The Spark of Resistance: Women Spies in WWII

by Sergeant, Kit

  After Kiki had gone, Bleicher called Mathilde back into the living room. “Is your divorce finalized now?”

  “It will be when they deliver Maurice the papers. They’ll have to locate him first—last I heard he was in North Africa.”

  Bleicher nodded. “Then I’m going to arrest Maître Brault tomorrow.”

  “Why?” Mathilde couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice. “We need him if we are going to carry on the infiltration of Lucas’s network.”

  “No.” Bleicher waved an unsteady hand. “As you said, he never really joined Interallié, so I don’t think it will make much of a difference with Lucas.”

  She decided to try a different tactic. “If he wasn’t technically a part of Interallié, why bother going through the trouble of arresting him?”

  “Brault’s monetary contributions to the Resistance are well-known. He may never have gotten his hands dirty, but he provided plenty of cash for the saboteurs to carry out their soiled deeds. He’s as guilty as you were. We’ll go first thing in the morning.”

  “No.” She stood up. “I’m tired and want my sleep. If you’re so keen on arresting him, send your goons instead.” Bleicher had often complained that his Abwehr associates were lousy at their jobs, and, thanks to their blundering, potential arrestees had a fifty percent chance of escaping. It might be the only chance Brault had. She held out her arm to Bleicher.

  “You don’t have a headache?” he asked hopefully.

  “Not tonight.”

  Chapter 39

  Odette

  Peter communicated with the Maquisards hiding in the woods beyond Saint Jorioz through Annecy’s ambulance, figuring it was a vehicle that would not invite suspicion.

  For several nights in a row, the RAF dropped much-needed supplies for their newfound collaborators: guns, ammunition, knives, medicine, boots, hand grenades, and of course, necessities such as coffee, cigarettes, and chocolate. Once they were fully equipped, the Maquisards were able to mount an enormous attack on the railways and start waging guerilla warfare on the German troops.

  “Congratulations,” Alec told Odette and Peter the next time they visited him. “Forty new drop sights is quite an accomplishment.”

  “Thank you,” Odette replied, pleased they were finally inflicting the kind of damage on the Nazis she had once only dreamed about.

  “And here’s this.” Alec handed Peter his latest message. “Buck wants you back in England as soon as possible.”

  Odette felt her heart sink.

  “What for?” Peter asked, perusing the notice.

  “Maybe they’re finally planning the Allied invasion of France,” Alec replied.

  Peter set the paper down on a nearby table. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” His gaze swerved to Odette as if to gauge her reaction.

  She gave him the widest smile she could conjure. “Indeed.”

  “Or maybe it has something to do with the arrest of Carte’s wife and daughters,” Alec continued.

  “The briefcase?” Peter asked.

  He nodded.

  “What briefcase?” Odette demanded.

  Peter sighed heavily. “One of Carte’s couriers fell asleep on a train, back in November, and had his briefcase stolen.”

  “Who was it?” Odette demanded.

  “Marsac.”

  Her mind whirled, wondering how Marsac could have been so careless.

  “At any rate, they’re sending someone in your place,” Alec stated.

  Both Odette and Peter focused on Alec. “Say that again,” Peter commanded.

  “His codename is Roger. If you think some greenie is going to parachute in and bark orders and expect me to obey…” Alec began.

  Peter held up his hand. “We all know how you feel about the SOE’s newest recruits.”

  “I’m sure Lise will concur.” Alec looked at her imploringly, his heavy eyebrows raised.

  For her part, she couldn’t imagine anyone, not even Buckmaster himself, daring to take Peter’s place. “I agree with Alec.”

  “I’m sure London knows as well as I do that they can’t send some novice to serve as a stand-in for Spindle’s director. Not with you two as second-in-command.”

  Odette weighed his words. Though the Maquisards had proved excellent recruits for the Resistance, it was true that the only remainders of the Spindle Network in Saint Jorioz were Peter, Alec, and herself. It occurred to Odette that the three of them—an English gentleman, a Frenchwoman and a Russian Jew—made for a strange trio.

