Code Name- Beatriz

by Lou Cadle

  “Enough. More than I let on to them.”

  “I need to learn more. Would you be willing to give me lessons?”

  “I’m no teacher.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I won’t complain.”

  She shaped a series of rolls with quick hands. “Agreed,” she finally said when she was done. “What do you know already?”

  “‘Yes’ and ‘no,’ ‘good day,’ numbers to a hundred, some food words.” She thought a moment more. “And ‘Heil Hitler,’ but I hope I am never forced to say it.”

  Madame held up a raw roll. “What is the word for this?”

  “I don’t know. As close as I can come is ‘strudel.’”

  Madame gave her a disgusted look. “‘Brotchen.’ ‘Bread’ is ‘Brot,’ so ‘little bread.’”

  “Das ist ein Brotchen?”

  “Ja, das ist es.”

  “What is ‘dough?’ ‘Flour?’”

  “Will you need those?”

  “Who knows? I may well need more than I can learn. I suppose that ‘I am not a spy’ would be useful.”

  “They would understand ‘the Résistance.’ Ich bin nicht im—or no, “Ich mache bei der Résistance nicht mit.” She returned to making rolls, finishing another large tray and then lining up the trays to rise before they would go into the oven.

  “I am a secretary,” Antonia suggested. “How do I say that?”

  And so the time passed, with Madame Charlevoix providing German vocabulary and grammar lessons.

  “You are a good student,” she said after more than an hour. The room smelled of freshly baked bread, and Madame had insisted that Antonia have two rolls. “But how much will you retain?”

  “A good deal,” Antonia said. She rattled off, in German, “My papers are here. I am a secretary. My employer is traveling now to Paris. You can telephone him when he arrives. I am not in the Résistance. I am on my way to take notes for my employer.” Madame hadn’t known the German words for “dictation” or “shorthand.”

  “Your accent is terrible.”

  “That doesn’t matter much, does it? So might be the accent of any French girl. Especially when she is being questioned on the street, and is nervous.”

  “That is so. In fact, it would probably be best if you said what you had to say in French first, and then in German. Do you think?”

  “I can do that.” She could convince herself that she was a French woman, working in business, and react as one. If that act would hold up under torture? She knew it could not forever. Her hand went, without thought, to her locket.

  “You do that whenever you’re nervous,” Madame Charlevoix said.

  Antonia became conscious she was holding the locket through her clothes. “Do I? I’ll have to break the habit.”

  “I am guessing you have your poison in there? Or is it something more sentimental?”

  “I feel rather sentimental about the poison. It might save me a good deal of pain.”

  “I would hate to see you die for no reason.”

  Antonia was touched, but she felt it was important to be honest. “I would die to bring down Hitler. That is reason enough.”

  “It’s not your dying that will do that. It’s your living that will do him more harm.”

  The bell rang, announcing a customer. Madame wiped her hands on her apron, untied it, and hung it on a hook near the door of the kitchen. Then, using a dish towel, she took up a tray of cooling rolls and carried it out the door.

  Antonia did not move or make a sound. She had automatically sat in such a way she had an eye on both doors in the room, so all that moved were her eyes, from the back door to the door that Madame Charlevoix had exited through.

  She took a moment to glance around the room for places to hide—there were not many, and none would hide her from more than a cursory search. The door to her left led to the middle room and then either to the entrance to the residence or the storefront, depending on which way you turned. The door to her right opened to an alcove where trash bins were kept, with a row of hooks for jackets and a black umbrella, and then out to an alley. If she had to run, that was the way she would go.

  Then where? Down the alley, and take as many turns as she could. She visualized an outside staircase she knew of, where she might access the roofs of a block of shops and apartments. The cathedral awaited with its many rooms and alcoves, as did the road that led to the barn she’d stayed at that first night. Out and out her imagination went, onto the mental map she kept, thinking of rows of bushes along the tracks, of alleys too narrow to allow a car, of an overgrown lot she’d spied with weeds thick enough to hide in.

  It was all vivid in her mind. Her visual memory was good. An inheritance? Her training? She didn’t know why, only that it was so.

  By the time Madame Charlevoix returned, Antonia had run a dozen escape routes in her mind. But the boulangere was calm, and she thought there would be no need to run right this moment.

  “Customers will come now. So run up the stairs, child.”

  It warmed her heart strangely to be called an affectionate term. She spontaneously went to kiss Madame on her cheek. It was powdery and cool. “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “Everything. Safety. The language lesson. Two warm rolls to fill my belly.”

  “It is nothing,” she said.

  “It is everything,” Antonia said. And she scuttled back up to her attic.

  Chapter 11

  The next day, after her morning language lesson was over, she grew restless, not having anything to do. She’d do her shopping, having grown comfortable enough with the street that she thought it was safe to, but she was waiting for a possible visit from Claude. The church bell rang at noon, a one-tone and brief marking of time. Antonia remembered an old man in Spain who had told her that church bells were meant to drive out demons. If so, cathedral bells all over Europe must need a good tuning. Demons had overrun the place.

