All the King's Men (19 page)

Across the Channel, the Easter season marked the start of an extraordinary piece of ‘theatre of the absurd’, played to a select audience in Paris. Upon receipt of the news of the arrest of the Tambour sisters, Francis Suttill called a council of war. Germaine Tambour’s flat had been used as a safe-house by a dangerously large number of people. Andreé Borrel and Gilbert Norman, Suttill’s deputies, had
used it for meetings. Suttill himself had used it as a mail-drop, as had Jean Amps, Peter Churchill, Agazarian and his wife, Ben Cowburn, Johnny Barrett and a radio operator called Staggs. A stunning cross-section of people from a variety of networks, all of whom needed to communicate with the networks in Paris. Borrel, Norman and Suttill used to meet there and argue late into the night.

It was safe for them to assume that Germaine’s address was now a worthless asset to the Abwehr (it would have been dropped by everyone the moment news of the arrest had circulated). The crucial concern was what she might know – and be forced to tell about them. Francis Suttill was seriously shaken. It had not been just bad luck – the Germans had gone straight to her door. He worried about trying to locate the leak in the network, while others argued that they should cut their losses, take the normal security procedures that would insulate them from the Tambours and then forget it. But Suttill would not. The incident seemed to provoke an uncharacteristic wave of anxiety – the beginning of an erosion of his self-confidence. Suttill became even more obsessed with the network’s security, and with a misplaced sense of chivalry he advocated trying to spring the women from Fresnes Prison – either by force or by other means.

Another Paris-based sub-circuit of PROSPER, the exclusively Jewish network ROBIN, run by Jean Worms, contained a fascinating figure by the name of Jacques Weil. Weil, a Swiss merchant who traded in everything from oriental carpets to diamonds, was another of those well-placed entrepreneurs who had worked for Dansey’s Z Organization. Following the occupation, he had maintained his connections with MI6, via a number of ‘mail-drops’ in the Paris business world, long after his colleague Worms had volunteered their network to the SOE. Weil’s professional orbit led him inevitably to the SD, an organization that flourished on its links with every form of trade.

Weil had learnt that the sisters were in the custody of the
Abwehr, and not with the SD. Nevertheless he claimed that his SD contacts might, with the application of some hard cash, be able to extract the Tambours from the Abwehr’s grasp. Suttill was desperate enough to try it and authorized Weil to approach the SD. He finally struck a deal with two unknown SD officers, who claimed that in return for F250,000, they could deliver the Tambours to a rendezvous at the Château de Vincennes.

Unfortunately, the Abwehr were not prepared to release the sisters. Undaunted, the SD men seized the opportunity for a little private enterprise and sent a message to Weil to say that the women
would
be delivered. Weil handed over the money and on the appointed day, he and one of his colleagues turned up at the Château de Vincennes to wait. Suddenly, a black Citroën with the two SD men, pulled up and disgorged two elderly whores – substitutes for the Tambour sisters.

That kind of earthy humour didn’t appeal to Boemelburg or Kieffer, though it did lighten the atmosphere down on the lower floors of Avenue Foch. Boemelburg was still furious with Riele for allowing the arrests to take place at all – especially after Berlin’s instructions to keep off. He demanded that Kieffer deal with Colonel Reile and ‘that swine Bleicher’.
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But the farce wasn’t over yet. To the SD’s immense surprise their contact, Weil, came back with another offer. This time he offered F2,000,000 in return for the Tambours. Finally Kieffer took a direct interest in the proceedings. He contacted Colonel Reile and demanded the women be released into his custody. He had no better luck with the Abwehr than before, but he did have some success with the other side. Kieffer had proposed that at the next rendzevous, PROSPER himself turn up to collect the women. Amazingly, Suttill agreed. Now even Boemelburg had begun to take an interest.

