WEBVTT - From Poland with Love 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:03.800 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:08.400 and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minkie. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:17.400 In nineteen fifty one, the passenger ship Ruhein was set 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:21.160 to embark on its maiden voyage, a four month trip 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:25.440 from London to New Zealand. For the crew, their uniform 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:28.640 required that they all wear whatever medals or ribbons they 0:00:28.680 --> 0:00:32.440 had been awarded during the Second World War. Most of 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:35.480 the stewards had served, and some even had a few 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:38.280 glistening gold medals that made them puff out their chests 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.800 proudly while chatting with the guests. But then there was 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:46.440 one Polish maid who caused a mixture of fascination and 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:52.720 consternation among her colleagues. Her name was Christina Scarbeck, although 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:57.639 she went by the Anglicized name Christine Granville, and though 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:00.880 her job on the ship was sweeping and dying bedrooms 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:07.080 and bathrooms, her uniform was a constellation of military acclaim 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:10.840 nearly a dozen medals and honors that would be impressive 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:15.040 on a general medals that included the incredibly prestigious French 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:20.399 Quadi Guerre and the British George Medal. She's lying clearly. 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:24.000 Some of the other maids whispered to each other, rolling 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:27.479 their eyes whenever the male passengers on the ship sought 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:32.399 out Christina for conversation. She probably stole those medals, or 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:35.840 got them from a guy she slept with. Though Christina 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:39.280 had quickly charmed many of the passengers on the ruine, 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:44.039 her coworkers were suspicious and resentful of the attention that 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:48.800 she got. Only one steward, an awkward looking man named 0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:52.160 Dennis Muldoni, stood up for her when the rest of 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:56.160 the crew mocked her. Thank you, Christina said to Muldoni, 0:01:56.520 --> 0:02:00.240 after he deflected a particularly vicious act us a shim 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:02.840 that one of the other maids had made against her. 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:07.480 Christina smiled at him, that charming smile that had made 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:10.320 dozens of men across Europe fall in love with her. 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:17.279 Muldoni was smitten. More than smitten, he became well obsessed. 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:22.520 He followed Christina after they docked, wrote her dozens of letters, 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:25.560 and watched her in the small hotel in London where 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:29.520 she was staying, watching as she came and went. He 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:34.200 wanted to know everything about her. Who was this woman? 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:38.640 The maid with a dozen medals on their chest? But 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:42.080 even he would never fully be able to understand the 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:46.640 strange path that Christina's life had taken the adventures of 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:50.160 a woman driven by passion and by bravery, who had 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:53.720 wanted to live life to the fullest. Even those who 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:58.240 loved Christina Scarbuck would never fully know her during her 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:04.000 life or after her death. I'm Danish Schwartz and this 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:13.400 is noble blood. As the century turned into the tent, 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:18.080 an impoverished count in Poland married the daughter of a 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:22.440 wealthy Jewish banker. It was a marriage of convenience, not love. 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:26.120 The count used his new bride's dowry to pay off 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:29.560 his debts. The pair did go on to have two children, 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:34.560 but the count continued to have debts. He spent lavishly 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:38.320 and gambled indiscriminately, and so by the time the count 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:43.080 finally died of tuberculosis, the family had already been forced 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:46.960 to sell their lavish worse at home. The widowed countess 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:50.200 barely had enough money to support herself, and so she 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:53.240 and her children would need to work for a living. 