Courtney's War Read online

  •••

  Barely a week after her arrival in Lisbon, Saffron alighted from the train at Ghent-Saint-Peter’s station in Belgium and begun her stay among the Low Countries’ most abject collaborators and Nazi sympathizers.

  To play her part convincingly, she was forced, as Hardy Amies had warned she would be, to adopt an air of conviction in an ideology and morality that she found abhorrent. It wasn’t just a matter of parroting the vile, psychotic idiocies of Adolf Hitler, as if they were the products of the greatest mind the world had ever seen. It meant cheering when a drunken, red-faced VNV in a blackshirt uniform got up on the table at a bar in Ghent, filled with Nazi sympathizers, and said, “We helped the SS round up a hundred and fifty Yids today and packed them off to the transit camp at Mechelen. Soon the rats will all be caught and Belgium will be Jew-free!”

  It meant laughing when someone shouted back, “Are they in time to catch the next train?” and the blackshirt replied, “Oh yes, and they’ll have plenty of company on their journey. They’ll be packed in nice and tight!”

  Over her first few months in Belgium she made her way to the heart of the VNV party hierarchy. The idea that someone had come all the way from South Africa to stand alongside them seemed to thrill the party’s leader Hendrik Elias and his cronies. For all their bluster, they seemed aware that their politics were still hateful to most of the outside world, and to a great many people in their own country, too. Any gesture of friendship or solidarity was welcome, and when it came from an attractive young woman it was all the more warmly received.

  Elias fancied himself as an eminent intellectual. A round-faced, bespectacled man of forty, he boasted of his studies in Philosophy and Law at the universities of Leuven, Paris and Bonn. “I have two doctorates from three countries, so you can see I am both broad-minded and well-traveled,” he laughed, surprised at his own wit.

  Saffron obliged. She decided that Marlize should be intelligent enough to interest Elias, but not so much that she was a threat to him. She affected an interest in politics and the VNV’s role in the governing of Belgium under German occupation, while deferring to Elias’ opinions and being grateful to him for his insights. She was at her most outspoken on the subject of the British and their arrogant, hypocritical view of the world.

  “They talk about democracy and freedom, but they’re wicked liars!” she exclaimed. “They go all over the world, taking people’s countries from them, robbing their precious possessions. Look at South Africa! My people found gold and diamonds on their own land. The British went to war to take the mines for themselves. They are like that everywhere . . . everywhere!”

  A fortnight after her outburst, Elias took Saffron to one side and said, “I have been thinking about your views on the subject of the British . . .”

  “Oh! I hope I didn’t say too much.” Saffron hung her head in shame. “It wasn’t my place to talk.”

  “Nonsense, my dear, I thought you spoke well. Indeed, I happened to be speaking to General von Falkenhausen the other evening . . .”

  Saffron looked at him in wide-eyed wonder. “The Military Governor of Belgium himself?”

  “The very same,” Elias said, glowing with pride. “I mentioned your feelings about the British and the general said to me—and these are the words he used—‘You may tell Fräulein Marais that the British will not be allowed to play their tricks in Belgium. They keep sending men here to work with subversive elements, and . . .’”—Elias paused before he delivered the punchline—“‘we keep catching them!’ There, how do you like that?”

  “How wonderful,” said Saffron. “How do they do that?”

  “He has informants. One in particular is very important.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Oh, I can’t possibly tell you, and besides, why on earth would you want to know such trifles?” laughed Elias.

  Saffron noted that he didn’t deny the informant’s gender, and that Elias’ smile had disappeared. She quickly changed the subject.

  “I don’t know how to say this . . .” Saffron enthused, though she felt more like weeping. “I’m so grateful and so honored that you spoke to the general about me. And that he should think me worthy of a personal message . . . I don’t know what to say.” She allowed herself to shed a tear. “I’m sorry, but I’m just overcome . . .”

