BILLY: THE SEAL MISSION

The word “spy” has a connotation of loneliness which frequently it does not deserve. In peacetime, most nations have the services of traveling businessmen who go about in foreign countries quite openly in search of customers and trade, and simply keep their eyes and ears open as they go. They are in fact spies, but their very stock in trade is their open congeniality.

In wartime, it is nearly always possible, as a later chapter will reveal, to get interesting facts about enemy countries by sending men into neutral countries. There is nothing lonely about the work of such men since they have a perfect right to be where they are, and can go about quite openly. Gregariousness for them is an admirable trait provided it is not accompanied by garrulousness.

In peace and in war, nations discover extremely important facts about each other by simply reading each other’s newspapers and other publications. Movements in population, births and deaths, shipping statistics and labor trends, can all be compiled by the expert who sits comfortably at home and who knows what to look for in the newspapers. If such men are indeed spies, they are not lonely.

There is in fact no type of intelligence operation in which the spy depends solely upon himself. The very word intelligence in its synonymous sense of information calls to mind at least two people, one to impart, and one to receive, and intelligence, as nations use the word, requires at least a third party, the one who uses it.

But there is one type of intelligence operation which depends more heavily than any other upon the lone and secret agent. It is used in wartime, not only because it is one of the few types of operations which has a chance of success in wartime, but because a time of war is the only time when it is necessary to use it. It was used by both Germany and the Allies during the last war, and for the Allies at least, it was a highly successful type of intelligence operation. It consists of sending men alone into enemy territory. Naturally, they are given the names of certain friends with whom they can establish relations and seek shelter, but insofar as the word spy connotes the lonely, these men are lonely.

Such a one-man operation was the Seal Mission, and such a spy was Billy. His is a typical story. It is also a true story. If it sounds fictional, that is typical too.

In the month of November, 1944, the country of Holland was a sea of hopelessness. To the south, British, Canadian, and Polish troops, pushing north past Eindhoven, had bogged down in mud and overflowing dikes. To the west, the Germans had blown the walls which let in the sea. British troops fought knee-deep in water.

To the north, there was mud and water too. Worse, there was famine. German soldiers, all but cut off from supply by the American push to the east, fighting bitterly in a last kind of trench warfare, knew by that time that their purpose in life was to stand and die. They took what food they could find from the Dutch. There seemed no longer any sense in paying.

The resistance movement in Holland had slowed to a standstill. In the occupied part of the country, packed deep with German troops, an uprising was out of the question. The nighttime vigils for the parachute supplies from England were likely to be interrupted disastrously at any moment by German troops on the move. Moreover, the resistance had been twice betrayed by a man they had accepted as their own.

He was called Bill of the Seaman’s House and had once been a British agent, under another name, Bill Overveen. He had “turned.” Now he traveled from one locality to another, met the local farmers, and pretended to be an Allied courier from England. When the farmers had eagerly introduced him and taken him into their plans, he would suddenly disappear. A day later, everyone who had confided in him would be arrested. It was disheartening to the point of despair.

The Dutch people, even those who took no active part in the resistance, were almost hopeless too. The work of industrious centuries spent in building, out the sea had been destroyed. Many of the fields lay flooded. The Allies were never coming. All was dirt, water, and mud.

Into that dismal bog, at 11:30 o’clock on the night of November 10, a man dropped alone from the hole of a Liberator aircraft, into a ditch a half mile north of Ulrum. His was the “Seal Mission,” and he was known to the friends he left behind him as “Billy.”

What it was that impelled Billy alone into the land of the enemy that night was not immediately apparent to the men who flew him there. To the pilot of the Liberator who asked about him afterwards, to the other members of the crew, and to all his casual friends in England, Billy was a gregarious, congenial fellow, 27 years old, blond, good-looking except for that faint trace of coldness in the eyes which so often stamped the men whom OSS hired as agents.

There were two, somewhat conflicting, theories about Billy and his motives, and only one man, an OSS man whom we shall know as Peter Smith, was convinced that he knew the whole true history, and the true reason why, with apparently total nervelessness, Billy had joked with the pilot about “a hell of a way to be going home” up to the last minute before he disappeared into the darkness that night in November.

Smith believed—he “knew,” he said—that years before, when the Germans had overrun his country in the spring of 1940, Billy had made up his mind about his own role in the war and had adhered to that role ever since with the kind of strength which permits of no second thoughts while waiting in an airplane, even for a man who has never jumped before.

The story which Peter Smith knew, which he believed, and which he had heard from Billy’s own lips when he had come to him in the spring of 1944 asking for a job, was as follows: He had been born, he said, in the Dutch East Indies, a Dutchman by nationality, and had become, at his parents’ strong desires, a lawyer. His parents soon moved to Holland, and by 1937 his law degree had gained him a minor but promising post in the Dutch government. In 1938 his parents had died, and Billy tossed aside his future to become what he had always most wanted to be—an engineer. He was at the University of Utrecht when Germany swallowed the Lowlands.

