by Howard Blum
But the sketchy BSC files didn’t offer the piquant intelligence Betty was looking for. So she traveled to New York—she knew better than to risk asking questions in Washington—and checked into the luxurious Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue. The Pierre was famously packed with well-heeled Vichy sympathizers waiting out the war, and Betty made it a point to bump into two old friends she had heard were in residence. Over drinks with a woman from Chile who was now married to a French count, and tea the next afternoon with another longtime acquaintance, an English woman married to a prosperous Vichy businessman, Betty received a more complete briefing.
At first Brousse, the press attaché, seemed to offer the most promise for the game she was hoping to play. “Oh, a real charmer,” said her Chilean friend in response to Betty’s seemingly casual question. “I don’t know about now, but he was a member of the Anglo-French Intelligence Board,” she added, referring to a joint military planning group the two countries had set up during the last war. “He is loyal to Vichy, as he is a serving officer, but he has no love whatsoever for the Germans.”
But then Betty’s English friend gave her the dirt on the ambassador. Henry-Haye, she whispered with catty delight, had a Frenchman’s wandering eye. These days it had wandered to two mistresses whose affections he was merrily juggling. In addition to, of course, his long-suffering wife.
Betty shared a giggle over the randy ambassador with her friend, but at the same time her operational mind began churning. A plan swiftly took shape: using her old standby cover as a journalist, she’d set up an interview with Henry-Haye. Once in the room with the ambassador, she’d hit him with the full force of her high-voltage charm. Any man enjoying two mistresses, she told herself, should be willing to add a third. Especially if she made it quite clear that this was just the sort of liaison she was looking for, too.
On May 19, Betty, assuming her cover identity of Elizabeth Thorpe, called the embassy. She had rehearsed her lines all morning, and delivered them as soon as Charles Brousse, the press attaché, came on the phone: She was an American newspaperwoman who wished to help France. She wanted to write a series of articles on Vichy France’s brave struggle through these complicated times, and she would like to start with an interview with the ambassador. How soon could one be arranged?
Brousse did not respond for a moment. All Betty could do was wait, and hope she had sounded both professional and sincere.
Another moment passed; the silence was unnerving. Growing desperate, Betty tried another tack. Perhaps, she challenged, Captain Brousse wasn’t, well, quite high up enough in the Press Department to make such arrangements.
An indignant Brousse shot back at once. “Of course I have the necessary authority! Will you come to the chancery tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock? Everything will be arranged and you will have as much time with the ambassador as you like!”
Captain Charles Brousse and his wife, Catherine, aboard the S.S. Exeter as they arrived in America for Brousse’s new post as press attaché to the Vichy French Embassy.
© Bettmann/CORBIS
Chapter 43
BETTY CHOSE A TIGHT GREEN dress whose bold color came close to matching the deep emerald of her eyes. Usually that sort of advantage would have reinforced her confidence, but as her appointment at the embassy approached, her anxiety increased.
She decided to walk around the block before going up the steps to the front door; perhaps that would settle her nerves. She knew the neighborhood well. After her father’s death, Cora had moved into an apartment just three doors down the street. Yet this afternoon she studied the embassy on Wyoming Avenue as if she were seeing it for the first time.
In a previous life, the embassy had been a comfortable private Victorian-style home, and it still retained its wide front porch, sloping roof, and bay windows. But another more businesslike story had been cobbled on, making the building look squat and misshapen. It was, she decided, a very ugly fortress.
Her nerves somewhat calmed and her resolve returning, she climbed the front steps. Yet as she walked through the door, Betty suddenly realized: she was behind the lines in enemy territory.
CHARLES BROUSSE, THE PRESS ATTACHÉ, greeted her with an apology. The ambassador, he explained with a diplomat’s fulsome sincerity, had been unavoidably delayed. Would Miss Thorpe please accompany him to his office? They could get to know one another until the ambassador was available.
The Vichy French Embassy, located on Wyoming Avenue, as photographed in 1942.
