Madeleine's War

by Peter Watson

  I walked on and went round the block, where I saw a café. I stopped for a coffee, to give myself a further chance to spot if anyone was behind. The only person in sight was loading bicycles on to a van.

  I approached number 46 at a good pace, stopped suddenly, pressed the bell, and looked about me.

  There was no one near. No one else had stopped suddenly, and no one was looking my way.

  I waited, I heard footsteps, and then the door opened slightly.

  “Madame Brèger?” I whispered slightly. “You are expecting me. Colonel Picard sent me. My name is Juno.”

  It was the name Picard and I had settled on during a brief telephone conversation when he had confirmed the date and time of the meeting. Juno was the code name of one of the British beaches at Normandy on D-Day.

  The door opened, but the woman turned before I could say hello or shake her hand, and retreated up some steep stairs.

  At the top of the stairs she led the way into a long room, darkened by heavy lace curtains drawn across the windows. Two lamps with glass shades were twin pools of light throwing deep shadow everywhere else.

  She sat in a low easy chair, just beyond the range of the lights.

  The only other chair was on the far side of a dead fireplace. From there, as I sat down, I could make out her face, but not clearly.

  Her left eye was grey-silver. A crimson patch, like a large leaf, lay over the same side of her face, extending as far down as her jaw. Above her forehead, a patch of hair was missing, presumably where the acid had killed the follicles. Part of her nose was red, her lower lip was distended, and the flesh on her neck under her chin was…It had the texture and consistency of dead leaves.

  Despite all this, I could still see that, once upon a time, she had been very beautiful. The right half of her face proved it.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” I said as softly as I could.

  “I hope I can help you,” she replied.

  Her voice was deeper than I had expected. And it was a self-confident voice. She might have been victimised, that voice said, and she might still be in hiding, for what others might still do to her, if they found her, but she knew what she had achieved, and nothing could take that away from her.

  “Shall we start?” I said.

  “You’re busier than I am; you set the pace. Just one question.”

  “Go on.”

  “Where did you learn your French? It’s very good but you have a slight accent—I can’t place it.”

  I smiled. “I learned my French first in Switzerland, then I spent two years in the early part of the war in and around Lorraine. Can you understand me all right?”

  “Oh yes, it’s not that. Your syntax is near perfect, but your accent is…Well, I haven’t heard that kind of accent before. That’s all. Don’t worry about it.”

  I said nothing for a moment.

  “What shall I call you? Madame Brèger? Monique?”

  “We are on the same side, yes? You are not a communist? Antoine said you were not a communist.”

  “No, I am not.”

  “Then call me Monique. You are…?”

  “Matthew, Matt. Matt Hammond.”

  “Matthew. Mathieu, my father’s name. Ask your questions, Mathieu.”

  I got out a pad and a pen, and my folder.

  “As I expect Colonel Picard told you, I work for SC2. I’m second in command of the French section, which will wind down soon, if the war goes as well as we expect it to. We sent a number of agents into France, as you know, but forty-one are still missing; twenty-seven men and fourteen women. My job is to find out what happened to them, the women in particular. We fear that most of those who are missing have been captured, interrogated, and shipped east by the Germans, where they will have been executed. But we can’t be certain in all cases.”

  I opened my folder.

  “I interviewed a Claudine Petit in La Santé prison. She was a cleaner in the Gestapo headquarters in avenue Foch, and she recognised some of the names, but not all. If I could read out the names of the missing—their proper names and their code names—perhaps you could search your memory and tell me if any of these people did come through Gestapo headquarters in Paris and, if so, if you have any idea of what happened to them.” She nodded. “I can do better than that, Mathieu.” She reached out to the table at her side and picked up a notebook. She held the notebook in front of her, smiling.

  “I kept notes when I could,” she whispered. “I knew it might matter someday. I don’t have to rely on my memory.”

