As October 1942 gave way to November, Fourcade’s nerves were stretched tight. She was doing her best to keep up with MI6’s incessant demands for intelligence while having to deal with Bla’s capture and execution and Germany’s crackdown against the resistance in the free zone. Rumors were spreading that German troops were on the verge of occupying all of France. Adding to the strain, MI6 had just catapulted her and Alliance into the midst of a political hornet’s nest involving the Allies’ top-secret planning for an invasion of North Africa.

Although she had no idea of its meaning, Fourcade had received the first hint of the coming operation six months earlier, when her daughter was convalescing at the clinic in Toulouse. Working one night by the dim light of the lamp in Béatrice’s room, she was deciphering the latest messages from MI6 brought to her by a courier from Alliance headquarters. She was puzzled by the last one she read. Sent to her by Eddie Keyser and marked “strictly confidential,” it noted the recent escape of a top French general from a German prison. Keyser wanted Fourcade to contact the general, who was believed to be in Lyon, to see if he would serve his country again.

The subject of Eddie Keyser’s inquiry was General Henri Giraud, the highest-ranking French officer captured by the Germans during the 1940 fighting in France. Taken prisoner when his headquarters was overrun during the third week of the Nazi blitzkrieg, Giraud had been jailed at Koenigstein fortress, on the banks of the Elbe River near Dresden. One of the largest hilltop fortifications in Europe, Koenigstein was known as the Saxon Bastille.

In the early hours of April 17, 1942, the sixty-three-year-old Giraud had lowered himself down a sixty-foot rope in an extraordinary escape engineered by anti-German military intelligence agents in Vichy. They spirited Giraud out of Germany, through Switzerland, and into the free zone. An infuriated Hitler demanded his return, and Pierre Laval, who had just taken over again as head of the Vichy government, insisted that Giraud must give himself up to the Germans. But Marshal Pétain, to whom Giraud had sworn his allegiance, would not hear of handing the general over. Laval did not dare to arrest Giraud on his own, knowing that the French armed forces would revolt if he tried. Although Giraud and his family were kept under police surveillance, he led a relatively unrestricted life near Lyon, making clear his opposition to German occupation and the need to combat it.

From the moment she read Keyser’s cryptic message about Giraud, Fourcade had misgivings about the motive behind it. Why were she and Alliance being asked to get involved in this? Clearly, MI6 officials had no intention of asking Giraud to gather intelligence for them. What, then, did the British government want from the general? Was Churchill thinking of setting up a rival to Charles de Gaulle?

Since the fall of 1940, Fourcade had resolutely avoided getting involved in issues relating to French politics, whether inside or outside the country. As she saw it, Alliance’s only mission was to collect information about the German military presence in France. While she supported the efforts of de Gaulle and the Free French, her first loyalty was to MI6. She wanted no part of the rivalries and feuds bedeviling other French resistance networks or the constant, often violent intrigues and power struggles raging at the Free French headquarters in London.

As it happened, her suspicions about the motivation behind the British government’s interest in Giraud proved to be correct. As a result of pressure from President Roosevelt, Churchill was reluctantly seeking another French general to work with the Allies in helping them win over Vichy French forces in North Africa.

In the spring of 1942, just four months after the United States entered the war, its military leaders had joined their British colleagues in preparing for the Allies’ first joint offensive against Germany. U.S. generals had pushed for an invasion of the Continent, but the British protested that Anglo-American forces were not ready for such a high-risk campaign. The two sides finally compromised on an alternative proposed by the British—an amphibious invasion of North Africa, to take place in November.

From the beginning, however, FDR had been adamant that de Gaulle and the Free French must have no involvement in either planning or carrying out the attack. Filled with disdain for both the French general and his country, the president had little understanding of the complexity of the situation in France and scant sympathy for its citizens. All he knew or cared about was that France had failed the Allied cause by capitulating to Germany. As for de Gaulle himself, Roosevelt considered him insignificant and absurd, a British puppet with grandiose ambitions.

It didn’t matter to Roosevelt that by late 1942, the Free French had recruited an army of more than a hundred thousand men, an air force exceeding a thousand pilots and crew, several dozen ships, and support from most resistance leaders in France. Roosevelt informed Churchill that the general and his followers “must be given no role in the liberation and governance of North Africa or France” and insisted that de Gaulle not even be told of the upcoming attack.

