The news of PROSPER’s arrest was signalled to Berlin by midday and passed on to Adolf Hitler before he sat down to dinner. Kopkow immediately sent congratulations to Boemelburg with a request that he be kept informed of the interrogations.
How had the SD known where Suttill was staying? Neither Gilbert Norman nor Andrée Borrel spoke a word to their interrogators for more than two days. No one else knew. Except, perhaps, for Déricourt. The last time Déricourt and Suttill had met was on the morning of 21 June, at the Gare d’Austerlitz when Heslop and Taylor, the two homeward-bound passengers, were introduced and told by Déricourt to return to the station that evening. They did, but Déricourt did not. Heslop and Taylor went to ground again and awaited an explanation. That night, over the field at Poce-sur-Cisse, Squadron Leader Verity circled in vain, looking for the reception lights.
Déricourt never gave a reason for his absence, but he did have to contact Suttill again (the only man who knew where the passengers were hiding), to re-schedule the operation and ensure the passengers would come to the same rendezvous the following day. Which they did. Then it was Verity’s turn to miss the party, having suffered a generator failure over the Channel.
The following night, that of the 23rd/24th, the night Norman and Borrel were arrested, Déricourt’s operation was finally completed under the silent gaze of the SD’s agents. Out of Verity’s Lizzie had come Robert Lyon, on his second mission to the ACOLYTE network, and a Free French agent called Colonel Bonoteau. Both men were followed to their destinations. The SD eventually lost track of Lyon, but Bonoteau was arrested that same morning.
Meanwhile Suttill and Norman were undergoing their calvary. It was not uncommon for prisoners to have to withstand some tough punishment during their interrogation at the Avenue Foch. Though it was not, in the strictest sense, a torture chamber, there were a number of instruments for enthusiasts to use to extract information: rubber or wooden truncheons, thin leather whips – rather like riding crops, knuckle-dusters and, of course, the standard issue jackboot. Suttill’s interrogation began in the presence of SS Feldwebel Josef Placke, who was relieved by SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Karl Langer and he by one Dr Josef Götz. These men were not responsible for any beatings, but maintained a presence while others did the heavy work. It lasted for three days, during which time Suttill was not allowed to eat, drink, sleep or even sit. Sometimes Kieffer conducted the interrogations and on one occasion SS Standartenfuhrer Knochen himself engaged in the breaking of PROSPER. In a separate room, Gilbert Norman underwent the same treatment in the presence of SS Hauptsturmfuhrers Scherer, von Kapri, Ruhl and Vogt. Boemelburg remained aloof from the entire procedure.
What Baker Street expected of its captured agents was that they would hold out for at least 48 hours, giving enough time for contacts to disappear. They were not expected to keep absolutely silent, a principle proceeding from the view that no intelligence that any SOE agent held would ever be worth a human life. Suttill and Norman had already agreed their scale of values, and it was understood that information about materiel would come low on the list. To all their colleagues they had given the same instructions, ‘Don’t try to hold out. Give them something. A little at a time, but don’t give them everything.’1 For three days Norman, Suttill and Borrel spoke not a word. In fact Borrel never talked at all.
On the fourth day Kieffer removed from his safe a file marked BOE/48 and presented for Suttill’s gaze the photographic copies of his letters, reports, instructions – everything that he had sent as mail to London, or that had been sent from London to him. Probably the most devastating sight was a list of his ‘personal messages’, broadcast by the BBC since January.
Mes genets sont fleuris dans le jardin,
Après les fraises, les framboises,
Il faut compter les marches de la Tour Eiffel,
Quand les lilas refleuriront,
Archibald aura 10 ministres,
La morue est salée,
Halte-là qu’on vous rattrappe,
Ils seront toujours verts,
Prenez garde au lion perdu,
Congestion à la gare de Lyon,
On plombe la dent du midi.2
Out of the thousands of messages the BBC had broadcast to the agents in France, the SD knew precisely which were his – and more importantly, what they signified. It was a blow of devastating effectiveness, for all his worst nightmares had come true – there had been a traitor in Baker Street. Most of the material that was presented to Suttill, Norman, Culioli and others bore the stamp ‘von BOE/48’, which Suttill and a few others took to be this phantom German agent in Baker Street. No one presumed it was someone who lived just round the corner. The SD had other mail, also from BOE/48, that revealed a great deal of information about the forthcoming invasion, including other BBC messages that were to ‘alert’ the network that the invasion was imminent. Then there was a piece of correspondence brought by the Canadians from London, in clear, which was a schedule of ‘arms drops’ leading up to D-Day. Suttill could see no point in prolonging his agony. He could neither stand nor speak, but he could just about hold a pen.
