The distinctive Haussmannian architecture had also made it easier for the Nazis to invade Paris during the Battle of France in June 1940.
On the section of Avenue Fochs closer to Porte Dauphine stood several anonymous buildings that gave the street its chilling reputation, which resulted in its isolation. Nos. 82 and 84 housed the Paris headquarters of the Gestapo—the abbreviation for Geheime Staatspolizei, or secret state police, founded in 1933 by Hermann Goering and controlled by Heinrich Himmler. The Gestapo leaders had chosen Avenue Fochs deliberately for their headquarters of terror: it was named after the French general Marshall Fochs, to whom the Germans surrendered in November 1918.
Inside No. 84, in a large office on the first floor with high ceilings, elaborate crown moldings, and a glittering cage chandelier, light refracting through its spear-and point-cut crystals. A large reproduction of Nicolas Poussin’s Rape of the Sabine Women hung on one wall. Obersturmbannführer Wolfgang von Waltz’s ears pricked at the low growl of a car piercing the silence of the street. From his desk, he looked out the window over Avenue Fochs to see a gleaming black Benz pull up to the curb. Two SS officers in black emerged with a young brunette in handcuffs.
Obersturmbannführer von Waltz was in his early forties, handsome and immaculately groomed, with golden-blond hair and silvery sideburns. Only his middling height and a pointed, jutting chin kept him from looking like the Nordic gods of Nazi propaganda posters. Despite his SS rank, he wore a double-breasted gray-striped suit, silk Hermès tie and pocket square, and handmade alligator shoes. He wore civilian clothes on purpose—to disarm and put at ease prisoners. He left the actual torture to the SS henchmen in No. 84’s soundproofed basement.
Von Waltz was the chief for France’s section IV Counterespionage division and of the Sicherheitsdienst, the German security service, answering directly to Himmler himself. Technically, he was the third-ranking Nazi officer in Paris, overseeing the task of arresting and interrogating foreign agents. Before the war, he’d received his doctorate in Romance languages and had been a professor at the University of Vienna. He’d volunteered as the conductor for the St. Stephen’s Cathedral boys choir and was known for his graceful dancing, especially the fox-trot.
He lifted the heavy black Bakelite telephone receiver with immaculately manicured hands and dialed his secretary. “Frau Schmidt,” he crooned in honeyed tones, “our guest has arrived from the Rouen office. Please put on coffee for our meeting.” Coffee—real coffee—not the ersatz coffee made from chicory or roasted acorns, was as precious as gold or diamonds in occupied Paris.
Hertha Schmidt did as she was told, but she didn’t like it, not one bit. A German woman in her twenties, she relished the many luxuries, such as coffee and chocolates, that working for the SS in Paris afforded her. “Terroristen,” she muttered as she measured out the ground beans, resentful that the enemy would be treated to a cup of the office’s precious brew. “Englisch Terroristen.”
As von Waltz heard the heavy iron courtyard gate clank shut, he looked up from the file in front of him, sent to him by motorcycle courier, containing all the information gathered on the captured agent. He heard footsteps on the staircase, then a rap at his office door. He smiled, eyes shining. “Come in!” he called in Austrian-inflected French.
The two SS officers who opened the door looked grotesquely large, towering over their captive. The petite woman trembled violently and looked as if she might faint.
Von Waltz rose, clicked his heels, and bowed. “Please sit down, Mademoiselle,” he said in gentle tones, indicating a fragile gilt chair. “Would you like a drink? Coffee is on the way, but I can get you something stronger if you’d like. You look as if you could use it.”
He gestured to the two men. “Take those off,” he ordered, indicating the heavy cuffs shackling the woman’s delicate wrists. Once they did as they were told, he dismissed them.
“That’s better now, isn’t it?” Von Waltz took the seat across from the woman instead of returning to his desk chair. Her face was swollen beyond recognition; eyes slits in the battered flesh. Impassively, he noted her matted and dirty hair, the bruises on her neck, and the stench of sweat and urine. Three of her fingernails had been torn off. Her stained and ripped dress concealed whatever else she’d endured. She moved slowly to rub some life back into her hands.
He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I see you’ve shown the poor judgment to resist in Rouen. I do trust you will do better here. Ah, coffee!” he cried as Frau Schmidt entered bearing a silver tray piled with a silver sugar bowl, creamer, and plate with pastries. “I do love the ones with the hazelnut crème filling,” he confided as the secretary set it on the table between the Obersturmbannführer and his prisoner. “Of course, German pastry is the best, but there is something special about Parisian pastry that makes it a very close second.”
“Would you like me to pour, sir?”
“Thank you, but no, no. I’m sure we can manage, yes?” As he reached for the coffeepot, he watched the prisoner take in his office. There was the mandatory portrait of Hitler over the marble fireplace, topped with a mounted Degen SS saber with an ebony grip. On the mantel was an antique Jean Gille unglazed bisque porcelain figure, with enamel and gilt, of a beautiful woman in repose—The Sleeping Beauty. Next to it stood a Sèvres vase of violet hyacinths. The blossoms gave off a sweet and almost narcotic scent.
A beechwood fire had been lit earlier in the day against the damp spring air, and although the logs had burned down considerably it still crackled. There were red Nazi flags on both sides of the hearth. On a rosewood table, a marble chessboard was set up with a game in progress.
“Would you prefer I call you by your code name?” he asked as he poured steaming coffee with graceful movements. “Or by your real name—Erica Calvert?”
He watched for her reaction. “And do you take sugar or cream? Or both?”
Erica shook her head; von Waltz dropped two sugar cubes and a generous pour of cream into a cup for himself. “Well then, I shall call you Mademoiselle Calvert.”
He blew on his coffee before taking a sip. “You are Erica Grace Calvert, one of Winston Churchill’s secret army of undercover agents, known as the SOE or Special Operations Executive, recruited to ‘set Europe ablaze.’?”
Erica avoided his direct gaze.
“You were captured in Rouen and held for questioning.”
The agent remained silent.
“And you’re so tiny!” he exclaimed, studying her. “I had no idea when I read your file that you’d be such a tiny little thing—and so young, as well.” From his jacket pocket, he took out a silver case. “Cigarette?”
Erica made a sound halfway between a snort and a mew.
“My colleagues, unfortunately, were not able to obtain any satisfactory answers from you. And so you have been sent to Paris, to me.” He left the case open, placing it on the table between them. “I will ask the questions now, and, as you can see, we can make this a civilized exchange. It is up to you.” He set down his cup and saucer beside the cigarette case. “What were you doing in Rouen, Mademoiselle Calvert?”
“I can’t say,” she managed through bruised lips.
“Plans for sabotage?” von Waltz suggested.
Erica shook her head.
“To whom were you reporting?”
“I can’t say.”
“With whom were you working?”
“I can’t say.”
“Where are the secret stashes of arms and explosives you and your colleagues are bringing over here?”
“I can’t say.”