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:58.720 Their daughter, Christina, aged two, quickly found work at a 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:04.440 Fiat dealership. Christina was beautiful and charming. She had actually 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:08.800 placed six that year in the Miss Polonna beauty contest. 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.480 But the beauty queen was not suited to a life 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:16.400 of office work. The clerical work in the car dealership 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:20.560 was dull and monotonous, and to make matters worse, the 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:25.799 office was above the poorly ventilated garage, so Christina breathed 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:29.839 in so much exhaust that her lungs would have permanent 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:32.440 scars on them, scars that you would have for the 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:36.400 rest of her life. She dreamed of a much bigger 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:41.520 life for herself, something exciting and glamorous. She was more 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:45.760 than ready then to say yes immediately when a businessman 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:49.520 named Gusta Getlich came into the dealership one day and 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:53.919 proposed to her. The marriage wouldn't last long. Within a 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:57.680 few short years they were divorced, but thanks to the settlement, 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.320 Christina now at least had enough money to to live 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:07.040 relatively independently in inexpensive in bohemian but still fashionable apartments 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:11.000 in the city. She's a nice girl, her ex husband 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:15.280 would say, but she's always looking for change. She's young, 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:23.760 and she's romantic. As a young woman, Christina found that 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:28.839 she was more compatible with the single lifestyle. She drank 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:32.479 champagne with her friends wore silk stockings and orbited a 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:38.479 circle of equally glamorous writers, poets, and politicians. Her status 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:42.320 as a young divorcee seemed glamorous when she spun it 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:46.159 out at cocktail parties, but Christina soon learned that it 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:49.560 was making things very hard when it came to finding 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:54.400 another husband for herself. She was already getting a reputation 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:57.560 that she was more suited to being a mistress than 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:00.279 a wife, and that she wasn't the kind of girl 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:04.640 that a respectable, prominent Polish man would want for his wife. 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:08.680 If she had any doubts as to her prospects, well, 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:12.640 those doubts would soon be put to rest. For a 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:16.200 few months, Christina had been dating a young man named Adam, 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:19.320 with whom she fell in love. She was half expecting 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:23.440 a proposal when Christina accepted an invitation from Adam's mother 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:27.960 to meet her for tea at her house. Adam's mother 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:32.880 squeezed lemon into her mug of tea and stirred with 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:36.960 the silver spoon as she looked Christina up and down. 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:42.240 The mother informed Christina that her relationship with her son 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:48.080 was over. Christina was broken up with by her boyfriend's mother. 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:53.240 In her loneliest moments, Christina wondered if she was destined 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:57.800 to be alone forever, a divorcee, verging on penniless, nearing 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:01.520 the end of her twenties, and bouncing from meaningless relationship 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:06.719 to meaningless relationship, and then, like it always happens, life 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:13.720 found her where she least expected it. Christina had been 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:17.040 skiing since she was a young woman, particularly in the 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:20.400 mountains of southern Poland, where doctors had told her that 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:24.280 the air would help her scarred lungs. While skiing down 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:30.720 a particularly treacherous slope during a snowstorm, Christina's wooden skis 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:34.080 slid on the ice and she flew off the trail, 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:38.800 only to be rescued, literally swept off her feet by 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:42.520 a hulking man over six feet tall, who reached out 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:46.760 his arms to grab her. His name was Yurjah gishki. 