The Vatican Pimpernel (15 page)

They debated the situation. Derry and O'Flaherty were of the view that the request to meet Iride was a trap whereas Pollak felt he should go because it was the only way to find out what was happening. Finally, at noon, he left to keep his meeting with her. The arrangement was that if the Monsignor had not heard from him by mid-afternoon, they could assume that he had fallen into a trap. At 4.00 p. m., a young Italian arrived with a note which was to be handed only to Patrick (the code name for Derry). This caused great alarm because they felt now it was another trap. Eventually they agreed that the best one to go down was Furman. Derry had very little Italian and it would be too risky to involve the Monsignor. When Furman went down he managed to persuade the young Italian to hand over the note. It confirmed that Iride had been captured, as had her mother, her sister and her own child. She had asked Pollak, using his codename Giuseppe, to come to see her because it was the only way to ensure the survival of her family. In the letter she stated:

When Pollak arrived at Iride's boarding house he immediately sensed that he was going into a dangerous situation and made a run for it. A chase through the city ensued, ending when Pollak attempted to enter a building. He spoke to the porter in Italian: ‘I am an escaped British soldier. Please help me.' Since he was small and dark, very Italian-looking and dressed in civilian clothes, the porter thought he was a thief on the run from the police and replied in Italian ‘and I am the Pope'. Pollak was captured. In the excitement of the phone call which Adrienne Lucidi received, she had forgotten that Payonne had mentioned that Pollak should not keep this appointment.

O'Flaherty and Derry realised this was a time of great danger for the organisation. While they were certain Pollak would never betray them, Iride's situation was particularly difficult bearing in mind that her entire family had been captured. Of all the various local helpers they had, she was one of those who knew most about the activities of Monsignor O'Flaherty and Major Derry. The fact that Iride and Pollak had been taken back to Sulmona the next day was reassuring to some extent. It almost certainly meant that the Germans were still investigating what was happening in that area and had not managed to obtain information about what was going on in Rome, either from Pollak or Iride. However, it was always possible that Iride would disclose information in the days ahead, so Derry made the decision to clear out the Via Chelini apartment.

The next blow to the organisation, ironically, was not aimed at it at all. One of the major preoccupations of the Gestapo at that time was to try and capture as many of the Italian Communists based in Rome as they could. During the morning of Saturday 8 January, two plain-clothes officers called on a widow whose Communist son was in the Regina Coeli prison. They introduced themselves as members of the Resistance and she of course did not realise they were actually from the Gestapo. They told her they had just been released from the prison and they had arranged a plan to assist with the escape of her son who was being constantly tortured. The plan was that her son would pretend to break down under questioning and offer to lead the Germans to the hideout of his Communist friends. His friends, however, would be ready and, in the ambush, the Germans would be killed and the prisoner, her son, would escape. Her part in this scheme was to get all her son's Communist friends together and arrange for the ambush. This she agreed to do, in her innocence. She took them along to meet Nabolante, who was a leader of the Italian Resistance, but also was one of those who regularly housed people for O'Flaherty. At that stage, he had living with him the two British army men, ‘Tug' Wilson and ‘Pip' Gardner whom Furman had waved to on the night of the opera. Within minutes, uniformed SS men arrived and arrested Nabolante, together with Wilson and Gardner. They left behind some Gestapo agents with Nabolante's cook, who was an old man and not difficult to frighten. This old man knew of the existence of the apartments in the Via Firenze and Via Chelini and indeed, even more dangerously, knew of the secret code via the doorbell which was used to gain admission. Furman in the meantime had arrived at the Via Chelini billet to arrange for it to be vacated in accordance with Derry's decision. Shortly afterwards, Nabolante's cook arrived with the two men who had originally deceived the widow. When they arrived, Furman answered the door and the cook told him that Gardner and Wilson had been arrested. It struck Furman as curious that two men were there also because obviously the cook could have delivered that message himself.

Arrested immediately were five officers, two privates, one American Air Force sergeant, Bruno Buchner the Yugoslav and Herta the Austrian girl who acted as housekeeper and, of course, Furman.

His first thought was how to get a message of warning to Derry and also how to keep Simpson away because the latter was due back at that apartment within the next few minutes. As all those who had been captured were lined up, he noticed that two soldiers who had been in the basement, Lance-Corporal Dale and Gunner Jones, had not been captured. He hoped that they had got away to convey the information to Derry. He also heard the doorbell stutter once or twice and then stop.

