Chapter Five

As were the other important buildings in Paris, the Palais Garnier—the grand opera house, home to the Paris Opéra Ballet—was shrouded in Nazi flags. Their presence negated the beauty of the arched windows, the double columns, the gilded adornments, and the graceful statuary, as did the sign on the front doors: INTERDIT AUX JUIF.

A group of young German soldiers had clustered together on the front steps, singing:

Deutschland erwache aus deinem bösen Traum!

Gib fremden Juden in deinem Reich nicht Raum!

Wir wollen kämpfen für dein Auferstehn

Arisches Blut soll nicht untergehn!

“Mackerel sky, mackerel sky—Never long wet and never long dry,” Sarah Sanderson muttered to herself as she walked quickly past the assembled Germans. She moved gracefully in her raincoat and jewel-toned Hermès scarf, despite the heavy dance bag she toted over one shoulder. But Sarah knew enough German to be able to understand the song’s menacing lyrics:

Germany, awake from your nightmare!

Give foreign Jews no place in your Reich!

We will fight for your resurgence!

Aryan blood shall never perish!

She turned her head to avoid the sight of the assembled Germans. Two wizened women in black were walking arm in arm, followed by several giggling schoolchildren, and a mother pushing a pink and chubby-cheeked baby in a pram. She caught the baby’s eyes and smiled; the infant rewarded her with a gurgle and a waved fist.

Sarah, a slim brunette from Liverpool, had performed with the Vic-Wells Ballet in London. But now, as an SOE agent, she was posing as a dancer with the Paris Opéra. She’d already taken daily class with the company that morning and had put in an afternoon’s worth of rehearsals. Her long legs felt close to collapse, but there was still one more rehearsal onstage before the performance that evening. And then, after the ballet, was her actual SOE mission.

As she passed the singers, she saw a lanky French policeman in his gendarme uniform and cape walk by without saluting. A German sergeant, a dumpy man, with a florid, spongy face, wasn’t about to let the perceived slight go unpunished. “You!” he roared.

The policeman stopped, spun around, and saluted smartly. “My apologies, sir—I didn’t see you.”

Sarah had spent her childhood summers in Paris with her grandmother, on Île St.-Louis. She knew firsthand Parisians had always enjoyed making jokes about buffoonish policemen. At the same time, there was a genuine affection for Monsieur L’Agent. Most French police officers had an easy and kindly manner. They seemed to represent the spirit of a free country. And they had never been required to salute French Army officers.

When the Germans arrived, all that had changed, and the French police had been turned into the Milice, the German-run military police.

“You will stand at attention!” the German sergeant bellowed.

The policeman did.

“You will salute me!”

The policeman did.

“And now you must run three times around the Palais.”

Sarah turned away, her heart constricting with deepest shame at the humiliation of the Parisian police.

Passing through the back doors of the Palais Garnier, she stepped into an austere world the public never saw: a realm of classes and rehearsals and hard work and sweat—far, far away from the glamour and gilt of the front of the theater. It had survived on orders from Joseph Goebbels, who’d instructed that Paris’s wheels of gaiety—music, dance, and theater—must keep turning at whatever cost.

She strode down a long corridor with plain stone floors, hearing the squeak of violins warming up and seeing a throng of wiry, long-limbed dancers, thick woolen leg warmers and sweaters over their practice clothes, congregate like Edgar Degas figures before a cork bulletin board. They smelled of fresh sweat, face powder, and sweet perfume. Pinned in the center was a sheet of thick paper embossed with a black swastika.

“What’s this?” Sarah asked one of the coryphées in her deep, raspy voice, as she, too, rose on tiptoe to see.

“More decrees against the Jews,” the younger dancer replied.

In the two years since the Occupation, the Nazis had passed anti-Semitic legislation in France, the Statut des Juifs. Jews were now excluded from public life, dismissed from positions in the civil service and the military, and barred from jobs in industry, commerce, medicine, law, and teaching. They were even forbidden to use public telephones. Thousands of Jewish businesses had been seized throughout France; Jewish-owned art and property had been “repossessed.”

