The Spy Net (6 page)

For a few years he worked in one of the Belgian administrations, but his ardent nature revolted against the narrow,
hide-bound, official routine of a government office. With his brother-in-law, he established an engineering workshop, which soon grew into a small factory, producing high grade precision machinery. Happily married, blessed with a small baby girl of four months, a permanent income assured, a keen participator in all church activities, Lambrecht’s life was fixed. The vista of a peaceful existence stretched before him.

All this was suddenly changed by the war. Into the turmoil of that conflict went all that he had built up.

He resolved to consecrate his intelligence, his fortune, his influence, his life itself if necessary, to the task of freeing his country’s soil from the German invader. Naturally, his first thought was to join the Belgian Army.

But, as happened to so many Belgian refugees, as soon as they reached Dutch soil, he was approached by one of the Allied secret service agents who swarmed in Holland at that time. It was into the hands of Afchain, a Belgian in the employ of B, chief of an intelligence service connected with British GHQ, that Lambrecht fell.

Now a man of thirty-two, his sensitive mind keenly alert, Lambrecht listened attentively to Afchain, weighing how best he could serve his country. It needed little persuasion to get him to return to Belgium for the purpose of organising an espionage service.

In the Catholic circles of Liège, Lambrecht found support. Two Jesuit priests, Father Dupont, and Father Des Onays, and his brother-in-law, Oscar Donnay, helped him recruit a number of former railway employees. With this band of faithful followers, train-watching posts were soon established at Liège, Namur,
and Jemelle, from which all troop movements by rail through these important centres could be observed.

The most dangerous work Lambrecht reserved for himself. In spite of rigid surveillance by the Secret Police, he travelled around the country enrolling new agents and identifying German divisions in the various rest areas. As far afield as Belgian Flanders he went spying and recruiting; he even penetrated into the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. On one occasion, at Jemelle, a heavy westward movement of German troops was in progress for several days from the Eastern Front. Realising that concentration for an offensive was probably under way, Lambrecht, without hesitation, jumped on the buffer of a passing troop train, and accompanied it through the night, until he had definitely established its destination. The very boldness of his act outwitted the German Secret Police – a troop train was the last place to look for a spy, as Lambrecht cleverly realised.

In addition to this hazardous work, he often acted as his own courier, the most dangerous role in wartime spying. Slipping past the frontier guards at night, and avoiding the revealing rays of the searchlights, he carried the precious reports, written with a mapping pen on fine tissue paper, and sewed into the interior of the cloth buttons on his clothes, through to Holland. A friend manufactured these buttons in Liège, and it was an easy task to substitute the filling. Good as the concealment was, however, it only protected him in case of a casual search in Belgium itself. Caught at the frontier, his fate would have been sealed – the knives of the German Secret Police would soon have laid bare the compromising contents of those ingenious buttons.

For eighteen months Lambrecht and his faithful assistants kept
watch. Night and day, every train passing through the railway centres of Liège, Namur, and Jemelle, every troop movement through Belgium between the Eastern and Western Fronts, was reported to British GHQ. These reports definitely announced coming offensives, and were far more valuable than any information obtained from stolen or captured documents. The documents might be false, or the Germans might have changed their plans after the dispatches or orders had been written, but the troop movements were established facts which could not be altered.

To Lambrecht also belongs the credit that he helped to devise these means of controlling troop movements. Train-watching posts had never been used in any previous war, and it was the initial reports of such pioneers as Lambrecht which enabled intelligence officers at British GHQ to work out from the number of constituted units passing by a given train-watching post, their accurate system of gauging the exact volume of a troop movement.

The mass of information transmitted by Lambrecht to British GHQ is astonishing.

In May 1915, for example, his train-watching posts at Jemelle and Namur rapidly and accurately reported the transfer of several German divisions from the Serbian Front to Flanders. This was of vast importance because it was an indication that all the German divisions on the Serbian Front were being transferred to France. In August 1915, his posts noted a heavy movement of troops from the Eastern Front to Champagne. This concentration of troops was intended to parry the offensive which the Germans knew the French were preparing in this sector. As a result of this information, the French advanced the date of their offensive several days.

Lambrecht also accurately reported the German preparations for their attack on Verdun. Much of the information he obtained through the indiscretions of a German major, billeted in his sister’s home. But not satisfied with this, he sent agents into occupied France to determine the destination of the troops which were pouring past his train-watching posts in a westerly direction.

The following letter from Afchain, dated 26 January 1916, speaks eloquently for the valuable services rendered by Lambrecht and of the high hopes entertained of him:

Events now began to move quickly.

Eighteen months of experience had taught the German counter-espionage service all the tricks used by refugees, and by the Allied secret services, and efficient means had been devised to seal the Belgian–Dutch frontier. In the interior, every Belgian, man and woman, was forced to carry an identity card, with photograph, name, and address attached; and special permission had to be obtained to travel from one town to another. At the frontier, a high-voltage electric wire, a cordon of sentries every
100 yards, mounted patrols, police dogs, and, finally, an army of plain-clothes Secret Police, guarded its entire length.

The Belgian refugees in Holland who had dabbled in secret service could well shut up shop. And it was a good riddance – they had exploited the patriotism of their countrymen in the interior, and they had sold their information to the highest bidder among the Allied secret services, sometimes to several of them at the same time. The results cost the life of many a brave man or woman in the occupied territories.

