Betrayals

By George M. Hahn

It was Britains most humiliating intelligence disaster of World War II. The newly established Special Operations Executive (SOE) dropped fifty-three agents during 1941 and 1942 into the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. Their mission was to aid the Dutch underground as part of Winston Churchills plan to set Europe ablaze. However, Dutch resistance was thoroughly penetrated by German counter-intelligence. In spite of repeated security warnings including one by SOEs own chief encoder, Leo Marks, agent after agent was parachuted into the waiting arms of the Nazis. Almost all of those captured were executed at the Mauthausen concentration camp. Two were able to escape from captivity and reach London to report the calamity. These two heroic men were promptly arrested as suspected double agents, their tale ignored.
In this story, Sgt. Jeff Williamson, a fictitious Canadian agent, goes through SOE training and because of his ability to speak Dutch, is dropped into the Netherlands. He manages to evade German capture and make his way through war-torn, occupied Europe to Spain and Gibraltar only then to be incarcerated in an MI5 (British counter-intelligence) prison and kept there until the Germans surrender. During his time in prison and long afterwards he is haunted by his own history and the fate of his fellow agents. He is driven to attempt to find the cause of the intelligence disaster and SOEs motivation for his own imprisonment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781477294918

George M. Hahn

George Hahn was born in Vienna in 1926. After Austria was annexed by the Germans in 1938, he fled, first alone to the Netherlands, where he spent a year in a children’s camp, and finally, after the outbreak of World War II, with his family to the United States. Towards the end of that war and for some time afterwards he was an agent of the US. Counter-Intelligence Corps, working in France and Germany. After his return to the US, he attended the University of California in Berkeley and then Stanford University, where he studied Biophysics. The author was appointed to the faculty of the Stanford School of Medicine in 1966. He has written or co-authored four books and over two hundred articles in the scientific literature. Since retiring, he and his wife have divided their time between Carmel Highlands, California, and Panajachel, Guatemala.

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© 2013 by George M. Hahn. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/04/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4772-9490-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-9491-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012922594

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

NOTE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

NOTE

With the exception of the individuals listed below, the characters appearing in this book are fictitious.

In the UK:

Col. RGW Stephens

Maj. Harold Dearden

Leo Marks

Prof. MRD Foot

In the Netherlands:

Hauptmann SK Giskes

William Stephenson

In France:

Emile Bernard

Yvonne Bernard

Guy Bernard

In the USA:

William Stephenson

CHAPTER 1

For the second time that night Jeff was startled by sudden silence. The pilot had feathered the Whitley’s two engines to reduce the plane’s speed. The jump-door was open and Jeff could see that the darkness on the ground a few hundred meters below was broken by the small fires that had been set by the Dutch resistance group to guide the plane to the drop zone. The sky was overcast; but occasionally moonlight managed to penetrate the clouds and soften the dark. Hendrijk, his friend, had jumped on the first pass, but a sudden, unexpected roll of the plane had prevented Jeff from following immediately. Now, on the plane’s return, it was his turn. His eyes were fixed on the jump light that would tell him when it was time. It was red. Once more he reached to make sure that his parachute cord was attached to the guideline.

The light turned green. His stomach tightened and he was overcome by a desire to give in to his fears and return to the safety of the interior of the plane. Instead, he forced himself to reach for the sides of the jump-door and push himself, head first, into the blackness. The rushing, cold air dried the sweat that had been forming on his brow. He counted: one thousand and one, one thousand and two. At one thousand and three he felt with immense relief the welcome pull on his thighs and the momentary pain in his chest as the parachute opened.

Jeff steeled himself, anticipating the harsh impact of the landing. All at once, however, a fierce gust of wind violently dragged his parachute in a new direction, pulling him away from the drop zone. The wind was so strong that the chute bellowed and lifted him several meters back into the dark above. Helplessly, he was carried for some distance; he could only guess how far, perhaps as much as a kilometer or two.

