Operation Tulip, page 1
About the Author
DEBORAH SWIFT is a USA TODAY bestselling author of historical fiction, a genre she loves. As a child, she enjoyed reading the Victorian classics such as Jane Eyre, Little Women, Lorna Doone and Wuthering Heights. She has been reading historical novels ever since, though she’s a bookaholic and reads widely – contemporary and classic fiction.
In the past, Deborah used to work as a set and costume designer for theatre and TV, so enjoys the research aspect of creating historical fiction, something she was familiar with as a scenographer. More details of her research and writing process can be found on her website www.deborahswift.com.
Deborah likes to write about extraordinary characters set against the background of real historical events.
Also by Deborah Swift
The Silk Code
UK
US
The Shadow Network
UK
US
Operation Tulip
DEBORAH SWIFT
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2024
Copyright © Deborah Swift 2024
Deborah Swift asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © September 2024 ISBN: 9780008586850
Version: 2024-05-16
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by Deborah Swift
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Note to Readers
Chapter 1: Amsterdam, Holland; October 1944
Chapter 2: Baker Street, London
Chapter 3: The Hague; November 1944
Chapter 4
Chapter 5: London; December 1944
Chapter 6: The Hague
Chapter 7: Bedfordshire, England
Chapter 8: The Hague
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13: Allied Zone, Holland
Chapter 14
Chapter 15: The Hague
Chapter 16
Chapter 17: Geffen, Allied Zone; January 1945
Chapter 18: Dordrecht, Holland, Occupied Zone
Chapter 19: The Hague
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22: Dordrecht, Occupied Zone; February 1945
Chapter 23: The Hague
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27: Amsterdam
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43: April 1945
Chapter 44: May 1945
A Letter from Deborah Swift
Keep Reading …
Historical Note
Acknowledgements
Dear Reader …
About the Publisher
For Josephine
Note to Readers
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Chapter 1
Amsterdam, Holland
October 1944
Nancy glanced through the slash of rain to where Josef, tall and dark in a belted raincoat, was checking the others were in position. He stooped to tie a shoelace as he came out from the shelter of the weigh-house – one of the oldest buildings in Amsterdam, with its distinctive pointed towers. He looked up briefly and Nancy silently returned his gaze before checking her watch.
She was taut with nerves. 4.25 pm. Obermayer should appear at any moment.
As an agent Nancy often worked solo, but she’d agreed to this mission because she was the only one of her Resistance friends who knew what Obermayer looked like – a short, stout Nazi with an unmistakeable pouchy face. She’d recognise his calculated expression of mild surprise anywhere. It was designed to make you think him merely a bland civil servant, and not the most feared torturer in the Dutch SS.
Time to go. As she walked down the street, she glanced to the news stand to see another of their men reading the headlines on the front of the booth. She’d already seen Wim, sheltering by the tram stop, and Eva was waiting with the van, just around the corner.
Nancy strolled down the road towards the bank where Obermayer was due to meet one of what he called his V-men – informers who infiltrated the Dutch Resistance to sell their secrets to the Nazis. According to her intelligence, Obermayer met the same man every week at 4.30 outside the bank.
All she had to do now was to identify Obermayer by stopping as soon as she saw him, and opening up her handbag – and her comrades would do the rest and bundle him, and any accomplice, into the van. Once they had him, by God, they’d get the name of any traitor and give him what was coming to him. Hence this kidnap. A horrible job, but necessary. As she passed the bank doorway, she clocked a man waiting there.
A sharp intake of breath. Elmo. Oh no. Not one of their own?
A ripple of shock went down her back but she didn’t pause her step. Bastard. So he was a double agent, one of the snakes in their midst. And there he was, waiting for Obermayer, cool as you like, smoking and shuffling his feet.
Her heels clacked on the pavement as she walked through the puddles, her head turned away from Elmo, as she hid under the brimmed hat that shaded her eyes. Still, the smell of his foul French tobacco drifted by her face.
No sign of Obermayer. He was late.
Josef and the rest would be tense; it was hard to look as if you were an innocent bystander when you were waiting to kidnap someone.
A heavy-set man walked around the corner and Nancy’s heart lurched. She gripped her bag, ready to open it.
Not Obermayer. Her hand relaxed.
She’d got to the end of the row of buildings. She sensed the men’s stares of impatience on her back. As if she’d forgotten something, she clapped a hand to her mouth and turned on her heel to return down the street. She walked more briskly now, swerving past other pedestrians, but the noise of footsteps slapping behind her made her stiffen.
A bulk of a man hurried by, beige overcoat flapping. He walked with a slight turnout of the feet, the neck thick as a tree trunk. It was Obermayer, she was certain, but he’d caught her by surprise and she couldn’t see his face. She had to be sure.