The president was far more cordial to Pétain and his government; unlike Britain, the United States had formally recognized Vichy as the legitimate government of France almost immediately after the country’s capitulation to Germany. Convinced that America was popular with Vichy, Roosevelt told Churchill he was confident that Vichy troops in North Africa would put up little or no resistance to the landings as long as U.S. soldiers took the lead and Free French troops were nowhere to be seen.

Churchill, for his part, was faced with an agonizing dilemma. In June 1940, he had made a solemn pledge to support de Gaulle, and he shrank from having to go back on his word. But he desperately needed Roosevelt and the United States to provide the manpower and industrial strength necessary for Britain to survive and, in tandem with Britain and the Soviet Union, to eventually win the war. Churchill considered himself FDR’s lieutenant and told his staff that “nothing must stand in the way of his friendship for the President on which so much depended.” The British ended up handing over all initiative for the invasion to the Americans.

To take charge of Vichy forces in North Africa once the attack occurred, U.S. officials wanted a French general who was anti-Gaullist but also anti-German and untainted by Vichy’s collaboration with the Reich. Giraud, who outranked de Gaulle by two stars, seemed the perfect solution. Unlike many of his military colleagues in Vichy, he strongly believed that Germany was going to lose the war and that Vichy must ally itself with the Americans and reenter the conflict. The tall mustachioed general, who had distinguished himself in both world wars, was known for his courage and integrity. His remarkable escape from the Koenigstein fortress had been heavily publicized in newspapers around the world and had added even more luster to his already notable name.

Having designated Giraud as commander of French forces in North Africa, the Americans instructed the British to sound him out about the job and then find a way to smuggle him out of France. MI6, which was handed both tasks, turned to Alliance—its most effective French spy network—to carry them out. The selection of the network for this delicate, controversial mission showed how vital Alliance was to the British war effort. But it also thrust Fourcade and her agents into uncharted territory: They had never before been involved in this kind of operation. Although she continued to have grave doubts, she did what MI6 asked, later writing that it was not her job to think. Her job was to help Giraud return to the fight against the Germans.

She and Faye decided to send one of their top agents—Maurice de MacMahon, the Duke of Magenta—as their envoy to Giraud. The meeting between the two in Lyon, however, proved to be highly problematic. The general told the duke that while Giraud was willing to cooperate with the Americans, he was anti-British and had no interest in going to London. At the same time, though, he was prepared to accept British aid to help him achieve his primary goal: to become the leader of all resistance movements in occupied Europe. Giraud would consider leading French forces in North Africa, he said, as long as the invasion there was coordinated with an attack in France. If the Allies supplied him with enough arms and equipment, he added, he could lead France’s armed forces to victory over Germany, accompanied by armed rebellions in other occupied countries, including Holland and Norway.

Marie-Madeleine was dumbfounded by Giraud’s presumption. How could he possibly believe he could take charge of all of Europe’s resistance movements from inside France? It was hard enough, as she knew from bitter experience, to lead a single network in one’s own country. She also knew that French resisters would refuse to accept the leadership of a man like Giraud, who had never had any dealings with the resistance up to that point and who had pledged his loyalty to Pétain and Vichy. Resistance members who had already taken a political stand had, for the most part, thrown their support behind de Gaulle and the Free French. Courageous as Giraud obviously was, he was also clearly out of touch with reality, political and otherwise. One resistance leader later called him “idiotically self important.” Another labeled him “delusional.”

Knowing that British officials would be as nonplussed by Giraud’s quixotic plans as she had been, she sent a brief, considerably watered-down version of his demands to Eddie Keyser. She told Keyser that Giraud wanted to stay in France for the moment and play a leading role in the resistance there.

Marie-Madeleine heard nothing more about Giraud until late September, when Léon Faye returned by Lysander from his monthlong stay in London. During his time away, he had also made a brief trip to Algiers. From various sources, British and French, he had learned that the Allied invasion of North Africa was imminent and that planning was already well under way to spirit Giraud out of France. American officials had met with a representative of the general and promised him that Giraud would be given an important role in the invasion if he could persuade French commanders in North Africa not to oppose the Allied landings. While agreeing to work with U.S. forces, Giraud, according to Faye, was apparently still trying to induce the Americans to combine the attack on North Africa with a simultaneous landing on the French Mediterranean coast.

