Mathilde Carre
Major Roman Gerby-Czerniawski cut a dashing figure. He had been an Olympic skier for Poland. As a Polish Air Force officer with crypto-analytical training, he escaped to Paris when Poland fell to the Nazis. When France fell seven months later, he went undercover, contacted the Special Operations Executive (SOE, British cloak-and-dagger) to organize a Paris based espionage ring.
Gerby-Czerniawski recruited an alluring Sorbonne educated lawyer in her mid-thirties as his radio operator. Mathilde Carre didn’t know it at the time, but she was to become the war’s only triple agent.
Carre picked up important intel at social functions from German officers who were trying to seduce her. She later said she received a sexual thrill from danger.
She would radio her tidbits to SOE almost daily. She introduced her reports with “the Cat reports,” so she was given the code name La Chatte (the Cat).
Meanwhile, the Abwehr (German Intelligence) sent a “human ferret” to locate the broadcast source. Hugo Bleicher, a middle aged man who adopted the alias “Colonel Henri” (he was only a sergeant) relentlessly pursued the source of the transmissions.
She was sleeping (possibly with Gerby-Czerniawski) when Bleicher and a squad of SS men broke into her apartment and arrested her. She evaded torture and execution by agreeing to become a double agent.
She began feeding London false information. Predesigned phrases were embedded in the Cat’s messages to show she hadn’t been turned as Bleicher looked over her shoulder.
Another SOE agent (code-named “Lucas”) suspected the Cat had been turned. He confronted her and accused her of being in bed with the Germans (no pun intended). She broke down in tears and confessed. Lucas thought of shooting her on the spot, but then had an idea. Why not turn her into a triple agent?
The Cat persuaded Bleicher to let her go to London where, she said, she would get details of SOE agents operating in Paris.
She and Lucas were picked up by a British torpedo boat on the Brittany coast and ferried to London. SOE treated her like a queen, putting her up in a luxury hotel where she enjoyed three happy months totally unaware her room was bugged by SOE.
When SOE had gotten all they wanted out of her, they threw her in prison, clawing and scratching.
Turned over to the French authorities after the war, she was condemned to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. She served twelve years and was released. She moved to a provincial French town and lived quietly until her death in 1970.