Some of his friends at the University who were then tossed into jail were certain that Billy’s intelligence was chained to his ambition. He left the University, secured a high position in the Netherlands Food Distribution Office, and kept his mouth closed. He said nothing against the new rulers, but within a year, according to Billy, he had established an underground network among food-distribution officials throughout Holland.

For two years the chain worked secretly and well. But as more and more German officials came carpetbagging into Holland, as more and more executive posts were turned over to aging German officers, the work became increasingly dangerous. In October, 1943, Billy said, “My cover was blown.” With three friends he escaped in a small boat to England, bringing with him files of intelligence which he had accumulated during two years of silent work.

He had then secured a post in the Dutch intelligence, working for the Dutch government-in-exile. He despised it, he said. He thought the exiled government had fascist tendencies, that it was bent on preserving itself and the status quo, that it was insensitive to the sufferings of the people in Holland across the sea. In April of 1944 he had resigned, and now he poured out his story to Smith, and begged to be sent on a mission to Holland.

There was another story—or rather another theory, about Billy. The Dutch government in London thought he was left wing, perhaps Communist; not thoroughly suspicious; still, it refused what it considered the risk of sending him back to Holland on a mission of its own.

Smith, at first, was skeptical. Billy was suspected by his own government. His own government, for what might or might not be good reason, had refused to send him back to Holland. The man admitted that his cover had been blown once before in Holland, admitted therefore that the Germans knew of him. Yet he was asking to be sent back on what would certainly be, if he were what he pretended to be, an extremely dangerous mission.

“Of course,” Smith thought, “if he were not what he pretended to be, it would not be dangerous.” Across the mind of Smith there played the faint notion that in dealing with this man, he might possibly be dealing with what is known as a “double agent.”

While the two men talked it out in Pall Mall restaurants, other OSS men investigated Billy’s story. Everything checked. Yet there was that slight suspicion. Smith made the final decision. Billy’s open friendliness had won the day. “I am convinced,” Smith said, “that Billy’s politics are unimportant. He is motivated by a strong love of his country and his people.” In October, 1944, Billy was assigned to OSS, and given a mission to Holland.

He did not need much of a briefing, for he knew the country well. Peter Smith saw that he had the things he needed, and brought him up to date on the leaders of the resistance. He looked over a map of Ulrum, and picked the spot where he thought the pilot could drop him with the least chance of danger. Smith told him what was known about the Germans in the area, and he warned him particularly just before he left, about the activities of the German spy, Bill of the Seaman’s House.

Billy was grateful for his chance. The last direct word which OSS had from him the night he went back to Holland was his thanks to Peter Smith and his promise of a safe return.

After that, for awhile, nothing. On two occasions within the next ten days, an OSS-staffed plane flew high over the area where Billy had dropped, while Smith sent out the code signals to the ground, “Message for Billy; Smith to Billy, Smith calling Billy.” There was no answer. There was no one on the air.

For Smith, the days became full of strain and worry. As always in the relations between an OSS agent in the field who did not report, and his friends back at base, suspicion would not down. It was strange that this should have been so. OSS men who had become firm friends would sit in a room together toasting each other’s luck, before one of them departed for enemy territory. Yet, when days passed and that man did not report by radio to headquarters, his friends would begin to remark to each other, “I wonder if he could have turned.” Perhaps distrust is the inevitable result of nerves and tension. Perhaps no men who are forced to make a trade of deceit can ever fully trust each other.

But Smith and the others were worried for another reason. Whatever their opinions of his worthiness as an agent, everyone in OSS had liked Billy. It was impossible not to. On the eleventh night after his departure, on the night of November 21, Smith’s faith seemed justified. It is still not possible to reveal completely what happened that night, but the essence of it is reportable in the messages which flowed out from an OSS plane over Holland to a field below. From the plane that night, Peter Smith sent out another signal for the agent on the ground:

“The time is now 2354, Pete calling Billy, Pete calling Billy, Pete to Billy, Pete to Billy.” A pause. “The time is now 2358. This is Pete calling Billy, Pete to Billy, Hello Billy, Pete to Billy, Hello Billy.”

There is a short silence, then a crackle of static, and in the airplane overhead Smith’s voice could be heard over the noises of the engines saying simply, “Thank God, thank God.”

“I am quite all right,” the message spelled. “I am ready to receive my friends” (an acknowledgment of Billy’s mission to set up landing points for more agents) “one mile north of the eleventh position.”

“Is there anything you need?” Smith asked. And the reply: “I have landed in a big ditch, and lost part of my luggage. I have a car now. I need new maps, new batteries, five flashlights, two sets of automobile tires 16×25 and 17×50. I could not find my friend at first, and I had to stay near German posts. It is very dangerous. That is why I am so glad to contact you now.”

When Smith made his report of the contact, OSS men who had worked with Billy heaved a collective sigh. When an agent asked for automobile tires, there was not any great need for immediate worry.

