The Spark of Resistance Read online

  The Spark of Resistance

  Women Spies in WWII

  Kit Sergeant

  Also by Kit Sergeant

  Historical Fiction:

  355: The Women of Washington’s Spy Ring

  Underground: Traitors and Spies in the Civil War

  L’Agent Double: Spies and Martyrs in the Great War

  Be sure to join my mailing list at www.kitsergeant.com to be the first to know when my newest Women Spies book is available!

  Contemporary Women’s Fiction:

  Thrown for a Curve

  What It Is

  Copyright © 2020 by Kit Sergeant

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Although this book is based on real events and features historical figures, it is a work of fiction.

  This book is dedicated to all of the women who lived during the Second World War and whose talents and sacrifices are known or unknown, but especially to the real-life women upon whom these characters are based.

  And to Norman Fanter, Sr, Harvey Feeley, Charles “Chuck” Pfeifer, and Marin Sergeant: thank you for helping keep the world free, especially for your great-grandchildren, my beloved Thompson and Belle.

  Glossary of Terms

  Abwehr: German Military Intelligence

  Boches: a derogatory term for Germans

  FANY: First Aid Nursing Yeomanry; members of the all-female charity often worked for the SOE

  Feldwebel: a German military rank, approximately equivalent to a sergeant

  F Section of the SOE: The French Section of the British Special Operations Executive

  Gestapo: Nazi Secret Police

  Halifax: a bomber, mostly used for dropping supplies and parachuting agents

  Hudson: A Lockheed light bomber, used for reconnaissance and agent pick-ups

  Huns: another derogatory term for Germans

  Lysander: another bomber, also used for reconnaissance and agent pick-ups

  MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service

  Wehrmacht: the German armed forces

  Whitley: another bomber, also used for reconnaissance and agent pick-ups

  Prologue

  May 1945

  Vera Atkins barely recognized the woman standing alone on a platform at Euston railway station. She was clad in a bedraggled coat, unusually thick for this time of year, that hung too loosely on her frail figure. “Yvonne?”

  The woman turned. At only eighteen, she had been one of the youngest hired, and still bore the look of a child, though now a starved one with dark circles around her eyes and matted blonde hair.

  Miss Atkins had the mind to hug her, but was afraid she’d either break the girl’s bones or Yvonne would collapse under the weight of her former boss’s arms.

  “I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” Miss Atkins said instead. “Was your journey all right?”

  Yvonne attempted a smile. “As good as could be expected.”

  Pleased as Miss Atkins was to see Yvonne, her thoughts were eclipsed by one, niggling inquiry. She voiced it after they had settled into the car, Miss Atkins sitting as straight as always, Yvonne’s head leaning against the seat. “What do you know of the other girls?”

  Yvonne’s eyes flew open. “The other girls?”

  “Yes. Who else was with you?”

  Yvonne closed her eyes again, scrunching her face in recollection. “I saw Alice at Ravensbrück, and they said there was another British woman there, Lise, but she was in solitary confinement and I never got a good look at her face. And I encountered Louise, Nadine, and Ambroise at Saarbrücken when I was taken there, temporarily. I remember going into a prison hut and seeing them, and thinking, ‘The whole women’s branch of F Section is here.’”

  Miss Atkins mentally matched the code names with the real identities of her girls: Didi Nearne, Odette Sansom, Violette Szabo, Lilian Rolfe, and Denise Bloch. Nearly forty women had gone into the line of fire, and most of them, except Yvonne, were still missing in action. “I’ve been looking into it, but I was notified that there had been no British females held at any concentration camp.”

  Yvonne turned to her. “I never told them I was a British agent. I thought I would have a lighter punishment if they believed I was French. But I knew that Louise, Nadine, and Ambroise felt differently.” She shook her head sadly. “They were moved out of Torgau the night before I was.”

  “And what do you think became of them?”

  “I don’t know,” was Yvonne’s terse reply. “I’d heard they were brought back to Ravensbrück, same as me, but I never saw them again.”

  They arrived at Yvonne’s father’s house. Miss Atkins reached out, as though to touch her former employee’s tangled curls, but thought better of it. She folded her hands across her lap. “Don’t worry,” she told Yvonne as the driver helped her out of the car. “I will find them.”

  Chapter 1

  Mathilde

  He moved through the crowded restaurant with the lithe limbs of a Gypsy. Indeed, his eyes were as black as a Roma, though his hair was styled like a Frenchman’s.

  Those dark eyes now focused on Mathilde. “Do you mind if I sit here?” He did a good imitation of a Parisian accent, but she could detect a hint of something else.

  “Not at all.” Jeanne leaned forward, the décolletage of her velvet top dipping low. She patted her impeccably coiffed hair. “And you are?”

  “Armand Borni.” He glanced over at Mathilde, as if to weigh whether or not his perfectly French name fooled her.

  Mathilde stretched her lips into a thin smile. It was one of those dull evenings at La Frégate, the kind when she questioned just what she was doing there. Jeanne had requested their usual seat near the entrance, the better to watch the comings and goings of wealthy Parisians attempting to escape the gloom of their lives under the Occupation.

