by Howard Blum
“I must speak to you on a matter of grave importance to France,” she announced with somber authority in her impeccable French as soon as Benoit opened the door.
He stared at her quizzically for a moment. Then, to Betty’s immense relief, he asked madame to please come in.
Benoit led her to a gloomy little room, and he stood at polite attention until his guest took her seat in one of the two armchairs flanking a long sofa. As he settled into his chair, fitting comfortably into its well-worn depths, Betty had a chance to study him. He was a short, elderly man, his round face gray and weary, but he sat with his back straight as a soldier’s, giving him a remarkable dignity. Betty at once knew it would be a mistake to offer him money, or to try to charm him. She would stick with her plan.
Small talk would be of little help, she sensed, so she came out with it at once. “I work for American intelligence,” she said in French, and unlike the last time she’d said this to Brousse, it now was true.
Benoit looked at her, confused and perplexed, and she took advantage of his bewilderment to continue in her rapid French. “Our desires and aims are the same as yours,” she said. “We want you to help France because we know that by doing so you will also be helping the Allied war effort.”
He fixed her with a hard, chilly stare.
Betty let the silence continue. She wanted him to ask the inevitable question.
“What do you want me to do?” he finally demanded.
Betty once again did not hesitate or attempt to dance around what she had in mind. If Benoit decided she was being coy, if he felt she was holding something back, he’d end the conversation. So Betty told it to him straight: she wanted his help in obtaining the naval ciphers.
Benoit’s face collapsed into a frown of disapproval. And then, overwhelmed, he started to cry. “I am very confused,” he pleaded. In just moments, Betty felt, he seemed to have aged a decade, perhaps even two. “I have had no time to think,” he went on through his tears. “Everything has happened so quickly.”
Betty could not help but feel sorry for him. But at the same time all her training was telling her that Benoit had not turned her down. Her request was still out there, still dangling in the gloomy little room.
So she persisted. “It is in your power to prove how much the traitors in the French Government are helping the Germans. To turn the ciphers over to us would be the greatest service you could perform for your unhappy country.”
Once more a thick silence stretched between them, and Betty did not dare puncture it.
“Excuse me, madame, but everything is so confusing. Everything has happened so quickly,” he muttered at last. Then he repeated his words as if in a trance. “Everything is so confusing. Everything has happened so quickly.”
Betty was ruthless. “Surely your loyalty is to the French people,” she attacked. “Not to a government of traitors.”
Benoit cradled his gray head in his hands. His agony over the decision he was so desperately trying to make had left him undone.
When he found his words, he spoke not in anger but with despair. “I cannot,” he said in a soft, but steady voice. “I have a long record of loyalty to my chiefs. All of them have written me letters. The codes and ciphers have been my responsibility, my personal responsibility. To guard them has been my duty. Loyalty is loyalty.” He repeated in his firm whisper, “I cannot.”
Betty had the wisdom to concede defeat. She knew nothing she could do or say would convince Benoit to betray his concept of honor. And, to her surprise, she found that part of her couldn’t help but admire his resolve. She thanked him for his time and then saw herself to the door.
She had failed. Now she would have to come up with a different ploy. But when she was back in her apartment, picking up the phone to ring Brousse, another, more chilling thought occurred to her: What if Benoit felt it was his duty to inform the ambassador? How long would it be before the FBI—or perhaps the Vichy security thugs—were pounding on her door?
Chapter 47
BUT FEAR, BETTY REPRIMANDED HERSELF, is an indulgence. She would not allow the mission to be further delayed by her dread, or her shame, or her helplessness. She had no control over what Benoit would or would not do; she would push those anxious thoughts aside. What she could do instead, she told herself with pride, was find another way to grab the ciphers. She would rush straight ahead with a new plan.
She chose not to discuss this fresh idea with Brousse; he’d only try to dissuade her. And she also decided not to inform Huntington; she hoped to surprise him, to present him with the ciphers as a grand, totally unexpected present. The time for hesitation, for delicacy, had passed.