Kieffer had received an instruction from Kopkow in Berlin to offer Suttill a promise of clemency in return for information about the hidden arms dumps. It was Hitler’s personal wish that the entire network be eliminated as swiftly as possible, while Boemelburg insisted on pursuing the date for the invasion. Suttill considered Kieffer’s proposal carefully and then asked for a guarantee from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt in Berlin – from Kopkowc or even Himmler himself, that in return for information about arms and equipment all captured agents would be treated as prisoners of war.
On the fifth day a document arrived bearing Himmler’s signature and the marque of the RSHA. After going over the document innumerable times and talking it over between them, Suttill and Norman agreed to accept the guarantees. Later that same day Josef Placke and some French agents of the SD called on George Darling out at Triechateau, and presented him with a letter in Suttill’s hand. The letter requested that Darling hand over all the arms in his care to the bearers of the letter. Darling mounted his motorcycle and led them, unsuspecting, to the Bois de l’Etoile where the arms were hidden. Once the arms were loaded onto the back of a truck, Darling climbed onto his bike again and kicked the motor into life. One of the Frenchmen, sensing that he might be trying to escape, took out his pistol and ordered him to stop. Darling swerved into the forest, a volley of shots cut through the clear air and Darling was found – a mangled heap beneath some thorny undergrowth. He died in hospital within the day.
On 1 July Gilbert Norman was led into Culioli’s cell to acquaint him with the details of the pact. They have known everything about us for so long. No one will be shot so long as they recover the material.’3 Culioli eventually agreed to help the Germans uncover nearly a hundred containers: Roger Couffrant at Ramorantin, 30 Containers; André Gatignon at Noyers-sur-Cher, 20 Containers; August Cordelet at Chaumont-sur-Loire, 25 Containers; and Albert le Meur at Chambord, 14 Containers. Culioli was driven around to each location where he did his best to reassure the local Resistance of Suttill’s pact with the SD. Norman did the same. The scene was repeated in the Paris suburbs, in dozens of départements, in hundreds of villages and towns.4
By the second week of July, both Suttill and Norman had divulged the date of the invasion. It seemed to be supported by the scraps of information in the mail, but Boemelburg wanted corroboration from other sources. On 14 July, Jacques Bureau, the radio specialist, was arrested, taken to Fresnes Prison and placed in a death cell. The previous occupant had been shot the day before. Bureau was there hardly any time before the door swung open again. He presumed he was about to be shot. Instead he was driven to the Avenue Foch, where he was confronted by Gilbert Norman. Despite the treatment to which he’d been subjected over the past fortnight, Norman seemed very relaxed. Bureau was impressed. Norman wasn’t cowed or beaten, indeed he projected a sense of pride – of rescued honour. ‘Don’t let them depress you,’ he said, ‘retain your dignity. We have made an arrangement with these gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘and Jacques, I want you to shed some light. Understand?’
Bureau believed there to have been a hidden message in Norman’s statement. He had employed an obvious grammatical error in his French which signalled that his meaning was to be interpreted as, ‘give them something, but not everything’. Bureau had understood. As Norman moved to the door he repeated, ‘A little light, monsieur, and in return no one will be shot.’ Then, for the guard’s benefit as well as Bureau’s, ‘And you know it won’t be long now.’5
Assigned to an interrogator, Bureau was escorted down a long corridor of small ‘torture’ rooms that were used for the less significant detainees. At each room his interrogator knocked, but found it occupied. They were all occupied. With a macabre shrug, the German told him, ‘We will have to wait.’
Bureau’s thoughts raced through all the information in his head regarding PROSPER, grading it from the insignificant to the critical. For a number of days he was able to satisfy them with information about the location of hidden radio sets and crystals. But he knew that couldn’t last. He knew the invasion was due in September and it was to that question the SD returned time and again. ‘Other people have told us the date, why don’t you?’ Finally he relented and decided to tell his little lie: ‘November.’6
From all the interrogations and written material that had been gathered, Boemelburg was sufficiently confident to send a report during the third week of July to Kopkow in Berlin that stated the invasion would fall at the Pas-de-Calais during the first week of September. From this point Kopkow’s priorities would switch to the next stage of the SD’s operation against an invasion – the radio game.
Each morning Dr Josef Götz would step out of a small hotel in the Avenue Grand Armée and walk to the Avenue Foch, where he had an office on the second floor. On rare occasions he would wear his uniform but mostly he preferred civilian clothes, being as he felt more of a civilian, and though he always carried a concealed weapon, he was grateful he had never had cause to use it.7
Josef Götz was born in Michelbach in 1910. He studied French and English to university level, graduated with a doctorate in philosophy and became an inspector of schools in Karlsruhe before the war. He was transferred to Paris in June 1941 to work with the Abwehr but was commandeered by the SD on 21 November 1942. He initially baulked at the idea of working with the Nazis, but was quickly won over by the threat that if he refused to bring his linguistic talents to the Avenue Foch, he would be transferred to a punishment squad.8
After the final arrests of the Red Orchestra, Götz had been briefly involved with playing back to Moscow a few of the captured Soviet radio sets. Since then he had been engaged on translations, interpreting documents and a bit of code-breaking. Most of his attention was focused on the product that had been coming out of the sophisticated radio listening station at Boulevard Suchet. There, the German technicians would listen in to all the transmissions to and from SOE’s agents in the field. It was Boulevard Suchet that had first given Boemelburg a clue, back in November, that a new network seemed to be developing in northern France. During all the months since, they had put together thick files on each of the radio operators they had monitored, with information on their call signals, wavelengths, strength of transmission and most significantly, the operator’s ‘signature’ – that is, the pattern of an operator’s individual ‘touch’ on the Morse key. Now all this scrupulously gathered information was going to be put to the test.
