Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins & the Missing Agents of WWII (74 page)

Attached to the letter were three pages of single-spaced typescript— obviously a copy of the original: it was Wickey s document on the “disposal” of Nora. And along the sides of one of the pages was some barely legible handwriting.

Lieutenant Colonel Wickey explained first that during the war he worked for Canadian intelligence. As a fluent speaker of French and German, he was used behind the lines as a courier and had “contacts on both sides of the fence.” After the war he became military governor of Wuppertal-Eberfeld, in the British zone. He also worked on war crimes investigations.

Now if my memory serves me well, I believe that on the trial agenda were Herren Kiefer [sic] and Knochen, who both had been on the staff of the Geheime Sicherheitsdienst at Avenue Foch. It came to our notice that the question of Miss Inayat Khan was to come up…
But, as stated above, I was the Military Governor of Wuppertal and with some four regiments then stationed in the vicinity (British, French, Dutch and some Russian small formations) social life was somewhat heavy, and also on account of my own duties, my movements were restricted. However, I managed to go under cover and sneak out. I frequently mingled with all sorts of people, house parties, slums rendez vous, even black market operators. Thanks to my training and dual nature, I once more felt quite at home, and, of course, I was after information. All this was to the dismay and consternation of my own staff who obviously could not always know where I was. In due course of time my “suspicious movements” were reported to British HQ then at Düsseldorf.
Now on my staff, my police section was headed by two officers, both of whom were, I think, on the London Metropolitan Police staff, but of this I am now not too certain. In any case, one of these officers, from the very first day I arrived in Wuppertal, greatly detested me, perhaps not personally but perhaps because I was a Canadian, a “colonial” and, further, because a foreigner (as I am not Canadian born, just naturalised) was in command.

These officers, said Wickey, often sent “distorted reports” of his “suspicious behaviour” to HQ, but nevertheless he continued with his underground investigations into the Nora Baker case.

That was how many of us Canadian officers were treated after the war to make room for unemployed British officers… and at that time I regret to say that I did not trust British HQ. So much information that I had previously passed on had leaked out and especially information on Russian agents who were trying to establish contacts with London, with the view of obtaining industrial diamonds for the operation of certain types of machinery.

Eventually, said Wickey, he came across a “certain German officer” who had worked as an interpreter and once spent some time at Dachau.
While there some camp officials had told him that a few days previously they had received a group of special prisoners, four women who had arrived from Karlsruhe. These women were to be kept absolutely separate from other inmates of the camp.
The four women were French, but one of them, somewhat more swarthy in complexion, looked much like a Creole. She was considered to be a “very dangerous” person and to be given the “full treatment.”
Now, if we remember that agent Nora was of Indian descent, she would as such look much like a Creole. In Europe any person who shows an appearance of not being pure white is often referred to as a Creole.

The German officer gave Wickey the name of one of the Dachau camp staff who had somehow managed to get away before the Allies arrived and was by then living in Hamburg or in a village close to it.

“This official had been present to the last hours of these four women and, of course, would know well about all that had happened. Upon this hot tip, which I considered most reliable, that same evening I commandeered my car and driver and left for Hamburg.”

With assistance of the military government of Hamburg and the Hamburg police, Wickey eventually found his man.

At first and quite naturally he denied all knowledge, but when I assured him that there was no action contemplated, at least just now, he began to talk. At first I made a bargain with him that for the information wanted I would not mention his name to anybody. He said they did receive a group of four women, three typical French and one looking more of a Creole type. The three French women were taken, after some two or three hours of their arrival, near the crematorium where they were partially undressed, they were in rags anyhow, and shot with pistols. They were handled very roughly, one of them had her face several times slapped, they were all kicked several times before being shot.
The Creole was kept outside, chained and almost naked. She was subjected to ridicule, was slapped and kicked several times, apparently by this same man who was very fond of this type of sport. She was left all night long lying on the floor in a cell, and the next day, rather than drag her along to the crematorium, they gave her some more rough handling. Finally in a cell they shot her with a small pistol, and dead or half dead she was carried by some other inmates and thrown into the furnace. That the person was the unfortunate Inayat Khan is well nigh 99 per cent certain.

