The Suitcase by Frances Stonor Saunders

Author:Frances Stonor Saunders [Saunders, Stonor Frances]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473552722
Publisher: Random House

The first to be taken was Jock Anderson, who disappeared from Ploies‚ti on Tuesday 24 September. The following night John and Esther Treacy also disappeared, as did Reginald Young, refinery engineer, and Charles Brasier, both of Romano Americana, and Mr E. Bowden, the drilling superintendent of the Unirea company. Their whereabouts were a mystery for forty-eight hours, after which they were delivered to the headquarters of the Sigurant‚a (State Security) in Bucharest, at which belated point the British Consul was informed. His request for immediate access to the prisoners, now formally accused of being part of a spy network, was denied: the ‘interrogation’ that had begun in some obscure Iron Guard barracks had yet to be ‘completed’.

It was a week before the consul was finally given permission to visit the detainees, and then only for a few short minutes. All had been subjected to ‘highly irregular procedures’19 and ‘third-degree methods’: they could barely stand properly (blow-lamps had been applied to their feet) or use their arms, which had been wrenched from their sockets from the strain of being hung up on a wall with their elbows tied behind them. They had been given nothing to eat or drink and could only speak in whispers. Esther Treacy, who was being held on her own in a three-foot by three-foot cell, had been pistol-whipped and repeatedly punched in the face. Her husband, John, aged fifty-six, had been tortured so badly that he later needed several operations. It was soon evident that the arrests and interrogations had been carried out by the Iron Guard under the supervision of the Gestapo.

In London the Foreign Office decided to compile a list of ‘suitable Romanians in this country for possible arrest as a retaliatory measure’, but MI5 couldn’t produce any names because their card index of Romanians had been destroyed in the Blitz. New Scotland Yard helpfully stepped in with a list of eleven possible candidates, but cautioned that numbers one and eleven were unsuitable as they had fought with the Romanian Army when Romania was ‘on our side in the last war’; two others had left the country, and three seemed to be anti-Nazi and pro-British. That left numbers three, five, eight and ten, all of whom ‘should be eliminated at once since their names appear unmistakably Jewish’. Probably the only instance in history in which a sentence coupling the words ‘eliminate’ and ‘Jewish’ signalled good news. No further action.

Meanwhile Alexander Miller, the administrator of the Astra Romana refinery, had been snatched from the company’s sports club at Snagov, near Bucharest. He was taken to his office, then to his flat, and finally to the Sigurant‚a, by which time his face had been repeatedly slashed with a blade. He was then subjected to further torture. When a legation official managed to get access several days later, Miller looked ‘pitifully dejected’. As did Percy Clark, whose kidnappers, three men with revolvers, had broken into his room at the Athénée Palace, where they gave the sixty-year-old a

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