Code Name- Beatriz

by Lou Cadle

  “I don’t have ribbons or fancy paper,” the clerk said.

  “Whatever you have to make it a bit more festive is all I ask.”

  She put together a package wrapped with ivory-colored stationery and bound with raffia tied into a bow. “Thank you,” Antonia said, though the thing looked rather pitiful. She tucked it into her pharmacy bag, wore the new scarf, and walked to the café, where she found an abandoned two-page Vichy newspaper. She was there in plenty of time, for there was no sign of the train yet. A few other patrons sat singly or in pairs, but most people had gone to work. Again, as in the last café across from the jail, there were no waiters. Antonia approached the man standing behind a bar and saw they offered coffee still. “Is it real, the coffee?” she asked.

  “No, I’m sorry, madame. It is chicory and roots only.”

  “Then mint tea please. I’ll sit outside. It’s lovely this morning.”

  “Yes,” he said, and he made a small ceramic pot of tea for her. She took it and the cup outside and found a spot in the sun. She wished she had sunglasses. It was bright. Instead, she shifted her seat around until the glare didn’t bother her.

  “Bonjour, madame,” said a man about ten years older than her. He was dressed fashionably. “Are you alone?”

  She tensed at first, but then understood what she was seeing. A man was trying to pick her up, nothing more. “I’m meeting a friend today,” she said, with an apologetic smile.

  “My misfortune,” he said, and he moved along, strolling, looking into the café and then into the windows of the next building.

  Her senses were on high alert from the encounter, but as she continued to watch him, she thought he was only what he seemed. A well-to-do man of middle years strolling the streets. A pair of young German men passed by, chatting with each other in their language, perhaps off-duty soldiers. A normal day in Vichy France.

  Several minutes after 10:00, she heard the train whistle. She left her tea, picked up her shopping bag, and made her way to the station. There were a number of guards there. She hadn’t been to the station during daylight hours, but she believed it was business as usual.

  None of them seemed to be looking her way—at least no more than they glanced at anyone else. She decided it was safe enough to wait here on the street. How safe could one be in occupied France, after all? Never perfectly so. She put the newspaper under her arm, a signal that all was well. She already had the white scarf tied around her neck. All she knew about the courier was that she was female. Claude, with his typical concern about security, had said nothing more, and probably had said nothing more to the courier about Antonia than the clues of the scarf and newspaper.

  The train arrived, and the first passengers queued up for the identity check. Nothing went quickly in occupied France. No jumping off the train and hurrying into the arms of someone waiting for you. There were lines, and gates, and paperwork to check, always.

  She could only see the faces of the taller passengers from her vantage point, and only one woman looked young enough to be a possible courier.

  The first cleared passengers began leaving the gates set up around the station, positioned between the towers of sandbags. There were men, women, two children who might be twins. A few Germans in uniform, and a few Vichy uniforms too. They swept past her, not noticing her. She nervously adjusted her scarf.

  The train had emptied, though it was not yet moving off. The sign said it was headed to Paris as its final destination.

  A younger woman was walking her way. She made eye contact, but the other woman brushed past her. Was it the courier, telling her something was wrong?

  Suddenly, something did seem wrong, but she didn’t know why. Just a strange sense that the crowd wasn’t moving normally. Then a new woman appeared in front of her and stopped. “Good day,” she said. “My feet hurt”

  “It’s a long walk,” Antonia said, taking the newspaper from under her right arm and extending her hand to shake the woman’s.

  The woman backed up a step and glanced to the side.

  That’s when they grabbed Antonia.

  Four German guards were there, faster than seemed reasonable, surrounding her, and one was reaching for her. She turned around, straight into the arms of the local head of the Gestapo, Meyer.

  “And so,” he said, in perfect French. “It is you.”

  “Let go of me!” Antonia said, thinking quickly of how an innocent person would behave. “I’m here to meet a cousin. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  He grinned at her. Then he looked over her head. “Take her to the jail. I’ll be there soon.”

  As two guards dragged her away from the train station, she heard Meyer say, “Good work,” and she realized he was talking to the woman. Not the courier then? The courier must have been captured, and had talked, giving them the password and her description. If she had talked, Claude would be in danger, and the worker on the train whom Claude said passed the messages. The whole circuit was at risk. She had to do something to help them.

  She took a breath, relaxing her muscles, ceasing to fight against the guards who had her arms. She walked with them, making it easy for them, looking for her opportunity. Ahead, a group of boys was kicking a ball through the streets.

  Genevieve. Not all boys. One of them was Genevieve. The girl ran to the ball, stole it from the boy who had it, and ran right toward the guards, swerving only at the last second, as if only then seeing them.

  Antonia yanked both her arms at once, freeing them from the Germans’ grip, and ducked to the side.

  But she only made it two steps before they were on her again. One punched her in the side of her head, and the other wrapped both arms around her. His grip was iron, and fight as she might, she could not loosen it.