But the secret service game had become a problem even to the official services. After months of fruitless effort many of their representatives were recalled from Holland, to leave the field clear for the few who still seemed to have the chance of success. There was a period in 1916 when no information of any kind was coming out of the occupied territory. The Allied secret services had lost their initiative. New methods had to be devised to penetrate the formidable barrier which the Germans had built up at the Belgian–Dutch border.

It was not surprising, then, that Lambrecht found himself suddenly cut off from all communication with Holland. His precious information piled up only to become valueless as the days dragged by. Frantically, he waited for a courier from Holland to pick up his reports at the letter box, which he had established in Liège.

In Holland, Afchain was working feverishly to find some means of reaching Liège. He could no longer pick a trusted courier from a dozen volunteers. He would be fortunate if he could find anyone at all to undertake the dangerous mission.

His chief at British GHQ wired him impatiently. He took
a risk. Whether he handed a letter for Lambrecht to an intermediary, who was duped, or whether he himself was tricked, is not known exactly. The letter, however, fell into the hands of Keurvers, a Dutchman in the employ of the German counterespionage service.

Lambrecht’s ‘letter box’ in Liège was a small cigar store owned by one of his relatives, a man called Leclercq. While Leclercq was out Keurvers called at the store and introduced himself to Madame Leclercq as a Dutchman who had just arrived from Holland with an urgent letter for her husband. Madame Leclercq, fully aware of her husband’s dangerous activities, was suspicious. This man with his red, bloated face, and small vicious eyes, repulsed her; besides, his accent seemed more German than Dutch. She refused to accept the letter. But Keurvers, not to be put off, countered with the password: ‘The seven boxes of tricolour cigars have arrived safely.’ Madame Leclercq was nonplussed: she recognised the words, but still she could not bring herself to trust the man. After some hesitation she replied that her husband had told her nothing about the cigars, and that they were not expecting any letters from Holland.

As soon as Keurvers was out of sight, she hastened to Lambrecht with the news. To her surprise, instead of praising her discretion, he scolded her for being overcautious. ‘He gave the right password, didn’t he? What more did you want?’ Thoroughly dismayed, she hurried back to the store, where she found Keurvers had returned in her absence and left the letter with her servant together with a message that he would be back the next morning at ten o’clock. The message and the letter were quickly conveyed to Lambrecht.

Lambrecht eagerly opened the small roll containing the letter, and found that it was in Afchain’s familiar handwriting. It was dated 24 February 1916, and contained the following message:

If Madame Leclercq had sowed any doubts in his mind, they were quickly dispelled by Afchain’s letter, which was undoubtedly genuine. Lambrecht was ready to welcome Keurvers with open arms, so relieved was he that regular communications with Holland had once more been established. His thoughts immediately turned to the accumulation of six weeks’ reports which he had in his possession. He knew they would be too bulky as they were, and so the night was spent making a résumé of all but the most recent ones.

At ten o’clock next morning, Lambrecht was at the Leclercq cigar store, in the rue de Campine. As he entered, he saw a man in conversation with Leclercq. It was Keurvers. Leclercq immediately called Lambrecht aside into the small parlour at
the back of the store. He, too, shared his wife’s suspicions of this man. But Lambrecht could not be persuaded: there was Afchain’s letter, and the man had given the right password. So Keurvers was called into the back room, and the reports were handed over to him.

On his way home Lambrecht noticed that he was being followed. Such was his trust in Keurvers and his solicitude for his men that his immediate thoughts were not for his own safety, but for that of the courier, and the precious reports in his possession. By jumping on to a passing tram, he managed to get rid of the man who had been following him.

Lambrecht knew that he had a chance of finding Keurvers in one of the cafes on the Grand Place, for most visitors in the city gravitated to this centre. As he looked through the large windows of the Café du Marronnier, he saw Keurvers sitting with Landwerlen and Douhard, two of the German Secret Police, whom Lambrecht knew only too well by sight; they had figured in nearly every spy arrest in the city.

Instantly Lambrecht knew he was trapped, that the Secret Police were following him to discover his associates. He had a chance to get away. He had shaken off the man who had been on his trail. He had a number of friends who would gladly have hidden him until an opportunity presented itself to get across the frontier. But Lambrecht decided to return home to advise his wife, and to get her to warn Leclercq. He thought he could get there before the police.

It was a fatal step. As Lambrecht walked in at the front door, the Secret Police were waiting for him on the inside – his wife had been arrested shortly after he had left for his rendezvous
with Keurvers. It was known afterwards that the Secret Police had been watching the Leclercq cigar store for several days before Keurvers presented himself there, that they had photographed Afchain’s note, and, of course, had understood its meaning. As usual, their object had been to track down associates, and above all to secure the reports – the evidence to convict.

Lambrecht knew he could not save himself. He could, however, save the thirty-odd agents who had been working for him. (The Leclercqs did not know their names.) His one care now was not to betray them. Every third degree method familiar to the Germans was employed to break down his resistance, but Lambrecht allowed no name to escape him. He even succeeded in proving to the Secret Police that his wife had no idea he was engaged in espionage activities, and that the Leclercqs did not know the purport of his correspondence with Holland.

His friends did everything within their power to save him. Brand Whitlock, the Marquis de Villalobar, and van Vollenhoven, the various neutral ministers to Belgium, were all persuaded to intercede with von Bissing, the German governor-general of Belgium. Even the German chaplain of the prison was so moved by the heroic attitude of Lambrecht that he wrote to the German Cardinal von Hartmann, at Cologne, asking him to intervene.