Agent in the shadows, p.13
Agent in the Shadows, page 13
Michel waited until the couple had moved to a table before he slipped through the unlocked door. Minutes later Maurice followed him. They climbed down a steep set of steps into a cold basement. Moments later they were joined by the couple. They were their contacts from a Resistance group in Strasbourg.
‘You don’t think you may have been drawing a bit too much attention to yourselves, behaving like that?’
The couple looked at Michel and laughed and the boy said romance was alive and well in Strasbourg even if it wasn’t in Lyon, and then he introduced himself as Hugo and the girl said they could call her Marie and they better get a move on.
‘We have a plan,’ said Hugo. ‘If there are no German patrols, it can work.’
‘Isn’t the centre of Strasbourg full of German patrols? It’s a big gamble to take, planning on there not being any.’
‘What you’ve asked for our help with is a big gamble,’ said Marie. ‘But Strasbourg is quite well behaved these days: in any case, we’ll have plenty of lookouts.’
They spent the next hour going through the plan, consulting a map attached to the wall and they all agreed it could work. Marie suggested they rest for any hour.
‘And when does the other woman arrive?’
‘She’s already here. She’s waiting upstairs.’
* * *
Sophia von Naundorf had arrived in Strasbourg on the Wednesday night. She’d crossed the border just west of Basel into France on the Tuesday night and hid in a farmhouse until daylight, when a farmer’s van took her to Mulhouse, where she was handed over to another courier, who accompanied her on a bus to Colmar from where they caught the train to Strasbourg.
Since her arrival she’d been in a small apartment above the café close to the cathedral, resting as much as she could and going over and over in her mind the instructions from Barney and Benoît. It had all happened so fast: the gathering in Barney Allen’s apartment on Rue François-Bonivard in Geneva on the Sunday night, travelling to Basel on the Monday, another safe house, more briefings, a hurried goodbye with Jack on the Tuesday evening and then across the border.
She had no idea what their relationship would be like without the constant frisson of danger. She understood that you can forgive someone an awful lot when you know the time you’re spending with them is quite possibly limited. She’d once wondered out loud whether they could ever be a normal couple or whether their love existed only because of the clandestine nature of their lives. Jack had looked at her in that innocent way of his and smiled and said she was being far too serious and to come back to bed. Nonetheless, when they’d said goodbye on the Tuesday, she had noticed a catch in his voice and the hint of a tear in his eye.
Jack had told her he thought the plan Barney and Benoît had come up with was a clever one. It was audacious, of course, and it needed an experienced agent like her to have a chance of being carried off, and in any case, she wouldn’t be alone. There was the Mars Resistance group in Lyon and when he’d suggested to Barney that maybe he and Siegfried could join her there, Barney had thought it was a good idea.
‘He thought Siegfried being there was a good idea, Jack, not you. You don’t speak French.’ Jack had said not to worry, something would be sorted out.
Around five o’clock on the Thursday afternoon she was taken down to the basement of the café where she was introduced to two men from Lyon, Maurice and Michel. Michel spoke a little German but the young man called Hugo spoke it well and they went through the plan carefully.
When they’d finished Hugo said they should all wait in the basement. Timing was of the essence and it wouldn’t do if they were too early.
At six o’clock Maurice and Marie left, saying they’d see them soon. Sophia remained in the basement with Michel and Hugo, alone with her thoughts and the knowledge that even if all went according to plan, it would still be dreadful.
* * *
The train from Frankfurt arrived in Strasbourg at ten to seven that Thursday evening. Luise Brunner was tired after her early start and very excited, of course: this posting to France was one she’d been hoping would come about for some months now. The past year had been awful. She’d been due to marry her darling Kurt in March but the previous summer the 6th Army had been posted to Stalingrad and although at first his letters home had been optimistic and full of cheer, by the autumn their tone had changed.
‘When’ he came home became ‘if’ and 1942 turned into 1943 and what little news there was from the Eastern Front was utterly depressing and by the time the authorities admitted early in February that Stalingrad had been lost, she’d not heard from Kurt for weeks.
Berlin hummed to the sound of rumours: there were hundreds of thousands of casualties and hundreds of thousands of prisoners, all kept in sub-zero temperatures, hundreds dying each day. Everyone seemed to know someone who had a relative or a neighbour or a friend who’d been at Stalingrad – and none of them had returned. By the start of March, it was evident she was unlikely to ever see Kurt again.
She’d spent Easter with her mother’s sister, a clever woman, the headmistress of a school in Brunswick, who’d lost her own fiancé in the Great War. Her aunt told her that she had to snap out of it: the only way she’d survive was by putting this behind her and thinking of her future. Her advice was to keep herself very busy. In her case she’d devoted her life to her career and had progressed from being an assistant in a school to where she was now: a headmistress.
And that was when Luise decided to apply for a transfer. She knew there were openings at Gestapo bureaux around Europe and she hoped for Paris but then Lyon had come up and she’d heard they were very keen on her and the man in charge there, Klaus Barbie, was known to be very ambitious and ran the kind of efficient operation she’d revel in.
