by Kit Sergeant
Chapter 63
Alouette
February 1917
The Baron, who had been driving the doomed car, suffered only cuts and scratches from broken glass. Alouette’s face was also cut, but her left ankle, which had been broken previously in an airplane accident, was fractured and her left knee was pulled out of its joint.
After a night or two in a Madrid hospital, von Krohn had Alouette transferred to his house. He claimed he wanted to protect her from the prying eyes of journalists, but she knew his real reason was to maintain his semblance of control over her, especially since her supposed fiancé, whose arm had been broken, remained at the hospital.
For weeks she lay helpless on a bed in the Baron’s office. After she was able to put weight on her leg, she’d trek back and forth between the guest room and a pull-out bed in the office, spending her days lamenting over the money Zozo would never receive. Von Krohn must have already hired someone else, who was most likely not a double agent and might actually earn it by writing German propaganda to further lower the morale of French troops.
One day she was standing at the patio door of his office, propped up by a crutch, enjoying a little sunshine, when the Baron came in.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, the tenderness obvious in his voice.
“Fine,” she snapped. All the tenderness in the world could never change the deep resentment she held toward him.
A maid popped her head in. “Señorita Maria is here.”
“Tell her to wait in the parlor and I’ll be there in a minute.” Von Krohn reached for Alouette’s hand. “We will continue this conversation later this afternoon.”
She recalled that Maria was one of von Krohn’s other female agents, one she’d warned Ladoux about months ago, but had yet to be arrested.
Alouette made her way toward the closed double doors that led to the parlor, balancing on her crutch with her ear to the door. Von Krohn’s tone was low, but she could still discern most of what he said. “Very good. I’ll send Antonio to look for two fountain pens. Call again tomorrow at the same hour and I’ll pass them on to you, along with full instructions.”
Alouette hobbled over to the nearest chair and sat, deep in thought. She had to find a way to warn Paris and have an agent shadow Maria immediately. She frowned at her bandaged foot, thinking the normally straightforward task seemed nearly impossible.
As soon as von Krohn returned, she remarked, in as casual a voice as she could manage, “I say, Hans, I can’t go on wearing your wife’s undies indefinitely. I should like to purchase some new ones.”
He smiled an oily grin, probably picturing her in sexy lingerie. “I’ll take you out after my afternoon siesta.”
“No. I’d like to go on my own.”
The grin disappeared. “You cannot manage an outing such as that by yourself. Not yet.”
“But the doctor has given me permission to walk a little bit at a time. And I’ve managed so far on this crutch just fine. Besides,” she racked her mind for a reason for him not to accompany her. “I must pay a visit to Zozo and see how he is getting on.”
This produced the reaction she desired. “Fine. If you want to risk your healing leg just to see him, go ahead. I do not wish to be disturbed.”
He left the room, the door banging behind him.
The servants helped her into the motor-car, and Alouette instructed the chauffeur to first drive her to the Palace Hotel so that she could pick up her mail.
The desk clerk deposited a pile of letters in front of her and gave her a satisfied smile before walking away.
Alouette wondered what was behind his reaction as she flipped through her mail. One of the envelopes contained a newspaper clipping sent by one of the Deuxiéme Bureau’s clerks. She picked it up and read the headline: “The Spy in the Car,” before she tossed it aside with shaking hands. She could only imagine what the newspaper article had speculated about the reason why the prized airwoman of Nancy was in a car with the German naval attaché and a known anarchist.
Someday, Alouette promised herself, shoving the rest of the letters into her purse. Someday they will all know what I’ve sacrificed for France.
She summoned the clerk, now surmising that his smirk had been because he too thought she was a German agent, to help her back to the car. She asked the chauffeur to head to her apartment on the Calle del Alcalá. The driver helped her upstairs before Alouette dismissed him, stating that she was going to change and then lie down for a few minutes.
She went to her desk and pulled out a piece of paper and a packet of antipyrine. After a moment, she threw them both onto the floor, cursing loudly at the lack of organization in the French Secret Service. Even if she did write to Ladoux, there was no way he would receive the information in time to prevent whatever it was Maria and von Krohn were up to. Not to mention she had no guarantee the Deuxiéme Bureau was even receiving her letters at this point. She racked her brain before calling the Palace Hotel.
“May I speak to General Denvignes?”
The hotel clerk put down the phone for a moment before informing her that the general had left for Paris several days ago.
Alouette hung up, barely able to refrain from banging the telephone receiver against the wall. She had no one left to contact. There was no way she could visit the French Embassy and demand to speak to Denvignes’ replacement: not only would her crutch attract attention, but Madrid was so teeming with German spies that von Krohn would hear of it within the hour.
She returned to the Baron’s house in utter defeat, claiming that her foot was too sore to attend dinner.
A few days later she was seated in the parlor when von Krohn entered. He tossed a French newspaper on the table in front of her, and Alouette’s heart hammered as she picked it up. The headline read, “German Incendiaries Blow Up Munitions Factory Near Bayonne. Total Dead and Wounded: 90.”
Her confusion slipped into horror as she realized what von Krohn had sent Maria to do. With no one to stop her, she probably accomplished her mission with ease. Alouette shoved the paper aside.