  Once again, Peter met her eyes. “Lise, I’m putting you in charge.”

  “I—” she began, but he cut her off. “Alec, watch out for her. No matter what.”

  Alec looked as if he was about to argue, but something else came over him. “Sure, boss. No problem.”

  Peter extended his hand. “Au revoir.”

  Alec met Peter’s outstretched palm with his own meaty one. “Adieu, boss. Be well.”

  As they rode home in the gasping motorcar that Peter had managed to finagle off someone, Odette asked why he’d chosen her to be in charge of Spindle.

  His reply was simple. “I trust you.”

  “But Alec is a lieutenant and I’m a woman.”

  Peter kept his eyes on the road as he repeated, “I trust you.”

  Odette stared out the window for a few moments, trying not to imagine why Buckmaster wanted Peter back in London. What if Buck wants to reassign him?

  Peter’s gruff voice cut through the silence as they pulled up to the hotel. “Do you have any messages for me to pass on? Either to your daughters or… to your husband?”

  “Have Miss Atkins tell my girls…” her voice broke and she paused until she could get the words out. “Tell them I am well and obeying orders from my superiors, just as any good soldier would do.”

  He turned to her, his eyes full of unspoken emotion. “Will do.”

  Chapter 40

  Didi

  Didi was working on yet another complicated indecipherable when Leo Marks approached her. He was accompanied by a good-looking middle-aged man with wireframe glasses.

  “Miss Nearne, I’d like to introduce you to the one and only Peter Churchill.”

  “Churchill,” Didi said, holding out her hand. “Ah yes, of hatting column fame.”

  He gave her a wry smile. “Sorry about that. Did it take long for you to figure it out?”

  There was something infectious about his grin. “A few minutes. But it’s my job.”

  “Well, I’ve got Alec Rabinovitch back as my operator so it should never happen again.”

  “The Beast?” Marks looked surprised. “How is he?”

  Churchill shrugged. “Probably chomping at the bit in my absence, but Lise can handle it.” His voice seemed to catch at the woman’s name.

  Marks steered Churchill toward the door. “Well, while I admire Rabinovitch’s audacity, if he ever does send in an indecipherable, I’ll have to do it myself. There’s no way I’d have a FANY try to unscramble it, what with the colorful language he uses. It’s bad enough his home operator having to decode all his curses.”

  Churchill shot Didi one last smile. “I apologize in absentia for my associate’s lack of decorum.” He turned back to Marks. “If you want to attempt to control him, you can see if you could do a better job than I. But I warn you, he doesn’t respond easily to that sort of handling.”

  “Not many of us do,” Marks agreed as he shut the door.

  Chapter 41

  Mathilde

  Just as Mathilde had hoped, Bleicher’s comrades cocked up the attempt to arrest Maître Brault. They did not know that most of the larger houses in Paris had a separate servants’ staircase. While the Abwehr men plodded up the main stairs, Brault was able to sneak out the back.

  After Lucas told Mathilde this story, he mentioned that Brault was on his way to Vichy and needed an official pass to help him get through the demarcation line. Mathilde promised to secure some and deliver them that evening to Lucas’s flat.<
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  When Lucas opened the door, Mathilde handed him the pass and some forged papers she’d managed to secure for Maître Brault before heading to the kitchen. As she returned to the main room with two glasses of brandy, Lucas was examining the papers. “These are more than adequate.” He seemed preoccupied as he ran his finger over the Wehrmacht stamp. “Almost perfect.”

  She handed him a drink. “I told you my contacts would come through.” They were, of course, courtesy of the Abwehr, but she couldn’t tell Lucas that.

  He sighed heavily. “Mathilde, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” The distraction was gone and his astute eyes now focused on her so intently it made her uncomfortable.

  “Is Jean Castel really your husband?”