And in March, the Reich had also required all Jews in Occupied France, including more than eighty thousand Parisians, to register with the police. Sarah had heard rumors that the next order would have Jews identify themselves by wearing gold Stars of David emblazoned with the word Juif on their chests.

The dancer in front, a wiry étoile named Yvette Chauviré, large eyes accented by thick mascara, read the new regulation aloud: “Decree of June 1942, concerning measures against the Jews—”

“What do you make of it?” one of the other coryphées, Héloïse Guillemard, whispered to Sarah.

In her role as Sabine Severin, dancer from Monte Carlo recently come to the Paris Opéra Ballet, Sarah couldn’t afford to raise any eyebrows. She shifted her weight to one side and lied, “It doesn’t affect me.”

“Well, I think there’s another roundup coming.” There had been two mass arrests of Jews already—men and foreigners. The prisoners had been taken to camps at Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande in the Loiret. Rumors had swirled since early in the spring that they were being sent to Poland.

“Chez nous en France, tout cela serait impossible,” Roland Petit, one of the company’s premier danseurs, declared. Here in France, that could never happen. He asked Jean Babilee, “Still, if another roundup is coming, what will you do?”

Babilee, another premier danseur, was Jewish—his given name was Jean Gutmann. Sarah had heard he’d left Paris in 1940 when the Wehrmacht had invaded but returned not long after, still dancing beautifully. His dark eyes flashed. “If it comes to that, I’ll run off to the mountains and join the Maquis!” Sarah knew of the Maquis. It was made up of bands of French Resistance fighters in the countryside, called Maquisards, both Jews and men who had escaped to avoid conscription into the Service du travail obligatoire—performing forced labor for Germany.

“Shhh!” warned a girl with a blond ponytail, frightened gaze darting up and down the corridor. “Someone will hear!”

“I don’t care,” retorted Babilee, his voice growing ever louder. “Let them hear. They can’t deny my talent. Besides, my family may be Jewish, but we’ve been here since the Revolution. All of my ancestors fought for France—against the Prussians and in the Great War. I’m a Jew of French ancestry and proud to be French. I believe in the glory of France and always will. I came back to Paris out of loyalty to my country—and I will stand by her.” He folded his arms across his muscular chest. “To the end.”

“You do have a rather large nose,” Roland Petit deadpanned.

“That’s because I have a large”—Babilee paused theatrically—“foot.” The assembled members of the company dissolved in laughter, dispersing and going their separate ways.

“It’s an elegant nose,” Héloïse said, as the two women made their way down the hall to the corps’s dressing room. Sarah wondered if Héloïse had a bit of a crush on Babilee. “It looks Basque, don’t you think? Besides, it doesn’t matter here.” She gestured to the studios. “Here we are dancers, all of us. Artists. Art is the only thing that matters to people like us. Are you any good? is the only question worth asking.”

Another dancer caught up to them—one of the quadrilles, one step down from the coryphées. Although her stage name was Daphné Gilbert, Sarah knew that her real name was Simone Dreyfus and that she, like Babilee, was Jewish. “France is the land of human rights,” Simone insisted. “Nothing can happen to us here.”

“I heard they’re taking down the names and addresses of the Jewish children, too,” Héloïse confided. “My cousin’s boyfriend is a gendarme.”

Sarah hadn’t heard this rumor. “Children? Why?”

“Because they’re planning on rounding them up as well next time.”

“But they’re children!” Daphné protested. “That’s absurd! Thousands of Jews have taken refuge here. Do you know what they say in Poland? ‘France is the Jews’ salvation.’ ”

Héloïse moved her dance bag from one shoulder to the other. “I’m not so sure of that anymore. Maybe you should try America. I hear there’s ballet in New York City. That’s where George Balanchine went, after all.”

“America’s turning away the Jews. Calling us ‘undesirables.’ ” Daphné managed a coquettish smile. “Of course, I, myself, am quite desirable, don’t you agree?” She ran her hands down the curves of her waist and hips. “Oh, here’s a joke I heard—why don’t the Germans like the Jews?”

Sarah and Héloïse waited.

Daphné chortled. “They only like barb-Aryans!”

