Liberation

by Ellie Midwood

  Etienne straightened his back and, with a strange gleam in his eyes, said something that he already sensed he would regret, “We are, in fact, in a desperate need of a female liaison agent...”

  Michel tried to interject something, but Giselle rose to her feet swiftly.

  “Oh, please, Etienne, do take me with you!”

  Etienne rose to his feet too, now standing inches away from her, his hand gripping the edge of the table. He never made such rushed decisions in his life, and yet the words were now tumbling out of him as though against his will, all under the haunting gaze of her eyes.

  “I will need a few days to get new papers. Can I come back tomorrow with a camera to take a picture of you? I’ll also get some new clothes for you to travel in. Would you prefer anything specific? Do you need shoes as well? A hat! We must get you a hat...”

  “Giselle! Are you mad?” Michel stood up as well and tried desperately to look into her eyes, which were still fixed steadily on Etienne. “You’ll get yourself killed! Or worse, captured and tortured again!”

  “Don’t worry, Michel.” She gave his arm a reassuring pat, smiling confidently at him. “A man hasn’t been born yet who could do worse than what they have already done to me.”

  4

  Gex, French-Swiss border, May 1942

  Klaus fixed his dark hair in front of the mirror, the usual outline of a soft smile playing on his lips as he hummed a song under his breath. A strange Eastern melody echoed hauntingly around the walls of the small rural house that stood on the border of France and Switzerland. Klaus’s grin grew wider as memories flooded his mind, bringing back the day when he first heard the song. A beautiful – and fearless – Soviet partisan girl sang it as she was being led to the gallows by two uniformed men.

  She did have a wonderful voice, Klaus thought to himself, lowering his gray eyes, a sudden look of tender melancholy settling over his features. What an unfortunate death…

  He glanced back at his reflection, marveling at how touchingly sad he made himself look, and suddenly burst into laughter. He should have been an actor, really. He certainly had quite a talent for it; that, and talking to people. Oh, what a conversationalist he was! He was one of those men that could make a rock talk; his superiors had commended this exceptional quality of his on quite a few occasions. Klaus had only recently discovered this talent in himself, during his posting in Russia. Heinrich Müller, his superior in Berlin, took immediate notice of it. It was this very talent of his, combined with his friendly smile and his excellent French that brought him here, to this house in Gex.

  Klaus’s new orders, given to him by Gruppenführer Müller, the Chief of the Berlin Gestapo himself, were to kidnap Alexander Foote, an agent working for Moscow who currently resided in Geneva. Needless to say, with Switzerland’s current neutrality in war affairs, Klaus needed a good story and had to tread particularly carefully, without attracting any attention to himself. Getting through the French-Swiss border without having his car searched, as Klaus planned to hide the drugged and kidnapped man in the car’s boot, was the main problem. But SS-Untersturmführer Klaus Barbie was notoriously known for finding solutions for such problems. He already had a perfect story. He had also found a perfect man, who could help him with the car. Now, he only needed to make the man offer him his help without suspecting anything.

  Klaus threw a last appraising glance in the mirror, taking in his beige trousers, short-sleeved white shirt with a pullover thrown casually on his back with its sleeves tied around his neck, and, satisfied with his innocent image of an ordinary tourist known as Klaus Altmann, he stepped outside to meet his new friend – the chief of the Swiss customs post.

  The Swiss customs chief, Franz, was of Klaus’s age, and openly despised Nazis but loved everything German and therefore was more than glad to pass time chatting with a friendly German fellow, who, as he thought, shared his sentiments perfectly. After all, the two found themselves in the same trouble; during their very first conversation, Klaus admitted to Franz that he was desperately in love with a girl from Évian. Franz was desperately in love with a girl from Yvoire. Only one of them had a car – a fact which could make their friendship an even more mutually-profitable affair.

  “So?” Franz pulled forward eagerly, looking into Klaus’s eyes with an expression bordering on begging. The two had exchanged firm handshakes and sat down at the table in Franz’s office in the small, one-story customs building. It was a hot, humid day with the promise of a storm hanging in the air. Franz apologized for the warm beer, regarding Klaus once again with intense attention. “Will you allow me to take it for the weekend?”

