Operation Armageddon Read online

As the two guards pushed Bosanquet towards the guardhouse, two more guards came up behind him. He pointlessly shouted a colourful range of outraged comments in voluble French. It was a good thing that the guards had no idea that ‘Va te faire enculer’ meant ‘Go fuck yourself’. Had they known, they would have smashed a gun butt across his face in no time. At least his foul-mouthed language helped to reinforce his French status.

  An hour later, Marie heard of the arrest of a man from the food truck. She needed no more detail to know which of the two men had been taken. She began to count all the people who knew – even in a vague way – of the presence of Raymond. Which one of them had betrayed him? The only possibility seemed to be Paulette Delacroix – yet all she knew was that a man from London had been landed. Marie had had no contact with her since then. She feared that her faithful worker was now in the hands of the Wehrmacht or the Gestapo.

  ****

  While the base personnel who had gathered around the arrest scene were returning to work, Bosanquet, hands tied behind his back, was taken away by two soldiers. Beck was standing to one side as Bosanquet was bundled up the steps of the main office building. He smiled as he watched his prisoner being shoved down the back stairs into the basement. Bosanquet stumbled after a few steps before he rolled and bounced down to the bottom.

  ‘Up, filth!’ cried a soldier.

  Bosanquet tried to get up but could get no further than a sitting position.

  ‘Prefer the floor, do you?’ continued the soldier. ‘Fine by us.’

  The two soldiers grabbed Bosanquet by the feet and dragged him down the dimly lit corridor. Along each side was a series of heavy metal doors, mostly closed. He was thrown into the first empty cell, his hands were released, and the door clanged shut behind him. He heard the slam of the huge bolt on the other side.

  The sliding hatch on the door opened: ‘Comfy? Best Gestapo hospitality for you!’ The guard’s laugh was cut short by the hatch banging shut.

  Under the dim light of the single overhead bulb Bosanquet began to assess his new accommodation. The cell was barely two metres wide and three metres long. Its walls of raw rendered cement were covered with the graffiti and scribblings of previous residents. All were of the “Mathieu was here Oct 1942” type. Some names could be clearly read. Here and there were the tally marks of prisoners’ attempts to track their incarceration. Many of the inscriptions had been eroded by the crumbling mortar and the salty encrustations of damp patches. A tiny barred window, perhaps twenty centimetres high, was set into the outside wall at ceiling level. Through it, the feet of passers-by could be seen now and again. The floor was filthy, as was the thin, frayed mattress on the wire-framed bed. There was no sanitation. How luxurious had been his farm loft in comparison, thought Bosanquet.

  The soldiers had given no hint as to why he was there or for how long. Reminding himself that the Gestapo had arrested Raymond Lapointe, not James Bosanquet, he asked himself how Lapointe would react. He was here to look for work. True, he got into the base in an unorthodox manner. That just proved how keen he was to work here. Lapointe would make a fuss, the same way that any self-respecting French worker would. He banged on the door, shouting ‘I’m here to work!’ and proclaimed his devotion to collaboration.

  ‘Work?’ cried a guard. ‘You’ll be lucky if you can stand up by the time you get out of here.’

  Bosanquet forced himself to respond as Lapointe would. His cries for work and protestations of loyalty and good behaviour echoed along the sinister corridor.

  22

  Dawn was breaking – a pale yellowness glowing behind the thin cloud – when Marie left Madame Rougier’s house for work the next day. She was more than half-asleep, being worn down by so many nocturnal rendezvous. And last night she had slept fitfully as her mind churned over the problems of her network. She consoled herself with the thought that at least she now had London by her side – some slight compensation for having to face Beck and Wohlman each new day.

  The bus that day was hot and stuffy from engine fumes, cigarette smoke and the stench of damp rarely-washed work-clothes. Marie dozed in the fetid atmosphere. A nudge in the ribs from a fellow-worker – not one she knew – told her that the bus had arrived at the base. She stepped out, hoping that her work would be no more than routine that day. She needed time to think, even if her brain was near to exhausted. And, despite her shattered state, she somehow needed to make discreet enquiries about Raymond. She joined the ragged file of workers making their sluggish way to the gates.