The three dancers entered the spartan dressing room all the lower-ranking girls in the company shared. Sarah set down her dance bag and opened it, pulling out a slip of an evening gown, intended for the opening-night party after the performance, and hanging it up. She also took out her silver sandals, a chiffon wrap, and a beaded clutch—complete with a compact, lipstick with a sleeping pill concealed in the base, and a camera hidden in a cigarette case that, with any luck, she’d be using later that night.

As Pétain looked down impassively from his official portrait and a wall clock with long black hands kept the time, the female dancers all changed quickly from their street clothes into tights, leotards, and practice tutus, tying the ribbons on their worn pointe shoes. This last rehearsal, on the stage, was to perfect the blocking of the prologue before the curtain rose on the premiere.

As Sarah changed, Héloïse snuck a look at her figure. The tall brunette was usually slim, but, since she’d arrived in France, her body had become more rounded. “Ooh la la, your breasts, Sabine! They’re huge!”

Sarah looked down. Her breasts had always been small, too small in her opinion, but they’d grown, she had to admit. And felt tender. “I’m going to get my period,” she replied.

“Do you still get yours?” asked Daphné. “I didn’t think any of us did anymore, not with the rationing.”

As she had been instructed, Sarah left her black dance bag on the bench, and when another dancer, one she’d rarely seen, slipped hers beside it, Sarah picked that one up. The dance bags were identical. The other girl took Sarah’s. The exchange was performed as gracefully as any pas de deux. Sarah lifted the new bag and slung it over her delicate shoulder, the straps biting into her pale skin. Fait accompli, she wished she could say aloud.

In the wings, it was dark. Dust motes sparkled in the beams of blue and amber gelled lights. Dancers clustered about a freestanding barre, holding it lightly with one hand, bending forward then arching backward, doing demi-pliés and relevés to warm up. Others were stretched against pieces of the set or moved their weight from foot to foot, burning off excess nerves. A few girls sat on the wooden floor, sewing pink ribbons onto their slippers and darning the satin toe tips for extra traction. An African-looking man, a trombonist from New Orleans whom Sarah knew played jazz with Django Reinhardt at La Cigale, pushed a wide broom. He’d been allowed to keep his job as stage manager at the Opéra when Serge Lifar promised Goebbels and his men that no black man would ever be seen by the audience.

From the other side of the velvet curtain, they could hear the orchestra tuning up, various instruments doing scales, the violins performing a snippet of melody only to stop and repeat.

“I didn’t know Babilee was a Jew,” one coryphée whispered to another as they dipped their feet into the rosin box. “He seems so nice.” Around them, stagehands, burly men in black trousers and chunky black turtlenecks, adjusted lights and double-checked props.

Sarah stood at the barre, her feet in fifth position, the dance bag nearby. She did grand pliés deep and slow with her feet tightly tucked toe to heel—head up, shoulders down, neck long—all the while keeping an eye on the bag.

“All dancers to the stage, please,” came the booming voice of the manager. “All dancers to the stage. Positions for the prologue.”

With the other members of the corps who were ladies-in-waiting, Sarah made her way to the “throne room,” standing still, waiting for the music to begin. This was the one time she had to take her eye off the bag, praying no one would take any notice, no one would look through for a pair of scissors or a skein of thread. Together, she and the other dancers stood in position as members of the royal court for the prologue, the “Entrance of the Fairies.” They waited under the hot lights, staring out into the darkness, for the conductor to give the signal for the triangle to begin.

The Ukrainian Lifar had starred in Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in the twenties. In 1929 he took over the Paris Opéra Ballet as premier danseur and choreographer. The company had been on tour in Spain when the German Army had invaded Paris. When they returned, Lifar was confirmed as maître de ballet by French authorities to prevent German interference with ballet. Somewhere in the theater, Serge Lifar watched.

However, Lifar was rumored to get on well with the German overlords, including ballet aficionado Joseph Goebbels, and no one was quite sure if he was a collaborator or not. Regardless, the dancers, musicians, and everyone at the theater were relieved that the Paris Opéra Ballet was still under French control and they still had jobs. They practiced an ironclad ambiguity in order to survive.