She speeded her step. He was ahead of her, striding towards Elmo at the bank. She passed a long queue of drab women queuing outside the grocer’s on the off-chance of a food delivery.
The man stopped at the bank, which had dripping Nazi flags and a colonnaded portico where Elmo was leaning against a pillar. Obermayer dropped a hand on his shoulder in a familiar way and said something she couldn’t hear. Elmo smiled, spat out his cigarette butt, and ground it in the wet with the toe of his shoe.
Seconds later, a young boy leapt out from the queue to snatch up the butt. It provided just the diversion that Nancy needed. She risked a glance up to look directly into the man’s face. Obermayer. No mistaking him.
Now! She fumbled with the clasp on her handbag and brought out a handkerchief to wipe her nose, leaving the bag gaping open.
The noise of the van starting up and then a door opening. Her Resistance friends had seen the signal.
Obermayer glanced up at the old gas-powered fish van parked a little further down the road. His lips tightened and his gaze snapped to meet hers. His eyes were grey and knowing.
‘Excuse me,’ he said swiftly to Elmo, and abruptly, he began to walk away, powering down the street.
He’d smelled a rat, and there was nothing she could do. Should she follow? Already, she was conscious of her men moving on the street, closing in. They had to catch him where they could get him to the van, which was kerb-crawling close behind him. Elmo, the double-crossing swine, had melted away into the bank.
A glimpse of her friend Josef. He had the chloroform bottle in his pocket. He swung out to follow his quarry who was heading briskly for the Apollolaan Hotel, a Nazi stronghold, close to where five canals meet.
But Obermayer didn’t get far before Josef leapt at him.
‘Gestapo!’ Obermayer shouted, trying to summon help as he swung his fists at the men wrestling to pin him down and disarm him. He was still trying to get to his gun, but Wim was trying to crush his hands together.
Josef brought out the bottle of chloroform and the rag and unstoppered it, just as her friend Wim swung his fist to hit the big man. Obermayer reeled, cannoned into Josef and the chloroform bottle shot out of Josef’s hand.
A sharp inhalation as the glass shattered. No. Don’t let him get away.
The pavement glinted with shards of glass and running liquid, as Obermayer lurched out of their grasp.
Nancy ran towards them, uncertain what they could do now, but knowing the plan had failed. Obermayer drew a pistol from his coat and aimed it at Wim.
But before he could fire, two cracks. Eva, who had been in the getaway van, had panicked, drawn out a revolver and fired two shots out of the window.
Obermayer hit the ground like a collapsed building, his head smacking on to the pavement. One bullet had gone through his head, the other his neck.
Shit. The sound of the revolver instantly brought the Greens running. Like lice, they emerged from the side streets and buildings, shouting ‘Stop! Stay where you are!’
The Greens were the Ordnungspolizei, the Order Police in green uniform who worked for Nazi Germany and were responsible for carrying out Nazi orders. They were tasked with the arrest, execution or deportation of what they called ‘Enemies of the Reich’.
Already Nancy’s friends were scattering, leaving Obermayer’s body as a heap on the pavement. Wim jumped into the van, as Josef set off running and Eva reversed as fast as she could, foot hard on the gas pedal. Nancy was already on the move as she saw Josef dodge between the military trucks that had appeared from nowhere, and hare off alongside the canal. A patrol, alerted by the disturbance, was ready for him and cut off the route. He was surrounded by Wehrmacht helmets within seconds.
In the distance she saw Koos, one of their lookouts, being led away to a truck. She must get out of there. But slow. Act calm. Nothing to do with me.
She increased her pace and stepped straight into the chest of one of the Greens.
‘Name?’
‘Hendrika van Hof.’ Her sixth false name.
‘Did you see what happened there?’
‘No,’ Nancy said. ‘I just saw trouble. I was going to work, and now I must go another way.’
The man, a grizzled-looking man in his forties, looked her up and down. ‘Where d’you work?’
Her cover story was solid now. ‘The Prinsengracht Hospital.’
‘But that’s the other side of the city. What are you doing here on Nieuwmarkt?’
‘I needed to buy some press-studs from the market,’ she said, smiling pleasantly though light-headed with fear.
‘Well, Nurse Van Hof, you want to have dinner with me?’
She blinked. With him? He was old. The thought was repulsive. The question had come out of the blue and she didn’t know how to answer.
‘I will have to take you in for questioning,’ he said. ‘Or, you could answer my questions over dinner.’
He had a self-satisfied smugness about him that made her want to punch him, but she knew she had no choice but to agree. All women had no choice but to agree with the police in this war. And besides, it would look more suspicious if she turned down a free dinner. Not now northern Holland was cut off from their food supply lines. ‘That would be very nice,’ she said.