Determined, she decided that if she could not persuade Benoit, then she would find a more tractable target. She set her sights on the man who had replaced him as chief cipher officer, Count Jean de la Grandville. She made up her mind to strike the next day.
Long afterward, a more reflective Betty would look back on what she did and acknowledge both her impetuosity and her regret to Hyde. “Too much zeal, perhaps, and it was in my nature to be headstrong,” she conceded with sorrow.
COULD TWO MEN CHOSEN FOR the same job have been more different? While Benoit was aged and weary, a plodding by-the-books factotum, young Grandville was another sort entirely. Blessed at birth with a grand family heritage and movie-star looks—with his toothy smile and dark wavy hair, he was often compared to the matinee idol Jean-Pierre Aumont—Grandville had strutted his way through life. Vain, preening, and self-possessed, he had the haughty confidence of a man who has little doubt that the world is his oyster. He was no friend of the Nazis—their fanaticism struck him as unseemly—but unlike Benoit he never felt that serving Laval’s regime jeopardized his own sense of honor. Grandville conveniently twisted the facts to suit him. To his way of thinking, it was possible to be both a good Frenchman and loyal to Vichy. In fact, there really was no other choice.
Yet while there appeared to be little likelihood of appealing to the count’s shifting patriotism or opportunistic morality, Betty thought she’d found other openings. Two snippets of gossip about Grandville that Brousse had casually passed on had convinced her that he’d be pliable. First, Brousse, with an indulgent laugh, had mentioned that the young count fancied himself a lady’s man. And now that his wife had been exiled to the country as she waited to give birth to their second child, Grandville was eagerly taking advantage of his new freedom. Lurid stories about his many liaisons were flying around the embassy.
But that was not all. Exhibiting a genuine sympathy, Brousse had also told Betty that the count was in pretty much the same straits as he was: that is, broke. The Grandville money was firmly tied up in wartime France, and Washington was an expensive city; the count barely got by on a junior secretary’s stipend. And the arrival of a new child, Betty slyly presumed, could only make a difficult financial situation worse.
In Betty’s mind, then, her next move was clear. If the count could be bedded or bought, she could play this operation out to a successful conclusion; she had mounted reassuringly similar ops time after time, and all had been intelligence triumphs.
That evening Betty picked up the phone, boldly dialed the count’s home number, and, adding a new alias to her growing list, identified herself as Mrs. Elizabeth Branch when he answered. Then, before Grandville had a chance to hang up, she made her pitch.
“I wish to see you most urgently on a matter of interest to you,” Betty announced in her faultless French.
It was wartime. He was a diplomat in an increasingly unpopular embassy; the security personnel repeatedly warned the staff to be wary of approaches by enemy agents. But his wife was away, and for once he had nothing planned for the evening. And the mysterious Mrs. Branch had a lovely voice. He could not help wondering what she looked like.
He was alone, he said. If Mrs. Branch would like, she could come over right away.
An hour later Betty was sitting opposite the count in his living room. If Benoit
had been there too, he might not have recognized Mrs. Branch as the woman who had appeared at his house the previous day. It wasn’t just Betty’s attire, although she had purposefully chosen a snug dress that clung to her curves. Nor was it the flowery perfume that floated around her in an aromatic cloud. What had transformed her was the way she presented herself. She looked at Grandville with a new, intense alertness. There was a playful intimacy in her smile, in the ebullient gestures of her hands, in the way she casually sprawled on the sofa. All that had been diminished the night before, tonight was enhanced. With her long legs crossed, her green eyes shimmering, and her naughty, throaty laugh carrying things along, her sensuality filled the room. It was a calculated performance, and an effective one.