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:52.080 Yrjah was approaching fifty, but he was charming, smart, and 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:56.720 worldly in a way that drew Christina towards him. Unlike Christina, 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:00.320 he hadn't come from a noble family. His father was 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:04.360 well off, but Usia had no interest in the responsible 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:08.120 future that his father envisioned for him. He failed out 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:11.480 of an engineering course and set out for America, where 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:14.360 his list of jobs reads a bit like an early 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:19.600 nineteen hundreds Forrest Gump. Rsia was a prospector, a trapper 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:25.680 and actual cowboy, and even a chauffeur for J. D. Rockefeller. Eventually, 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:29.520 his skills with language and his connections brought him to 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:32.640 a job with the Polish legation in Washington. D c 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:38.200 Usiah helped Poland's first ever Olympic team prepared to compete 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:41.200 in France, and then he joined an expedition with a 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:46.040 Polish explorer in Africa, where he hunted elephants and survived malaria, 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:49.040 only to make it back to Poland and run into 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:53.360 Christina on the ski slope. Here was the man Christina 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:57.760 had been waiting for, someone who was mature and financially secure, 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:02.079 but above all interesting. The pair were married and they 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:06.320 set off for Europe together. The photo in Christina's passport 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:08.920 was one of the head shots she had used in 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:13.360 the Misspolonia pageant. Yujiah was a powerful man, and he 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:17.720 was domineering. It didn't take long for Christina to feel 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:23.120 claustrophobic in her role as a diplomat's wife. Still in 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.600 nineteen thirty eight Yrsiah was assigned to help open a 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:30.040 Polish consulate in Kenya, and so the pair moved to 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.520 London while they prepared for their journey together to Africa. 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:37.240 What Christina hoped at least would be a new start, 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:40.560 a type of adventure that would make her marriage feel 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:45.680 well worthwhile again. On the ship to South Africa, though 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:48.960 Christina began to wonder if she had made a mistake 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:53.400 in her marriage. Yujiah had become more of a which 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:58.880 she called quote Sfengali than husband. He dominated her life 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:04.559 in a way that she hadn't anticipated. Unfortunately, Christina's marriage 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:08.319 would soon be the least of her problems. The pair 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:20.000 reached Johannesburg just days before Hitler invaded Poland. The two 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:25.760 of them, Poles in Africa, were panicked and terrified, terrified 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:28.079 for their loved ones and for the fate of their 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:32.840 beloved country, and they were five thousand miles away, unable 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:37.480 to do anything to help. Of course, they immediately turned around. 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:40.400 They sold their car in Cape Town and boarded a 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:44.360 ship for Southampton, embarking on what would become a journey 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:48.760 fraught with distress, the constant worry about what was happening 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:52.080 in Poland, and the feeling of impotence that they weren't 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:56.880 doing anything to help. Every morning they received more news 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:03.079 on the radio about the German armies steady advance. On September, 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:08.120 one of the British officers aboard the ship updated the 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:12.720 lost and found board in the ship's common area. Underneath 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:16.560 a notice for a lost pair of ladies panties was 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:22.239 a new notice on the bulletin board. It read lost Warsaw. 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:31.680 By the time Christina and Yuge finally reached Europe, two 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:36.920 hundred thousand Polish men and women were dead, arrested and 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:41.839 killed by the German invaders. Neither had any idea as 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:45.400 to the fate of their families. Usa tried to join 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:49.480 the military in France, but his advanced age over fifty 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:53.800 at this point, combined with numerous skiing injuries, including a 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:58.640 recovering broken collar bone, meant that he was rejected for service. 