Scorched Earth - Robert Muchamore Page 0,85

Henderson’s Espionage Research Unit B was one of more than a dozen intelligence organisations set up by the British during World War Two. As soon as the war in Europe ended, the heads of Britain’s traditional intelligence services – MI5 and MI6 – moved ruthlessly to shut down their rivals.

CHERUB was officially closed on 1 October 1944. Campus and all facilities were mothballed. All of the organisation’s documents were destroyed, including the records of twenty boys and one girl who were trained for duties in occupied France. As a result, there is no official history of the wartime CHERUB organisation and none of its staff or agents ever received medals, pensions or any other recognition for their war service.

A review of CHERUB’s successful wartime activities, along with rising tensions between the new global superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union, led to a decision to begin a new CHERUB organisation in July 1945. Charles Henderson was appointed head of the revived organisation, along with his deputies, Eileen McAfferty and Elizabeth DeVere (known as Boo).

McAfferty took charge of the organisation following the death of Charles Henderson and ran it for the following twenty-one years. Today, CHERUB campus is a one-of-a-kind intelligence facility that is home, school and training camp to more than 200 highly trained child agents.

PT BIVOTT

In the years immediately following World War Two, PT Bivott returned to working on civilian ships in the Mediterranean. In 1949 he was arrested in southern Italy and extradited to the United States on charges of armed robbery and second-degree murder, relating to an incident that took place in December 19383.

As PT was only thirteen at the time of the robbery, a judge agreed to give PT a suspended prison sentence, provided he report immediately to a recruiting office and sign up for three years’ military service.

PT’s career in the US Navy was a chequered one, marked by a number of brawls and courts martial for running illegal gambling operations. This naval service was forcibly extended until 1953, due to the Korean War. He saw action on small boats in harassment and demolition operations along the Korean peninsula. PT was decorated for gallant service, but never promoted due to his poor disciplinary record.

Upon release from the US Navy, PT was approached by Eileen McAfferty with a view to joining the expanding post-war CHERUB organisation. PT joined the new CHERUB in early 1954. He served the organisation in various roles, including physical training instructor, and rose to become Deputy Chairman before taking retirement in 1985.

PT was twice married and had a daughter and two sons. He died in 2002 at the age of seventy-seven.

PAUL CLARKE

Paul Clarke returned to Great Britain shortly after the liberation of Paris. He had inherited a reasonable sum of money from his late parents and was enrolled in boarding school, spending school holidays with a maternal cousin whom he had not previously met.

Paul continued to excel in art and drawing. He studied Art History at Cambridge University, and obtained a first-class degree. After university, Paul did two years’ national service in the RAF and his drawing skills saw him assigned to a cartography department.

Throughout this period, Paul dated his long-term friend Edith Mercier, and they married when his national service ended in the summer of 1951. Edith gave birth to twin girls the following year and they went on to have three further children before divorcing in 1978.

Following his national service, Paul tried to make a career as an artist, without much success. A growing young family forced him to take a job in a small London art gallery and, with a keen business brain, he soon made enough money from buying and selling artwork to buy out his boss.

Over the following decades, Paul became a well-known figure in the art world. He was a pioneer of the contemporary art scene, with two galleries in London and additional spaces in Paris, New York and Los Angeles. He was appointed to museum boards in the UK and the United States and wrote two books on modern art.

Paul was a collector as well as a gallery owner and the explosion in contemporary art prices from the 1980s onwards meant that his wealth ballooned to a level in excess of £650 million at the time of his death.

Paul Clarke returned to Beauvais every summer to visit his lifelong friend Marc Kilgour and the grave of his sister Rosie. He died in November 2011 at the age of eighty-three and was survived by