by Larry Loftis
That night a sign was placed on her door.
A red cross.
* * *
30. A thin mattress filled with sawdust or straw.
CHAPTER 15
ALL MY LOVE
As Christmas neared the Red Cross brought parcels—including miniature Christmas trees—for prisoners in solitary confinement, and families and friends brought parcels for those who were not. Odette was a beneficiary of the generosity, receiving from others small items such as pots of jam. Peter, in turn, received a parcel from the Fols, which also contained a small tree. He set it below his crucifix and beside a poem that the Catholic Society had sent.
Christmas and sanctification all in one.
Meanwhile in the sewing room, Odette was busy. She crafted a small crib—complete with baby Jesus—to set beside the small tree someone had brought, and made two rag dolls for Father Paul’s niece and nephew.
On Christmas Day, someone in the cell block began singing “Il est né, le divin Enfant”—“He was born, the Divine Child.” As the words echoed down the hall, Odette fought back tears. She had sung this very carol to her girls many a Christmas night.
Joyeux Noël, Marianne. Joyeux Noël, Lily. Joyeux Noël, Francoise.
January 1944
THE NEW YEAR ROLLED in and little changed for team SPINDLE. Peter and Odette had minimal contact with the outside world and knew little about the status of the war. For them, each day brought the same sensations: hunger and thoughts of each other.
The Allies, in fact, were inching toward victory, one fallen soldier at a time. On the fourth the Red Army crossed the prewar Polish border, and later in the month the Americans would land at Anzio.
On January 14 Peter’s door opened and there stood Trude—a collaborator’s grin and something in her hands. Odette had not forgotten: it was Peter’s birthday. He took the gift and beamed; it was a handkerchief that she had embroidered in the sewing room.
To Peter, with all my love.
Odette
14 Jan 1944
For two people in solitary confinement, Trude’s messenger service was a gift all its own. Still, Peter and Odette longed to see each other. About three weeks later it appeared they might get the chance. Odette heard that she and a number of other prisoners were to be taken to rue de Saussaies, Gestapo headquarters, for fingerprinting. She called for the captain of the guard and asked if Peter also would be fingerprinted. He would, the captain said, but Peter was not on the list for tomorrow.
Since it shouldn’t matter to the Germans in what order the prints were collected, Odette asked if she and Peter could go on the same day.
The captain looked at her. “Frau Churchill, is it your wish that I should be dismissed from my post?”
“Far from it, Monsieur. It is unlikely that your successor could be as just and as understanding as you are.”
He grinned. “Eventually you will get me hanged, Frau Churchill. I will see what I can do—but it means approaching the Commandant.”
* * *
THE FINGERPRINT LINE WAS a herded mass, but Peter spotted Odette and came alongside. No talking was allowed and a guard stood only feet away, facing him. Odette whispered something and a redhead nonchalantly slipped between Peter and the guard so the German couldn’t see Peter’s lips moving, but facing the soldier to give the couple privacy.
Peter asked who she was and Odette said under her breath, “Diana Rowden. One of us.”31
Peter nodded and guards ushered the group up a flight of stairs to a landing where they waited for an hour. Odette explained how the captain allowed them to be fingerprinted together, and how Trude was so kind to deliver their messages and food. Odette mentioned the sewing room, and how she agreed to go there so long as she did no work for the Germans. She ended up doing some work, though—in a way. The room was working on the new Afrika Korps caps, she said, and she decided to help; on each piece of cardboard used for the peaks she wrote: “Made in England.”
Peter smiled. This was the Odette who had confronted a German general on the train to Arles and forced him to fork over the Winter Relief tax. This was the gal who had persuaded three German officers to move a piano upstairs so the SPINDLE team could enjoy Christmas Eve in proper fashion. But it wasn’t just pranks. Odette’s morale was sky-high, he had noticed, and through her optimistic personality she had transferred a sense of joy to other prisoners and even guards. Peter realized now what Paul Steinert had meant by the regard in which Odette was held.