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:03.560 Christina also attempted to enroll in active combat, but being 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:08.640 a woman, she was rejected as well. But Christina was persistent. 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:12.439 She knew that with her language skills, her social contact 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:15.000 she had made across Europe, she would be an asset 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:18.440 to the resistance, and so with her relationship with her 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:22.360 husband dissolved in all but name, Christina built a new 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:26.480 future for herself as an agent with the British Secret 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:32.320 Special Operations Executive or s o E. The organization wasn't 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:35.560 itself fully formed yet, and it wouldn't allow women to 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:40.480 enlist technically for another two years, but Christina demanded that 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:43.760 she'd be put to use. I know Poland, she said, 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:46.680 I know the mountains to the south. I can ski 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:50.240 across the border of Hungary and into occupied territory. Just 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:55.480 let me, and so they did. Christina convinced a former 0:12:55.640 --> 0:13:00.440 Polish Olympic skier to join her skiing across the Tatram Mountains, 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:04.079 where she helped to deliver British propaganda and news material 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:08.280 to underground printing presses in Poland so that they could 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:13.840 reprint and distribute them. Christina recognized how starved the Polish 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:17.520 people were for news. Their only source of information about 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:22.200 what was happening around them was the German propaganda, and 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:26.680 as she brought information in, she also smuggled secrets out, 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:32.520 data and information on Germany's shipments and transportations. She traveled 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:37.000 back and forth between then neutral Hungary and Poland undercover 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:40.960 as a journalist. Her first time back in Poland, she 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:43.760 kept a hat low over her head so she wouldn't 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:47.840 be recognized by any friend. Still, an old acquaintance came 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:52.680 up to her at a cafe one morning, Christina, Christina Scarback, 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:55.640 What in Heaven's name are you doing here? We all 0:13:55.720 --> 0:14:00.640 heard you went abroad. Christina shook her head. I'm sorry, 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:05.280 that's not me. I'm not Christina. Why how odd? The woman, 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:09.079 oblivious exclaimed, I could have sworn you were my friend, 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:15.400 Christina Scarback. It's uncanny people were looking now. Christina just 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:19.240 shook her head and to ally suspicion, she hung around 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:22.480 a little while longer, pretending that she hadn't been deeply 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:26.360 spooked by what had just occurred. How risky it was 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:29.520 for her, as a British agent to be moving in 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:34.680 occupied territory. On her final visit to Poland, she met 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:38.920 with her mother in secret. Christina had never registered as 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:43.120 a Jew, but her mother had. Christina knew what Germany 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:47.080 was doing around Eastern Europe, and she begged her mother 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:50.040 to leave, to stay in a cabin outside the city 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:54.880 until she could be smuggled out. Her mother refused. She 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:58.240 was loyal to Poland and she was teaching an underground 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:01.360 French class. She were a used to leave her students. 