All the King's Men (22 page)

An ex-employee of the Government Code & Cipher School, who prefers to remain anonymous, has confirmed that they did occasionally monitor SOE’s signals on behalf of MI6, but it was not a constant operation and there is no way of knowing whether in fact they caught the particular transmissions concerning ‘Anton’. If Dansey knew about the Abwehr’s ruse, and if he did forewarn Déricourt, it is impossible to prove now. Whatever the answer, on 9 June Déricourt made sure he was nowhere near the Restaurant Capucines.

Christmann and Bodens arrived early and chose a table inside. Most of the establishment had been roped off for cleaning and was relatively empty. Then, a gentleman in a grey hat and raincoat took a seat at a table on the terrace. A minute later Agazarian arrived and joined ‘Arnaud’ and ‘Anton’. After a few minutes Christmann noticed over his shoulder a pair of Feldgendarmerie moving amongst the clientele, asking for papers. The restaurant which had been empty a moment ago was now suddenly full; outside, the gentleman in the raincoat sat alone with nothing on the table before him. Bodens got up from the table and moved quickly towards the door. Once he was outside he was approached by a man who escorted him across the street. An incredulous Christmann exclaimed, ‘They’ve arrested
him!’ Agazarian and Christmann remained at their table while the Feldgendarmerie examined their papers. Once they’d been returned, they left separately.

Agazarian, unmolested, got safely away to see Andrée Borrel and report what had happened. Christmann was not so lucky. As soon as he was out of the café, he was arrested and driven off towards Fresnes Prison, protesting wildly that he was a German agent. He persuaded them to take him to 84 Avenue Foch, where he saw Obersturm-fuhrer Gutgesell.
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Later he had an interview with Ober-sturmfuhrer Kieffer which, by all accounts, was a withering experience.

Meanwhile Boemelburg made a report of the affair to Kopkow in Berlin and paid a call on Colonel Riele at the Hotel Lutetia. A visit from the SD, though never a comfortable affair, nearly always introduced problems of rank – especially as the SS/SD saw themselves as superior to everyone. SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Boemelburg’s rank was the army equivalent of Lieutenant Colonel, a rank below that of Riele who was a full Colonel. Reile used to infuriate Boemelburg by addressing him with his civilian police rank of Krimminalrat. Little was ever accomplished at these meetings.
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Four days after the incident at Capucines, Francis Suttill prepared for his return to France. He was expected to return to one of Déricourt’s receptions, but instead chose to parachute to a reception in a field in the Sologne. His anxieties about security had multiplied during his stay in London and he became suspicious of various people in Paris, including Déricourt. In fact, he was on the verge of paranoia and the prospect of being in GILBERT’s care completely unnerved him. In October 1942, at the very start of his messianic operation, Francis Suttill, consumed with hope and ambition, had parachuted into France and been greeted by the diminutive figure of Pierre Culioli; more than eight months later he preferred to return to the
same man. Culioli was puzzled by Suttill’s decision. In the first place, when he made his first drop into France, Suttill came down very hard, damaged his ankle and had dragged his foot for some months after. Second, and more important, Culioli’s area was crawling with Germans and he had just warned London of that fact.

Culioli and his ‘soldiers’ had been out virtually every night (as had other PROSPER sub-circuits) coping with the massive quantity of arms that were pouring in. Every night there were streams of ‘personal messages’ broadcast over the BBC, directing the various groups to a particular field where they would await the Halifaxes. On the night of 11/12 June, a typical drop was going smoothly until one container flared dramatically and then exploded on impact. This began a small chain-reaction, causing other containers to explode and sending debris and shrapnel in all directions. Two of Culioli’s men were wounded. The operation had been a disaster and they all expected to be surrounded by Germans at any moment. In fact they were not discovered, but the following day the Germans poured men and armoured vehicles into the area, set up barrage balloons to entrap parachutes and patrolled the area looking for hidden arms dumps. Culioli sent a message to London, requesting they cancel all air operations in his area for the time being. The very next night, Culioli was informed that Suttill was arriving by parachute on the 14th and wanted a reception. For some reason, Culioli’s message had not reached London.
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It seemed the sky was filled with danger that night as Culioli and his team stood in the field and watched for the grey floating shape of the parachute. Out of the sky Suttill came, with a sound like the thrash of linen on a clothesline. Not a word was said until the three were safely at Culioli’s brother-in-law’s house. ‘I asked you to receive me because I didn’t want to be received by anyone else,’ Suttill told Culioli. The latter asked, ‘Was there any news of the invasion?’ Suttill replied bitterly, ‘It will have to wait until
the autumn. During the next full moon, everything will double and then double again in July.’
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The following morning Suttill briefed them about another proposed drop in a day or so, when two young Canadians were due. He arranged for Culioli to bring them up to Paris around the 21st or 22nd, where they would be accommodated at Armel Guerne’s place. Culioli, though loyal, was almost at the end of his tether. ‘Does London know how dangerous it has become?’ ‘London expects us to be ready by September,’ Suttill replied.

