Spy Princess (24 page)

On the night of 22/23 July, London sent French section’s second-in-command, Major Nicholas Bodington, to Paris to ascertain the scale of the damage to the Prosper circuit. He was accompanied by Jack Agazarian and the two of them made the crossing by Hudson. Déricourt arranged the reception and settled Bodington at the flat of his courier, Julienne Aisner (Claire), in the Place des Ternes while Agazarian stayed in a more modest flat in a working-class area of Paris. At this time Norman’s wireless was being worked back to London by the Germans, and F-section had their doubts about whether his messages were genuine. Nevertheless London asked Norman for a safe address where he could meet Bodington and Agazarian. The message came back asking them to meet Norman in the flat of a Madame Philipowski in the rue de Rome. This address was then passed on to Bodington and Agazarian. Both of them were convinced that the message was a trap, but felt they should check it out. Agazarian offered to go. Predictably, he was arrested as soon as he knocked on the door on 30 July.
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His captor identified him by sight. Agazarian refused to divulge any details despite brutal torture and finally ended up in front of a firing squad at Flossenburg, just six weeks before the end of the war.

With his radio operator captured by the Germans, Bodington now relied on Noor. She often stayed overnight in the flat in the Place des Ternes and transmitted for him. At the time Noor was also working for Déricourt as well as coordinating with Robert Gieules. Through Noor, Bodington discovered that elements of the Prosper circuit had remained intact. One was Garry’s Cinema/Phono circuit, as Garry had escaped capture, and the other was a fragment of the French Resistance: a Giraudist rather than a Gaullist faction called OCM. It worked closely with F-section agent Claude de Baissac’s Scientist circuit in Bordeaux. Claude de Baissac knew Suttill and Antelme well and often came to Paris to meet them. The local Paris contacts of de Baissac consisted mainly of OCM members under the leadership of a French major with the unlikely name of Marc O’Neil. For logistical reasons it had been decided to transfer the group to Prosper, and Suttill had met O’Neil on 24 June, the day of his arrest, to discuss this. After Suttill’s arrest, Claude de Baissac had to take responsibility for the group again and it was handed over to him by Bodington.

Noor also organised a rendezvous between Bodington and Robert Gieules at the Tuileries.
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Antelme had asked Gieules to establish a list of contacts of people in the Ardennes who would help the SOE in that sector, and Gieules conveyed this list to Bodington.

Bodington helped Noor rent a flat at 3 Boulevard Richard Wallace, Neuilly-sur-Seine.
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It was in a block of modern flats facing the Bois de Boulogne, and Noor occupied a small room on the ground floor. The suitability of the apartment was questionable however, since most of the apartments were occupied by SS officers. Noor now lived directly in their midst. Bodington himself moved to another flat in Avenue Malakoff to an address unknown to other organisations.
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Meanwhile the bad news continued on the arrests. On 29 July two men went to Madame Lethias’s house in Pontoise looking for Benoist’s radio operator, Robert Dowlen, but he was out. On 31 July, eighteen men came to arrest Dowlen, who had been traced by direction-finding vans. On 2 August, the Gestapo arrested Madame Lethias and took twelve million francs from her desk. The same day they arrested Robert Benoist’s brother, Maurice, at seven in the morning at his home at 75 Boulevard Berthier, Paris.

Barely ten days after Antelme had left Auffargis, the Gestapo now arrived there. Accompanied by two Gestapo officers, Vogt and Peters, Maurice Benoist was driven to the family estates at Auffargis, calling first at his father’s property and then his own. Grover Williams was arrested at Maurice Benoist’s house and beaten up. Along with him the Gestapo arrested Maurice’s wife, Suzy Benoist, and Mrs Williams. Next they were driven to Robert’s farm where they discovered a stack of arms behind a false plaster wall hidden by bales of straw.
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Maurice had hidden these himself with the help of Antelme. Benoist’s father was questioned for 8 hours and his mother was beaten, and then they were both taken to Fresnes prison. Robert Benoist had evaded arrest because he was in Paris at the time. He now hid in a friend’s room in the city. On 5 August, when Benoist stepped out to make a call from a call box to enquire about his parents, he was asked by two Germans to get into their car. He made a dramatic escape from the car, hid in a friend’s flat, contacted Déricourt on 7 August, moved to another safe house and escaped to London on a flight arranged by Noor on 19/20 August.