Sarah gazed out across the stalls of the main floor, up to the four rows of balconies, a world of glitter and glamour. She knew Hugh was down below in the orchestra pit with his cello. She found that she danced better knowing he was playing. Hugh Thompson, with the French identity of cellist Hubert Taillier, was her “husband” as part of their disguise. During their SOE training in Scotland and England, they’d fallen in love.

Still, keenly aware of the dance bag left in the wings, Sarah could feel her shoulders inch up and her hands tighten. With the mission of the evening on her mind, she wasn’t dancing her best. She took a deep breath, pushed her shoulders down, and unclenched her hands, trying to listen to the music, to dance, and to forget everything else for the moment.

Finally, Lifar clapped for them to stop. “Are you Arabians or Clydesdales?” he mocked. His jeer echoed through the empty theater.

Sarah thought they were in for a tirade, but he added only “All right, that was better. Rest now. Then get ready. It’s a big night for us.” The maître de ballet relaxed, shifting his weight to one side, a hand placed elegantly on one slim hip. “Merde to all,” he said, the ballet world’s age-old shit for good luck—just like spies—waving them offstage.

As they all trailed offstage, Sarah heard chatty Daphné Gilbert’s unmistakable nasal voice. “You know Hitler blames the sinking of the Titanic on us?” she told Babilee, who’d been watching from the wings, warming up. He was playing Prince Désiré.

He had a towel around his neck, dabbing at the sweat rolling down his face. “Really?”

“Because it hit an iceberg!”

Sarah grabbed the bag, releasing a quick, grateful breath, then made her way to the orchestra pit.

Hugh was putting his cello back in its case, waiting. He smiled, green eyes bright, when he saw her. At the sight of him, her heart leapt for joy.

“Hello, my love,” he said, kissing her full on the lips. “How was the tempo?”

“Fine.” Sarah hadn’t even noticed. “Fantastic.” She looked around to make sure they were alone. “Here,” she said, handing over the black bag.

“It’s heavy.”

“The less we know, the better.” She took another glance at him. “You’re wearing glasses,” she said, finally noticing his silver frames.

“As it turns out,” he said, slipping them into his jacket pocket with a disarming grin, “I’m a bit nearsighted. It helps, even though I know most of the music by heart now.”

“Wherever did you find eyeglasses?”

“The conductor got them for me,” he explained. “Where they came from—well, I try not to think about that.”

Hugh looked down at the bag, then pulled on the zipper to reveal the contents. Inside, he rummaged through to see geological reports with readings, measurements, detailed field sketches of stratigraphic sections, and notes with drawings of various beaches and rock formations. Adding to the bag’s weight were a compass and glass jars, neatly wrapped in layers of tissue paper. Moving aside the tissue, he could see each jar contained sand samples, neatly labeled: BARNEVILLE-PLAGE, CABOURG, GRANVILLE, ÎLES CHAUSEY, PORTBAIL, TROUVILLE. All beaches in Normandy.

Like Orpheus, he couldn’t look away. His eyes widened, as he realized the implication. “To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower—hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour,” he muttered.

“Put it away!” Sarah cautioned, refusing to look. “We don’t need to know what it is—we just need to get it back to London.”

She pulled away, then gestured for him to follow her. He acquiesced, and they walked backstage, where Sarah pulled him into a janitor’s closet, tugging at a string to turn on the bare bulb.

“You make everything romantic,” Hugh teased, closing the door. He lowered the bag and bent to kiss her. But Sarah was in no mood. Their mission after the evening’s performance was simple—and yet not.

Since their arrival in Paris three months ago, Sarah and Hugh had been cultivating a relationship with Reichsminister Hans Fortner, a German ballet aficionado, although whether Fortner truly loved the dance or just liked watching girls in tutus, Sarah didn’t know. Or care. What was more important was that he was the head of the Reich Ministry for Armaments and War Production in France. He would have the latest files on which French companies—such as Peugeot, Renault, Avions Voisin, and La Licorne—might be working with the Germans in violation of the terms of the armistice, aiding in the development of weapons. Once their collaboration was confirmed, the factories would be targets for RAF strikes or for SOE sabotage. Their mission—hers and Hugh’s—was to photograph the precious papers so SOE would have the concrete evidence they so desperately needed to bomb the weapons factories.

