Spy Princess

by Shrabani Basu

Vogt, not entirely comfortable with having to leave Noor alone, went to the lavatory next door and looked out of the window. He was shocked to see Noor standing on the gutter. She was making her way towards his window, unaware that he was there.

  He didn’t want to distract her and make her lose her footing. A fall from here meant certain death. Instead he waited till she reached the window and then said quietly ‘Madeleine, don’t be silly. You will kill yourself. Think of your mother! Give me your hand.’4

  She looked shocked to see him, hesitated and then grasped his extended hand. Vogt pulled her in by her shoulders, head first, and marched her to her cell. Defeated, Noor sat down on the narrow bed and broke down. She cursed herself, crying that she had been a coward and should have allowed herself to fall and die rather than be captured. She was almost hysterical with anger and frustration. Finally Vogt decided to bring her colleague Gilbert Norman to see her. Ever since his arrest with Andrée Borrel and the Laurents in June, Norman had been kept a prisoner at Avenue Foch. Noor was surprised to see him. Vogt asked Norman to try to calm Noor down and tell her there was no need to commit suicide. Norman did his bit, telling her, as he had told other agents he had met at Avenue Foch, that the Germans knew everything and there was no point in trying to hide anything.5 It did not make the slightest difference.

  Seeing Norman apparently quite comfortable in Avenue Foch made Noor even more angry. She refused to cooperate with Vogt and remained silent. After a few hours had passed, a guard brought Noor lunch, but she refused to eat it and later refused dinner as well. Vogt was trying hard to placate her. He ordered her to come for dinner to his room and offered her English tea and cigarettes. She accepted the tea and smoked the cigarettes furiously, but hardly touched the food.

  Vogt now started playing the psychological games which he used to demoralise prisoners. He showed Noor that they had managed to decipher her codes from her notebook. He also showed her copies of the letters she had sent to her mother by the August Lysander, along with copies of her reports and letters to F-section. Vogt tried to give her the impression that the Germans already knew a lot, so it was pointless trying to hide anything. Vogt tried to make Noor believe that the Germans had an informer in Baker Street so she would feel even more vulnerable. He told her that he knew Maurice Buckmaster was their head, that they trained at Beaulieu in Hampshire (he even pronounced it correctly as ‘Bewley’) and that she had done her parachute training in Ringway in Manchester, and showed her aerial photographs of some of the schools. Noor had not done parachute training so this bit of information was wrong. Nevertheless, Noor was shocked to learn that the Germans knew the details of their training schools. It had the desired effect.

  ‘You must have an agent in London!’ she gasped. Vogt let her think they did.6 He questioned her till midnight but got nothing out of her. Finally he decided to call it a day.

  The next morning the interrogation began again. Vogt showed Noor the copy of her messages and demanded to know who the people mentioned in them were and what they did. Once again Noor remained silent. He then told Noor that some of the people may have helped her in small ways by providing a room for the night. If she didn’t give the names, these innocent people too would be arrested, as they would eventually round up and arrest everyone. Vogt was a skilful interrogator who had mastered the tactics. While at Avenue Foch he wore civilian clothes so as not to appear too threatening. But there is a photograph of him in full SD uniform standing at Avenue Foch with the rest of the staff. On one hand he talked tough; on the other hand he tried to confuse Noor and hoped his gentle persuasion would make her open up. But Noor gave out nothing. Her stubborn streak matched Vogt’s persistence and the German repeatedly drew a blank.7

  Kieffer had the help of a radio specialist, Josef Goetz, who played a dangerous radio game with London called Englandspiel. Once the Germans had captured the wireless sets they could easily use them to transmit back to London. All the sets came with their own special crystals which were tuned to a certain frequency to contact London for incoming and outgoing messages. Goetz studied the style of transmission of the operators and successfully imitated it, coming on the airwaves on the same frequency and giving London the impression that the agent was transmitting from the field. Initially Goetz worked on his own, then as the game got larger he was assisted by Joseph Placke, Von Kapri and Werner Ruehl. Each had three or four decoy transmissions on hand during the time when the radio game was running.8 Together they sent false messages to Baker Street and demanded equipment and reinforcements, which the Germans seized. They could also use the radio game to find out the location of SOE agents and set traps to capture others. Goetz had successfully played back the wireless sets of the two Canadian agents, Macalister and Pickersgill, and later that of Norman. These had led to the arrests of Jack Agazarian and Robert Gieules. Goetz now tried to work on Noor. He took Noor down to his office trying to get her to reveal her security checks and some of the technical side of her work. Once again he faced a wall of silence. True to her word, Noor said nothing.