It all sounded rather fun: she’d have her own apartment, generous rations, more responsibility and the opportunity to learn French. Although she was still mourning Kurt, there was a large garrison in Lyon and plenty of young officers…
Of course, there were those who said the war was going badly, but she had no cause to doubt that victory was assured.
If we’d listened to the pessimists in 1939, where would we be now?
She’d had her trunk sent ahead and it would be waiting in the apartment and now she just had to think about the next stage of the journey: it was, she’d been assured, a short walk from the station in Strasbourg to the small hotel on Rue de la Course, where she’d be able to change and there’d be a supper for her. Then a train to Lyon the next morning, just over four hours, which wasn’t too bad, and she’d be met there by a very nice-sounding lady called Agnes Kléber, whose German was excellent and who assured her she’d be looking after her.
She paused at the exit of the station: she’d been told to find the Place de la Gare and head to its south-west corner. At that moment a charming lady paused and asked if she needed help. The woman spoke decent German – with a French accent, of course – and was accompanied by her daughter, and they both seemed very friendly and willing to help, so unlike what she’d been told about the French, that they were unfriendly and even resentful of the Germans.
But this woman said of course she knew Rue de la Course and in fact she and her daughter were heading in that direction and she should accompany them, and they crossed the Place de la Gare and she knew they were going in the right direction because after the Place de la Gare they crossed the Rue Déserte, which she’d also been told to look out for.
Just then they came to a small alley and the woman asked which hotel she was staying at and Luise told her and the woman said she knew a short cut, if they went down this alley then they’d be able to enter through the rear and she followed them down the alley – followed the mother that is, the daughter was behind her – and she began to become a bit unsure because the alley turned, so they seemed to be moving in the wrong direction, but the woman continued to chat in a friendly manner – how beautiful Berlin was, how she adored Munich, how France was moving in the right direction these days. Ahead of them was a van with the word boulangerie on the side, which Luise knew was something to do with bread, and then the back door of the van opened and before she had a chance to react, she was grabbed from behind and shoved into the van.
* * *
Sophia was in the van, along with, Marie, Maurice and Michel. Hugo was waiting in the driver’s seat.
At one stage Sophia had thought about asking whether it was really necessary to go this far, but she realised there was no alternative. Another woman had helped push Luise into the van and crouched behind her. Michel forced a cloth against the woman’s face: she struggled violently at first and then lost consciousness, at which point Marie held the woman’s head while Maurice grabbed her jaw with one hand and her face with the other and twisted both swiftly with an enormous amount of force and Sophia was shocked at how loud was the sound of the woman’s neck snapping. It seemed to echo around the sides of the van. For a few moments there was silence in the van.
When they turned her on her back Sophia stared into the face of her alter ego as if trying to glean something about her from the now lifeless body. Her eyes were still wide open and in utter fear, her make-up smudged and her mouth open, her teeth marked with bright lipstick.
‘Help me,’ said Marie, who’d already begun to undress the woman. Sophia helped to remove her clothes. They’d been insistent: everything must be removed, every single item of clothing. Everything that Luise Brunner came into the van with would leave it on Sophia von Naundorf.
Maurice and Michel helped too, which surprised Sophia, but she knew every second counted. Now Luise Brunner lay on the floor of the van completely naked. Only then did the two men turn round as Marie helped Sophia to dress in Luise’s clothes. She handed her the handbag and they quickly checked its content: all her identity papers, money, the rail ticket to Lyon, the make-up. She took out a brush to tidy her hair and a compact so she could sort her make-up.
‘Put these on.’
It was the woman’s spectacles. They made Sophia squint but the frames were quite distinctive and made her look more like Luise Brunner’s photograph on her kennkarte. Marie handed her an engagement ring and the woman’s watch.
‘Are you ready?’
Sophia said she was, did she look all right and Marie said she looked fine, maybe adjust her hair later, and then Hugo called from the front to get a move on and Michel knocked twice on the side of the van and when there was a response of three knocks, they opened the door and Sophia hurried out.
Except she was no longer Sophia von Naundorf.
She was now Luise Brunner, a native Berliner, twenty-nine years of age which was four years younger than Sophia but it didn’t show. She was an employee of the Gestapo, excited by her positing to Lyon and still grieving her darling Kurt but managing to put it all behind her.
There was an older woman waiting in the alley. She handed Luise’s suitcase to Sophia and said she should follow them. When they passed the pension, she was to carry on in.
‘Tomorrow, you will see us on the train to Lyon, but you are not to acknowledge us, you understand?’
Sophia nodded. She realised her heart was still beating fast and she was breathing heavily. She knew she needed to calm down.
‘If you think you are in trouble when you’re on the train then remove your gloves.’
She thanked them, and they stood aside as the van with boulangerie on the side reversed past them. She knew they’d be on their way to dispose of the body.
‘The woman who’ll meet you in Lyon—’
‘Mademoiselle Kléber?’