  Klaus shifted in his seat, visibly hesitant concerning the proposition. Franz quickly produced a bottle of fine cognac and two glasses, hoping to sway the German fellow in his favor.

  “I don’t know.” After a few shots, Klaus was still undecided and kept squirming under Franz’s imploring gaze. “You know those damned Nazis, how thorough they are with their check-ups. What if they stop you to check your papers and see that not only are you Swiss but you’re driving someone else’s car on top of it? They will commandeer it without batting an eye, believe me. I’ll be left without a car and in a whole lot of trouble with the Gestapo. They will quickly find out in whose name it’s registered and will most certainly think that I’m a spy, or worse! A runaway criminal! I don’t know if I want to risk it… Their jail cells don’t look too attractive, from what I’ve heard, and I don’t intend on finding out how much of the rumors that I’ve heard about the people operating them are true.”

  “Oh, come now, Klaus! Why would they stop me? There are hardly any Germans posted here at all, and they’re all bored out of their minds…” Franz even tilted his head to one side, looking darn pitiful.

  “That’s precisely the reason why I’m worried! They’re bored and will jump on any possibility to distract themselves. And it will be you who will provide them with such a distraction!”

  Franz had just opened his mouth to pour another torrent of pleas on the German fellow but suddenly clasped Klaus’s wrist instead and smiled as a new idea brightened his previously devastated expression.

  “What if I offer you a deal?”

  “A deal?”

  “Why, yes. A deal. You said that it was your dream to take your girlfriend to Switzerland to ask her Swiss Papa for permission to marry her.”

  “Well, yes…” Klaus lowered his eyes, looking slightly embarrassed. “But it will only happen when the war is over, I’m afraid…”

  “Why wait? Go now!” Franz even slammed his palm on top of the table with enormous enthusiasm.

  “But she’s French.” Klaus seemed thoroughly confused. “She’s not allowed to cross the border…”

  “And that’s where having a customs chief as a friend becomes useful!” Franz was nearly bursting with joy.

  “I don’t understand…”

  “What’s not to understand? I’ll let you smuggle your girlfriend across the border – just put her on the back seat and cover her with a blanket! – and I’ll make sure that no one searches your car, and after you come back from visiting her father and getting his blessing, you let me take the car for the weekend so I can go see my girlfriend. Well? What do you say? We’re both risking an equal amount in this case. Please, say yes!”

  A triumphant light gleamed in Klaus’s eyes before he quickly hid his scheming expression from the unsuspecting Swiss customs chief, replacing it with his signature charming smile. “Well… I suppose we can arrange that.”

  Walking out of Franz’s office, Klaus couldn’t stop grinning at the thought of how beautiful the report about such a smoothly completed operation would look in his personnel file.

  However, his joy was a bit premature. As soon as he crossed the border and made contact with one of his fellow agents, who was working in Switzerland undercover, the latter reported to him that Foote, the man he planned to kidnap, had suddenly disappeared from Geneva and was nowhere to be found. Kla
us took the news with a curt nod, thanked the man coolly, shook his hand and left the conspiracy apartment. Outside, in a small fenced-off backyard, he nearly broke his knuckles after punching the brick wall several times with brutal force, imagining Foote’s bloodied face under his vicious blows. He only stopped when he realized that the blood on his hand was his, and not the man he had been ordered to detain.

  Breathing heavily, with his eyes shining with ire, Klaus wiped his knuckles with a handkerchief, wondering how Müller would take the news. He hated reporting failures. The man couldn’t have gone far. He would find him if Müller only said yes. If he agreed to give him a bit more time… A twisted smile relaxed the muscles on his tightly clenched-jaw as Klaus imagined what he would do to Foote to make him pay for his escape.

