windar
Teller of Tales
Barb and I have been working on a new story. It's a spy tale set largely in Occupied France, inspired by the true story of Virginia Hall, an American who worked bravely and highly successfully for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in and around Lyon. Her true story is told in Sonia Purnell's recent book, "A Woman of No Importance". Our totally fictional story begins here.
1.
Lyon, France, Nov 1942
“Where is the British spy, Barbara Moreau?” the voice asked. It was a rather calm voice, not screaming like one might have imagined. It belonged to a man of rather ordinary appearance, around thirty years of age, dressed in the uniform of an SD Hauptsturmführer, or Captain, who sat in a chair in front of the woman, cradling a purring cat on his lap as though he were having a cup of tea by the fire in a tranquil parlor.
“Who?” asked the woman. Her name was Marie Delorme. She was a Lyonnaise of around twenty five years of age, blond and attractive. She wasn’t wearing any uniform. In fact, she was naked, her arms chained over her head, held in spiked cuffs that were attached by long steel chains to the ceiling beams of the small hotel room.
The spikes dug agonizingly into her wrists, which were forced to support her weight. Her toes hung down, scrabbling fruitlessly for contact with the floor in a vain attempt to relieve the stress on her shoulders and wrists. But the length of the chain had been carefully adjusted so that her big toes came up just a hair’s breadth shy of the floor.
Sweat was pouring down Marie’s body, from the strain of her struggles and from pain and fear. For, she knew who this man was. His name was Klaus Barbie.
He had arrived in Lyon only a couple of weeks ago, when the German troops that had occupied the northern and western sections of France had moved into the unoccupied zone of southeastern France, which included Lyon.
Marie had watched them parading through the streets of her beloved city with dread. For as bad as the Vichy government had been, its civil servants toadying to the Nazis at every opportunity, the Germans were worse. A shiver had run down Marie’s spine whenever she had passed their armored vehicles stationed in Place Bellecour and on Place des Terreaux in front of the Hôtel de Ville.
And now she was in their hands, at the mercy of a man who had no mercy, a man who in two short weeks had already established a reputation for unmatched brutality among the citizenry, and especially among the members of the Resistance.
This man, as unprepossessing as he seemed for the moment, was the representative of a Reich that extended now from the Pyrenees to the Urals, its might unchallenged except by small bands of Resistance groups, men and women who lived mostly in hiding, emerging only to spirit fugitives hunted by the Nazis to safety or to conduct acts of sabotage that, alas, seemed to do little undermine the iron grip the conquerors held over her occupied country.
But Marie couldn’t let herself think about that. The forces of freedom had help from across the Channel and now from across the ocean and they must have faith that a proud and free France would one day rise again. Her part in that struggle was to hold out as long as she could, to give Barbara a chance to escape if she hadn’t already.
Of course that was easier said than done. These brutes would stop at nothing to get her to talk. Everyone had their limit, the people who had recruited and trained her had said, and Marie knew that applied to her just as much as to anyone. And he would find those limits, she knew.
The man carefully laid the cat on the floor. It meowed and stretched. Marie watched it wander slowly towards the far corner of the room. The man stood and approached her.
Calmly, as though about to pour himself more tea, he drew his fist back and slammed it into her belly. Her breath left her. To regain it, she had to pull herself up on the chains, making the spikes dig deeper into her wrists. Blood flowed freely down her arms.
“You stupid French whore!” Barbie, the domestic mask dropped, spat at her. “You know exactly who I mean. Your lesbian girlfriend. How does her pussy taste?” he grinned evilly.
Marie wondered which of her fellow Resistance members he had pulled that little tidbit out of and what fiendish tortures had broken their silence. Or had a mole in their organization given Barbie that information? She knew Barbara had been convinced that their resistance cell had been compromised. Who betrayed them?
Well, it didn’t really matter. Barbara was critical to their cause, their link with London and even if they hadn’t comforted each other, lying naked on a mattress on the floor of the room on the second floor of the little house in Vieux Lyon on rue due Boeuf during days in hiding, Marie wouldn’t betray her.
Marie could almost feel Barbara’s hand caressing her breast, her other hand reaching between her legs as she kissed Marie on the lips. But in this room there were only the cruel faces of the Nazis and the pain that they would subject her to, which hung in the air like an unspoken curse.
