Several months earlier, in June of 1942, a new man arrived in the city of Dijon and went to work at the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence service of the SS. Dijon was one hundred miles due north of Lyon, about twenty-five miles into the occupied zone. The new arrival, Klaus Barbie, had been an ardent Nazi for nine years, dedicated to all the party stood for, including contempt for those who didn’t meet the racial standards. Barbie was stationed in Holland after the Germans arrived and it was there that his gruesome appetite for torture developed.
When he appeared in Dijon, he had already cultivated a range of sadistic treatments that served his purposes. For gathering information, if promises of money or immunity didn’t entice his prisoners to talk, he frequently stripped them, men and women alike, and beat them into unconsciousness. He used handcuffs lined with metal spikes. The more resistant the prisoner, the tighter he had the cuffs pulled until the spikes tore into flesh. He hung victims on metal hooks or plunged them into tubs of ice-cold water, forcing them down to the point of drowning. If the prisoner fainted, he was dragged out of the water and revived, and if he still refused to talk he was plunged into the water again. All of this was interspersed with beatings.
Regardless of the fact that a prisoner had no information or had given him all he knew, Barbie continued to employ his vile treatments for his own pleasure. Occasionally he stroked his favorite cat during an episode of torture, or accompanied a prisoner’s cries for mercy by playing a love song on a piano.
Barbie overheard talk one day in late August about the Gestapo’s efforts in Lyon against the local Resistance. They had heard about a woman there, a Canadian they thought. This woman had been seen frequenting cafés and restaurants, usually in the company of one or two men, rarely the same ones. Capturing such an important pawn in the game of chess being played with the Resistance would certainly further his career, Barbie reflected. And the more he thought about it, the more resolute he became in playing a part in her detention.
“I would give anything to lay my hands on that Canadian bitch,” he told his staff. Without being aware of it, Virginia had suddenly become one of the Gestapo’s most wanted.
12
Flight
As early as 1938, President Roosevelt realized that the United States would have to become involved in the crises that were unfolding around the world. To that end, in 1939, he asked for, and Congress approved, an increase in military spending. The British were purchasing an enormous amount of American war implements and materials needed to fight the Germans, and the president recruited civilian manufacturers and engineers to build up military supplies. The American motor industry began manufacturing tanks, naval vessels, and landing craft. It was clear that the U.S. economy would be vital to the Allied war efforts.
When Britain could no longer afford to buy what it needed, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act on March 11,1941. It gave Roosevelt the power to sell, transfer, exchange, or lend equipment, up to an appropriated amount of $50 billion, to any country to help it defend itself against the Axis powers.
The desperately needed equipment was sent to Britain aboard ships traveling in convoys. The Allies had learned during the First World War that a group of ships moving together was the best defense against the menacing German submarines, the Unterseeboots, commonly referred to as U- boats. But the Nazis were not deterred, creating the “wolf pack” tactic. Rather than U-boats haunting the seas singly, a number of them would lie in wait. When one spotted a convoy, it signaled the others, and they all went in for the kill. Unable to fend off attacks from all sides, the convoys suffered heavy losses. Still the ships continued to stream across the Atlantic, manned by brave seamen dedicated to the cause.
When the United States entered the war, the U-boats began cruising American waters. In the first four months of 1942, eighty-seven ships leaving East Coast shipyards were sunk in the Atlantic, including one just fifteen miles off the New Jersey shore. The U-boats then moved to the Gulf of Mexico to attack ships coming out of the yards there. In May 1942 alone they sank another forty-one.
Despite a promise to defeat Germany first, American military powers were heavily engaged in the war in the Pacific through mid-1942. Battles in the Philippines, the Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal required enormous resources, and they cost the United States dearly in men and matériel. Although a number of bombers arrived in Great Britain that year, they saw only a limited number of campaigns. Their crews weren’t idle, however. The bomber commanders and their men learned tactics and the Allies built up a strong ground organization.
Also at work in Britain at the close of summer 1942 was an unfamiliar American lieutenant general by the name of Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was to assume command of the daring Allied attack in North Africa, codenamed Operation TORCH, that was in the planning stages. TORCH was aimed at German-held African countries along the Mediterranean and would be a three-pronged attack. Thirty-five thousand American soldiers would leave the United States to disembark in French Morocco. Another thirty-nine thousand would leave from Britain to take western Algeria at Oran. The third prong was made up of ten thousand Americans and twenty-three thousand Brits who would also leave England to attack at Algiers in Algeria.
Eisenhower’s opinion on TORCH during its planning was one of awe: “The venture was new. … Up to [this] moment no government [has] ever attempted to carry out an overseas expedition involving a journey of thousands of miles from its bases and terminating in a major attack.”
One early October morning, Virginia received news that infuriated her. French citizens had handed over yet another British flyer to the Gestapo, which was paying well for them. That made three in the last month. These collaborating French had no idea, of course, what fate awaited the flyers. Many assumed it was a prison sentence until the termination of the war. Others simply didn’t care. A bundle of francs at a time when a great many were going to bed hungry more than made up for guilt.
