L'Agent Double

by Kit Sergeant

  Suddenly Alouette felt overwhelmed: the velvet drapes, the Persian rug, the gilded mirrors, even the various knick-knacks spread over the piano from their travels seemed to weigh on her. Hortense had kept everything impeccably neat and free of dust, but it appeared incongruous and foreign to the lifestyle Alouette had once led.

  Still in her blood-stained dress, the sudden urge to flee came over her. She walked purposefully out of the house and back into the Parisian sunshine. As her stomach protested against her quick movements, she realized she hadn’t eaten anything for hours and, a bit slower now, headed down the street to her favorite café.

  Instead of the familiar, chubby face of the shopkeeper, a hard-faced woman was behind the counter. “Husband’s gone to the front,” the woman replied to Alouette’s inquiry after the owner.

  “I’ll have a croissant and a coffee, please,” Alouette requested.

  The woman arched her eyebrow. “Croissants waste precious flour and butter, and we’ve been ordered not to produce them anymore. We just have plain bread.” It made a distasteful ringing sound as she dropped it onto a plate. “The Germans are approaching the Marne River. A battle will be on soon, if it hasn’t started already.” She handed Alouette the coffee. “But we will not know for weeks: the Parisian papers have stopped running since all the men have gone to war.”

  “Will your husband be in the battle?”

  She shrugged. “If he fights, he will fight hard, like every other Frenchman. And yours?”

  Alouette gave her a small smile and nodded, embarrassed to explain that Henri was too old to be a soldier.

  “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs!” the woman called as Alouette walked away from the counter.

  She drank her coffee and ate the stale bread on a little table outside of the café, pondering the woman’s casual remark. It seemed that everyone, and everything, had gone a bit numb since the war started. Talk of the destruction of whole towns and the murder of innocent people had become almost commonplace now, and it was both spoken about and heard with a degree of indifference. But, Alouette supposed, maybe that’s to keep from surrendering to the ever-present misery that is war-time.

  She dusted the crumbs off her dress, and, still avoiding returning to her empty house, decided to stroll down the street. She had gone a few blocks when she heard a plane overhead.

  “Is it French?” a female passerby asked in a shrill voice.

  “No,” Alouette said, gazing at the fan-tailed plane, which was flying just over the tops of the buildings. “It’s a German Taube.” Indeed the Taube—German for dove—resembled its namesake in both form and flight, yet she was sure its graceful maneuvering belied the plane’s menacing intentions. Alouette and the passerby stared warily at the black crosses on the plane’s wings as it made several passes, coming closer and closer.

  Suddenly, Alouette caught sight of something small being hurled from the cockpit. “It’s a bomb!” she shouted. “Get down!” She flung herself to the sidewalk in time to feel a small tremor in the ground. When it stopped, she got unsteadily back to her feet. The buzzing of the plane was fainter now. Smoke filled the air and Alouette coughed.

  When it began to dissipate, she ran toward the source of the smoke. Her heart sank as she saw that the café she had visited just half an hour before had been obliterated. She covered her mouth against the black smoke rising into the air, cloaking the bright sunlight and making the afternoon seem dark as dusk.

  A crowd had gathered in front of the ruins. Alouette tried to move some of the debris in search of survivors, but she burned her hand on a still-hot piece of metal.

  “It’s no use,” the woman Alouette had passed earlier on the street said as she came up beside her. “Anyone buried under there is now the latest victim of the Huns.”

  “Look at this,” a young man said, waving a banner in German colors he had pulled out of the wreck.

  Alouette reached for it. There was a message printed in German and she translated it aloud. “The German Army stands before the gates of Paris. You have no choice but to surrender.”

  “Surrender?” the young man repeated, the indignation obvious in his voice. “To the Boches? Never.”

