Dangerous Lives of Female Spies

One man’s meat is another man’s poison, they say.

Oftentimes, one country’s hero becomes another country’s villain.

Stories of spies and secret agents, therefore, are intriguing to all of us.

Listening to a gripping BBC documentary this week, on Noor Inayat Khan, I was once again drawn into thoughts about the dangerous lives these female spies chose to live.

Fluent in French, Noor Inayat Khan was a wartime British secret agent sent into Nazi-occupied France by Special Operations Executive (SOE) in early 1940s.

She was born in Moscow to an Indian father and an American mother, and was a direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Muslim ruler of Mysore.

Her father was a musician and Sufi teacher who moved to London, and then to Paris, where Noor was educated.

That explains her French.  But just, look at her. 

She wrote children’s' stories, studied Sufism, got a degree in child psychology, and even played the sitar.

But when France fell to the Nazis in November 1940, she escaped to England and joined WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force).

Trained as a radio operator – with Morse code and all those works - she was sent to join the 'Prosper' resistance network in Paris, under the codename 'Madeleine'.

Her communication headquarters was, however, raided by the Nazis.  She avoided detection. But was later betrayed, and ruthlessly interrogated.

Without revealing sensitive information, despite extreme odds, she managed to escape several times before finally being shackled and transferred to Dachau Concentration camp.

Here, at this camp, she was brutally tortured and finally executed in 1944. She was just 30.

She was awarded posthumously the George Cross, and a Statue of her, now stands in London.

Tortured and shot by one country. Decorated and honoured by another.  

And we must wonder now, what gave woman like Noor such courage and confidence?

Is it some horrible blackmail, some threat to family, or some lure of money? Nothing seems plausible.

We see in these spies a strange passion to serve the country they owed allegiance to. Temporarily.

When caught, they became double agents. When caught again, they became triple agents.

But they kept evolving, and kept playing roles that were too many and too complicated to play by even an accomplished actor. And that too, in terrifying circumstances.

An enormous amount of grit and fortitude was needed I think, years ago, when communication and transportation was pitiable.

And when to be a woman in a ruthless world of men was by no means easy.

But Noor was just one among hundreds of women who chose to live on the edge.

Krystyna Skarbek, the Polish spy was an excellent skier. She put her skill to good use when Poland was occupied by the Nazis. She transported information back and forth from Poland to Hungary through the mountains.

Nancy Wake developed a spy-network in France so strong that she became the prime target for Gestapo. Nicknamed White Mouse for her elusiveness, she was a lethal combination of femininity and brutality.

Mata Hari. How can I not mention this greatest female spy? Born in Netherlands, and initially married to an Indonesian, she went around the world changing men, and changing allegiances with equal ease.  But finally, accused of spying for the Germans, she was executed in 1917.

Females or males, what’s in a gender? These spies were all doing what the other countries did not want them to do in theirs. Dangerously.