Spy Princess (15 page)

The early evening broadcast would alert the agent. If it was repeated on the later broadcast, it was a confirmation. They would then get ready to receive the agent or the parachute drop in the fields. Very often meaningless sentences were added just to make the
messages personnels
sound genuine.

The methods at Beaulieu were classic spy school. Noor was taught how to be constantly vigilant, how to organise safe houses, how to pass a message to someone in a crowd without attracting attention and how to keep her identity a secret. Every single aspect of the training was aimed at helping the agents to save themselves and function effectively.

Noor immersed herself completely in her training. For the first time she felt she was working towards a positive goal and was doing something worthwhile. On one of her visits to London from Beaulieu, Noor told Jean that she had been promoted to something special and she was working with girls who were of a ‘superior type’.
¹³
She also mentioned that she was staying in a beautiful old house with stained-glass windows. Jean remembered her being very keyed up and excited and looking better than ever.

Meanwhile, the shortage of radio operators in the field was reaching crisis proportions. An SOS from Paris led the SOE to ask Noor if she was prepared to go straight away, without completing her training. Typically, she agreed immediately. Vera Atkins gave her a cover story and prepared her for the final stages before departure. Noor was to be flown in by Lysander aircraft and landed on the ground. There are no details of the flight except the flight records kept by the Air Ministry. They show that on the night of 21/22 May, Noor and another agent, Jacques Courtaud, were flown into France but the flight had to come back from Compiègne because there was no reception committee.
¹⁴
The field agent in Paris had not heard the radio instruction because of jamming. Noor suffered the anxiety of this flight in vain.

There is slight confusion in Noor’s personal files at this stage. They make no mention of her flight to Paris in May, but show that from Beaulieu she was sent on a training operation to Bristol.

It is unclear whether Noor made her first trip to Paris during her trip to Bristol or immediately afterwards. Her file says she was in Bristol between 19 and 23 May 1943 as part of a 96-hour scheme. These clash with her dates for the Paris flight. It is unlikely that Noor would have been sent to Paris without completing her 96-hour course in Bristol. This final training-push gave recruits the most realistic idea of what it was like to work in the field and was considered essential.
¹⁵
It is likely therefore that Noor left for Paris after returning from Bristol, which means her Bristol test run would have been around 17 May.

Noor’s assignment was to visit Bristol with a workable cover story, recruit contacts, fix up live and dead letter boxes (people and places from where agents could retrieve messages) and find a flat from which it would be safe to transmit. She would have to take all the precautions of security, watch out for being followed and handle the police if she was caught and questioned. She would be watched by SOE staff to see if she made any mistakes. Her detailed notes of the exercise are in her file.
¹⁶

Noor decided to go to Bristol in the guise of gathering children’s impressions of air raids for a book and providing articles for the BBC on this subject. This was considered a good cover story as she was a writer of children’s stories and had been broadcast on the BBC. To make it look even more genuine, she actually interviewed children at Bedminster and at the Mangotsfield War nursery. She chose the cover name of Nora Kirkwood. The SOE thought this was very workable. Noor also chose a permanent cover story while at Bristol. She chose to say that she was a secretary at BOAC and that she was an Air Raid Patrol (ARP) warden with night duty three times a week. This would give her the excuse to go out at night without coming under suspicion.

The first thing Noor had to do was find herself a safe place to stay where she could work comfortably. She rented a room in a boarding house belonging to a Mrs Harvey at 30 Richmond Park Road, Clifton. But Noor found Mrs Harvey to be a very inquisitive person and she would have left the place if accommodation had not been so difficult to find. Mrs Harvey, she said, was ‘frightfully conventional and police-minded’. She also wrote that ‘general accommodation was very scarce and landladies as a whole (were) uncongenial’.

All the while Noor was observed by the SOE. They noted that she took the usual security procedures against search and surveillance. She did not carry any incriminating papers with her as she memorised her orders before leaving base.