  The skin on Alouette’s arm grew cold and, despite the warm day, she shivered as she took stock of the felled café, imagining the charred body of the owner’s wife among the smoking embers. Looks like a few eggs have already been broken. She glanced again to the sky, just being able to make out the dark form of the Taube over the eastern part of the city. She would have given anything to be in her own plane at that moment, armed with a machine gun, the German plane centered in the crosshairs. And suddenly she had an idea.

  She rushed home, once again throwing her bag on the floor, before entering Henri’s office. She wrote a hasty letter to the Ministry of War, offering her aviation experience to France and the Allies. “It does not matter where I would be stationed, of course, but I request to be put to use. I have risked my life for sport as an aviatrix, and therefore the sacrifice I now propose to make is of no consequence.”

  A week passed without word from either Henri or the Ministry of War. The Taube had become a frequent fixture in the skies over Paris, occasionally dropping its bombs, which were always accompanied by a note full of threats. There was nothing else to do but make light of the macabre matter. The clerk at the postal office had told Alouette that the German plane’s flight pattern was so regular he’d begun to set his watch by it.

  Alouette’s restlessness turned to worry over Henri’s fate. Every day she awoke faced with two choices: carry on her day as she’d done before the war and pretend that everything was normal, or wallow in self-pity that her husband was at the front, possibly getting killed at that moment. Most days she went with the former choice, but one morning it was the latter, and she stayed under the covers until well past noon.

  Hortense burst into the room with a tray of bread and tea. “Madame, will you not go out today?” She set the tray on the bed before raising the blinds.

  Alouette blinked in the sudden sunlight before burying her head under a pillow. There was nowhere to go, anyway. Most of the population believed the Germans were indeed at the city gates and had fled for the countryside, turning the once-bustling Paris into a ghost town. The theaters and museums had all been closed, and the gas lamps that had given the city its nickname, “The City of Lights” remained dark.

  “Madame.” Hortense’s voice was hesitant, but closer this time.

  “Yes?” Alouette reluctantly pulled the pillow away.

  “It is your husband you worry about, no?”

  Alouette met her maid’s eyes without reply. For once Hortense’s gaze held no animosity, only sympathy.

  She stepped toward the bed to set a gnarled hand on top of Alouette’s. “My son-in-law is also at the front. I pray for his safety each day. I will add Monsieur Richer’s name to my prayers as well.”

  Alouette was uncomfortable with this unexpected show of affection from the normally aloof maid, but she nodded in agreement. “We must pray for all the Allies at the front.”

  Hortense dropped her head in acquiescence. “Perhaps it's just that Monsieur Richer’s letters have been held up in a German blockade.”

  Alouette’s indignation rose. Wasn’t it enough that the Germans were bombing their city and killing their men? Did they have to steal their mail as well? She turned away, and Hortense, taking the hint, left the room as silently as she had come in.

  The next day Alouette was pleased when Hortense handed her an official-looking letter, with the Aéronautique Militaire, the aviation department of the French War Office, as the return address. Her half-smile soon drooped as she read the opening lines. The letter was written in a characteristically French style: polite but standoffish, telling her with regrets that only males could be employed in the French air force.

  “Madame?” Hortense inquired, a helpless look on her face.

  Alouette folded the letter into
a mock airplane and sent it flying across the room. It landed, as intended, in the fireplace. “It’s nothing.”

  A few days later another official-looking letter arrived. This one summoned her to the office of a man named Georges Ladoux, from the Deuxiéme Bureau of the Ministry of War.

  Alouette hurriedly dressed and rushed over to the address given in the summons, thinking at last the men of the Aéronautique Militaire had changed their mind.

  The building at 282 boulevard, Saint-Germain had been built recently; the ornate doors led into a rotunda with high plastered ceilings and a mosaic tiled floor. None of it seemed like a suitable office building for the War Department.

  Alouette was shown to an upstairs room and squinted at the hastily-scrawled lettering on the door indicating that this was the office of French Counterespionage Services. That’s odd, she thought as she pushed the door open. What do they want with me?