At the beginning of June Götz had returned to Germany on leave, but this was abruptly cancelled by a call from Kieffer. On 29 June he sat in Kieffer’s office and was told in the broadest terms about the recent arrests. His next engagement would be to begin playing the game with PROSPER’s radios. Boemelburg presumed that London would send in reinforcements to try and salvage something from the disaster before the invasion. He wanted to know who and where those agents would be, before they left London. He also wanted to ensure that any change in the Allies’ plans was not missed.
Götz began with Gilbert Norman’s transmitter, which had been captured with all the codes. He transmitted to London, as if from Norman, ‘There have been arrests. Am safe and gone to ground. Await instructions.’ London responded and Götz was ecstatic. He composed another message and awaited another reply. This time London signalled, ‘Where is PROSPER?’ Götz hesitated, then chose to ignore the question. The exchange continued.9
While Dr Götz concentrated on his radio game, Kieffer concentrated on what he was best at. His priority was simple police work and the eventual eradication of every last vestige of PROSPER’s army from the field. The arrests continued throughout July. Armed with information from Suttill or Norman – and sometimes with Norman accompanying them, the SD swept through the countryside like a scythe through ripening wheat. At first scores and then hundreds of French men and women were delivered to the prisons around northern France. At Fresnes, people were crowded sometimes five or six to a cell.
Following the initial arrests, most of Suttill’s contacts went to ground or left the city. Many did not. Jean Worms and Armel Guerne were arrested on 1 July at the little black-market restaurant not twenty yards from Déricourt’s flat; the rest of Captain Darling’s staff at Grignon on 1 July; Dr Balachowsky on 2 July; Jacques Bureau on 14 July; Rowland Dowlen by radio direction finders on 31 July; Charles Grover Williams on 2 August; Robert Benoist on 5 August (but he escaped). Then there was Pierre Culioli, Yvonne Rudellat, Frank Pickersgill, John Macalister, Gilbert Norman, Andrée Borrel and Suttill himself. But these are only the names that have been recorded. The full account simply can’t be given. Francis Suttill had 144 full agents (classified P1) within his network, but when you count everyone officially connected to PROSPER – all the P2s and P3s, the number rises to 1015.10
All over Paris and the surrounds, wireless sets signalled the news to Baker Street. Noor Khan, Rowland Dowlen, Dubois, Cohen, Johnny Barrett, Ben Cowburn and others all sent the black tidings. The news crept around the corridors and began to sink into people’s hearts. Buckmaster found it very hard to believe at first. Suttill had been the best, the very best that they had sent in – or so he believed. Vera Atkins recalls her first concern was for all the people that had been associated with Suttill and what had become of them. Atkins was right. The loss of PROSPER was nothing compared with the devastation that rained down on the SOE’s networks in northern France as a consequence of those initial arrests. By August the SD would be in almost total control.
Across London, at Broadway Buildings, the young Patrick Reilly, Sir Stewart Menzies’ personal assistant, was at work in his office across the corridor from ‘C’s’ when Claude Dansey marched in, clapped his hands and declared, ‘Great news, Reilly. Great news.’ Reilly naturally presumed Dansey was about to tell him of some major intelligence coup against the Germans. ‘One of the big SOE networks in France has just blown up!’11
Dansey’s isolation within the service could not have been more acute. Reilly thought him ‘a wicked man, undoubtedly’. Indeed, one of Reilly’s contemporaries actually claimed ‘Dansey was the only truly evil man I ever met.’ Many of Dansey’s colleagues, however, never saw any evil. General Sir James Marshall-Cornwall, who admired Dansey and served under him for nearly two and a half years, never learnt the full details of any of his operations. And as for his agents, ‘Only Dansey knew anything about his agents, who remained very much his own.’ He would come and go from his office unannounced, ‘making for secret meetings elsewhere, conspiratorially wrapped in his long dark overcoat’. He was unashamedly ‘the most unpopular snake in the business’, as the author Charles Whiting described him. But like him or not, he was there for the duration.12
One evening during the first week in July, around 9 pm, Karl Braun cruised one of his master’s Citroëns along the Boulevard de Beausejour, watching for GILBERT’s familiar shape loitering by the kerb. Braun was another who resented the special treatment this man seemed to receive. Their trips to the Château in Neuilly were always conducted in mutually contemptuous silence.
