Eleanor
London, 1946
“Eleanor.” The Director looked up from his desk. It had been four days since she’d left Zurich. She stood unannounced in the door to his office now, paper in hand. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon. How was your trip to France?”
“In France, I found nothing.”
He leaned back in his chair and reached for his pipe. “Well, that’s too bad. I’m grateful to you for trying, but we always knew it might be a wild goose chase with nothing to come of it after so much time. Hopefully it has at least put some of your questions to rest.”
“I didn’t say nothing came of it,” she interjected. “I said I found nothing in France. But then I had the opportunity to go to Germany and interview Hans Kriegler.”
“Germany.” The Director paused, unlit pipe dangling in midair. “Kriegler’s being tried at Nuremberg, isn’t he? How did you ever manage that?”
“I managed. I was able to speak with him at Dachau, where he was being held, before he was transported. He led me to this.” She held out the document from the vault. “You knew that the Germans had the radio set. And yet you kept broadcasting classified information.”
He took the paper from her. “Eleanor, that’s preposterous!” he blustered, a beat too quickly before reading it. “I’ve never seen this document before in my life.”
She held out her hand. But it wasn’t the return of the paper she was seeking. “The transmission log. Let me see it. And don’t tell me it was lost in the fire,” she added, before he could respond. “I know you kept a copy of your own.” The Director regarded her unflinchingly. Then his expression changed to one of resignation. He turned to the file cabinet behind him, dialed the combination of the safe lock and twisted the handle. The drawer popped open and he handed the thick file to her.
Eleanor thumbed through the pages and pages of transmissions between London and F Section, organized by date. Then she came to it, a copy of the transmission she’d gotten from Kriegler. London had received it after all. It was identical to the paper Kriegler had given her, except for the received stamp—and the second sheet of paper stapled behind it. “Message not authenticated,” the second sheet said, a warning flag from the operator who had received the message. And then a separate notion: “Continue transmissions.” Someone had issued a directive to keep transmitting despite the warning that the message was a fraud. And though she had never seen it in her life, the memorandum had been printed on Eleanor’s own letterhead.
“You kept this from me.”
“I didn’t include you,” he corrected. As if that made a difference. She had kept transmitting, unaware that the concerns she had raised over and over to the Director had in fact been substantiated to SOE by the Germans themselves. But her superiors, the Director and God knew who else, had kept the information from her so that they could keep transmitting. And it had gotten the girls arrested, cost them their lives. She had long suspected something was wrong, that the broadcasts were not authentic. But the notion that her own agency would willingly sacrifice its own people was staggering.
“You knew that if I saw this, I would stop the transmissions altogether. You should have stopped the transmissions. You were broadcasting to the Germans, sensitive information that put all of our agents at risk.”
He stood up. “I had no choice. I was acting on orders.” How many times had she read that in the reports of captured German war criminals, who said they were powerless, that they had no choice but to commit the atrocities by their own hands? Then the Director sat up straighter. “But even if that were not the case, I still would have done it. When we realized that the Germans had the radio, it was an opportunity to feed them information about operations—false information that would redirect their defenses elsewhere ahead of D-Day. And it worked—surely if the Germans hadn’t thought we were amassing forces elsewhere, Allied casualties would have been much worse. If that blasted radio operator hadn’t flagged the message that was supposed to be from Tompkins, it would have kept working. It worked,” he repeated, as if to convince himself.
“Not for my girls,” Eleanor replied sharply. “Not for the twelve who never came home, or for the other agents like Julian who were killed.” The information London had fed to the Germans over the radio had revealed their locations and activities, led directly to their capture.
“Sometimes a few must be sacrificed for the greater good,” he said coldly.
Eleanor was dumbfounded. She had worked for the Director; supported him. The strategic way he approached the difficult work they’d had to do, deploying agents like chess pieces on a board, was one of the things she respected most about him. She had never imagined him to be like this, though: cold, cynical. “This is outrageous. I’m going to Whitehall.”
“And tell them what? It was a covert program, wholly sanctioned. Where do you think authorization came from in the first place?” It had not just been the Director, but the highest levels of government that had approved the plan. She saw then the full extent of the betrayal.
“I’ll go to the newspapers.” Something had to be done.
“Eleanor, have you stopped to think of your own role in the affair? You knew that the transmissions were suspicious. Yet you continued to transmit the information over the same frequencies to the same operator.”
Eleanor was stunned. “You can’t be suggesting…”
“You even sent the message signaling that Julian would be returning to the field. And when the operator said to switch landing fields, you okayed that as well. You sent Julian to his death, Eleanor. You didn’t press harder because you knew on many levels that no matter what, the mission had to go forward.”
“How dare you?” Eleanor felt her cheeks go red with anger. “I never would have done anything to jeopardize Julian—or my girls.”
But the Director continued, “And make no mistake about it. Your name is on all of the outgoing transmissions. If that gets out, the world will know that you are to blame.
“I never wanted it to come to this.” The Director’s voice softened. “I thought it was all in the past when you left SOE. But you couldn’t leave well enough alone. And then that business with Violet’s father. He brought his questions to his MP and they said there was to be a parliamentary inquiry. I sent off the files I could to Washington.”
“And burned the rest,” she said. He did not reply. The truth was almost too awful to believe—the Director had destroyed Norgeby House, the very place they had worked so hard to build, to bury the truth forever. “You sent me off, too,” she added slowly as the realization came to her.
“I kept receiving reports of you asking questions,” he admitted. “You wouldn’t leave it alone. I thought getting you out of London, sending you to look into things in France, would buy time.” He hadn’t counted on her getting to Germany and speaking with Kriegler. But she had, and the things she learned had changed everything.
“So what are we going to do about it?” she asked.
