by Larry Loftis
“Nothing of the sort.” The Commissar stood and again brooded over her. “Are you going to answer my questions?”
“No.”
“Then I shall cause to be done to your finger-tips the same operation that has just been carried out on your feet.”
Odette blanched. The metallic smell of blood was sickening and the thought of another round, numbing. Maybe she would pass out. And then what?
Brandy.
Twenty nails on the floor.
And what after that?
The fire iron. Perhaps to the face?
The Commissar waited for a response and Odette stared at him, her nerves stabbing as rivulets of blood continued to trickle and shock set in.
Suddenly the door swung open and the Commissar snapped to attention. A man in civilian clothes came to the table and observed the blood and nails. There was a brief conversation in German and the man left.
“The Major says that I am wasting my time,” the Commissar said, “and that you will never talk. He has ordered that you be taken upstairs. You are a very fortunate woman, Lise. I have no doubt that we shall meet again. One more thing. If you speak about what happened to a living soul, you will be brought here again and worse things will happen to you.”
* * *
TWO DAYS LATER A man came to Odette’s cell. The uniform and medals indicated captain, and that he had served on the Eastern Front. About thirty-five, he was well built and had a fresh complexion. Behind the spectacles were soft, gentle eyes. Father Paul Steinert was his name, Fresnes chaplain.
“You will please forgive me, Father, if I fail to stand up.”
“Ma fille . . . what have they done to you?”
Odette paused and then said, “You are a German officer, and you must know that it is not permitted to discuss what happens at Number 84 Avenue Foch.”
“I am a priest.”
Odette removed the bloody rags from her feet and Father Paul gasped in horror. He looked for other abuses.
“And your hands. What are those marks in your hands?”
She explained their origin and Father Paul was overcome with shame and compassion. He stood motionless, absorbing the injury and injustice. There were no words. With heartbreak in his eyes he kissed her forehead and left. He would return often.
Soon thereafter Colonel Henri visited again. He offered a cigarette and smoked while he contemplated his message.
“You’ve been to the Gestapo,” he finally said.
“Yes.”
“Lise, I know what they did to you. Believe me when I say how sorry and how utterly ashamed I am. It had nothing to do with me and . . . I couldn’t stop it.”
Odette said she believed him and Henri asked if there was anything he could do.
“Have you been to see Peter Churchill since I went to the Gestapo?”
Henri said he had not but was going to visit him as soon as he left her.
“Then there is something that you can do. You can keep silent about what they did to me.” She explained the rifle butt treatment Peter had taken from the Italian in Annecy and said that if he found out what the Gestapo had done, he’d do something violent and foolish.
Henri agreed. “Lise, do you ever think of yourself?”
“Far too much. I am a very selfish woman.”
Henri wrestled with his thoughts—what he had done in bringing Lise to Fresnes—and the consequences when duty and conscience collided like ships in the night. “I hate to see you here,” he said at last, “in this place among these vile and sordid people.”
Her warders weren’t especially vile or sordid, she replied; prison simply revealed and accentuated character—the strong became stronger; the weak, weaker. She bid Henri good-bye.
“Give my love to Peter Churchill,” she added. “And not a word about . . . anything else.”
“Not a word. I will come again. Au revoir, Lise.”
In the interrogation room for Peter’s wing, Henri passed along Odette’s sentiments and said he wanted to help them.
“Can’t you understand now that I hate the Gestapo?” he asked.
Peter understood the rivalry between the Abwehr and Gestapo, and the mutual distrust and disdain wasn’t altogether surprising; the British had their own version of it. As MI6 officer Malcolm Muggeridge recognized, “Though the SOE and MI6 were nominally on the same side in the war, they were, generally speaking, more abhorrent to one another than the Abwehr was to either of them.”
Henri said he wasn’t going to help the Gestapo or try to get anything out of Peter. “It’s sufficient for me to have captured you, and now that you’re here I can’t bear to see you slowly starving to death in this lousy hole. I know all about the meager rations of Fresnes.” He asked Peter for the name and address of a friend who could provide food parcels; Henri would arrange pickup and delivery.
Peter was incredulous. This was precisely how Henri had fooled Marsac into providing Roger Bardet. Besides, everyone knew that if Henri actually did this and was caught, he’d be shot.
“My dear Henri. If I were to give you anyone’s name and address, you’d immediately suspect that they were implicated in Resistance activities and put them under arrest.”
Henri’s countenance fell. “You do me a grave injustice, Pierre. I have often been able to help people in this way, nor do I stoop to such low tricks in order to capture people.”
Peter reminded him of the trick on Marsac.
“That was different. Marsac was a fool and played right into my hands. After all, you were a big fish and I certainly wouldn’t have picked you up if the bomber had been sent for me.”
Peter thought for a minute about Henri’s ruse of leaving for London to help negotiate the end of the war on behalf of Germany.
“Do you really expect me to believe that, Henri?”
“I do. Marsac told the Gestapo about the bomber business and they began to smell a rat. If the bomber had come I should have vanished from the scene. As it didn’t, I had to pick you up or I should have found myself inside your place.”
Peter considered the story. It was plausible.
