They had agreed to meet Churchill at another café. Once they arrived, they found a table and signaled the waiter, but before they could place their order, a dozen gendarmes stormed in, guns drawn. A cacophony filled the place: screams and shouts, chairs and tables overturning, glasses shattering on the floor. The men and women, their faces tense with fear, were ordered at gunpoint to stand against the bar and produce their papers. An eerie silence descended.
A minute later, the district police commissioner swept in and began stalking down the row of frightened café patrons, pointing at most of the men. It was what the French called a rafle, a raid, and the lucky selectees were being chosen for mandatory labor in Germany. Vichy had made a deal with the Nazis to send three workers in exchange for the return of every French POW. The chosen men were dragged out of the café and would be immediately trucked to the station, locked in trains, and taken away, without being given a chance to pack or bid their families good-bye.
Virginia and Olivier were near the end of the line. He was holding her arm protectively. The commissioner was now only half a dozen people away. Virginia was not about to waste her time with the self-inflated Marseille gendarmes, and was conjuring up a distraction. She glanced over at Olivier. He was making eye contact with one of the inspectors who had accompanied the commissioner.
The inspector motioned to one of the gendarmes and pointed at Virginia and Olivier. He told the gendarme to take them into the back room where he would question them as soon as he was done.
The two were hustled off unceremoniously and shoved into a little, dark room behind the bar that smelled of stale beer. Judging from the number of wooden kegs lying around, Virginia guessed it was where they kept their stock. Olivier dragged a keg over to the wall beneath a window, telling Virginia that he knew the inspector and they just been given a head start. Olivier helped her up onto the keg. She pulled herself into a sitting position on the windowsill and swung her legs out, dropping to the sidewalk below. He followed her seconds later. They ran to the corner and saw Churchill striding toward the café from the other direction.
Olivier signaled him to cross the street. He did and then crossed back to meet them at the corner. The three of them got away from the café as quickly as possible. As they charged along, Olivier gave Churchill a quick description of their close call in the rafle. Churchill was already distraught and explained he wasn’t able to enlist the colonel’s help in springing the men from prison.
When they were a good five blocks from their original meeting place, they slipped into another café. Olivier felt they were safe there. Rafles only occurred in a couple of cafés in a day and always in the same area. They ordered three grenaches to buy themselves some time and to calm their nerves.
Virginia told Churchill his dilemma might not be as grave as he assumed, depending on how much he was willing to spend on some bribes. He was authorized to go as high as a million, he told her, at which point Olivier nodded to Virginia. They all had unscrupulous lawyers up their sleeves, she told him. And prison guards could be bought, too.
They worked out the details and went back to the train station. As before, Virginia took the first train back to Lyon and Churchill followed on the next one. He was leaving the next morning, but promised to pass her regards to the new head of F Section, Maurice Buckmaster, who had worked for the Ford Motor Company in France in the 1930s. Buckmaster knew France well and had extensive contacts, all of whom would prove to be useful. His enthusiasm about the work SOE was doing was contagious and his leadership qualities were unparalleled.
The Corsicans’ situation was becoming grave. This was the case that Ben Cowburn had told Virginia about, and the one she had alluded to when she was with Churchill. Pierre Bloch, the Frenchman in the group who had been recruited by Jacques de Guélis, was occasionally able to see his wife, Marie. The couple lived in the nearby village of Villamblard and the guards allowed Marie to give her husband food packages. Pierre had been told by the British prisoners with him to send Marie to Lyon to find the woman they knew as Mlle LeContre.
The prison conditions, Marie told Virginia, were beyond description. They were thrown in with deserters, thieves, and murders. Pierre had described other men he’d seen, weakened by disease and starvation, who were actually being eaten by rats they were unable to repel. He’d heard stories about the German guards who, in a never-ending search for sadistic treatment methods, occasionally amused themselves by forcing the prisoners to eat their own feces. At the present time the Corsicans were maintaining their spirits, but their physical condition was deteriorating.