  Goetz, however, had Noor’s past codes from her diary and her radio set and crystals. He used this to transmit to London and started a radio game called Operation Diana. He even imitated her particular style of transmission. On 17 October, the Germans sent a message on Poste Madeleine: ‘My Cachette unsafe. New address Belliard. Hundred and Fifty Seven rue Vercingetorix, Paris, Password de la part de monsieur de Rual. This perfectly safe. Good bye.’9

  At the receiving station at Grendon, the signals operator noted that the true security check was present but the bluff check had been omitted. Though Noor had not returned on the full-moon mid-October Lysander, London was not alarmed. They replied that they had received the new cachette address. Leo Marks had always taken a special interest in Noor, and followed her messages closely. Up till the end of September he had noticed that her transmissions were flawless, with all the security checks intact, and was secretly very proud of her. He had told the operators at Grendon that he had given Noor a special security check and they should watch her wireless traffic very closely and look out for it. But the girls at Station 53a had not noticed.

  Noor, however, had remembered her extended briefing with Marks in London and what he had told her about her special security check. He had told her not to use a key phrase containing eighteen letters. If she ever did so, he would know she had been captured. In her first message through Goetz, Noor had sent a transposition-key eighteen letters long. Later, Marks saw the message and noticed Noor’s cry for help. He immediately took it to Buckmaster and said he thought Noor was a prisoner, but Buckmaster did not believe him. He said he intended to continue the two-way traffic.10 This decision would lead to further fatalities for F-section agents. Marks prayed that Noor’s coding had just been a lapse, but in his heart he knew that she had sent him her special security check and he feared the worst.

  London was, however, slightly guarded from now on. Goetz asked for twelve containers of supplies and received only one. The Germans knew that without the security check, the messages were not foolproof and they would soon be discovered.

  Vogt now adopted a different tactic. He tried to make Noor relax, talking to her about unrelated things, sometimes about her family. But all he learnt was that her name was Nora Baker. Noor once again gave out the name she had told the Balachowskys and others in the Prosper sub-circuit who thought that Nora Baker was her real name and Jeanne-Marie her cover name. Noor had concealed her real identity even from those she was closest to in the circuit. She did not want to reveal that her real name was Inayat Khan, because she did not want the Gestapo to catch up with Hidayat who was still in France and use him or his children as hostages to make her speak.

  As time went on without Noor being tortured, she slowly lost her fierce attitude to her captors at Avenue Foch. Vogt in particular played up to her, trying to be the friendly face of the Gestapo. He would talk to her every day trying to learn anything he could. Noor spoke about her mother and V
ogt could gather that she was very close to her.

  Sometimes he called her for dinner to his room to extract information. But Noor never dropped her guard, and though they discussed many things, she never let slip any details about her operations or the people she worked with. Sometimes she chose her words carefully and revealed a trivial fact which she knew he would know already and which was of no use to anybody. Later in their sworn statements, Goetz and Kieffer both said that no arrests were made as a result of Noor’s capture as she revealed nothing.