Henri gave his word that he would not arrest the person providing the parcels and Peter said he’d think about it. “Just give me a little time to digest the idea that you and the Gestapo don’t work hand in glove,” he said. “In the meantime, if you want to give me a treat, have Odette brought here.”
Henri gave the order and a guard went to fetch her.
Odette fell into Peter’s arms and he held her tightly, noticing that she was much thinner, but not catching that her steps were slow and soft. She asked Henri if she could return to her cell to get something, and he nodded to the guard. When they returned, Odette was carrying two half loaves and gingerbread.
“These are for you, Pierre. I know how hungry you must be.”
Peter was speechless. She was starving but had saved for him a large portion of her minuscule rations. He tried to say something but was overcome.
She put the food in his hands. “You know I’m never very hungry.”
Sweet Lise. Always sacrificing for someone else.
Henri stepped aside and allowed them several minutes to talk privately.
Back in his cell, Peter reconsidered what Henri had said about coordinating food parcels. At great risk to himself, Henri had just allowed Odette and him to see each other a second time. The spy-catcher, it appeared, had a soft spot.
Peter thought of who might be amenable to the task and Charles Fol—banker, broker, and gentleman farmer—came to mind. Peter had stayed with Charles and his wife two nights in March on his way to Compiègne, and he was confident they would help.
When Henri next visited, Peter gave him the Fol address, asking Henri to mention that Peter’s “wife” was also at Fresnes.
It just might work.
* * *
IT WAS A SUNDAY when Peter awoke to a driving rainstorm, drops drumming his window like a cadence for the dead. He watched for several minutes as i
t matched his mood—he was starving and hadn’t shaved for six days.
Behind him the door quietly opened. It was Father Paul. Peter turned and saw the light of goodness on him.
“I’ve just come from your wife’s cell in the third division,” the priest said. “She asked me to call on you and give you her love and to say that she was well. If I may be permitted to say so, she is a very fine woman. She hopes you are being patient in these difficult times.”
Peter sighed. “Thank you, Father. You are the first German who has spoken to me as though I were a human being in seven weeks.”
“My profession has no frontiers, Monsieur. We are all God’s children and answerable only to him. If we have acted with loyalty to our friends or for a cause, there is no shame in that.”
“Tell me, Father, how is my wife, really?”
“She is well and serene. She behaves with great dignity and has already earned the respect of many people, including myself.”
Father Paul gave Peter a book on learning German—the only thing he had with him at the time—and said he’d visit again if Peter liked.
“Thank you very much, mon Père. Please give my love to my wife and tell her that I am well, that I think of her all day and especially at our meeting hour, and I pray for her every night. And mon Père, please come again.”
It was still raining when Father Paul left but Peter noticed that his cell was no longer dark. Nor his spirit. It was that man, he thought. Since his first day of incarceration, Peter had suffered bouts of depression. The suffocating shoe box treatment—starved and degraded and deprived—had driven him to near madness. Father Paul changed that. There was something unique about the man—his goodness, his gentleness, his quiet calm. He had been on the Eastern Front, Peter remembered, so he’d seen the horrors: death, misery, frostbitten men who’d eaten their horses.
Without instruction, Peter realized, Father Paul was teaching and the first lesson was that the battle of faith required many scars before it was won.
* * *
A FEW DAYS LATER Father Paul returned. Odette was doing well, he said. He gave Peter another book: poems by Goethe. Peter was touched.
“How is it, mon Père, that you manage to leave something of yourself behind you in every cell you enter? There must be many cells and many difficult and painful encounters.”
“Mine is a rather long day, Monsieur, but I have been blessed with faith that helps to conquer the fatigue of the body. My prayers for guidance are always answered and I sometimes find words are put into my mouth.”
“Do you prefer this to the Eastern Front?”
“Man’s needs are much the same everywhere,” Father Paul said. “Whether I am sent back to the East or remain here is entirely the same to me. I am at God’s disposal to be called wherever He may command.”
Peter thanked him for the visit and book, and asked that he pass along his love to Odette. When Paul was gone, Peter continued to think about him. What a superb representative of God he was. He was more than a magnificent Catholic priest; he was a genuine saint.
Peter said a silent prayer, giving thanks for what this man was teaching him about what it truly meant to be selfless. When he finished, he opened Goethe and read the first verse of the first poem:
He who has not eaten his bread in tears,
He who has not sat up weeping upon his bed throughout the night of despair,
He knows you not, Oh Heavenly Father.
* * *
BY JULY 1943 ODETTE and Peter had adjusted to prison, and Odette was almost running the women’s wing. One day four guards—two men and two women—came into her cell alleging that she had been talking out of the window; a forbidden practice. Odette denied it.
“Liar,” one of the female guards hissed. “You have been talking. Get up.”
Odette stood. “I have not been talking out of the window. You can see for yourself that the window is not only sealed but nailed.”
Unmoved, the guard slapped Odette twice. “You will be reported,” the woman crowed.
The following morning Odette asked to see the captain in charge and one of the guards fetched him. He looked fatherly, Odette thought—midfifties, grey, and rather small—maybe five foot six.
