The Greatest Traitor Read Online Free Page B

were getting better or, on the contrary, worse.’
    Albert’s business struggled on even as his health began to deteriorate. He was having difficulties with his lungs, perhaps related to the effects of mustard gas from the battlefields of the First World War. Whatever the reason, the family doctor advised that a move away from smoky, grimy Rotterdam to an environment with cleaner, fresher air might do the patient some good. When, in 1933, an opportunity arose to move to Scheveningen, a pleasant seaside resort not far from The Hague, the Behars eagerly grasped it, settling into a villa at No. 4 Maasstraat, close to the impressive Kurhaus, the luxury hotel and concert venue.
    To sit down at the dinner table in the Behar home in the early 1930s would have been an entertaining yet puzzling experience. Albert was fluent in English and French, usually opting to speak the former as he continued to uphold the image he had created of himself as a British entrepreneur. He did not speak Dutch, however, and stubbornly refused to learn the mother tongue of his wife and children. Catherine knew a little English and could communicate well enoughwith her husband, but George and his sisters – although just starting to learn both French and English at school – did not share a common language with their father. Albert would effectively remain a stranger in a foreign land, an attitude no doubt partially responsible for the failure of his successive businesses.
    To his children he seemed a remote, otherworldly figure. When he was working, he would set off early in the morning and not arrive home in the evenings until after 8 p.m. when they had gone to bed. On Sunday, his only day off, he would usually choose to stay at home and read while George and his sisters would be taken for a walk by their mother and aunt. He left most of the care of his children, material and spiritual, to Catherine, and retreated into the background. When he did turn his attention to them, he invariably spoiled them with spontaneous gifts and presents.
    Nonetheless, the young Blake inherited his father’s intellectual curiosity and sense of adventure. When growing up in Rotterdam, he was inspired by the famous statue of one of the city’s notable sons, Erasmus, which he could see from his window. The philosopher is depicted holding a book, and George was assured he would turn a page each time the clock on the nearby church struck the hour. The little boy believed the story and spent much time pleasantly anticipating the event.
    As well as reading – he particularly enjoyed stories from the Bible, and books on Dutch history – George’s imagination was stirred by thoughts of life in foreign lands. He would spend many hours on his own wandering the quayside at the port of Rotterdam, watching the ships come in from all over the world and observing the diverse cargo being unloaded – timber from Russia, spices from India, coffee from Brazil.
    Dina Regoort, a long-serving maid to the Behar family, remembered him as a quiet, polite, somewhat solitary boy. ‘I always felt he was apart and rather sad,’ she said. ‘He had no friends of his own age, and he did not play with his schoolmates or other boys.’
    Instead he preferred to act out games of fantasy in his own home, often persuading his reluctant sisters Adele and Elizabeth to join him. One family snapshot of the time shows him in Arab dress, another in the guise of an admiral. In one game, dressed in an old black gown belonging to his grandmother, he would be a minister of the church addressing his congregation (his sisters). In another, he would place an old black hat on his head and pretend to be the judge presiding over a courtroom. Dina would often be called upon to play the prisoner in the dock – more often than not accused of serious crimes.
    In 1935, Albert Behar’s failing health took a turn for the worse. Lung cancer was diagnosed and, after a period of many months confined to his bed at home, he