“She’s not my girlfriend and I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen her in days.” The second part of that was true. Marie had sacrificed herself to these monsters the night before just so that Barbara could escape. She had feared that Barbara had been captured by the Germans despite her efforts. The fact that he was asking where she was suggested she was safely across the border into Switzerland, or at least still at large in France. And if the latter were the case, Marie had to tell them as little as possible.
Barbie grabbed her nipples, one in each hand and twisted hard. She screamed. It felt like he was going to tear her breasts off. “You lying cochonne! Soon you will beg to tell me everything. Fritz! Heinrich! Come in here!” he shouted.
The door opened and two large men dressed in SD uniforms similar to Barbie’s came in. Marie recognized them as the two brutes who had roughly stripped her and chained her up shortly after her arrival at the Hôtel Terminus just across from the Gare de Perrache, the building commandeered by the Gestapo as their headquarters in Lyon.
The two men raised their arms “Heil Hitler!” they said, as one.
“This French bitch thinks we are stupid enough to believe her filthy lies that she doesn’t know where the British spy, Moreau, is,” Barbie pronounced. “Perhaps the bullwhips will loosen her tongue.”
“Of course, Captain. When Fritz and I strip the skin off her tits and ass she will be eager to share everything she knows,” the one named Heinrich said.
Barbie grinned. “You see, Mademoiselle Delorme, why we Germans have reduced your nation to a state of abject servitude. Discipline, that is what has won the war. You French lack it. You are weak.” He stooped to pick up the cat and sat back down in the chair facing Marie so that he would see the agony she was about to suffer in her face.
Heinrich returned carrying two long coiled whips of firm but supple leather. He removed his jacket and shirt, laying them on the table that stood against one wall, leaving him in just his undershirt. Heinrich handed one of the whips to Fritz, who had similarly disrobed. Fritz took his position behind Marie. Heinrich took his position a few paces in front of her, uncoiling the whip and letting the tip drag along the floor.
Marie didn’t want to look at it, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the horrible implement. Barbie stroked the cat’s head and nodded. Marie heard a “Whoosh!” behind her and her back exploded in pure agony.
The force of the blow knocked the breath out of her lungs and set her body swinging like a pendulum, each movement causing the spikes in the cuffs to dig further into the flesh of her wrists. She saw Heinrich watching her swing, waiting for the motion to slow enough so as not to disturb his aim.
Marie saw him bring the whip back, then the leather tip was coming towards her, too fast for her eyes to follow. Her universe exploded in unimaginable pain as the leather struck across her breasts, ripping into the sensitive flesh near the nipples, leaving a jagged line from which bits of red fluid leaked.
Marie howled twisting madly, her feet kicking. Through tear-filled eyes she saw Barbie smiling broadly. “She felt that one, Heinrich, didn’t she?” he said, laughing.
“Ja, Captain, that she did.”
“She is learning that the German Reich is not to be trifled with,” Barbie replied.
Fritz struck again, this time across the woman’s ass. “I’ll tear her a new asshole, Captain,” he said after Marie’s shrieks died down.
Barbie laughed. “That’s a good one, Fritz. Then you and Heinrich can fuck her in both of them at the same time.”
Heinrich smiled, then struck her again across the breasts, the leather sinking deep into the soft tissue, leaving a vivid line of fire behind. Marie roared her pain to the walls of the old hotel. The cat in Barbie’s lap arched its back at the sound. Barbie stroked it behind the ears. “There, there. Nothing to worry about, Muschi. Soon this bad girl will decide to tell us where that Barbara Moreau is and the noise will stop. For a while at least.”
Fritz continued his unrelenting assault on Marie’s back and buttocks. The poor Frenchwoman couldn’t see the damage on that side, but she could see the gashes that Heinrich had gouged in the soft white skin of her breasts and belly.
Finally, warming to the always delightful task of torturing a nubile young woman, Heinrich succeeded in hitting his most sought after target. He was able to snap the tip of the whip against the nipple on the left breast, tearing it partway off. Blood flowed down the wounded flesh, dripping onto the floor.
The scream from Marie’s lips was unearthly.
“Good one, Heinrich! Bravo!” Barbie said, chortling. “I will buy you a beer tonight.”