The first contact was renewed again and again. Billy soon began to pass intelligence. He did it in a careful, accurate style. He reported the movement of a panzer unit to Arnhem, naming the unit and the route taken. He reported that the Germans were making a water barrier between the Ems canal and the Wischoter Diep, and he gave the map reference. He reported the effectiveness of the Allied bombing of the docks at Gaarkeuken, and he proposed that the air forces bomb the railway bridge across the canal at Leeuwardem.

In later messages he said that it was difficult to keep warm in Holland, and asked for more clothes and for some cigarettes.

In the fourth contact with OSS, Billy made, for the first time, serious and definite proposals for the dropping of “friends” which had been promised him. And he ended, “Tell Pete I have a nice car now and I travel the country. It is very nice. We are always escorted by a German soldier. Now I must end. I must walk now, half an hour through muddy fields with the radio.”

“Good night, Billy,” came from the plane, “and good luck.”

By the time the sixth message came from Billy, it was apparent that he was beginning to be worried about the arrival of his friends and of supplies. On January 10, and again on January 23, Billy reported that unless friends and packages came soon, his Dutch friends of the underground would begin to lose faith in him.

OSS men realized his predicament. They frequently received such messages from agents. They knew that the underground of Europe was of necessity a suspicious organization, and that if a man turned up among them, claiming to be an Allied agent, and could not show proof that he had the confidence of the Allies, he would soon be suspect with the underground.

But it was midwinter. The elements were waging a cosmic war of their own over the battlefields of Holland, and though OSS-stocked planes had several times tried to reach the pinpoints which Billy had described, they were unsuccessful. Billy reported that one plane had flown right over his reception field, but had not seen his group of friends on the ground. Perhaps, he said, he had not kept the lights lit long enough, but lights were very dangerous. He needed supplies, or friends, or both, he said, and he needed them immediately.

There was another contact on February 8. Again Billy asked for friends. Looking back later over the texts of his messages, OSS men noted that it was the last time he did so.

Beginning on February 15, there was something peculiar and suspect about Billy’s messages. OSS realized it almost at once. On that date, he asked for packages and did not mention friends. Two days later, a successful drop of supplies was made, the first that OSS had been able to send him, throughout his time in the field. Smith then asked Billy specifically, if, now that the weather had broken, he was again ready for friends. He received the specific answer, “No friends.”

On that same contact, Billy passed on some information. It was poor information, and Smith was surprised. Billy had passed a message about enemy units. “Be specific,” Smith answered him, “what units?”

All these omissions seemed strange, and Smith again was worried. Still there was no real evidence that anything was wrong.

Then on February 28, the evidence came. At 2358 hours, a radioman in an OSS plane called to Billy: “I am hearing you OK tonight, Billy. Your signals are good. Billy, we are sorry we could not come over with packages. The weather was bad. Do you get that?”

From the ground came the answer, “I understand that the weather was poor, but it was damned bad standing there in the cold.”

The radioman listening to the message signaled to Peter Smith. Together they continued to listen. The word came again, later in the message: “It is a damned good place for a drop.” And just before he finished, once more in the very last line, “Don’t wait till Saturday; it is damned dangerous unless you come on time.”

There was no mistaking it. The word, “damned” had been agreed upon long before as the “danger signal.” Smith gave no indication that he had heard it. “OK, Billy,” he said, “Good night.” But he knew, as he flew back to London, that Billy was in the hands of the Gestapo. He was operating, under duress:

When an agent is captured and is forced to send signals on his radio, the only way in which his headquarters can help him is to continue to send him messages, to keep up the pretense that all is well; to send him a little information or some supplies which will make the enemy believe that the agent is worth more to them alive than dead. Peter Smith and OSS did their best for Billy until a time came when it appeared that perhaps Billy was not doing his best for them.

Until March 31, OSS continued to send him messages. On that date, Billy asked that a plane fly over his area. In order to preserve the illusion for the Germans that they knew nothing of his capture, OSS complied.

The OSS man who rode in the plane reported that the moment he reached the target area, he began to hear the steady buzz of radar, the telltale sign that the German stations have picked up the presence of an airplane. It was unusual that it should have happened so quickly. Perhaps Billy had been used as a decoy so that the plane could be destroyed; perhaps the Germans were only following the plane’s course in the hope that it would lead them to the areas of other Allied agents. The pilot didn’t wait to find out, but headed immediately for home.

That was the last radio message OSS ever had from Billy. But more than two weeks later, on April 19, a cable was received from the Allied front lines by the British Intelligence Service which substantiated what some OSS men had been afraid of, and which cast doubt into the mind of even Peter Smith: “German courier captured morning 18 April,” the cable read, “carried complete report Gestapo interrogation of Agent Billy. He apparently told them all he knew.…”

Billy clambered out of the watery ditch in which he landed, unhooked the strap which connected him to the cumbersome British leg bag, and folded his parachute, tying it neatly with the shroud lines in the way he had been taught at the school. He was feeling happy, exhilarated, as only a man can feel who has just jumped out of an airplane and is none the worse for it. For a moment he sat still on the muddy bank, humming a tune to himself, and then he realized suddenly that around him the night was silent. He could no longer hear the noise of the plane; he was alone.