“Is something wrong?” von Krohn asked.
She glanced at the Baron, taking in the grin of triumph lighting up his ugly face and realized she was supposed to be delighted at the murder of her fellow countrymen. “A tremendous accomplishment,” she managed to croak out. He nodded with satisfaction before reaching in his desk and taking out a fresh piece of paper, probably to brag to his superiors about the outcome of his bloodthirsty scheme.
Chapter 64
M’greet
March 1917
Bouchardon continued his interrogations of M’greet on a near daily basis. For one particular session, her lawyer, Edouard Clunet, was allowed to join them.
After Bouchardon re-established her life narrative: where she grew up, what her father did, etc., he tried to get into the specifics of her marriage and little Normie’s death.
“I do not wish to answer any more questions about that period of time,” M’greet stated with a wave of her hand. “It has no bearing on anything you have accused me of.”
Bouchard glanced at Clunet, who shrugged. “Very well then,” Bouchard replied. “Tell about this Vladimir Masloff.”
“Oh.” She blinked quickly. “It was a grand love on both sides.”
“Is that so?” Bouchard asked, the doubt obvious in his voice. He flipped through some papers. “Would you claim the same about the Baron van der Capellen?”
“No,” M’greet replied. “He was married.”
Bouchard frowned. “What about the Marquis de Beaufort?”
She flicked her hand again. “A tryst. But fun while it lasted.”
“And the German, Lieutenant Alfred Kiepert? Or the Berlin police inspector, Walter Griebel?” He looked up. “I need a separate file just to keep all of your men straight.”
M’greet leaned forward. “What exactly am I on trial for? My morals?”
“Well,” Bouchardon said, shuffling some papers. “I wouldn�
�t exactly consider you a respectable woman.”
She glared at her lawyer, who was chewing his fingernails. He took his hand out of his mouth. “Now, Monsieur Bouchardon, as you have no hard evidence of espionage activity, I would request that you allow Madame Zelle-MacLeod provisional liberties.”
“You know that I cannot grant her any liberties,” Bouchardon’s tone was patronizing. “She is a suspected German spy. You should also be aware that cases of this kind rarely rely on physical evidence. It is more about witness testimony and character analysis of the accused. Now,” he turned back to M’greet. “Let’s talk about your meetings with Arnold Kalle. Did Captain Ladoux tell you specifically to contact this man?”
“No. Ladoux never gave me explicit instructions,” she replied testily.
“So you were not obeying orders.” He nodded at the clerk to make sure he wrote that down.
“There were no orders!” M’greet insisted. She relayed how she decided to contact Kalle after being sent back to Spain by Scotland Yard. While she was explaining what had happened, Bouchardon got up to pace up and down the tiny room.
“Let me get this straight,” he said after she’d finished. “You sent the information you picked up from Kalle using your own handwriting, writing in the open for anyone’s eyes. When you got no reply, you repeated said information to a stranger—Denvignes—just because he was with the French Embassy.”
“But—” she was going to argue just that: Denvignes’ position made him an ally since Ladoux wasn’t responding.
Bouchardon held up his hand. “If you are to be believed, that would make you the worst spy I have ever encountered. And,” he resumed his steps. “That would mean that Captain Ladoux, the esteemed head of the Deuxiéme Bureau, had engaged an amateur and completely unqualified agent, with no clear instructions on how to disguise intelligence nor deliver it in a secure method.”
Clunet examined his hands and then selected one of the longer fingernails to continue gnawing on. M’greet shook her head at her lawyer’s uselessness. She could at least refute one of Bouchardon’s points. “Ladoux tried to get me to use his secret ink, but I refused.”
Bouchardon looked at his watch. “I think we are done for the day.”
M’greet got unsteadily to her feet. “Please do not send me back to prison. I cannot bear it for another night. The conditions there are so foul. I am not the same as those other women prisoners, but they treat me as though I am. I won’t make any trouble for you, I promise!”
Bouchardon fixed her with his condescending stare. “From what you have told me, you are very much like ‘those other women.’ You are a courtesan, they are streetwalkers. The difference is only in sobriquets: under the law you are all prostitutes.”
Clunet put his hands, with their bloodied cuticles, on the table. “Now see here.”
But Bouchardon wasn’t done yet. His gaze still fixed on M’greet, he continued, “You’ve lived your whole life having delusions of grandeur. If you choose to imagine yourself better than your fellow prisoners, so be it. But there is not much of a leap from being an, as you call yourself, ‘international woman,’ to a traitor. Both are evidence of a lack of morals, as you yourself have demonstrated time and again.”
Once again M’greet blinked back tears. The last thing she wanted to do was go back to that hateful place, but she would not reduce herself to begging. “If that’s what you think, then my grave has already been dug.”
Bouchardon left the room without a reply.
The clerk began collecting his things as M’greet turned to Clunet. “What was that all about?”
“M’greet.” He coughed into a wrinkled hand. “I am an expert in business law, not criminal proceedings. I’m afraid I’m in over my head.”
“You’re in over your head?” M’greet flung her arms into the air. “What about what they are doing to me?”