  “Forget about him.” Holding a phone to his ear, Klaus couldn’t believe Müller’s nonchalant tone. Apparently, Foote didn’t interest him any longer. Or he had simply stopped representing a threat after leaving the country and all his contacts in the haste of his escape. “I have a better task for you. You’ll go to Dijon next. In full uniform, as an official representative of the Gestapo. Pack your suitcase; you’ll be staying there for quite some time.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Gruppenführer. Thank you. I won’t disappoint you, I promise.” Klaus couldn’t believe his luck. Instead of being reprimanded, he had just received a promotion.

  “I know you won’t.”

  Müller already knew him too well.

  Paris, May 1942

  Exasperated, Kamille was once again struggling with a patient who was nearly twice her size and applying all her efforts to pacify him and put him back onto his cot. It had happened several times before, to which she was a witness and not a participant, where he screamed something wildly in German and tried to force his way out of the nurses’ grip. Only, today it was just her, Kamille, in the furthest wing of the hospital where mostly the German wounded were treated, and therefore there was no one to come to her aid.

  “Partisanen!” His eyes rolling wildly, the veins on his bandaged head swelling with tension, the German clasped Kamille’s forearms with such force that she nearly screamed out in pain herself. “Partisanen! Hierher, ich brauche Hilfe! Ich bin verletzt! Hilft mir!”

  The German nearly succeeded in worming his way out of Kamille’s feeble grip, ready to run somewhere in his undershirt only, when a nurse suddenly seized him, appearing seemingly out of nowhere and, in a practiced gesture, pricked him with a needle in the bulging vein in his neck.

  “Nicht partisanen, Albert. Partisanen are all dead. You killed them all single-handedly, the brave soldier that you are. Now, be a pet, lay down and take a little nap, won’t you?”

  With the sedative taking its hold of him already, the wounded German visibly relaxed in the dark-haired nurse’s arms and didn’t resist when she lowered him back onto his cot and fixed a pillow under his bandaged head.

  “Poor fellow.” The nurse shook her head disapprovingly, muttering under her breath as if not addressing Kamille directly. “Partisans smashed his head in with their rifle butts. Thought they left him for dead… It would have been better if they did; now, look at him. He’ll never be right in his head again. And what’s the point in such a life? Poor fellow.”

  But it wasn’t such the unexpected expression of sympathy from her fellow French nurse that rendered Kamille speechless. It was the familiar voice, which she never expected to hear again.

  “Augustine?” Kamille barely whispered, placing quivering fingertips on the nurse’s shoulder.

  The woman turned on her heel swiftly, her eyes widening in recognition as well. However, she pressed her finger to her mouth at once, signaling Kamille to remain quiet.

  “Mariette Savatier.” She introduced herself intentionally loudly, shooting a pointed look in Kamille’s direction. “I don’t believe we’ve met before. Are you new here?”

  “Yes.” Kamille quickly regained her composure and played along. “My name is Kamille. Kamille Hartmann. I’m still studying; I was supposed to change his dressing but he started getting agitated, and I suddenly couldn’t control him anymore…”

  “It happens to him from time to time,” a new voice, with a slight accent, spoke behind her back. It seemed that their measures of precaution weren’t in vain, as Kamille recognized a chief surgeon – also a German – who was most likely making his usual noon rounds. “It happens to a few of them, actually. That’s why you always should carry a sedative on your person, nurse Hartmann.”

  Kamille dutifully nodded, lowering her gaze before the stern man. “As I said, I’m merely a student; no one has told me about sedatives yet. I apologize.”

  “That’s quite all right, as long as no harm was caused.” He regarded her for some time before asking, “why do you have a German last name, if I may ask? Are you from Alsace-Lorraine?”

  “No, I’m French. My husband is German. I’m going to be transferred to the Deutsches Rotes Kreuz after I have finished my studies and practice here. Major Decker from the Kommandantur promised me personally. My husband is in a hospital in Germany, you see…”

  “Ach. I see. Gut. Well, more reason to study and work even harder, nurse Hartmann.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Kamille promised solemnly.