In Paris, Suttill moved quickly to prepare himself and his team for the long, hard wait. He believed that from the moment his feet touched French soil, every action, every conversation, every word almost, was a potential trap that might cause the invasion to founder, and for the first time he felt vulnerable and exposed. One of his first actions was to eliminate someone of whom he had come to despair: Agazarian. The young Mauritian radio operator, over the course of his current mission, had made contact with a large number of networks that had nothing to do with PROSPER. He was even known to some circuits in Holland. Suttill had warned him not to extend himself or to maintain his contacts with other circuits. In fact Agazarian had been transmitting messages for more than twenty separate individuals. The recent incident at Capucines topped it off. Jack and his wife would return on the next Lysander.
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During the first weeks of June, Déricourt had decided to get out of Paris and take Jeannot away for a break. They were doing their best to overcome a big disappointment about the new flat at 58 Rue Pergolese. After they’d spent a great deal of money re-decorating and furnishing, the owner had changed his mind about selling. The Déricourts would have to rent. It was a great blow to Jeannot who had for so long dreamt of owning her own place. (In fact they were never able to buy the flat.) So, no sooner were
they inside the apartment than they left again, took the train down to Tours and spent a week or so bicycling along the rivers Loire and Loir. Henri used the break to note down a few more fields, while for Jeannot it was one of the first opportunities she had to be alone with her husband since they had moved to Paris.

They avoided hotels or pensions and mostly camped out under the stars. When he went on these journeys, Déricourt used to wear an old suit of ‘country clothes’ that would make Jeannot despair. After a few days, Henri would look like a vagrant and sometimes when they called at a farmer’s door to ask about a certain field, they’d be set upon by vicious dogs or packed-off like beggars. Even so it was a time of real happiness between them, and one she cherished long afterwards.

If given the opportunity Henri would talk with the locals about soil and rainfall and the quality of livestock – and never ceased to amaze his wife at how much he knew – or seemed to know. Sometimes they would pause on the brow of a hill to take in the scenery, and Henri would repeat a promise to her that ‘one day they would own land down here in Loire’. She believed him absolutely.
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On the night of the 16th/17th, Déricourt handled another double Lysander operation. On the first aircraft was Charles Skepper, who was headed south towards Marseilles where he was to establish a new network which would last for nine months. With him was Diana Rowden, a courier who was to link up John Starr in the ACROBAT network, over in the Jura. Jack and Françoise Agazarian climbed into the plane and settled themselves into the rear cockpit. Déricourt waved them off back to Britain. On the next aircraft to arrive were another two women; Cecily Lefort, who was to join the JOCKEY circuit in the Basses Alpes, and the enigmatic Noor Inayat Khan, the famous MADELAINE. Noor Khan was to join up with Gilbert Norman, in Paris, as a supplementary wireless operator. The passengers returning to Britain were Paul Lejeune,
who had arrived on Déricourt’s first operation, and two escaping French politicians.

The SD had been informed well in advance and their Bony–LaFont agents were already waiting to follow the newcomers. They tailed Skepper, but lost him in Lyon. They had better luck with Diana Rowden and Cecily Lefort, but were discouraged from following Noor Khan, as she travelled up to Paris in the same compartment with Rémy Clément – someone they’d been ordered to avoid.