Captain Barbie waited until the girl exhausted the air in her lungs and her screams died down to a low wail. He set the cat down gently on the floor, then rose and approached her. He grabbed her sweat-soaked blonde hair and wrenched it back and forth, finally stopping when she was forced to look him in the eye.
“Fritz and Heinrich can go on all day and all night, if you’d like Mademoiselle Delorme. Perhaps you’d prefer to tell me what you and Barbara Moreau were doing that night. We know you were together but my men were only able to pick you up. Who is she really? She's British, and a spy, right? And what exactly was she doing here?” She just shook her head, too exhausted to reply. “Such a pity to ruin a body like yours,” Barbie said shaking his head.
He stepped back and sat in the chair. Fritz struck a vicious blow across Marie’s ass. She was too weak to do anything more than groan. Heinrich tried to hit the right nipple and split it open as he had the left, but the tip of the lash landed just above the intended target. The pain was like a savage beast, eating Marie from the inside.
After a few more lashes on both sides, it was clear that Marie was no longer responsive. She hung in the cuffs, limp, not moving, her eyes closed, blood dripping from her breasts, back and wrists, red drops spattered on the floor beneath her feet.
Barbie motioned with his hands. “Enough!” he said. “The filthy French whore is asleep. We better clean her up and put some life back in her. A nice cold bath should do it,” he ordered.
Fritz and Heinrich left the room and returned shortly with a large tub filled with ice. They dumped it into the bathtub in the small bathroom attached to the suite, then ran cold water from the faucet into the tub until it was filled almost to the rim.
They lowered the barely conscious Marie to the floor and dragged her into the bathroom. “These Frenchies,” Fritz said. “Maybe this is the first time she’s bathed all year.”
“Maybe two years,” Heinrich said. They threw her into the tub. The sudden shock of the cold water caused her to scream and wriggle madly, trying to climb out of the tub. But Heinrich held her feet down and Fritz put his weight on her stomach so that she couldn’t move.
Barbie stood over the poor woman like a conquering hero. He knelt beside her head. “Where is Barbara Moreau?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the girl replied, shaking her head.
He pushed her head under the water and held it. The girl struggled madly, but the men were too strong. He counted to 30, then released her. She sputtered and gagged, gulping air desperately.
“Where is she, that English bitch, your lover?”
Marie was too dazed and close to passing out to respond. He pressed her head under the water again.
1.
Lyon, France, Nov 1942
“Where is the British spy, Barbara Moreau?” the voice asked. It was a rather calm voice, not screaming like one might have imagined. It belonged to a man of rather ordinary appearance, around thirty years of age, dressed in the uniform of an SD Hauptsturmführer, or Captain, who sat in a chair in front of the woman, cradling a purring cat on his lap as though he were having a cup of tea by the fire in a tranquil parlor.
“Who?” asked the woman. Her name was Marie Delorme. She was a Lyonnaise of around twenty five years of age, blond and attractive. She wasn’t wearing any uniform. In fact, she was naked, her arms chained over her head, held in spiked cuffs that were attached by long steel chains to the ceiling beams of the small hotel room.
The spikes dug agonizingly into her wrists, which were forced to support her weight. Her toes hung down, scrabbling fruitlessly for contact with the floor in a vain attempt to relieve the stress on her shoulders and wrists. But the length of the chain had been carefully adjusted so that her big toes came up just a hair’s breadth shy of the floor.
Sweat was pouring down Marie’s body, from the strain of her struggles and from pain and fear. For, she knew who this man was. His name was Klaus Barbie.
He had arrived in Lyon only a couple of weeks ago, when the German troops that had occupied the northern and western sections of France had moved into the unoccupied zone of southeastern France, which included Lyon.
Marie had watched them parading through the streets of her beloved city with dread. For as bad as the Vichy government had been, its civil servants toadying to the Nazis at every opportunity, the Germans were worse. A shiver had run down Marie’s spine whenever she had passed their armored vehicles stationed in Place Bellecour and on Place des Terreaux in front of the Hôtel de Ville.
And now she was in their hands, at the mercy of a man who had no mercy, a man who in two short weeks had already established a reputation for unmatched brutality among the citizenry, and especially among the members of the Resistance.