  Lucas looked so handsome. She half-hoped that there was a hint of romantic notions behind the inquiry, but something in his gaze told her that wasn’t the case.

  She took a sip of her drink. “Of course. What a silly question.”

  “I don’t think it’s silly at all, but let me ask a different one. Who told the Germans about Maître Brault?”

  She gave him a coy smile, mostly to hide her trembling lips. “What do you mean?”

  “Only a few people knew about his involvement with the Resistance, and most of them are in prison.”

  He had her there. Mathilde realized it was futile to keep lying to him. “Oh, Lucas, there’s something you should know.” She set her drink down before sinking into the couch beside him. “I too was arrested, the day after Armand. They threw me in La Santé prison and it was so horrible...”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “And the Germans convinced you to work for them.”

  It wasn’t a question but she answered anyway. “They forced me to.”

  “What about your husband—the supposed Jean Castel?”

  She hung her head. “His real name is Sergeant Hugo Bleicher. He works for the Abwehr.” She reached out to grab Lucas’s arm. “You have to believe me. I would never have agreed to such things if my life weren’t at stake.”

  He shrugged her off. “We’ve all been risking our lives. But the brave men and women I know would rather die than put their networks in peril.”

  “I, too, would never willingly place mine in peril either.”

  “Then all of those arrests—nearly a hundred Interallié agents? You had nothing to do with them?”

  “No,” Mathilde spoke quickly. “I mostly provided Bleicher with false information.” She saw no need to confess the full extent of her culpability. It was too late to help any of those agents and would only make Lucas doubt her intentions.

  “And all this time they never grew suspicious with your so-called false information?”

  “No.” She shook her head vehemently for good measure. “But even so, all I want now is a chance to redeem myself, to get back at the Germans for this horrible situation they’ve put me in.”

  He folded his hands under his chin as he thought. “We are both in grave danger,” he said finally. “The Abwehr has known about my operations all along, and if Bleicher learns you’ve revealed all of this to me…”

  “He’ll throw me to the dogs,” she finished for him.

  “And Benny, and the schoolteacher, Brault, and everyone else I’ve been associated with since I arrived in France.” He took a shaky breath. “I can’t have that on my conscience. And, oh, the wireless,” he smacked himself on the forehead. “They’ve been listening to our messages, of course. They know everything. I need to get back to London and warn them that our wireless has been compromised.”

  “Take me with you,” Mathilde begged.

  “I’m not sure that’s appropriate, though…” he fell silent for a moment. “What if…” At first his voice was tentative, but then it grew more confident. “What if we could infiltrate the Abwehr the way they’ve tried to do to us?”

  “How?”

  “Go back to Bleicher and tell him…” Again his mental wheels were spinning, “Tell him I’ve held a meeting with other heads of Resistance networks and now need to report back to London on our collaboration.”

  “Did such a meeting take place?”

  “Yes,” Lucas said, “though that’s beside the point.”

  Mathilde couldn’t help herself. “How come I wasn’t invited?”

  “What?” he looked taken aback. “You’ve just told me you’ve been working with Bleicher this whole time.”

  “But you had no reason to suspect me of that until the night they tried to arrest Brault.”

  The mark hit home and Lucas had the good sense to look sheepish. “Well, that’s not strictly true. I’d had an inkling after you clearly forgot your husband’s pseudonym. You said ‘Bl—’ before you caught yourself. Besides, most people don’t continuously call their husbands by their first and last name.”

  The thought of Lucas distrusting her ruffled her feathers and she felt the need to prove how possessive Bleicher was of her. “Though he’s not my husband, he will never give his permission for me to go to London. He hardly lets me out of his sight.”

  “Explain to him what a grand opportunity it would be to send his own mole to London. That I will introduce you to all the higher-ups in the SOE. Meanwhile you will tell Buckmaster everything you’ve learned about the inner-workings of the Abwehr.”