Churchill Archives Center, Papers of Harford Montgomery Hyde, HYDE 02 011
Their conversation was more a flirtation than an interview. Perched informally on the edge of his desk, his long legs crossed, Brousse was aware of the mischief in what he was doing. Without embarrassment, he studied her openly. It was a very deliberate inspection. Betty, alert and intrigued, welcomed his attention. She listened with rapt interest to his every word, at the same time making sure to signal her availability.
What did they talk about? With guile made all the more artful by her fluent, accentless French, Betty began by asking about the impressive display of ribbons on his suit. Brousse took the bait, recounting the wartime exploits that had earned him his Croix de Guerre and Légion d’Honneur rosette. Then with barely a pause, Betty shrewdly maneuvered the conversation to more personal revelations. Here, too, Brousse was quick to brag, portraying himself as a debonair forty-nine-year-old Frenchman of a certain class. He dismissed his many marriages with an insouciant shrug, spoke candidly of his numerous affairs, and let her know that he had a connoisseur’s appreciation for fine foods and good vintages.
Both of them realized full well that their meandering conversation was merely background noise. What mattered more was unspoken, but nevertheless filled the room: the attraction pulling them toward one another.
As it built in intensity, an aide entered to announce that Ambassador Henry-Haye was ready to see Miss Thorpe.
Gaston Henry-Haye, Vichy France Ambassador to the United States, with Charles Brousse on the right.
© Corbis
THE AMBASSADOR WAS FURIOUS. HE had just returned from a session with Cordell Hull, in which the secretary of state acted like a stern headmaster admonishing a misbehaving schoolboy.
Henry-Haye had requested the meeting to protest the US seizure of French ships interned in American ports and, a more self-interested complaint, the recent flurry of critical newspaper articles about the Vichy embassy. He had marched into Hull’s office expecting to receive at the very least a somewhat apologetic explanation; the traditional stiff courtesy between diplomats required Hull at the very least to display a modicum of chagrin. Instead, Hull fired right back. “The French Government at Vichy has gone straight into Hitler’s arms,” he railed. Vichy’s “first thought,” he snarled with genuine contempt, was “to deliver France body and soul to Hitler.” The fierce upbraiding continued without pause for an hour. Too shocked to offer more than an occasional feeble rejoinder, Henry-Haye suffered through most of his lashing with a mute astonishment.
But now, safely back in his own office, the ambassador poured out everything he felt he should have said to Hull. As he ranted, Betty was the perfect audience. She listened to his every resentful word with sympathetic concentration.
“How dare they [the Americans] judge France when they themselves had never suffered invasion,” Henry-Haye fumed. He ridiculed “American vulgarity and lack of civilized manners” and angrily justified his “difficult” mission: “France’s future requires cooperation with Germany. If your car is in the ditch, you turn to the person who will help you put it on the road again. That is why we will work with Germany.” On and on he went, in a monologue that lasted for a seemingly endless two and a half hours.
Betty was only too happy to let him vent. There was no better way to win the ambassador over than to sit back and listen, an adoring smile fixed on her face.
Finally Henry-Haye was too exhausted to continue. Yet although clearly spent, the gallan
t ambassador nevertheless rose from his seat and escorted Betty to his office door. Fixing her with a deep, meaningful look, he solemnly said he would be only too happy to see her again.
Brousse was waiting in the hallway. A perfect gentleman, he accompanied Betty down the embassy steps. They stood together on the street, and he bowed, kissed her hand, and said, “Au revoir.”
“Au revoir,” Betty replied before she turned and walked off. She felt an immense relief. Against all odds, she had completed the first part of her mission: she had made contact with Henry-Haye. But as she continued down the street, she found herself wondering whether it would be the ambassador or his press attaché who would make the next move. Either one, the practical spy decided, would suit her just fine.