Not to be outdone, Virginia told Rousset that if the Germans were paying for flyers, they would too. They would spread the word that each man turned over to them was worth ten thousand francs, plus any expenses the citizens were out for food.
Radio operator le Chêne was back in Lyon and had stopped by Rousset’s office that morning to say he was in desperate need of some new radio tubes. In an effort to stay off the streets as much as possible, he had asked Rousset to see about them for him. Tubes had arrived in the parachute drop Labourier had picked up the previous night and were now stashed at the home of M. and Mme Catin. The Catins had been recruited to join HECKLER four months earlier. Both Monsieur and Madame were willing to assume any and all risks, acting as couriers between Lyon and Avignon, carrying messages to be sent to London or between Resistance members. Even their teenaged children had volunteered, independently of their parents’ involvement. It was only at a meeting in Rousset’s wine cellar that the four of them realized they were all engaged in the cause.
Virginia told Rousset that she’d be happy to pick them up, as she was headed in that direction to sign the papers for her new flat. The search for new living quarters had been difficult. The only suitable location she could find was on the sixth floor of a building with no elevator. But it was better than the alternative, which was to stay in her current flat and have people popping in all the time. Some dope, she said, had given her name and address away. Suddenly, she had begun to get an astounding number of people at her door who wanted to go to England.
The previous night it had been an old man who supposedly just got out of the camp at Vienne. He had told her that Mr. Lanlo of Nice sent him. Virginia told Rousset she didn’t know anyone by that name, nor did she know anyone named Bondy, who was still in the camp and also gave the old man her name. He had brought her ten eggs and told her that he could get her four more if she wanted. Evidently he had been informed that her services could be bought with hen fruit.
Rousset asked her if she had given the man their usual instructions, w
hich Virginia said she had. Whenever anyone approached a member of the HECKLER réseau, the member first disavowed any knowledge of the subject the stranger wanted to discuss. It was commonly known that everyone gathered at Place Bellecour to discuss news, so the stranger was directed to go there for a couple of days, with the possibility of receiving the information he was seeking. Then, another member of HECKLER would observe the stranger to see if he was approached by anyone else and to determine if he was genuine.
Rousset turned the subject to one Virginia had avoided for months: her return to London. It was an unwritten SOE rule that agents remained in the field for no more than six months and then went back to England to “cool off.” Virginia had been operating for thirteen months straight and London was strongly suggesting she return. She had agreed to go home later that month, but was now having second thoughts.
In a recent report to SOE headquarters, she had written:
I have asked you to arrange my clipper passage for the end of October, but I may postpone my departure. … I just want to have it all in order to be able to get my visas so that I can leave promptly if it seems advisable to do so.
Virginia remained unconcerned about her own safety. There was no reason for her to think otherwise. Why should she? She was in charge of her fate, not the Gestapo. She was directing the action in Lyon and unoccupied France, not the collaborators. She was conquering territory, not the Germans, even if only figuratively for the time being.
Still she had heard stories about incarcerated agents and Resistance members who were dragged into the prison yard, and, within full view of the other inmates’ windows, were stood against the wall and executed for their “crimes against the state” or for giving “aid and succor to the enemy.” The jailers hoped witnessing executions would encourage the other prisoners to divulge information, and some did. But others, far greater in number, remained silent to the end.
Resistance members were publicly tortured as well, and some were even executed in plain view. Virginia stumbled across one such display on a late October afternoon. The day was warm and the sun an autumn gold. She was on her way back to her flat and came around the corner to see four men and a woman chained together and being hauled behind a police vehicle. Two of the men were on their feet running, but the other man and the woman must have fallen and were being dragged. Their bodies were bloody, their clothing shredded. The gendarmes in the back of the truck were laughing, encouraging those on their feet to keep running. The scene nauseated Virginia. She didn’t know any of the people, but it didn’t matter. She knew their destination and their fate, if they survived the present ordeal.
Every story she heard about the death of someone fighting for a free Europe knifed into her. And for those who were tortured first, death did not come easily. The training the SOE agents had received in England might have made them aware of torture, but Virginia was quite certain it could never truly prepare them for the genuine article. She assumed she was no different from her compatriots in wondering how much she would be able to take if her turn ever came. How would she hold up?
By this time, the new Gestapo chief, Heinrich Müller, had authorized “sharpened interrogation” for terrorists, namely the Resistance and British agents. He approved exhaustion exercises, regulated beatings, sleep deprivation, starvation, and confinement in dark cells. The treatments were used to gather intelligence against those who had “plans hostile to the state,” or for confessions of guilt.
And there were other tortures even more demented. Some victims were subjected to having larger and larger stones pressed upon their chests until they confessed, or, as the weight of the stones became too great for them to breathe, they suffocated to death. Others were subjected to the funnel. It allowed the torturers to force-feed them fluids, from salt water to whatever the depraved mind could imagine, including vinegar, urine, and diarrhea.