  “I’ll help her with everything, if you allow me,” Augustine, who stood silently behind her back during the entire conversation, chimed in unexpectedly. “So that she can tend to the brave German wounded as best as she can.”

  “Yes, nurse Savatier. That’s probably a good idea.” The chief surgeon nodded pensively and dismissed both with a wave of his hand while he proceeded to check on his patients.

  Augustine, her daughter’s former teacher, whom she helped to escape to the Free Zone with the help of falsified papers and whom she never expected to see again here in Paris, which was swarming with Nazis, all but ignored her for the rest of their shift. She also hardly spoke two words with her while the two women made their way to Augustine’s new apartment, to which she had invited her. Only after they stepped through the doors, did Augustine pull her former savior into a tight embrace, kissing her on both cheeks, as tears of happiness shone in her black eyes.

  “So, you did marry your German after all?” she exclaimed with an impish grin.

  “I did,” Kamille confirmed with a wide smile which soon after turned into a frown. “But I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

  “You said he was in a hospital in Germany?”

  “So I hope. No one knows for sure. That’s the reason I begged the Major in the Kommandantur to help me with transfer papers, so I can go to Germany and try and look for him.”

  “I’m sorry.” Augustine gave her hands a sympathetic pressure. “And I do hope that you find him. He’s a good man.”

  “Yes, he is,” Kamille acknowledged with a dejected nod. “But enough of my misfortunes. Tell me, what are you doing here and under an alias no less?”

  “I’m afraid my real name would earn me one of those fancy yellow stars of theirs that all of my kin are now required to wear.” Augustine pursed her lips in disdain regarding the latest decree that was issued a couple of weeks ago, prescribing all Jews to wear yellow stars sewn onto their clothes. Her expression then changed, though, a mild smile soon lighting up her face. “Do you know what I miss about Paris though? Fraternité. I went to get some bread the other day, and do you know what I saw? A young student with a yellow star, strutting proudly together with his friend. Only, the friend’s star said ‘Juif’ on it, like it’s supposed to, and the second one’s said ‘Français.’ I saw a few more people with similar stars, and each said something different; Français, Breton, Honorary Jew – anything you can think of! They wear them so that us Jews don’t feel separated from the rest of the French. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “It is.”

  Kamille shared her sentiments perfectly, admitting with pride that Parisians would never betray their Jewish neighbors like the Germans expected them t
o. Not that all French loved their Jews so much, but those were their Jews, and they flat out refused to hand them over to the Nazis, protesting the best they could.

  “You still didn’t explain why you returned in the first place. I thought you wanted to take Lili to the Free Zone and start a new life there?”

  “I did,” Augustine replied with a slow nod. “It was very nice there, peaceful. As if the war isn’t happening at all. But things changed. I met someone… The man, who took us in, he’s a priest. Not a real priest. That is, he is, but… It’s difficult to explain. Anyway, he became involved with the Resistance, and so did I. I came here after our cell got compromised as we needed a reliable liaison agent in Paris. And so, this was the least I could do for my country. They murdered my husband in cold blood, and they’re going after my people now. I want to do something – anything – to rid France of them. That’s the reason why I came back.”

  Kamille sat at the table, stirring her tea and feeling immense guilt weighing down on her conscience. Her friend risked her life in order to fight the Germans, while she, Kamille, was going to Germany to work for them.

  “I’m sorry,” she sighed, at last, catching her friend’s gaze. “You must really despise me.”

  “Why would I despise you?” Augustine seemed genuinely surprised.

  “Come now. I married one of them, and I’m going to Germany to tend to them. To them, not to the French.”

  “Your husband, from the little that I remember about him, is not one of them. He saved my sick daughter from certain death. He hid us together with you. He treated us with the utmost respect. I have not a bad word to say about him or his adjutant. He was a nice young man too.”

  “Horst.” Kamille smiled sadly. “Yes, he was.”

  She passed her hand over her forehead and shook her head with a look of finality. “I still feel guilty. Before you. Before the whole country, if I’m completely honest.”