  I nodded, slightly incredulous—but marvelling at her efficiency. “Very well—”

  “Before you go on,” she said, “Did this Claudine Petit explain the difference between Ravensbruck and Pforzheim?”

  I frowned. “No, no—she never mentioned it. I don’t know what you mean. What do you mean?”

  Monique opened the book and leafed through the pages. Not finding what she was looking for, she closed it again.

  “I would say that close to fifty agents came through Avenue Foch over the final few months. The Gestapo, as you must know by now, had penetrated several of your circuits—”

  “Yes, we did find out about that, eventually, a bit late in the day but yes, I know what happened.”

  She nodded.

  “People were kept in Avenue Foch for only a few days and then divided into two groups—”

  “Oh yes?” This was news to me.

  “Agents who the Gestapo thought were more important, or who resisted interrogation in Paris, who had information still in them, so to speak, were sent to Ravensbruck—that’s a camp north of Berlin. There, as I understand it, they underwent more intensive interrogation techniques, more sophisticated torture methods, in fact, before being executed after however long their torture lasted, two or three weeks, or occasionally more, as I overheard it.”

  I was scribbling notes. “And the other group?”

  “The other group consisted of people who, the Gestapo judged, didn’t have any more secrets in them, so there was no point in interrogating them further. They were sent to a camp at Pforzheim—just across the Franco-German border. There, they were executed straightaway. The Gestapo thought it was safer to execute them on German soil—had they done it in Paris, word might have leaked out, the Resistance might have got involved, the graves might have become shrines. It was a straightforward bureaucratic decision.”

  She opened her notebook again.

  “So, let me find the names I recorded and, if I can, I will tell you who was sent where.”

  While she flipped through the pages, I said, “I have proper names and code names. What do you have?”

  She rubbed her blind eye with a finger. “I have some proper names but mostly code names—that’s how they were referred to in Avenue Foch. I think the Gestapo preferred code names because it depersonalised things, and made execution easier—ah! Here we are.”

  She laid the opened notebook on her lap and smoothed down the pages with her fingers.

  Her fingers were as beautiful as the rest of her had once been.

  “I’ll read the proper names first. Just say ‘Ravensbruck,’ ‘Pforzheim,’ or ‘no,’ if you don’t recognise a name or know what his or her fate was. Okay?”

  “Bien sûr.”

  I started with the men’s names this time. Out of twenty-seven, Monique had twenty in her written lists; twelve had been sent to Ravensbruck, eight to Pforzheim. The others she didn’t know about.

  When I switched to code names, the number she had notes about rose to twenty-three, of which fifteen had gone to Ravensbruck and eight to Pforzheim.

  Then I came to the fourteen women.

  I read their proper names in random order.

  Of the first thirteen, she recognized eight, five of whom were sent to Ravensbruck and three to Pforzheim.

  The last name I read out was Madeleine Dirac.

  Monique looked down her records, a finger scoring down the page.

  After a m
oment, she said, “No record.”

  The skin on the back of my neck was damp.

  I now knew the probable fate of eight of the fourteen women, so I just read out the six code names that fitted the women whom she had not recognised, just in case.

  “Marée.” This was Katrine Howard, who had been with Madeleine in Ardlossan, who Madeleine had given the Schiller book to, in the Red Anchor.

  “Ravensbruck.”

  Poor Katrine. I swallowed hard.

  “Rossignol.”

  “Ah yes. Ravensbruck.”

  “Poisson.”

  “Ravensbruck.”

  “Boulanger.”

  Pause. “No record.”

  “Maître.”

  “I didn’t catch that—say it again, please.”

  “Maître.”

  “Yes! Pforzheim.”

  Slight pause.

  “Chêne.”

  “Again?”

  “Chêne.”

  “Hmm.” Her finger slid down the page.

  Turned to the next one.

  And the next one.

  “Ah! Yes. Pforzheim.”

  I wrote down what I was told and then pretended to go on scribbling as I did my best to assimilate the news.

  I was breathless. I wanted to be sick.