Then, just as quickly, the wind lost its intensity and he floated to the ground. In the dim moonlight he saw that he was about to land in an open field. He had considerable forward momentum and was afraid of being dragged along the ground and severely injured. As his feet hit the earth, his training took over and he rolled over backwards and then rapidly severed his connections to the chute. The wind was still strong enough to pull him along the field, but after he unbuckled the lines on one side of his harness, the chute collapsed and fell to the ground and he freed himself completely. Jeff had come to rest only a few feet from a barn. He felt pain in his right leg, his knee, he thought, but in spite of the throbbing pain he dragged the parachute to a small door on one side of the barn. He entered. Luckily there were no people inside.

The barn was partially filled with hay that was stacked in bales near the large front doors, but loosely piled towards the rear. He sat on one of the bales. The pain in his leg was quite severe; he feared that he might have broken a bone. There was not much light inside the barn, but when he took off his backpack and jumpsuit, the long zipper made that easy, he discovered the source of the pain. The impact of the landing had caused the sharp point of one of the harness-buckles to be driven into the upper thigh of his right leg.

At least no damage to my knee, he murmured to himself as he pulled out the sharp pointer, and wrapped a handkerchief around the wound to stop the bleeding. When I’ll have time, I’ll pour some of the sulfa drug on the wound.

He knew that he had to get to the drop zone as quickly as possible. The Dutch resistance fighters would not dare to wait more than a few minutes, fearing that the Germans might have spotted the plane and sent troops to investigate. Quickly he took off his jumpsuit, emptied the pockets, and, except for a small compass and a green pen, stuffed the content into his backpack. He then buried the parachute and jumpsuit in the loose hay, put on his backpack again and painfully hobbled outside.

The wind was blowing from the north-east, as his compass showed, and he decided that his best bet was to walk in that direction. He hoped to retrace the aerial detour the wind had forced on him. The terrain was mostly flat, but the irregularly shaped fields made it impossible for him to walk in a straight line. The wind was coming in gusts and he had to read his compass repeatedly to avoid losing his bearing. In spite of the pain in his leg, fear of missing his rendezvous made him move rapidly.

He had walked a few minutes when he came to a knoll. Something startled him; he thought he heard whispering or low voices that seemed to come from the other side of the hill. He anticipated that it would be the Dutch reception committee, but caution had been drilled into him and gingerly he crawled to the top of the hill to determine the source of the voices. To his consternation, what he saw when he peered over the crest were four heavily armed soldiers in Wehrmacht uniform and a man in civilian clothes. He and one of the soldiers were using binoculars to examine the area in front of them. Jeff could see that the object of their attention was the drop zone that was still marked by fires set to delineate it. Immediately he realized that his mission had been compromised; the Germans were waiting, hoping to observe his descent into what was a trap.

CHAPTER 2

He had decided to go back to the relative safety of the barn, but the way back had not been easy. Fortunately, the Germans had been occupied watching the drop zone and were not paying close attention to events behind them. Jeff tried to retrace his steps as much as possible, but the dim light and the irregularity of the shape of the fields made this difficult. At times drifting fog covered large sections of the landscape, further limiting his vision. Following his compass, he walked in a southeasterly direction, but saw nothing that resembled the barn that he now was forced to consider his home. Jeff was afraid that he might have walked too far, so he turned sharply to the right and walked a short distance, when the furious barking of a dog warned him that he was approaching a farmhouse. He turned and wandered in the opposite direction and considered himself very fortunate when, within a few hundred meters, he saw his goal. There he retrieved his chute and backpack, climbed to the top of the stacked bales and worked his way as far back as he could to almost the back of the building. The odor of the hay irritated his sinuses and he had to sneeze several times. His sore leg reminded him that he had to be careful not to get the wound infected. In his backpack he searched for and found the small box labeled ‘Bayer Aspirin’ that contained not aspirin, but sulfonamide powder. There was enough moonlight coming through a crack in the barn’s side so that he could see that his wound was still oozing blood. He sprinkled some of the powder over it and re-bandaged it as best as he could. Then he wrapped himself in his parachute, burrowed into the hay, but sleep did not come easily. He kept seeing Hendrijk’s face and wondered what happened to his friend. By some miracle, had he been able to escape the trap? Jeff doubted it.