Odette asked Peter if he had been ill-treated during interrogations and he said he had not, although he had been called to Avenue Foch only twice. He asked if she had been mistreated.
“Never. But they’ve had me up fourteen times. They seem to think I know more than I do.”
Peter asked why and Odette explained what the Commissar had said about him at her first interrogation—that he was a doorknob. She was just about to set him straight, she said, when it dawned on her that it was the dream defense.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, if I grudgingly admitted that you were a numb-skull I could make out that I was the grey eminence behind our movement.”
Peter winced. “Oh God! You did that! No wonder they left me alone. Oh, Odette, you sweet, crazy fathead!”
Odette’s bravery was highly dangerous, he knew, if not suicidal. What would the Gestapo do to her? Fourteen interrogations and they had not tortured her? One more visit, perhaps, and then the chopper?
She also told Peter how they could communicate in the future. She had been saving gifts of jam and she would have Trude deliver one to him every two weeks. Inside the cardboard top of the cover, she said, he would find her note written on cigarette paper. He would reply with a message coded in a book he would have Trude deliver. Starting on page fifty, she instructed, he would form words by placing a pinprick below each letter he wanted.
Peter was impressed; even the slide rules in Codes could not have come up with a better scheme. Faithful Trude began the courier service, and the SPINDLE team was back in business.
* * *
THE LOVE LETTERS, GIFTS, and meetings would end all too soon, however. On February 13 a guard told Peter to pack his things; he was off to Germany, the man said. Peter separated his items into two bags, one of which he packed for Odette. He gave the man cigarettes and asked him kindly to make the delivery.
As guards were inspecting Peter’s bag downstairs, Trude came by and asked where he was going. Germany, he told her.
Trude gasped. “Frau Churchill won’t like this thought. Am I to tell her this news?”
Yes, Peter said, and if Trude would please make sure the box he had just given to the guard was delivered to her.
Trude was on her way.
Peter signed for a small, mysterious parcel at the checkout desk and was whisked off to Gestapo headquarters downtown. While he waited in a detention room, he opened it. He couldn’t believe his eyes. It was his wallet—the one Odette had hidden in the car when they were arrested some ten months ago.
He checked the compartments. Money? Gone. Arnaud’s messages? Gone. He opened the flap to the special compartment. Yes! The small photos of his mother and Odette were still there. He kissed his mother and returned her to the wallet. As he looked at Odette, he wondered what the future held for her, for them.
The door opened and in traipsed the chief of the Paris Gestapo.
“I’ve got some good news for you,” he said in German. “You are being sent back to England.”
Peter said nothing.
“It’s true, nach Hause.” Home.
Peter smirked. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“Not at all. You and a British major are being exchanged for a German lieutenant now in British hands. We are offering two of you to get him back. Your colleague is already in Berlin where you will also be held until you go home via Switzerland or Sweden. Would you like your wife to travel with you?”
Surely it was a trap but Peter played along. “What do you think?�
��
The chief said he’d call Fresnes and make the arrangements.
When he had gone someone brought in a hot plate of meatballs, potatoes, and cabbage.
Peter looked at the food. Could it be true? He had been down this trail before. He sniffed at the scent, his mind pawing the possibility. If it was a hoax, why the hospitality? And would a man of this importance have time or inclination to conjure up such an elaborate scheme, complete with the underhanded enticement of someone’s wife?
His spirits soared as he envisioned standing with Odette at the rail of a Swedish liner, the Aurora Borealis blessing their love.
Around eight o’clock guards escorted him to the second floor, where the chief was again waiting. Peter inquired about Odette.
Oh, right, the German said. Berlin reported that she would not be going after all. Sorry.
Peter stared at him. Bastard.