The capture and disappearance of F-section radio operators – Norman, Agazarian, Robert Dowlen, Macalister, Dubois and Cohen – left Noor as the only operator in and around Paris and though she had been warned by Buckmaster to lie low, she started transmitting cautiously. Single-handedly she did the work of six radio operators. She went on air and exchanged messages with Antelme (now in London), who wanted her to keep in touch with Octave Simon and send him information about the financing of troops during the invasion.
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On 28 July he sent a message saying Noor should contact Simon to ask his brother-in-law about the matter. Through Simon, Noor was to arrange direct contact with the people who would be connected with the scheme. Noor sent him a message on 31 July that the goods depots were now ready at Amiens. She reported that there were 3,000 gearboxes for Tiger tanks in the factory at present and gave its exact location. On 3 August Antelme replied that he assumed the Amiens goods depots were connected with Dutilleul (Champagne) and asked Noor to get the latest news from Garry and to collect 150,000 francs from Grover Williams for Dutilleul. (Unknown to him, Grover Williams had already been arrested.)

Antelme had complete faith in Noor and knew that she would rise to the occasion despite the difficulty of working in Paris at that time. The work was dangerous as Noor had to carry her wireless set around with her most of the time. In the early days this was still in the form of a bulky suitcase, weighing about 30lb, and could attract the attention of the Gestapo. It was only later, by 1944, that the wireless sets were hidden in smaller briefcases which were lighter to carry and less noticeable. Some time in early August, Noor was involved in a scrape with the Gestapo when she went to meet Octave Simon. After they had lunch she accompanied him to his home, but the Gestapo were shadowing them.
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Noor was a fast runner, however, and so she managed to outrun the Gestapo. She later met Déricourt’s courier Julienne on a Metro platform and told her what had happened.

Noor had been warned by Buckmaster that the German listening apparatus would be tuned in on her. In order to evade detection she transmitted from various places and under different conditions. Sometimes she would drive out with Arrighi or Vaudevire, and transmit from the suburbs of Montrouge, Levallois and Noisy-le-Grand. They would stop the car in a quiet lane where Noor could let out the aerial and transmit. Arrighi had lost both his wireless operators, so he asked Noor if she could send messages for him as well. He worked for General de Gaulle and needed to send messages to the headquarters in London. Noor readily agreed and she was now sending messages not only to French section, but also directly to De Gaulle’s office in England. She would go out with Arrighi every Wednesday and Friday and transmit between 5 and 5.30 p.m. She arranged for a drop of one million francs to be flown in and delivered to him. All the while she kept in touch with Gieules, who liaised between the F-section and important French civilians.

Meanwhile Bodington decided to buy a café in Place St Michel to be run by Julienne. It was to be used as a contact point for agents seeking to escape from France and also to evacuate RAF pilots or French Resistance workers who needed to go to England. Once he had done this, he returned to London on Déricourt’s aircraft on 16/17 August. Noor received the messages organising Bodington’s flight. With him went F-section agents Claude and Lise de Baissac, the brother and sister duo. Claude was the leader of the Scientist circuit in Bordeaux and Lise often acted as a courier for Antelme. On 19/20 August, Noor organised the flights and escape routes by Hudson for ten more people returning to London. They included Octave Simon, Robert Benoist and Vic Gerson. Noor remained the only British agent in the field (the others were mainly local recruits) and she must have felt increasingly isolated, but she carried on undaunted.

Noor needed safe places to transmit, so she turned her attention to old schoolfriends. This period of her life in Paris has been pieced together to a large extent by her friend Jean Overton Fuller, who went to Paris after the war and traced Noor’s friends and the surviving people in her circuit. Noor first called on her music teacher Henriette Rénie, whom she had not seen for nine years.
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Noor asked her if she knew of a room to let.