Boemelburg greeted Déricourt by the large circular table in the hall and led him across into the salon. Though Déricourt would be the very last to admit it, that visit – in substance no different from any other – rocked the great survivor to his very foundations.
Boemelburg’s tactful, one might say even sympathetic, approach was to catalogue the extraordinary bravery and resilience PROSPER’s people had shown under interrogation. ‘The Jew Worms has not uttered a syllable! And DENISE (Andrée Borrel), she has impressed everyone.’ This conversation took place before the SD had really begun to reap their rewards out in the field, and before news of it had drifted into Paris.13 Nevertheless, Déricourt had felt the first cracks of an arctic wind clawing its way through. Again, he received the same reassurances that he would be well taken care of. How attractive these reassurances felt that night in Neuilly, is anyone’s guess.
The Déricourts’ move to Rue Pergolese had its uncomfortable side. Emerging from the metro at Porte Dauphine, he would have to walk past the blazing lights at 84 Avenue Foch on his way home. How did he cope with the knowledge that each day more and more of his colleagues were being driven through the steel gates and down into the basement garages?
On 17 July, Déricourt was scheduled to run an operation down near Tours, on a field Clément had discovered. Joseph Antelme, the organizer of BRICKLAYER, and Jean Savy, a lawyer colleague of his, were on their way to London and away from the chaos. Following his meeting with Boemelburg, Déricourt also decided to get out. He sent an urgent message to London saying he was taking advantage of the next mission to catch a lift back. This message wasn’t sent to SOE but to MI6. SOE were never informed he was leaving his post.
Then, as with the previous operation, Déricourt failed to make the rendezvous. Flying Officer McCairns circled the area for no less than 25 minutes before giving up. The operation was set up again for the 19th/20th. Déricourt rarely had trouble with unwanted German patrols interfering with his operations, quite the reverse. So why did he miss the rendezvous?
The night for which the operation was originally scheduled happened to coincide with a critical MI6 Lysander operation on the other side of Paris. From a field near Brez-Brouillancy, Marie-Madelaine Foucarde, the leader of the famous MI6 intelligence network ‘Alliance’, set off on her long-overdue trip to London to meet with her controller, ‘Uncle Claude’. It would have been very careless if Dansey had allowed two agents, from two vastly different operations, to get anywhere near each other as they passed through RAF Tangmere.
So, two days late, on the night of the 19th/20th, Antelme, Savy and Déricourt climbed into the back of McCairns’ Lysander. As the aircraft began to roll across the meadow grass, Savy and Déricourt watched the lonely figure of Rémy, giving the thumbs-up to them as they passed.14 Déricourt knew it was incredibly callous of him to have left Clément at that particular time, the latter’s safety being subject to an arrangement with the enemy, but he knew he wouldn’t be gone for long. The SOE had hastily put together a Hudson operation three nights hence, the 22nd/23rd, for what they expected would be a veritable exodus of PROSPER people still at large. As the Lysander lifted up and out over the Loire valley, Rémy was already organizing bicycles and the luggage. The SD were not on station that night – Déricourt had told them nothing about the operation.
Dansey arranged for an MI6 reception officer to actually meet the aircraft on the hardstanding and whisk Déricourt away from his SOE colleagues.15 He was taken to MI6’s own little safe-house where two nights before Foucarde had enjoyed her first English breakfast. From Tangmere he was taken up to André Simon’s flat in Harley Street, where he slept until late in the morning.16 After lunch he was driven to a meeting at one of Dansey’s ‘service flats’. No one at Baker Street headquarters (except André Simon and Bodington) knew that Déricourt was in London. Nor did they ever know.
Déricourt’s de-briefing served a variety of purposes. He was extremely keen for everyone to appreciate the delicate state of the situation in Paris. He needed to hear the same sort of reassurances from Dansey as he’d recently heard from Boemelburg. No doubt he was given all the encouragement and expressions of confidence he needed. But if Déricourt had harboured any hopes of being withdrawn from the field, he was disappointed. ‘I went secretly to London. There I received the order to carry on my mission as Air Movements Officer [for SOE] and other orders too. These related to the intelligence side.’17 Naturally Dansey couldn’t pull Déricourt out without revealing his hand? On the contrary, it would seem that Uncle Claude was of the opinion that the greater part of Déricourt’s work was still to be done.
He was told to return to France and maintain his contacts with Boemelburg. Déricourt was concerned, however, that his integrity in the field was beginning to be questioned. That would be dealt with, he was told, by an old friend who was flying out to join him. Nicholas Bodington had convinced his superiors at SOE that before anyone else went in, he should fly to France to report on the situation and make any necessary decisions ‘on the ground’. News of this decision had already reached Dansey.