  When a coded knock came at the attic door, she jumped up from her practice Bible-verse coding, relieved to have something else to do. Waiting around was a bigger part of the job than she had imagined, and it frustrated her. The door swung down and as Claude’s head appeared, she was happier still.

  “You have news?” she asked.

  “Yes. About two things—Monk circuit and the stranger arriving.”

  “Excellent. Come up and sit down.”

  He climbed, looked around doubtfully, and finally chose the trunk, perching on the edge of it while she sat cross-legged on the bed. “Do you do any exercising up here?”

  “No. I sit. Or lie and read.”

  “You might want to do something. Box with the shadows, flexion, pompe.” He demonstrated squatting and pushups, in case she didn’t know the French words.

  “Fine, I will, but tell me. Who is the stranger? Or what?”

  “Who. He is an engineer, an inventor. But first, will you listen to what I have to say about Monk circuit?”

  “Of course.” She made herself settle down and listen attentively.

  “All active members—all English members—are captured or in hiding. Two may be heading for Spain, but probably not.”

  “All taken then?”

  “Oui. The circuit is finished for now. If there are other circuits in Marseilles, they will have to take over Monk’s work.”

  “I see.” The news had sapped most of the excitement she had felt at his arrival. “Do we know if they are still…?” She trailed off.

  “There is a report on this as well. It may only be rumor, but I think not.”

  “Go on.”

  “French prisoners at Baumettes—do you know Baumettes?”

  “Only the name. You said it before.”

  “The prison in Marseilles where the Gestapo interrogate and torture people like you and me.”

  She nodded for him to continue.

  “French prisoners there have a way to get word out through hired local cleaners. They say that three new English p
risoners—two men and a woman—have been tortured badly. Shocked with electricity. Hard. Much voltage. So much that their faces hardly seem like human faces at all.”

  “Their faces? I would have thought….” Again, she did not finish the thought. Genitals, was what she thought, and perhaps breasts for the woman.

  “Perhaps that too, but there were scorch marks here,” Claude said, and he pointed between his own eyebrows.

  She couldn’t help it. She touched herself there too, wondering what that might feel like, electrical current feeding into the thin skin there, burning quicker than thought through her skull. Her imagination failed her.

  “From what the courier said, they betrayed no one.”

  “They stood up to that?”

  “And to much more, I imagine. Or, it is possible….” He shrugged.

  “What?”

  “That the shocking damaged their minds. Or rendered them incapable of speech.”

  “I suppose the Gestapo found and took their L-pills.” She used the English term.

  “Their what?”

  She was surprised he didn’t know the term. “La pilule létale. ‘L’ for ‘lethal.’ Cyanide.”

  “Of course. I was distracted, ordering my thoughts. You will remember all that?”

  “I will.” She didn’t see how she could forget it. “Two men, one woman, two more perhaps trying for Spain. The woman who was caught was the wireless operator?”

  “No, a courier. One of the two men operated the wireless. Someone said—” But then he stopped himself.

  “What?”

  “No matter. Now, on to the visitor.”

  “All right.” She was much less enthused than she had been when Claude first appeared. The reality of her situation had struck her full force. Her mind couldn’t help but send up the phrase “hit me right between the eyes,” a favorite of one of the rural girls back in training in England, and which made her wince now, considering what she had just heard.

  “What?” He had seen the wince.

  “Nothing. No, not nothing. I’m horrified.”

  “Nazis are evil, soulless monsters.”

  “I know.”

  “I know this better than you.”

  “Yes. I’m sure that is so. I can’t imagine what it has been like to live so many years like this.” She had escaped from Spain’s fascism as soon as she could, and she had been a girl when most of it happened. Certainly, she had heard her parents talking as things there grew worse, had seen the friends they met with, had heard the voices raised in anger. But until her mother and father were killed, she hadn’t really understood what was at stake. They—and her youth—had protected her.

  French children probably did not have that luxury. Genevieve certainly did not.

  She shook herself and said, “I’m sorry. I will pay better attention. What did you learn of the visitor?”

  “He is an engineer or inventor or scientist, or all of those. His expertise is in radar, and he has a new invention or device that will help their long-range rockets become more accurate.”

  “That is a lot of information,” she said, impressed. “I hope the person who acquired it is safe.”

  “Yes, not caught or suspected of espionage, if that is what you meant.”

  “Do you know when he will come?”

  “The kanones are still arriving as we speak, being loaded the instant the trucks come. The train wheels will seize or the train will derail soon after they start tonight. After that?” He shrugged. “It is impossible to say. They had planned for his arrival here—and a formal dinner with officers of the area—in five days. But if the train line is blocked, it may be longer. Other arrangements may need to be made for his travel.”

  “Or they’ll change his itinerary and he’ll never arrive.”

  “That could be. Also, I have his name.”

  That surprised her again. “Your source is good.”

  “Yes. We do not use this person often.”

  “What is his name? The scientist, I mean?” She’d have to send it without using a code for it, plain letters double coded, but there was no help for that. If the code remained secure—and it should, for the instant she burned the silk, only one copy remained in a secret facility in England—the Germans could not read it.

