Churchill's White Rabbit (9 page)

Forest took his bike despondently, it had obviously been made for a much taller man and at 5ft 8in, he would struggle to ride it. At least it had a carrier for his bag, with an extendable piece of elastic to hold it in place. He secured the suitcase and then spent several moments trying to find a small mound or pile of stones that he could use to assist him onto the bike.

Their guide was not particularly patient or sympathetic to his plight. He put a finger to his lips to indicate utter silence and then he rode off. Passy followed and Forest brought up the rear. They had hardly gone 100yds when there was a dreadful crash from Forest’s bicycle. The guide turned around in panic, motioning frantically that they must be quiet, while Forest, grumbling, descended from his cycle to retrieve the suitcase that had fallen off so dramatically.

The elastic strap of the carrier had perished and there was no point even attempting to try and use it again. Somehow Forest managed to mount his bicycle (having found a suitable lump of stones) and precariously balanced the suitcase with one end against his chest and the other propped on the handlebars. It was not a happy compromise. Having trouble reaching the pedals of the too-tall bike and with the suitcase threatening to tumble off again every time he hit a rut in the road it was unsurprising that when the bike hit a big bump that the suitcase would lurch and set off the bell on the handlebars.

Once again the guide scowled and motioned for silence. Even grumpier than before, Forest descended again and spent precious moments wrapping a handkerchief around the bell to silence it. Next he had to try and find a suitable mounting block, all the while his companions tutted impatiently, anxious to get off the road. No sooner was he back on the bicycle then the guide signalled trouble and both agents flung themselves into the nearest ditch. This was but the first of many false alarms that would have Forest diving for cover, and each time he re-emerged more frustrated and cross, and had to try and find something to stand on so he might mount his bicycle again.

It was a long and infuriating ride to the outskirts of Lyons-la-Forêt with the suitcase banging into Forest’s chest and crushing his fingers. They paused in the shadow of a wall. The guide told them to wait and went on ahead to check the coast was clear. Forest stretched his aching legs; his return to France was not at all what he had expected.

The guide returned quickly and they rode off yet again, but this time their journey was thankfully short and within moments they were outside a small door, which opened immediately as though someone had been waiting for them. Pushing the bicycles inside, Passy and Forest were led into a brightly lit room with a table laden with food. Their hostess was the pretty wife of a local chemist, who had himself been part of the reception committee. Madame and Monsieur Vinet had spent their savings on the lavish display of food they now set before Forest. Bayonne ham was served with galantine and truffles, rounded off with a sweet cider and a glass of old calvados.

Forest was stunned by the meal. The Vinets, though usually living as sparingly as their neighbours, had used the black market to splash out on the banquet. They wanted to welcome their English helpers in grand French style, which made Forest feel a touch guilty knowing that his mission was unlikely to be the battle cry for the resistance and the death blow for the Germans his hosts hoped for. He was made even more emotional when the reception committee members turned up and handed back the agents’ pistols. They had risked their lives to bring them and Forest was close to tears as they drank a toast to French victory.

Upstairs in the room they had been offered for the night, Passy opened his suitcase and gasped. In the confusion of the dark reception grounds he had not, as he had believed, pulled his own suitcase from the crate, but one containing a wireless transmitter, hand grenades and explosives. Unwittingly the agents had been carrying equipment that would have marked them out instantly as spies to any curious German patrol and left them open to torture and death. Passy could not apologise enough, but the matter was over and Forest could only reflect on the Yeo-Thomas luck that had brought him safely to Lyons-la-Forêt.

The next morning they were on a bus for Rouen with Jacot. The vehicle had been converted to run on the fumes of burning green wood, as petrol was impossible to get hold of in France unless you were a Nazi or a collaborator. Forest looked around at the other passengers, grim-faced, thin and smelling of stale wine. They clutched parcels of food and produce, some carried whole suitcases ready to sell on the black market. The German ration books they also carried were pointless as their quantities were hopelessly inadequate and only enough to enable people to starve to death slowly. So the black market had become a vital resource, the only thing keeping some people alive, and farmers who sold their produce on it could make a good profit. Despite thoughts of the money they might make that day, the peasants on the run-down, groaning bus looked unanimously sullen and bleak. No one spoke. Forest wondered if they suspected he was a German spy. If only he could explain that the opposite was true.

