OCTOBER 24, 1941
LYON, FRANCE
AFTERNOON
The restless woman with one leg senses trouble.
British secret agent Virginia Hall wakes up knowing she needs to make a decision. She lies in her small room at the Grand Nouvel Hotel, just off the centre ville.
Lyon is gray. Plane trees along the Rhône River shed their leaves. It is the season for switching from sweaters to jackets and waiting for the inevitable first snowfall.
Hall has been in France seven weeks. Rather than parachute, like other operatives, she took advantage of her American nationality to travel by ship to Lisbon, then by train into France. The United States is not at war with Germany, so her movements are not heavily restricted. Hall’s cover is that of a journalist for the New York Post, filing stories from Vichy France. She dresses down to avoid being conspicuous, wearing workingwoman’s tweed and heavy-soled shoes, covering her wooden prosthesis with thick stockings. Her official papers—forged back in London—give her name as “Brigitte LeContre.”
And she is lonely.
The Special Operation Executive has become successful at landing agents in France. So while a great number of men have been dropped in by parachute, the nature of Hall’s work is solitary. She is alone and exposed. Human connection comes when she stops off for a glass of wine at the hotel bar or dinner at a nearby Greek-owned restaurant where the smitten owner feeds her black-market food and refuses to accept her ration coupons. Hall is setting up her own network—code name Heckler—of informants and saboteurs, but that is still a work in progress. Hall even lacks a radio operator to help her communicate with London.
This is the life of a secret agent.
Hall knows this reality and accepts it rather than wallowing in fear or self-pity.
On this particular day, solitude is also a choice. Right now, Virginia Hall could be spending Friday night with a group of SOE agents two hundred miles south in Marseilles. Radio operator Gilbert Turck, code-named Christophe, has invited all agents in southern France to meet at a safe house on the edge of town known as the Villa des Bois—heavy gate, lush garden, the privacy of a suburban location. This is a fine opportunity for Hall to enjoy a smidgeon of companionship in the increasingly volatile world of Fortress Europe.
Tonight is Friday. A weekend by the Mediterranean, particularly under the guise of writing a travel story for the Post, would be a great getaway from Lyon, a most dour city in central France now full of starving refugees. At the very least, Hall could feel the sun on her face.
This should be an easy decision, but something is not right.
Christophe is known to have hit the ground hard when he parachuted into France two months ago. Knocked unconscious, he was discovered by Vichy authorities and taken to jail. But for reasons unknown, Christophe was released.
Then, two weeks ago, during another parachute drop, the plane was forced to circle at low altitude for half an hour as the pilot searched for the drop zone. The “Corsican Mission,” as the four agents were known, finally managed to jump. Three operatives landed successfully but Lieutenant Daniel Turberville, code-named Diviner, was blown far off course. His head struck a rock upon landing. Once again, the police found an unconscious SOE operative and took him to prison. But as Turberville was taken into custody, his captors found a map leading to a safe house in Marseilles—Villa des Bois.*
Hall does not know about the map, nor that police can pinpoint the villa’s location. There’s just something strange about inviting every single SOE operative in southern France to the same location at the same time.
Virginia Hall trusts her gut—and something in her gut is telling her not to go to Marseille.
Vichy Police have a name for the Villa des Bois: the “mousetrap.”
Feeling just as lonely and exposed as Virginia Hall, SOE agents flock to Marseille. One by one, they pull back the iron gate and knock on the door of Villa des Bois, hoping to see a friend. Maybe someone they knew from training.
Instead, they are grabbed by the waiting police. Each man is arrested. This group constitutes all the “piano players”—wireless operators—in southern France.
Charged with actions contrary to the security of Vichy France, the ten men are shipped to Beleyme Prison, two hundred miles west, in Périgueux. There, torture and questioning leads to more arrests.
The official SOE report calls the arrests a “clean sweep of the British organizers in the occupied zone.”
In all of France, just one SOE agent remains. As official documents will note, there is “little left in the field except Miss Virginia Hall.”
And, much to London’s surprise, that is enough.