Wickey concluded by saying that he had never presented his report to the war crimes command because when he returned to Wuppertal he was summoned to Düsseldorf and charged with taking a joyride to Hamburg without first requesting permission.

“I was so angry with this attitude towards Canadians that although my pockets were bulging with hot information I destroyed the whole thing and requested to be returned home.”

I then turned the paper around to try to read the handwriting scrawled along one edge. It wasn't Vera's writing. I could just make out one sentence: “This bears more resemblance to the horrible report from Gibraltar than to Wassmer's account given to Miss Atkins.”

I looked again for a reply that Vera might have received from the National Defence HQ in Ottawa, but it wasn't here. Presumably she had requested information about Wickey to check his reliability and perhaps also to see if he was alive or dead.

So I contacted the Canadian Defence Department and was put in touch with Colonel Wickey s son, John Wickey, who said his father died in 1994. He sent me newspaper cuttings and obituaries as well as a record of his father's war service.

The documents painted Hippolyte John Wickey (known as John) as something of an adventurer. Born in France and educated in Switzerland, he served with the French Foreign Legion in the First World War before moving to Canada. In 1944 he was seconded from the Canadian Army to
train in England with SOE and was parachuted into France in 1944. This was presumably when he operated as a “dual agent,” as he put it. It was not possible to verify every aspect of Wickey's life story. However, his service with the Canadian armed forces and his tenure as military governor of Wuppertal-Eberfeld in 1945–46 were very clearly substantiated.

Reading Wickey's report, I immediately thought of Max Wassmer's comment to Christian Ott, “So you want to know how it really happened?” and of the sanitised story he had first told about how the women had died, all holding hands. The Wickey report also reminded me of a conversation I had with Zenna Atkins about how Vera thought Nora might have died. The conversation arose in a roundabout way. I had asked several people if they thought Francis Cammaerts was right to say that Vera was racist. Several thought he was. “But only in the way women of her generation were,” said Phoebe Atkins, her sister-in-law. Zenna, however, did not believe Vera was racist in her views, and she recalled how Vera once told her that Nora had been singled out for particularly horrific treatment by the Nazis because of the colour of her skin. “I think this distressed Vera more than anything,” Zenna told me. Vera believed that Nora had been not only appallingly beaten but also raped.

When I first interviewed Vilayat Inayat Khan, I didn't know about Wickey or his story and so couldn't ask him about it. But I went to see Vilayat a second time. Again, I didn't raise Wickey's evidence, but Vilayat did so very early on. And I discovered that he knew every detail of the Canadian's story and had done for a very long time.

We were talking again in his house in Suresnes, this time sitting in the living room surrounded by Indian artefacts. There was a strong smell of teak and incense. I wanted to ask Vilayat again about Nora's cyanide pill. I told him I had heard that Vera advised Nora not to take the pill with her on her mission, fearing she might swallow it when it was not absolutely necessary, in order to be sure she would not give anything away.

Vilayat repeated, however, that he had seen the pill and was sure Nora had it with her. “But, of course, the Nazis took it away from her,”
he continued. “They knew these agents had the pill and made sure they took it from them.”

“Would she have used it?”

“To get out of being tortured, yes, I think she would. And of course, she was tortured in Dachau. In fact, she was beaten to death. I don't know if you have a copy of a report by a man who contacted me—a man who said he was present when she was beaten to death and said she was covered in blood and said like this she was thrown into the oven.”

As Vilayat spoke he got out some papers from a pink folder and flicked through documents he had accumulated over the years. I could see that the paper he handed me was Wickey's report.

I asked Vilayat whether he had managed to come to terms at all with what had happened to Nora.