On that uncomfortable journey Forest saw his beloved France in a new light. It had been three years since he had fled its shores and now he was returning to an almost alien world. Throughout those long years of exile he had found consolation by associating with other French refugees, particularly his comrades at the BCRA. They had sustained his hope, but also his despair. When they gathered together and drank to France, they also inevitably came to discussing its fall and Britain’s seeming heavy-handedness in their resistance work. General de Gaulle did not like feeling he had to cooperate with, or worse, ask permission of his British hosts and at times tensions were high. During spells of drinking Forest would sometimes resort to joining his BCRA colleagues’ abuse of Britain. This did not sit well with Barbara and not long before Operation Seahorse came into being she had kicked Forest and his BCRA guests out of her flat for being unpatriotic.

Now he looked at France under the Nazi boot and trembled with outrage. Those cosy dinner parties and half jovial rants at the British now seemed pathetic. They had been naïve in their abuse and now Forest rankled at having been away from his country for so long. How could he have sat and drank when SS men marched on
his
roads? Trampled
his
people? What was Pétain thinking of letting these men dominate one of the greatest empires in Europe?

‘Look out Shelley. If they see you looking at them like that you’ll be arrested.’ Jacot’s whispered words brought Forest out of his dark thoughts and he realised he had been glaring at the grey-suited Nazis walking outside. It would hardly do to fail in his mission so early by allowing his hatred to govern him.

They were due to meet Pierre Brossolette in Paris. The bus dropped them in Rouen where they would have to wait 2 hours before they could board a train for the capital. Jacot decided to use the opportunity to give them a crash course in ‘France under occupation’ etiquette. First he took them to a typical café, the patrons looking dowdy and cold, and ordered them ‘ersatz’ drinks. Ersatz was a German word meaning an inferior substitute, which became popular in the First World War, especially to describe POW food. As the Germans dominated the French streets, ersatz became a byword for a way of life. Ersatz coffee was the best-known example, made from chicory or acorns and hardly deserving of the name coffee. It only made drinkers crave the real thing. Forest tried ersatz alcoholic drinks, which did nothing to improve his mood.

Jacot worked his way through occupation protocol with his apprentices: there was no milk anymore, to ask for a
café crème
would bring instant suspicion on a person for being unfamiliar with French shortages. There were meatless days and days when even the disgusting ersatz alcoholic drinks were not served, except in black market restaurants. All this had to be remembered to avoid making a fatal blunder. Then he took the men’s ration books and tobacco cards and explained how they were used.

The train to Paris was another depressing affair. Forest spotted the first-class carriage with its ‘reserved for Wehrmacht’ sign and the various grey and black uniformed individuals who were boarding it, while the remaining passengers willingly hopped into the third-class carriages: who would want to sit with the Nazis anyway? Forest was shown to one of the few first-class carriages not restricted to the Nazis and once again was surrounded by bleak-faced French citizens, now numbed by the misery of life under Hitler’s thumb.

Forest was becoming familiar with the menacing presence of the German troops all around them. Semi-dozing in the train compartment he watched them march through stations, carelessly pushing aside civilians who got in their way. When he first saw this he felt a renewal of his outrage, but as the sight was repeated again and again he started to feel immune to it like the men and women around him. It became expected and therefore was no longer so threatening or insulting. As his first sense of shock subsided, Forest took the time to watch the Nazi troops more closely and begrudgingly acknowledged to himself that their discipline, even in the train carriages, was impressive. Every officer was saluted as he boarded the train and there was no relaxing of their manner as might be expected of other troops travelling. As impressive as it was, it was also chilling. Where was the humanity in this race of super-troopers?