They knew from a fellow Resistance worker, a woman who worked as a maid at Fortner’s hotel, that the Reichsminister kept all of his files in a safe in his suite. Sarah had learned the safecracking skills needed to get the safe open and shut. Now she just had to get into his heavily guarded suite.

Through postperformance parties Lifar threw for the occupiers and collaborators who were ballet aficionados, Sarah and Hugh and Fortner had been introduced, then had become friendly, going out for drinks and for dinner, where Fortner flirted shamelessly with Sarah.

And tonight, after the party at Maxim’s, they would make sure they were invited back to his hotel. There the plan was for them to get drunk, or at least seem to. Hugh would pretend to become ill and need to return to their flat, and then Sarah would seduce Fortner, drug his wine with the sleeping pill hidden in the base of her lipstick, and then, while the Reichsminister was unconscious, break into his safe and photograph the plans with the tiny camera hidden in her cigarette case.

Sarah pulled away, Hugh still clasping her waist. “I’m worried, Hugh. I might have to, you know—”

“You have the pill to knock him out.”

“Yes, but how long will it take to work? This isn’t an exact science, you know. I’ve never even used it before!”

“As long as we get the names of the factories”—he pushed back the tendrils of dark hair that had escaped her bun—“that’s all we need. And then back to London—”

“Where we’ll be married, for real, this time.” They embraced, this time kissing passionately, until Sarah broke away, again. “I could tell him I’m having my period,” she said against Hugh’s chest, unable to look him in the eye. His arm cradled her head, and she could hear the faint tick of his watch.

“It won’t come to that.” He rubbed her back.

“How would you feel?” she asked softly. “If it did come to that? If I—had to?”

“It’s a job, darling.” He reached for her hands and looked her in the eye. “Think of it as acting.”

But Sarah loved Hugh. And, even knowing how selfish she was being, she didn’t want her actions to damage their burgeoning relationship. “But how would you feel about Fortner and me—in bed together?”

“I want us to complete this assignment and get safely back to London,” he answered firmly, either unable or unwilling to entertain seriously the possibility she was asking him about. “Once we have the photographs of the papers, I can radio back to London that they can schedule a pickup for us. Eight days until the full moon—and then we’ll be home!”

“So I should ‘lie back and think of England’?”

“Sarah…”

“Oh, it’s fine. Darling, people are being asked to kill in this bloody war! Surely, in context, fucking an old German—if it even comes to that, which it most assuredly won’t—isn’t such a huge deal.” Then, “If you were me, would you do it?”

“I would,” Hugh reassured her without hesitation. “Soldiers in the field endure far worse. Espionage, well, there’s a reason it’s called ‘the second oldest profession.’ ”

“All right then,” she said resolutely, “if worse comes to worst, I’ll do it. I’m a patriot, after all. I’ll do what I need to,” she concluded, feeling both angry and not a little betrayed by Hugh’s reaction.

“Look,” he reminded her gently, cupping her cheek with his palm, “these files could take out dozens of weapons factories. They could save hundreds of thousands, if not more, of British lives. Wars aren’t won by respectable methods.”

“Wars aren’t won by respectable methods,” Sarah repeated softly. “I understand. God gave me a mind and a body, and I shall use both. If Mata Hari could do it, so can I.”

“I love you,” he said, kissing her.

“I love you, too.” She drew back and smiled. “I need to change into my costume and do my hair and makeup.”

He picked up the bag. “And after the performance, we drop this off, then have our own little performance.”

“Merde,” she said.

“Merde alors,” he replied.

In addition to attending the ballet, Nazis in Paris patronized the brothels. With no wives or children in tow, and the imposed exchange rate at twenty francs to one mark, carnal pleasure on demand was practically free.