He buried his face in his hands.
“Edouard?”
He finally looked up. “I wish I could help you more, M’greet, but, as you said, it sounds as if your case has already been decided. They are going to keep questioning you until, out of desperation, you tell them what they want to hear. I cannot attend any more: under the French system, you are only given legal representation during your first and last interrogation sessions. We are lucky they allowed me to be here today.”
“What am I going to do?”
“I would be as honest as possible with them. You have nothing left to lose at this point.”
This time she let the tears flow freely. “That place is so horrible, Edouard. There’s filth, so much filth. I just want to be in a clean hotel, with all of my nice things…”
He reached out to pat her hand. “I know, M’greet. I know.”
Not only was Saint-Lazare filthy, it was cold and damp. M’greet was transferred from her padded room to a smaller, even dirtier cell.
As she lay in bed that night, she could hear the rustling of small creatures: rats, maybe, or cockroaches. She had thought her tears had dried, but she cried all through the night, with no one to hear her, thinking she might go mad with worry. What had she done to deserve such treatment? Only what she had been told to do.
In the morning, her unwashed body was covered with tiny, itchy red bumps. For once she was grateful not to have a mirror around; she was sure her face was swollen and her eyes rimmed with red. If only she had her make-up, she could have easily fixed that, but her cosmetic kits had been sent to a chemist for analysis, to see if secret ink could have been made from them. As if she would have wasted her precious ointments to make ink!
As predicted, Clunet was absent from the next interrogation. Bouchardon began with the question: “Whom have you served? Whom have you betrayed? France or Germany?”
M’greet replied in a quiet voice, “My goals were to aid France and damage Germany, and I believe I succeeded in both.”
“Were you ever recruited to work for German intelligence?”
A denial formed on M’greet’s lips, but then she remembered how Clunet had told her to tell the truth. “Yes. Karl Kroemer recruited me. But I only agreed because Germany owed me money! I considered it payback for the furs they stole from me at the beginning of the war.”
“Why didn’t you tell Captain Ladoux about this beforehand?”
“I never intended to do their bidding, so I didn’t think it was relevant.” She also didn’t consider it important to tell them about Fräulein Doktor.
Luckily Bouchard didn’t ask. “You entertained many officers in Paris. Did you pass on military information you solicited from them to Germany?”
“No. I love officers and have loved them all my life. I would rather be the mistress of a poor officer than a rich banker.”
He grimaced. “I don’t think that statement rings particularly true. What about your affair with Harry de Marguérie?”
M’greet gripped the arms of her chair. “What’s he got to do with any of this?”
Someone knocked on the door to the little room. “Ah, right on time,” Bouchardon stated before answering the door.
She looked up in surprise as Ladoux stalked in.
“Please sit down, Captain,” Bouchardon gestured toward the empty chair across from M’greet.
Her hands were tingling and she looked down to see that she was clutching the chair rail so tightly her knuckles had turned white. She removed her hands to flex them.
“Would you care to make a statement, Captain?” Bouchardon uncharacteristically remained seated this time.
“I would,” Ladoux replied smoothly. “The accused was never under my employment.”
“That’s a lie!” M’greet countered.
Bouchardon’s directions were sharply put. “If the accused would remain quiet during the captain’s testimony.”
Ladoux continued, “The accused had never been given money, nor an agent number, nor was any communication protocol put forth.”
“But you promised me one million francs as payment i
f I succeeded.”
Ladoux glanced at the clerk before stating slowly, with perfect enunciation, “Let the record show I made no such promise.”
“And with good reason.” Bouchardon repeated what M’greet had told him earlier about Karl Kroemer.
Ladoux sat back and clasped his hands. “I knew all along she was a German agent, though she never cared to admit that to me.”
M’greet folded her arms across her chest. “I didn’t feel obliged to reveal that to you, because,” she shot a look at Bouchardon, “once again, I never intended to carry out tasks for them.”
Ladoux dug a sheaf of papers out of his briefcase. “That’s not what these telegrams say.” He pushed the papers toward Bouchardon.
“What telegrams?” M’greet asked.
“They are from Kalle to Berlin,” Ladoux stated to Bouchardon. “We intercepted them via the Eiffel Tower.”
Bouchardon picked one up and read it to himself before summarizing, “Kalle is recommending that German Intelligence pay H-21 ten thousand francs.” He shifted through them and selected another. “Here Kalle says he paid H-21 3,500 pesetas.” He glared at M’greet. “Did you ever receive money from Kalle?”
M’greet could feel her face growing red. “Yes, but only because…”
Ladoux’s fat head was nodding furiously. “You see, the Germans gave her a code name, and paid her great sums of money, something France never did.”
She banged her fist on the table. “I’ve already told you I never provided any information to them. Kalle only gave me that money to help me return to France, since no one at the Deuxiéme Bureau was responding to me.”
Bouchardon leaned forward. “We must make clear that, from our point of view, maintaining contact with the enemy is legally considered a crime equivalent to actually furnishing intelligence to said enemy.”
“Is that all?” M’greet started to get up. She’d rather sit in her dingy, disgusting cell than continue this conversation.