Noor’s first point of contact was a Mrs Laurie, head of the Irish Traveller’s Censor Office, who had been instructed by the SOE. The first interview was arranged by letter. Noor set up a meeting on the pretext that she was looking for a job in the Censor’s Office. During the meeting she introduced the password naturally in the conversation as she had been taught to do in Beaulieu.

She arranged a second meeting with Mrs Laurie on the cover that she would come to hand in her completed application form. Noor now put forward her real proposal to her contact. She did so with ease, asking Mrs Laurie to cooperate in a line of communication in the event of an invasion. Mrs Laurie agreed to all her suggestions.

Both Noor and Mrs Laurie had to make reports to the SOE about the meeting. Noor reported that Mrs Laurie was a ‘very suitable contact’. She described her as ‘responsible, understanding and tactful, security minded from experience and duty conscious as far as own country interests were concerned’. Mrs Laurie reported that Noor had ‘put up a good show’ but added that there was something very suspicious about Noor’s manner. SOE dismissed this as nerves.

Next Noor had to locate a place to set up a live letter drop. This would be a person who would be used by her and other agents as a letter box to pass messages. She did this successfully with a porter at Bristol University and a secretary at the Empire Rendezvous in Whiteladies Road, explaining that she was moving to Bristol but as yet had no address.

She then selected two dead letter boxes. Dead letter boxes were unused hidden places where agents could exchange messages. Noor chose an oblique angle in the stone steps of the ruins of Bethesda Chapel in Great George Street and behind a fuse case in the call box at the end of Queen’s Road, Clifton. The SOE found both of these ‘very suitable’.

In the short time that she had, Noor had to now establish six rendezvous where she could set up meetings with contacts. The SOE had given her detailed instructions on the nature of the arrangements. Three of these were to be for a person of the same social standing as the agent. For these, Noor chose the University Library between 1 and 6 p.m., the Clifton Lawn Tennis Club on Beaufort Road before 12 noon on a Sunday, and the entrance to the Victoria Rooms after 11 p.m. She noted that the dances and parties at the Victoria Rooms finished at 11 so it would be relatively safe to meet there.

The other three rendezvous were to be with an elderly working-class woman. For these Noor chose the waiting room at the bus station at the Knowles Centre between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m., St George’s Church on a Sunday at 12 p.m. and the waiting room on platform 9 at Temple Meads station after 11 p.m. Again the SOE thought the choices were good.

Noor used her Beaulieu training and observation skills to complete the rest of her project. She had to identify three operational sites where a wireless could be set up and used. This meant posing as a tenant and searching for flats available for rent. She did this with considerable speed. The first flat she chose was 9/34 Cornwallis Crescent, where the rent was £80 and the electric supply of 210 volts. Noor noticed that there were two parts of the flat to be let, the top maisonette and the basement flat. She reported that the two intermediate floors were occupied by a Mrs Sutton (the proprietor), who lived alone. She was aged between seventy-five and eighty and was very deaf. Noor found her to be a kindly old lady, most helpful and rather ‘half-witted’. She noted that this was very suitable for the job as she would not know what the flat was being used for. The next step was finding a place for the aerial. Noor moved quickly around the apartment without arousing any suspicion and found that the top maisonette was a complicated structure offering several places of concealment. There was one exit by the door. The back window gave way to a long balcony which would provide roof escape.

The basement flat was separate from the rest of the house. It had two exits – one on to the crescent and one on to a wooded garden at the back facing the avenue. Noor noted that there were two main rooms and a place of concealment. There was an area in the middle between the conservatory and the garden where a wireless set could be buried under the fence. The SOE appreciated Noor’s detailed report.

The second flat selected by Noor was at 99 Pembroke Road with a rather higher rent of £120 per year. She noted that it had a spacious loft in which to conceal a wireless set and offered an easy place to fix the aerial. There was no danger of being overheard and good means of police warning and escape.

A third address was at 10 Whiteladies Road, where the rent was £75, and the electric supply of 210 volts. It was a first-floor flat with one exit. This the SOE found very suitable.