Although such a demand was obviously unacceptable, the Americans apparently believed they could bend Giraud to their will. They told the British to proceed with arrangements to retrieve the general from the south of France and bring him to Gibraltar, the forward-planning headquarters for what would be called Operation Torch. Instead of a Lysander, a submarine would be dispatched to help him escape. The submarine and its crew would be British, but the anti-British Giraud would not know that. Instead, he was to be informed by officials in London that the sub was American.

Alliance was put in charge of finding a secure embarkation site on the Côte d’Azur, as well as smuggling Giraud out of Lyon from under the noses of his Vichy and German watchers and transporting him to a safe house to await the submarine’s arrival. Marie-Madeleine chose Colonel Charles Bernis, head of the network’s Nice sector, and Pierre Dallas, chief of the Avia team, to handle the logistics of the escape, which the British christened Operation Minerva.

After scouting several possible embarkation locales on the French coast, Bernis recommended Le Lavandou, the village sixty miles west of Marseille where Marie-Madeleine had briefly taken refuge a few months before. The rocky, wooded terrain there, overlooking the sea, was quiet and secluded, with little sign of German or Vichy police activity. A local fisherman who was sympathetic to Alliance had agreed to take Giraud and his party from the coast out to sea to rendezvous with the submarine. Marguerite Brouillet’s villa, where Marie-Madeleine had stayed, would be used to shelter the general and his retinue until the vessel came.

On November 1, Marie-Madeleine was notified that Operation Minerva must begin no later than November 4. Over the next three days, a flood of coded messages flew back and forth between London and Alliance headquarters in Marseille. Marie-Madeleine was uncomfortably aware of how dangerous these frequent, lengthy radio transmissions were to the safety of her network. With German radio-detecting vans and cars on the prowl in and around Marseille, it was essential to keep transmissions short and to a minimum. But when one was working out the details of a mission as complicated as the Giraud escape turned out to be, it was virtually impossible to do so.

MI6 informed Marie-Madeleine that Giraud would be picked up by HMS Seraph, commanded by the Royal Navy’s Lieutenant Commander William Jewell. Giraud, however, would be told that the British sub was actually the USS Seraph, under the command of U.S. Navy Captain Jerauld Wright, who would greet Giraud as he boarded. As part of the charade, the Seraph’s forty-man British crew would pretend to be Americans as well. Once the submarine was several miles out to sea, Giraud would be transferred to a seaplane that would fly him directly to Gibraltar to meet with U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the commander of the North Africa invasion.

Two days before the Seraph was to arrive, Faye showed up at La Pinède with disconcerting news: Giraud had just told him that one submarine was not enough. He was now asking that a second one also be dispatched, to pick up a number of other French army generals from Vichy whom he had urged to accompany him to North Africa.

Marie-Madeleine couldn’t believe it. This escape plan had already put her network and its operations in jeopardy, and now Giraud was making matters worse with his ridiculous new demand. She wasn’t running a public transportation company, she exclaimed to Faye. Although she would do everything possible to smuggle out Giraud, the other generals would have to fend for themselves.

After calming down, she reluctantly agreed to pass on Giraud’s request to the British, although she was convinced that no other high-ranking Vichy officers would break ranks and join the Allies. Just in case they didn’t, she said, she wanted several Alliance agents who needed to be evacuated, among them Jean Boutron and her brother, Jacques, to be ready to board the submarine in the generals’ stead.

The British agreed to the second submarine, and plans for Operation Minerva seemed back on track. Then on November 3, Giraud dropped another bombshell. He had changed his mind, he told Faye. He’d decided not to leave France after all; instead, he would take control of the country’s resistance from there. When Faye told her of this latest turn of events, Marie-Madeleine exploded with rage.

She knew that the noose was already tightening around Alliance. In addition to the threat posed by the direction-finding vans, French and German police had somehow learned of Giraud’s planned escape and were searching the coast for the general and those helping him. Faye urged her to calm down, assuring her that Giraud would change his mind again and decide to go. Faye’s prediction proved correct. Late that night, Marie-Madeleine received confirmation from Giraud’s representative that Operation Minerva was on track once more.