  “Of course you are, that’s only natural,” said Elias, putting a paternal arm across Saffron’s shoulders and drawing her close to his body. He held her for as long as was decent, and then a little longer before letting her go.

  As Saffron wiped the tear from her eye, Elias said, “Your words affected me in another way. You may have heard of the National Socialist Women’s League in Germany. It does valiant work encouraging German women to set aside any foolish desire to enter the world of men, and preaching the virtues of staying at home as wives and mothers. There is no greater calling. The future of the Aryan race depends on the gift of new lives and new blood, which only mothers can provide. Women play a vital role, raising their children to have true, National Socialist values. I’m sure you agree.”

  “Oh, I do, sir!”

  “It strikes me that as a woman, with a gift for expressing political views in a simple, emotional way that women can understand, you would be the ideal person to set up such an organization here in Flanders.”

  “I can think of no greater honor,” Saffron said.

  “Good, then you may set about the job at once. And after you complete your task you must get married and excel at motherhood.” He smiled crookedly and stared at her for too long.

  •••

  Saffron got to work. Over the following weeks and months she wrote enthusiastic articles for the party-controlled newspaper, De Schelde, explaining why National Socialism was so beneficial to women. She addressed small meetings of women in towns all over Flanders and, to her dismay, proved effective at recruiting new converts to the pro-Nazi cause.

  Every evening she went home to her digs in the house of a middle-aged woman called Mevrouw Akkerman, who was a known VNV supporter. Her room was shabby and almost permanently in shadow, for its only window faced onto a narrow cobbled street, no wider than an alley, with two- and three-story buildings running down its full length.

  At night Saffron would lie in bed and listen for the sound of bombers overhead, on their way to Germany, and pray that the anti-aircraft guns whose shells she could hear exploding in the distance had not found their target.

  When she thought of the bomber crews, whose lives might at any moment be ended by a shell that would send them plummeting down to earth in a coffin of fire and steel, she could not help but think of Gerhard. However hard she tried to tell herself that it did her no good, for there was nothing she could do to help or comfort him, it was impossible not to wonder whether he was still alive, where he was, or what he was doing. She hoped that he was still in Greece, having an easy war, with no serious fighting and little more to occupy him than the flirtatious advances of the local girls. Just so long as he wasn’t in Russia. He would never come home from that.

  •••

  Every time she went off to another corner of Flanders to recruit more deluded women to the fascist cause, Saffron tried to make contact with any agents or Resistance groups that Amies believed were operating in the area. But it seemed that von Falkenhausen’s claims of victory against SOE were no idle boast, for time and again she drew a blank. Only when she ventured into the French-speaking part of Belgium and visited Liège did she have some luck.

  A bunch of students and teachers from the Free University of Brussels, led by an engineering graduate called Jean Burgers, had set themselves up as a team of saboteurs under the grandiose title of the Groupe Général de Sabotage de Belgique, which they thankfully shortened to Groupe G. Since many of them had scientific or technical backgrounds, they brought a degree of expertise to their work and specialized in putting electrical facilities out of action, from cables and pylons through to power stations. The pow
er cuts they caused were localized and small-scale in themselves. But every time the lights went out in a Wehrmacht barracks, or the production line ground to a halt at a Belgian factory, the people and their conquerors were reminded that there were still some people who were willing to resist.

  Groupe G’s two main bases were Brussels and Liège. SOE had been instrumental in their creation and supported Burgers and his men with radios, explosives and other equipment, as well as large amounts of money.

  “I was informed you might be coming to see me,” Burgers said, when they met for lunch in a place of his choosing called the Café Royal Standard. Their cover, should anyone ask, was that his family and Marlize Marais’s mother’s were old friends. “I’m told you are highly capable.”

  “I’ve been well trained.”

  “And now we find ourselves in this madness.” He shook his head. “What can one do? We have to speed up the process of change, don’t you think?”

  “Yes. That’s the only way of getting back to where we started from.”