The officers went to the established bordellos: the infamous Le Sphinx near Montparnasse, 32 Rue Blondel in the Sentier, just off the infamous Rue Saint-Denis, or House of All Nations. But the pinnacle was 122 Rue de Provence, known as One-Two-Two. The brothel was housed in a mansion that had once belonged to a prince, and was run like a luxurious gentlemen’s club, similar to the exclusive Travellers on the Champs-Élysées, but with certain supplements. Before the Occupation, one could have spotted members of the French Parliament, nobility, members of the Académie, and stars of the Comédie-Française enjoying themselves there. Now the French could go only during the afternoons, while Nazis took over the more desirable evening hours.

There were multitudes of women to choose from, or else, for the shy or indecisive, proprietress Madame Georgette Jamet would make a suggestion and facilitate an introduction. The experience was further enhanced by differently themed rooms. Clients could select the hayloft, the Marquis de Sade dungeon, an igloo room—with a bed actually made of ice and covered in furs—a transatlantic liner cabin, or an Egyptian chamber complete with a sloe-eyed Cleopatra.

Von Waltz’s favorite courtesan was an unblemished young blonde with peachy skin named Selena, and his preferred room was designed to look like an Orient Express cabin, including a recording of engine noise and a vibrating bed.

When his rendezvous with Selena was over, the Obersturmbannführer took a leisurely hot bath, then dressed once again in his perfectly pressed trousers, a burgundy smoking jacket, and monogrammed slippers to enjoy a cigar and cocktail with some of his fellow officers before the formal dinner. He was looking forward to it: the night’s menu card read oysters, lamb, and strawberries with cream. But first, he wanted an aperitif.

Perfumed with Eau de Cologne du Coq, von Waltz entered, acknowledging various German officers smoking cigars and drinking Champagne, and a group playing an especially intense game of skat with gold-edged cards in one corner of the room. The gentlemen’s lounge was decorated to look like a Versailles salon, with boiserie panels, red brocade furniture, gilt sconces, cake-icing paneling, and an enormous glittering cage chandelier. A marble Louis XVI clock topped by a panther ticked faintly on the mantel, flanked by matching garniture.

“Bretz!” Von Waltz had spotted Hauptsturmführer Arlo Bretz. Von Waltz had trained with the younger Viennese man. Bretz was in charge of the Gestapo’s radio intercept station, located on Boulevard Suchet. Von Waltz walked to him. “Who were you with this fine evening?”

Bretz picked up his glass of cloudy, diluted pastis and raised it to von Waltz. “Angelique, this time. ‘The girl with the heart-shaped ass.’ You?”

“Selena, of course,” von Waltz replied, sitting opposite, a burr walnut games table between them. “I’m utterly faithful. If not to my wife, then at least I’m constant to my whore.” The men laughed. “Cigar?” von Waltz offered, pulling two Gildemanns from the breast pocket of his smoking jacket.

“I don’t think the girls like the smell of it.”

“True, true. Now ask me”—von Waltz put one back, then cut and lit it with a lighter engraved with a swastika and eagle, puffing on it until it flared—“who the fuck cares what the girls like?”

“True, true.” The two laughed again.

Von Waltz exhaled, blowing smoke rings one after the other. “Before I left the office today, I was talking to Ribbentrop about the little radio game our colleagues are playing with the SOE in Holland,” the Obersturmbannführer said, namedropping shamelessly. “We must have the same success here, in Paris. We must fool the British—beat them at their own game. Alas, our last prisoner decided not to work with us, but we can still use her radio.”

“Too bad,” Bretz said, tapping the side of his glass, then drinking. “Any stand-in we use would have a different fist from the English agent.” A radio operator’s fist, the way he or she coded, was as distinctive as a signature. It was an assurance to those picking up the message that the agent was really who she said she was. “The different fist, as well as lack of security checks, might set off alarm bells back in London, you know.”

“Oh, the SOE obviously doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about such details. They don’t even care that their security checks are compromised. We could include a few lines of Mein Kampf and the British still wouldn’t believe their pretty operator’s been captured. But you’re right—we won’t be able to get away with it forever. And so I have an idea. We tell them this particular spy has gone into hiding in Paris for a few weeks. This will explain her changed fist, lack of security checks, and missed times of communication.”