“Well, it is still not resolved,” he said. “I am just reliving it every day. I am living representing in detail in my thoughts everything she went through day and night. Not just in general—but I am visualising, first of all, that moment.” He paused as if visualising right there.

“And you see, we still don't know if she was killed with the others or on her own, so I always try to visualise how it happened. She was probably brutally taken from Pforzheim and brutally thrown in a lorry, and when she landed in Dachau she was brutally thrown on a floor. I don't know if it was in a room, or if it was raining or cold, or if it was outdoors, but according to what we know, the Gauleiter kept on kicking her with his big boots, and she must have had sores all over her body and spent the night in agony. Whether it was in the open or not, I don't know, but if she was out there in the open, then others would have seen her when she was beaten to death.

“And there she was after a terrible night and there was the waiting, and she knew she would be killed, and then the Gauleiter kept kicking and beating her until she was—what did he say?—a ‘bloody mess.' And again I have been trying to represent to myself—here Vilayat coughed—“what it would have been like with her nose bleeding and her eyes bleeding—I don't know.”

I didn't recognise the phrase “bloody mess” from Wickey's report. I asked Vilayat if he had ever received a letter from somebody in Gibraltar.

Again he reached for his pink folder, and he handed me another piece of paper. It was a copy of a handwritten extract, obviously from a different letter. The light was fading outside, and we had only an oil lamp in the room, but I managed to make out the words: “Afterwards I spoke to Yoop, who told me that it was terrible what had happened. When Rup-pert got tired and the girl was a bloody mess, he told her that he would shoot her. First she had to kneel, and the only word she said before Rup-pert shot her from behind the head was ‘liberté.'

Vilayat coughed again and shifted a little in his chair. “And then you see, for my eightieth birthday I conducted the B Minor Mass in Dachau.” Vilayat Inayat Khan, like all his family, was a talented musician and studied as a boy under Stravinsky. He shifted again and smiled.

“I don't know how to say this. Let's see. Well, there is a picture of Noor there at the museum. It was a grey day, like today. And I am conducting and thinking, How can I communicate with Noor about what is happening?

“Maybe she is alive, I thought. And I thought maybe I saw a smile on that picture. No. Then I thought, I need evidence that she is here.” He paused and sniffed. “I said: ‘No, I want you to give me a more tangible sign.' So then, all of a sudden, the sun came out from behind the clouds, and then went in again, just at that moment. How meaningful it is, I don't know.”

I asked Vilayat how he received the Wickey papers. He could not remember exactly. They had come to him with the extract from the other letter. He thought the papers had all been sent on to him from his younger brother, Hidayat, who lived near The Hague. This fitted with the story of the provenance of these papers, which all went back to Jean Overton Fuller, Nora's biographer. After publication of the first edition of her book on Nora, Madeleine, Jean received, via her publisher, the so-called “Gibraltar letter,” which referred to a “Yoop” and a “Ruppert.” All Jean could recall today of the provenance of the letter was that it had been posted in Gibraltar and the writer signed himself “Peters.”

“It was so sadistic that I thought it must have been written by somebody who was actually there. All that remains in my memory are the words ‘the girl was a bloody mess.' The writer was revelling in it, and it
was disgusting.” Jean's instinct was to destroy the letter, but she was loath to incur the responsibility of destroying a historical document, so she kept a brief note of the contents and sent the original to “Miss Atkins.” This must have been in the mid-1950s. The fact that I had not found the Gibraltar letter in Vera's papers suggested almost certainly that she had destroyed it.

In 1958, after publication of a second edition of Madeleine, retitled Born for Sacrifice, the Wickey letter also reached Jean, via her publisher, and it resembled the Gibraltar letter but was less detailed and less “sadistic.” Jean told me she kept the original of the Wickey letter herself for her records. Wickey stated that he had sent a copy of his letter to the War Office, so Jean saw no reason on this occasion to send the letter on to Vera.