  “And in the meantime, we are obliged to speak in riddles for fear that monsters will hear us. Pah!”

  Burgers gave her a smile. He was twenty-five, good-looking, principled and brave. The young men around him were full of vitality and laughter.

  They’re not ashamed, like everyone else in Belgium, Saffron thought. Resistance has given them life. It’s set them free.

  Burgers leaned across the table, as if he were about to share a secret flirtation with her. She played along, giggling and moving her head toward his across the table.

  “We have a radio, and a good operator. He’s here now, in fact, if that would be of use to you.”

  “Yes, it would be very useful indeed,” she replied and then leaned back with an expression of shock on her face and said, “What kind of a girl do you think I am?” loud enough for the young men at the next table to hear and direct a few wisecracks at Burgers.

  “But I forgive you,” she added, giving him a coy look that was the subject of more banter from what was now a captive audience.

  “I think we should continue this conversation outside,” Burgers said, getting to his feet. He grinned at the others and added, “In private.”

  He walked to the counter to pay the bill. Saffron watched as Burgers chatted to a florid, pot-bellied man with a handlebar mustache—the owner, she presumed. The owner laughed at something he said, then picked up a dishcloth and light-heartedly flicked it at him as he walked back to Saffron, who was waiting by the door.

  “You two seem like old friends,” she said.

  “You mean Claude? I’ve been coming here for years; he’s a good man.”

  They walked out onto the pavement. The café was on the corner of a block, facing a busy avenue, with a narrow side-street, little more than an alley to one side. Burgers led Saffron around the corner, away from the crowds and into the shadows, as if he really was intent on her seduction.

  “Claude helps us in any way he can.”

  At the back of the café there was a high wall, with a solid wooden gate set into it. Burgers stopped by the gate and knocked twice, quickly, then twice again. One of the two panels of the gate opened and Burgers let Saffron in.

  Claude was waiting for them inside. His smile had disappeared and his face was tight with tension. His greeting was no more than a nod and a grunted “In here.”

  There was a small brick shed in one corner of the yard. It was dark inside. Saffron could make out shelves stacked with cans, bottles, sacks of vegetables—all the supplies a busy café would need. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom Saffron realized that the metal shelves at the far end of the shed, away from the door, were not positioned against the wall. There was a small space behind them, from which a faint light could be seen.

  “Your friend’s in there,” Claude said, and left the shed. He didn’t want to see what they did next.

  Burgers ushered Saffron into the space, which was illuminated by a single desk lamp bent low over a table on which stood a small brown leather suitcase, opened to reveal a radio set, linked to a Morse transmission key. A wire ran from the set to a small window on the wall behind the table and passed through a crack in the frame. That was the aerial.

  Another young man about their age was sitting there, waiting for them.

  “I won’t introduce you,” Burgers said. “It’s safer that way.”

  “Good.” Saffron looked at the radio operator. “May I have your seat please?”

  “Of course.”

  He got up and Saffron took his place. She opened her handbag and removed a black notebook. If anyone chose to examine it, they would find that everything she had written within related to her work for the VNV. She tore out a blank page and placed it on the table in front of her. Then she reached into the bag again. Inside it had a false bottom. She lifted it out and extracted a square of silk the size of a handkerchief. It was covered in lines of numbers.

  The radio operator looked at it with curiosity. He couldn’t resist asking, “What’s that?”

  “The new way of coding messages. It’s unbreakable.”

  The printed fabric was the innovation Leo Marks’ had promised to give Saffron. It was a “one-time pad,” a method he had devised to stop the Germans decoding incoming SOE messages, or sending fake messages back. It employed a complex numerical coding system with a unique key for each message. The only other copy of the pad was in Norgeby House.

