Madeleine's War

by Peter Watson

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her exact fate—where her body is buried. And the others, of course.”

  “But how can we do that? If she’s been taken east…?”

  “I’m not totally sure, but I can think of somewhere to start. We need a list of all the Germans working in Avenue Foch. Then we compare that with the lists that the Allied forward forces circulate of all officers captured, together with details of where they are being held. If we find names that match, we track them down and interrogate them.”

  Justine looked at me doubtfully.

  “Yes, you’re right to look skeptical—needles and haystacks come to mind. But it’s the best I can do at this stage. I do have credentials granting me universal access anywhere.” I explained about my Churchill letters.

  “I wasn’t looking skeptical,” she said softly, when I had finished. “I was thinking. Hmm. Throughout the war, the communists have kept lists too—lists of Resistance people, of Germans in any particular area, and lists of collaborators, so that, when the war is finally over, we know who the criminals really were, on both sides. Our comrades will be keeping up that practice in the east of the country, near the German border. So…if any of the Avenue Foch people did move on to the east, and then stayed for a while, we’ll have records. I may be able to help—that’s what I was thinking.”

  “That gives us two bites at the haystack. We could make a start tomorrow, if that’s all right with you?”

  “Of course, of course.” She turned her head. “The music has changed again. Would you like to dance to this?”

  “No, no. It’s good of you to try to cheer me up, Justine, but dancing is beyond me at the moment.” I raised my glass. “Instead, a toast.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Yes.” I swallowed some whisky. “Let’s hope first, that, for France’s sake, the communists and de Gaulle kiss and make up.” I paused when, again, she looked doubtful. “And second, that I find at least one of my female agents alive.”

  · 20 ·

  “SIR, THERE’S SOMEONE TO SEE YOU.” Roland put his head round the door. He was in khaki shirtsleeves with braided braces, almost white. His tie was tucked into his shirt. His moustache was as pert as ever. He looked both relaxed and tidy. I envied him; I couldn’t relax.

  “Who is it?”

  Roland looked at the card in his hand. “A Colonel Antoine Picard.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He said to say that it was to do with your meeting with Claudine Petit.”

  I looked up sharply, but didn’t immediately say anything. Nobody other than Roland, Justine, and myself was supposed to know about that.

  “Tell him I’ll be with him as soon as I can.”

  The École Lavoisier had been a small private primary school before the war; so it was a large house rather than a specially designed building like the larger lycées. The ground floor was given over to a reception area and a cafeteria and library, but the real work was done on the first floor where Roland, two secretaries, and two transmission officers worked. They occupied a large room with a bay window, and I had my office directly off that, at the rear. There still was a faint smell of chalk dust everywhere.

  I had one thing to do before I could see this Picard man, and I had to do it myself.

  I hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on my door, banged it shut, so that everyone knew it was closed, and took out from the locked drawer in my desk the master list of agents that Tina Ridley and I had compiled on D-Day, setting out agents’ code names alphabetically. If there was a double agent in France, then obviously I couldn’t trust anyone, not even the SC2 staff.

  I ran my finger down the list of code names.

  No one was called Mole, or Taupe.

  That settled that.

  There was a double agent in SC2.

  God forbid that MI6 should ever find out.

  I put the list away, took the sign off my door, and shouted, to no one in particular, “Ask Colonel Picard to come up.”

  I was just putting my jacket on a coat hanger when he arrived.

  He was a good-looking man, with a strong head and bushy hair, but he was inclining slightly to fat and his lips were fleshy.

  “Colonel Hammond?” He had a warm voice and said my name in a self-confident, warm way, announcing in those two simple words that he spoke excellent English.

  “Please sit down,” I said, as soon as we had shaken hands. “Voulez-vous un café?”

  “Bien sûr. Merci.”

  “Roland!” I shouted. “Have two coffees brought in, please.”

  “Co-ming up!” Roland answered in a sing-song voice.

  I looked at Picard’s card, which Roland had left on my desk. I held the card up. “This just says your name and rank. May I know more?” I spoke in French.

  He answered in perfect English, and with a smile. “Yes, of course. I am second secretary to General Charles de Gaulle.”

  In the act of sitting down, I collapsed into my seat.

  “And this is a…courtesy visit?”

  He smiled again. “You can call it that if you like.”

  “What I mean is, I’m surprised you are here, in the offices of SC2. I thought the general doesn’t approve of us. Have you come to try to send us away?”

  Another smile. “No, not at all. Yes, it was true that—at one stage—the general was less than happy that SC2 was expanding its presence on French soil, rather than reducing it after the invasion, but we are on to a new phase of the war now, and I am here to help you.”

  “Oh yes? How?”

  He took out an expensive-looking silver cigarette case and held it open for me to help myself. “You visited Claudine Petit in La Santé prison.”

  I looked up, automatically checking that my office door was closed.

  I leaned forward and took a cigarette.

  “How did you know about that? The meeting was supposed to be secret.”

  He tapped his cigarette on the lid of his case.

  “You went with Justine Coudehard.”

  “Yes.” No point in denying what was true. I lit a match and leaned forward, to light his cigarette.