Noor had to now find some reliable colleagues to act as cut-outs. These were people who would convey messages and help the agent. Noor identified Mr T.A. Leach, secretary of the Bristol University Union at Victoria Rooms. She chose him because he was very popular among Bristol students and was a great sport with close connections with the boat club. She also described him as a clever organiser.

Her second contact was Dr Hope Scott, a surgeon based at Clifton Down Road, Bristol. He was in practice with a Dr Carter, who lived at 55 Old Market Street, Bristol.

Noor found Dr Carter to be a sporty man with a ‘high sense of responsibility’. She also found that he was popular among both wealthy and poor people. Noor described him as ‘extremely active, genuinely English. Most precious as potential cut-out’.
¹⁷

Noor noted that the ‘Bristol area as a whole was suitable for operations. Security precautions and well founded cover most essential as police service is extremely efficient being a coastal area.’
¹⁸

As part of the operation, Noor had to send a letter to the Bullring (this was probably a secret address in Birmingham where the SOE received letters). She successfully deposited a letter with a commando, who would have been the most reliable way of getting it delivered without the letter being traced back to her. This letter was handed over on the London train. But the SOE remarked that this gentleman, unfortunately, returned to the Bristol area before posting the letter. It was actually sent from Weston-super-Mare two days after the exercise had finished.

The most difficult part of the Bristol scheme was the interrogation. In a set-up by the SOE, Noor was arrested and taken to the police station to test her ability to improvise and stick to her cover story. Here, however, she did not perform well. The SOE noted that Noor made ‘stupid’ mistakes that she could easily have avoided with a little forethought. They also reported that Noor ‘always volunteered far more information when being questioned’.
¹⁹

The SOE officer concluded that Noor had worked very hard and ‘shown interest in the exercise, but however, she must learn to be more discreet. Apart from the police interrogation, I consider this quite a good scheme.’ This would go against Noor in her reports, leading to divisions among her instructors as to whether she was capable of becoming an agent.

Once Noor finished at Beaulieu, she had to wait for the next full moon to be flown to France. Agents were flown in on full-moon nights so that the pilot could have greater visibility of the area. While most agents went after Beaulieu for further specialist training – parachuting, lock-picking and safe-breaking or clandestine wireless techniques in Thame Park – Noor was urgently needed in the field and had to make her final preparations. Meanwhile, opinions about her capability were divided. Her nervousness had clearly gone against her. Some of her instructors were concerned that she did not have a sense of security and was too emotional. They blamed her emotional state on her father, as word had got around that he had been a Sufi preacher. Noor became one of the most controversial agents in Beaulieu as instructors clashed over their assessment of her. She was considered by some to be too beautiful and exotic, a person who would attract attention to herself rather than blend in the background. Some thought she would be a security risk while others considered her a very capable potential agent and an excellent radio operator.

Even Noor’s colleague in Beaulieu, Yvonne Cormeau, a successful agent herself who survived the war, described Noor as a ‘splendid, vague dreamy creature, far too conspicuous – twice seen, never forgotten’ who had ‘no sense of security’ and should never have been sent to France.
²⁰

The training schools, however, often had reports which did not match the agents’ actual performance on the field. A report from Beaulieu on Francis Cammaerts, one of the SOE’s most successful agents, described him as ‘rather lacking in dash’ and ‘not suitable as a leader’.
²¹
By 1944 Cammaerts had trained and armed nearly 10,000 men who were all in place by D-Day ready to delay German reinforcements. Violette Szabo, who later got the George Cross for her bravery, and was a crack shot, had reports which said: ‘I seriously wonder whether this student is suitable for our purpose. She seems lacking in a sense of responsibility and … does not appear to have any initiative or ideals.’ Szabo was also described as being ‘uncertain of her own mind and to have no definite purpose’. Even her final report described her as ‘temperamentally unsuitable for this work’.
²²
Yet in these and other cases, Maurice Buckmaster and Selwyn Jepson took the final decisions on the agent, trusting their own instinct rather than the reports from the training schools.