All the King's Men (21 page)

There existed a standing instruction (though SOE tended to think of it as more of an understanding) that when it was known that one of their networks had been penetrated, then the LCS had to be informed (usually through MI5), ‘so that the network in question might be exploited as quickly as possible for deception purposes’. In this case the information had travelled in the opposite direction and the LCS was simply informing the SOE that the decision to exploit PROSPER had already been taken. Neither Colonel Buckmaster nor any of the other F Section officers was ever informed of this decision.
¹⁸
It was also part of the understanding that the relevant country section should also be subject to the same deception. In an organization that was regarded by many outsiders as hopelessly insecure, the country section level was thought to be the most sieve-like. In other words the SOE would sometimes
have to deceive itself. This placed extraordinary internal stresses on an organization that was already hard pressed by the pressures created for it in the field.

Buckmaster was informed that Suttill had been given ‘an alert signal, warning the whole circuit to stand by … and to accelerate [F section’s] preparations to support an invasion’. In 1957, Buckmaster published
They Fought Alone
, in which he recorded,

In the middle of 1943 we had had a top secret message telling us that D-Day might be closer than we thought.

     This message had been tied up with international politics on a level far above our knowledge and we, of course, had acted upon it without question.

Clearly, by 1957 someone had told him something of what had been going on back in 1943, but equally clearly he was not told the whole truth. Even up to the time of the writing of this book, Buckmaster had only enough information to piece together a very imperfect explanation.

Churchill told Suttill he wanted to increase the amount of sabotage operations and general unrest in the west of France so he could have some defence against Stalin’s claim that we weren’t doing enough to help him. Suttill was encouraged by Churchill to run enormous risks, to forget his security training and produce violent explosions in and around the Paris area, so that Churchill could turn to Stalin and say – now, look at what we’re doing.
¹⁹

Whether Churchill actually gave Suttill a lesson in war and geo-politics is perhaps unlikely. What is beyond doubt is that Suttill returned to France, convinced the invasion was coming in September. But before his departure he expressed to Buckmaster and others his very real anxieties
about the network. It had grown too large, its boundaries stretched from the Belgian border round Sedan, down to the Loire and across to Nantes on the Atlantic coast. The Tambour sisters, though no longer a threat to their security, were still a source of anxiety and now Buckmaster had a list an arm long of new people queuing up to be sent in. Suttill began to have nightmares about whether the great network could survive for another three months.

XII
In the Wilderness

The differences that existed between MI6 and the SOE paled into insignificance in comparison with the internecine rivalry between the two German intelligence services. In Paris, it threatened to blow Boemelburg’s neat arrangement wide apart. Déricourt’s – or BOE/48’s – information had acquired a degree of status in Berlin that caused Boemelburg’s own stock to rise to an all-time high. At RSHA headquarters in Prince Albert Strasse, from Himmler down to Kopkow, the SD were basking in the Fuhrer’s unprecedented admiration. Meanwhile the SD were closing in on the anti-Hitler conspirators and Canaris’ days were numbered.

But the senior service was not about to lay down all their good work without a struggle. The animosity that existed was not merely proprietorial. They each had a very real personal distaste for the other’s methods. Canaris, the gentleman of the old school, head of the Abwehr since 1934, believed that intelligence work should be carried out according to the articles and rules of war. Not just for humane reasons, but for good solid practical reasons too. He opposed the execution of hostages because he was convinced it would throw the population into the hands of the Resistance.
¹
In Paris, Colonel Reile claimed, ‘The population was, if not overwhelmingly pro-German, at least disposed to do nothing if they were left alone.’
²