* * *
THE RIDE WAS SURPRISINGLY comfortable. There had been other passengers in the second-class compartment, but one of the Gestapo escorts flashed his identification and the squatters vanished. The secret policemen, it turned out, were quite friendly. One was an older gentleman—beyond the age for military service—and the other was a young man who was in the occupation reserve.
When dawn came they were well into Germany and Peter saw the handiwork of Allied bombers on factories, houses, and military yards. The RAF also seemed to have nailed a number of railways as they had to change trains twice before reaching Berlin’s Anhalter Station.
It was eleven o’clock when the Gestapo car rolled into headquarters at the Albrechtstrasse, but even at night Peter could see the damage.
The agents checked Peter in, and the young one went home. The older man escorted him down a long corridor and then through a pair of massive oak doors. Before them was a panel of uniformed officers.
“Erik Hoffmeyer reporting with his prisoner from Paris.”
The senior officer gave Hoffmeyer his leave and asked Peter to be seated.
Peter drank in the inner sanctum: six officers sipping tea, a raised dais with a battery of telephones, a radio set, a young girl taking shorthand, a large framed picture of the lord of the Gestapo, Heinrich Himmler, overseeing all.
It had all the trappings of a trial.
But not at half past eleven. So why the pomp? The setting was more formal than his Foch tribunals, but there was no way that official Gestapo business would be conducted at midnight. No, the routine was universal: mornings were for interrogations and trials; afternoons were for executions and tortures, and, after a full hard day, evenings were for drinking and dancing and putting the children down.
So what was this?
A major stood and picked up one of the phones. “Is that the chief receptionist of the Ritz?” A pause. “I want you to prepare your very best room with a private bath, of course, for a most important new guest.”
Peter’s pulse quickened. Could it be true? Perhaps there was a glimmer of hope.
The major set down the phone and burst into laughter. With a sneer, he instructed the guards to make a thorough search of Peter’s belongings.
Ah, yes. Not every day you get to have a little fun with Winston Churchill’s nephew.
Peter followed the guards out, then the familiar tramp along the cell block—Yes, I have read the bloody regulations—and the metallic clang of the lock.
No toilet, smaller than his cell at Fresnes, lovely rubber floor. The bed seemed nice—actual sheets and blankets—and a solid wood table and chair. There was also a high window with blackout cardboard over it. And the place was spotless.
The Ritz, indeed.
As he settled in, Peter noticed something else: on the back of his door were scratches. He examined them closely. How? He surveyed the room again. The window with the cardboard—the glass was missing. And the furniture was new; maybe the floor, too.
He had it now. Bomb blast.
His predecessor had been thrown by an explosion—a tossed salad of prisoner, glass, table, and chair—against the door. They had cleaned up the blood nicely.
Peter took it in stride.
He was a target.
Fresnes Prison
ODETTE WAS MAKING HER way to the sewing room when Trude motioned to her with a conspiratorial wave. They went into an open cell and Trude said, “Frau Churchill, I have something to tell you concerning your husband.”
Odette sat to brace herself, nerves twitching. “Tell me.”
“He has been taken away yesterday.”
Taken away. Euphemism for horizontal exit. “Has he been shot? I want to know. I am strong enough to know the truth.”
“No. He has been taken to Berlin, to Gestapo headquarters in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse, for interrogation.”
Prinz Albrechtstrasse. It made 84 Avenue Foch look like Scarborough Fair. Everyone knew about their dungeons and tortures and confession killings. Dribble out the last betrayal and then the bucket to wash out the blood.
Odette absorbed it with composure. Today Peter was alive. Tomorrow he would be alive. And after the war, she told herself, he would be alive.
Berlin
PETER ADJUSTED TO LIFE in the Albrechtstrasse—no talking, no parcels, no visitors, no exercise. Nothing to read. Just silence. Deafening silence.
His was an open-air coffin in the Gestapo cemetery. Here lies British saboteur Peter Churchill, nephew of Winston Churchill. Exterminated February 1944.