Pierre Brossolette, his white streak dyed black to match the rest of his hair, was awaiting them in the rue de la Faisanderie. The friends shook hands and greeted each other warmly. Brossolette had organised a temporary safe house in the flat of a schoolteacher named Madame Claire Davinroy. He considered it a particularly amusing choice, as the rest of the apartments in the building were all rented by the Gestapo, who would hardly expect the resistance to be so brazen as to house their people among them. As Forest entered the building he couldn’t help feeling a twitch of anxiety at his friend’s audacious scheme: was it genius to lodge enemy spies under the Nazi noses or just over-confidence? Madame Davinroy was warmly welcoming but Forest was relieved when after dinner it was suggested that they split up and establish other safe houses around the capital in case they had to make a hasty move.

Forest left Passy and Brossolette behind to be escorted to another flat, this time the once-luxurious home of the son of the ex-vice-president of the senate, Roland Farjon. The Farjons had been hit by the restrictions of the German occupation like everyone else and their home had taken on a tomb-like quality, a memorial to better times. There was no heating, since there was very little fuel and the meagre breakfast they could offer Forest consisted of ersatz coffee, approximate jam and grey bread. It was a depressing meal, though the family swallowed it down with relish. It crossed Forest’s mind that if this was the breakfast of the rich under occupation, what were the poor living on?

By 8.30 a.m. Forest was outside taking his first good look at occupied Paris. It was a grim sight, and the grey sky above seemed to mirror his dismal mood. Around him swastikas appeared in windows or were scrawled on walls alongside posters listing the latest restrictions or announcing the execution of hostages in retaliation for the death of a Nazi officer. Notices in shop windows announcing that they did not serve Jews, sat above a paltry window display of fake goods, most of which could not be found in the shop and were a memory of pre-war conditions. Women wrapped in frayed coats formed lines or argued over a scrap of bread. Some rummaged behind displays in the hope of forgotten treasure, a cabbage maybe, or a carrot. When bare arms or legs were briefly exposed beneath the winter clothing they were stick thin and ghoulish grey. Forest struggled with the scene, trying to process such a medieval sight of famine in his beloved and once-decadent city.

For a time the utter silence of the roads baffled him, then he realised the shortage of cars. The only petrol-fuelled motor vehicles were the polished black German staff cars that whizzed quickly through the streets. Troop transports rumbled along, while the odd French car that had been converted to producer gas bubbled its way down the road with its huge gas container either strapped to its fender or roof. Bicycles had become a necessity of Parisian life and everyone now had one. A new crime wave of stolen cycles was on the rise and Parisians carried their precious two-wheelers into their homes as tenderly as if they were newborn infants. The industrious taxi men had invented the vélo-taxis, a cart pulled by the driver on a sturdy bicycle. They became a distinctive Paris sight and Forest saw many of these strange contraptions as he wandered around.

Forest remembered Jacot’s words however, and tried not to look like a gawping tourist. Already as he was walking the pavements he was formulating the first of the ‘Yeo-Thomas Rules’:

1.  Get used to operating while surrounded by the enemy.

2.  Study the habits of the police.

3.  Watch out for new regulations and merge with the population – you must
not
stand out!

At the same time Forest had to learn to be a secret agent ‘on the job’. No amount of cipher training and parachuting could prepare him for stepping into occupied Paris and being faced with an inquisitive, suspicious and deadly enemy.

It was not long before Forest faced his first real challenge as a spy. A whim of nostalgia and familial conscience had led him to his father’s apartment over the Passy Métro station (it was never an auspicious place for Forest to visit) where a combined German and French police blockade had been set up. From either side of the road a line of policemen barred the way and inspected anybody trying to pass. There was no knowing what they were after, or, more precisely, whom It might have been a routine spot check near a Métro station, or they may have been rounding up Jews or even looking for suspected resistance members. Forest hesitated, his instinct being to turn on his heel and flee, but his common sense overruled him – that would make him an obvious target for the police.