‘Tomorrow night at seven o’clock. Hotel de Gerstekorrel, near Dam Square. Okay?’
‘Thank you.’
‘And I’ll need your papers.’
In case I run away. She’d understood. Damn. She’d have to hand them over. She opened her bag for the second time that day and took out the papers. They were forged of course. Would he notice? Sweat gathered under the neck of her coat.
He took them and glanced at them again. ‘Aah, Hendrika.’ He rolled her name round his tongue. ‘I will see you tomorrow.’
‘Call me Rika,’ she said.
The man puffed himself up, pleased. Ugh. Every power-crazed Dutch creep had allied himself with the Nazis. ‘And I am Dirk. Dirk van Meveren. If anyone asks, tell them I have your papers. They will be returned to you tomorrow. I look forward to our dinner.’
*
Nancy got off the streets as soon as she could. Breathless, she fled to Karel’s ironmongery shop, a safe house where their resistance cell usually met. Karel was an old hand; he’d been in the Resistance in Amsterdam since the very beginning, whereas she’d only been in Holland for just over a year. Good going – they expected wireless operators to last only a few months.
She burst into his back room without knocking. ‘We failed,’ she told him. ‘Obermayer is dead.’
‘Dead you say.’ Karel – old, moustachioed, ground down by years of war – paced up and down the counter, occasionally slapping a veined hand down on its surface. Of course now there was barely any stock, the Germans had taken it all to repurpose for weaponry or to prevent the Resistance from doing the same, so the place was hung only with brooms and scrubbing brushes behind its wooden shutters.
‘Eva and Wim made it, but they got Josef and Koos,’ Nancy said, now she had her breath back.
Karel’s sixty-year-old face was worn and lined, his cheeks sunken. He leant on the counter, shoulders slumped. ‘I can’t do this anymore. Though I don’t think they’ll talk, you can’t meet here. Not now.’
It was a blow. Karel’s shop had been closed for months and they’d used it as their de facto base.
‘Koos and Josef?’ He seemed to consider the names, weighing it all up.
She nodded. To lose any agent was a disaster. But worse was the knowledge that Josef had been taken. He was not only their most experienced member, but the bravest of the men, the most agile, the one who had all the ideas and who tied the Resistance efforts together. He was the firebrand of their little band of brothers, the leader, and his loss was like pulling out the heart from their resistance.
Nancy shook her head, her heart still pounding. ‘What a botch-up. Elmo was there, meeting that butcher, cosying up to the Nazis.’
Karel rested his head between his hands on the counter. She waited as he let out a ragged sigh. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘I thought there was something about Elmo all along, too eager, too keen to be involved. It didn’t sit right.’
Karel looked up. ‘Doesn’t seem right he’s still out there, whereas Josef …’ Another sigh. ‘We’ll have to move on,’ he said. ‘And it’ll break my wife’s heart to leave this place. My father would turn in his grave. Been here a hundred and fifty years, this shop. Always thought it’d be here for the next generation. But Koos? He’s inexperienced. Not sure how long he’ll hold out. Could blab at any moment.’ He gestured angrily around the room, at the empty fireplace, the bare shelves, the sad-looking tins of metal polish, and the few remaining boxes of clothes pegs.
‘Where will you go?’
‘My sister in Brabant? I don’t know.’
Nancy shook her head. ‘I can’t leave. A Green took my papers.’
‘What?’
She explained. ‘If I don’t go to dinner with him, it will look suspicious.’
‘You can’t. Get out of Amsterdam. If they torture them and anyone talks—’
‘How, with no papers?’
‘We’ll think of something.’
‘The Green might look at my pass and ID, and see it’s a forgery. And if he does, I’ll be walking right into a trap. But equally, if I don’t go, he’ll have the Gestapo out looking for me straightaway, and he has my photo and my address.’
‘Then don’t go home.’
‘I’ve no choice. Besides, I need to clear Josef’s room of any evidence.’
‘You’ll miss him.’
She shrugged.
‘Oh, I know. You’ve got a reputation for keeping your distance.’
Had she? She considered a moment. He was right; she’d learnt not to trust anyone. Too many close shaves. And though she liked Josef, there was Tom, back home in England. She ran a hand along the counter. ‘Can you try to find out where they took them? D’you think it’s the Oranjehotel?’
Karel closed his eyes a moment as if summoning the last of his energy. ‘I’m leaving. My bag’s already packed upstairs. It’s always been ready in case of something like this, but I never thought I’d have the heart to use it. But I’ve had enough. The shootings, the reprisals. I’ve nothing left in me, Rika.’