Kopkow did not read the situation that way at all. His rise to power had been a struggle, quite literally from the
beer halls and gutter brawls of the early 1930s. He was born in Ortelsburg, East Prussia, on 29 November 1910 and apprenticed as a chemist in 1928, at the Rathaus Drugstore in Allenstein. He joined the party in 1931 and the SS a year later (SS no. 45043). He first attracted the Fuhrer’s attention as ‘the sternest of guardians’ by consistently being in the front rank of numerous beer-hall battles during the early 1930s. In 1938 he was seconded to the Gestapo headquarters at Prince Albert Strasse where he set up his own office to deal with communist saboteurs.
³
During 1942 he gained even greater recognition for the manner in which he conducted the interrogation of the Berlin leaders of the Soviet espionage network, the Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra). In a celebrated coup, Kopkow agreed a deal with the leader, Schulze-Boysen, whereby in return for some much-heralded secret papers, he promised to postpone the expected death sentences on Schulze-Boysen and his colleagues – until after December 1943. (By which time, the Soviet agent was certain the war would be over.) Kopkow’s assurance that he would preserve the lives of the Soviet agents even convinced his own staff. When the promise had extracted all that he needed to know, Kopkow stunned everyone with the coldness of his comment, ‘I was not authorized to make such a promise.’ He knew the execution squads would have ignored him anyway.
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Following their success with the Rote-Kapelle, the penetration of the PROSPER network seemed to make the SD invulnerable. Boemelburg, his ‘crack criminal investigator’, had assured him they as good as had the date of the projected invasion. Kopkow liked to boast about his men in Paris. ‘Kieffer was meticulous, utterly dedicated and totally immersed in his work. Boemelburg, though not a political Nazi, was completely loyal and a committed anti-Communist.’ Kopkow and Boemelburg were of like minds when it came to running double agents. ‘Avoid the scoundrels who are only interested in money. Look for the
intelligent and politically committed.’ He was often heard to quote: ‘I love treason; I despise traitors.’
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In the atmosphere Kopkow and his colleagues generated in Berlin, the Abwehr’s opportunity to fight for its continued independence was extremely limited. But in the occupied territories its freedom of movement was still considerable. During May, Canaris gave his tacit approval to a little operation that was born in Colonel Reile’s headquarters at the Hotel Lutetia in Paris – an operation to destroy BOE/48 – the extraordinary GILBERT.
⁶

Like the SD, the Abwehr had their connections in the black market, where they had learnt something of GILBERT’s extra-curricular activities. (In fact Déricourt was not the only one. There was a flourishing little symbiotic trade in gold and diamonds between certain ranks of the SD and members of the Resistance, some of whom were SOE.) From the outset, Baker Street had been prepared to give Déricourt a small quantity of diamonds which he claimed he would use as a contingency fund. The SD always paid well above the street value
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which, of course, bore no resemblance to their official value. Despite the success of his espionage arrangements with the SD, and despite Boemelburg’s reassurance, Déricourt prudently sought to look after himself. Unfortunately he never actually laid hands on enough of the stuff to make the sort of killing that would provide the ideal pension.

The Abwehr had managed, through scraps of intelligence, to piece together enough information about GILBERT to neutralize him, either by spoiling him for the SD or discrediting him with Baker Street. However, to avoid incurring the wrath of Avenue Foch, the operation was set running from Holland.

Colonel Giskes, Reile’s opposite number in Holland, had provided the springboard for the Abwehr’s intrusion, with intelligence he had gathered from London. The SOE networks in Holland had been under the Abwehr’s complete control since 1942. The most valuable product of
that control had been the famous North Pole ‘radio game’, whereby the Abwehr played back captured SOE wireless sets to London and received a wealth of arms and equipment, which Baker Street assumed was going to its agents in Holland. In September, London sent instructions for one of their agents, ‘Anton’, to return home. The real Anton was in a German prison so Giskes stalled while he thought of a solution. Meanwhile London sent further instructions, giving ‘Anton’ an address in Paris where he could be put in touch with an escape route, run by a certain GILBERT. Giskes immediately saw the solution to two problems. How to respond to London about Anton and how to spike the SD’s best informer. He notified London that ‘Anton’, accompanied by a Belgian guide, would be travelling down to Paris.

The two ‘agents’ who were dispatched were, of course, Abwehr men. Karl Bodens, who did not speak French, assumed the role of ‘Anton’, and his Belgian guide ‘Arnaud’ was played by another of those deceptive chameleons that turned up in the world of espionage, Richard Christmann. Born in the town of Metz in 1905, at a time when it was part of Germany, Christmann had been his father’s greatest hope, but had grown into his parent’s ‘sickly disappointment’.
⁸
He had served briefly with the French Foreign Legion, the Gestapo in Holland and eventually with the Abwehr. According to Giskes he was at once a strange product of some painful ‘psychological problem’, whose reports often stretched credibility, and a brilliant agent with a gift for insinuating himself into people’s confidence.