  Vogt later told Jean Overton Fuller that he had never met anyone like Noor and he admired her courage, bravery and kindness. He once asked her whether she sometimes felt that she had wasted her life by joining the service and that her sacrifice had been in vain since they had mopped up three-quarters of the French section. But she replied that it did not matter. She had served her country and that was her recompense.11

  Noor was not an easy prisoner. She demanded things. She asked for fresh clothes, toiletries and paper and requested that someone go to her residence at the rue de la Faisenderie to collect them. She thought Solange would know that she had been arrested and sent a note asking for the things to be given to the ‘bearer’. Solange, however, did not know that Noor was a prisoner. Taking advantage of this, Vogt sent Pierre Cartaud to collect the items, pretending to be a member of the French Resistance so that he could gather some more information and possibly trace other agents. Sure enough, Cartaud saw Garry and his wife at Solange’s flat on 17 October and came back and reported this to Vogt. The Garrys had moved out of their own flat after they heard of the arrest of Madame Aigrain and were trying to get a flight to England. They had come to stay at Solange’s flat hoping to get a message about their flights on 16 October. The very next day they were spotted by Cartaud, who had called with one of Noor’s notes. Cartaud, Vogt and three other Gestapo officers now returned to the apartment where the Garrys had just finished breakfast and arrested them. They were taken to Avenue Foch. Noor had no idea about these arrests. Neither did Solange, because she had left the flat earlier. She thought the Garrys had left suddenly, as they often did.

  On 30 October Charles Vaudevire, Paul Arrighi and their associate Emmanuel de Sieyes were also arrested, but Vogt and Kieffer had no idea that Noor knew them and had worked with them, because she had said nothing to give anyone away. Now 84 Avenue Foch housed several agents who had worked together. Noor had met Norman on the first day. Henri Garry was also there. She was to establish contact with two others.

  One night, Noor tapped out a message in Morse on her wall to the prisoner next door. She got a reply almost immediately. The prisoner identified himself as a Frenchman, Colonel Léon Faye, former head of the Alliance circuit which worked with MI6. She told him she was a British agent and that they should help each other and try to escape.

  The second agent she established contact with was Captain John A.R. Starr (code name Bob), an F-section agent of the Acrobat circuit active in the Dijon area, who was arrested on 18 July after being betrayed by a double agent. Starr was sent to prison in Dijon, then Fresnes and finally to Avenue Foch. The three of them now made a bold plan to escape, which if it had succeeded would have gone down in the history books as one of the most daring and dramatic escapes of the Second World War.

  Starr was a poster artist by profession. Kieffer recognised that he was a good draughtsman and had an excellent talent for drawing, and gave him quite a lot of work to do.12 Starr’s experience at Dijon and Fresnes prisons had been dreadful and he found Avenue Foch far more congenial. He decided to cooperate with the Germans and do what they asked: copy maps and even produce portraits and greeting cards. He was in a cell directly next to the guards’ room where a four-man guard was permanently present. Soon Kieffer was asking Starr to do drawings of subjects that had to be kept secret. If he escaped, Kieffer’s office could be compromised so he asked the guards to be extra vigilant in guarding Starr.

  Starr was also used by the Germans in their radio games. He would be taken down to the room where Placke played the captured wireless sets back to London and asked to check that the wording of the false messages being sent by the Germans was in the typical English style. Starr cooperated and soon got to know a great deal about German counter-espionage work, their wireless operators, arrested agents and organisers of hostile intelligence services. It was at this time that Noor was arrested and brought to Avenue Foch.

  Starr had heard about Noor from the German officers, who had told him she had fought fiercely and been very difficult to arrest. One of them had even shown Starr a bite on his finger which Noor had inflicted. Starr was told that she had made an attempt to escape within minutes of being brought into Avenue Foch.

  Since Starr was usually taken to the guard room to do his map work and drawing, he could see Noor being taken down to Kieffer’s office. She usually wore a light grey polo-necked jumper, navy-blue slacks and plimsolls – the clothes she had been arrested in. Once she had ordered fresh clothes from Solange, she had other things to change into. Prisoners at Avenue Foch were allowed to choose a book from the library in the guards’ room and Starr had seen Noor at close quarters when she had come in to select one. Noor had already asked the guards for writing paper and spent her time writing in her cell when she was not being interrogated.

  At night Starr heard her crying in her room. Her cell was opposite his. He wanted to console her but could not think how he could do this. The only common place they used was the lavatory. One day he pretended to drop a pencil and while bending to pick it up managed to slip a note under Noor’s door. It told her to cheer up as she was not alone, and maybe they could find a way to escape. He told her to check under the basin in the lavatory for further notes.