Her husband’s face had been badly beaten, she told Virginia. The guards beat them all the time, sometimes to glean information, and sometimes just for sport. Virginia had heard stories about Beleyme Prison, sickening stories of the same kind of abuses Marie was describing. Almost any place else would be better, she told Marie. So their first order of business was to get them out of that prison and into another. Then they’d worry about planning an escape. While HECKLER had many contacts, Virginia’s first instinct was to go to the embassy the United States still maintained in Vichy to ask for help through governmental channels.
She met with Ambassador William Leahy two days later and filled him in on the details. His initial response was as she expected. There was really nothing the American government could do, as the captives were Englishmen. Deciding to take a chance, Virginia divulged a deeper layer of the story. These men were vitally important in helping to fight the Nazis, she explained. They were part of an ever-growing assemblage within France’s borders. Their nationality mattered little, as both the British and the United States were now fighting a common enemy and would soon need every means available. This revelation got Leahy’s attention. He would see what he could do, he promised, and would contact her as soon as he had news.
At the same time Virginia was meeting with Ambassador Leahy, another conference was taking place, this one outside Berlin at Wannsee. An exquisite chateau on the shores of a lake, once a private residence, was opened and staffed for the event. At about 11:00 AM on January 20, 1942, the forum convened with fifteen men in attendance, representatives of the Nazi governmental offices involved in Jewish affairs. Only the chairmen knew of the meeting’s agenda: General Reinhard Heydrich of the Schutzstaffel (an elite paramilitary unit of the Nazi military known as the SS) and his special assistant SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolph Eichmann. The topic to be discussed was endlösung: the final solution.
Heydrich explained he had been given “the responsibility for working out the final solution to the judenfrage,” the Jewish question. The conference participants agreed that the Jews, by virtue of their mere numbers, represented a major problem. With the standstill in Russia and America in the war, the German military was being drained, as was the Reich’s food supply. They simply could no longer store the Jews within the German sphere of influence.
Heydrich then outlined his plan: make a major and thorough sweep of the estimated six million Jews throughout Europe, depositing them in one of the five major camps at Auschwitz, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, or Majdanek. His presentation ended with a revelation, delivered so callously that even some of these most hardened Nazis flinched. Once taken to the camps, the men, women, and children, would be exterminated by the most expeditious means possible. Heydrich’s final solution, vernichtung, represented the systematic annihilation of all of the Jews in Europe.
Ambassador Leahy and Virginia worked for weeks on the petition to move the nine Corsicans from the Beleyme Prison, each using the means they were most familiar with. The ambassador contacted Vichy political acquaintances, making promises to some and calling in favors from others. Virginia used the francs printed in England to glean information from gendarmes and guards who could be bought. Marie’s weekly reports to Virginia were tearful—the Corsicans were becoming alarmingly weak.
It was now mid-February and Virginia was working almost nonstop. There were agents in need of money, co
ntacts, or a shoulder to lean on. There were RAF pilots, anxious to return to the fighting, who needed safe transport back to England. And there were other prisoners whose lives were perilously at risk in the custody of the Nazis.
The darkness of the winter days were depressing and the cold reached its icy fingers into every building and body. Virginia had not planned on such harsh weather, but had fortunately brought enough clothes so that if she wore many layers at a time, she would be able to endure. However, the soles of her shoes had become worn, one to the point of a hole and there was no leather to be found for repairs. In this, Virginia’s luck was holding out better than her shoes. The sole with the hole in it was the shoe she wore on Cuthbert.
Baker Street had given Virginia the okay to move from the Grand Nouvel Hôtel to a flat on Place Ollier because of the concern that the number of visitors she had received at the hotel might appear suspicious. The flat was furnished and had two rooms, one that served as the kitchen, dining room, and parlor, and the other, separated by a curtain, which served as the bedroom. The bathroom was down the hall, shared with the floor’s other residents.