  The undoubtedly fictitious Armand arranged his napkin on his lap. He met Mathilde’s eyes for a split second before hers dropped, focusing on his teeth, which, like his accent, were obviously fake. She tucked a strand of her own unruly dark hair back behind her ear as she caught sight of a pair of German officers entering the restaurant.

  The crowd immediately fell into a palpable hush, the way Mathilde’s classmates used to at boarding school whenever the subject of their gossip came into earshot.

  “Feldwebel Müller,” Monsieur Durand, the owner, rushed over to the newcomers. “How good of you to come.” He reached out to pump the German officer’s hand a few times before turning to his companion and repeating the gesture.

  Armand’s face showed the tiniest frown before it returned to its carefully staged neutral expression.

  Jeanne looked up. “It’s Feldwebel Müller and Leutnant Fischer again. They come here every Friday night.”

  Mathilde, still unversed in the Wehrmacht ranking system, glowered as Monsieur Durand led the men to his best table, where an older couple was already seated. The restaurant owner gestured for a passing waiter to assist in moving the couple. “Those Nazis must be pretty important for Durand to oust the Bergers from their table.”

  “Of course they’re important,” Jeanne responded pointedly. “Even though they are low-ranking officers, if La Frégate becomes part of the Gaststätten für Reichsdeutsche, Monsieur Durand will probably get a pay raise.”

  “What is the Gaststätten für Reichsdeutsche?” Mathilde’s tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar German words.

  “It means ‘restaurants for the German Reich.’ My husband’s printing house was told to ma
ke pamphlets for the visiting German soldiers. They have lists of all the vendors promising accommodations for them, even...” Jeanne leaned forward to whisper, “brothels.” She sat back and took a sip of wine. “Any business in the pamphlet gets special treatment and won’t be subject to rationing.” Her voice dropped once more. “Not to mention Durand’s mother-in-law is half-Jewish. He probably hopes to work his connections so she doesn’t get deported.”

  Mathilde, never the type to conceal her emotions, shuddered. It wasn’t enough to see the grayish-green suited soldiers marching around her beloved city. The notion of watching them ravage a meal in her favorite restaurant made her sick to her stomach. “I don’t understand how we let them into Paris so easily in the first place, and now here we are, catering to their every whim.”

  “What do you mean?” Jeanne asked. “You are not wishing that we are still fighting them, are you?”

  Mathilde sighed. “No. What was to be done was done. But I still hate that they are here. I cannot stand to see the swastika flying over the Eiffel Tower.”

  Throughout the women’s conversation, their new guest had remained silent, but chose that moment to speak up. “You cannot just hate the Germans.”

  “What do you mean?” Mathilde asked, turning toward him.

  He laughed. “I’ve only known you for a few minutes, but even I can see that you deal in absolutes. You cannot simply hate them, you must despise them with every thread of your veins.”

  She put a manicured finger to her lips as she glanced at the oblivious Germans across the room, indulging in a steak meal even though today had been declared a meatless day. “Why leave anything half-finished? If one is to hate, one must do it fully.”

  Armand’s expression deepened for a brief moment before he dug into his salad, stabbing at a piece of lettuce with more force than necessary.

  “There are ways, you know,” Armand’s statement as they left the restaurant was carefully casual.

  “Ways to what?” Mathilde asked, her eyes on Jeanne, who was several steps away, trying to wave down a cab.

  “Defeat the Nazis.”

  “I’m not sure if you know this, but our soldiers refused to fight them here.” Mathilde spoke deliberately slowly, as though Armand were half-deaf, not concealing the fact she recognized he was a foreigner. “We signed a peace treaty that resulted in our soldiers being captured as prisoners of war. And now they’ve taken over our city and shame us every way they can.” She nodded toward a nearby placard that had been printed in German above the old street sign. Because of the blackout, the streetlights remained unlit and the French sign was barely visible, but the black-lettered words on the German one were quite legible, though unpronounceable. As bulky and awkward as a swastika, Mathilde thought. As unwelcome as the Germans themselves.

  “I am well aware of Paris’s plight,” Armand replied. He leaned in closer, his voice low. “What would you think if I told you we could establish communication with London to pass on our own propaganda? To encourage our compatriots to challenge the Germans any way they can?”

  Mathilde’s mouth dropped open.

  Armand glanced at Jeanne’s back. “I cannot say anything else here. There are spies everywhere. But not the right kind.”

  Jeanne finally succeeded in her task and turned to Mathilde as the cab stopped.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Jeanne demanded. “Curfew is in half an hour.” They all looked at their watches. Mathilde had once thought time was beyond being owned, but the Germans had even taken control of the city’s clocks and turned them all to Berlin time, two hours ahead of Paris. As a result it seemed even the sun was reluctant to confront Hitler; with winter looming, it set earlier and earlier in the evening, shrouding the already-dispirited city in even more darkness.

