The R.A.F.'s target was a single five-story building in The Hague. It was Gestapo headquarters, just across the Scheveningsche Weg from the Peace Palace, where the World Court once sat.
Gestapo headquarters was a busy, harassed little hive. The Dutch underground was growing bigger and bolder every day. The resistance groups had stolen or forged thousands of identity cards, food cards, work certificates, passes of various kinds. The Nazis had decided to call in all Dutch cards and passes, screen them for fakes, issue new ones. Eight or nine million of the new forms were printed and stored in the headquarters, along...