by Amy McAuley
“And I can’t leave you.”
“Ride to the farm. Warn them about this. For all our sakes.”
“Bloody hell,” she whispers, climbing aboard her bicycle. “Be careful.”
She gives me the V for Victory sign as I scramble to find cover in a low area. When I look again, she’s gone.
Pierre’s arm jerks back. His Sten tumbles, butt over muzzle. He crumples in a way that doesn’t look at all natural.
Not bothering to dodge and weave, I run to him. “No, no, no.”
“Adele, I’m hit,” he wheezes.
I fire a shot from the hip, emptying my cartridge. Hear a grunt as it hits its mark.
“I’m getting you out of here.” I prop him up. Slip my arms under his armpits. “Can you walk? Use me as a crutch.”
Gulping air, he says, “Leave me.”
“I will drag you if I have to, but I will not leave you here.”
My hands interlock, a slippery grip that threatens to release if I give it all I have. I haul Pierre along the ground. He cries out in anguish each time my arms apply pressure to his ribs.
Another round of bullets sprays the air above my head. Instinctively, I duck. With a fiery snap, my ankle gives way. Pierre’s weight sends both of us to the ground. I fight cold sweat and nausea that accompanies the burst of pain.
“Adele, go.” The plea gurgles from his throat. “Remember why we do this. Please tell my mother I love her. Tell her again how sorry I am for Father.”
“No, you tell her. I can get us out of this. I’ll fight them off.”
“You are a good person, Adele.” His whisper fades away with, “I’m glad for our time …”
Pierre’s body goes limp in my arms. I press my face to his shoulder, hugging him against me. Warmth has soaked his shirt and wet my hands.
“Pierre, no,” I sob. “Don’t go. I can save you.”
His breath slowly leaves him. I cling to his body, bewildered. This isn’t supposed to be happening. I don’t understand. In an instant, I’ve fallen into a nightmare I can’t wake from.
I lay my cheek on his chest. It’s so very still without his strong heartbeat. I hug him until my arms shake, breathing in his smell. I don’t want to let go. If I let go, I will never see him again.
I raise my head.
The soldiers are close enough now that their shapes clearly stand out. I count six.
They can’t have Pierre. They can’t have me.
I reach to the bottom of my pocket. Between thumb and finger, I pinch the small but deadly object I’ve carried with me since day one. My cyanide pill is so well wrapped, even swallowing it won’t kill me. I have to bite down on it, hard. To die from a cyanide pill is no accident.
A voice comes from the darkness. “You are surrounded. Lower your weapons.”
With a backhanded toss, the pill—evidence I was trained by the SOE—flies to an unknown spot in the scrubby field.
Heavy tears blur my vision as I change the magazine of the Sten. I don’t know who killed Pierre, but if I shoot all six soldiers, I will get him. I aim at the middle one first. I squeeze the trigger. And the metal weapon does what it does best.
It jams.
THIRTY-EIGHT
In the car, in the light of early morning, one of the two soldiers escorting me to Paris turns to inspect the backseat. His gaze roams my body, head to foot and back again.
When he resumes small talk with the driver, I imagine myself diving over the seat to slice his throat open. They confiscated my knife. I lock my stare on the back of the driver’s head. Can he feel it boring through his skull like a red-hot poker? I can crash the car if I want to and kill them both.
They fought over who deserved credit for shooting Pierre. Whose bullet took him down? They wanted bragging rights for it. “Is that your boyfriend’s blood on your sweater?” a soldier asked, laughing.
I won’t let them see me cry. I stare out the window. The smudged landscape streaks past.
“Girl, you want a cigarette?”
I turn farther away from him, holding fast to my breathing while he watches me.
“Girl, has the cat got your tongue?” He faces front, muttering, “Saucy bitch.”