  The next day there was a reply from Noor. She said she had already established contact with another prisoner who shared the adjoining cell, Colonel Faye. He would now join them and an escape plan could be hatched. On tiny notes that went back and forth between the three prisoners, a daring plan was worked out. Starr reported that his room had a small window in the ceiling with three iron bars. These were fixed to the window on a wooden frame. A simple screwdriver would be enough to unscrew the frame. He would need a screwdriver and a stool to stand on.

  The others told him that their skylight windows had the iron bars screwed into the wall so they would be a little more difficult to remove. The problem now was getting a screwdriver. This problem was solved unexpectedly. One day the cleaning woman entered the guard room complaining that the carpet sweeper was not working. Starr jumped up and volunteered to help, saying he knew all about carpet sweepers. He asked for tools to repair the sweeper. But the Germans were watching him closely and he could not conceal a screwdriver under their noses. So he mended the carpet sweeper badly, knowing it would break down again soon.

  Sure enough the cleaner soon brought the faulty machine to him again, helpfully supplying the tool box once more. This time the Germans weren’t watching so closely and Starr managed to retain a screwdriver. He left it at the lavatory for Noor and Faye. They were to keep it on alternate nights, passing it between them until they had managed to loosen the bars on their windows. As Starr’s window bars were much easier to remove, he would be given the screwdriver when they had nearly finished.

  Starr had to devise a way of reaching his skylight. If he moved the bed to the centre of the room, the guard would immediately be suspicious. So one day he moved the bed to the other side of the room. When the guard asked him why, he said he wanted to change the view. Though they were not pleased with this explanation, they did not take the matter any further. Starr next moved the bed to a new side of the room every few days till the guard lost interest in him. He then moved the bed to the centre of the room. He still needed a chair to reach the skylight, so he brought one from the guard room. Again a round of questions followed, but Starr said he needed to put his clothes on something and so had borrowed a chair. Once again the guards let this pass.

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p; Meanwhile Noor was also having problems reaching the window in her room. Her bed was a pull-out iron bed which folded back into the wall. There was no way she could move it at all. She had to stand on the iron cot and lean over to reach the skylight. She was small in build, which didn’t help either. One night Starr heard a loud thud. Noor had simply fallen over while leaning from the edge of the bed and trying to work the iron bars in her skylight. The guards rushed into the room, but a flustered Noor told them that she had been trying to commit suicide by hanging herself from the bars. They did not suspect her and soon she managed to get rid of them. They had not noticed the window bars half hanging out, or the screwdriver.

  As Faye and Noor continued to work at their iron bars, the holes were getting conspicuous. Noor asked Starr whether he could get something to fill the holes. He suggested face powder. So Noor sent out for one more of her famous parcels from Solange, asking for face powder, eau de cologne and scent. When this arrived she shared it with Faye, passing it to him through their postbox in the lavatory. Solange still had no idea that Noor was in prison and presented the items to Cartaud, who was pretending to be a friend of Noor’s.

  Noor had also asked for more clothes. She had some Metro tickets in her pocket which the guards had not discovered. These she shared with the others as they would help them make a quick getaway. Faye was the first to loosen his bars. The screwdriver was then passed to Starr and he unscrewed his. Noor’s was going to take some more time. Finally she gave the signal that she was ready.

  They decided that they would hang their shoes around their necks before climbing out of the window, and they would take blankets with them so that once on the roof they could knot the blankets together and let themselves down to the ground with them.

  On the night of 25 November, Starr sat up late in the guard room finishing Kieffer’s portrait. At about midnight the guards went to the other rooms and switched off the lights. Starr knew there would be some noise from Noor and Faye’s rooms as they scraped their bars. He went noisily to the bathroom whistling loudly to distract the guards. Finally he told them he was going to bed, so a guard came and locked him in. He let himself out from the window and stood on the roof. Faye was already there, but Noor was missing. She was still struggling with the last bit of her bar. They tried to help her but it was difficult. They were painfully aware that time was passing and that the scraping noise could be heard by the guards. Finally Faye was able to remove the bar. He pulled Noor out, kissing her in sheer delight.