He remembered that the next thing was to bury the parachute. He began to dig with his hands, but the soil was ooze, and he made no headway. The night began to get on his nerves. The complete bliss which he had felt when he first landed departed as suddenly as it had come, and he thought of all the things he had to do, of his old friend, Johannes De Woelf, whom he must find in Ulrum, and of his danger. Perhaps someone had seen his parachute coming out of the plane. It was best to hurry; to ditch everything, and get away.

He untied the side of the leg bag, took from it the radio, the batteries, some clothes, medicine, his pistol and ammunition, and stuffed it all in his pockets and in the rucksack on his back. Then he tossed the neatly rolled parachute and the half-filled leg bag into the ditch, slapped a few handfuls of mud over them, and set off to the south, across the fields.

It was raining by the time he reached the outskirts of Ulrum, and his watch said one. De Woelf’s house was about a mile away now, but there was always the chance he wasn’t there. Billy had not heard from De Woelf since he himself had escaped from Holland two years ago, and De Woelf led a dangerous life as a member of the resistance. He might have run away, or been taken away; it was even possible that his house was watched.

Billy decided to stay out all night, and try to see De Woelf in the morning. He sat down on the wet earth near a farmer’s fence, and tried to light a cigarette. The rain came down in sheets now. It was no use. He huddled against the boards of the fence and tried to doze in the rain. When he woke with a start, it was three, and he was freezing cold.

There is no courage and no fear like the courage or fear born of discomfort. A man will leave his post in the lines, or attack the enemy single-handed, if by doing either he can get a little warmer, or get out of the rain. It was so with Billy. Before he had gone to sleep he had cautiously decided to avoid De Woelf’s house that night. Now, when he woke from his doze, he ran down the length of the fence with but one purpose; to get warm and dry, and not until he was pounding on the door of the first farmhouse he saw did he think of what he would say, and how he would say it.

The farmer who lit a candle, clambered out of bed in his night shirt, and answered the frantic pounding on his front door that night was a 62-year-old man named Gort. Billy blurted out a story about being in trouble with the Germans and running away. He was lucky. Gort offered to dry his clothes and to let him sleep in the barn. Billy took only one precaution. “Before I go out there, I’d like to use your telephone,” he said, “to let my family know I’m safe.”

“You’ll have to wait till tomorrow,” Gort grunted, “there’s no telephone in this house.” With that certain knowledge that even if he wanted to, Gort could not notify the police until morning, Billy slept in the barn.

At six he was awakened by Gort, and told to be off before the farm hands arrived and asked who he was. At 6:30, muddy and tired, Billy trudged up the steps to the home of his old friend, Johannes De Woelf.

The De Woelfs were already stirring. De Woelf’s son, a full three inches taller than Billy remembered him, answered the door and called excitedly to his father. It was almost a party at breakfast that morning, the whole family amazed and pleased to see Billy, and Billy being very quiet and secretive about his work, and in spite of himself not quiet enough to prevent De Woelf’s three sons from making him a hero.

As soon as he and De Woelf were alone, Billy told his friend everything. Together, they made plans for the agents who were coming, the supplies which would be dropped, and the intelligence service they would organize. De Woelf was eager to help, and he told Billy all about the underground service which already existed in the neighborhood, but which had no means of communicating directly with London. De Woelf knew a farmer, he said, who was on the right side and whose fields would be perfect for a dropping zone. Over the hot coffee which Mrs. De Woelf had provided from a scanty hoard in celebration of the arrival of a long lost friend, Billy and De Woelf talked until 10.

It was still raining when they got up from the table, and De Woelf urged Billy to go to bed and get some sleep. He could go back later for the parachute and the leg bag he had left in the ditch. Billy didn’t argue for long. He climbed between fresh sheets and slept, which was fortunate, perhaps, for the next day, when he did go back to revisit the place where he landed, the parachute and the leg bag were gone.

Between November 11 and November 21, when he made his first successful contact with London, Billy got acquainted with De Woelf’s friends among the resistance, and set up his own organization. De Woelf’s farmer friend could be counted upon. His family was large and willing to work against the Germans. He had carts and horses and huge barns. Supplies could be hauled from the fields and hidden without anyone outside the family circle being any the wiser.

De Woelf’s brother took him to Zwolle, where he met a leader in the Dutch underground who badly needed a direct contact with London. This man had developed a courier service between the principal towns of north Holland, passing and obtaining information from leading Dutch citizens, for transmission to the Dutch government in London. The couriers were guarded by German troops, and equipped with German passes to aid them in the work which the Germans believed they were doing. He offered Billy a car and a German soldier to guard it, and Billy accepted.