  Saffron began her message with the secret call-sign that identified her, and a set of numerals that indicated which number-pad she was using. Then she began encoding the following message:

  IN PLACE WITH VNV. HAVE TRUST OF ELIAS. CONTACT ESTABLISHED WITH GP G. NO SIGN OF ANY BAKER ST FRIENDS. HAVE BEEN TOLD ALL INTERCEPTED, CAPTURED BUT NO PROOF. WILL KEEP LOOKING HERE AND HOLLAND.

  The coding was complicated and it took Saffron over ten minutes to convert her text into code. Now came the dangerous part. The radio operator had to tap out the message in Morse Code as quickly as possible, before the Germans could detect his transmission and trace its source. The task was harder because he was working with meaningless jumbles of letters, each one of which had to be sent correctly.

  He looked at Burgers and said, “If you could leave me in peace . . .”

  Burgers led Saffron back into the bigger section of the storage shed.

  “Is this really necessary?” she whispered.

  “Yes, that’s how he always works.”

  “How do you know he’ll get it right?”

  “Because he’s been a radio ham since he was ten. He doesn’t make mistakes.”

  “I hope not.”

  Burgers lit another cigarette. He offered Saffron the pack, but she shook her head. He said, “Anything important about this message. Good news?”

  “No news . . . that’s the problem. Listen, you must be careful. Don’t trust anyone who says they’re from London unless you have been told to look out for them and you are certain, beyond doubt, they have not been turned by the Germans.”

  Burgers sighed. “My God . . . it sounds like les Boches are winning.”

  “I don’t know . . . not for sure. But this is only one small corner of the war. Look around the world and the war is going our way. Don’t worry. You will be free.”

  “I hope so . . .”

  The tapping of the Morse key ceased, there were sounds of movement, followed by the snap of the suitcase being closed. The radio operator emerged with what looked like a normal, rather battered leather case in his hand.

  “That was quick,” Saffron said.

  He shrugged. “It took two minutes to send thirty-five words. I used to be quicker than that. We should be going.”

  “One moment,” Saffron said. “Can you light this with your cigarette?” she asked Burgers, passing him the silk one-time pad. As he put the tip of his cigarette to the fabric, which started burning almost immediately, she scanned the shelves and the junk that lay here and there on the floor until she foun
d what she was looking for: an empty tin can. She picked it up and held it out so that Burgers could drop the burning pad inside. They waited until the pad was ashes in the bottom of the can. Burgers stubbed out his cigarette on top. Now the can was an improvised ashtray. It would attract no one’s suspicion.

  “All right, we can go,” Saffron said.

  She made to leave but Burgers reached out and took her arm. “Look, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “It’s not our business to help agents. We exist to carry out acts of sabotage. But we’re on the same side, you and I, and if I can help you again, I will. I come in here, most days after work, around five in the afternoon, so that’s where you can find me. Or ask Claude. He’ll know how to get a message to me.”

  “Thank you,” Saffron said. “You know you’d be risking your life for me?”

  “You’re risking your life for us, too. What kind of a man would I be if I turned my back on you?”

  They left the shed. “I’ll see you,” Burgers said as he walked across the yard to the wooden gate.

  Before she could answer, he had turned and was heading up the street with the radio operator, moving as fast as they could without breaking into a run.

  Saffron departed in the opposite direction. Half a minute later, walking down a nearby street, she passed a furniture van, stopped by the side of the road. She paid no attention to it.

  Inside the van a German radio technician took off the headphones though which he’d been listening to the “ping” whose volume told him how close they were getting to the source of the signal he had detected five minutes earlier.

  “No good,” he said. “It’s gone dead.”

  The plainclothes Gestapo officer leaning against the inside of the van muttered a curse under his breath. “Damn! I thought we had him this time. You’re sure it was Otto?”

  “I’d recognize his style anywhere. None of the others are as fast or smooth as he is. It’s as good as a fingerprint.”

  “Funny . . . we don’t know who Otto is, or what he looks like. But we can detect his touch on a Morse code key. Let us hope we can one day put a face to the dots and dashes.”