Henriette Rénie asked Noor to stay with her, but Noor told her she could not do that. Noor told her that she had come to establish a wireless post for transmission to England. She knew she could not compromise her teacher’s safety. Henriette Rénie was alarmed at the risks Noor was taking. She had known Noor as a quiet girl and was amazed at how much she had changed. Yet on one level Noor was still very much the same person that her teacher had known: shy, earnest and friendly.

When Henriette exclaimed that if she was discovered she would be shot, Noor simply said she knew. She said her predecessor had been shot by the Germans and she had volunteered to come when London needed a person with language skills to do the job. Noor left quickly after that and it was the last time her teacher saw her.

Noor now moved around with her radio set most of the time. She desperately needed to find different houses, preferably with trees outside where she could hang up the aerial, in order to transmit. So far she had transmitted mainly from country roads with Arrighi and Vaudevire and occasionally from Julienne’s flat. She also dyed her hair in an attempt to disguise herself. The Germans had put out her description at all stations. They were also trying to detect her transmissions. The wireless detection stations often caught her on the airwaves but they could not close in on her as she constantly changed the place of transmission.
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One day, probably around the end of August, Noor was spotted cycling up the Champs Elysées by Madame Salmon, one of her neighbours from Fazal Manzil.
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Madame Salmon called out, ‘Noor!’ Startled at hearing her real name shouted out loud, Noor stopped and quickly led the other woman into a side street. She told Madame Salmon the reason why she was in Paris and said she was known here as Jeanne-Marie and no one knew her real name.

Noor was wearing dark glasses and had dyed her hair red, which made her look very different and somewhat odd. She was wearing a simple summer frock. Noor was hoping to throw the Germans off her track in case they were looking for a lady with dark hair. Madame Salmon, who had known her for a long time, still managed to recognise her despite the disguise.

They agreed to keep in touch by meeting in cafés. By now Noor had clearly become much more security conscious and they did not exchange addresses. They arranged to meet again at a café and decide at each meeting a rendezvous for the next. The next time they met Noor had dyed her hair blonde, which Madame Salmon thought suited her much more than the red hair.
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Still on the lookout for a room to broadcast from, Noor paid a visit to her old family doctor, Dr Jourdan, and his wife.
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The Inayat Khans’ family physician had always been very fond of little Noor, whom he had operated on for an inflamed appendix as a child. On being cured, she had presented the Jourdans with a small potted rose tree. They had planted it in their country house in Marly-le-Roi and called it the ‘Noor Inayat’.

Seeing Noor now on such a dangerous mission moved the Jourdans and they told her that she could occasionally use the garden of the house at Marly-le-Roi to transmit. Here she could put up her aerial in the trees. Noor went to Marly, where she found that the rose tree had grown luxuriantly and covered the house in pink blossoms. It filled her with nostalgia. Noor transmitted about four or five times from the house in Marly.

She visited the Jourdans at their Paris flat quite often and Madame Jourdan thought that she managed to relax in their company. The strain of constantly escaping from the Gestapo and carrying her wireless around with her was clearly taking its toll. Madame Jourdan noticed that Noor kept changing her hairstyle. Despite all the stress of the job, she would always bring Madame Jourdan flowers when she visited.

Though she was tense and exhausted, Noor sent back cheery letters to her family in mailbags that went in the August Lysander. She wrote to Vera Atkins that her little bird had cheered her up and things were going well. She hoped they would be celebrating soon.
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She told Vilayat in a letter that she had missed being with him on his birthday, and looked forward to seeing him in uniform. (She had learnt via Vera Atkins that he had got his commission.) She wondered when they would meet again and said they would have so much to say to each other.
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Noor also wrote to her mother. All her letters were photocopied by Déricourt and handed over to the Germans. These copies were shown to her when she was arrested.

Noor used her flat at Boulevard Richard Wallace extensively as a letterbox to pick up and drop off messages. Sometimes she transmitted from there. The concierge of the building, Madame Jourdois, later told Jean Overton Fuller that Noor always seemed to be in a rush. Her husband and she realised that Noor was leading a double life as she hardly ever stayed at the flat and strange men came and collected or left parcels for her. They knew, however, that she was a ‘nice girl’ and were aware that she was working for the Resistance.