The luminous dial of his watch told him that it was after midnight. His mind jumped to the early events of the day. He found it hard to believe the difference in his life that a few hours had made. At nine that evening, he had been in in England, in a small office at Temsford airfield. An SOE captain who called himself Walker, probably not his right name, had been briefing him. They had been drinking tea; Jeff had refused the offer of whiskey. The officer had quizzed him in fluent Dutch about some of the nuts and bolts of the mission. What were the addresses of the safe houses, one in Utrecht, not far from the drop zone, and the other in The Hague, perhaps fifty kilometers to the west? Did he know the passwords that would identify him to the Dutch resistance there? Did he know the security’ phrase, usually just referred to as ‘security’ in the SOE lingo, that he would have to include in all radio messages to London that he might have to send if his partner for any reason became unable to operate the transmitter? Absence of the phrase would indicate to SOE command in London that the message had been sent under duress. He was also asked about misspellings. Did he know that more than one misspelled word, a specific word for each agent, in any one message would also indicate to London that the sender was operating his transmitter with a German gun at his head? Just before he was to board, the captain gave him three gold coins and helped tape these to Jeff’s right leg. As to the questions, these and several others, he had replied to Walker’s satisfaction. In training he had been an unusually good student.

But what good was it all now? The safe houses were almost surely compromised, and Hendrijk’s transmitter was in German hands. Jeff realized that he was on his own in enemy-occupied country and that very likely German troops were scouring the neighborhood looking for him.

A phrase the SOE captain had dropped came to his mind. What was it?

I seem to be holding these sessions frequently these days, he had let slip.

At the time Jeff had not paid much attention to the comment. He remembered only thinking then that perhaps the good captain was expressing boredom with his job. But now he looked at the remark in a different light. The excellent Dutch that the captain spoke made it very likely that he worked primarily with agents that were dropped either into The Netherlands or into Belgium. Frequent sessions implied that many agents were being dropped into these countries. Jeff could think of only two reasons why this should be. One possibility was that so many radio operators were needed because the resistance groups were multiplying rapidly so that direction and liaison with London required the presence on the ground of a large number of ‘assets’. Jeff did not think that this was likely. He knew too much about the efficiency and ruthlessness of the German police and intelligence agencies. If the Nazis thought the underground was becoming a credible threat, they would take whatever means they thought necessary to suppress it: execution of hostages, torture and killing of captured resistance fighters.

That left him with the frightening conclusion that very likely the reason for the captain’s many sessions was that agents, once dropped, had an extremely short half-life. The implication surely was that the Germans, perhaps their military intelligence, the Abwehr, or their police intelligence services, the Sicherheitsdienst and the Gestapo, had deeply penetrated the Dutch underground. The presence of the Germans near the drop-zone surely was proof of that. But how was it possible that London was unaware of this disastrous situation? The Germans were known to force captured Allied agents to send misleading messages to their handlers. At least one, probably several of the captured agents must have been able to send messages that sounded innocuous to the Germans, but in fact were wake-up calls, lacking the ‘security’, or containing intentional spelling errors, warning SOE headquarters of the disastrous state of affairs. Why else had London set up this elaborate technique, a different ‘security’ for each radio operator, and arranged for the use of misspelled words as red flags? And if headquarters knew of the real state of affairs in Holland, why did they continue to send agents directly into the enemy’s arms? What was the point of sending in more and more agents only to have them picked off one by one by the Germans? Why were Hendrijk and he permitted to jump into this trap? He could think of no answers.

He did know that he could not stay in the barn for several days, even though his leg was still painful and he was very tired; so tired that he found it difficult to focus his thoughts. He badly needed some rest. The excitement of the jump, the dismay engendered by his being carried off by the sudden gust of wind and above all the shocking finding that his mission had been compromised had left him emotionally drained. He decided that, in spite of his fear of marauding Germans, his only sensible course of action was to stay in the barn for the next day, hide himself as best as he could, and get some rest, allow his leg to improve. Perhaps he would be lucky, either not to be discovered, or found by someone sympathetic to the resistance. His mind roamed over his predicament in a disjointed fashion until he drifted off to sleep.