This man, as unprepossessing as he seemed for the moment, was the representative of a Reich that extended now from the Pyrenees to the Urals, its might unchallenged except by small bands of Resistance groups, men and women who lived mostly in hiding, emerging only to spirit fugitives hunted by the Nazis to safety or to conduct acts of sabotage that, alas, seemed to do little undermine the iron grip the conquerors held over her occupied country.
But Marie couldn’t let herself think about that. The forces of freedom had help from across the Channel and now from across the ocean and they must have faith that a proud and free France would one day rise again. Her part in that struggle was to hold out as long as she could, to give Barbara a chance to escape if she hadn’t already.
Of course that was easier said than done. These brutes would stop at nothing to get her to talk. Everyone had their limit, the people who had recruited and trained her had said, and Marie knew that applied to her just as much as to anyone. And he would find those limits, she knew.
The man carefully laid the cat on the floor. It meowed and stretched. Marie watched it wander slowly towards the far corner of the room. The man stood and approached her.
Calmly, as though about to pour himself more tea, he drew his fist back and slammed it into her belly. Her breath left her. To regain it, she had to pull herself up on the chains, making the spikes dig deeper into her wrists. Blood flowed freely down her arms.
“You stupid French whore!” Barbie, the domestic mask dropped, spat at her. “You know exactly who I mean. Your lesbian girlfriend. How does her pussy taste?” he grinned evilly.
Marie wondered which of her fellow Resistance members he had pulled that little tidbit out of and what fiendish tortures had broken their silence. Or had a mole in their organization given Barbie that information? She knew Barbara had been convinced that their resistance cell had been compromised. Who betrayed them?
Well, it didn’t really matter. Barbara was critical to their cause, their link with London and even if they hadn’t comforted each other, lying naked on a mattress on the floor of the room on the second floor of the little house in Vieux Lyon on rue due Boeuf during days in hiding, Marie wouldn’t betray her.
Marie could almost feel Barbara’s hand caressing her breast, her other hand reaching between her legs as she kissed Marie on the lips. But in this room there were only the cruel faces of the Nazis and the pain that they would subject her to, which hung in the air like an unspoken curse.
“She’s not my girlfriend and I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen her in days.” The second part of that was true. Marie had sacrificed herself to these monsters the night before just so that Barbara could escape. She had feared that Barbara had been captured by the Germans despite her efforts. The fact that he was asking where she was suggested she was safely across the border into Switzerland, or at least still at large in France. And if the latter were the case, Marie had to tell them as little as possible.
Barbie grabbed her nipples, one in each hand and twisted hard. She screamed. It felt like he was going to tear her breasts off. “You lying cochonne! Soon you will beg to tell me everything. Fritz! Heinrich! Come in here!” he shouted.
The door opened and two large men dressed in SD uniforms similar to Barbie’s came in. Marie recognized them as the two brutes who had roughly stripped her and chained her up shortly after her arrival at the Hôtel Terminus just across from the Gare de Perrache, the building commandeered by the Gestapo as their headquarters in Lyon.
The two men raised their arms “Heil Hitler!” they said, as one.
“This French bitch thinks we are stupid enough to believe her filthy lies that she doesn’t know where the British spy, Moreau, is,” Barbie pronounced. “Perhaps the bullwhips will loosen her tongue.”
“Of course, Captain. When Fritz and I strip the skin off her tits and ass she will be eager to share everything she knows,” the one named Heinrich said.
Barbie grinned. “You see, Mademoiselle Delorme, why we Germans have reduced your nation to a state of abject servitude. Discipline, that is what has won the war. You French lack it. You are weak.” He stooped to pick up the cat and sat back down in the chair facing Marie so that he would see the agony she was about to suffer in her face.
Heinrich returned carrying two long coiled whips of firm but supple leather. He removed his jacket and shirt, laying them on the table that stood against one wall, leaving him in just his undershirt. Heinrich handed one of the whips to Fritz, who had similarly disrobed. Fritz took his position behind Marie. Heinrich took his position a few paces in front of her, uncoiling the whip and letting the tip drag along the floor.
Marie didn’t want to look at it, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the horrible implement. Barbie stroked the cat’s head and nodded. Marie heard a “Whoosh!” behind her and her back exploded in pure agony.
The force of the blow knocked the breath out of her lungs and set her body swinging like a pendulum, each movement causing the spikes in the cuffs to dig further into the flesh of her wrists. She saw Heinrich watching her swing, waiting for the motion to slow enough so as not to disturb his aim.