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:04.640 Maybe she didn't believe how bad it would become, or 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:08.640 didn't want to believe. Maybe she was scared. It was 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:13.520 the last time Christina saw her mother. Countess Stefanie scar Buck, 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:22.560 was killed by Nazis in a Warsaw prison. Soon it 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:25.760 was too risky for Christina to even remain in Hungry, 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:31.400 as Hungry, too fell to the occupying Nazi forces. In Budapest, 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:35.280 she connected with another Polish agent working for the British, 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:38.640 a man named Andreas Kowski, who would go by the 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:43.800 alias Andrew Kennedy. Don't you remember me, he said, grinning 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:46.640 when he shook Christina's hand. We used to have play 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:49.640 dates when we were toddlers. My father took me over 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:51.680 to play at your house in Warsaw when he had 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:55.480 business meetings with your father. Andre's fell in love with 0:15:55.560 --> 0:16:00.640 Christina almost immediately. He was a brilliant tactician and dedicated 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:05.000 Polish patriot. Thanks to a hunting accident before the war, 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:08.400 where a friend accidentally shot him in the foot, he 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:11.520 was missing most of one leg, but still he had 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.640 served with the Polish Army during the invasion and had 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:18.920 been awarded their highest honor for bravery. From the time 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:24.960 he and Christina reconnected in Hungary, they would remain associates, partners, 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:29.320 and sometimes lovers for the rest of their lives. While 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:33.520 working in Budapest, the pair was captured by Hungarian police 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:38.320 officers and turned over to the Gestapo for questioning. Ever, 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:41.800 the quick thinker Christina bit her tongue hard enough to 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:46.120 draw blood, which she then coughed all over herself and 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:51.240 the Gestapo guards. She claimed to have tuberculosis, and an 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:55.440 X ray scan revealed the scars on her lungs remnants 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:58.880 from her time working at the Fiat dealership, but the 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:03.960 Hungarian police and Gestapo didn't know that. Disgusted at this woman, 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:09.200 presumably moments away from dying of active tuberculosis, the Gestapo 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:14.280 released Christina and Andres from custody. The pair realized that 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:18.040 they needed to get out of occupied territory. They got 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:21.960 a pair of fake passports in which Christina became Christine 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:26.239 Granville and took seven years off her age. In the 0:17:26.280 --> 0:17:30.280 trunk of a Chrysler driven by an ambassador, Christina made 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:34.919 it to Yugoslavia and then Bulgaria, Andres drove across the 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:37.800 border in an opal, claiming that he owned a car 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:40.600 dealership and that he was driving a car that he 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:45.600 had sold to deliver it from Bulgaria. Christina Andres were 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:49.520 able to pass along the military intel that would eventually 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:53.800 help convince Winston Churchill that Germany was planning an invasion 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:58.200 of the Soviet Union. They say that Winston Churchill himself 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:08.720 actually looked at the micro film that Christina delivered. From 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:12.280 this point on, the stories of Christina's various exploits in 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:17.800 the war just become a string of heroic anecdotes, new lovers, 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:22.040 new countries, new missions. But I think my favorite story, 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:25.640 the one that best embodies her combination of quick thinking 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:30.480 and independent spirit, came after she had parachuted into France 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:33.880 to join the resistance there as part of a network 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:39.080 led by a man named Francis camer. One afternoon, three agents, 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:42.520 including the network's leader, came here. We're driving through the 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:48.240 French countryside when they hit an unexpected Gestapo roadblock. The 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:52.679 three men, almost immediately identified as agents, were brought to 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:58.560 a nearby prison and sentenced to be executed. Christina told 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:01.239 the rest of the resistance group that they needed to 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:04.199 get them out. It's too risky. The rest of the 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:09.159 group said, we'll see about that, Christina replied. She rode 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:13.160 her bicycle twenty five miles to the Digna prison, where 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:16.280 she suspected that the three captors were being kept, but 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:19.679 she couldn't be sure, and so she circled the walls 0:19:19.720 --> 0:19:23.520 of the prison, humming the song Frankie and Johnny, an 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:26.880 old song that she and Camaire had sung together. From 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:30.479 the other side of the stone walls, she heard humming 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:34.560 back the counter melody to what she herself was humming. 