A noise, a pounding and scratching awakened Jeff. It sounded as if some large animal was attempting to force its way through the side of the barn near his hiding place. For a while he stayed wrapped in his silky cocoon. He had had a dream that he was running, chased by an unknown enemy. It was a curious chase, because his pursuer kept at a fixed distance behind him. The stranger, Jeff did not get a good look at his face, made no attempt to catch up with him. The terrain over which they passed was treeless, the ground rocky, much like the area in the north of Scotland where he had only recently learned the arts of survival and of killing.

The persistent noise would not allow him to go back to sleep. As he lay in the hay, now wide awake, his thoughts inevitably went to the future. What was he going to do?

Staying in Holland was not an option. True, as far as his physical appearance was concerned he could easily pass as a Dutchman. His hair was brown, his eyes blue. His height, one meter seventy five, made him neither particularly tall, nor short, so in a crowd he would not appear conspicuous. Although he was fluent in the language, he did have a distinct accent. His Dutch friends had told him that he sounded like a Flemish Belgian, while the Belgians he had met said that his pronunciation categorized him as coming from the north, perhaps from Amsterdam. If he stayed in any one place too long, his accent would surely arouse some informer’s suspicion. He had no specific place to go; the safe houses, as he had already concluded, were almost surely compromised. So, he would be forced to move from town to town. Even if he were not caught, within a few months he would run out of money and ration books. And then?

And there were his papers.

Forget that you were ever called Jeffrey Williamson, the SOE trainer had said.

As if that were possible. His new passport and other papers identified him as Wilem Pijl, born in Groningen in 1920, a salesman and technician working for Siemens und Halske, the German manufacturer of electrical equipment. To bolster that claim, the passport had been stamped with fake German visas and he had been provided with several catalogs of his employer’s radios and phonographs. His gear also included a set of radio repair tools and a few spare vacuum tubes. These were to allow him to repair Hendrijk’s transmitter if required, and the Siemens und Halske papers provided a convenient cover. The documents looked authentic to anyone but a real expert; the SOE had access to some of the best forgers currently residing in British prisons. But if either the Germans or the Dutch police were ever to arrest him, it would not be long before they would discover that the real Wilem Pijl had died in an automobile accident in 1936. While these considerations were convincing, Jeff thought of an even more important reason why he should not remain in any German-occupied country. What if London was not aware of the fate of its agents in Holland? Then headquarters had to be warned so that no additional personnel were to be sent into the abyss. SOE handlers had to be made aware of the German penetration of the Dutch resistance organization. In the absence of an available radio transmitter, this could only be done from a part of the world not under Nazi control.

That meant reaching a neutral country. In the west there were only three possibilities: Sweden, Switzerland and Spain. The rest of Europe had been overrun by the German hordes. Sweden he eliminated immediately. To get there he would have to cross many kilometers of German homeland, and he doubted if the police there would take his papers seriously. Spain also seemed like an unlikely haven. Its dictator, Francisco Franco, had won a civil war on the back of Italian soldiers and German airplanes, and his Falangists were spiritual cousins of the Fascists and Nazis. Jeff did not think that Franco’s police would welcome an escaping British agent. That left only Switzerland as a feasible choice, and that country was several hundred kilometers and three borders away. He had no delusions about his chances of getting there. But he thought that he had to try.

The scratching and scraping at the side of the barn continued, keeping Jeff from getting his badly needed sleep. He found it so irritating that he decided, in spite of the obvious danger, to investigate its source. He burrowed out of the parachute and jumped to the floor. His sore leg complained bitterly, and he cursed his forgetfulness. Although it was only four-thirty, there was already enough scattered light so that he could see his surroundings. Hobbling to the small door, he opened it a crack and carefully looked around. The wind was blowing hard and blocks of fog sailed across the recently mowed field in front of the barn. He could see neither animals nor humans, so he opened the door wider and went outside. As he moved along the narrow side of the rectangular barn, he noticed next to the door a large gate big enough for a horse-drawn cart or even a truck. It was locked tightly from the outside with a chain and an enormous padlock. He crouched to make himself less visible and moved to the corner of the structure, towards the side of the origin of the noise. Cautiously he peered around the corner, and saw a small pine tree swaying in the storm, one of its branches scraping almost rhythmically against the side of the barn. He moved to it, took out his knife and was about to cut off the offending branch when he thought better of it. Instead he pulled off several small twigs so that the tree was freed from contact with the wall. He was even careful to scatter these as he removed them from the tree. Immediately afterward he returned to the barn, again covered his face with the parachute silk and buried himself in the hay. In spite of the continuing whistling as the wind blew through the roof structure of the barn, Jeff managed to go back to sleep.