  “Coudehard is a communist.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m not a communist but…Well, she is being very useful.”

  He smoked his cigarette. “You are an experienced man, Colonel, so you will know that, in France—ah!”

  He sat back as Colette, one of the secretaries, came in with the coffees.

  She served them and went back out again, closing the door behind her.

  We sipped our coffees, miming toasts to each other.

  “You were saying…”

  He nodded, placing his cigarette in the ashtray on the desk. “As an experienced officer, you will know that the Resistance in France has always been divided into factions, and that the two largest and most powerful factions have been the communists and the Gaullists. So far, you have liaised on this project only with the communists.”

  “Yes, I did know there were—are—two factions, as you put it. But with General de Gaulle being…being so anti-SC2, I didn’t think it worth approaching his people—your people.”

  He eyed me. “In this case, as it happens, we can be very helpful, and our interests coincide.” He swallowed some coffee, put the cup back in the saucer, and pushed both of them to one side. He picked up his cigarette again.

  “Let me explain. We know about your visit to Claudine Petit because we, the Gaullists, have our people inside the prison, inside the prison administration, of course. The communists are not the only ones with access.

  “We know not only that you met Claudine Petit but why you met her and…and we also know what she told you.”

  He glanced out of the window briefly.

  “You are looking for your agents—in particular your women agents—who passed through Avenue Foch, and you want to track them down, and find out their fates, dead or alive.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And Madame Petit was abl
e to help us some of the way.”

  He looked at me and tapped ash into the ashtray between us. “The information I have is, strictly speaking, top secret—I will explain why. But can I trust you, Colonel Hammond? Will you keep secret what I am going to say, even from Justine Coudehard? Especially from her?”

  “It is difficult for me to offer any guarantees in advance. But if you are going to give me valuable information, then I can say that I will do my best to honour what you ask of me.”

  He nodded and thought for a moment. “Very well. I accept your answer. It’s not ideal but what is in war?”

  He smiled and leaned forward.

  “We, the Gaullists, had someone in Avenue Foch. The communists do not know this—we never told them.”

  Where was this going?

  He sat back again. “Let me explain. The weak aspect of Avenue Foch—from the Germans’ point of view, I mean—was the food. They knew—and accepted—that French food was, is, better, much, much better than German food. They were in Paris, the culinary capital of the world, and they were in a privileged part of the army; they saw no reason why they should stint themselves.”

  I admired the fact that he could use an English word like “stint.” What was the French for “stint”? I didn’t know. Was there one? French has far fewer words than English.

  “The Gestapo chose as their chef a well-known Frenchman, Gaston LeFèvre, from Lyon—where else? And Gaston, on our instructions, chose as his pastry chef a certain Monique Brèger. When I say ‘our’ instructions, I mean the Gaullist Resistance movement—again, we never told the communists.

  “Now I get to the really secret part. Monique was exceptionally beautiful. She was sent into Avenue Foch with explicit instructions—explicit but obviously top secret—to try to sleep with a senior member of the Gestapo and in that way maybe find out whatever secrets they had—in particular what they knew about the Resistance. It was not—how shall I say?—a very savoury assignment, to use a culinary term. But you can see why…why we sanctioned it. It took a while—she was recruited to Avenue Foch in 1941 but she didn’t get into Ulrich Kolbe’s bed until 1943.”

  “Ulrich Kolbe! That’s impressive.”

  He nodded. “And I haven’t finished.”

  “Kolbe really fell for Monique—I’m not exaggerating. He took her on holidays when he had leave, to Switzerland, the south of France, the Atlantic coast.”

  “And did she…did she do as she was instructed? Or did they turn her?”

  “Good question—I can see you are an experienced officer. But no. She performed superbly. She found out a great deal about Gestapo plans, what they knew about the Resistance, your agents in SC2, MI6, morale in the United States. Monique was, in fact, pure gold. And she was wily. Every so often, she didn’t tell us about some particular plan, where she could have prevented something or other. So Kolbe and his colleagues never suspected they had a mole. Or perhaps a snake would be a better word.”

  “And are you going to let me meet her? Does she have information that we would find useful? Is that why you’re here?”

  He nodded. “But I haven’t quite got to the end of the story yet. You’ll see.

  “During the occupation, everyone had to collaborate with the Germans to some extent. That’s how it worked—the Nazis had the power and enjoyed using it. If a baker was told to improve his bread, there was no argument. If a prostitute was told she was charging too much, she had to lower her prices. But there was a limit and everyone knew it. Some people, however—some of my countrymen and -women, I am sorry to say—went further, much further than the minimum, and openly embraced collaboration. ‘Collabo,’ it’s called, as you may know. They derived power from it, made money from it, ate better, dressed better, travelled more than others. In Monique’s case, of course, it was her duty to do all this. She was where she was to provide information and, in quite a few cases, she saved lives. We have it all documented and, when the war is over, and the chaos is ended and the time comes, we shall publish a full account.”

  He wiped his face with his well-manicured hand.

  “But of course, to be a secret, her role could not be known outside the circle of a very few people. Everyone else thought she was a collaborator—that was the point.”