  She sat back, beginning to see that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. A way out of her collusion with Bleicher, and a way out of Paris at the same time, with Lucas by her side, no less. She would become the foremost expert on the German Secret Service, and every man in London would fall at her feet.

  Both Kayser and Bleicher were sitting in the living room when Mathilde returned to the apartment. She repeated what Lucas had instructed her to say.

  Though Bleicher found the idea ingenious, Kayser had reservations. “We will have to inform the Gestapo of this, and I don’t think they’ll like it. Their solution would be to just shoot Lucas and the whole lot.” Kayser lifted his thumb and pointed his forefinger in Mathilde’s direction as though he were cocking a gun. “Including her.”

  Although she was aware there was a fierce rivalry between the two branches of the German Secret Police, it didn’t make sense that they couldn’t work together on such a coup. “But I will be privy to your,” she quickly corrected herself, “our enemy’s top-secret information. Does it matter who gets the credit as long as you outsmart the British?”

  Kayser considered her statement.

  “I will pay the penalty if she dares betray us,” Bleicher was clearly in favor of the plan and tried to drive his point home. “I know her better than anyone else and I can guarantee her intention is not to double-cross us.”

  “You mean triple-cross us,” Kayser stated bitterly.

  “She could have had me liquidated at Vaas, but she didn’t.”

  Mathilde gave Bleicher a fake smile, inwardly regretting that she’d not taken the opportunity that night.

  “I’ll vouch for her,” he declared. “And if she does do something, then you can blame me.”

  Mathilde couldn’t help but kiss his forehead.

  Later in bed, Bleicher told Mathilde that her trip to London would be her greatest triumph. “After the war is over, we’ll get your story published in the most important Berlin newspapers. You’ll be hailed as the number one heroine of the war. And,” he rubbed his finger along the bridge of her nose, “we’ll be able to pay you even more than before.”

  “Wonderful,” Mathilde said before rolling over. She closed her eyes, dreaming of the day she’d finally be free from Bleicher’s clutches.

  Chapter 42

  Odette

  As Odette herself had predicted, Francis Cammaerts, the man who arrived when Peter left, was not as strong of a leader. He’d brought a few new men into the circuit, including one called Bardet, whom Odette despised upon meeting. As she later confessed to Alec, “He has shifty eyes.”

  “Shall I drop him in the lake?” Alec asked.


  “I don’t suppose that would look good on our part. But mark my words, Alec, this man is no good.”

  Alec shrugged as he pretended to read a message. Odette took the bait. “What is it?” He was about to crumple it up before she snatched it from him. It read: For Alec STOP Congratulations on your Captaincy STOP The SOE.

  She set it down. “Buckmaster promoted you.”

  “Thanks to our mutual friend, Peter, I’m sure.”

  She ran her fingers across the typewritten letters. “Peter has a way with people.” She looked up. “But you deserve this, Alec. There is no better wireless operator than you.”

  He seemed uncomfortable with the praise. “And about this new man, Bardet.”

  Odette waved him off. “He’s going to be running between here and the Occupied Zone. He’s staying with somebody named Keiffer so we don’t have to worry about him at present.”

  “Good.” Alec took out a lighter and together they watched the paper informing him of his promotion go up in flames.

  A few days later, Jean Cottet told Odette that Alec was waiting for her at the Limes. “He asked for you to come right away.”

  Odette frowned. The Limes was an abandoned villa that Peter had chosen to meet with his contacts since he’d decided it wouldn’t be wise to have them come to the hotel.

  The Limes was less than a quarter mile away and Odette got on a bicycle and pedaled as fast as she could.

  “What is it, Alec?” she asked breathlessly as the door banged shut behind her. She saw with trepidation that he was not alone. The new man, Bardet, was with him and his eyes were as shifty as ever.

  Alec was sitting at a battered kitchen table. Even though it was not quite eleven o’clock, he had a glass of whiskey in front of him. He looked at Bardet and nodded.