The rendezvous was an open restaurant, close to SD headquarters near Porte Maillot. Suttill and Norman
arrived and sat at a table overlooking the actual rendezvous spot, drank their beers and waited. At various points of the compass a number of Suttill’s well-armed men watched over the same ground. Without any warning, one of those ubiquitous black Citroëns pulled up at the kerb, the window came down and a man armed with a Leica leant out and started to snap their photographs.
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At first the unlikely subjects were simply confused, then stunned and finally, once they had overcome their paralysis, they bolted for the entrance to the nearest Metro. No one got out of the Citroën. Having accomplished their mission, the SD simply drove off. Suttill arrived at the safe-house to which he had intended bringing the sisters, slammed the door shut and cursed, ‘We are lost. We’ve been photographed!’

Now Suttill really was shaken. It seems difficult to believe this was the same man who had toured France six months before, calling men to arms. His judgement and self-confidence were being eaten away. Of course, it was immediately clear to him that he’d been set up, that the SD were just playing with him. Nevertheless he still would not give up trying to free the Tambours. G. A. Cohen, the ROBIN wireless operator, informed London of the general picture and set off a torrent of anxious memoranda.

Kieffer handed Boemelburg a series of photographs of the man he felt certain was PROSPER. Boemelburg told him to keep them in his office safe until GILBERT returned from London. Kieffer’s safe contained copies of all the reports from Déricourt, identified with a stamp –
von BOE/48
(from BOE/48). The file quickly expanded and the information in it became the hottest material at Avenue Foch.

By June, the name GILBERT was known to most of the SD in Paris. His fame had even spread to Berlin. Kopkow received weekly dispatches from Boemelburg, peppered with references to BOE/48. Despite GILBERT’s new
admirers at SS Headquarters, Kieffer could not dispel his doubts about him. He felt his superior put far too much store in this single informer. But Boemelburg’s faith was unshakeable. So long as PROSPER was not interfered with, ‘We will make our careers with GILBERT. Through him we will get the date of the invasion.’
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When Déricourt had left Paris the first cracks in PROSPER’s network had begun to appear, though he made no mention of it to anyone at Baker Street. Vera Atkins, one of the few F Section officers who saw Déricourt during that trip, lunched with him at a little restaurant in Soho. By this time she had come round to the view Buckmaster and the others had shared from the start; that Déricourt was an exceptional asset to the section. Her only reservation was that during the course of their meal she was alarmed that he spoke, with scant regard for security, about people he’d just left in Paris. Atkins cautioned him to keep his voice down, but he ignored her. Though he talked freely about PROSPER and the others, he naturally never mentioned that the network was seriously compromised and in mortal danger. Nor in any conversation with Buckmaster did he mention anything that might have given cause for concern.
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Later, however, Déricourt reported PROSPER’s situation in great detail to Claude Dansey at MI6. Long after the war, Déricourt described that trip to London. He explained that although he did operations for ‘French Section’, ‘I reported to an officer of much higher rank [than Buckmaster], and I believe that Buckmaster did not know at that time.’ This ‘officer’ was with ‘another organization in London’ which he claimed had ‘authorized [him] to maintain contacts with the Germans’. Without actually spelling it out, he made it clear. ‘It was not by French section I was authorized, but it was by London.’ He continued, ‘I reported on my visit in Easter to London, that the French Section was penetrated from a very early stage.’ He supposed that his ‘chiefs knew that and handled it in
their own way’ [sic]. He admitted that he was puzzled by his chief’s indifference to news of PROSPER’s perilous state.

‘The ways of HQ are impenetrable,’ he said. Then he speculated that perhaps the French Section networks had been ‘written off’, but had been allowed to continue to operate to distract German attention while something else was going on elsewhere. It was an intelligent guess – but that’s all it was. He was never told anything more than was necessary for him to do what was required of him. He was certain, however, that the decision to exploit PROSPER and the other networks in France had not been taken by SOE but by ‘…people in another quarter [who] were animated by honest motives’.
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The most important intelligence that Déricourt reported at his meeting with Dansey was Boemelburg’s obsession with discovering the date of the forthcoming invasion. The SD’s expanding role in German intelligence and security operations was giving cause for concern not only because its secret communication code, the so-called ‘Gestapo Enigma’, was proving impenetrable, but because the Abwehr were being steadily shunted out of the picture. It had become obvious that the internecine war between the Abwehr and the SD would result in victory for the latter.