My hand slides down my worsted wool pants. My fingertips reach the cuff. For the better part of the trip, I patiently work at the seam. Once a tiny pocket forms in the heavy fabric, I slowly but surely move my charm bracelet from one pocket to a safer one, stringing it through the opening and along the tunnel of the cuff.
The car pulls up to 84 Avenue Foch. Gestapo headquarters.
The driver cuts the ignition. He steps out of the car and opens my door. The wildness in my eyes must be clear. “Don’t be foolish and try to fight me,” he says.
The soldiers lead me by the arm to a guard room on the fifth floor. I lower my head, ashamed to be inside the notorious building.
While I wait, seated alone at a table, I steel myself for interrogation.
Behind me, the door opens. I draw my fear inward. Imagine it a small, crumpled wad.
Just then, I smell the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Not the ersatz coffee I’ve been drinking for weeks. This is what real coffee smells like. And if real coffee tastes as good as it smells, then it must taste like heaven. I breathe it in for all I’m worth.
Will they bind my hands and cruelly draw the coffee beneath my nose?
“Excuse me, miss?”
I slide sideways on my chair. Someone’s gray-haired grandmother stands where my interrogator should be. I stare at the tray in her hands.
Bread, butter, jam, coffee, sugar cubes.
“I have brought your breakfast.”
Is she one of the “friendly nurses” we were warned about, who will offer good food and comfort, or apologize for rough treatment, or seemingly look out for my well-being? No one can be trusted. Whatever happens here is all part of their bigger plan to wear me down.
My chest rises and falls quicker and quicker, pumping my lungs like bellows. As much as it pains me, and as hungry as I am, I have to turn down the brief chance to revisit normal life.
“No thank you.”
“It is not a trick, miss,” she says, a German accent marking her fluent French. “Please eat. You are quite thin.”
I refuse until the woman gives up and leaves the room.
A grand chandelier hangs from the ceiling outside the office on the fourth floor, dangling crystal daggers over my head.
Guards lead me into the room. The mahogany desk in the center of the office dwarfs the slight man seated behind it. He must be important and high ranking, but he wears civilian clothes rather than a uniform. I figure it’s his tactic. A tactic I’m not about to fall for. He isn’t my neighbor. He isn’t my friend. No ploy of his can win my trust.
The window next to the desk shows an expansive view of the yard. An officer decked out in full riding gear gallops by on horse back.
“Adele, please sit,” the man behind the desk says.
He knows my alias. I swallow the swelling lump in my throat.
“There is no reason to stand. You may sit,” he says in broken French, forcing me to piece together what he said.
I sit in one of two studded leather chairs.
From a side entrance, a woman enters the room with a typewriter, her wide hips straining the limits of her skirt.
“I am Joseph Krieger,” he says. “Senior counterintelligence officer.” Like a marionette the woman jumps after he speaks, to translate for him.
He stands, extending his hand. I remain seated.
“I am told you refused breakfast. Would you prefer a sandwich?” he asks.
Ironically, when he speaks German, I understand him better than when he speaks the language I’m supposed to know best. I focus my attention on his translator as she repeats the question to keep up my cover.
I haven’t eaten proper food in ages. It physically hurt to turn down the food they brought me earlier. Now offers of sandwiches are coming at me in multiple l
anguages.
I shake my head.
“Come now, I’m sure you are hungry,” Krieger says. He points to a wall chart. “There is no point in keeping the charade going. We know much more than you think. See for yourself.”
Gut instinct tells me to ignore him. But it might help me to gather as much of their intelligence information as possible. I look at the chart.
What a kick in the teeth that proves to be.
They have a hierarchy of names, all of SOE senior command, drawn up to the letter, in addition to detailed information about the training schools. Until that moment, I’ve been tight-lipped by choice. Each name on the chart hammers me deeper into silence. My gaze returns several times to my section head’s name. For a few seconds, I worry I might become sick to my stomach.
What is so goddamned secret about us secret agents then?
“I don’t know what this is I’m looking at,” I say.