A BOUQUET OF RED ROSES arrived the next morning, confirming Betty’s hopes: the operation was moving forward. She hesitated, though, before opening the accompanying envelope. Which of the two Frenchmen had stepped into her trap? With a sense of delight that took her by surprise, Betty read Charles Brousse’s name on the enclosed note. Even better, he’d invited her to lunch that day at the Carlton Hotel.
“I shall never forget that lunch,” an uncharacteristically nostalgic Betty told Hyde as they sat in the Shelbourne. The champagne flowed, but it had only worked, she’d thought at the time, to give her a firmer operational advantage; “I must say I was in my most sparkling mood,” she admitted. “As a diplomat’s wife”—the many jurisdictional problems caused by Arthur’s being in Chile and Betty’s return to America, as well as the war, had put their divorce on hold—“who had seen a good deal of the world, I had a fund of anecdotes. I could tell a story well, and I always kept them short. I told Charles the most amusing of them—with a few naughty ones thrown in deliberately. My object was to make Charles believe that I was a woman of the world who would not be averse to being wooed and won by a handsome Frenchman, even though we were both married. At the same time, I had to be careful not to reveal who my husband was and where my real sympathies lay. It was a tricky business, I can tell you.”
As the lunch continued and Betty went on gaily spinning her web, it got trickier. Brousse absently ran a single finger slowly up her arm, its tip tracing a smooth trail along her skin. The next moment he reached for her hand, cradled it gently, and then, as if it were the most natural of gestures, lifted it to his lips for a tender kiss.
And all the while Betty’s operational soul was telling her to go slow, to play this next stage long. The higher the price, the greater the appreciation, went the spy’s time-honored maxim. Tradecraft required that Brousse not get his way too soon or easily.
But her racing heart was sending Betty entirely different instructions. When Brousse caressed her, all her professional discipline nearly vanished. It took immense restraint not to return his touch, not to lean across the table and plant a long, deep kiss on his lips. So accustomed to being the one manipulating events, Betty found herself locked in a struggle with herself, each side of her mercurial nature vying for control.
When the long, leisurely lunch ended, Brousse asked if he could accompany Betty home. Yes, she agreed, at the same time trying to convince herself that her mind was not made up. Nothing had been decided by this small acquiescence.
Yet the moment the front door closed behind them, Brousse put his arms around her in a strong embrace. Suddenly, he lifted her off the floor and began to carry her up the stairs.
“Charles, what on earth are you doing?” she tried, but her protest sounded hollow even to her.
“You’ll see,” he promised. “You have nothing to fear.”
Their lovemaking was long, slow, and expert. His every gesture, his every touch, was skillful and precise. It was a power that ignited a greed in her for more.
That evening, after Brousse had gone home to his wife, Betty telephoned her handler in New York. “Johnny,” she said in a voice that she hoped did not betray the complicated emotions she was feeling, “I think I can say it’s in the bag.”
“Wonderful,” said Pepper. “But for heaven’s sake, play it cool.”
“Don’t worry, Johnny, I will.”
Betty hung up and sat on the edge of her bed, trying to convince herself that one more lie wouldn’t make any difference.
Chapter 44
THE TACTIC OF PRETENDING TO love someone in order to betray him was one that Betty had used with great success over the years. But setting out to betray someone she actually loved was something else entirely. It was, Betty began to discover, a much more precarious operation: she’d need to betray herself too.
Still, she did not turn away. Even as she fell deeper and deeper in love with Brousse, she went ahead with her mission to recruit him. She did not hesitate to deceive and manipulate, placing him in great danger. As she offered Brousse her affection, and yearned for his in return, Betty set out to coax him into being her agent.
Betty lived these two conflicting lives without regrets. Her wayward romances had taken her to some bad places, and this new affair was, she’d tell Hyde with total sincerity, the “complete love” she’d never before experienced. Yet it was also the “smoke,” as the jargon of her trade put it, that gave her the opportunity to turn a high-ranking Vichy official into a traitor. It was Betty’s gift—or was it a curse? she wondered as she shared this episode with Hyde—that while lying in Brousse’s arms, she could feel blissfully happy. But no sooner was he out the door than she’d be typing a report transcribing all he had carelessly revealed during their passionate afternoon.