Like the hotel, it had a window facing the street. Whenever she was home, Virginia put a flowerpot on the windowsill as a signal to those on the sidewalk that it was safe to visit. Given the fact that it was winter, the pot was now empty. But she had every intention of planting something in it in the spring. Flowers of any kind would brighten up the lives of those under immense tension, including hers.
In Paris, Pierre de Vomécourt had continued to build his GARDENER réseau as well as help develop others. At dinner one winter night in 1942 in Paris, he met a beguiling woman named Mathilde Carré. A relationship developed between the two of them and she ultimately confided in him that she worked for a Resistance organization called Interallié. She had a radio operator at her disposal, and she would be happy to transmit messages to London for him. De Vomécourt was thrilled as he had had such difficulties staying in touch with SOE.
But as time passed, de Vomécourt discovered that Mme Carré, known as LA CHATTE, was a double agent for the Germans, as was her radio operator. She confessed that all of the messages she had sent and received were also being read by the Nazis. Her only choice, he told her, was to become a “double-double” agent and go to work for the British. He had to warn London that the radio transmissions were being monitored, and she had valuable information about the Nazis the British would be quite happy to have.
De Vomécourt told her she was to convince the Germans that she had talked him into taking her to London to help him organize a grand meeting of all of the Resistance groups thus far. The Germans fell for the idea, pleased that they would have an agent inside SOE.
On February 26, de Vomécourt and LA CHATTE left for London from the rocky shores of Brittany, to cross the channel by torpedo boat. Once there, the now double-double agent sang like a canary. She told SOE all about the German intelligence agency Abwehr, for which she had worked, as well as the radio code they had given her to communicate with them.
Peter Churchill, meanwhile, had returned to London via Spain on February 13. Together with Pierre de Vomecourt, he had set up several more groups around Lyon and provided the necessary security and contacts for them. The SOE now had a permanent framework in the zone libre headed by Virginia.
During his debriefing, Churchill made numerous suggestions that he felt would augment SOE’s effectiveness. This included the suggestion that Virginia leave the hotel and move to her own flat. The gravest problem the reseaux faced however, Churchill told Buckmaster, was the lack of radio operators and the danger they faced in practicing their trade.
While Buckmaster could do little about the danger, he arranged for three more radio operators to go to France. Churchill was to take them via submarine just as he had done the month previously. It was a dangerous way to travel. Once the sub had closed in on the drop target, it had to cruise back and forth waiting for darkness to surface so that the passengers could disembark. Whether submerged or surfaced, an ever-vigilant crew kept watch for German ships.
On February 25, Churchill shepherded the “piano players” on board a submarine in London. Churchill and the three radio operators were sitting ducks paddling to shore in their canoes. They could be picked off by Vichy police from the shore or by German ships or collaborators’ fishing boats from the sea. Absolute silence was of the essence, as was moving slowly. Paddling too rapidly created a phosphorescent wake that was easily spotted. So despite the urge to get to the protection of solid ground as quickly as possible, one had to move at a snail’s pace.
They and their equipment landed at nearly the same spot Churchill had dropped to on the twenty-sixth. He escorted them to his contact and returned to the sub the same night with an agent bound for London in tow. The entire operation had come off without a hitch.
The evening of March 2, there was a knock on Virginia’s door. Knocks after dark had become synonymous with a house call from the Gestapo. She had nothing incriminating in the flat, though, and she opened the door confidently. A very pale man, hunched over, supported himself on the doorframe. He told her he was looking for Brigitte LeContre. Wary, Virginia told him that he had found her. “C’est le docteur qui m’envoie,” he said. “The doctor sent me” was HECKLER’S new pass phrase. Virginia’s response was, “Cela fait longtemps qu’il est venu” (It’s been a long time since he’s come).
The man told her his name was Gerard—actually Gerry—Morel and that he had come as a friend of Antoine’s, which Virginia knew was Philippe de Vomécourt’s code name. Virginia helped him in, led him to a chair, and asked him how she could help.