Krieger waits for the translation. When at last he understands, he smiles. “You do know what it is, Adele.”
“I’m afraid I do not.”
“No, you do. There is no sense in keeping quiet. In what way does that benefit you? Don’t you see? We know. It would not be wise for you to prolong our discussions.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Krieger drums his fingers on the desktop. To the soldiers, he says, “Take the girl to her cell.”
For a week, I stay in one of twelve attic rooms on the fifth floor, above Krieger’s office. The hallway leads to a bathroom at one end and the guardroom at the other. The conditions may be far cushier than I imagined possible, but cushy doesn’t mean easily escapable.
Several times throughout the week, Krieger invited me to his office to eat with him. I declined, baffled by his attempts to treat me well. On the third day, I picked at the delicious sausage and cheese in the guardroom. If they really are attempting to poison me, I thought, at least I’d go out on a full stomach.
I enter Krieger’s office this mid-June afternoon, as I have every day since my arrival to Avenue Foch, to be questioned. His interrogation methods seem based on the premise of catching more flies with honey than with vinegar; a surprising tactic for him to take, but it has obviously helped him win over agents in the past. He knows too much for that not to be true.
“Good afternoon, Adele.” When I’m seated, he says, “I have a question for you. What do you think of Churchill?”
Krieger’s inquisitiveness extends beyond the workings of the SOE to all things British. He asks some peculiar questions, and only in part to dupe me into talking with him. His interest in the answers seems genuine.
“Still not talking to me?” he asks. “I am trying to be honorable, don’t you see? It is not you, or agents like you, that I want. I must stop arms and supplies from reaching the Maquis bandits in the woods. Certainly you must agree that is a worthy goal.”
I stare blankly at a point over his shoulder.
Krieger sets a photo on his desk. “Do you know this girl?”
I glance only briefly. But of course I recognize her.
Krieger’s civilian clothing and easygoing attitude might have lulled other agents into a false sense of security. Those same things make me think he’s as fallible as any other regular person. I want to grab him by the collar. To scream in his face that he has to keep Denise out of this. That if he hurts her I will kill him. But the best thing I can do to protect her is to not acknowledge her at all.
“Come now, Adele. You put up a good fight, however, the game is up. We know everything. You may as well answer my questions.”
Liar, I think. If you know everything, then why the hell am I sitting here?
“I am a patient man. Some of my friends are … not so patient.”
A nub of skin has formed in my mouth from near-constant chewing. I pull at it with my teeth.
“Talk to me now and treatments at the house prison will not be necessary. You are a clever girl. Why put yourself through that? Why suffer needlessly?” he says. “I ask you once more to cooperate.”
I shake my head.
THIRTY-NINE
Near the end of June 1944, on a cool, misty morning, I’m moved from my cell in the Avenue Foch mansion and transferred to a solitary confinement cell within the nearby Gestapo prison, to begin “treatment” for my unwillingness to talk.
When I shuffle into the interrogation room, the first thing I see is a large vat of water.
My feet lock in place, refusing to move forward. Please, no, not this. Anything but water. An anguished whimper escapes me. There is nothing I can do to restrain it and nothing I can do to take it back.
To each other, the interrogators smile.
With brute strength that easily overpowers me the men force my rigid body onto a chair next to the vat. One interrogator holds me down. The other secures my wrists and ankles.
I struggle to free myself when I’m released from their rough clutches, violently rocking, pushing, and pulling until my stretched muscles and joints scream in agony.
The shackles binding my arms and legs to the chair scour my blistered skin to a bloody mash.
Firm hands clasp my hair and forcibly lower my head.
Ice water envelops my face, eagerly flowing up my nose. Devouring my head whole. A thousand pinpricks of pain spark across my raw cheeks. Panic wrings the air from my lungs, and it climbs my throat, claws of desperation sinking deep.
Fingers wind tighter through my tangled hair, raising me to the surface.