Slowly tearing out fingernails and toenails was a common method for seeking confessions. Pliers, sometimes heated until they were red hot, were routinely used. But nail extraction could be accomplished even more slowly and cruelly by driving needles or wooden wedges and splinters under the nails to pry them loose. Worse still, sometimes the wood was dipped in boiling sulfur.
News of these atrocities and others reached Virginia via escaping agents and Resistance members. Some of them had only witnessed the tortures, others had been victims. The stories sickened and fretted her, to be sure. But they did nothing to deter her. It was vital to achieve a Nazi-free Europe. Anything else was just not acceptable.
On Saturday, November 7, 1942, Virginia received word from Lyon’s American Consulate, at the request of the embassy in Vichy, that an invasion of North Africa was imminent. She was told she had better make plans to leave Lyon if she didn’t want to stay in “forced residence” for the duration of the war. Taking all of the papers she had hidden in her flat, she sped to Rous- set’s office to begin liquidating everything they had stored in his wine cellar.
The circuit rule was to have people there at all times should uninvited Gestapo callers arrive at the doctor’s office. In that event, the doctor would signal a warning to those in the cellar by feigning a cramp and stomping on the floor. He would delay the callers, while below, any evidence of Resistance work would be scooped up and the cellar returned to its former identity as a storage facility of wine-soaked barrels and dusty bottles.
Virginia instructed those in the cellar to put items that could be destroyed into a washtub and burned. Those that were vital were piled up and sorted. She gave one réseau member, Nicola, the official seals, blank government documents, and the two hundred thousand francs she had brought from her flat. From now on, Nicola would handle the finances for the group, she told them. If a German occupation occurred, which was looking more likely, she would have to leave immediately. There wouldn’t be time for good-byes, so she bid them a collective, albeit premature, au revoir.
During the flurry of activity that continued over the next hour, each member wished Virginia well in the event they didn’t see her again. She and Rousset had agreed to meet for lunch after they had finished. They left separately and took different circuitous routes, ending up at a café not far from his office.
Waiting for their food, Virginia told him she had no intention of leaving until she was able to get Rake out of prison and on his way back to England. And there were other loose ends she wanted to get tied up. But Rousset disagreed. She would be of no use to anyone if she was arrested. Virginia was still not convinced she could leave. All of them would need her help and her contacts in the gendarmerie if they were picked up. Again Rousset overrode her. She had taken extreme security measures and they had all learned from her. Their arrests were unlikely.
Virginia said nothing more, but she wasn’t convinced. The following morning, she left her flat to pick up a newspaper. As she rounded the corner, she ran into a fellow she knew from the Deuxième Bureau, France’s Secret Service allied with the Resistance. He told her that the Allies had begun the invasion of North Africa at three o’clock that morning. They were all under orders to leave, and he heartily advised her to do the same, and the sooner the better.
The Germans would not take the North African assault lightly. In fact, they would see it as an immediate threat to their holdings on the European continent. And rightly so. North Africa would be the perfect place for the Allies to assemble an invasion into southern France. To counter any possibility of that, Virginia would have bet the farm that the Nazis would be occupying all of France within days.
She thanked the Deuxième Bureau man for the information and continued on to the café, now out of curiosity. Would Lyon’s citizens or the local gendarmes have any inkling of the changes certain to take place in the very near future?
The paper she picked up had no news of the invasion. It was printed under the watchful eyes of the Vichy government. Any news adverse to France’s current situation, or that of Germany, was always cleverly couched. The s
taff journalists, even if they knew about the North African invasion, had probably not yet been given the fanciful version of the event; the version that would portray the military of the Third Reich swatting away the invaders as if they were flies. By early evening, though, Virginia had other worries on her mind.
One of her réseau members, Artus, had gone to a nearby village to confer with a friendly gendarme who could help Virginia get out of Lyon the following Wednesday. Virginia was to meet Artus at 6:00 PM, but he didn’t materialize. Neither did Nicola, who was expected later that evening. Perhaps they were nervous about coming to the flat, or maybe they thought she had already left. Worse still, maybe they’d been picked up.
At nine, she was hungry and headed out to get some food at the Café de la République. Her friend from the Deuxième Bureau had the same idea and was just leaving as she arrived. They exchanged greetings and then he said softly in her ear that the Germans were expected in Lyon sometime between midnight and dawn. To keep up appearances for the others in the café, she laughed as if he had just told her a joke, linked her arm with his, and walked back outside with him to the corner. She thanked him and wished him good luck. He tipped his hat and walked away.
Virginia went straight to her flat where she began packing a bag. She hated leaving Lyon with so many loose ends, so many people depending on her. On the other hand, Rousset was right: when the Nazis came storming into the zone libre, their first act would be to clear it of Resistance people. The Gestapo was already looking for a Canadian woman, so because of her accent and gender, she would be quickly singled out. And there was nothing she could do from a jail cell. The last train to Perpignon, one of the jumping-off points for those crossing into Spain, left Lyon at 11:00 PM. She figured shed better be on it. She took one last look around her flat and went back out into the cold night.
The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy Page 17