She began, though, with an appeal quite similar to the one she had used with Benoit. She was an American agent working in the interests of France, she said. But as she continued, her tone swiftly became more personal, as if she was coaxing a favor from an old and very dear friend, not someone she’d just met. “Why do you remain on the side of Laval instead of joining the cause of freedom? I can sense your true feelings,” she said, leaning closer toward him.
“I am a career diplomat,” Grandville countered, “and as such am in the habit of taking instructions from my government. I have no choice in the matter.”
His tone, though, Betty noted, was more defensive than confrontational. And he had not asked her to leave. So she pressed on. “But in your heart you think France should come first, over and above these considerations.”
He nodded mildly, as if he were agreeing. Encouraged, Betty decided to push on. “If you wish to accept this view, then I am in the position to offer you the means of helping your country.”
“What exactly do you mean, madame?” Grandville asked, suddenly testy.
Betty realized she had reached the moment when it was everything or nothing. Either slink away or plow forward, knowing that any second the entire operation could blow up in your face. But she felt a heady confidence, certain that what she had to offer would persuade the suave, absurdly handsome egotist sitting smugly across from her to commit treason. As if it were a perfectly natural request, she asked for his help in obtaining the naval ciphers. They would be used, she stressed, against the Nazis and to benefit France. Then, without waiting for a response, she went on with an almost apologetic note in her voice, as if it were bad manners to raise a subject as banal as money. Still, she explained that she’d been authorized to offer “a considerable sum of money if he would perform this patriotic service.” A monthly retainer could also be arranged if he were to keep her informed of any changes to the codes.
The count sat motionless in his chair, as if frozen by his thoughts. Finally he stood up and walked over to Betty.
“You are nice,” he said, caressing her cheek with his hand. “You enchant me. But you are too young to bother about such serious things. When may I call on you tomorrow?”
“You are nice, too.” Betty laughed, trying to keep things steady. But she was on guard: Grandville’s manner was disturbing. Was he being impish or calculating? Betty was not sure. Equally confusing, he had not so much dismissed her offer as deflected it. Yet he did want to see her tomorrow.
She continued to flirt, but now with a strategic restraint: “You will only enchant me if you bother about serious things! You may call me at the Wardman Park after six o’clock in the evening—but only about serious things!”
An icy March drizzle fell as the count accompanied a wet and shivering Betty back to the hotel. They said their good nights in the lobby, and it was agreed that he’d telephone tomorrow. But in her warm apartment, even after she had toweled her hair dry and changed into wool pajamas, she found that she could not stop shivering. She lay in bed wondering if she had made a terrible miscalculation.
IT WAS AN AMBUSH, AND Betty did not like that at all.
From the start, it had been a tedious day. She left much later than usual for her weekly meet with her BSC handler in New York; Charles had called just as she was about to go to the airport and said he was coming over with something “that would interest our American friends.” Then, on the flight back to Washington, a storm suddenly erupted, and her plane was forced to land in Baltimore. She waited impatiently for the next plane to Washington, only to be finally told that all scheduled flights had been cancelled. She had no choice but to take an annoyingly expensive taxi the forty or so miles back to the Wardman Park. It was after nine when, exhausted and bedraggled, Betty walked into the lobby.
And straight into an angry Grandville. He had been waiting for hours, and he was clearly bristling. “I have things to say to you,” he bellowed threateningly.
People in the lobby were turning to look at them. Betty did not want to have a discussion with the count in public; for all she knew, FBI agents were watching her at that moment. And she certainly didn’t want Brousse to see them together; his jealousy would only make things more problematic. But at the same time she was reluctant to ask the count up to her apartment. It was not just that she was totally spent after the long day. She was scared. Grandville continued to glower at her, his resentment honed to a sharp, intimidating edge.
But she’d have to take her chances with the count. Operational security was the most important concern. Let’s go to my apartment, she said quickly. We can talk there.
Upstairs, the count’s anger broke loose. He had discovered that Branch was not her real name. He now knew she was Mrs. Elizabeth Pack, the wife of a British diplomat. If she had deceived him about her identity, how could he trust her about anything else? How could he be sure of her?