He had arrived the previous September. All was going well until he was burned (betrayed) in November. In retrospect, he said he was sure it was one of the contacts he had established. The gendarmes arrested him and threw him in solitary in Limoges for three weeks, and then transferred him to Beleyme sometime in December. It didn’t take him long to figure out he was about to be put on trial as an “enemy of the state” and that he would die there if he didn’t take action.
His solution was to go on a hunger strike, which made him sick and got him the transfer to a hospital in Limoges he was hoping for. That’s when the plan backfired. The doctor decided the only way to save his life was to operate and Gerard was in no condition to argue with him. When he came to, the doctor told him he had performed a gastrectomy and taken out part of his stomach.
By this time it was the middle of January. He told his constant nurse, a Sister of Mercy, that as soon as the stitches came out, he was going to escape. One night while the guard was sleeping, the nun helped him walk out of the room and climb over the wall. Despite a horrible blizzard, they made it to a house he knew about that belonged to de Vomécourt. He had been there recuperating ever since, and de Vomécourt had told him when he was well enough, he should move to Lyon and look up Virginia for help back to England.
Virginia was amazed at his story, and at the fact that he hadn’t broken open his incision and bled to death. She insisted he stay in her flat that night. In the morning they’d move him to a safe place and have Pep check him over. Gerard was anxious to get out of France; he was sure those responsible for him at the hospital were probably combing the country. But Virginia explained that the best way out of France was across the Pyrénées, which would require quite a bit of stamina. He certainly wasn’t up to it. Instead, she promised to sequester him away in one of her safe houses, where he could stay unseen until he was strong enough to leave the country.
The next day, Virginia contacted Mme Guérin, who, the month before, had begun to accumulate flats for such emergencies. There was one near Place Ollier that Gerard could use, she said. Virginia deposited him there and contacted Pep to come have a look at him. Then it was off to Le Provost’s; Gerard would need a carte d’identité, a ration book with the appropriate months torn out for authenticity, and other papers to make him appear legal.
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bsp; A week later, Gerard’s health was much improved and he was ready to make his exodus from France. Virginia would accompany him initially, as his cover. Traveling together they looked like any other couple on their way to a holiday. Before they left, she presented him with a tattered and grayed piece of paper: his demobilization certificate from the French army. It stated that he had suffered an injury in defense of the country and that he was fit only for the least taxing labor, thereby explaining why he wasn’t working.
Their plan was to leave on the first morning train south for Marseille, where they’d spend the night with Virginia’s good friend Mme Landry in the Vieux-Port, the old part of town. Next they would take the train west to Toulouse where Virginia would put him in the capable hands of the men she knew there who would get him across the Pyrénées into Spain. From there it was on to Portugal for a ship home to England.
It took them until 2:00 PM to get to Marseille where Mme Landry welcomed them with open arms and had seen to it that her son had shopped the black market to provide a hearty dinner. Their trip to Toulouse the next day was even longer. After an early morning start, they arrived at 4:30 in the afternoon. They took two rooms at a hotel that Virginia understood to be run by a Resistance sympathizer. The proprietor was very amiable and happily suggested a restaurant for their dinner that night. When they questioned him about a guide for passage into Spain, he told them to be in the lobby the next morning at 10:00 to meet a man who might be willing to discuss such business with them.
The following day, the agent was in the lobby when Virginia and Gerard arrived. He said the guide he represented was on his way back from a crossing and would be happy to take Gerard. The price for him to arrange Gerard’s meeting with the guide was four thousand francs, to be collected in advance. The agent would turn the money over to an uninvolved third party, the hotel proprietor for example. If the meeting failed to take place for some reason, the agent continued, the four thousand francs would be returned to Gerard in full. The fee for the crossing itself was twelve thousand francs, which Gerard would pay directly to the guide. Virginia figured an arrangement like that would probably ensure the hotel proprietor a cut in the action as well. But she couldn’t fault the man, as tough times required one to do anything possible to guarantee food on the dinner table.
The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy Page 14