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:41.320 The agents were inside. Gathering herself up, Christina approached the 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:44.640 guard of the prison and began one of the most 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:49.679 dangerous feints possible, I admit, she said, I'm a British agent. 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:53.080 In fact, I am the wife of one of your captives, 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:58.359 Francis Camire, and the niece of General Bernard Montgomery. Of course, 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:02.480 she was neither. I'm not supposed to be here, she said, 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:04.880 but I care about my husband, and so I'm going 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:07.560 to be straight with you. You and I both know 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:11.080 that Allied forces landed in Normandy last month, But what 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:13.880 you don't know is they made it through the country 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:18.960 and they're just miles away. Now they weren't, but Christina continued, 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:21.919 and when they reach your prison and find out you 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:25.119 killed these men, my husband and his friends, there is 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:28.399 going to be hell to pay. I don't need to 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:31.320 tell you that the soldiers aren't going to have mercy 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:37.600 on you. Retribution on you personally will be swift and terrible. 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:42.879 The nervous guard relented. Some sources say that she paid 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:45.280 them off with two million francs that she had wired 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:48.359 to her, or that the money was air dropped directly 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:52.080 to her, but the sources on that payment isn't quite clear. 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:56.720 What is clear is that the three resistance men were 0:20:56.800 --> 0:20:59.560 led from their cells in the early hours of the morning, 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:02.520 sure that they were being taken into the yard to 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:06.840 be shot. Instead, as they shielded their eyes from the sun, 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:11.000 they saw Christina Scarback, leaning on the door of an 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:20.520 idling car to take them back to safety. Christina often 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:25.639 spoke half jokingly about her horror of peace, how nervous 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:27.879 she was for the end of the war when she 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:31.080 would no longer have a job or a noble purpose. 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:35.120 From the time the war ended, she had a pension 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:39.280 that lasted five months from the s Oe, but her 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:45.760 application British citizenship kept getting tangled up and delayed in bureaucracy. 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:52.000 Unable to find a government position without citizenship, she bounced 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:55.639 between a few odd jobs in London. Too proud to 0:21:55.680 --> 0:22:00.240 take any gifts or money from friends, Christina worked as 0:22:00.240 --> 0:22:05.720 a telephone operator, saleswoman, waitress, and then finally as a 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:10.359 steward on the passenger liner Rouhin, one of the three 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:14.200 men that she had rescued in France. Zann Fielding wrote 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:17.760 of Christina in his memoirs about how she chose to 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:21.320 work on board a ship rather than take any of 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:26.000 her friend's hospitality. Quote she embarked on a life of 0:22:26.200 --> 0:22:31.240 uncertain travel, as though anxious to reproduce in peacetime the 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:35.760 hazards she had known during war. On board the Rouhin 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:39.800 as a foreigner with a strange array of impressive medals, 0:22:40.280 --> 0:22:43.600 the rest of the crew quickly grew to resent her, 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:47.359 while the rest of the crew, except for Dennis Muldoni. 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:50.640 He stood up for her that one time and Christina 0:22:50.680 --> 0:22:53.760 had thanked him, and from then the two became friendly. 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:58.360 He claimed later that they were lovers, but Christina described 0:22:58.400 --> 0:23:03.080 him to a friend as obstinate and terrifying. Once he 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:06.960 latched his attention onto Christina, he just wouldn't let go. 0:23:08.320 --> 0:23:12.240 Christina was still a relatively young woman, younger even according 0:23:12.280 --> 0:23:15.600 to her passport, and while on leave from the ship 0:23:15.680 --> 0:23:19.760 in London, she made the decision that she would marry Andres. 