Bodington would go on the next available SOE flight, with the radio operator Jack Agazarian. F Section must have lost their concentration for a moment to have allowed the Deputy Head to fly to occupied Paris; but on the other hand, Bodington knew he’d be in safe hands. After the war, Déricourt claimed Bodington had known all about his operation from the beginning – ‘…he had been present in the room at the War Office when I was briefed to approach the Germans on my return to France’.18 Whatever argument he used with SOE, Bodington’s real purpose in going was to seal-up any cracks that had appeared in Déricourt’s reputation, something he’d become very adept at ever since Baker Street had heard the name Déricourt.
Bodington had already come to Déricourt’s rescue just a few weeks earlier, following yet another of those worrying reports from MI5. Back in April, during his Easter trip to London, there had been the report, gleaned from French intelligence sources, about Déricourt’s contacts with the Germans in Paris during 1940 and 1941; now the same sources had reported that ‘…the Gestapo are aware that Déricourt had been to the UK [the Easter trip] and that they would try and get in touch with him in order to use him rather than arrest him’.19
The provenance of such a report must be seriously questioned. Certainly there would never have been any leak from 84 Avenue Foch regarding Déricourt, he was one of the SD’s best-kept secrets. On the other hand, the report does date from the same time the Abwehr began their campaign to ‘discredit GILBERT’ – it may even have come straight from Hugo Bleicher.
At any rate, it was a serious piece of news and should have laid seeds of doubt for the safety of Déricourt’s entire operation. F Section chose to deal with it by asking Déricourt himself for an explanation – the perfect opportunity for him to exploit his greatest talent. As every basic manual of deception will tell you, you start from the truth, and proceed sideways.
Déricourt had written: ‘One day two Lufthansa pilots called at my home. I had met the two officers before the war, when they were civillian pilots. I think I remember the name of one of them, Mittelhauser, who use to fly Paris–Cologne in 1939.’ Déricourt claimed they invited him to work for the German air-transport organization, Luftflotte, which he described as ‘an organization of the Lufthansa … which consists solely of French pilots … but is controlled by Colonel Kingsburg of the Luftwaffe’. (Luftflotte was also concerned with aerial reconnaisance.) Déricourt claimed he had extricated himself from ‘any further involvement’ by getting declared medically unfit for flying. He also claimed, ‘this little adventure had for a time made me fear for my security’.20
He sent the letter by the Lysander that had taken the Agazarians out of France in June. It was a neat piece of work. Déricourt had dove-tailed the SD’s very real visit to his wife, with an offer he had received back in 1941 to work for Luftflotte. It was an important step, for he was able to refer to this fictional visitation, with suitable elaboration, whenever his activities were called into question.
Referring to Déricourt’s letter, on 21 June Bodington pencilled a most cryptic memo which, once again, put paid to any suggestions that Déricourt might be engaged in anything untoward with the enemy. ‘D. is now in France and doing well. I don’t feel there is much we can do about this. [The report that the Gestapo might try to contact Déricourt.] We know he is in touch with the Germans and also how and why.’21 The last sentence employs what civil servants call an economy of truth.
Having played ‘back-stop’ for Déricourt at Baker Street, Bodington would now do the same out in the field, for Dansey must have had Déricourt down as a long-term operation.
From SOE’s point of view, Bodington’s mission would provide a much needed picture of the ‘situation on the ground’. Apart from establishing precisely who was secure and who was not, Bodington was also required to solve some confusion over Gilbert Norman’s radio. There had been many reports announcing Norman’s arrest; and yet, his radio was still on the air. SOE’s signals branch had been suspicious of the transmissions from the outset. The very first transmission under Götz’s control had been too halting and with an uncertain ‘signature’. They reported, ‘unusual, hesitant – quite easily the work of a flustered man doing his work under duress’, implying that the SD were forcing him to transmit. But Buckmaster was of the opinion that Norman was not the type who would cooperate with the Germans. Unfortunately, Buckmaster wasn’t aware that the SD required very little assistance from Norman – and what they did need, they got from London.
Every operator had a secret code that he had to transmit, known as a security code, a meaningless series of numbers or letters that confirmed to the receivers in Britain that they were listening to the man himself. Often there were ‘double security checks’, one transmitted at the beginning and another sent sometime during the course of the message. While transmitting as ‘Norman’, Götz was surprised to receive from London a criticism for neglecting to use his ‘double security check’. Norman was pretty amazed too when Götz showed him the message from London and demanded to know his ‘double security check’.22 So Buckmaster wanted to believe Norman was still at large but Signals had their doubts. Bodington would clarify the situation.
Déricourt spent the night of the 20th at Simon’s flat in Harley Street and the afternoon of the next day in Bodington’s company. That evening, 21 July, an MI6 conducting officer drove Déricourt out to RAF Tempsford. MI6 already had two officers going into France that night on Operation FLORIDE; Dansey secured a place for Déricourt as the third passenger. They were put down to an MI6 reception at Chateauroux.23 Déricourt leapt from the craft and began a lightning dash across country to Angers where he was scheduled to receive his first Hudson operation for SOE.