Boemelburg, like Déricourt, had expected PROSPER to return on that operation. When GILBERT told him that PROSPER had already parachuted back, it was Kieffer who sifted through all their intelligence and concluded that, if he was back, then he would probably have been received by the group down in the Sologne. Kieffer wanted to make an arrest; Boemelburg resisted the idea. The situation sparked off a brief and extremely rare row between the two men.

Obersturmfuhrer Kieffer had carried the brunt of the work in dealing with BOE/48, organizing the surveillance operations and at the same time guaranteeing the FARRIER group’s safety, the most frustrating aspect of which had been fending off the Abwehr’s spoiling tactics and their brow-beating of German agents. Kieffer had never met (and never did meet) Déricourt and he frankly dismissed Boemelburg’s unswerving faith in him. However, the real source of disharmony was the disagreement over how best to deal with PROSPER. Kieffer wanted to swoop as quickly as possible and decapitate the entire network, before PROSPER had time to distribute his orders. Boemelburg was more cautious. His stakes were far higher than Kieffer’s. Boemelburg wanted the glory of having discovered the date of the invasion, something he did not believe PROSPER would divulge under interrogation. He believed that information would come from BOE/48. The other, and over-riding, motive was that he didn’t want GILBERT linked with any of the arrests. If they bungled it, GILBERT’s credibility would be destroyed.

While Kieffer and the 60-year-old Nazi argued over PROSPER’s fate, the man himself was moving from safe-house to safe-house, seeing as many people as he could. For reasons known only to himself, he misled jean Worms about the date of the invasion saying, ‘it was a matter of weeks away’. Gilbert Norman met up with the ebullient Jacques Bureau, the wireless expert, and told him PROSPER had actually seen Churchill during his trip to London.

A few days later, Bureau and Suttill met at the Hot Club in Montmartre, where the latter told the jazz fanatic, ‘The invasion will come at the beginning of September, on the northern coast. I cannot tell you precisely where, or precisely when.’
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Gradually Suttill made his way around the inner circle, but many who saw him remarked at how different he seemed. At the point when he ought to have felt at the peak of his power, he appeared ‘grey and strained’.
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He was exasperated that London was sending out to him two Canadians, whom he doubted would ever pass as Frenchmen and who would need cosseting until they’d settled down into obscurity. It was another of Buckmaster’s brainstorms, but at the worst possible time. With so much activity going on, the Germans were on their toes – and everyone was under that much more pressure. Added to which every week news arrived of the arrest of some distant contact out in the field. Each scrap of bad news brought more anxiety and Suttill began to feel the edges of his empire were crumbling. And yet, all around him his colleagues seemed indifferent to the danger. He needed to make new contingency plans.

Suttill wanted to organize another tour to see all his lieutenants in the field, but he somehow lacked the will to motivate himself. He was passing through an interminable nightmare of doubt and depression, feeling that his great operation was about to slip from his fingers – or be snatched from his grasp.

Introverted and tormented by suspicion, he suspected Déricourt, he suspected Armel Guerne and even Gilbert
Norman.
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He had become obsessed with the idea that there was a traitor, either at the very heart of their group, or in London; and he began to lose sight of his goal. Jean Worms spent a day with him and remarked to a colleague how careless PROSPER seemed, as though gripped by some suicidal fatalism. ‘One would almost think he felt something was going to happen to him. These English are queer people. I don’t understand them.’
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To another colleague Suttill remarked, ‘When the blow comes, and it won’t be long, it will come from London.’
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To others he seemed irritable and impatient, barking orders about tightening security.

Francis Suttill had been sent into France to organize a secret network whose sole purpose was to produce coordinated guerilla warfare behind enemy lines, in support of the forthcoming invasion. To that end he had built a massive army of trained and well-supplied men which was waiting for the signal to rise up. Then, with everyone stretched beyond their resources, they were being told to hold out until September. Suttill felt forsaken by his colleagues in London whom he believed were leading him – or allowing him to be led – towards some terrible disaster. Over and over he repeated to his friends his anxiety that, ‘unless the invasion comes now, during the summer, we are lost. We should otherwise all be arrested.’
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Not only would there be no invasion that summer, there would be no invasion that autumn either.