Above me, my interrogator shouts in French, “You are a spy! You are an agent of the Special Operations Executive! You are the American, Betty Sweeney!”
“Non,” I gasp, catching my breath. “Je m’appelle Adele Blanchard.”
“You worked with the British agents Denise Langford and Timothy Bishop! Where are they?”
“Je ne connais personne de ces noms.” I know no one by those names.
“You do! Who is assisting them?”
“Je ne sais pas.” I do not know.
My head plunges, displacing jagged chunks of ice. The sting becomes excruciating, as if my face has been turned inside out.
“You do know them! You will give us their locations! You will tell us where the weapon drops take place!”
I spit a mouthful of water on the floor in the direction of the shiny pair of army boots I see there. I draw a long breath. Down I go again.
Garbled voices bounce back and forth above me.
I strain against the chains, screaming on the inside. Fear eats what little oxygen I have left.
I am about to drown. There is nothing I can do about it.
Take a breath.
Just when I come to accept my fate, they pull me back for more. It goes on that way for over an hour.
I sit on the floor of my empty cell, wracked by violent shivering and bouts of coughing. My head feels stuffed with cotton batting. I hug my legs to my chest and lock my chattering teeth against my knees.
In the moment, it seems as if interrogation will go on forever. The trick is to stay lucid enough to remember the pain will eventually end, when instinct takes over and every part of me wants to fight back, run, scream.
Time in my cell gives me the chance to rest, but on edge every moment, never knowing when to expect another go-round with Krieger’s bully boys. In these quiet moments, I think about the Allies. I picture them marching across the country, rolling over the Germans with their tanks. They’re coming. They’re coming for me. It’s only a matter of time.
To keep from going stir-crazy here, I combed my memories from the past weeks and spliced together the good bits to create mental film footage I can watch whenever I close my eyes. Right as I settle into the movie, I hear faint tapping against the wall of the neighboring cell. My eyes pop open. I scoot taller against the wall, deciphering a definite rhythm. Someone is forming words in Morse. To talk to me.
I am Lisa.
I scramble around the floor,
desperate to find a rock. I snatch one up as if it’s a diamond and tap the message, Adele.
How long?
Four days. You?
Three months.
I lower my rock, unsure of how to respond to this blow.
Food delicious, Lisa says.
I can’t believe she’s able to poke fun at her situation after three months.
She asks, Enjoy games?
Sometimes.
Sing song. I guess.
When Robbie asked for a song to play on the piano, my mind went blank. I have an even harder time of it now. I hum the tune to “Someone to Care for Me,” imagining Robbie’s long fingers effortlessly gliding across black-and-white keys.
Lisa taps out the dots and dashes of her guess. “Danny Boy”?
No. Played this way, the game is too difficult. It needs something extra. Your turn. Give clues.
Take long way there.
I rub a filthy finger across my forehead, confused, until I realize Lisa gave a clue. I smack my rock into the wall to shout, Long Way to Tipperary!
Hurrah!
In that moment of shared victory, I picture Lisa, a complete stranger, as clearly as if I’ve known her all my life. We smile to each other through the concrete divide.
Your tu … The dots and dashes that follow make no sense. Then the tapping stops altogether.
I wait for a very long time, fearful that others now listen in on our game, before I silence my rock.
I curl up in the corner to sleep.
“Wake up!”
A boot heel slams into my ribs. I didn’t move quickly enough to convince the soldier that I’m already awake. I stagger to my feet. Agonizing pain wallops my side, pulsating through my chest, as if I’ve been kicked again. I double over, gasping for breath.
Two guards lead me from my cell. At the door to the interrogation room, I limp, expecting to go inside. They carry on. I drag my feet. I don’t recognize the guards. Maybe they’re new and don’t have directions to the interrogation room.
Soon nothing looks familiar. The temperature drops. Sound reverberates differently through the halls. The hair on my neck stands on end when I reason out the purpose for moving me outdoors.