  Then she heard a revolver cock and looked up into the eyes of Meyer. He smiled again, and the smile was a cruel thing. “Carry her, then.” He pocketed his revolver. And all four of them grabbed her and lifted her. Filthy German hands all over her, on her back and buttocks, touching her legs and her hair. She spat when one’s face came into range, but it did nothing for her. Just an automatic reaction to the foul Nazi being so near.

  She caught a last glance of Genevieve, standing as if rooted in the street. For a moment, her face changed, from the tough boyish look she affected, to that of a vulnerable young girl, whose heart was being broken once again. Antonia’s fault. She should have sensed the trap earlier than she did. She prayed the girl would look away, move away, get safe before she was noticed. Her captors turned a corner and she lost sight of Genevieve.

  The girl would tell Claude. It was the only comfort in all this. They would be warned, if the courier had revealed any more.

  Antonia struggled the whole way, and they had to keep stopping to adjust their grips. But too soon, she was pulled inside a building, the same building where they’d hurt Will so badly. She was carried to a stairwell and then heaved down it. She could feel her right elbow hitting a step, and then her hip, and she was rolling, rolling.

  When I get to the bottom, I’ll get up and run.

  But she didn’t make it all the way to the bottom. Tumbling unevenly, her head hit the wall, and her momentum was stopped two thirds of the way down. She was too dazed to rise, though part of her mind was screaming at her to do so, to get up and run. Run! Booted feet stomped up the stairs and someone pulled her up by the hair. Her vision was blurred from the knock to her head, and she couldn’t see the face clearly. Then she felt her arms yanked up, and the cold steel of handcuffs clamping around her wrists, pinning them behind her. The person in front of her kept yanking at her hair, and she felt a wad of it come out in his hand.

  When she was upright, she kicked at him, but it was a feeble motion. He pulled her down the staircase, stumbling, and through a dim hall. She was pushed into a cell, reeking of urine, and thrown to the filthy floor.

  The door clanked shut with a finality that chilled her.

  Chapter 34

  What happened o
ver the next four days would haunt her for many years.

  They only left her alone in the cell for ten minutes. Then Meyer came with a female guard who stripped her while he watched from outside the bars. There was nothing sexual about his stare, and she tried not to let it bother her, standing there naked in front of him. She refused to turn away, or to hide herself. She kept her back straight and met his eyes, remembering the Jewish baby and mother he had ordered killed. The same cold regard was in his face now as then.

  He took her watch and the wrapped pin from her pockets and examined them. “This held your cyanide pill?” He spoke in English.

  “I’m sorry, I speak English only badly,” she replied in French.

  “Nonsense. You’re an English spy. And which of these held your L-pill?”

  She shook her head. He dropped the watch on the floor and smashed it with his boot, and kicked at the pieces, but of course there was no pill there. There was no place in the cheap pin to hide a pill.

  “Did you take it already?”

  “In French please,” she said.

  He pointed at the woman guard, who took one of Antonia’s nipples between two fingers and gave it a cruel twist.

  She bit her lips against the gasp of pain. “No speak English,” she said, when she could talk again.

  “You’ll talk. In every language you know,” he said. “You’ll beg me for the chance to talk more.” He twisted the pin, glanced at it, threw it on the floor, and kicked it away. “They all talk.” He sounded bored with the fact, and with her.

  Then he left her, the woman taking her clothes with her.

  Antonia sat naked on the bare springs, but it pinched her bottom, so she stood again and searched the floor for the least disgusting place to sit. Her head was still reeling from hitting the stairwell wall. She didn’t see anywhere she wanted to sit, but the walls didn’t look too bad, except for one that had a splash of blood drops on it. She chose a different wall and leaned against it. Closing her eyes made her head spin worse, so she kept them open and propped herself up with the strength in her legs.

  At least they hadn’t suspected Genevieve of knowing her. They’d ignored her, to them merely a young boy with a ball. Genevieve would have told Claude by now what had happened. He would do what he needed to protect himself and the circuit.

  Something like that was what had happened to Monk circuit, wasn’t it? First one capture, then the next, until all the dominoes were falling. She swore to herself that she could not be the cause of Cooper Circuit’s demise. The captured courier might have revealed the passwords, but Antonia would not talk. No matter what, she would not give them a single name. Will had survived this. She was a trained agent. She could survive it as well.

  Antonia thought of Madame Charlevoix and the old farmer lady. No matter what happened, she would not, could not speak of them. In fact, she needed to make up something to tell the Germans for when she could bear their treatment no longer. Her mind wasn’t working at its best, but she forced herself to slow down, to focus, to push her fear away. There was plenty of time between now and the moment she would pretend to break and confess all, time enough to make a good plan for that false confession.

  First, she would say she had rented a room, not that anyone had kept her. Or no, that would mean naming an address and involving an innocent person. She could say she stayed in the empty or abandoned apartment like the one she’d sent her wireless message from where Genevieve’s friend had once lived.

  And then what? They’d ask her for secrets, and ask, and beat her, and ask again. Eventually, she’d have to reveal something.

  Monk circuit. That was blown already. She could confess, when denials were impossible, that she was part of that circuit. She could invent a false contact and then name the people who had already been arrested. Weep when she did, act ashamed, make them tear it out of her. In about two days, she would do that. She would have to bear whatever they did to her for two days before that.