In Paris, Colonel Riele had been a party to the ‘Anton and Arnaud’ scheme from the beginning and when the pair called at the Hotel Lutetia he made a point of meeting them both.
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From Bleicher and others, Christmann received a further briefing about his target, GILBERT, including the address of one of the latter’s favourite rendezvous. On 20 May Christmann posing as the Belgian
‘Arnaud’ called at Chez Tutulle in the Rue Troyon. There he asked the proprietor, Monsieur Touret, if he could be put in touch with GILBERT. Since March, Chez Tutulle had become a favourite meeting-place for PROSPER people, and for that reason Déricourt had begun to avoid it. Consequently, Touret thought this slim, fair-headed Belgian was asking for Gilbert Norman, Suttill’s second in command. He told Christmann that Gilbert normally came in for lunch. ‘But if it’s urgent,’ he glanced at his watch, ‘you’ll find him playing poker at 10 Square de Clignancourt.’

Near the Metro Jules Joffrin in the 18th Arrondissement, Alain Bussoz and his wife lived in a flat that overlooked the delightful Square de Clignancourt. The Bussozs, another couple who worked for PROSPER, allowed Suttill’s people to meet there and these meetings had developed into a regular pattern, focused round a poker game. Not long before mid-day, Christmann and Bodens knocked at the door and presented themselves as two agents from Holland needing a Lysander to get to Britain. They said they’d been told to ask for GILBERT. Inside they found Jack Agazarian and his wife, Andrée Borrel, and of course Gilbert Norman. The confusion was soon cleared up and Agazarian, who knew more about Déricourt’s operations than anyone else, offered to put them in touch with the real GILBERT. Agazarian knew there was no room available on any of the May Lysanders and that they would have to wait till the next moon period. A rendezvous was set up for 9 June at the Restaurant Capucines. Christmann wasn’t aware of it at the time, but of course he had just stumbled into the very heart of the PROSPER organization. He reported all that had happened to Abwehr headquarters and then he and Bodens went to ground until June. Meanwhile Agazarian got in touch with Déricourt and told him about the pre-arranged rendezvous at Capucines.

What Christmann would have done had Déricourt
actually placed Bodens on the next Lysander is unclear; most probably Déricourt would never have got that far. It is certain that Christmann was instructed to try and interest Déricourt in a supply of diamonds from Holland. (Christmann had already hinted this to Agazarian, who seemed very keen.) It seems certain that the lure of diamonds was meant as an extra incentive to Déricourt – to ensure that he and Christmann actually met. Since the war, Christmann has always been very vague about what his next move would have been, had he and Déricourt actually made contact. However, a veteran ADC to Colonel Reile has stated there was only one thing Christmann would have done – lured Déricourt to some quiet spot and shot him.
¹⁰

Unfortunately for the Abwehr, Déricourt was warned that the two agents were Abwehr men and that it would be unwise to go to the rendezvous. Who actually warned Déricourt is not known. It was no one from PROSPER’s people, and certainly not Agazarian, who was completely convinced of the men’s bona-fides. Nor did the warning come from Boemelburg, as might have been expected – on the contrary, it was Déricourt who informed the SD that he was being set up for a rendezvous with Abwehr agents. The Avenue Foch was not familiar with Christmann and Bodens and would never have linked them with the Abwehr, which was precisely why the Abwehr sent the lying Dutchmen in the first place. Boemelburg decided to deal with the matter by asking Kieffer to lay a trap.

But before we examine what happened next, the question still remains: who did tip off Déricourt? Could it have been Claude Dansey? Since 1941, British code-breakers had been reading Abwehr ENIGMA communications and were often able to track an Abwehr agent’s progress across Europe, right to Southampton docks. But Christmann is unlikely to have needed to communicate by radio with his controllers, and all the Abwehr’s top security communications
between The Hague, Paris and Berlin would have been conducted by landline – which made them undetectable. Another possibility, and one that really does open a can of worms, is this: since MI6 had lost control of SOE’s communications, Dansey had instructed Bletchley Park to monitor Baker Street’s signals, and so might have been privy to the communications between Baker Street and the Abwehr-controlled sets in Holland. He would also have known that the Abwehr controlled all the SOE networks in Holland (something the SOE didn’t know), and thus conclude that the Abwehr was trying to pass Arnaud and Anton on to GILBERT. It was possible, but it is an unproven hypothesis.