  The flow was slower than usual. Still deep in thought, Marie did not notice its lessening pace and bumped into the man in front of her. The orderly line of workers through the turnstiles was today a jostling throng. A hubbub of conversation ran through the bemused crowd. On every pair of lips, the same question: why were they not being allowed in? Slowly, the mass of workers edged forward, passing lethargically through the turnstiles.

  It was at least a quarter of an hour before Marie reached the gate and handed over her pass just as she did each day.

  ‘Papers!’

  ‘As well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Marie opened her bag, reached for her identity papers and handed them over. The soldier gave them to two officers, who jointly scrutinised them. They nodded and passed the papers to a clerk, who copied out some details into a ledger – writing things down was part of Wohlman’s idea of security. With her papers back in her hands, the soldier peremptorily barked: ‘Proceed!’

  As the turnstile clanged behind her, Marie caught a glimpse of Wohlman and Beck discreetly observing the scene. She had no doubt that their presence was in response to her operations of the previous day. She felt a frisson of fear mixed with a sense of pride at the chaos that she had precipitated.

  Once inside the base, Marie saw the full extent of the security check. All the workers – well over a thousand of them – were in a mingling mass, corralled by soldiers with levelled weapons. The doorways of each workplace were blocked by more soldiers. It was to be a search like no other that the base had ever known.

  Marie knew exactly what had happened, even if she did not know how it had happened. Someone had informed on her network. That someone had told Wohlman that something had been smuggled into the base the previous day. She did not for a moment suspect Raymond – there had been enough network leaks even before his arrival to ensure that he was beyond suspicion. He, wherever he was, and whatever interrogation atrocities he was being subjected to, would never have given the secret away. And it couldn’t be Pierre. He was not part of her network and had not been told that Raymond was on a mission. He had fallen for Marie’s story that Raymond had made a bet that he could get in and out of the base without being captured. It was fortunate that Pierre’s decrepit physical condition put him beyond all suspicion in the eyes of the Germans.

  Winter was well upon the base that day. The biting cold winds tormented the waiting mass as they watched the soldiers search one building after another. They began with the smaller, auxiliary facilities, including the electricity sub-station and the emergency generating plant. These, naturally, revealed nothing. They were far too heavily secured to permit casual entry. Next came the office blocks. It took well over an hour for the soldiers to rummage through the multitudinous places for concealment in the vast number of individual offices. Every draw was opened. Items were pulled off every cupboard shelf. The depths of every filing cabinet were meticulously delved.

  ‘Nothing, Herr Major’ … ‘Nothing, Herr Major’ came the replies.

  Meanwhile the massed workers chatted, smoked and hypothesised. What could Wohlman’s men be looking for? Some suggested the concealment of vital spares, removed from the stores to prevent the patrol boats from sailing – a regular means of easy protest against the occupying force. Others fantasised about hidden weapons, ready for a rising against the invaders. Others, knowing how scornful most of the officers were of Wohlman, suggested it was just for show. ‘He needs to look as if he’s doing
something.’

  Way out of earshot of the edgy workforce, Wohlman continued to supervise his operation. ‘Lockers next,’ he ordered.

  Soldiers led the workers back inside in small groups to have their lockers searched. Marie was well prepared for such a moment. Her locker’s overnight contents never varied: one pair of indoor shoes – the symbol of a dutiful worker. Others did not fare so well.

  ‘A knife!’ shouted one soldier.

  It was only a modest-sized penknife yet it was enough for the soldier to spit in the face of its owner. He was then dragged off to be accused of … well, Wohlman would think of something and mark it up on his wallcharts.

  ‘What’s this filthy mess?’ asked another soldier as he pulled out a half-eaten baguette. He threw it to the floor and ground it under his boot to a squelching mess.