Billy also arranged with the leader in Zwolle an official cover for the two agents whom Billy expected from OSS. They were to work as government officials in the communal kitchens at Winschoden, where food, beds, a government car, and a safe place for the radio could be easily arranged.

Quickly, much more quickly than he had any right to expect, even, perhaps, too quickly, Billy’s underground organization was taking shape. Already he had a supply field, cover for himself, cover for the two friends he expected, and a large organization to help him get information and pass it on.

Meanwhile Billy tried several times without success to contact Pete in London, first from De Woelf’s house, again from the home of De Woelf’s farmer friend. Several times his aerial would not work; again he thought there was some interference. At last, on November 21 he was successful.

On this contact, arrangements were made for parachuting two more agents. If the weather held good, Billy had to work quickly. His friend in Zwolle was not yet ready to receive them, at the communal kitchen. Papers and passes and documented stories had to be arranged before two men who had come from nowhere could be suddenly introduced into government jobs. Billy turned to De Woelf for help and De Woelf, in his haste to be of assistance, made the one fatal mistake of his underground career. He introduced Billy to a friend in the underground named Van Steele.

Van Steele was a thin little man with a narrow face, spindly legs, and a physique born of life in the city. He was possessed by fear, and the fear Van Steele knew was sometimes the safeguard and more often the weakness of resistance movements all over the world. Van Steele had joined the resistance, he was able to persuade himself, because he hated Germans. In moments of deep privacy, he knew that he had joined it to hide from the eventual necessity of being sent off to forced labor in Germany.

From the moment of his joining, he lived in constant terror of being caught. Because he suspected his own loyalty, he was suspicious of everyone. He steered clear of the dangerous jobs, and covered his constant fear to his friends in the underground by posing as a sort of watchdog over their security, perpetually warning them to be careful of their speech and actions, and not to go too far. De Woelf could not really be blamed for believing that Van Steele was the one man to whom Billy could entrust his secret.

Billy told Van Steele his story, and told him that he expected the arrival of two friends. Would Van Steele hide the two friends until a permanent cover could be arranged?

At first Van Steele was wary. “If you have any doubts about me,” Billy told him, “come night after tomorrow and I will show you that I am receiving supplies from London.”

Van Steele was still uncertain. Billy clinched the argument by giving the man one of his pistols. Van Steele was the sort of person who fancied himself much safer if he were armed. The deal was closed. Van Steele was to hide the two agents.

Early on the morning of February 10, 1945, while the family of Johannes De Woelf was at breakfast, a Ford V-8 automobile stopped in front of the De Woelf house in Ulrum. Four men, wearing the shiny blue civilian suits of wartime, moved quickly and silently out of the car, and stationed themselves around the house. They were armed with Sten guns, hand grenades, and revolvers. One of them knocked on the front door. De Woelf himself answered.

“Is Bill Van der Zeemanshuis here?”

De Woelf said, “No.”

The man pulled a letter from his pocket, shoved it into De Woelf’s hand, and stood waiting, aggressively.

The letter was from the leader of the Dutch underground at Eindhoven. De Woelf knew the signature well. It was addressed to Van Steele.

“Permission to get rid of the man mentioned in your letter. Enclosed a revolver. Carry out the execution. If necessary inform local committee in Ulrum and ask for help. Arms and papers in Billy’s possession must be captured, as presumably he once worked for British Intelligence. Give a very exact description. Make sure he is killed. Return revolver after execution.”

De Woelf started with relieved surprise, and began a flow of explanation. He did not believe it for a moment, he said. He had known Billy for years. He had always been a member of the underground, and a loyal one. He, De Woelf, could prove it. Besides, he was never called “Bill of the Seaman’s House.” This Billy was a genuine Allied agent. Why, he would gladly show Van Steele the radio Billy used. But where was Van Steele?

The man at the door gestured impatiently. Van Steele had lost his nerve, he said. He and his three friends would carry out the execution instead. But, the leader of the four men asked, “Where is the proof that this man is really an Allied agent?”

De Woelf hastened to the piano, lifted the cover on the top, and from inside drew forth the radio which Billy used. He held it up triumphantly.

The man at the door looked at it, and with one hand behind his back, signaled through the open door to his three partners. In line, they planted themselves in front of De Woelf, leveling their weapons at his face, while his wife and three sons cowered behind him.

“You may as well know,” the leader said, “since you’ve told us all we need to know.” From his pocket he drew a black leather identification folder, and held it out to De Woelf. Stamped clearly on the outside was the large white insignia of the skull and crossbones. De Woelf took one look at it, and stepped backwards. “The Gestapo.”

If Billy had decided to escape at that moment it might have been possible for him to do so. From his upstairs room he had heard some of the conversation, though he was not sure how much De Woelf had told them, and of course, he did not know about the letter from the resistance headquarters. When he heard De Woelf’s last exclamation of astonishment, he knew that his work was finished. Still, he had a revolver, and by jumping through the upstairs window, while the Gestapo men were all down in the front room, there was just a chance, perhaps a good chance.