In the same day Betty could live two lives. And she’d never feel any conflict, any warring loyalties. For she had—and this insight, too, reached across the decades as she sat in the Shelbourne opposite Hyde—already pledged her allegiance, and after that nothing else mattered. She would sacrifice everything for the cause she served and the secret life she had chosen.
RECRUITMENTS, LIKE MOST SEDUCTIONS, PROCEED in stages, and so it went as Betty set out to make Charles Brousse her agent.
In the beginning they simply shared earnest confessions, the small revelations that lovers disclose to one another as they weave the fabric of their romance. Or at least that was what Betty wanted Brousse to believe. He would tell her about his loveless marriage to his wealthy wife, the great-granddaughter of John C. Calhoun, a former vice president of the United States. With unembarrassed candor he would admit that he counted on Kay to pay the bills; his assets were tied up in France, and he had a fondness for all the good things money could buy. Other times he would rant about Henry-Haye; in his eyes the ambassador was incompetent and, much more unforgivable to Brousse, an arriviste, the son of merchants who had the effrontery to think he was worthy to represent France. All these snippets would be dutifully included in the weekly reports Betty delivered to handlers in New York, but even as she typed, she knew they were of negligible intelligence value. Still, she was not discouraged. Experience had taught her that trivial divulgences can gather momentum, and that frank talk can become a habit. The road to treason is paved with small confidences.
But it was John Pepper, pressured by an impatient Stephenson, who pushed the op to the next level. He gave Betty a typed sheet of questions for Brousse. “I want the answers on my desk next week,” he ordered.
Pepper was not demanding state secrets. He had carefully crafted his questions so that Brousse would be disclosing seemingly random scraps of diplomatic tittle-tattle—say, the names of his close contacts at the German embassy, or who was out of favor in his own embassy and who had the ambassador’s ear. And Betty, of course, was never so clumsy as to directly question Brousse; it was not an interrogation. The art—and Betty’s tradecraft was wonderfully instinctive—was to insert an inquiry into their conversation as if it were a small curiosity, nothing more than another fork in their meandering pillow talk.
Yet—and this was the part that kept every agent on full alert—Brousse had to realize on some level what was going on. Like any target who has not yet signed on, he might
deny to himself that he was being played—but part of him would know. He must have suspected that the woman with whom he was falling in love was grooming him for treason.
But still he had a choice. He was not fully committed. He could walk away with no consequences; neither his ambassador nor his government would ever know. At worst, he could admonish himself that he’d been indiscreet.
At this crucial moment in every operation, all any fieldman can do is worry through the long, sleepless nights. Will the prey run for the hills, or will he come back for more? Everything depends on what happens next. And—a further complication for an anxious Betty—she not only wanted Brousse as her agent but desperately needed him in her life.
Yet after Brousse played innocently along, responding with no apparent hesitation to her questions, three silent days passed. He did not call, and Betty slept alone in her bed.
When Brousse finally returned, he brought Betty a present—or, more accurately, two presents. They were telegrams. Admiral Darlan, the head of Vichy’s naval operations, had sent the first, to the embassy that morning. It requested a list of all British ships being refitted in American dockyards and the specific repairs scheduled. The second telegram was the response the embassy’s naval attaché had sent just hours earlier. “From a good source,” the attaché began, and he proceeded to rattle off the names of the British battleships, carriers, and cruisers in East Coast ports, the work being done, and the approximate dates when they would put to sea.
Brousse handed this gift to Betty with no explanation. He was reluctant to discuss what he’d done; any conversation would force him to face up to the treasonous act he’d committed. With purposefully delusional logic, he wanted to be able to tell himself that he was merely sharing some interesting information about his day at the office with the woman he loved. It was a rationale he clung to even as he knew it was a lie.