She informed him that she had been unfairly charged and struck twice the previous night by one of his subordinates. The captain apologized and said he didn’t want her to think ill of all Germans. He asked if there was anything he could do to make up for the injustice. Odette didn’t have anything on the tip of her tongue but mentioned Peter and the captain said he’d let Peter know that she was okay.
He added that he’d find a way to rectify the harm, a parcel perhaps. Just then he noticed the wounds on her feet and his countenance faded. “I am, of course, responsible for the actions of my prison subordinates. I am not responsible for . . . for what may happen outside the walls of the prison.”
That night one of the guards delivered a small parcel. It contained twenty-three ginger biscuits—a king’s ransom in the court of Fresnes. Even though Odette had been on starvation rations for three months, she removed only a few and closed the box.
The captain also sent something else: a protector. Trude was a forty-year-old SS guard—perhaps the most feared in Fresnes—who would call on Odette once a week and look after her. She was educated, Odette learned, and was impressed by the Churchill name. Trude immediately admired Odette and assumed the role of a servant, delivering the bulk of the ginger biscuits to Peter that evening.
Shortly thereafter, notwithstanding the Gestapo prohibition, the captain had Trude deliver books and more parcels to her.
At the end of the month Odette was again summoned to Avenue Foch. She was taken to the top floor and a well-dressed agent in his early forties offered her tea and began asking questions about a Miss Herbert and Madame Lechene. Odette said nothing and he left.
A few minutes later he returned with two men: the first was short and fit, with sandy hair and a limp. He was the man she knew as Emile, organizer of the CHANCELLOR circuit, which had been operating in Cannes. He was smoking and had some papers under his arm and Odette got the impression he worked there. The second man was a husky, highly decorated officer who resembled Hermann Goering.
Odette pretended not to notice Emile but it was shocking; she had not known that he had been arrested. The Germans asked if she knew him and she said she did not.
That was strange, they said, since he had returned in the same felucca.
“Yes, we have met before,” Emile said. “I have been working with Raoul in Cannes. I came back a few months ago, and there you are, I am here!”
Emile told her not to worry and that the war would be over soon.
Odette processed. Emile was acting under duress.
“You must understand,” she said to the Germans, “that I did not recognize this man because I met him only for a few minutes at two o’clock in the morning, and I was getting out of the felucca and I did not worry about the people getting in.”
The Germans accepted it as a reasonable answer and Emile looked at her again.
“What about Fresnes, can you take it?”
“It is all right, I can take it.”
Emile left and the Germans continued to probe, asking her what she knew about him.
Nothing, Odette replied. Peter had told her nothing of what he had done before, and she didn’t ask.
Since Odette was French, the well-dressed German said, she in all probability had persuaded Peter to come to France. It didn’t really matter.
They’d both be dead very shortly, he said.
CHAPTER 14
VIENNESE WALTZES
The German corrected himself. Peter had a chance of survival, but she did not.
She would be killed without question.
Odette asked why Peter had a chance and the man said that they were working on an exchange. Since he was an English officer and a Churchill, it might go through.
“Can you tell me anyt
hing about this exchange,” Odette asked, “and for whom you are asking?”
“Hess.”
* * *
ON AUGUST 19 HENRI visited Odette again. Like a nervous teen trying to ask the prettiest girl to prom, he fidgeted and mumbled.
“I went to a beautiful concert last night and thought of you,” he said. “You would have loved it.” He brought up Mozart and Shakespeare, rambling on as if mustering up courage to pop the question.
Odette didn’t engage. Rebuff by silence.
Henri moved on to the topic of Odette’s children, but still she said nothing. He was visibly anxious about something, almost distraught, and finally came out with it: “I would be very distressed, Lise, if you were to be sent to Germany.”
Odette asked if that had been scheduled.
“No, no, there is no talk of it—yet. But against the Gestapo, one is helpless.”
He retreated again to music, almost to take his mind off the Gestapo, and at length compared Haydn and Bach. Odette didn’t engage, and after a few minutes, Henri circled back.
“Lise, I would very much like you to leave this prison with me—if only for a day. I have much to say to you, and it is impossible to speak inside these walls. I would take you out in the morning and give you lunch and that sort of thing.”
Odette considered the proposal. Fresh air and real food—how desperately her body needed both. But it wasn’t just about her.
A cardinal in danger sounds a distress call knowing that other birds will respond as cavalry. In unrelenting waves they will attack and harass the predator—cat, snake, or otherwise—risking their own lives. Though of different species they will share the terror.
The freedom Henri offered was enticing—lunch almost irresistible—but it would be unfair; no other women received these benefits, and she would not be singled out. No, she would suffer with her mates, even if it killed her.
Beyond that, accepting any favors from Henri posed a greater danger. If she accepted one—a lunch, extra food, even a shower—what would be next? Dinner and a movie? It would be a slippery slope and Odette feared that she would be unable to refuse later favors if she accepted the first one. And even if she could draw the line—accept this favor, reject that one—she sensed that Henri was making a romantic advance. She recalled that Henri had tried to convince her at their first meeting that she didn’t really love Peter. Was Henri’s luncheon a second attempt to woo her? Heaven forbid, he might even try to kiss her!