  This was terrible, terrible. Madeleine had been captured, just as Claudine Petit had said, but…but she had not resisted interrogation as fiercely as I thought she would, and had been sent to Germany to be executed immediately.

  She wasn’t a German spy—she was dead.

  I tried to swallow, half retched, and felt the burning taste of vomit in my throat.

  She had been dead for weeks.

  I finished my scribbling and closed my book.

  “You have been most helpful, Monique.”

  She grunted. “You don’t look as though you’ve been helped. You look as though you badly need a drink.” She stood up. “I know it’s barely four o’clock in the afternoon, but would you like a drink? A stiff drink, I mean. A proper drink. Have I just confirmed that you have lost some dear colleagues?”

  I put my notes back in my briefcase, nodding.

  “Then let’s drown our sorrows in a Ricard, yes?”

  “I’d prefer a Scotch.”

  “Then Scotch it shall be.”

  She crossed the room to a sideboard with some glass decanters on it. With the disfigured side of her face turned away from me, in profile she looked normal, intact, beautiful.

  She poured herself a Ricard, added water, turning it cloudy white, and emptied a generous helping of Scotch into a tumbler. Then she came directly across to me.

  She was ready for me to see her close up.

  I stood up and took the glass from her.

  We toasted each other.

  “To wartime bravery,” I said. “Colonel Picard has told me what happened. I am very sorry.”

  She shrugged. “You spend years fighting the enemy and then your so-called friends do you the most damage.” She looked up at me. “I was beautiful once.”

  “I can see that,” I said.

  “You were close to these colleagues you lost?”

  “Yes. One in particular.”

  “A lover?”

  I nodded.

  “The one you kept for last, who was sent to Pforzheim?”

  “Yes. Was it obvious?”

  She smiled and gestured to the chair I had been sitting in.

  “Sit down again, please, Mathieu.”

  I did as she asked, and she sat back again in her seat, nursing her Ricard.

  She opened her book, leafed through it, turned the pages until she came to what she was looking for.

  “Here we are.” She sipped her drink, placed the glass on the table next to her chair and looked across to me. “On June 12, the Gestapo in Paris got word that two of the people on their way to Pforzheim, a man and a woman, had escaped.” She held her finger steady on the page. “They were part of a group of five, but I don’t know who it was exactly who escaped. I don’t have their names or their code names. We never found out because the Gestapo had to retreat, like everyone else, and my relationship with Ulrich Kolbe came to an abrupt end. But it could be that…You realize what I am saying?”

  I did indeed, and suddenly the day brightened, even in that darkened room.

  “It’s something,” I said. I gulped my whisky. “A lifeline. Thank you.”

  She nodded and sipped her Ricard again.

  I had got what I had come for, but I couldn’t just leave.

  “One other thing, Monique. While you were with Kolbe, or in Avenue Foch, did you ever hear, or overhear, any references to a double agent, someone who ostensibly worked for SC2 but in fact was a German agent? Did anyone ever mention or refer to a ‘mole’ or a spy?”

  “N-n-no, but…now that you mention it, there must have been one.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

  “Well, I’m guessing, of course. But about a year ago Ulrich suddenly acquired an English cigarette lighter. I noticed it on the dresser in the bedroom we used in his flat. He took it away from me and I never saw it again.”

  “Couldn’t he have bought it on the black market, or stolen it from one of the captured agents?”

  “I don’t think he would have stolen it, even from a captured agent. He was a remarkably upright man in some ways. He was a Nazi, of course, but I don’t think he would have stooped to petty theft. And he wouldn’t have bought it on the black market—he despised that, and, being the Gestapo, he didn’t go short. He didn’t need the black market.”

  She sipped her Ricard again. “For a time I wondered where he got that lighter, and who from, but I didn’t dare ask him, and I must admit I had forgotten it until you mentioned it just now. He was fond of the lighter—at least he was till I noticed it was English, when he removed it—because, I think, it represented a big secret in the war. I’m piecing this together—since you asked your question about a double agent. It’s the best I can do.”