He stepped noiselessly around the room, quickly assembling his papers, notes, and documents, his mind racing over the various courses which confronted him.

The mention of Bill of the Seamen’s House did not puzzle him greatly. If the men downstairs were in truth the Gestapo, they certainly knew where Bill of the Seamen’s House was, and they certainly knew he was not living with De Woelf. Obviously, that was some kind of a trick. He thought again of the window.

On the other hand, there were the De Woelfs. What would happen to them with his radio discovered in their home, and the admission of his presence and his identity in their teeth? It was not difficult to imagine. No, it was better to go downstairs and deny everything until he could find out exactly how these men had found him, and how much they knew. Perhaps, if they didn’t know everything, they would give him some kind of opening into which he could fit a story which would save himself and the De Woelfs. At least, the De Woelfs. He burned his scraps of paper in the waste basket, and opened the door of his room.

As he did so, two fists hit him in the face, and he fell down. They beat him unmercifully with fists and clubs. At intervals they paused. Staring then, at the patterns of blood on the floor an inch from his nose, Billy would wait for the order from the voice behind him: “Confess.”

Again he would murmur, “There is nothing to confess.” Then a jerk at his collar and for an instant he was on his feet again, facing them. Then fists slammed in his face and he would fall. Somewhere, far away, he could hear the sobs of Mrs. De Woelf.

It lasted for twenty minutes. At the end of that time, one of the men said, “Take him downstairs with the others, and we’ll shoot them all.”

Billy said, “No, I am ready to confess.”

They led him downstairs. Three of his teeth were gone. He was bleeding from the ears. Laid out on the front table, he saw his radio equipment and his other weapons, saw how useless it had been to deny his work. He saw De Woelf and the oldest boy led out the door to the Ford. They let him sit down, and he waited, silently staring at the floor. After awhile another car came, there was a gesture, and he walked out the door.

Billy’s arrest had been caused by a rare case of mistaken identity. There were three partners to it: Van Steele, the man who had promised safe lodgings for Billy’s friends, the Dutch underground headquarters in Allied territory in Eindhoven, and the Gestapo

Van Steele had made his promise to Billy early in December. He began to worry about it, and in this instance he had some superficial cause. Billy had told him that he would soon be receiving packages as well as friends. Van Steele had watched Billy warily, and had accompanied him sometimes to the farmer’s field to wait for the parachutes from London. They never came. Day by day, Van Steele’s suspicions grew. The obvious explanation, weather in England or weather in Holland, seemed too obvious for Van Steele. He reported his suspicions by courier to the Dutch underground headquarters across the German lines in liberated Eindhoven.

At the same time, Van Steele also reported that he suspected the presence in the neighborhood of Ulrum of the notorious Gestapo agent known as Bill of the Seaman’s House, or Bill Overveen. Van Steele wondered if perhaps the Bill of the Seaman’s House whom he had been warned about, and the Billy whom he had recently met, might not be the same man.

If Bill of the Seaman’s House was really in the neighborhood of Ulrum, Van Steele was doing the resistance good service in reporting it. Conceivably, he even had a right to question whether Billy, the American agent, might not be Bill of the Seaman’s House. What he failed to do was to describe and identify Billy the American agent so carefully that there was no possibility of resistance headquarters swallowing his suspicions and confusing the two men.

The men at headquarters in Eindhoven were remiss as well. If they had any doubts whatsoever about a possible confusion, they made no effort, at least inside Holland itself, to straighten out the matter. From Eindhoven headquarters went an order to Van Steele to liquidate Bill of the Seaman’s House, and the order identified that man as living in Ulrum at the home of Johannes De Woelf.

Billy owed his life, for the time being at least, to the fact that Van Steele never got that letter. It fell into the hands of the Gestapo.

When Billy arrived at the prison in Groningen where he was taken after leaving the De Woelf home, he had as yet no plan, and no hope. The only question in his mind about his probable fate was why the Gestapo had asked De Woelf about Bill of the Seaman’s House. He was not long in learning the answer.

Confronting him with proof of his guilt, the Gestapo showed him the letter from the resistance headquarters to Van Steele. It referred, Billy and the Gestapo both knew, to his own movements, but called him by the Gestapo agent’s name. But, even while he glanced at the message, a plan of action raced to Billy’s mind.

The resistance had ordered him murdered. Very well. He would tell the Gestapo that he would work against the resistance. It was his last, and only hope.

When they gave him a chance to talk, Billy told the following story: He admitted that he was the man referred to in the letter to Van Steele. The name, he said, the “Bill of the Seaman’s House” was wrong. He knew no such person. But it didn’t matter. There was no doubt that he, Billy, was the man referred to, that he was an Allied agent.