  As Georges Ladoux stood in greeting, it was clear he was much shorter than Alouette. He was stocky, with black hair gleaming with brilliantine product and a well-trimmed toothbrush mustache. He nodded as Alouette sat down across from him. “I presume you know why I have sent for you, madame.” It was not a question. Ladoux’s eyebrows arched and he leaned forward expectantly.

  “I do not,” Alouette replied as coolly as she could. Inside her heart was racing, but she relied on her experiences as a pilot to force herself to remain outwardly calm.

  “I have proof that you have visited Germans in Paris.”

  Alouette covered her confusion by pulling a lipstick out of her purse and uncapping it.

  “German spies,” Ladoux continued.

  She flipped open a compact mirror, hoping her shaking hands were not noticeable. The bewilderment in her voice was not fake, however. “And who would these German spies be?”

  “Does it matter?” Ladoux sat back in his desk chair.

  “I should think that it does. Such words could get me hanged, if they were true.”

  “Then you are saying it is not true?”

  She snapped the lid back on her lipstick. “Of course it is not true.”

  He pulled a piece of paper from a file folder and unfolded it. “Alouette Richer was born in Lorraine, April 15, 1889. Her father was an adjutant in the Hussars. As a young girl, she took to sports with ardor. Before becoming an aviatrix, she had much experience with horseback riding and driving an automobile. She won second place at an international target practice competition in Lille, a sport which few women attempt.”

  Alouette’s hands tightened, but he thankfully put the report down before he read any more. “Now, Madame Richer, if you could explain your recent visit to Crotoy.”

  She met Ladoux’s eyes squarely. “I had to check on my plane. I am trying to join the air force.”

  He gave her an oily smile. “A woman pilot in the Armée de l'Air?”

  His condescending tone was beginning to grate on Alouette’s nerves. “Surely, if you researched me that much, you would know that I recently offered my services to them.”

  He shuffled some papers on the desk, and Alouette caught her name written at the top of a file folder. “I can tell that you are a woman of some character, Madame Richer. If you would just tell us about these Germans—”

  Alouette, sensing there was no point in continuing the conversation, grabbed her bag and stood. “I’m sorry you have been so misinformed, Captain. I have repeatedly offered my services to the government, to no avail. If I knew of any German spies, I would be the first person to report them. But alas, I do not.” She started for the door.

  “Will you join my department?”

  Alouette nearly dropped her purse.

  “We need women like you—patriotic, sporty, not fearful of anything.”

  She stood frozen, thinking that only two of those descriptions were true. “If you are so convinced I’m a German spy, why are you inviting me to join your staff?”

  He indicated her unoccupied chair in lieu of answering.

  As much as she longed to leave this odious man’s office, here he was offering her the chance she’d been longing for. She sat. “What would you want me to do?”

  “I want you to, in fact, find the German spies I have been referencing.” The hairs on his mustache fluttered with his breath.

  Alouette replaced her purse on the floor and folded her hands in her lap as he continued, “When Germany closed its borders, we had not a single French agent within her lines, whereas they had managed to infiltrate France and many other Allied and neutral countries with liaisons ready to act at a moment’s notice.”

  “And do what?” Alouette asked.

  He stretched his hands out. “Spy. Spread German propaganda. Steal supplies. Defy the blockade.”

  “And we are at a loss as to the identities of these liaisons.”

  “Indeed.” He pulled out a cigarette before offering her one. She declined. He lit it before continuing, “France’s ability to detect these Trojan horses, if you will, was almost nil. That’s when General Joffre recognized the necessity of a Department of Counterespionage. I am the man whom he appointed to begin this new type of combat, what I am dubbing the Secret War.”

  “What role would I play?”

  “I’m told you speak German.”

  She gestured toward her file. “As you know, I grew up in Alsace. I had no choice but to learn the language.”

  He flicked ash into a nearby tray. “Our frontiers are like sieves: full of holes. Everybody and everything can pass through our borders at their will. I will give you 25,000 francs for every spy you expose.”