CHAPTER 3

Later in the morning loud voices awakened him. Startled, he nearly made the mistake of sitting up, but his silk-wrap reminded him of the need for caution. The speakers’ sounds were muffled as they traveled through the hay. At first, Jeff thought that it was German that he heard, but soon, to his relief, he recognized that it was Dutch, though not the variety he had learned in school. Initially, the words he made out, farmers or workers talking to each other were of no interest to Jeff. Only occasionally did a phrase penetrate his mind.

"Got verdumme, Johan, get them horses out of here. There’s no room for us to move around."

A few seconds later he heard a clanging noise as if a cart was being moved over the hardened ground.

Stack these bales over there.

Okay, okay I’m doing it.

Where the hell is Dijk?

How the hell should I know? He is probably taking a leak.

Later there was some banter about sexual exploits involving a woman named Marijka, but Jeff paid little attention. His interest was suddenly aroused when he heard one of the voices ask:

What the hell did the goddamn Germans want at your place last night?

They said that they were looking for an escaped murderer.

Did you believe that garbage?

Hell, no. I would not believe anything them guys say. Shit, there is something weird going on. I have seen them bastards around here before. Soldiers and cops. They show up late in the evening and sometimes hang around till morning. And last night I heard some plane flying right over the house. Maybe you guys heard it too. Must have been flying very low because all of a sudden he made one hell of a racket. I thought the pilot was going to slam into our place. It’s funny, because for a while I could not hear a thing, but then his engines started up again. Come to think of it, the other times I saw the Germans here, I also heard a noisy plane.

Well, what do you think they were looking for?

Hell, who knows? And with the soldiers was a guy in civilian clothes. But he is no goddamn civilian. I seen him around, right in Zeist, strutting in a uniform. Must be some big shot! Even had a car, an Opel, with a driver.

Jeff knew only too well that the Germans were not looking for a murderer but for a British agent. Presumably, they would be making a major effort to find him. Soon, he thought, the area will be swarming with Germans, soldiers and police from the nearby town of Zeist, probably with dogs trained to sniff out hiding humans. Staying in the barn for even a few days would be far too dangerous. Tomorrow at the latest, he had to be on his way. Fortunately, Hendrijk did not know his complete cover name, and he would have done his best not to provide his captors with an accurate physical description of Jeff. What he needed was a place to hide for a few days until the search for him was abandoned, and preferably one not too close to the drop zone. Jeff thought about the people that he knew when he and his family lived near the beach, just outside of The Hague, in a beach town called Scheveningen.

He had been quite unhappy when in the summer of 1936 his father, a sales manager for a Canadian aircraft manufacturer, was assigned to The Netherlands. Jeff’s family, his parents and he, had been living in France. He had become accustomed to the ways of the French; appreciated their food, particularly the cheeses, and enjoyed the wine he was allowed to drink, even in school. In many other ways the sixteen-year-old boy had found life in Paris exciting: the political passions, the feeling of being in the center of the world, at least as far as art and music were concerned. He had learned some French in school in his native Canada, in Toronto, but when as an eight year old he first moved to France, he found that he could understand nothing and say very little. Few of the people he encountered spoke English and the first few weeks were very lonely. But Jeff was a quick learner and his command of French improved rapidly, within a year to the point where new French acquaintances would have conversations with him for several minutes before they realized that he was not Parisian. In those days he was outgoing, and liked people. Several of his classmates in the all-boys’ Lycee became his friends. Yet he was only invited to the home of one of them, a boy who was not French, but Belgian. He fell in love with that schoolmate’s sister, kissed her several times and once even furtively touched her breasts. She quickly stopped him from proceeding any further. He knew that his mother would have been shocked had she found out about his behavior; it would have been contrary to her strict Calvinistic view of the purity of her child. He was less sure about his father’s attitude. He was away so much on business trips that at times he seemed a stranger. Not surprisingly, when Jeff heard about the impending move to The Netherlands, he was quite angry. He not only hated to give up his friends, but also dreaded having to learn a new language and attend yet another school.