Then he planted his story. He said that he hated the underground which had ordered him murdered. He blamed the whole thing on the Allied governments and particularly on the Americans, who had never been fair to him. He wanted nothing more than revenge against his betrayers. Then he made a proposal:

“I will work for the Gestapo as a double agent,” he said, “if you will release the De Woelfs from prison, if you will punish the men who beat me, and if you will give me the treatment in prison which is ordinarily due an Allied officer.”

He made his statement with sincerity and vehemence and without the slightest show of fear. The Gestapo man made no comment. When he had finished, he was led back to his cell.

Two days later he was taken out again, bundled into a car, and driven to Gestapo headquarters at Zwolle, where he was questioned again, this time more searchingly, the same questions being asked over and over.

The Gestapo was extremely polite. They always offered him a chair. They asked him about the organization of OSS, the organization of the British Secret Intelligence Service, the names of the men he had met, the places where he had trained, the organization of the Dutch resistance, the manner of his dispatch into Holland, the code he used. Billy answered all the questions. He told them enough to write the long report which OSS was later to hear about in a telegram to London. When he had finished, he again proposed that he would be a useful agent for the Gestapo. His questioner merely grunted. He was taken to a new cell at the prison in Zwolle.

On the night of February 12, he was unlocked again, handed his radio, driven some miles to a lonely field, and while four men stood over him with machine pistols, he was ordered to contact London.

It was his first operation under duress, and from the moment that Billy realized that the Gestapo did not mean to shoot him immediately, he had prepared for it, and decided what to do. That was the night on which Peter Smith in London first began to note something strange in Billy’s messages. He asked for “packages only.”

All this time Billy had been fairly well treated. At least he was not beaten up again, or starved. That fact gave him some hope that perhaps the one last chance he had been afforded through the case of mistaken identity would save his life. On February 16 his hopes were answered.

The Gestapo man who unlocked his cell door on that day remarked to him, “The drop was successful.” Billy was afraid to speak. In his mind he could visualize the two “friends” who might have landed the night before. Down the long rows of cells and out into the office he went, in front of his guard, and as soon as he entered the room he knew he had been successful. Propped up against the wall was the huge tin container which had been dropped by parachute the night before. That was all. The Gestapo men were very pleased. Billy had proved himself to them, and they gave him cigarettes and chocolate out of the container, and told him that because of the successful drop, and to show the good faith of the Gestapo, the two De Woelfs, father and son, had been released from prison.

From that time on Billy was treated as a special prisoner. Food and cigarettes were his. On February 17, he contacted OSS again, and this time the Gestapo gave him some information to pass on. The information was general, but it was accurate, and Billy wondered about it. Walking through the field on the way back to prison, he chanced a question: “Why do you give them accurate information?” he asked.

“Wait till we get a reply,” the Gestapo man answered. “They might ask you for a few more details, and we’d find out just what part of Holland they are interested in.”

A few days later Billy was again taken out; this time to wait for a drop of packages. The weather was bad, and no plane arrived. All night they waited, and the Gestapo men were irritated. But the failure gave Billy the chance he had been waiting for.

On February 28, under the Gestapo eye, Billy tapped out the prearranged danger signal, the repeated word “damned.” It did not go off as smoothly as he had hoped. The Gestapo asked him why he had used the word. He answered, half-jokingly, “I ought to have used something stronger after sitting out all night waiting for packages which never came.” There was no answer. Evidently, the Gestapo was satisfied.

On March 30, Billy contacted London for the last time. He did not know that it was for the last time, and he kept waiting for the usual order to come out of his cell and go to work with his radio. But the days passed and the Gestapo ignored him. The order never came again.

Alone in his cell, unable to plan, to argue, or to act, he knew for the first time since his capture the loneliness of fear. Over and over he posed to himself the question of his chance for life. At first he had staked everything on his argument to the Gestapo that he would be willing to work for them as a double agent. But they hadn’t answered that argument. Perhaps it was a useless hope.

Again he had experienced a quick mounting joy the night the Gestapo man had told him about the plan to get requests for specific information from OSS. Such a scheme might keep him alive until the war was over. But now he had sat and walked and tried to sleep in this small room of dirty whitewashed stone for days, and no one had come near him. Perhaps that was a useless hope too.

He passed the time in trying on, mentally, the logic of the Gestapo. He put himself in their place. If he were they, and they were he, would he think it worthwhile keeping them alive? Would he make them double agents? Would he use them to pass on information in the hope of getting some in return? Some days he thought the answer was yes. As the days went by, he was certain it was no. Two weeks passed, and Billy still did not know his fate. Then on April 17 the answer to his questions came.

He was led out of his cell and taken to the office of a Gestapo man whom Billy had met before and whom he knew as Shreieder. Shreieder greeted him in friendly fashion, asked him to sit down, and then remarked: “We have decided to release you next week. What are you going to do then?”

The question was casual. Billy tried to be casual too. “I hope,” he said, “that you will let me work for you.”