“And then?” Bretz drained his glass.

“Then, after some time has gone by, we begin again, make London trust her. All the while either capturing more agents and commandeering their radios or letting them signal back as our prisoners, operating under our watch.”

“And our endgame?”

“The Allies will be making plans for their eventual invasion attempt, of course,” von Waltz answered, resting his cigar in an opaline ashtray. “To prepare, they will need covert agents in place, supplies, plans of destruction. By playing our Radiospiel, we’ll learn the time and place of the invasion. Information invaluable to Himmler. And to our Führer. Ribbentrop is on his way to Paris as we speak.”

“ ‘Radio game.’ I like the sound of that!” Bretz swallowed the last of his pastis. “But the British might know. It’s possible they are playing us at our own game. They could have given us this agent in order to have someone on the inside. She just didn’t go along with the plan.”

“I studied at Cambridge years ago and know a few things about the English,” von Waltz replied. “They’re smart, they fight hard when they have to, they always do their duty—but they have an idealistic sense of ‘fair play’ that never fails to trip them up. And they would never, ever deliberately sacrifice one of their own, even in the name of victory.”

“But we can’t have this agent ‘in hiding’ forever,” Bretz objected. “And to truly use her radio, we’re going to need more information about her network. Specific details, so they don’t begin to suspect anything.”

Von Waltz leaned closer. “I have a spy on the inside—a double agent. My relationship with him goes back to the Spanish Civil War.”

“Ah. And what contacts does this agent have with the English?”

“Through the whimsies of war and his own quite considerable ambitions, he’s risen to a position of critical importance inside English intelligence. He’s the SOE’s roundhouse, through which most vital movements of their spy networks are scheduled. If we protect him and the British activities from any untimely discovery and arrest—keep the police and the Wehrmacht away from the safe houses and the Luftwaffe from their takeoffs and landings, at least as much as possible—he will continue to be extremely valuable to them.” Von Waltz doused his cigar in a small pool of water in the ashtray. “They will grow to trust him more and more.”

“Won’t they get suspicious if their agents start disappearing?”

“We mustn’t be greedy. We’ll pick off only a few at a time, no mass arrests. After all, the more agents he gets home safely, the more confidence the English will have in him. And the more they trust him, the better an agent he’ll be for me. We should follow these spies, see who they meet, find out the locations of the safe houses, and so on. By leaving their networks more or less intact,” von Waltz continued, “we’ll have access to unprecedented intelligence—up to and including the time and place of any Allied landings.”

One of the girls, wearing only a satin robe, poked her head into the salon. “And pierce the heart of the British spy network.” Bretz blew her a kiss. She giggled and left. “But why would your man be so keen to betray the British? After all, we invaded his country.”

“He’s no fan of the Reich, but he loathes Communism even more. He’s appalled at the way the French Communists have joined the Resistance, collaborating with the British. He thinks the Commies are planning on taking over if the Allies win. And he’d rather see his country Fascist than Bolshevik. Besides, the money is very good. He likes the finer things in life.” Von Waltz reached for his cigar. “As we all do.”

“But the agents—they’re not going to confide the details of their missions to this man. What information other than drop-offs and deliveries will he have access to?”

“This is where things become truly wonderful. In addition to smuggling agents in and out of France, he picks up their mail going back to London and various letter drops around Paris and hands it over to the pilots of outgoing flights. He brings it to me first, however, so that I can read and photograph anything of importance. In addition, to arrange a landing, the Allies will need to send their agents materials in advance. The information on maps, blueprints, and drawings can’t be transmitted by radio. It’ll have to be in papers handed off by courier. These pages will ultimately provide the secrets of the invasion.”

“Tell me, who is this mystery man, this double agent?” Bretz was nearly giddy with pastis and curiosity.

“I can only tell you his code name: Gibbon. I chose it specifically—it’s French for ‘friend with a gift.’ ”

Bretz grinned. “Well then, let the Radio Games commence!”

“Come by Avenue Foch with me tonight. I’ll give you a little demonstration.”

“Now?” Bretz protested, grabbing his crotch. “I’ve barely begun!”

“No, after. After, of course!”