‘Correct. You are to trust her, but say nothing to her about your involvement with us and she will do likewise. It is to be assumed. You understand?’
Sophia said she did. Now they were walking to the end of the alley, about to turn into Rue de la Course, and the older woman paused and smiled briefly, gripping her wrist as she did so.
‘Don’t worry: we will be with you in Lyon. We’ve been told you’re the best.’
And then the women moved briskly ahead of her and soon they were past the pension, which she walked into. A tall woman with a severe haircut asked in German if she had a reservation and she replied that she did and then the woman said that in that case perhaps she’d be so good as to give her name and she said of course.
‘I’m sorry, it’s been a long day: I left Berlin at dawn and I still feel as if I’m on a train!’
She laughed and the woman allowed herself a tight smile.
‘Of course: and your name?’
‘My name is Brunner, Luise Brunner. Fraulein Luise Brunner.’
* * *
It was a strange feeling, to feel less oppressed in a foreign country than in the one you’d been born in and spent your whole life in and whose language was the only one you spoke.
France was not nearly as relaxed as Switzerland, of course. It was an occupied country and there was an unquestionable tension about. And it was not easy having to cope with the unfriendliness of local people. Everyone seemed aware she was German and this was certainly the case on the train, where the ticket inspectors and gendarmes deferred to her and the German security officers treated her with great respect.
Was she comfortable?
There’s no need to open your case, Fraulein, thank you.
We wish you a pleasant journey.
At one point a young girl – maybe five or six – wandered up to her seat and said something in French and Sophia – Luise – indicated she was German and the mother hurried over and pulled the child away, all the while avoiding looking at her.
They headed south through Colmar and Mulhouse, west towards Besançon and Dijon and then south through Maçon, where there was a half-hour delay and the ticket inspector walked through the carriage making an announcement in French and it was only when the train moved on that she noticed they passed mounds of tangled metal and twisted rail tracks and she assumed it was bomb damage and she took that as a sign that if the Allies could hit a target this far south then maybe the war really was coming to an end.
There was a shorter delay just north of Lyon and the train finally pulled into Part-Dieu station just after two o’clock. Even before the train stopped a young German officer appeared by her seat. He would help her with her case and she was to come with him he said, and for a brief moment she wondered if there was a problem, and if there was what on earth would she do in a country where she didn’t speak the language, but the officer was very friendly and spoke with a Berlin accent. She asked where he was from and he said Schönefeld, and she said she had many happy memories of Schönefeld.
By now they were on the platform and a woman in her fifties stepped forward and introduced herself as Agnes Kléber. ‘Welcome to Lyon, Fraulein Brunner. How was your journey?’
They’d begun to walk towards the exit. Her case had been handed to what she took to be their driver, who was walking in front of them. She replied that it had been a long journey but a pleasant enough one.
‘Uneventful, I hope?’
You are to trust her, but say nothing to her about your involvement with us…
‘Very uneventful indeed.’
‘Very good, our car is here. It is a short journey to Avenue de Saxe but it is better to arrive in some style, eh?’
Sophia nodded and when they were in the back of the car the woman asked how she found Strasbourg.
‘Rather pretty: more German in appearance, I must say, Fraulein Kléber.’
‘You must call me Agnes. But all went well in Strasbourg?’
She hesitated before replying but the woman smiled, and Sophia did too and said it all went well, and the pension was most comfortable.
* * *
The apartment on Avenue de Saxe was smaller than Sophia had expected but it seemed clean and well equipped, though these were the least of her concerns. What mattered was, as Jack had reminded her, to check out how secure it was.
Remember what Basil always tells us: make sure it’s not bugged, see if there is more than one exit, check who your neighbours are…
Agnes Kléber showed her round the apartment. They were alone in it, but she was very correct and said nothing unexpected.
‘This is the bathroom; the kitchen is small but quite modern and through this door…’
She opened a narrow door at the back of the kitchen.
‘This leads to the fire escape. Some people use it to take their rubbish down. At the bottom of these stairs are the rear doors to the building.’
She closed the door and indicated Sophia should join her at the sink. She turned the taps on and said this is the hot water one, though there was only hot water in the evening. She leaned towards her.
‘Although the Gestapo does not normally listen in on German staff, it is best to act as if they do. Do you follow me?’
She was speaking softly. Sophia nodded.
‘I’ve shown you the rear exit. Maybe check it out soon. It is important you are familiar with it. It opens onto an alleyway which runs parallel to the street. If you go to the end, you can get back onto Avenue de Saxe.
‘I will show you the way to where you’ll be working: you are to walk south through Place Jean Macé and then turn left on Avenue Berthelot. Everything is on this map. I’ve marked here the food shops that are less hostile to German customers.’
‘Only two of them?’
Agnes Kléber nodded. ‘There are ten apartments in this building: two on each floor. Half of the occupants are Germans working for the authorities and the French residents have all been vetted. Your trunk is in the bedroom. Unpack and settle in. Take a look around the area by all means, but my advice would be not to speak unless it is really necessary: Germans are not popular in Lyon. Do you have any questions?’
