It was a short drive to the Gestapo Headquarters, but a long way from the Paris Noor knew. Four guards shoved her up five flights of stairs and into an office.
‘I am Ernst Vogt,’ said the German officer standing behind his desk. A creepy smile, oily with triumph, spread across his overfed face.
Noor snarled. Her fists curled and uncurled. If not for the brutes holding her back, she would have thrown herself at him and scratched his beady little eyes out.
‘So tell me, mademoiselle, what is your name?’ he asked. ‘Your code name?’ He leaned towards her, his greasy lips peeling back to reveal yellow teeth. ‘You are Madeleine, aren’t you? Aren’t you?’
He repeated the questions in French and in English.
Noor glared at him.
‘Thought so. Who do you work with?’
‘I will not answer your questions!’ She spat the words out in French. She did not want him to know she spoke English.
‘What are their names? Code names?’ He paced in front of her. His breath stank of wine – doubtless French wine.
Noor stayed silent. ‘Who arranges the safe houses? Who do you meet? Who gives you instructions?’
Noor only sneered.
He kept firing questions at her, but Noor focussed on a smudge of dirt on the wall behind him. If she did not speak, she would not be lying.
Finally, he stopped pacing. ‘All right, mademoiselle. Have it your way. For now.’ He ordered the guard to take her to a cell.
The guards grabbed her arms. ‘I want a bath,’ Noor said, elbowing their rough hands off her.
Vogt raised his eyebrows, but gave the guards a nod. They shoved her towards a bathroom. She stepped inside, then turned. The guards had left the door slightly open, and were peering through the crack. She launched herself at the door, pushing it against the foot of one of the guards.
‘I won’t have anyone watching me,’ she screamed. ‘Shut the damn door. Now!’
Vogt appeared, and ordered the guard to shut the door.
Immediately, Noor clambered on to the window sill and swung out of the bathroom, balancing on a gutter that circled the building beneath the attic windows. Holding on to the roof tiles, she crept along on silent feet.
She had to get away. She had to catch that flight and go back to England. It was all she could think about.
‘Madeleine.’ It was Vogt, leaning out of the next window. ‘You’ll kill yourself,’ he said quietly. ‘Think of your mother. Here. Take my hand.’
Noor looked down at Avenue Foch, dizzyingly far below. She thought of Amma. Reluctantly, she took his hand, and he pulled her inside, and pushed her into a cell.
The key turned in the lock.
Noor sank on to the hard bed, put her head in her hands and began to sob.
She’d been so close to going home. Why had she walked into their trap? Why had she been such a coward? Why hadn’t she let herself fall? Death would have been better than prison – and torture.
Again and again, day after day, Vogt questioned Noor. When she spoke, she told him only what he already knew. And she made it her business to make as much of a fuss as possible. She demanded that the Germans fetch her clothes and soap and makeup and toothpaste from her apartment, and she smoked the cigarettes Vogt gave her. But she refused to tell him what he wanted to know – even when he showed her that he’d worked out her security codes.
Once he shocked her by showing her copies of her letters to Amma.
She’d been betrayed. Which of her fellow agents had it been?
And her precious letters to Amma, whom she missed so deeply, had been read by the Nazis. Noor felt dirtied and used. In the night, these things made her cry, but still she gave nothing away.
Time passed. No doubt the Nazis were sending messages pretending they were from her. Surely London would have realised by now that she’d been captured. How many unsuspecting agents were falling into the German traps?
Noor’s cell was dark and stuffy and small. Through the window she could hear the sounds of Paris – so near, so far. She paced the cramped space, angry, frustrated, desperate. She had to get out of there.
One evening, she heard male voices through the wall, the slam of the door, and the grind of a key in the lock: another prisoner. Noor waited until the early hours of the morning. Her neighbour was pacing his cell.
She tapped out a message in Morse Code on the wall.
My name is Madeleine. British agent. Who are you?
He tapped back. Léon Faye. Also British agent.
I want to escape. Trying to work out plan.
Count me in.
For the first time in weeks, Noor smiled.
A few days later, she made contact with another prisoner living opposite her: John Starr. He’d heard her crying in the night, and managed to slip a note under her door: Check under basin in bathroom for more notes. He was an artist who’d decided to cooperate with the Gestapo, which meant he had access to paper and pencils.
Soon, she, Faye and Starr were leaving notes to each other in the bathroom they shared.
Have escape plan, Starr wrote soon afterwards.