He caught the first train up to Vierzon, where he changed to another heading west to Nantes in the Loire Atlantique. He got off at Angers, long before Rémy arrived for their rendezvous. The army of SOE fugitives that both Déricourt and London presumed would try to get on that flight didn’t materialize. While Rémy and Henri sat in a café waiting for nightfall, Déricourt told Rémy he should go to London soon and be properly trained. Rémy shrugged. ‘By the way,’ Déricourt said, ‘my chief is coming on this flight.’
The virtue of the twin-engined Hudson was that it could carry about a dozen passengers and yet had similar landing and take-off characteristics to the Lysander. Running up towards one of those craft really was an awe-inspiring experience, especially when it had just dropped out of the night sky towards a series of simple torches stretched out across a meadow. Once again, it was an operation the SD knew nothing about, though that isn’t to say they didn’t know Bodington was coming.
Agazarian looked after himself, while Déricourt put Bodington up at Charles Besnard’s flat in the Avenue Malakoff, which Besnard now shared with Julienne. He was completely devoted to Julienne and it was really for her sake he allowed his place to be used as a safe-house. He was reconciled to the fact of Julienne’s involvement with Déricourt and the Resistance, though it would always be a source of deep apprehension. Lately, however, Besnard had grown a little more anxious for Julienne’s security. No one, not even he, could have been unaware of the new season of terror that had broken out since the PROSPER arrests. Déricourt sensed Besnard’s anxiety and so moved Bodington across to his own place in Rue Pergolese, where in fact he stayed for most of his time in Paris. For Déricourt it was the very pinnacle of success to emerge from the Metro at Porte Dauphine with the Deputy Head of F Section and walk past 84 Avenue Foch. It was the first time Bodington had met Jeannot. They spoke very little to each other, except that Nick told her that ‘London thought Henri was doing a good job’.24
The secret that Bodington was at large in Paris was not kept so for long. Kieffer telephoned Colonel Reile at Abwehr headquarters to find out – in a roundabout way – whether they had yet heard the news – but before Kieffer had a chance to begin probing, Reile popped the question: ‘By the way, did you know the Deputy Head of F Section is in Paris?’25
Kieffer had no sense of humour. He telephoned Boemelburg and asked whether GILBERT had already informed him? Boemelburg confessed that he had not been informed. The only thing concerning Kieffer was who got to Bodington first, the Abwehr or himself. He also suspected that if Bodington was in Paris, GILBERT would certainly have known about it and was holding out on them. Kieffer also began to have his doubts about Boemelburg.
One of the first items Bodington dealt with, was the confusion that was often created over Déricourt’s codename. GILBERT had often been mistaken for Gilbert Norman and vice-versa, so Déricourt had to be re-christened. Someone with a secret sense of humour plumped for CLAUDE.
The most pressing problem to deal with, however, was the question of Gilbert Norman’s radio transmissions. During the course of Baker Street’s conversations with Dr Götz, they had asked Norman for ‘a contact address where friends could reach him’. Götz duly supplied one. Baker Street then signalled to Bodington, through Agazarian, the details for a rendezvous with Norman at ‘Madam Ferdi-Filipowsky in the Rue de Rome’.26 The SD were amazed at how audacious, not to say foolhardy, London could be in sending Bodington into the field. Both Kopkow and Kieffer wanted him; Boemelburg was oddly indifferent. But Kieffer must have sensed he was onto a hiding to nothing, that Déricourt would surely protect Bodington. Nevertheless, Kieffer had his orders from Berlin, and he had to persist.
Naturally Déricourt protected Bodington. They both knew Norman was under arrest. They knew the transmissions were coming from the SD. They knew the address in the Rue de Rome would be a trap, but Baker Street was clinging to the possibility that Norman was still at large. Why? Why should Baker Street have any doubts about whether Norman was arrested? Why had London requested a contact address and then passed it to Bodington, if they hadn’t wanted the address tested? A rendezvous was made for 30 July. Bodington hadn’t actually been ordered to turn up, but it was clear Baker Street expected someone to go. There were many more subtle ways of testing the authenticity of Norman’s transmissions but Baker Street hadn’t thought of any and Bodington was damned if he was going to test the bloody address, so – they sent Agazarian. His arrest was as swift as it was predictable.
Another piece of business that had to be dealt with was the purchase of a small bar in the Rue St André des Arts, near the Place St Michel. Déricourt wanted a proper establishment that could be used as a mail-drop and contact point for escaping personnel. Bodington had brought a sizeable contingency fund and a substantial part of it was used to buy the bar. Charles Besnard, being a lawyer, would look after the purchase, and he and Julienne would run the place. One evening, while Bodington was at Besnard’s place to finalize the details, Charles took the opportunity to air his anxieties about Déricourt. Bodington listened intently.
