Spy Princess

by Shrabani Basu

  Gieules found Dutilleul waiting for him at 2 p.m. in front of the Trocadero. They waited for some time near the Palais de Chaillot and then a person corresponding to the description approached them, asking if one of them was Dutilleul. They had barely exchanged a few words when they were surrounded by eight policemen armed with revolvers. The police handcuffed them and drove them separately in two cars to the Avenue Foch.

  At Avenue Foch, Gieules told his interrogators that he was simply a friend of William Savy and was doing a few errands for him while he was away in London. He said he knew nothing more. The Germans pressed him for Noor’s number, but although Gieules knew both her number and her address he insisted it was always she who called him, and did not give it away.

  The Gestapo now used Gieules to set a trap for Noor on 30 September. Noor was worried that she had not heard from Gieules after 28 September. She confided in Viennot that she suspected he had been arrested. He advised her to ring the house and find out. Unknown to Noor, Gieules was sitting in front of two armed Gestapo officers when she called. He had been told to arrange a meeting with Noor. He deliberately tried to sound vague but asked her to meet him on 1 October at 10 a.m. at the Etoile, on the corner of Avenue MacMahon and rue Tilsit.

  Noor had her misgivings, and Viennot advised her not to wait at the meeting place. He left Noor near the Arc de Triomphe and went to check out the site near the Etoile. Sure enough he saw Gieules there, but at a discreet distance there were six tall men guarding him from all angles. He returned to Noor and told her it was definitely a trap. At 10.40 a.m. Noor and Viennot saw the six agents bundle Gieules into a car and drive away. Noor had had a narrow escape. Gieules realised that she had sensed the trap and given the meeting a miss.26

  Viennot realised that Noor was now in very real danger since the Gestapo had seen her and talked to her. He took her to a good hairdresser in Paris and asked for her hair to be dyed brunette. Noor had dyed her hair so many times now that it had become coarse and stiff. He also got rid of her English-style macintosh and grey dress and bought her a blue suit, a grey polo-necked jumper and a navy-blue hat. He remarked that she looked more French now.

  Viennot noticed that Noor always carried her notebook with her in which she had written her codes and a full record of all the messages that she had sent to London. He reminded her that it was a dangerous document and if found on her would incriminate her at once. It would also reveal many useful things to the enemy. But Noor said she carried it on her precisely because it was so important, and she did not like to leave it anywhere. He also asked her why she did not destroy her past messages, as these were dangerous too, but Noor told him that London had told her to be particularly careful in ‘filing’ her messages.27

  London had indeed said that all agents were to be very careful about filing their messages. They had, however, meant the use of the term ‘filing’ in a journalistic sense (as in sending a story). Noor had taken it literally as ‘filing’ in the bureaucratic sense and preserved the messages neatly and in order. This simple mix-up could have been avoided if agents had been told in clear terms to destroy all their messages after they had been sent.

  Viennot found that Noor would not listen to him, and she insisted on obeying what she thought were orders from London, even though in the wrong hands the notebook could reveal a considerable amount to the Germans.

  Noor was very shaken at the way she had nearly been betrayed by Gieules, a person she had worked so closely with for the past few months. She knew now that the Germans were closing in on her. They had actually seen her face to face. The strain of it all became too much for her and she broke down at Madame Prénat’s house, burying her face in her hands and crying: ‘I wish I was with my mother.’28

  Some time around the end of September Noor was spotted in Paris by her old friend and acquaintance Alexis Danan, the journalist from Paris Soir with whom she had planned to set up a children’s paper.29 Danan saw her on one of the avenues that converge on the Etoile. Their glances crossed and there was a look of surprise and recognition on Noor’s face. They instinctively started moving towards each other when Danan noticed her hesitate. Her dark eyes told Danan that he was to avoid her. Noor was carrying a small black case with her (probably her transmitter). Danan then strolled in front of the window of a bookseller allowing her the opportunity to approach him if she wanted to. Noor clearly wanted to talk to her old friend, but she restrained herself. She returned twice to the bookshop and walked close to Danan. He saw her ‘magnificent surprised eyes’ but she did not smile at him. Her eyes told the story. It was their last meeting.