  The growl in his voice contained hints of intimidation and Alouette had the notion that his offer was as much of a disguised threat as the German liaisons that, according to him, lurked on every corner. Once again, Alouette stood. “You must know, of course, that I do not need the money. And also that I would need to consult with my husband before I can accept your offer.”

  He rose from his chair and bowed. “Of course. Take what time you need. Contact me when you are ready.”

  Alouette’s demurral of Ladoux’s offer was not merely an excuse. As typical of most marriages, she consulted Henri on all of her decisions, but he often did the same. They’d shared the same interests and had a trusting, if passionless, marriage. Still, they had never spent so much time apart, not since Henri had rescued Alouette from poverty when she had, misguidedly, left her hometown for good at sixteen to follow a lover to Paris.

  She wondered what Henri, with his old-world sense of chivalry, would think of the pompous little Ladoux. She would never know if his letters couldn’t get past the blockade.

  The next afternoon, when Alouette finally got the motivation to get out of bed, she decided to demand news of Henri at the town hall. While she was getting dressed, Hortense entered without knocking and set an envelope on the bed. “Madame, this came for you by courier this morning.”

  Alouette could feel her maid’s eyes boring into her back as she lifted the bulky letter with an equally heavy heart. Ironically it had come from the Sixteenth Arrondissement, the same destination she had been gearing up to set out for later that morning.

  She tried her best to rip open the envelope in spite of her shaking hands.

  Dear Madame Richer,

  We regret to inform you that the soldier, Richer, Henri, aged 42, was engaged in bringing up transports while exposed to military artillery fire.

  She looked up, her mind racing with indignation. I know that already. What do they think, husbands don’t communicate with their wives?

  She forced herself to read on:

  After being wounded by a highly explosive shell, he showed an extraordinary coolness in bringing his lorry into a position of safety.

  “Thank God,” she exclaimed out loud, expecting the rest of the letter to contain news of Henri receiving the Croix de Guerre.

  But the letter ended simply with the words, A few minutes later he died.

  “No!” The letter lande
d on the bed as Alouette’s hands flew to her mouth. She tasted blood and forced herself to look at her fingers. She must have sliced the tip of her finger opening the envelope, but sensed no pain. She felt nothing, in fact, but a numbness that penetrated her body.

  “It’s Henri,” she told Hortense helplessly. Her eyes dropped to the terrible letter sitting on the bed. “He’s dead.”

  “Oh madame!” Hortense glanced at the cream-colored letter, as if the French government, in opposition to their callous explanation, had included some sort of blueprint for what to do next. “Madame?”

  Alouette glanced at Hortense, who was standing with her hefty arms opened wide. Wordlessly Alouette stepped forward until those arms were around her back and she was standing in Hortense’s embrace. She clung to her maid, feeling as though the floor was sinking beneath them.

  Chapter 7

  M’Greet

  October 1914

  M’greet’s letter to her daughter was returned unopened, accompanied by a note from her ex-husband. He stated that if she wished to see Non, she should ask permission from him first. M’greet responded with a letter written, perhaps a bit pretentiously, in French, knowing that Rudy did not readily speak the language.

  My dear friend,

  If you so wish, I will ask you personally: be kind and let me see my daughter. There is much hate between us, but Non should not be deprived of a mother because of our bickering. I thank you in advance for allowing me what I’ve been craving all these years.

  Sincerely, Marguerite

  Finally, Rudy agreed to a meeting, though he was reluctant to meet in Amsterdam, where he lived, or even in the Hague. Instead he suggested lunch in Rotterdam.

  The last time she’d seen Non was nearly ten years ago, at the railroad station in Arnhem. It had been shortly after M’greet had started to make it big as Mata Hari. She’d traveled from Paris in the first-class car, and was helped down by the liveried footman who’d been assigned to personally look after her luggage.