Besnard claimed he did his best to ignore the work Julienne was involved with, but he was naturally protective and couldn’t help but wonder sometimes precisely what was the nature of Henri’s operation. He had noticed that Déricourt appeared to have regular contacts with the Germans, which naturally seemed an odd thing to do, given that he was supposed to be working with the Resistance. Bodington asked Besnard what Julienne knew.
‘She knows he has contacts with the Germans. She says he’s seeing old friends from before the war and that he’s doing a black market in oranges. She doesn’t suspect anything else, she believes in him completely.’
Bodington asked Besnard straight out, what he believed. He replied, ‘Déricourt is, in my opinion, a double agent acquainted with both parties.’
Bodington didn’t see any point in fudging an answer, Besnard was an intelligent lawyer. ‘I know that Déricourt is working with the Germans. I encouraged him to do so.’
Besnard was naturally a little taken aback, but Bodington told him ‘not to worry about it, London has recommended it’.27
Besnard shrugged and shook his head, but if that was what London wanted Henri to do, who was he to question? It was agreed that it would be the wisest thing not to disturb Julienne’s ignorance.
Bodington actually got around quite a bit during his visit and saw a number of people. One person he had to meet with was Henri Frager, the DONKEYMAN organizer. It was a conference he’d put off for as long as possible, having been warned by Déricourt from the outset that Hugo Bleicher had an agent within the DONKEYMAN group. A meeting with Frager was a potentially lethal operation, further complicated because Frager himself had no idea his network was compromised. Frager was an honest and devoted officer, but highly excitable and often given to fits of temper. He would not have been easily convinced that his lover Roger Bardet was also a German agent. And besides, Bodington wouldn’t have been able to tell him without giving away his source.
Before Bodington and Frager finally met, Frager had been primed with highly damaging information about Déricourt. On 12 August, an extraordinary meeting took place between Frager, Roger Bardet and Hugo Bleicher. The German was introduced as ‘Colonel Heinrich’, a dissident Abwehr officer keen to be rid of the Nazis. This Colonel Heinrich confided in Frager that the SD had a most valuable agent within SOE’s Paris circuits. ‘Gilbert, l’homme qui fait le pick-up.’ This fuelled Frager’s already smouldering suspicions and seemed to explain much that had occurred that summer. Colonel Heinrich was quite frank with Frager, and admitted his motive was the Abwehr’s fight with ‘those people at Avenue Foch’.
When arranging the meeting between Bodington and Frager, Déricourt went to considerable lengths to evade Bardet and Bleicher, by employing Vera Leigh, a courier in the INVENTOR circuit, as a ‘cut-out’, a go-between who could not compromise anyone. Just as Bodington expected, he was subjected to a fierce tirade against Déricourt. ‘GILBERT,’ Frager pronounced, ‘is an agent of the Sicherheitsdienst.’ It wasn’t what Frager said that concerned Bodington, but the vehemence with which he said it. Frager threatened that unless Déricourt was taken out of the field, he would send a report to Baker Street himself. Bodington said that he would include Frager’s remarks in his report.28
Bodington immediately warned Déricourt that Frager knew about his contacts with the SD and that he would doubtless repeat the accusation to Baker Street. Déricourt was never in any doubt where Frager had received the information but all he could do about it was to ask Boemelburg to intervene. This Boemelburg did in no uncertain terms. Bleicher was ordered to present himself before Boemelburg at the earliest possible moment. The elderly Nazi didn’t mince his words, repeating himself again and again to emphasize that GILBERT must remain inviolate and that, if necessary, he would demand further orders from Berlin to protect BOE/48. Whatever placatory noises Bleicher might have made at the time were quickly swept away by his actions, for within days he ran into Bardet and Frager again, and ‘Colonel Heinrich’ gave Frager even more intelligence on Déricourt.
‘You spoke to Bodington about GILBERT?’ Bleicher enquired.
‘Of course.’
‘Then Bodington warned GILBERT about you.’ Frager could not understand why Bodington had revealed what Frager considered to have been a strictly confidential conversation.
‘How do you know this?’
‘From the SD, where else? Oh, by the way, you should know that he is no longer GILBERT, but CLAUDE. That is also from the SD.’29
Bodington’s own position had begun to look a trifle exposed by now and Besnard recalled noticing just before Bodington’s departure, that he looked a man consumed by some internal struggle, ‘like two people within the same skin’. It must be said that, throughout the course of Déricourt’s operation, great pains were taken by Bodington and others to protect Déricourt’s integrity, while Bodington’s probity seems to have been neglected.
There is a (probably apocryphal) story that before Bodington returned to London, he and Déricourt dined secretly with the one they referred to as ‘notre ami’ at his château in Neuilly. Unfortunately, it is now too late to confirm this story though there is evidence that Boemelburg boasted of it to some of his colleagues.30 Within a few weeks half the SD interrogators at Avenue Foch were making the same boast to their victims.