  She mentally rehearsed her lies, telling herself these were the truth. I have been in Marseille, an occasional courier for the Monk circuit. I was sent here for a short time to await a message. I never did meet my first contact here, and I was waiting for further instructions after he did not show up. His name? I was never told it, just a code phrase. She would make the code phrase up on the spot, something about the weather, rain or cold or summer coming. She liked the last idea. Summer would come, and with it the invasion from England, and the liberation of France.

  Over and over, she repeated her new cover story. I am French. I do not even understand English, except for a few words like the easy numbers. I am a minor courier for the Résistance in Marseille, and they do not use me often. I was sent here. I know no one’s name here. I never met anyone from the Résistance in this town. I won’t tell you the names of my circuit in Marseille—but then, when they tortured her more, she would tell. She tried to remember them all. Laurent was one, and Gaby, a woman. Both captured. They were English, but their French was good, and that is all I know of them, she would say, and I only saw them once each. I swear, I swear. She would have to hold out a long time before giving them that, or they’d suspect she was lying.

  She had never operated a wireless set. Did not know how to, did not even know the way messages were coded, could not identify one if they showed it to her. Why should she know such a thing?

  She would pretend to be rather stupider than she was. That just might help her.

  Over and over she thought through her new cover identity, this one just for the Nazis. Until she could not resist any longer, and it was time to confess it, she would deny she was a spy of any sort.

  A half-hour later, they came for her. Two male guards handed her a thin cotton shift, let her put it on, and took her upstairs, where two men and a woman stood in the hall. Those three took her to an office and the first pair of guards went away. There was Meyer, sitting behind a desk. But he did not question her. A lieutenant did.

  The next hour was not difficult. He asked her questions, in English, French, and German. She pretended to only know French and begged them to speak it. The woman, who had stayed in the office, said nothing.

  After an hour or so, when she said for the hundredth time, “I don’t know,” the lieutenant slapped her. And asked the question again. Over and over, he asked the same question. The slaps because more frequent. Her face stung, but this was nothing. She could take slapping for days and days.

  “Who are you working with? Who is your circuit? Name them!” he said. At least she had made him speak French all the time now. She held on to that victory. They were beatable.

  “I do not know what you mean. I am a shorthand secretary. My name is—”

  He pulled the chair out from under her so quickly, she didn’t have time to react. She fell to the floor, jarring her wrist when she put her hands down at the last moment to slow her fall. “Tell me the members of your cell!”

  “I don’t have a cell,” she said, forcing herself to begin to cry. “I don’t even know what that means.”

  The lieutenant grabbed her by the hair and pulled her over to a table. He held on to her head and slammed it into the front of the table. It hurt. There was a drawer with a metal handle, and he aimed her face at that. That hurt more. She felt her skin split, and blood flowed down her forehead and nose.

  She felt each blow, but each time, she thought, This is not so bad. I can take this.

  At a signal, the woman finally moved. She picked up a satchel and removed scissors. Antonia looked at her with all the fear she felt and then some. She was being her cover identity, that frightened. The woman came at her, and Antonia swallowed hard. She didn’t want to lose her eyes. Anything else, she could cope with. Not my eyes.

  The woman looked to the man who had been interrogating her, and he swung her around, then barked something in German. Antonia looked at him, confused. In French he said, “Sit in the chair.”

  She did. The woman moved behind her, and Antonia let
her hand fly to her throat.

  “Hands down!” the interrogator said.

  The sound of it reached her before the meaning of it did. The woman was cutting off her hair, each snap of the scissors close to her ear.

  As if that would bother her at all. Not even a flash of vanity entered Antonia’s mind. In fact, if they cut it very short, they’d no longer be able to pull her around by her hair, so it would help her, not hurt her. Psychological torture for some. Not for her.

  But she pretended as if it was emotionally painful, working up a few tears and begging the woman to stop. She glanced at Meyer behind the desk and saw him watching her with a cold stare. She feared he didn’t believe her act at all.

  The woman took out a razor and shaved her head too, without water or cream, and she cut her scalp a few times. It stung.

  “Take the dress off,” Meyer said, his tone bored.

  The interrogator pulled her upright and stripped the shift from her.

  “Beat her,” Meyer said.

  The interrogator pushed her down, and when she resisted, said, “On your knees. Hands and knees, bitch.” He pushed and kicked at her until she was how he wanted her, and then he took something—a switch of some sort—and hit her on her thighs, buttocks, and back.

  She wasn’t playacting when she cried out. It stung. She begged for mercy, said she was innocent, asked why they were doing this to her, why? “I’m a good girl,” she said, over and over again.

  “Harder,” said Meyer.

  The interrogator obeyed, and it hurt even worse. The rawness on her skin gave way to a terrible hot stinging with each slash. She felt blood dripping down her thighs. It persisted until she was kneeling in pools of her own blood. Her thighs burned, even when she wasn’t being whipped. She wept, pitifully, but she held most of her true self detached from it all, carving out a little corner in her mind where the trained agent sat and watched and analyzed.