Operation Columba - The Secret Pigeon Service by Gordon Corera

Author:Gordon Corera [Corera, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062667076
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

12

Capture

THE MORNING OF May 6, 1942, in Brussels promised a beautiful spring day, one which Henri Michelli expected to prove busy. He had three meetings. In the morning, Michelli took Van Hooff to see the president of the local football club, FC Mechelen. For Van Hooff, this was not a chance for a kick-around. The president was a well-connected clergyman named Dessain. He and Van Hooff had clashed before the war over the journalist’s criticism of his leadership of the club, but now Van Hooff was welcomed and they began to chat eagerly, Van Hooff about England and Dessain about the club. Van Hooff gave Dessain a long questionnaire about relationships between the Church and the Nazi occupiers that had been drawn up by British intelligence. Dessain took the list and said he would fill it in later. He also promised to lay flowers on Van Hooff’s mother’s grave and say a Mass in her memory. If things went wrong, Van Hooff asked Dessain to ask for forgiveness from his father for abandoning his family for his mission.

The next day in Mechelen Van Hooff was due to see Cardinal van Roey, a strong royalist, in the hope of forging a link to the government-in-exile. Raskin had arranged the meeting. A crazy plan was hatched in which Van Hooff was to go to the cardinal’s palace in disguise, dressed as a priest wearing a cassock. It was an absurd disguise. He was well known in the town from his footballing days. But before that meeting could take place, events took a dramatic turn.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, Madame Roberts came to see Michelli at his office. She brought along a dark-haired woman in her thirties whom she had only recently gotten to know. The new friend had won Madame Roberts’s trust thanks to the help she had provided in supplying clothing, papers and coupons for the resistance. The two women and Michelli talked. Michelli mentioned that there was going to be something of a party later that evening. Madame Roberts’s friend left just after half past six.

Van Hooff and Marcel Thonus arrived at Michelli’s soon afterward in order to discuss their route back to England. The meeting was also a social get-together. That evening Michelli’s place would be filled with members of the secret world. Also present was another agent, Gérard Wauquez, along with Charles Morelle, who acted as a guide on the Comet line. Michelli’s secretary and girlfriend were there too. Members of a handful of networks were gathering to meet. The plan they discussed was for Morelle to meet Thonus and two English airmen—Larry Carr and Ron Shoebridge—the next day at a square in Brussels. He would then take them out on the Comet line along with messages from the various networks.

The gathering was unusually—dangerously—large, something of a farewell party for those planning to depart. The food spread out on the table was mouth-wateringly extravagant for people who were used to rations. Each person was to get two boiled eggs, and there was asparagus and bottles of fine wine brought up from the cellar.

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