  ‘Ugh!’ cried a third soldier as he smelt a dirty looking work-shirt. ‘Filth!’ It joined the motley pile of discarded personal belongings.

  And so the search went on. The knife was the nearest the searchers came to finding anything suspicious. The more they searched, the more frustrated they became. And as their frustration grew, so did their contempt for the workers’ belongings. The pile mounted and mounted.

  Oberleutnant Franz Erhard was one of the young officers supervising the search. He held his tongue as outrage followed outrage. Only when a flute fell out of a locker and was stamped on by a soldier, did his self-restraint collapse. Three years of conscripted service had kept him from his violin, yet had not lessened the rapture that he felt when playing. Here was another music lover. True, he was French, but music had no boundaries. His oath to the Führer did not commit him to desecrating the instrument of a fellow musician.

  ‘Enough!’ shouted Erhard. ‘Show some respect for our workers … for their treasured possessions!’

  His command went unheeded by the soldiers.

  When the last locker had been stripped and the last worker humiliated, Wohlman called off the search of the offices and ordered his men to the submarine pens. Ten minutes later a sound of cheering drifted over to the still corralled workers. A soldier came running from the pens.

  ‘We’ve found it! We’ve found it!’

  In his hand he clutched the flask. Marie was overwhelmed by a black despair. Another few hours and the U-boat would have been engulfed by flames. Nothing was going right in her network.

  Wohlman stepped forward to greet the soldier and slapped him on the back. Then, with his men gathered around him, he climbed onto an oil barrel and addressed them.

  ‘Men, I congratulate you on the thorough way in which you have conducted today’s search. You have thwarted a cowardly and treacherous attack on our courageous seamen and on our glorious Reich. I will see to it that you are duly rewarded – all of you except Oberleutnant Erhard. His shameful criticism of our soldiers in front of the enemy will not be forgotten. You may return to work now. Dismiss!’

  Wohlman’s remarks about Erhard were to cost the Reich dear.

  ****

  While Wohlman was congratulating himself on having forestalled the sabotage of the cargo U-boat, Marie continued to puzzle over who was betraying her network. She had sifted through every possible combination of who knew what and when, but could find no explanation as to how the Germans could have known about the flask. It was a few words that she had heard that morning when penned in with the others that set her thinking: ‘Fucking Resistance. If they’d leave well alone we’d be much better off. I’ve a good mind to turn them in.’

  Slowly an idea came to her. Raymond was unknown on the base. Perhaps someone, curious about the newcomer, had paid too much attention to his movements yesterday and had seen the handover of the flask. It was hard for her to admit that her fellow citizens on the base might go to such lengths. Yet it was easier to accept that explanation than to pursue the thought of treachery in her diminishing network.

  23

  Shut away in his basement cell, Bosanquet knew nothing of the search. A spider, sitting at the edge of its web, waiting for its next meal to arrive, was his only distraction. That is, before it saw the fly. The prey smashed into the web and immediately stuck to the silky thread. As the victim buzzed in anger and uselessly beat its wings, the spider raced over the threads and began to wrap its still writhing prey in a deadly corset. With one last flap of its ever more constrained wings, the fly fell silent. Anatomically interesting as the performance had been, Bosanquet was discomforted at the similarity of his situation to that of the fly. The question was, though, to whom did his web belong?

  The spider, having secured his food supply, returned to the edge of his web to await further deliveries. With no further action to distract him, Bosanquet dozed a little. He was awoken by the echoing sound of a guard’s heavy boots. The boots halted outside his door. The bolt slammed free and the door opened. Reminding himself that he was Raymond Lapointe from Marseille, here in Cap d’Enfer in search of employment, he fell into his part. A self-confident display of injured innocence was required.

  ‘So you believe me at last, do you?’

  The fresh-faced young guard, with not a sign of any stubble to his chin, looked as if he had barely left school. Nevertheless, he shoved his gun into Bosanquet’s ribs with the malevolence of a hardened veteran.

  ‘Forward!’