  The Gestapo had been trying to track Noor down since the beginning of July. Their wireless-detection system was trained on her and they had often heard her transmissions, but despite their best efforts they had not yet managed to capture her as Noor was following strict SOE guidelines of short transmissions from different locations.

  Once the German listening machine intercepted a phone call from Sablons 88.04 that told them an agent was at work. It was the telephone number of Noor’s address at the Boulevard Richard Wallace. They raided the flat some time in early October. But here too they found nothing. Immediately after the Gestapo had tried to trap her, Noor had collected her things, paid Madame Jourdois the rent and left the flat. She had told her it was unsafe for her to stay there any longer.

  Throughout September, Noor had become like a hunted animal and on two occasions she told Madame Jourdan that she had been followed by the Gestapo and nearly got caught. One night she came to their house at nine, trembling like a leaf and said she had done her job, but that time she had felt she would not make it.30 The Jourdans knew that Noor had been on a particularly dangerous job that night. She had called in before the job, entrusted them with her transmitter and told them to bury it if she did not come back. They had been waiting tensely for her return, and were greatly relieved when she did walk in. Already Noor was living on borrowed time.

  Seeing the state that Noor was in, Madame Jourdan begged her to stay with them. But Noor would not be persuaded. She told Madame Jourdan that she had obligations in Paris and there were some people she had to meet every day to exchange notes. And she stepped out into the night again.

  Viennot and Vaudevire now decided that Noor should lie low for a while and they arranged for her to go to Le Havre in Normandy. She put up a stubborn resistance but they said her arrest could compromise the others, so she was forced to agree. Vaudevire took her to the station at St Lazare and put her on the train himself. This was around 5 October.

  Noor, however, returned in two days saying she could not vegetate in a farm in Normandy when she was needed in Paris. But Garry was away and Noor found that she was isolated again as both Arrighi and Vaudevire told her that she should not work from Paris any more. They advised her to return to England as it was clearly unsafe for her to stay there any longer.

  Noor meanwhile told London that she would be going off the air for a while. Since she refused to leave her post till a replacement had been sent, Buckmaster advised Noor that he had found somebody to fill her position and she should return by the mid-October Lysander, to which she agreed.31

  Noor now made a quick dash to Suresnes to say goodbye to Raymonde and Madame Prénat. She told Raymonde she was leaving for England and that she would see her again after the war. She gave Raymonde a parting gift of a gold compact (this was probably the one given to her by Maurice Buckmaster before she left for the field).

  Vaudevire went with Noor to a rendezvous at Porte Maillot to meet a contact who would arrange her passage to England. When they got there they saw the agent, but felt something was not quite right and walked away. They had escaped another Gestapo trap.

  On 9 October Viennot got a frantic call from Noor asking him to meet her at the Pont Levallois. He was not sure if this was a genuine call but went there anyway. Noor was not there. Neither did she come for an important meeting that night in which the Resistance were discussing how to blow up a bu
ilding that housed the instruments for submarine warfare. They thought she had been arrested.

  But Noor was still safe. She visited the Jourdans and told them that she was leaving for England on 14 October, and that she would see them on the day. They begged her to stay with them but once again she said she had other obligations.

  On 10 October she did not go for her usual transmission to Madame Peineau’s flat but rang her the next day. On 11 October she visited Madame Aigrain and told her she was leaving on the 14th. The next day, she rang Madame Aigrain again and asked her if she could come and see her. She sounded frantic.

  Madame Aigrain had some visitors who were not sympathetic to the Resistance and she told Noor that she should not come just then. It was the last she heard from her. Within half an hour the Gestapo had entered Madame Aigrain’s flat at 1 Square Malherbe and arrested her and her friend Raymond Andres.