  He shook his head.

  “In early August, when it became clear after the invasion that the Gestapo would have to leave Paris, Kolbe told Monique that their affair was over, he was being withdrawn to Germany and…Well, she had to seek other employment. We had always anticipated this, of course—it was the good news we were all waiting for.”

  He shifted in his seat.

  “What we didn’t anticipate, what we had never expected, was the speed with which the épuration took place.”

  I nodded. “Épuration sauvage. I suppose that would be ‘wild purification’ in English, or something like that.”

  “ ‘Wild’ is right. The women especially, and the women of Paris in particular, took it into their heads to ‘cleanse’ any female who had slept, or was believed to have slept, with a Nazi. Collaboration horizontale it was called—it’s still called that, in fact. Dozens of women, hundreds perhaps, have been attacked in the past weeks.

  “Perhaps you know this, perhaps you don’t. Usually, a group of women will single out a collaborator, or someone rumoured to be a collaborator, surround her, overwhelm her, pin her down—and then shave her head. This is intended as a humiliation and it is certainly felt as such by those it has been done to. They are shunned, shops refuse to serve them, children shout at them in the street, or spit at them, no one will sit next to them on the Métro—if they have the guts to go on the Métro.”

  “Claudine Petit was worried it might happen to her.”

  He nodded. “And with good reason. It happened to Monique—”

  “Oh no!”

  “Yes. Only…that’s what I wanted to tell you: it didn’t stop at head shaving.”

  I looked at him.

  “I don’t know what it was with Monique. Maybe it was because the Gestapo were especially vilified, maybe it was because she had all those high-profile holidays with Kolbe, maybe it was because Kolbe himself was hated so much, or maybe it was because she was so beautiful.”

  He squashed out his second cigarette.

  “She had acid thrown in her face—”

  “What?”

  He pressed his lips together.

  “Yes. She is disfigured—and blind in one eye. You can imagine what it has done to her psychology, her social self-confidence.”

  A long silence passed.

  Eventually, I said, “You’re here. You must think she has information to give us. Has she agreed to see me?”

  He nodded. “The attack has made her unwilling to go out on the street, and she can’t have a normal social life. But it has only made her more determined to go on doing her duty where she can. When the story comes out, she will not be an outcast, but a heroine. If she can help you, as well as us, so much the better.”

  “Why haven’t you published her story already?”

  “Because of the war, what else? Other women have been attacked. Stopping the épuration itself takes priority for the moment. But we’ll get there.”

  He crossed his legs and sat back. “There’s one other thing. Monique is living in a safe house, an address no one knows. I will tell you, but no one else must know. Not your people here, and certainly not Justine and the communists. They don’t know what the real situation is, and they must not know. If they found out they would make political capital out of it. She couldn’t bear that.”

  “I understand.”

  He slid his cigarette case back in his pocket. “So you must go to see Monique alone, without Justine—I insist. Your French is quite good enough; you’ve a bit of an accent, but otherwise you sound bilingual to me.”

  “Thank you. And no, I won’t take Justine and I won’t let anyone follow me.”

  “Good. All I ask is that, if anything comes of the i
nformation she gives you, please tell us and we will publish it when the time comes. It will also help Monique’s reputation, that she helped you British as well as the Resistance.” He eyed me. “Do we have a deal?”

  I nodded. “Of course. I’m grateful you came to see me and if I can ever return the favour, I’ll do my best.”

  He ran his tongue around his lips. “I think the general was a bit too sensitive about SC2. But he knows how badly damaged France has been by collaboration. It’s important to him—to us—that we play a big part in our own liberation. Vichy will stay with us as a stain for a while. De Gaulle—whatever you think of him—is our best hope of overcoming that.”

  I moved my head in a non-committal way. This wasn’t my fight.

  I stood up and so did he.

  We shook hands. “I hope we shall meet again,” I said, and he smiled.

  I opened the door for him to leave.

  Standing right outside the door was Justine.

  · 21 ·

  THE RUE MORAND WAS CERTAINLY QUIET. Just behind the Gare de l’Est, near the Canal Saint-Martin, it was a narrow thoroughfare of workshops, garages, one or two studios, and—I noticed—a wholesale fur warehouse. Dogs and cats lurked in the rubble, some of which, it seemed to me, predated the war. It was not a part of Paris you would visit by choice. Antoine Picard’s people had selected this location well, although I doubted whether Monique Brèger agreed.

  Even so, I had arrived via three changes of train on the Métro, just to make sure no one was following me. With Justine’s interest in Antoine Picard I was taking no chances.

  I was as certain as I could be that I had not been followed. The only person who got off with me at the Riquet Métro station was an old woman who had been already in the carriage when I boarded at Port de la Villette.

  The number that I wanted was 46 rue Morand. I found the even numbers and crossed the street, to the side with the odd numbers. Not every garage or warehouse displayed its number prominently, but enough did for me to register my progress. Number 46, I judged, would be more or less opposite numbers 43 to 49, and so it proved. I kept walking but noted that 46 was a tyre warehouse with three or four floors above it.