  “Kurt Anton Hesse.” He spelled it.

  “I will tell them.” She frowned. “But five days, if they stick to their schedule, is not much time. We’ll have to formulate a plan ourselves, no? Do you have one? Do you want to kill him, capture him, turn him?”

  “Capturing is difficult. Dangerous.”

  “Yes.”

  “But information would be useful, what is in his head, would it not?”

  “It could be very useful. If they are truly developing a better way to bomb, London is a target. All of England is.” She imagined a targeted bomb hitting Downing Street. Or a school full of children. Another hitting the SOE headquarters, though it was unlikely they knew where that was. “Or, if a French town is liberated, that town and its brave citizens will be at risk.”

  “Also its collaborators. But yes, it would be a dangerous weapon if they have it. England is being bombed still?”

  “I forget you do not hear all the news. Yes, regularly. People are quite accustomed to the sirens, to hurrying into the underground shelters. Some civilians die every week.”

  He nodded. “And so. You will tell your superiors?”

  “I will, and I will say you are preparing for the visitor and to advise. There are code words for killing and such matters.”

  “We do not need England’s advice.”

  “No, of course not. You do marvelous work on your own, and your circuit is still intact, which is an impressive feat. They know this.” She hadn’t meant to offend. There was no reason to remind him that those in England might know something of this man, or have a broader view of things.

  “It’s your circuit now too.”

  “And I appreciate being able to help the other night.”

  “You did more than help, it seems. You overheard an important bit of information.”

  She supposed she did, but she had done nothing to earn the praise. “An accident of fate, that. It might have been you nearby when they spoke, or Leonce.”

  “True, but you did well.” His brief irritation had passed. “You will send this tonight?”

  “If I had a way to send right now, I’d do so immediately.”

  “Someone will come at midnight and lead you to a new site from which to radio.”

  “Thank you.” She appreciated his awareness of the risks she bore.

  “Be waiting by the back door. If it is not someone you know, they will knock twice and say, ‘Is this the butcher’s shop?’ And you will know the person is from me.”

  “I understand,” she said. Her mind was already working on the wording of her message to England. There was a lot to convey about Monk and Hesse, and she wanted to keep it to no more than ten minutes of keying.

  “I will see you soon.” He stood.

  She did as well and shook his hand. “Long live France,” she said.

  “Death to our enemies,” he replied, and then he was gone.

  She spent an hour in the attic on the English-language version of the message, honing it down to the fewest possible letters while still getting all the information across. It would be a close thing, the timing.

  Once she had it as brief as was possible, she took out the silk with its one-time-use codes and encoded the message, making sure to misspell the words she was supposed to. She told them to send back any direction or information twenty-four hours after she sent the message. Time was short, so she’d have to risk operating the radio two nights in a row in case they had anything useful to say.

  And then she opened the radio case. She did not turn it on, of course, but she keyed the message, using her watch to time herself. If she sent the whole message twice, she’d be three minutes over. Twenty-three minutes of radio transmission, and over t
hirty minutes at the site. Too long.

  Antonia kept keying the message, over and over, trying to shave off seconds with practice. She spent over an hour at it, but at the end, she was still a minute too long. She examined the English-language version of the transmission, but she could not find a single word to eliminate.

  So be it. Thus far, the Gestapo had not come close to finding her. She hadn’t even seen a radio-tracking truck. One minute over would have to do.

  She had given Madame money yesterday for butter and sugar and white flour if she could find any on the black market, and to buy Antonia candles and matches if it was easy for her to get them. She took out a match now and burned the English language text and the strip of silk, crushing the ashes between her fingers. She was left only with the encoded message.

  Inside she was thrumming from excitement about the coming operation. This was what she was here for. She could hardly wait for midnight to come to set it in motion.

  Chapter 12

  It wasn’t three minutes after the appointed time when the knock came at the back door.

  “Is this the butcher’s shop?” a man’s voice said.

  She opened the door and saw it was Leonce. He was dressed in a bulky jacket of dark brown wool, and his trousers and shoes were black. “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Your radio?”

  “Here,” she said, and she opened one of the cool ovens where she had hidden it.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  They emerged into a street not quite as dark as she was used to, and when they turned a corner, she saw why. A quarter moon had risen. She’d been here that long? It felt only a moment, but the changing moon told her otherwise.

  Speaking not at all, they slipped through the streets. Here and there in a window, a thin line of light was visible around blackout curtains, the residents up reading or talking, doing their accounts or fighting insomnia. Perhaps listening in secret to a BBC broadcast or comforting a child having nightmares.

  Living lives as normal as they could, considering everything that had happened.

  That path had not been for her.

  Eventually Leonce pulled up short and pointed at a building, three floors of apartments. They entered into a dark interior. He took her free hand and tugged until they were at a staircase, and he put her hand on the railing of a staircase and then let it go. He ascended the stairs ahead of her, surprisingly quiet, and she followed, avoiding putting her heels down on the bare wood. Two stories up, and his footsteps stopped. She reached the landing and he leaned close and whispered to her, “To the right.”