“How can you be more sure than you already are?” Betty echoed. She had hoped to suggest that his question was absurd, but she knew her response rang hollow; she’d been caught. “You have my word that I am an American agent, and I have made a straightforward proposition to you,” she continued with stagy indignation.
Grandville frowned. “I appreciate all that,” he said. “But you know intimacy forms a bond like no other. I think there should be this bond between us.”
Betty did not want a bond. She wanted the ciphers. Until the count handed over the codes, or at the very least promised that he would deliver them, there was no reason to bed him. It wasn’t just her mood; desire had little to do with her reluctance. It was prudent tradecraft: sex is a reward, not an inducement. You pay your asset after he delivers, never before. Of course it was a rule she’d broken from time to time. But on those occasions either she was the one doing the manipulating, or the prospect of a bit of frolic had seemed enticing. She saw neither advantage nor pleasure in a dalliance with the count.
“All I am after is the ciphers,” she said with what she hoped sounded like resolve. “As for anything else, it is besides the point and means nothing to me.”
“It means nothing to you, but it means something to me.”
Suddenly the count rose and took Betty in his arms. He kissed her, and when she didn’t respond, he kissed her again. Betty thought about pushing him away, but she also feared that she’d be driving off her one chance to obtain the ciphers. She told him to stop, but he kissed her with more passion. His hands moved over her. All her training, all her instincts, told her it would be wrong to let this go any farther. She wanted to fight him off, but she also wanted to keep the operation alive.
Without really thinking about it, she found herself returning his kisses. She told herself she could be either a lady or a spy. She could not be both.
When he led her into the bedroom, she followed obediently, but not willingly.
“I closed my eyes and hoped that this, like so much else that I wanted to do, would be for England,” she told Hyde, hoping to convince herself too.
AFTERWARD, MOROSE AND BITTER, BETTY lay wrapped in a tight cocoon of still-warm sheets. In her adventurous life, she had taken lovers for many reasons—for her country, for her pleasure, or simply for the reckless hell of it. But this had been something different.
Something untoward. As Grandville lay on top of her like a conqueror, as he moved inside her with a harsh fury, he had been punishing her. He had no intention of getting the ciphers, she realized. He wanted revenge for the lies she had told him, for her attempt to manipulate him. For the first time in her life she had a feeling of self-disgust, as if she had somehow sinned against her own very broad notion of honor.
Grandville, meanwhile, was getting dressed. The room was strangely quiet. Then suddenly he started to talk, his back to her. He addressed the reflection in the bedroom mirror in front of him; now that he was done, there was no reason to speak to her directly.
He would not cooperate, he told her firmly. He was “torn by doubts.” In fact, he continued, he felt it was his duty to inform the ambassador that an American agent had contacted him. That she had asked him to steal the naval ciphers.
Despite her low mood, Betty knew she had to act. She had to steady a situation that was careening out of control. “We need to talk. We should meet again,” she suggested, detesting herself.
The count turned to face her. “Yes, I could come by some other evening,” he said. “When?” The prospect clearly pleased him.
Betty did not want to set a date. She did not want to go to bed with him again. But it was the only way she could think of to save the mission. Before she could say anything, the phone rang.
Glad for a reprieve, she picked up the receiver.
“I’m coming right over,” she heard Brousse say before he quickly hung up.
Chapter 48
BETTY HAD ALWAYS KNOWN HER many deceptions might someday catch up with her, but she’d prepared herself for tragedy, not a French farce. Yet here she was, trying to rush one lover out of her apartment and down the stairs before another lover stepped out of the elevator. Frantically she threw on her clothes, as she pleaded with the count to hurry. She loved Brousse, yet she had matter-of-factly betrayed him. Betty herself had difficulty understanding or condoning what she had done, and she couldn’t imagine that Brousse would even try.