“There is nothing to be done. Parliament will conduct its investigation and find nothing and it will all go away.”
“What do you mean? We have to let the truth be known, tell Parliament.”
“For what, so they can further denigrate the work we did at SOE? They’ve always said we were inconsequential, even damaging, and we are to give them proof to support it? SOE is my legacy and yours, too.” He would do anything to keep that intact. “The truth changes nothing, Eleanor. The girls are gone.”
But to her, the truth had to prevail.
“Then I’ll go myself.” The words were an echo of the threat she had made when she suspected the radios. If she had made good on it then and followed through, some of the girls might be alive today. But she hadn’t. The threat this time was not a hollow one. She had nothing left to lose. “I’ll go to the commission myself.”
“You can’t. It’s your word against mine. Who do you think they’ll believe—a disgruntled former secretary, or the decorated colonel who headed the agency with distinction?” He was right. She just as easily might have betrayed the girls. There was simply no truth to contradict him.
Unless there was a witness. “Kriegler said one of the girls never made it to the concentration camp where the others perished. That she might still be alive. Do you know anything about that?”
An uneasy look crossed the Director’s face. “I received a visit from one of the girls not long after the war. She wanted help expediting a visa to the States. I helped her because it seemed like the right thing to do.”
More likely he was happy to send her as far away as possible. “Which one was it?” Eleanor asked.
“The one you never thought could do the job, oddly enough. And ironically, the one whose transmissions were being faked by the Germans—Marie Roux.”
She brought her hand to her mouth. What Kriegler had told her was true.
“She survived SD interrogation and Fresnes prison. Tough as nails, in the end, and damn lucky.”
Joy surged within Eleanor, but it was quickly replaced by anger. The Director had known and had not told her. “What did you tell her? About the arrests, I mean.”
A look flickered across the Director’s face. “I told her nothing.”
She couldn’t believe anything he said anymore. “Where is she?”
“Leave her alone. Let her move on with her life.”
But Marie was the one person who knew that Eleanor had nothing to do with betraying the girls. She was the only one who could corroborate the truth about what happened to the Vesper circuit. “The address.” She could tell from his expression that he was going to refuse. “Or I will leave here and go directly to Parliament.” She held out her hand.
He started to argue, then turned wearily to the file cabinet behind him. He pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to her. “Eleanor, I’m sorry.” She took it from him, not responding.
Then she tucked the paper in her bag and began the last leg of her journey.
It was almost eight thirty on a Tuesday morning when Eleanor stood in the center of Grand Central, waiting anxiously. Before leaving England, she had wired Marie: “Coming to America and I need your help. Please meet me at the information kiosk in Grand Central on February 12 at 8:30 a.m.”
Eleanor stood uncertainly in the center of the station now, suitcase in hand. The flight had been a hot, noisy affair, making stops in Shannon, Gander and Boston before finally reaching New York. She’d arrived by plane the previous night and taken a room by the airport. As the hands on the clock reached half past eight, she looked around anxiously. She had arranged the neutral meeting point rather than going to the address the Director had given her, fearing it would be too much.
Five minutes passed, then ten. Why hadn’t Marie shown? Had she not received the message? The message the Director had given her might have been outdated or wrong. Or perhaps she was angry at Eleanor for what she thought Eleanor had done, and was refusing to meet her at all.
Eleanor set down her suitcase, which had grown heavy, beneath a bench. She looked around the station, contemplating her options. There was a message board at the side of the round information kiosk, little bits of paper stuck to it. She walked closer. There were pictures of missing soldiers and refugees from families seeking information. There were notes, too, about meetings or missed meetings. She scanned the board, but did not see anything addressed to her.
She stepped away from the message board, her heart sinking. It was nearly nine, well past the time she had asked Marie to meet her. There could be only one conclusion: Marie was not coming.
She had to get to Marie. Eleanor reached into her purse and pulled out the slip of paper the Director had given her with Marie’s address, an apartment in Brooklyn. She could go there and ring the bell. But what if Marie didn’t want to see her? When she had learned Marie was alive, it was hope against everything she had known. To Eleanor, the notion that Marie was alive and unwilling to see or forgive her was unbearable.
For a minute she looked around the station, wanting to give up. If Marie wouldn’t even see her, what point was there in going on?
Then she squared her shoulders, steeling herself. She had to see Marie and explain what really happened. This was about more than Marie’s feelings or forgiveness; she needed Marie to help prove what had really happened during the war. With Marie’s help, they could bring the truth to light about the betrayal that had killed so many of her girls.
She would go to Marie’s flat, Eleanor decided, and insist that she listen. She started across the station.
Outside the station, she paused to get her bearings. She looked at the passersby, wanting to ask someone for directions. She approached a group of commuters waiting near a bus stop. “Excuse me,” she said to a man who was reading the paper. But he did not seem to hear. As she turned to find someone else, she spied a phone booth at the corner. Perhaps the operator might have a number for Marie.
Eleanor crossed the street to the phone booth. Then she faltered; perhaps it was best just to go find Marie, rather than calling and giving her a chance to say no. She stood indecisively, caught between the phone booth and the bus station. As she turned back toward the bus station, something across the street caught her eye. A flash of blond hair above a burgundy print scarf, like the one Marie had worn the first day she came to Norgeby House.
She had come after all! Eleanor’s heart began to pound. “Marie!” Eleanor called, starting back across the street. The woman started to turn around and Eleanor stepped hopefully toward her. There was a loud honking of a car’s horn, which seemed to grow to a roar, and Eleanor turned, too late, to see the vehicle barreling toward her. She raised her hands in a protective gesture. She heard a deafening screech of the brakes, felt an explosion of white pain.
And then she knew no more.