6. Hiding in a Whorehouse
On another occasion, Odette was tasked with guiding four newly arrived English SOE agents into Marseilles, and chaperoning them past German military checkpoints. Those were relatively easy, compared to the checkpoints manned by collaborationist Vichy police, who as native Frenchmen were more attuned to telling genuine fellow countrymen from imposters. After fulfilling that task, she was to contact and deliver a message to a high ranking Resistance commander. She was then to contact yet another Resistance leader, and deliver to him a sum of money with which to buy gasoline on the black market. Odette managed to fulfil all her tasks, but ran into delays while doing so, and by the time she was done, night had fallen, and with it a curfew imposed by the authorities.
All hotels were booked, and the last thing Odette wanted was to get arrested for violating curfew, and risk a search that might reveal incriminating documents. So she hid in a whorehouse that catered exclusively to German soldiers, run by a madam sympathetic to the Resistance. It was as safe a hideout as any, because such an establishment was the last place the authorities would expect to find an anti Nazi. However, on that particular night, the whorehouse was raided by German military police searching for a deserter. The quick thinking madam kept them from entering Odette’s room, by claiming it housed her niece, who was infected with smallpox.