In some ways Holland proved to be more attractive than he had anticipated. The house that his parents had rented was only a few meters from the beach that even in the summer attracted just a few hardy souls. Only on the very few days when the sun managed to penetrate the solid cloud cover did it become crowded. Then, it seemed to him, the entire population of The Hague, the nearby Dutch capital, swarmed to the seaside and occupied every available square meter of the soft white sand. Jeff, who had never lived near the ocean, found himself spending hours watching the waves, fascinated by the different patterns they made in the sand. He tried, unsuccessfully, to relate these to the tides and the direction and strength of the prevailing wind. To his surprise, he rather liked solitude and made no attempt to make friends with any of the many neighborhood children. His sociability turned to shyness. The first time he went swimming, he found the water of the Atlantic too cold for his taste, nothing like the comfortable temperatures of the piscines in Paris where he had learned to keep from drowning. But then he watched some of the neighborhood boys his age and even younger plunge into the waves and swim for extended periods, apparently enjoying themselves. His competitive spirit was aroused and he forced himself to spend more and more time in the water, swim longer and longer distances. He was not particularly vain, but during his first lonely months in Holland he examined his arms daily to see if he could detect an increase in the size of his muscles.

On one of the days when the sun did make an effort to perforate the gray sky, one of the locals, a lanky boy whose wet, blond hair partially covered his face, approached Jeff at the beach. Jeff had noticed him before and had wondered how a person with such a thin body managed to stay in the cold water for twenty to thirty minutes at a time. The boy, Jeff guessed him to be about his own age, wore dripping-wet, black swimming trunks that covered his upper thighs and almost reached his knees. In spite of a large towel wrapped around his shoulders he was shivering. He said something in rapid Dutch. Jeff’s parents had hired a tutor, a formidable woman in her forties, who came for an hour several times a week to teach the three of them the new language. She spoke slowly, carefully enunciating each word and repeated herself frequently. While he had begun to understand her carefully chosen expressions, the boy’s torrent of words left him completely bewildered. Without thinking he responded in French:

"Je suis désollé, mais je ne parle pas votre langue."

"Ah, tu est un Français?"

Non, je suis Canadien.

Then perhaps we can speak English. I much prefer it. My English is not well, but my French is very bad.

Jeff was delighted to find anyone with whom he could converse in his native tongue, even if the English was not ‘well’. In fact, the boy’s English was quite good.

I learned it in school. Five years. It should be better but, as my father tells me almost every day, I am lazy.

His name was Heinrich, Heinrich van Doorn.

My mother is German. And Heinrich was her father’s name. I guess my father met her on one of his many trips. Travel is his business, he explained. Anyway, everybody calls me Henk.

Jeff told him that his mother also came from a German family, although he did not know any of her German relatives. The two boys became good friends and frequently visited each other’s house. Henk lived only a few hundred yards from the Williamsons in a mansion at least twice the size of the six-room, two-story house that the Williamsons had rented. But then Henk had two sisters and three brothers. Jeff was impressed by the elaborate ironwork that covered the first floor windows of the van Doorn house and the baroque iron railings that surrounded the two balconies that faced the street. He also admired the carpeted staircase paneled in dark wood that led from the entrance hall to the upstairs bedrooms. The two boys, sometimes joined by Robert, one of Henk’s older brothers, swam together and held chess competitions. Jeff’s Dutch improved rapidly. Occasionally the three took the tram into The Hague, where they drank beer, walked through the red light district and talked about sex. Though none of them admitted it, they were all still virgins. Jeff feared that his parents might learn of these expeditions. He thought that his father would act annoyed, perhaps even furious, although he might secretly be amused. Jeff really did not worry too much about his father’s response. He was much more concerned with his mother’s likely reaction: disgust and contempt.