Marie saw him bring the whip back, then the leather tip was coming towards her, too fast for her eyes to follow. Her universe exploded in unimaginable pain as the leather struck across her breasts, ripping into the sensitive flesh near the nipples, leaving a jagged line from which bits of red fluid leaked.
Marie howled twisting madly, her feet kicking. Through tear-filled eyes she saw Barbie smiling broadly. “She felt that one, Heinrich, didn’t she?” he said, laughing.
“Ja, Captain, that she did.”
“She is learning that the German Reich is not to be trifled with,” Barbie replied.
Fritz struck again, this time across the woman’s ass. “I’ll tear her a new asshole, Captain,” he said after Marie’s shrieks died down.
Barbie laughed. “That’s a good one, Fritz. Then you and Heinrich can fuck her in both of them at the same time.”
Heinrich smiled, then struck her again across the breasts, the leather sinking deep into the soft tissue, leaving a vivid line of fire behind. Marie roared her pain to the walls of the old hotel. The cat in Barbie’s lap arched its back at the sound. Barbie stroked it behind the ears. “There, there. Nothing to worry about, Muschi. Soon this bad girl will decide to tell us where that Barbara Moreau is and the noise will stop. For a while at least.”
Fritz continued his unrelenting assault on Marie’s back and buttocks. The poor Frenchwoman couldn’t see the damage on that side, but she could see the gashes that Heinrich had gouged in the soft white skin of her breasts and belly.
Finally, warming to the always delightful task of torturing a nubile young woman, Heinrich succeeded in hitting his most sought after target. He was able to snap the tip of the whip against the nipple on the left breast, tearing it partway off. Blood flowed down the wounded flesh, dripping onto the floor.
The scream from Marie’s lips was unearthly.
“Good one, Heinrich! Bravo!” Barbie said, chortling. “I will buy you a beer tonight.”
Captain Barbie waited until the girl exhausted the air in her lungs and her screams died down to a low wail. He set the cat down gently on the floor, then rose and approached her. He grabbed her sweat-soaked blonde hair and wrenched it back and forth, finally stopping when she was forced to look him in the eye.
“Fritz and Heinrich can go on all day and all night, if you’d like Mademoiselle Delorme. Perhaps you’d prefer to tell me what you and Barbara Moreau were doing that night. We know you were together but my men were only able to pick you up. Who is she really? She's British, and a spy, right? And what exactly was she doing here?” She just shook her head, too exhausted to reply. “Such a pity to ruin a body like yours,” Barbie said shaking his head.
He stepped back and sat in the chair. Fritz struck a vicious blow across Marie’s ass. She was too weak to do anything more than groan. Heinrich tried to hit the right nipple and split it open as he had the left, but the tip of the lash landed just above the intended target. The pain was like a savage beast, eating Marie from the inside.
After a few more lashes on both sides, it was clear that Marie was no longer responsive. She hung in the cuffs, limp, not moving, her eyes closed, blood dripping from her breasts, back and wrists, red drops spattered on the floor beneath her feet.
Barbie motioned with his hands. “Enough!” he said. “The filthy French whore is asleep. We better clean her up and put some life back in her. A nice cold bath should do it,” he ordered.
Fritz and Heinrich left the room and returned shortly with a large tub filled with ice. They dumped it into the bathtub in the small bathroom attached to the suite, then ran cold water from the faucet into the tub until it was filled almost to the rim.
They lowered the barely conscious Marie to the floor and dragged her into the bathroom. “These Frenchies,” Fritz said. “Maybe this is the first time she’s bathed all year.”
“Maybe two years,” Heinrich said. They threw her into the tub. The sudden shock of the cold water caused her to scream and wriggle madly, trying to climb out of the tub. But Heinrich held her feet down and Fritz put his weight on her stomach so that she couldn’t move.
Barbie stood over the poor woman like a conquering hero. He knelt beside her head. “Where is Barbara Moreau?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the girl replied, shaking her head.
He pushed her head under the water and held it. The girl struggled madly, but the men were too strong. He counted to 30, then released her. She sputtered and gagged, gulping air desperately.
“Where is she, that English bitch, your lover?”
Marie was too dazed and close to passing out to respond. He pressed her head under the water again.
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