In 1982, Colonel Reile explained that just before Bodington’s departure, during a rare consultation with the SD, the Nazis proudly revealed that they knew the date of the ‘1943 invasion’ and argued against the pursuit of Bodington. ‘Bodington was in France a few days [weeks] before the invasion and it was decided not to arrest him because they [the SD] felt the English would conclude we were aware of the date of the invasion.’31
On the night of 16/17 August, Bodington was shepherded down to the field near Pont-de-Braye, to a rendezvous with Claude and Lise de Baissac. The great SCIENTIST network, so closely associated with PROSPER, was also disintegrating. Their story was remarkably similar to PROSPER’s.
A network claiming to have some 11,000 fighting men and women, strategically placed in the west and embracing the Biscay coast, it had been an obvious choice for exploitation. Since June, de Baissac’s group had received nearly 121 aircraft loads of equipment; that is nearly two thousand containers of arms and explosives – three times as many as had been sent to PROSPER. During the first weeks of August, SCIENTIST received BBC messages indicating that the invasion was on for September.32 But in July, just at the time the PROSPER network was being swept from the field, the Germans began to move in on SCIENTIST. By the time the de Baissacs were clambering aboard the Lysander, the Germans were making hundreds of arrests throughout their region.
All three passengers snuggled together in the cramped fuselage, each preoccupied. Bodington spent most of the journey running through his head the outline for one of the least ‘enlightening’ reports in the SOE canon.
In that report he dealt with the arrest of Agazarian by claiming that both of them had had their doubts about the address at Rue de Rome, but it had been agreed they would ‘toss for which of them would go’, and Agazarian lost. (The question of Agazarian’s arrest and subsequent death was one that dogged Bodington for some time. Long after the SOE had passed into history he was interviewed about his trip to France. This time he was able to volunteer the information that following his arrest, Agazarian had withstood the most punishing treatment and not said a word. Where he had obtained that information was not revealed.)
As to Frager’s accusation that Déricourt was an agent of the SD, Bodington concluded (rather disingenuously) that it was highly unlikely, as he himself had not been arrested while he was there, and so Déricourt must have been sound. He went on, ‘I can say here and now that GILBERT’s (Déricourt) organization, which consists of three people, has not the slightest possibility of being infiltrated and that the Germans obviously do not know the real identity of GILBERT.’33 [I cannot explain why Bodington persisted in referring to GILBERT when it was he who had informed Déricourt that he was henceforth CLAUDE.] Bodington’s report bolstered Déricourt’s reputation and went a long way towards fending off future slings and arrows. But unfortunately Déricourt was soon to lose his friend at court. Only a matter of weeks after his return from France, and somewhat mysteriously, Bodington moved to the Political Warfare Executive (PWE). The official record states that Bodington took up the post to ‘lecture soldiers on conditions in France’.34
While Bodington had been away, Dansey and ‘C’ were making use of the material Déricourt had given them during his secret trip in July. He had provided details of the SD’s sweeping arrests throughout the Loire, Normandy and Pas-de-Calais regions, just as they’d been described to him by Boemelburg. It provided Menzies with invaluable ammunition for a campaign they were about to unleash on the SOE. This goal – which was also Dansey’s – was to have the organization finally abolished. On 26 July, Menzies sent a note to Sir Charles Portal to be read to a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff Committee of the War Cabinet.35 The purpose of Memo CX 108, ‘based on reports from most secret sources, on the situation of certain of the Resistance groups in France’, was to direct opinion towards MI6’s view that the SOE had no proper control over its affairs in France and ought to be restructured as a sub-section of MI6. A copy of Memo CX 108 was sent to a highly embarrassed Gubbins, by then the Head of SOE, who recovered quickly enough to challenge Menzies’ view ‘that at the present moment Resistance groups are at their lowest ebb and cannot be counted on as a serious factor unless and until they are rebuilt on a smaller and sounder basis’. Gubbins countered by claiming that the ‘groups under [our] own direct control have not been penetrated by the enemy to any serious extent’.36
Gubbins had fallen into a trap. On 1 August, a Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee pronounced that on the basis of Memo CX 108 and despite Gubbins’ protestations, they were forced to the view that SOE had been less than frank in their reports about their situation in France. Moreover, because the JIC had been obliged to learn the truth from MI6, they felt doubly disappointed with SOE, who had a responsibility to keep them and the Chiefs of Staff informed. After reiterating the tenet that wherever the two organizations’ interests coincided, MI6’s should always prevail, they concluded that if SOE and MI6, ‘formed part of the same hierarchy … under the Ministry of Defence, we cannot believe that the information regarding the situation in France would have failed to have reached the Chiefs of Staff before now, nor that when it did reach them they would have had only half the story’.37
They went on to recommend the Chiefs of Staff to consider just such a reorganization. The SOE were not only fighting for survival in France, but in Whitehall too.