He smiled at the thought of the innocence of those days, although lying in the hay was decidedly uncomfortable. The injured leg objected to the awkward position that the soft hay had forced upon him, but he did not dare to move for fear of attracting attention. He was beginning to be very hungry. Time passed painfully slowly. He thought about his mission: backup for the radio operator, monitor German troop movements, prepare the underground for weapons-drops, train the Dutch in the use of the weapons, and assist in sabotage operations. How futile it all seemed now, almost absurd.

The voices from the floor reached him occasionally, but the conversation was limited to short phrases relating to the farmers’ work. His mind went back to the Scheveningen days.

Politics the boys discussed rarely. Jeff was by nature conservative, echoed his father’s view that the primary, perhaps only functions of government were to maintain law and order and to facilitate the growth of commerce. He found it natural, though gratifying, that Henk expressed similar views. There was one area, however, where they disagreed strongly, almost violently.

Hitler is building a bulwark against the Bolsheviks, Henk proclaimed one day, almost defiantly. The Dutch newspapers had been describing the vicious tactics used by the Nazis to discourage Germans from buying from stores owned by Jews. So he doesn’t like Jews. So what? His demeanor made it clear that he was not too fond of them either.

By a coincidence, only a few nights earlier Jeff had been listening to a visiting friend of his father’s, a fellow Canadian whom he called Uncle Bill. William Stephenson had been a decorated pilot in the Great War, a true hero. Jeff always enjoyed the stories he told about his exploits and greatly admired the man. So when the visitor spoke passionately about the dangers of German rearmament, predicted that Hitler, if not checked, would use whatever means necessary to achieve his expansionist ambitions, even if that meant starting a war, Jeff listened attentively. In France he had heard similar comments from left-leaning fellow students, but had paid little attention, dismissing their words as Red propaganda. But Stephenson was no wild-eyed radical. After leaving the military, he had created a worldwide business, trading in basic commodities, especially metals needed in aircraft manufacturing. In Canadian political terms he was in the conservative wing of the Conservative Party. His comments Jeff took seriously. He had also seen with considerable displeasure pictures of the frenzied Germans burning books whose authors he had really liked, among them Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and the ‘degenerate Jew’, Marcel Proust. So he was receptive to criticism of Hitler whom until then he had regarded as a clown, a poor imitation of Charlie Chaplin. After Stephenson’s comments, he took the Nazi dictator seriously, thinking that his actions might constitute a menace to his neighbors. Jeff talked to Stephenson about politics; and found out that although he feared Hitler, he equally disliked the Soviets, the Bolshevik menace, he called them.

The two youngsters almost came to blows over the leader of a country neither of them knew. Afterward, when they had made up, they agreed not to discuss either Germany or its leader ever again. The point became moot. In 1938 Jeff was sent back to Canada, to Montreal where he was to attend his father’s alma mater, McGill University. He intended, or rather his parents intended for him, to follow in his father’s footsteps and study international trade, economics and business administration.

Only a few months later his parents returned to Toronto. There they bought a house. The political situation in Europe had deteriorated to the point where they feared that war could break out at any moment. The fledgling student rarely visited his new home. On one of these visits he noticed that his parents now occupied different bedrooms. It did not particularly surprise him. For several years he had been aware of the absence of sensuality in their relationship.

Jeff and Henk wrote to each other, perhaps every other month, until the Nazis invaded Holland in May of 1940. After that all communication ceased.

I haven’t seen Henk in almost four years, Jeff thought to himself in his hayloft hideout. I wonder how he feels about the Germans now! Does he still admire Hitler? If I appeal to him for help, would he betray me?

Perhaps an allergy to hay caused Jeff to be seized by a sneezing fit. He did his best to muffle the noise, pinched his nostrils and doubled the layer of silk over his face. Finally he was able to control it.

Did you hear that screwy noise that seemed to come from up there? Almost sounded like somebody blowing his goddamn nose, Jeff heard and feared immediate discovery.

"Oh, it’s probably just the verdumme wind. Or do you think that it is the murderer the Germans were looking for?"

