Miller Caldwell - A Reluctant Spy

‘Hilda, welcome home,’ shouted a familiar voice. ‘Welcome to Northolt.’

She was very pleased indeed to see both Dynes and Thornton. They jumped out of the car and hurried forward, hands outstretched to shake hers. Their welcoming smiles reassured her: they knew which side she was really on, and that was all that mattered at that moment.

‘It’s getting late. We will return tomorrow at ten a.m. and we can debrief then. There is RAF accommodation here for you. Is that all right?’

‘Perfect. I have a lot to tell you, but better to do it after a good night’s sleep, I think.’

‘I’ve left a wee dram, as you might say, by your bedside,’ said Dynes. ‘To make sure you sleep soundly.’

At breakfast next morning Hilda was the only woman in the dining room apart from the kitchen staff. The sky-blue clad airmen at the other tables cast curious looks in her direction from time to time, trying to guess why she was there. She tried to ignore them, but it was not easy. Perhaps she reminded them of their mothers, while she saw many of them as Otto’s contemporaries.

She had had a restless night despite Dynes’ tot of whisky. She had deliberately lain awake for a while, trying to create some kind of order out of everything she had observed in Germany and Portugal, in preparation for her debriefing. She was certainly not at her best in the morning; what little sleep she had was hardly refreshing when she sat with cupped hands over a cup of tea the following morning at breakfast. The only washroom she had found was full of shaving airmen. She wondered how long they would keep her here, and what would happen next. Much as she longed to see Otto again, she was certain they would not send her back to Germany.

She sat in the dining room with her a mug of tea, keeping an eye open for the arrival of Dynes and Thornton. It was some ten minutes before ten when they appeared. They exchanged pleasantries. Then Thornton led the way to a hut in the grounds.

It was a well-appointed hut, carpeted, with toilet facilities on the right as they entered, and a room with a table in the centre as well as a blazing coal fire which must have been lit an hour or so ago. A full coal bucket lay beside the fireguard.

They sat down at the table, Hilda on one side and Dynes and Thornton on the other.

‘I must say finding you were in Portugal was a surprise. I look forward to you telling us about that,’ said Dynes. ‘But let’s go back to when you left Forres to return to Germany; that should be a good place to start.’

Her memory of the early days of her return to Hamburg was a little unclear. Her first recollection was the atmosphere. How National Socialism had grabbed the nation’s attention and how Hitler’s plans seemed to have the answers. His annexation of the Sudetenland was popular among Germans, as was the invasion of Poland. Many Germanic people lived in both countries and that was their excuse to invade. At that time they felt Britain was all bluff, more interested in protecting its own commonwealth than in coming to the defence of small European countries.

Her nose suddenly itched, and she opened her handbag and took out a handkerchief. She apologized.

‘German or British handkerchief?’ asked Dynes.

She laughed. ‘Portuguese, of course.’

The next thing she told them was how she earned the Eagle Civilian Cross with two swords. Both Dynes and Thornton were open-mouthed in utter astonishment.

‘Presented by Reinhardt Heydrich himself, I might add.’

‘Heydrich, by God,’ Thornton exclaimed. ‘Heydrich?’ he repeated. ‘Do you know about Operation Anthropoid?’

‘Anthropoid? No, can’t say I’ve heard of it.’

‘On the 4 thof June Heydrich was assassinated on the instruction of the exiled Czech government.’

‘Marvellous. I detested that man,’ she said with venom.

‘It was not a wholehearted success, Hilda. The reprisals have been brutal. They killed all males over sixteen at Lidice and Ležàky in Czechoslovakia.’

A chill seemed to fall over the room. Heydrich could make his influence felt from beyond the grave.

‘Anyway, you seem to have been appreciated by the Reich. How the hell did that come about?’ asked Dynes.

She recounted the tale Heydrich had told her, about how her late husband had served the Heydrich family. ‘He also intended the honour to ensure I stayed loyal to Germany.’

‘Think twice about who you show it to, won’t you?’ warned Dynes.

She nodded. ‘For the moment it remains in the hall cupboard in Hamburg,’ she assured them. ‘And when the war is over, it will be for your eyes only. Imagine if I had brought it with me and not shown it to you, and it fell out of my bag, or you searched my things and discovered that I had it?’

‘Yes, best to cover your tracks’ smiled Thornton. ‘You’re good at that. The medal can stay in Hamburg.’

Next, she told them about the training camp at Baden-Baden where she had met New York airline office official, Nancy Krause, Baltimore taxi driver Carl Jaeger and a Bronx cafe owner Max Becker.

‘It was from them I was receiving signals to relay to Berlin,’ she said. ‘They were all diehard Nazi supporters.’

Her voice cracked towards the end of the sentence and without warning, her shoulders began to shake and, tears filled her eyes. She could hold it off no longer and began to sob. For the first time over two stressful years, it seemed she had no fight left in her.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Thornton solicitously, patting her arm. She groped for her grubby handkerchief, and Dynes offered his immaculately pressed linen white one.

All the pent-up anxiety became unravelled: the strain of living under a false identity was only a small part of it. She knew she had embarrassed them. They had no idea what to do with her, but she could not stop the flow of tears. ‘I’m a murderer,’ she sobbed, shaking her head. ‘A murderer. I murdered so many people. I sank the SS Athenia … It was my fault… I murdered the crew.’

She had not, until this moment, appreciated the extent to which the Athenia ’s fate had been preying on her mind. However, in the back of her mind, she realised she had chosen the right time and place to fall to pieces; they now had a grandstand view of the stress she had been under. She hoped they would see her breakdown in a favourable light.

‘I think we should take a break,’ said Dynes. She thanked him, wiped the last of the tears from her face and held out his damp handkerchief.

‘I think you’d better keep it,’ he grinned. ‘A small gift from the British government.’

Dynes left the hut briefly and brought back a tray bearing three cups of tea. By the time he returned, Hilda had composed herself and it felt good to hold a warm cup of tea in her hands again.

‘The sinking of SS Athenia was not your fault, Hilda,’ Thornton said gently.

‘You don’t understand. I was not diligent enough. I did not interpret the numbers in time,’ she said, her guilt still showing in her forehead’s worry lines.

‘Yes, but what did you do when you did discover what they meant?’

She exhaled and her shoulders slumped. ‘I sent false coordinates to Berlin on my next transmission.’ Too little, and much too late, she thought.

‘You gave Berlin a false reading to save another ship from the same fate. Think of the people you saved.’

‘That was why I had to cut short my time in Portugal and get out of there before I sent more ships to the bottom of the Atlantic.’

Both men nodded their approval. ‘You left at the right time,’ said Dynes. ‘You did the right thing.’

‘That was when I drowned. Let me explain,’ she said and then gave a moment-by-moment recollection of her disappearance.