It emerged subsequently that Bill Simpson had indeed rung the bell but while he was waiting for an answer the porter had signalled to him frantically from her room not to go upstairs. He was actually out of sight on the first floor landing when the flat door was opened and he saw the German soldier trying the bell. The two men who had been located in the basement had indeed managed to escape and made their way to the Swiss Legation to pass on the details of the ambush. They then left the Legation but were picked up again by a police check shortly afterwards. Meanwhile, an army Major called D'Arcy Mander, who was due to stay at the flat that night, returned and was also arrested. He, however, managed to make his escape and was never recaptured.

Eventually the two soldiers decided that Mander would have to wait until the captain arrived to question him.

Mander went on to spend the remainder of his time in Rome as an undercover agent for the advancing forces. While he sought O'Flaherty's help from time to time for people he came across, he, like others, specifically avoided involving the Monsignor in any of the espionage in which he was engaged or in supporting it in any way, financially or otherwise.

Meanwhile Simpson hurried to get word back to the Monsignor.

This breach of security in the escape organisation caused great concern to Derry and O'Flaherty.

‘His vehemence surprised me; but he was deadly serious,' Simpson recalled later. There was, of course, always the danger that the Germans would raid the Monsignor's accommodation. It was only extra-territorial, and so was not, strictly speaking, part of the Vatican. From the street outside there was no obstacle to anyone wishing to carry out a raid. He had always refused to keep firearms. He did, however, keep a coil of rope under his bed. In the event of a raid, his hope was that he would be able to escape through the window down into the courtyard.

On the way by lorry to the Regina Coeli prison, using a blanket on his lap as cover, Furman managed to tear his identity documents and his notebook with coded addresses and telephone numbers of the organisation into tiny fragments and pushed the bits, a few at a time, out of the lorry. In the prison, Furman learned that the cook had also led the Germans to the Via Firenze apartment where three South Africans were arrested.

It was now of the utmost importance to establish whether other locations had been raided or not. O'Flaherty sat down at his desk and, working the telephone for a number of hours, contacted every one of his priests and clerical students to warn them of the position and also asked them to check on the billets insofar as they could. In general, the billets were with private families and a visit from a priest would not be suspicious. Even if the billet had been detected by the Germans, a visiting priest would not necessarily be compromised. There was a worry that, if a large number of the billets were under observation, and they were all visited by priests during the course of one day, eventually the German intelligence work would point clearly to O'Flaherty. So all the priests were warned that they should not enter any billet unless they were reasonably sure it was not being watched. Those of O'Flaherty's helpers who had Vatican passes, which allowed them to bypass the curfew, worked through the night walking swiftly from home to home and being very careful to keep an eye out for SS or Koch's men. At dawn, more went into action. The most dangerous task was assigned to Fr Owen Sneddon, the New Zealander, as he had to check out the Via Firenze apartment which was felt to be the one most at risk. He approached it very slowly, taking good care to observe everything around him. As luck would have it, just as he reached the property, he managed to see the Italian porter whose face clearly conveyed to him that there was a problem and so he passed the apartment entrance and continued to walk down the street. The porter eventually caught up with him and explained that the Via Firenze apartment had been raided. In the succeeding hours and days however, it became clear that this was the limit of the breach of the organisation's security as all the priests reported back that the other locations were safe.

New security arrangements were immediately put in place by Derry. Escapees were moved to different billets and a strict limit was put on the amount of knowledge available to those who were assisting the groups. The total picture was known only to O'Flaherty, Simpson and Derry. Clearly, however, Kappler, Koch and their associates knew what was going on in general terms. Intimation of this came in the form of an invitation to O'Flaherty to attend a reception at the Hungarian Embassy. This particular Embassy was one that the Germans often chose for informal diplomatic activities. Accepting this invitation would involve O'Flaherty leaving the sanctuary of his accommodation and there was a suspicion it might be a trap, given recent developments. However, in typical fashion, he decided to attend. As it turned out, there were not many guests but the German Ambassador was one of them. Towards the end of the evening, von Weizsaecker asked the Monsignor for a quiet word. The Ambassador explained to the Monsignor that they knew precisely the activities he was involved in so, while the Ambassador would guarantee him safe conduct back to the Vatican that night, he added, ‘If you ever step outside Vatican territory again, on whatever pretext, you will be arrested at once. Despite the consequences one could foresee, that decision has been agreed in your case and I cannot alter it. Now will you please think about what I have said?'
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