Strangely, though, he had yet to be called for questioning. No beatings or tortures. Prospects of an exchange lingered, teasing him each dawn as guards jingled keys and whistled through the halls. He was certain the Gestapo believed that he was Churchill’s nephew, and in their minds the leverage was substantial. A trade for Hess seemed unlikely, but MI5 no doubt held any number of captured German spies, all of whom had appointments with the Tower of London.
He envisioned a Berlin cable being delivered to the German ambassador in Stockholm, the ambassador’s visit with the British minister, and the ensuing call to the Security Service.
Who? Wait . . . Yes, we have him. Standartenführer Hans Wolfgang. Guilty of espionage, condemned to death . . . An exchange? We’ve had those proposals before. Sorry, old boy. ’Fraid the two chaps in Germany will have to take pot luck.
Once again, he would have to sweat it out. But this time, no dueling pianos, no love letters, no refreshment from Father Paul.
* * *
THE INACTIVITY AT THE Albrechtstrasse had a simple explanation: the Germans had their hands full with the onslaught of Allied bombers and fighters attacking their homeland. In January the Luftwaffe had lost 292 pilots—12 percent of its force—and February would be worse. With incredibly bad luck, Peter had arrived in Berlin just in time for a bull’s-eye view of Big Week—one of the largest air offensives in history. Code-named Operation Argument, the raid was a six-day-and-night coordinated attack by RAF Bomber Command and the US Strategic Air Forces in Europe. Commencing February 20, more than 3,800 American and 2,351 British bombers dropped nearly twenty thousand tons of incendiaries on German fighter plane and other military factories in Berlin, Hamburg, and elsewhere.
The principal objective was to cripple German fighter production; the secondary aim was to thin the ranks of Luftwaffe fighter pilots. Both goals were achieved: the Luftwaffe lost 34 percent of its fighter aircraft in one week, and would lose 18 percent of its pilots during the month. After six days of pounding, the German air force was incapable of defending much of its airspace, which provided the Allies the tertiary goal: unchallenged attacks on Berlin.
From his cell Peter heard and relished the daily bombings. Payback for the Battle of Britain. But what he witnessed all week were attacks on targeted factories. Now, with a limping Luftwaffe, the Allies could hammer Nazi administration centers like the Reich Chancellery.
And the Albrechtstrasse.
The night of February 27, all hell rained down. For more than an hour Peter felt the concussions of incendiaries se
tting the city ablaze. It was Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries—antiaircraft batteries chasing bombers, bombers chasing targets, bombs chasing buildings, firemen chasing fires.
Bombs began exploding around the prison, tearing loose stone and plaster. The guards pretended not to notice—stiff upper lip and all that—but prayed as they paced.
“Let them all come,” Peter said to himself, “and if some happen to drop on the prison, all the better. If the lights must go out for good I should never blame a British pilot. This is as good a way of going as any.”
Call the Valkyries to carry him to Valhalla.
At that moment, high above the Albrechtstrasse, an Allied pilot dropped his load.
* * *
31. Rowden, an F Section courier for the ACROBAT and STOCKBROKER circuits, had been arrested at Lons-le-Saunier only days earlier.
CHAPTER 16
LILY OF THE VALLEY
At midnight came the air-raid siren’s song;
I thought of you in silence and for long—
how you are faring, how our lives once were,
and how I wish you home this coming year.
We wait till half past one, and hear at last
the signal that the danger now is past;
so danger—if the omen does not lie—
of every kind shall gently pass you by.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Sirens wailed as shells pounded the prison.
Perfect, Peter thought. Surely some of these RAF offerings would be destroying prisoner files and the Gestapo would have a house full of strangers. As concussion after concussion rocked the Albrechtstrasse, guards began unlocking cells, keeping only the bolt. Peter jumped as a massive explosion came from the yard—every prisoner in the underground cells killed instantly.
The bombing finally stopped and a guard opened Peter’s door and peered in.
“How goes it?”
“First class,” Peter said.
