

Southgate said he had been so staggered by the depth of Kieffer's knowledge that he had told him: “You seem to know more than I do.” Kieffer did not understand Southgate's words immediately. But then, on hearing the translation, he jumped to his feet and laughed with great excitement, relishing the flattery. “We know much more even than you think!” he exclaimed. “The documents that were sent to your country were read by our people before they were read by yours.” Then he paused for a moment, perhaps realising that he was being somewhat indiscreet: “Do you know Claude?” he asked. Observing the surprise on Southgate's face, Kieffer continued: “He is a very good man of ours. From him we get reports, documents and names of people.”

Claude, as Southgate well knew, was another alias, in addition to Gilbert, used by Henri Déricourt. Southgate told his British interrogators: “Personally I can only state the fact that this German colonel told me himself that Claude was his agent.” And for good measure Southgate added that while he was in Buchenwald he had heard from another prisoner who experienced Avenue Foch a little later that Kieffer had “gone raging mad” when he heard that Claude had been returned to England for investigation in January 1944.

Vera also had the impression that Kieffer went out of his way to be liked. He enjoyed contact with the agents and once took Robert Shep-pard, a fair-haired young man of twenty, for a stroll around the pond outside the “house prison” in Place des Etats-Unis. Kieffer showed Sheppard his shotgun and tried to shoot a pigeon. It became clear to Sheppard that Kieffer was showing off. He seemed to have taken a liking to him, and Sheppard was to recount many years later that he had feared momentarily that the German's interest in him was homosexual. Vera had also learned of a famous occasion when Kieffer went swimming in the same pond with Bob Starr.

Kieffer would sometimes even mention his children to his F Section prisoners. On one occasion he drove Sheppard in the back of his own car to the prison in Fresnes. On the way he turned round and offered him a sandwich, saying it was made by his daughter.

Harry Peulevé, an escapee from Buchenwald, was another SOE agent who had been bowled over by the extent of the Germans' knowledge. When he arrived at Avenue Foch and tried to deny his real identity, he was told: “It is useless denying this as of course you realise we have in Orchard Court an agent working for us, and we know the real identity of all your agents.”

Ernest, his interrogator, “made a great show of producing a lot of photographs of agents who I recognised and asking me if I knew any of them. When I denied this, he smiled and said: ‘Well, we will see!' Afterwards he enquired as to the health of F Section officers.”

Peulevé was shown a photograph of Francis Suttill and was told of a “pact” Prosper had made with Kieffer in order save his people's lives.

Of all the questions Vera wanted answered, the mystery of Prosper's “pact” with Kieffer was perhaps the most urgent of all. Much had been said about it by returnees, but nobody in London believed that Suttill could have done a deal with the Gestapo. It was a damaging story nevertheless, and in the summer of 1945 it was widely recounted by certain Frenchmen, who blamed the British for the massive loss of French lives, which they claimed was caused by the pact.

And the account of Peulevé and others about what might have happened to Suttill after capture certainly carried some conviction. The Germans told Peulevé that for a long time Suttill had been resolute under interrogation and had refused to give any information. It was only when he was shown a photostat copy of a report he had sent to London, giving all details of his circuit, that Suttill had finally broken down. Another agent said he was told that Suttill held out under torture but broke down when he was shown his last letter home to his wife, Margaret. In any event, the story went, Suttill became convinced that Kieffer knew all about SOE and said: “Well, since you know everything I am prepared to answer any questions.”

According to Peulevé's account, the “pact” involved an agreement to
give Germans information about all the circuits' and subcircuits' arms dumps. In return the Gestapo had then guaranteed the lives of everyone in the network. “They told me that in many cases the presence of Prosper with them in visiting these arms dumps helped to convince the people that it was all over and that it would be better not to resist.” Peulevé had also been told that the “pact” had been agreed to by the RSHA in Berlin, and that Prosper was by then already in a camp in Germany.

Such stories were at best secondhand. So swiftly had Suttill been taken to Germany that no F Section survivor had actually set eyes on him at Avenue Foch or heard a word about the “pact” directly from Suttill himself. Yet what the stories suggested was that agents who were brought in later were one by one convinced, perhaps as Suttill had been before them, that Kieffer already had the full picture so they might as well cooperate and tell him what they knew. Several agents had told Vera that Gilbert Norman met them at Avenue Foch and said the Germans knew everything so there was no point in refusing them information. And a number of agents had said that most of what the Germans had discovered they had found out directly from London by working the wireless sets and then monitoring the BBC's messages personnels on the Avenue Foch radio.