  I nodded, writing down what she was saying.

  That took a while. I tried my whisky, then I said softly, “And what was it like? Being with Kolbe, I mean. Leading a double life of such…intimacy? Was he good to you, gentle, generous, considerate? Did he have a family? All wartime experiences are unusual, but yours…yours was unique.”

  She sat back in her chair and again put her glass on the table next to it.

  “That will be a big question for me, after the war. Before the war, before the Nazis came, the Germans were the most civilized people on the planet—the best culture, the best science, some of the best theologians even. Ulrich—I still think of him as Ulrich—was part of that civilization. He kept his brutality quite separate, he never brought it into the bedroom. He was never rough with me, he loved the fact that I was a pastry chef, and took a great deal of interest in my work. He had a wife and two sons back in Germany. He liked me well enough, but he missed his family.”

  “Did he never suspect you?”

  “If he did, he never made anything of it. I…I shouldn’t say this, perhaps, but…Well, I am very skilled at making love. He had power and he enjoyed spoiling me, because he could. And he made it easy for me. Sometimes I feel that those women who did this to my face”—and she pointed to the crimson mark on her cheek—“had a case. I did live well.”

  “But you—”

  “Yes, I did. I took risks, I got information, information that saved lives…but in order to stay where I was I had to let some intelligence go by without any action on my part. If I had leaked everything I would have given myself away. So it cut both ways. I saved lives, I let some people die. It couldn’t be helped.”

  She picked up her glass and drained it.

  She pointed to her face again. “I have this but I am alive. Can you say that about your dear friend?”

  —

  LATER THAT NIGHT I LAY IN BED in the Hotel Séranon, accompanied by what I had left of the whisky I
had brought from London, three of that day’s newspapers, and the map of Europe I had also brought with me.

  I was aware that I had, so far, done precious little about locating François Perrault, and would have to act soon, but that night the accounts in the newspapers were especially vivid about the pace of the war. The maps printed in the papers showed that our forces had taken Châtel and Lunéville, near Nancy, and that fierce fighting had broken out at Nijmegen. So some of our troops were quite a way east. At the same time, the Germans in Calais were still holding out, as they were at Brest. Most of northern France, Belgium, and parts of southern Holland were in our hands, but there were those worrying outposts.

  Looking at the map, I could see that Lunéville—our forward-most point—was just under a hundred miles from Pforzheim, a few miles into Germany. At the moment, our forces were making headway at anything from seven to twelve miles a day, so even on the most favourable scenario we were more than a week away from reaching Pforzheim and that was—

  Suddenly, from down below, came the sound of a door being opened quickly, and banging against the wall of the hall. Voices could be heard immediately, laughing, accompanied by the sound of more banging. I looked at my watch: 1:35 a.m.

  Then I heard footsteps on the stairs, and more voices. Laughter, drunken laughter from the noise level.

  I knew what was happening. This was the third night in a row of these late-night noises. An American jazz band, touring with the U.S. troops, had been billeted in the hotel and they liked to party when they weren’t playing—staying out late, drinking, and joining in late-night jam sessions, in whatever club they found themselves.

  The Hotel Séranon, once a quiet haven, was one no longer.

  I tried to concentrate on my map.

  If Madeleine had been the woman who escaped on her way to Pforzheim, she could, of course, be anywhere now. And there was no guarantee that, if and when the Allies reached there, and I was allowed into the prison, its records would tell me who had (and therefore who had not) been executed. At the same time, it was the best chance I had. Possibly, as Justine had said, not everyone there had been killed.

  Maybe Madeleine was alive in Pforzheim. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t been heard from.

  More voices in the corridor outside, then the sound of a bath running. This had happened for three nights also. Why was it that American jazz musicians liked to take baths in the middle of the night? And did they have to tell each other about it, at the tops of their voices?