If it’s him I ain’t gonna go take a look. No need to give him a chance to practice on me. There was laughter from more than one voice.

Ah, just forget it and do your work. I bet it was nothing.

Sometime later Jeff heard noises that indicated that the workmen were leaving. The heavy door shook the building as the wind caught it and blew it shut. Soon afterward the only noise Jeff heard was the whistling of the wind as it blew through the rafters of the barn.

CHAPTER 4

About an hour after the workmen left, Jeff crawled out of his hideout. He had decided that he had to leave the barn as soon as practicable. Not that he thought that any of the workmen would approach the Germans and inform them about the possible presence of their quarry. But it was not impossible that one of them might mention, either at home or in a bar, the curious noise that they had heard. It was a humorous story, especially the fear shown by one of them, and as such might be spread around until an informant would hear the talk and alert the Dutch police or, worse yet, the Germans. Now Jeff had to decide whether to leave immediately, or wait till early the next morning. He knew that civilians without proper permits were forbidden to be in the street between eleven and five. Thus leaving now entailed the danger of being picked up for curfew violation. On the other hand if he left now he could put a few kilometers between the barn and himself before the Germans might arrive. After weighing the pros and cons, he decided to leave immediately.

To be able to move quickly, he needed to travel as lightly as possible. Jeff assembled his belongings to see if he could discard any of them. There was no question about leaving behind any of his food. In spite of his hunger he did not open any of the few cans of meat that he had, knowing that he would need all he had and probably more. Similarly, tobacco and cigarette paper were not to be left behind. The parachute silk might make valuable trading material, so he used the knife that was part of his equipment to cut out several squares and started to stuff these into his pack. Then he hesitated. If he were searched at a road block, possession of these might be incriminating evidence. Finally he decided that taking them was worth the risk. The catalogs and the tools could reinforce his claim that he worked for Siemens und Halske, but the extra vacuum tubes had lost their value and he discarded them. The gold pieces he fastened to his right leg using some of the tape from his medical kit. SOE had provided him with several hundred guilders and he stuck the notes into his socks and the few coins into one of his pant pockets.

If you want to appear like a Dutch farmer, don’t throw your money around. Life is not easy for them and they take good care of what they have, an instructor at Ringway had said when he handed Jeff the money. And always count money twice whenever you are buying anything. Let others know that you value it.

The remainder of the medical kit went into the backpack. Carrying the Walther, he decided, was too dangerous. He doubted that he would ever have the chance of using a pistol and its likely discovery during a search would be disastrous. It joined the parachute harness and the useless vacuum tubes as well as the large ‘killing’ knife. He had a smaller one and he strapped that on his right lower thigh so that it covered one of the gold pieces. He decided, in spite of the admonition in the training manual, to keep the map. All his extra clothes, dirty or not, including his raincoat and hat, he stuffed into the pack. The few objects that he had decided to abandon he buried deeply in the hay.

It was now eight o’clock. Jeff decided it was time to go. He figured that many of the local farmers would be eating their evening meal, giving him a better chance to leave the area undetected. He cautiously opened the barn door and, seeing no one, stepped outside. He took a final drink of water from the cattle-trough, filled his canteen and stored it in the backpack. He started to walk over the potato field towards the west. His wound still bothered him, prevented him from going as fast as he would have liked. As he passed a pile of cow dung he remembered an old trick he had learned when he went hunting with his father in the north of Ontario.

If you want to cover your tracks so that animals won’t know that you have been there, smear the bottoms of your boots with animal shit, the guide his father had hired told them.

There was a possibility that the Germans might have already been alerted about his hiding place and would bring dogs to trace him. By stepping into the cow manure he hoped to throw them off their track. In the barn he had found a rusty old hoe, and he carried that to enhance his appearance as a local farmer. After only a few minutes’ walk across a field densely planted with potatoes, he came to a small, unpaved road. Now he had to decide whether to follow it and make good time, or continue on the slower cross-country trek. His map indicated that the road led to Zeist. From the conversation he had overheard in the barn he suspected that a German military intelligence detachment was likely to be stationed in that