  Armand shut his pocket watch with an audible click as Mathilde waved her friend along.

  “Come to my apartment,” Mathilde said once Jeanne’s cab had pulled away. She wrapped her thin fingers around Armand’s and led him down the street.

  “I know nothing of espionage,” she told him when he was comfortably seated on her couch.

  “But you know France… much more than an exiled Pole.”

  Mathilde nodded to herself as she fixed them chicory coffee. “You’re Polish. What happened to make you hate the Germans so much?”

  He laughed. “Besides being from Poland?” His tone dropped as Mathilde sat beside him. “I was a fighter pilot before I was taken prisoner by the Nazis. They sent me to a POW camp.”

  Mathilde’s eyes widened. “Did they torture you?”

  “I managed to escape before they could do their worst. A widow hid me in her house and then gave me her husband’s papers.” His voice grew hoarse. “But my brother is somewhere in one of those camps. And my parents are still in Poland.” He put his hand over hers. “You have to help me. I will not accept that Poland is defeated.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I think the same of France. And now that the occupiers refuse to hire me as a nurse, I have more time on my hands.”

  His face hardened. “I should warn you that this work will be extremely dangerous—”

  “I don’t mind the risk,” Mathilde interrupted. “As you said, I do know people in most parts of the country, especially in the Free Zone.” This included her husband, but she of course made no mention of him.

  He took on a dreamy look. “Can you imagine you and I plotting against the Germans? You’d become the Mata Hari of the Second World War.”

  “Mata Hari? Didn’t she betray her own country?”

  He laughed and Mathilde couldn’t help but smile. She paused to mull over what Armand was proposing. In what he would probably claim was her characteristic, all-in way, she decided to be the best spy the Allies had. “If we are to be working together, I suppose I should know your real name.” She said it both out of curiosity and as a test, to see if he trusted her fully.

  He did not hesitate. “Roman Czerniawski.”

  It was her turn to laugh. “That’s quite a mouthful. I shall call you ‘Toto.’”

  “Toto? As in the dog in the Wizard of Oz?”

  “Yes.” She touched his arm. “As in my dependable sidekick.”

  “Oh, so now I’m your sidekick? It was my idea in the first place.”

  She shrugged. “You’re cute, with big brown eyes just like Toto.”

  “What’s your full name?”

  “Mathilde Lily Carré.”

  He put his hand on her knee. “I think Lily suits you better than Mathilde. I’m going to call you Lily from now on.”

  She bestowed her most seductive smile on him, thinking he wouldn’t be the first man to refer to her by that particular name.

  Chapter 2

  Odette

  The gray-haired gentleman took a sip from his teacup before asking, “Tell me, Mrs. Sansom, how did you come to have those pictures of Calais’s beaches?”

  “Were they helpful? I’ve been wanting so badly to do something for the war effort, so when I heard that the Royal Navy was requesting pictures of the French coast, I sent them in right away.” Odette frowned. “I know they were just panoramics of my brother and I when we were growing up, but—”

  “Oh, they will work quite well. I take it you were born in France?”

  “Yes. I moved to England when I got married, but I grew up in Amiens, and my mother is still there, suffering under German rule. My father was a banker, but he died at Verdun in the Great War.”

  Major Guthrie cleared his throat. “As did many. At that time, we thought it would be the war to end all wars, but now, with the Nazis…” He trailed off, appearing at a loss for words, the way Englishmen often were when the subject of Hitler was brought up.

  “If it would help, I could draw you a picture of the Amiens village square.”

  He seemed relieved at the digression. “I think we probably have one in our files.” He set his teacup down before clearing his throat again. “Mrs. Sansom, I believe that your French
background might be quite useful to the War Office.”

  She sat back. “The War Office? What would the War Office want with me?”

  “We need people who are familiar with France, and who speak the language, of course.”

  After a moment’s thought, she replied, “I do want to help as much as I can, but I have three young girls, and my husband, Roy, is fighting on the continent.” Major Guthrie’s face fell, so she continued, “Perhaps I could do some translating for you? Or house soldiers?”

  “Yes.” He attempted a wan smile. “Raising three children on your own is quite a large undertaking. But I would like to pass your name on. As you said, we might have some part-time work for you.”

  “Of course.”

  It wasn’t until she got back to Somerset that she realized Major Guthrie had neglected to return her photographs.

  A few weeks later, Odette was sitting in a lounge chair, taking in the pleasant country sun when her youngest daughter, Marianne, dumped a packet on her lap. “Here’s the mail, Mummy.” Marianne waved an opened envelope in the air.

  As it fluttered, Odette caught sight of a red cross printed at the top. “What’s that?” she asked, her heart beginning to race. What if Roy was hurt? The prospect of losing her husband didn’t fill her with as much fear as one might expect. Their relationship had been strained long before he went off to war, and she had more than proven herself capable of being the sole provider of care for her children. Still, she’d hate to have to tell her daughters that their father had been wounded… or, worse yet, killed.