‘Christ almighty! It wasn’t my idea that Dorbeck and Jagtman were the same person! I never said he was Egbert Jagtman. I said his name was Dorbeck. And if Jagtman and Dorbeck were in fact the same person, how do you explain the following? As I told you before, when I first met Dorbeck he gave me a roll of film he wanted me to develop. That’s where those three stupid photos came from: the snowman with the rifle, the three soldiers in gas masks, and the soldier in pyjamas behind a machine gun. But there was a fourth exposure.’
‘So where did it get to? You never mentioned it before — all your statements refer to three photos, not four.’
Osewoudt paused before replying. He lowered his eyes, put both thumbs in his mouth and chewed them like a little girl.
‘Well? What was the fourth photo of then?’
‘It was of Dorbeck. He had two girls with him, and it was taken outside Kleine Houtstraat 32. The number was clearly visible, and also the street name, because the house is on a corner. If Dorbeck was in fact Jagtman, and Jagtman had no connection whatsoever with that address or with what went on there, why would he have had his picture taken in front of that particular house?’
‘That depends. First tell me what happened to the photo.’
‘Something went wrong. Just as I was taking it out of the developer, my mother came in and switched on the light. I switched it off at once, but the photo was ruined — it had gone completely black.’
‘Dear me, how sad! How could you have had such rotten luck! The only photo with Dorbeck on it … and that was the very one that didn’t come out.’
‘And yet I swear to you on everything sacred to me that I saw it.’
‘Swearing won’t get you anywhere. Listen here, you halfwit, if we had just one photo of someone who might possibly be Dorbeck I’d be prepared to think again.’
‘But there is one of Dorbeck! I just remembered! I took a photo the morning after Dorbeck rescued me, on 6 April, in the house he took me to in Amsterdam! We’re in it together, in front of a mirror!’
‘Really? So where is it now?’
‘I lost my Leica when I fled. I had a shoulder bag, it was in there. I lost the bag on the way.’
‘Christ, I’m exhausted. I never get to bed before three nowadays. If you promise to stop whingeing, I’ll see if we can do something about your lost Leica.’
‘You’re just saying that to get rid of me. What do you expect? That camera was swapped for cigarettes with some Canadian soldier ages ago. It’ll never turn up. And anyway, if it did turn up the film would never still be in it.’
Selderhorst stood up, groaning with fatigue. He took a sheet of paper and picked up a pencil from his desk.
‘What did that Leica look like?’
‘I can even remember the exact serial number,’ Osewoudt said. ‘It was a Leica IIIa, number 256789, and the lens was a Summar 222456.’
Selderhorst wrote down the numbers and then held the paper under Osewoudt’s nose.
‘That right?’
From the daily newspaper Het Vrije Vaderland, 18 October, 1945:
HERO OR TRAITOR? (from our special correspondent)
Of all the insalubrious episodes that have inevitably come to light during the post-war administration of justice, the mysterious case of tobacconist O. is by no means the least significant. We have the impression that the investigation, in so far as it has been effectively conducted at all, is sorely lacking in logical reasoning.
O. took part in various underground missions during the German occupation. Keen observers did not fail to notice that sooner or later everyone who had dealings with O. fell into German hands, while O. himself always managed to escape in miraculous fashion. Indeed, shortly after his arrival in the liberated provinces of our country in April 1945, he was taken into custody by the Allies on suspicion of high treason.
O., for his part, denies everything, claiming that a man named Dorbeck was behind it all. This Dorbeck has never been found, despite repeated efforts to trace him. According to O., Dorbeck is a Dutch officer working for the British, and by coincidence they resemble each other like two peas. No lack of coincidences in this affair! A third mysterious figure has since surfaced: one Egbert Jagtman, likewise a Dutch officer and likewise bearing a striking resemblance to the apparently chameleonic O. Because a photograph published in the press (of O.? of Dorbeck?) was recognised by none other than Jagtman’s dentist! Prior to that, O. had already claimed to have sent secret documents to the said Jagtman’s address, which he alleged had been passed to him by Dorbeck.
Whatever the case, it is now generally accepted that Jagtman himself is no longer alive and that a body found in a German mass grave is indeed Jagtman’s. Is it fair to infer from this that the third pea in the pod, so to speak, has been eliminated? Possibly.
There is more.
According to O., Dorbeck asked him to develop some photographs, which he, after having heard nothing from Dorbeck for four years, posted to him. Only four days after doing this, O. was contacted by a young lady by the name of Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel, who called herself Sprenkelbach Meijer. She identified herself with one of the pictures O. had put in the post, claiming that it had been given to her in England. But the photo had still been in O.’s possession three days earlier. She also claimed to have been put ashore the previous night at Scheveningen, where she had gone to stay with an aunt. But by June 1944 Scheveningen had already been evacuated by the Germans, and the beach was heavily guarded in anticipation of the Allied invasion. Moreover, at that time communications between England and occupied Dutch territory were hardly good enough for a photo to be able to travel there and back in two days. A mystery … Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel was in effect a British agent, but how she had obtained the picture O. could not explain. Did the man called Dorbeck exist after all? Was it he who played it into Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel’s hands (in Holland, presumably), instructing her to tell O. that it came from England? Theories abound, but what is the truth? Not long after this, Elly B. S. was caught by the Gestapo, and later shot. To make matters worse, it transpired after the war that the Germans possessed multiple copies of the relevant photographs …
Whatever the case, the possibility of Dorbeck’s existence should not, in our opinion, be ruled out.
But then where is he?
The answer to that question appears not to be forthcoming from the authorities. We, for our part, believe it is incumbent upon us to take the matter in hand.
Women
Numerous women are implicated in the present affair. One is O.’s girlfriend, named Mirjam Zettenbaum, who went into hiding during the war as Marianne Sondaar. She is now residing in Palestine and efforts to contact her appear to have been unsuccessful. Why is this? Why has she not come forward to clear her former lover’s name?
The judiciary have shown remarkably little concern about this situation, possibly with good cause, as we shall see.
Mirjam Zettenbaum owes her life to the treachery of O.
She was apprehended by the Germans in Leiden along with O. Being Jewish, she was promptly imprisoned in the Westerbork concentration camp, and her fate in a German Vernichtungslager would have been sealed had O. not saved her.
O. saved her life — this is, by all accounts, not in dispute. For the Germans had come to the conclusion, on the basis either of O.’s statements or their own findings, that the arrest of O. had not dug out the root of the plot. They believed (or knew???) that although O. was behind bars there was still someone at large who matched O.’s description! So they said to O.: tell us who this person is, and we will ensure that your girlfriend Marianne comes to no harm. Thus they persuaded O. to betray Dorbeck.