I want to do the right thing for my country. Meeting you and falling in love was a wonderful benefit I could have never foreseen.’
He turned to her and tenderly kissed her. ‘You know, my greatest fear is that you’ll be taken from me, tortured or worse, and I won’t be able to do the right thing at the right time.’
She pulled away. ‘Marcus, you can never think like that. I could never be happy if I knew you’d done the wrong thing to save me and help the Germans win this war. We have to stay strong for one another.’
He nodded, and then took her in his arms, holding her as though he never wanted to let her go. When they made love that night it was tender, as if he wanted to appreciate every part of her, not just her body, but that he desired to be joined with her on a much deeper level.
31
Within a matter of weeks, Vivi appeared to win over the Germans’ trust, all except Captain Von Klaus, who continued to eye her warily whenever she came into contact with him. However, her cover story was established and believed, and Vivi continued working as Marcus’s assistant as, day by day, he recovered.
The first time she put on her German uniform was surreal and she had stood looking at herself in the mirror, tears streaming down her face, knowing at this point there was no going back. The office they worked in was a long, sprawling building with a vast network of staff working with them. Marcus had an office on the second floor.
The information came in all different forms, but mostly wireless transmissions that had been intercepted by the people in the listening room. Those messages were always coded, and the staff would copy them down precisely as they were received. They would then hand those off to the decoders, who would do their best to figure out the information using captured code books and then pass the messages back to Marcus’s office.
The Germans also got intelligence from reconnaissance missions. The pilots took photographs of land-transportation movements, Allied ships’ whereabouts, air bases and the number of planes, and any amassing of the forces in particular areas that could alert them to upcoming attacks.
The last way they would acquire information was through Allied agents who were captured in the field. After they were interrogated, any new intelligence would be verified against other information Marcus had received from alternative sources.
To do her job as his assistant, Vivi was allowed to move freely between all the offices, so often went down to visit the girls in the listening pool or speak to the officers’ wives and even the children that sometimes came to the office to visit their parents. She became popular, with her friendly outward demeanour and the desire to help in any way she could, often taking extra work from colleagues. Vivi quickly earned a reputation within the office as being not only industrious, but capable of doing whatever needed to be done. And the fact she also spoke good French boded well for her within the office; she found other members of the Gestapo would rely on her to decipher messages or correspondence that came in.
Lastly, she would aid Marcus in sorting through documentation and writing the reports he would present to the Reich. As a spy, his most essential job was to deceive them. As the information from the Allies filtered through the network, he intercepted it, changed it, and offered it to high command as the truth.
‘We have to be extremely careful, Vivi,’ he’d informed her. ‘We have to let some of the true information through, and some we can manipulate. We cannot bring any suspicion to this office.’
As Marcus’s secretary, she also attended the high-level meetings to take notes. She was there one morning as he presented his findings to the group.
‘It appears the offensive we have feared may be considered over the next few months,’ Marcus stated as he stood in front of a desk of ten of his peers. They met every week in an underground bunker that was dimly lit and smelled of mildew. An experience Vivi did not enjoy, but it was secure, and the higher members in the Reich insisted on caution to keep them all safe. In the dingy room, they assembled around a circular mahogany table, officers of the highest calibre from all the departments.