Peulevé, whose SOE alias was Jean, described how a BBC message, sent apparently as a warning to others of his capture, was heard inside Avenue Foch, immediately alerting Kieffer's men to the identity of three of Jean's resistance helpers. “During one interrogation—it was about ten o'clock at night—a German I had previously seen came rushing down to the office and asked me: ‘Who is Nestor?' I said I did not know. He then said: ‘That is very surprising, we have just heard a BBC message saying: “Important message for Nestor—Jean very ill, Nestor go immediately to Maxime or Eustace and not to contact Jean.” ' I said it was probably another Jean, but of course the Gestapo fully realised this message applied to me. This put me in great difficulties as up to now they were unaware of the existence of Nestor, Maxime, and Eustace.”

By now Vera had her own information showing how much the Germans had learned through radio deception. Recently she had been asked to comment on German documents captured at Stuttgart that showed
that the Germans knew about F Section's plans to increase sabotage against railways well before this had begun. In a memo she wrote: “They appeared to know of the pact with the RAF who agreed to cease their attacks against French rail traffic if we could prove we were capable of taking on the job by sabotage. They ordered a strengthening of guards. I assume they obtained this advance information through the controlled W/T traffic they were running for the various Prosper circuits.”

Several of Vera's agents had now explained how the radio deception was done. An officer named Dr. Goetz was the radio mastermind. His office was on the third floor at Avenue Foch. Southgate said the cracking of the codes began with Suttill's arrest. Many of the wireless operators' codes and crystals were captured in that roundup. “But for a long time,” he said, “the Germans did not realise that there were two checks on outgoing telegrams—one true check and one bluff check.” Therefore they sent out their telegrams with one check, which should have been clearly phoney to London. “Time after time for different men, London sent back messages saying: ‘My dear fellow, you only left us a week ago. On your first message you go and forget to put your true check.' You may now realise what happened to our agents who did not give the true check to the Germans, thus making them send out a message that was obviously phoney, and after being put through the worst degrees of torture, these Germans managed, sometimes a week later, to get hold of the true check, and then sent a further message to London with the proper check in the telegram and London saying: ‘Now you are a good boy, now you have remembered to give both of them.'

This had happened first to Archambaud, who had been totally demoralised by it. But Southgate said it had happened to several others. He considered that the officer responsible in London should have been court-martialled. “He was responsible for the death and capture of many of our best agents, including Major Antelme for one, who was arrested the minute he put his foot on French soil.”

After reading Southgate's comments, Buckmaster wrote: “this is the report of a very tired man.” Vera, however, wanted to learn more. In particular, she wanted to hear the evidence of Bob Starr, the agent who, according to Southgate's report, knew the most about the “radio game”
because he had “cooperated” with Kieffer and thereby collected all the evidence of London's “foolishness” for a long time.

Vera wanted to find out exactly what “evidence” Starr had and what he might intend to do with it. For many weeks Starr had been on Vera's “missing” list, but he had suddenly turned up—one of the very few SOE survivors of Mauthausen concentration camp, from which he had cleverly escaped by slipping in among a group of French prisoners being taken out on a Red Cross convoy.

On arriving home Starr told Vera that his “cooperation” with Kieffer had begun when he first arrived at Avenue Foch. Kieffer himself had immediately showed him a large drawing of all the F Section circuits. He then asked him to print the name of his own circuit in the space provided. Starr did so and found he caused much excitement, not because he had given his circuit name—it was already well known to the Germans—but because of his artistry in printing the name.

A graphic artist by trade, Starr had taken some trouble with the lettering. As a result Kieffer asked him to draw the whole chart for him in similar fashion, and he readily agreed. So delighted was Kieffer with his graphics that he assigned more and more similar tasks to Starr, who became, in effect, Kieffer's artist in residence. He even painted portraits of the Avenue Foch Gestapo, including the Sturmbannführer himself.

The quite extraordinary sight of Starr at work painting charts of F Section circuits, joking and laughing with the Gestapo, and singing “Rule Britannia” was what first struck most new British arrivals when they were captured and brought to Avenue Foch. Starr was seen translating the BBC news for the German guards and correcting the spelling on the trick radio messages. “Thumbs up for England,” he would boast to Kieffer, and on one occasion he played “God Save Our Gracious King” on the accordion. Kieffer, Dr. Goetz, and Ernest all took it very well. “The Gestapo boys are quite decent when you get to know them, you know,” he told Southgate. The two men, who both grew up in Paris, had been boyhood friends.