Читать книгу Secret Armies - John L. Spivak - Страница 12

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Neither Hitler nor Mussolini could have foreseen the development of a Cliveden set or England's willingness to weaken her own position as the dominant European power by sacrificing Austria and a good portion of Czechoslovakia. The totalitarian powers proceeded on the assumption that when the struggle for control of central Europe, the Balkans and the Mediterranean came they would have to fight.

The Rome-Berlin axis reasoned logically that if, when the expected war broke out, France could be disrupted by a widespread internal rebellion, not only would she be weakened on the battlefield but fascism might even be victorious in the Republic. In preparation for this, the axis sent into France secret agents plentifully supplied with money and arms, and almost succeeded in one of the most amazing plots in history.

The opening scene of events which led directly to the discovery of how far the foreign secret agents had progressed took place in the Restaurant Drouant on the Place Gaillon which is frequented by leaders of Paris' financial, industrial and cultural life.

Precisely at noon, on September 10, 1937, Jacqueline Blondet, an eighteen-year-old stenographer with marcelled hair, sparkling eyes, and heavily rouged lips, passed through the rotating doors of the famous restaurant and turned right as she had been instructed. She had never been in so luxurious a place before—dining rooms done in gray or brown marble with furniture to match. Two steps lead from the gray to the brown room and Mlle. Blondet, not noticing them in her excitement, slipped and would have fallen had not the old wine steward who looks like Charles Dickens, caught and steadied her.

The two men with whom she was lunching were at a table at the far corner of the deserted room. The one who had invited her, François Metenier, a well-known French engineer and industrialist, powerfully built, with sharp eyes, dark hair, and a suave self-assured manner, rose at her approach, smiling at her embarrassment. The other man, considerably younger, was M. Locuty, a stocky, bushy haired man with square jaws and heavy tortoise-shell eyeglasses. He was an engineer at the huge Michelin Tire Works at Clermont-Ferrand where Metenier was an important official. The industrialist introduced the girl merely as "my friend" without mentioning her name.

With the exception of two couples having a late breakfast in the gray marble room, which they could see from their table, the three were alone.

"Shall we have a bottle of Bordeaux?" asked Metenier. "I ordered lunch by 'phone but I thought I would await your presence on the wine."

"Oh, anything you order," said Locuty with an effort at casualness.

"Yes, you order the wine," said the stenographer.

"Garçon, a bottle of St. Julien, Château Léoville-Poyferre 1870."

The ghost of Charles Dickens, who had been hovering nearby, bowed and smiled with appreciation of the guest's knowledge of a rare fine wine and personally rushed off to the cellars for the Bordeaux.

When the early lunch was over and the brandy had been set before them, Metenier studied his glass thoughtfully and glanced at the two portly men who had entered the brown dining room and sat some tables away. From the snatches of conversation the three gathered that one was a literary critic and the other a publisher. They were discussing a thrilling detective story just published which the critic insisted was too fantastic.

Metenier said to Locuty:

"You will have to make two bombs. I will take you to a very important man in our organization, a power in France. He will personally give you the material and show you how to make them. Then I will take you to the places where you will leave them. I do not want them to see me."

In low tones, they discussed the bombing of two places. Metenier, a pillar of the church, highly respected in his community and well-known throughout France, cautioned them as they left.

Why the vivacious blond stenographer was permitted to sit in on this conversation, Locuty did not know, unless it was to tempt him, for, as she bade him good-by, she squeezed his hand significantly and said she wanted to see him again.

Metenier drove Locuty to an office building where he introduced him to a man he called "Leon"—actually Alfred Macon, concierge of a building which Metenier and others used as headquarters for their activities. Within a few moments the door of an adjacent room opened and Jean Adolphe Moreau de la Meuse, aristocrat and leading French industrialist, came in. He had a monocle in his right eye which he kept adjusting nervously. His face was deeply marked and lined with heavy bluish pouches under the eyes. With a swift glance he sized up Locuty as Metenier rose.

"This is the gentleman whom I mentioned," he said.

"He understands his mission?" De la Meuse asked.

"Yes," said Locuty. "You will teach me how to make them?"

De la Meuse nodded. "It will be a time bomb which must be set for ten o'clock tomorrow night. There will be nobody in the building at that time, so no one will be hurt."