  When he stepped out into the corridor, Bosanquet noticed a second guard at the bottom of the stairs. The first guard prodded Bosanquet in the back as he propelled him towards the stairs. It was the sort of ill-treatment that no self-respecting Frenchman could accept so he kept up a barrage of obscene abuse with abundant references to the sullied honour of German wives and girlfriends. The dumb look on the faces of the bored youths confirmed that they barely had a word of French between them. Nevertheless, Bosanquet drew some satisfaction from the fact that no German could possibly have mistaken him for an Englishman.

  While still spouting French expletives, Bosanquet was thrust into Beck’s office. As he stumbled over the threshold he caught his first sight of his spider. The greasy over-weight carcass in the grey SS uniform that the Gestapo used in foreign countries was not a reassuring picture. Beck sat foursquare behind his desk, his hands splayed out on its vast surface, helping to add to this picture of emotionless brutality. His scowl and down-turned, tightly closed mouth completed his threatening stance.

  Without introducing himself, Beck opened the conversation.

  ‘As I am sure you know, we’ve had some “trouble” on the base this morning.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about your troubles. I’ve been stuck down in your stinking cell. And I only came here for a job.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do, Monsieur Lapointe …’ Beck hesitated as he picked up Bosanquet’s identity card and deciphered the mud-obscured text. ‘… and, unless you cooperate with us, you will wish you had never set foot on this base.’

  Bosanquet tried to repeat his story of looking for work.

  ‘Let’s forget about work, shall we? You just give me a few details and then you can go. My men will take you back to wherever you came from.’

  ‘Marseille.’

  ‘Marseille! That’s a long way, Monsieur Lapointe.’

  ‘I told you – for a job.’

  ‘Nothing nearer home? Are you a specialist?’

  ‘No. A labourer,’ said Bosanquet, hastily scrapping his original cover story.

  Beck took a discreet look at Bosanquet’s hands and drew his own conclusions.

  ‘Who told you that there was work here?’

  ‘Mates – in Marseille.’

  ‘And what would they know about Cap d’Enfer? I fear they have gravely mislead you, Monsieur Lapointe. Even more so in their suggesting that you enter the base.’

  ‘I hadn’t planned to come to the base. I arrived in the town yesterday, just a few francs in my pocket. A man on the bus said he would pay me 30 francs if I would help with the food truck this morning and take some cigarettes in for a friend of his at the same t
ime. I was desperate so I agreed.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘I didn’t ask?’

  ‘Has he paid you?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘His friend’s name?’

  ‘Maurice.’

  ‘Maurice who?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Lapointe. But a dangerous one.’

  ‘Just desperate.’

  ‘Not as desperate as you will be if you don’t give me some names.’

  ‘Names? I’ve only been here for twenty-four hours!’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Parents?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Very convenient. I would have liked to have made their acquaintance.’

  This line of questioning made Bosanquet thankful that he knew no one in France whom Beck might get at. He didn’t even “know” Simone in any meaningful sense.

  ‘So, you know no one who could help us with our investigations. Let’s try another tack, Lapointe. Let’s talk about this.’

  Beck slammed the flask down on his desk.

  ‘I’ve told you all I know.’

  ‘Come off it, Lapointe: “A man on the bus”. Which bus?’

  ‘From the town.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘About 7.15am,’ said Bosanquet, hoping that his interrogator knew no more about the timetable than he did.

  ‘There’s no such bus, Monsieur Lapointe. It’s time to stop messing around. We’re not children here. Talk!’

  ‘There’s no more to tell.’

  ‘There’d be plenty to say if you stopped making things up and just stuck to the truth.’

  ‘I told you, a man gave me the flask—’

  ‘What did he look like? Age? Height? Fat? Thin?’

  ‘Medium height, dark-haired, my sort of build—’

  ‘I see: just a typical anonymous Frenchman. Nothing special about him? Limp? Squint? Finger missing?’

  ‘No. Like you say, just an average Frenchman.’

  ‘I thought you’d say that, Monsieur Lapointe,’ concluded Beck. ‘You Marseille people aren’t very observant.’