By the end of 1942, the British knew they had captured all of the Abwehr’s agents in Britain, many of whom they had successfully ‘turned’ and these had become a tremendous asset for deception purposes. If then, when the Abwehr finally went under, the SD discarded the Abwehr’s old agents, then all the XX Committee’s hard work would have been for nothing, just when it was needed most – during the run-up to the real invasion.

Dansey’s grip on the ear of the SD had become a potential ‘ace’ that might be used in another game – a game of deception. Naturally Dansey instructed Déricourt to maintain his contacts with Boemelburg, which is precisely what he did.

Around the middle of May, soon after Déricourt had returned to France, Gubbins and a select few of the staff at SOE were informed by MI6 of reliable intelligence that the major French Section network named PROSPER was penetrated and seriously compromised. Information about German penetration of their networks often came via MI6, so there was no reason to question it – or its source. The significance of the information was that it arrived under a heavily ‘restricted’ classification – not to be passed on to country section level. In fact, apart from Gubbins, his deputy Sporborg, the Director of Intelligence and Security, Archie Boyle, and perhaps one or two other senior officers, no one else in SOE heard a whisper of it.
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The only reason anyone in SOE was informed at all was because a decision had been taken to exploit PROSPER’s situation and this would require a certain amount of cooperation from SOE itself. No one who was informed of this had the slightest suspicion of anything untoward. It was just very hard not being able to inform F Section.

Meanwhile, on 30 April, while Déricourt was still in London, SOE received a report from MI5 that cast serious doubt on his reliability. This information, which MI5 received from de Gaulle’s security service, seemed to date from before Déricourt had been sent into France in January. It made sobering reading. The report stated, ‘Since the Armistice in France, Déricourt had started to frequent German circles in Paris…’ and ‘…Later, he was often encountered in Toulouse,
frequentant des femmes de moeurs legères payées par les Allemands
.
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MI5 also mentioned that Déricourt had been overheard talking in London about returning to France ‘on behalf of a British service’. MI5 commented with typical understatement, ‘This seems to us dangerous.’ Coupled with the fact that they would not recommend Déricourt for employment in the first place, the April report was the clearest warning SOE could have received that Déricourt was not someone they ought to trust in a sensitive position abroad. F Section
never had a better opportunity to save themselves from disaster. It would have been very simple to eliminate him, while he was still in London. Instead Bodington came to the rescue, dismissing the report with the remark, ‘This sounds like typical French back-biting.’
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The report was ignored. Bodington seemed to make a career of protecting his friend’s reputation. But even without Bodington’s support, with the scent of invasion so strong in the air F Section would have been hard pressed to consider finding a replacement for Déricourt.

Rather than wait for the moon period and return by Lysander, Déricourt chose to parachute back into France on 5 May. Hugh Verity, being off-duty that night, came along for the ride and saw him off through the hatch in the belly of the Halifax. Déricourt was dropped ‘blind’ over a familiar field west of St Laurent-en-Gartinais, not far from Tours. He made a perfect landing; he touched the ground, bent his knees and stood up again. Then he stumbled into a ditch, ricked his back and was in pain for weeks.

His return to the ‘Col Moll’ and to Jeannot was more tearful than joyful. As he lay beside her during the early morning hours, she began hesitantly to tell him of a visit she’d had from the SD. She attempted to laugh it off as insignificant, but couldn’t disguise her obvious terror. There could not have been a more sobering return to Paris.

Jeannot related that one afternoon, she had opened the door to two young and extremely handsome gentlemen wearing the grey uniform of the SD. One of these young Adonises held out in the palm of his hand, a button from his tunic. In his very best French and with all the grace he could muster, he asked whether Madame could help by sewing the button back on. Jeannot had been so terrified she could hardly speak. She could think of nothing else to say except yes. Somehow she managed to thread a needle while the younger man sat beside her in his shirtsleeves and the other, who didn’t speak much French, paced about the room. They asked if her husband was at work and she
replied that he was in the country on business. They were so grateful, so effusive as they stood in the doorway again, the younger one rebuttoning and rebuckling his uniform.
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