An hour later Locuty, who had made both bombs and set the timing devices, wrapped them into two neat packages. Metenier took him to the General Confederation of French Employers' Building in the Rue de Presbourg. In accordance with instructions he left one of the packages with the concierge, after which Metenier took him to the Ironmasters' Association headquarters on the Rue Boissiere, where Locuty left the second package.

On the evening of September 11, the General Confederation of French Employers was scheduled to hold a meeting in their building. This meeting was postponed; and, as De la Meuse had assured the Michelin engineer, the concierges and their wives, contrary to custom, were not in their buildings that evening.

At ten o'clock, both bombs exploded. The plans had gone off as arranged except for an accident, the investigation of which made public the whole amazing conspiracy. Two French gendarmes standing near one of the buildings were killed.

Immediately after the bombs exploded, the Employers' Confederation and the Ironmasters' Association issued statements charging the Communists and the Popular Front with being responsible for the outrages and accusing them of planning a reign of terror to seize control of France. The accusations left a profound effect upon the French people despite the Communists' assertions that they never countenance terrorism. The Sûreté Nationale, the French Scotland Yard, opened an intensive investigation which was spurred on by the deaths of the unfortunate gendarmes. It was not long before the French people heard of the almost incredibly fantastic plot to destroy the Popular Front and establish fascism in France—a plot directed by leading French industrialists and high army officers cooperating with secret agents of the German and Italian Governments.

The ramifications of the plot are so packed with dynamite in the national and international arena that the French government, under pressure from England as well as from some of its own industrialists, government officials and army officers, has clamped the lid down on further disclosures lest continued publicity seriously affect the delicate balance of international relations.

It was obvious from what the police uncovered that it had taken several years to organize the gigantic conspiracy. Within the teeming city of Paris itself, steel and concrete fortresses had been secretly built. Other cities throughout France were similarly ringed in strategic places. Every one of these secret fortresses was stocked with arms and munitions, and throughout the country, once the confessions began, the police found thousands upon thousands of rifles and pistols, millions of cartridges, hundreds of machine guns and sub-machine guns. The fortresses themselves were fitted with secret radio and telephone stations for communication among themselves. Code books and evidence of arms-running from Germany and Italy were found. A vast espionage network and a series of murders were traced to this secret organization whose official name is the "Secret Committee for Revolutionary Action." At their meetings they wore hoods to conceal their identity from one another, like the Black Legion in the United States, and the press promptly named them the "Cagoulards" ("Hooded Ones").

Just how many members the Cagoulards actually have is unknown except to its Supreme Council and probably to the German and Italian Intelligence Divisions. Lists of names totaling eighteen thousand men were turned up by the Sûreté Nationale, and the hundreds of steel and concrete fortresses and the arms found in them point to a membership of at least 100,000. The way the fortresses were built and their strategic locations (blowing down the walls of the buildings where the fortresses were hidden would have given them command of streets, squares and government buildings) indicate supervision by high military officials.

When contractors buy enormous quantities of cement for dugouts, when butchers' and bakers' lorries rattle over ancient cobblestones with enormous loads of arms smuggled across German and Italian borders, when thousands of people are drilled and trained in pistol, rifle and machine-gun practice, it is impossible that the competent French Intelligence Service and the Sûreté Nationale should not get wind of it.

As far back as September, 1936, the Sûreté Nationale knew that some leading French industrialists with the cooperation of the German and Italian Governments were building a military fascist organization within France. Nevertheless it quietly permitted fortresses to be built and stocked with munitions. The General Staff of the French Army, from reports of Intelligence men in Germany and Italy, knew that those countries were smuggling arms into France, but they permitted it to go on. The General Staff knew that some eight hundred concrete fortresses were being built under the supervision of M. Anceaux, a building contractor of Dieppe, and that skilled members of the Secret Committee for Revolutionary Action had been recruited for the building and sworn to secrecy under penalty of death. They knew that these fortresses were equipped with sending and receiving radios, knew that some were within the shadow of military centers, knew that the Cagoulards had a far-flung espionage system. But the French General Staff made no effort to stop it.

The Popular Front Government was in power at the time, and heads of the Supreme War Council apparently preferred a fascist France to a democratic one. In fact, officers and reserve officers of the French Army cooperated with secret agents of their traditional enemy, Germany, to build up this formidable secret army.

The investigating authorities, stunned by their discoveries and the high officials and individuals to whom their investigations led, either did not dare go further with it, or, if they did, suppressed the information. Some of it, however, came out.