  Noor had told everyone about her planned departure. It seems she would have successfully outwitted the Germans, as she had done for the past three months, and managed to return to England, if she had not been betrayed by a person named ‘Renée’. This was probably Renée Garry, sister of Henri Garry, her first contact in Paris. Noor knew Renée well and had often stayed in the Garrys’ flat with her.

  Renée, according to the German officer who met her, was a Frenchwoman, about ‘30 years old with dark hair and fairly corpulent’. She came to the Gestapo headquarters at Avenue Foch and told the head, Josef Kieffer, that she was prepared to betray a British agent if she was paid a certain amount of money. It was arranged that the arrest would not take place at the flat and that the other agent (Solange, Garry’s friend) would not be arrested. She gave a personal description of Noor and the full address of the house in which she was staying.32 The description matched the one the Germans had of Noor, and they now had the address they so badly needed. Renée was promised 100,000 francs for supplying the details about Noor (one-tenth of the amount that the Germans usually gave for the capture of British agents).

  The house that Noor was staying at was on the rue de la Faisanderie, a corner house on a street parallel to the Avenue du General Serrail, which led off the Avenue Foch. The street was right opposite 84 Avenue Foch, headquarters of the Gestapo, who were distributed in small groups to watch her house. On the morning of 13 October Noor came out of the main entrance and walked into the baker’s shop which was situated in the same building. Within minutes she came out again and walked away.

  The German officers sent out to arrest her, Werner Ruehl and Haug, were sure the girl was Noor. She was wearing a blue tailored dress trimmed with white, and a dark hat. It was the dress Viennot had bought her a few days earlier. They started following her. Suddenly Noor turned around and saw them. Instinctively she knew she was being followed and quickly disappeared around a corner. They did not see her again though they searched the area thoroughly. Once again Noor’s Beaulieu training had come in handy as she managed to shake off her followers and disappear.

  After a lengthy search Ruehl and Haug returned to the station. 2 hours later they heard that Madeleine had been arrested. The man who made the arrest was Pierre Cartaud, a French officer working for the Gestapo.

  After she had shaken off the German officers, Noor had at some time returned to her flat in rue de la Faisanderie. She turned the key in her lock and went in. Standing behind the door was Pierre Cartaud. He had let himself into the flat and was waiting for her. A violent struggle followed. Cartaud seized Noor by her hands, but she fought back savagely and bit his wrists. As Cartaud tried to free himself, Noor continued to struggle and bit him harder, drawing blood. Eventually he was forced to release her hands. Cartaud tried to push her on the sofa and handcuff her, but he could not subdue Noor, who was attacking him ferociously. Finally, he drew his gun from his pocket, told her to keep still or he would shoot. Then with one hand training the gun on her, he used his second hand to make a telephone call to Kieffer at Avenue Foch and asked for assistance.

  Kieffer immediately sent Ernest Vogt and told him to take two or three men with him. Vogt described the scene later: ‘Pierre was standing covering her from the farthest possible corner of the room and Madeleine, sitting bolt upright on the couch, was clawing the air in her frustrated desire to get at him, and looked exactly like a tigress.’33

  Noor’s eyes were flashing with rage and she unleashed a stream of insults on her captors, calling them sales Boches (dirty Germans). Vogt said he had never seen such fury. Noor was also cursing her luck. She exclaimed that this would have to happen at the last moment, just before she was going to leave for England. Out numbered by the Gestapo, she sank back on the couch.

  Cartaud’s wrists were bleeding heavily. Vogt and the other officers led Noor down the steps. Trying not to attract the attention of the other residents of the building, they bundled her into the waiting car for the short drive to 84 Avenue Foch.

  The Gestapo had finally caught up with Noor. At Avenue Foch, Kieffer was delighted with the news of her arrest. Ruehl remembered thinking that she must have been a very important agent indeed.34

  TEN

  Prisoner of the Gestapo

  The wide tree-lined Avenue Foch is one of the most exclusive boulevards of Paris, running from the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Boulogne. Named after the French general Marshal Foch, to whom the Germans had surrendered in November 1918, it was ironic that the Gestapo chose this boulevard for their headquarters. The symbolism was not unintentional. It was just outside Paris in the forests of Rethondes that the Germans had surrendered to Marshal Foch after the First World War. On 21 June 1940, four days after the Armistice had been agreed by Marshal Pétain, Hitler chose to visit this very spot to reinforce the fact that the Armistice was a diktat rather than a diplomatic agreement.