It was agreed. During the next week, Shreieder and Billy worked out his mission behind the Allied lines.

It was in essence an attempt to put into practice the same plan to split the Allies which Germany had tried so frequently before. This time there was a new twist to it. Billy was to return to OSS with the following proposal from the Gestapo: that representatives of OSS and the Gestapo should meet in a round-table conference, at which the Gestapo would turn over to OSS all the valuable intelligence it possessed on Japan. In return for this information, OSS would attempt to persuade the Allied command to stall the war on the Western Front while Germany attempted to reach a decision with Russia. The United States would then be free to tackle Japan with the added advantage of the secrets about that country which the Gestapo would disclose.

The two men worked out a code also, by which Billy would keep in touch with Shreieder. There were to be four messages: the first to signify Billy’s arrival, the second to report that he had delivered the Gestapo terms, the third to report whether or not the mission was successful; the fourth to let Shreieder know that Billy was returning through the lines.

Two more weeks were occupied in getting passports, pictures, a Gestapo pass, and various other documents. Billy fretted at the delay; but he tried to seem particular about his documents, and not too anxious to leave. Again and again, while he waited, he went over his cover story with Shreieder.

On May 3, near the town of Veenendaal, Billy shook hands with Shreieder, checked the documents he possessed as a German agent, and set out through the mine fields in the company of an officer in the German SS. Halfway through, the SS officer pointed out the way. They stopped and chatted for a moment. Billy returned him his Gestapo pass, they shook hands, and parted.

It was about this time, or a little before, that Pete Smith in London received a copy of the Gestapo interrogation of Billy which had been captured from a German courier some two weeks before.

The document is worth some attention because it completely and finally settled the question of Billy’s allegiance, which had been under doubt from time to time, and which, when the document was first discovered, had stamped him definitely as a “turned” agent, a man who had gone over to the camp of the enemy.

The document began:

“SECRET REICHS MATTER

“To the Front Reconnaissance Commando 306

“For the Attention of Major Von Feldmann

“Subject: The American Secret Service in the Netherlands

“Precedent: None

“On February 10, 1945, the first of the American agents for Strategic Services of the United States Army was caught through the Special Command of the BDS in Ulrum Groningen. He has fully confessed.”

The man to whom that document had first fallen, and who had sent the cable announcing that Billy “has apparently told them all he knew,” had evidently read no further than this.

For there followed a piece of subterfuge as clever in planning and powerful in effect as a perfectly executed football play. Billy had completely fooled the Gestapo. He had told them nothing that they did not already know, and a great deal which, from that time on, they regarded as fact, and which was in reality sheer dream.

Billy had told them, the document proved, that he had been sent to Holland to get a job as a fisherman on a Rhine boat so as to carry out espionage in Germany. He told them that he had been forbidden to work with the Dutch resistance, so that therefore, he did not know any of their names. In this way he completely misled them as to his real mission.

Billy had told them that OSS was a part of the American State Department; that the Earl of Harewood, brother-in-law of the King, was the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service. He had invented fictitious addresses for OSS head-quarters in London, and fictitious names for his friends in OSS. In this way he completely misled them as to the United States and British organizations.

Interspersed with all this information, he had given them a sprinkling of fact to make the whole story plausible. All of these facts the Germans already knew. He told them that General Donovan was the director of OSS, the location of the British parachute school (maps of which the Germans already had). He told them about the effect of V-2 bombings in London, and about British rationing systems. Both of these stories the Germans already knew.

But incredible as it may seem, these real facts were enough to make the Gestapo swallow whole everything else which Billy said. For most important of all, Billy’s interrogation had led to one of the most mystifying German troop movements of the entire war:

The Germans had asked Billy about the possibilities of a further Allied invasion. He told them, quite frankly, that an invasion of north Holland was a part of the Allied plan, and that it would be made in the eastern area of Friesland, on the Dutch North Sea coast.

At a time when Germany’s need was desperate, when every able-bodied man and many who were not, were being rushed to stop the gaps in the West Wall, the Germans took that information so seriously that they moved 30,000 of their finest troops, three parachute divisions, to the area Billy had pointed out on the map.

The German move was so bewildering that Allied headquarters suspected insanity in the enemy high command. Eisenhower had no more intention of invading Holland than the Germans then had of invading England. But Eisenhower did not know about Billy.

The final decision of OSS men after reading the captured report was set forth in a note from one of them: “It is clear that the underlined portion of the cable we received was absolutely false, and that Billy not only did not give the Germans any public knowledge or information which they did not already know, but that he prevented them from securing the names of his friends in OSS, and gave them other information which was completely incorrect.”

Peter Smith, reading the report, summed it up too: “A damned good job.”

In the late afternoon of May 3, a British soldier, lounging near his slit trench, looked up to see a tall thin man in civilian clothes coming toward him from the direction of the German lines. He was waving a white handkerchief above his head, and grinning from ear to ear.

Agent Billy had returned.