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:24.119 After all, he had been proposing to her continually. He 0:23:24.160 --> 0:23:27.280 had loved her his entire life, and she did love 0:23:27.359 --> 0:23:30.680 him too. In her way. She had been running for 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:34.720 so long, trying to find that rush of adventure, but 0:23:34.880 --> 0:23:38.679 maybe love could be an adventure too. She was living 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:41.960 at a hotel in London, the Shelburne, but maybe it 0:23:42.040 --> 0:23:44.480 was time for her to build a more permanent life, 0:23:45.560 --> 0:23:49.080 and so, to the delight of Andres, plans were made 0:23:49.280 --> 0:23:51.640 she would meet him in Belgium and the two would 0:23:51.680 --> 0:23:55.240 get married and continue on together to build a life together. 0:23:56.440 --> 0:23:59.760 She packed her suitcase the night before her flight. She 0:24:00.160 --> 0:24:03.359 was clothes, but also stowed away in the bottom of 0:24:03.400 --> 0:24:08.159 the trunk her old s Oe wireless radio and the 0:24:08.200 --> 0:24:10.760 commando knife that she had always kept on her person 0:24:10.800 --> 0:24:14.240 while in service. Even as she was flying away to 0:24:14.440 --> 0:24:18.080 a more stable life of marriage, she was still prepared 0:24:18.320 --> 0:24:26.680 for adventure, but her flight was canceled because of an 0:24:26.680 --> 0:24:30.480 engine failure and pushed back to the following morning, and 0:24:30.520 --> 0:24:34.680 so Christina had one extra day in London. That day, 0:24:34.760 --> 0:24:37.440 she met a friend for coffee and neatly laid out 0:24:37.440 --> 0:24:40.119 her travel outfit on her chair. For the next morning, 0:24:41.040 --> 0:24:44.480 she borrowed an ink and pen from the hotel housekeeper 0:24:45.000 --> 0:24:48.000 and neatly labeled her linens with her name so that 0:24:48.040 --> 0:24:51.120 she could put them in storage. And then that night 0:24:51.200 --> 0:24:53.919 she met a few more friends for supper before she 0:24:54.040 --> 0:24:57.240 boarded the two and walked from the station back to 0:24:57.280 --> 0:25:02.800 the hotel. Unbeknownst to her, Dennis Muldoney was watching her. 0:25:03.400 --> 0:25:07.320 He slipped into the shellbourne after her and waited until 0:25:07.400 --> 0:25:11.120 she was in the stairwell to confront her. He demanded 0:25:11.280 --> 0:25:15.080 his letters back. I don't have them, Christina said, I 0:25:15.240 --> 0:25:21.000 burned them. Muldoni sputtered in something like despair. To Christina, 0:25:21.359 --> 0:25:26.160 he was pathetic, he had no self respect, he was obtuse, 0:25:26.600 --> 0:25:30.760 and worse than that, he was boring. There's nothing here 0:25:30.800 --> 0:25:36.080 between us, Dennis, she said. He charged at her. A 0:25:36.320 --> 0:25:39.960 porter heard Christina shout, get off of me, and he 0:25:40.119 --> 0:25:43.440 raced into the stairwell. Where he saw a man pressing 0:25:43.560 --> 0:25:47.040 Christina against the wall. The porter assumed that the man 0:25:47.240 --> 0:25:50.320 was forcing himself onto her, and so he ran ahead 0:25:50.520 --> 0:25:54.600 and yanked the man off of her. Christina crumpled to 0:25:54.680 --> 0:25:59.400 the floor. Dennis muldoney had stabbed her with a five 0:25:59.480 --> 0:26:03.920 and a half blade into her chest, and Christina Scarbuck 0:26:04.400 --> 0:26:10.200 was already dead. Oh Christine, Dennis Muldoney shouted, I did 0:26:10.240 --> 0:26:14.440 it because I loved her. The police arrived shortly after, 0:26:14.640 --> 0:26:18.400 and Maldoni offered his full confession, but he also tried 0:26:18.440 --> 0:26:20.960 to pour a bottle of powdered aspirin into his mouth 0:26:21.040 --> 0:26:23.120 that the police had to not go out of his hands. 0:26:24.000 --> 0:26:27.840 In the end, he was as impatient as Christina. I 0:26:28.000 --> 0:26:30.680 killed her. He told the police, let's get away from 0:26:30.720 --> 0:26:34.919 here and get it over quickly. Andres flew to London 0:26:34.960 --> 0:26:39.119 the next morning and identified the body. He was the 0:26:39.240 --> 0:26:51.320 last to say goodbye to her. Christina Scarbuck was buried 0:26:51.359 --> 0:26:55.119 in the cemetery of Kensal Green in London under a 0:26:55.240 --> 0:26:58.560 dusting of Polish soil, with all of her medals and 0:26:58.680 --> 0:27:03.159 honors buried with her pinned on a velvet cushion. The 0:27:03.240 --> 0:27:06.639 Polish national anthem was sung as the coffin was lowered 0:27:06.680 --> 0:27:10.639 into the ground. During the funeral, a strong gust of 0:27:10.680 --> 0:27:13.600 wind blew over the iron cross at the head of 0:27:13.640 --> 0:27:17.639 her grave, and Andres raced forward to write it. He 0:27:17.760 --> 0:27:21.399 would be protecting Christina and her reputation for the rest 0:27:21.440 --> 0:27:25.720 of his life, until he would eventually be buried too. 0:27:26.440 --> 0:27:31.880 His ashes at the foot of Christina's grave. Her death certificate, 0:27:32.040 --> 0:27:35.320 which said that she was thirty seven, got her age rung. 0:27:36.480 --> 0:27:40.160 Christina Scarbuck was forty four when she died, killed by 0:27:40.200 --> 0:27:43.000 a man who claimed he loved her but only wanted 0:27:43.040 --> 0:27:47.080 to possess her. She was the first female British Special 0:27:47.080 --> 0:27:51.560 agent and their longest serving female agent. A woman who 0:27:51.560 --> 0:27:55.720 had lived a life filled with adventure and bravery, the 0:27:55.840 --> 0:27:58.600 daughter of a count and a Jewish woman killed by 0:27:58.640 --> 0:28:02.320 the Gestapo, who had lived life only on her terms, 0:28:03.200 --> 0:28:06.760 who had probably imagined death a thousand times coming in 0:28:06.800 --> 0:28:09.240 the glory of battle or in the line of duty, 0:28:10.240 --> 0:28:23.560 but had died instead in a hotel stairwell. That's the 0:28:23.600 --> 0:28:27.240 story of Christina Scarback. But keep listening after a brief 0:28:27.280 --> 0:28:39.520 sponsor break to hear a little bit more about her legacy. 0:28:41.600 --> 0:28:44.280 Even if you've never heard of Christina Scarback up until 0:28:44.360 --> 0:28:47.400