  Accompanied by Goering, Ribbentrop and Hess, the Führer surveyed the scene in the forest. The site included a statue of Marshal Foch, a wagon-lit that had been there during the surrender, and an inscription condemning ‘the criminal pride of the German Empire’. These Hitler looked at with an expression of ‘hate, scorn, revenge, triumph’.1 He stayed only a few minutes to hear the preamble to Pétain’s Armistice read out and left after the German national anthem had been played triumphantly on the spot. His troops then blew up the slab with the inscription, razed the entire site and towed away the wagon-lit to Berlin.2 To Hitler, it symbolised the victory of the Third Reich and revenge for the defeat in 1918. The Gestapo then chose to have their headquarters on Avenue Foch to rub further salt into the wounds.

  The German word ‘Gestapo’ was the abbreviation for Geheime Staats Polizei or Secret State Police, the organisation founded in 1933 by Goering and controlled by Himmler. The Gestapo was the most hated branch of the German forces, notorious for arresting people who were never seen again. Such was the fear of the Gestapo that Parisians would say that a person had been taken to the Avenue Foch rather than mention that they had been picked up by the Gestapo. The job of arresting agents was the responsibility of the Gestapo. It overlapped with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the party security service, as both were divisions of the Reichssicher-heitshauptamt or RHSA, the SS-controlled security service. There was little difference in practice between the two departments and in Allied eyes they worked as one.3 Both their officers and non-commissioned officers were all members of the SS, Hitler’s crack bodyguards. At the Nuremberg trials the two bodies were indicted jointly.

  The three buildings of numbers 82, 84 and 86 Avenue Foch were occupied by the SD and the Gestapo. It was to no. 84 that captured F-section agents were sent. Heading the Gestapo team at no. 84 was Sturmbannführer Josef Kieffer.

  Number 84 was a magnificent building with high ceilings and a wide marble staircase leading to the upper floors. On the fourth floor were Kieffer’s office and residential quarters. One of the large rooms with a grand chandelier was used as the office while at the back of the house were the bedroom and kitchen and a hall with a white wooden staircase running up to the fifth flo
or. Here there were a few small dark rooms originally meant to be servants’ quarters. The Gestapo had converted them into seven mini prison cells. Two slightly larger rooms to the front of the house on this floor were used by the guard and the interpreter, Ernest Vogt. There was a bathroom and two lavatories, one of which was used by the prisoners.

  Escorted by four guards, Noor was taken straight up to the office of Ernest Vogt on the fifth floor. When they had arrested her, Cartaud and Vogt had collected a notebook with her codes and messages in it from her bedside table. It was the one that Viennot had asked her to destroy. They had also seized her radio set. It was a prize haul for the Gestapo.

  Noor was still shaking with rage when she was led to her room. She faced Vogt’s questions with fierce resistance, telling him over and over again that she would say nothing, no matter what. Vogt, however, continued to fire questions at her. Who was she working with, who did she meet every day, who were the people that provided her with safe houses? Noor remained stubbornly silent, and Vogt finally decided to send her to her room. Noor asked if she could have a bath.

  This was an unusual request, but thinking it was better to go along with her, they agreed. But the guards left the door slightly ajar so they could keep an eye on her. At this Noor let loose another temper tantrum, saying she wanted to undress and have a full bath and she would not tolerate the guards looking at her. Vogt, thinking all the while that it was better to humour a feisty prisoner like Noor, agreed and asked the guard to shut the door.

  Within seconds, Noor had climbed out of the bathroom window and was standing on a narrow gutter which ran underneath the attic windows. She walked like a cat, holding on to the tiles for support. Noor had always been sure-footed, clambering on to roofs in the past to hook up her aerial. She had wasted no time in making a bid to escape.