Early the following morning, she left Marseille with Monique Bontinck and several other headquarters staffers. She was determined that the network should not suffer because of the venture. If the escape effort failed, she wanted to make sure she was still free to oversee Alliance’s continued operations. She and the others spent the next two days at the headquarters of the network’s Toulouse sector.

With Faye taking her place at Le Lavandou, the stage was set for that night’s embarkation attempt. Their nerves on edge, Faye, Colonel Bernis, Pierre Dallas, and the rest of Alliance’s escape team spent the day at Marguerite Brouillet’s villa awaiting the arrival of Giraud and his party. Brouillet had prepared a lavish meal for the general, but by dinnertime, there was still no sign of him, and the food went cold. Finally, at about ten o’clock, two cars arrived at the villa, and Giraud, his son, and several aides stepped out.

After Brouillet reheated the food and everyone sat down to eat, Faye was pulled away from the table by an incoming message from London. The submarine, it appeared, might not arrive in time that evening. If it didn’t, another attempt would be made the following night—November 5.

While Giraud and his party were escorted to their rooms, the sixty-three-year-old Bernis and twenty-six-year-old Dallas scrambled down to the beach and for several hours used flashlights to send out prearranged signals to the submarine, scanning the horizon in vain for a response. Early the next morning, they gave up their watch and returned to the villa for a couple of hours of sleep before going back to the shore at dawn. The sea had grown considerably choppier, but the conditions were still good enough, they thought, for the embarkation to proceed that night.

As the hours dragged by, a strong wind began howling outside the villa, and the Alliance team’s anxiety mounted, reaching sky-high levels when the fisherman who was to take Giraud from the coast to the submarine arrived. He said that at the moment, the wind was too gusty for him to take his boat out of the harbor, and if the gusts continued, the operation would have to be canceled.

A fierce debate broke out. Faye insisted that an attempt must be made, regardless of the weather, while Giraud’s chief aide said that the decision must be left up to the fisherman. The general himself remarked that he was willing to take any risk necessary. Bernis, who was equally worried about the weather conditions and the security threat posed by Giraud’s presence at Lavandou, settled the matter, declaring that the operation would proceed as planned if the boat could make it through the harbor entrance.

Near midnight, the wind began to die down. Giraud’s son and aides left with the fisherman to help him load the party’s luggage into his boat and get it in the water. Giraud and the Alliance team, meanwhile, set out on foot toward a rocky headland overlooking the sea. When they reached the headland, Pierre Dallas hurried to its tip and flashed a signal meaning “wait” to the submarine that he hoped was out there in the inky darkness.

Giraud and the others clambered down a narrow path to the beach. The fishing boat soon came alongside and took Giraud and Dallas on board. Standing in the bow, Dallas flashed a prearranged letter signal out to sea. After a few heart-stopping seconds, a light flashed back with the correct letter of response. A muffled cheer went up from those in the boat and on the shore. They could barely make out the dark mass of the Seraph, which had surfaced a few hundred yards away.

The rescue’s only hitch came when Giraud tumbled into the water while trying to board the Seraph from the fishing boat, which was pitching and rolling in the ocean swells. His son and aides immediately fished him out, and he climbed aboard the sub with only minor injuries to his pride and the herringbone suit he was wearing. The American naval officer posing as the captain showed him to the captain’s quarters, where he fell asleep without ever noticing the pronounced British accents of the crew.

Later that morning, an RAF seaplane rendezvoused with the Seraph in the Mediterranean, landing about thirty yards from the submarine. The transfer of Giraud and his retinue—from sub to rubber dinghy to plane—took more than an hour. Finally, after a bumpy takeoff in an increasingly rough sea, the seaplane flew west to Gibraltar, landing three hours later. Giraud was immediately whisked away for a meeting with General Eisenhower.

Meanwhile, after delivering the general to the Seraph, the fisherman and Pierre Dallas returned to shore, met by cheers and embraces from Faye, Bernis, and the rest of the embarkation team. The Alliance men all had mixed emotions: jubilation over their successful execution of an exceedingly difficult operation coupled with a lingering sense of regret that as former military officers, they were unable to emulate Giraud and return to actual combat against the enemy.

But they had little time to dwell on such things. It was time to get back to work. Another submarine was arriving in less than forty-eight hours.