The Saboteur: True Adventures Of The Gentleman Commando Who Took On The Nazis. Paul Kix

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СКАЧАТЬ on him. The agency described him as an “adventurer” who had once used his military permit at the Alexandra Hotel in Hyde Park as the means to gain whiskey; he’d told the barman it wouldn’t be long before he worked for MI5. The report also said that before the war Piquet-Wicks had had pro-Nazi leanings, but that wasn’t the reason the agency stayed away from hiring him. “We considered him unsuitable for employment on Intelligence duties, in view of his indiscreet behavior,” the report stated.

      MI6, the famed spy agency, then began asking about Piquet-Wicks in July 1940, the idea being that he was an intelligent if unstable man whose dexterity with languages—he also knew some Portuguese and Italian—might still benefit Britain. But again a concern over indiscretion surfaced, and MI6 kept its distance, with one agent even saying Piquet-Wicks didn’t have “enough guts to be an adventurer.”

      He may have stayed in Northern Ireland, living in a former brewery where “it was difficult to feel embarked in a war of … consequence,” he later wrote, were it not for a new security service that was in need of qualified agents.

      Piquet-Wicks’s new life began one day in April 1941 at 3 a.m., pulling night duty in Belfast as a punishment for marching too far ahead of his company in drills. The phone rang. He didn’t think to answer it, but the ringing wouldn’t stop and so he picked up.

      “Have you a Second Lieutenant Piquet-Wicks?” a man said. Piquet-Wicks thought this had to be someone in the mess pulling his leg.

      “I am the poor bastard,” he said.

      The shocked splutterings on the other end made Piquet-Wicks realize this was someone official. Startled, he hung up.

      The phone rang again.

      “Inniskilling,” Piquet-Wicks said, trying another tactic.

      “Have you a Second Lieutenant Piquet-Wicks with the battalion?” the same voice said, but angrier.

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Where is he? A few minutes ago I had someone on this line. I thought—”

      Piquet-Wicks broke in, saying this was the night duty officer speaking. “The officer you are calling is undoubtedly asleep,” he said. “Shall I wake him for you, sir?”

      “Of course not, at this hour,” said the caller, who was a colonel from the Northern Ireland district. “Take note that he should report to the War Office … at 1500 hours on Friday the fourth.”

      The War Office was in London, and the fourth was the next day.

      In the morning, Piquet-Wicks went to his superior, to see what to make of the message. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to continue your disciplinary training as night duty officer,” the superior said, his eyes twinkling. “However, good luck and good-bye.”

      If Piquet-Wicks were to make it to London, he would have to catch the next boat, which departed before he could properly gather all his things, or comprehend why he needed to rush to the capital.

      When he arrived at the given room inside the War Office, he met with a general, who said the British were establishing a new department—unlike MI5 and MI6, and unlike anything seen before. “I was to be seconded to a secret organization,” Piquet-Wicks later wrote, “to become involved in events whose existence I had never suspected.”

      On his walk now with La Rochefoucauld, almost two years later, Piquet-Wicks implied he would like Robert to work under him, as an agent in his branch of this secret organization, which he had built up almost single-handedly. More details and the particulars of missions would be disclosed if and when La Rochefoucauld made it through training.

      “Here is my address,” Piquet-Wicks said.

      He was “surprisingly close to each prospective agent,” he later admitted, and La Rochefoucauld sensed the humanity behind the spy’s implacable eyes. Like virtually every French agent whose life was to be guided and ultimately transformed by Eric Piquet-Wicks, Robert liked the man with the goofy smile immensely. So he thought it best to level with him. He said he had to seek out de Gaulle and ask the general’s advice on joining a British agency out to save France.

      Robert didn’t know how closely Piquet-Wicks worked with the Free French forces. He was taken aback when Piquet-Wicks not only agreed to the sensibility of the meeting but offered him directions to Carlton Gardens, de Gaulle’s headquarters in London.

      “If you get to meet him,” Piquet-Wicks said, “ask him what you need to ask him, then come meet me.” The display of camaraderie eased La Rochefoucauld’s mind and pushed him ever closer to joining the British.

      No. 4 Carlton Gardens sat amid two blocks of impeccable terraced apartments, their white-stone façades overlooking St. James Park, the oldest of London’s eight Royal Parks. Built on the order of King George IV in the early 1800s and designed by architect John Nash, the rows of four-story buildings collectively called Carlton House Terrace had been home to many a proper Londoner over the years—earls and lords and even Louis-Napoléon in 1839. The German embassy occupied 7–9 Carlton Gardens until the outbreak of World War II. In 1941, during an air raid, a bomb fell on No. 2 Carlton House Terrace, leaving its roof open and exposed for the rest of the fighting. No. 4 Carlton Gardens housed de Gaulle’s Free French forces, and one didn’t need to look for the address to know who worked there. A French soldier in full military fatigues, rifle at his side and a helmet on his head, stood guard outside the entrance, itself marked by the Cross of Lorraine, which the Knights Templar had once carried during the Crusades but which was now the symbol of the Free French movement.

      Robert kept his appointment, arranged by the Brits, with an aide of de Gaulle’s. La Rochefoucauld mentioned his family name, “which may have possibly facilitated things,” he wrote, and because de Gaulle’s daily schedule allowed for fugitive Frenchmen who wanted to see him, Robert was told he would meet with the general that afternoon. He gulped.

      The interior was all dark wood and high Gothic ceilings—an airy space with lots of natural light but poor insulation. In the winter, the Free French, across four floors, each nearly three thousand square feet, shivered in their huge rooms.

      When the hour came, the secretary asked La Rochefoucauld if he was ready, and they climbed an ornate stairwell to a landing where doors led first to the offices of De Gaulle’s aide-de-camp, and then past those to the general’s own quarters. La Rochefoucauld’s heart thrummed in his chest.

      Then the door opened and there he was. The man whose voice over the last few years Robert had heard scores of times, The soul of Free France, La Rochefoucauld thought. He sat behind his desk, peering over his glasses, with a look that asked, Now what might this one want? СКАЧАТЬ