7. Hiding in a Whorehouse
Not long thereafter, Odette Sansom was acting as a courier between the SOE and a French Resistance higher up, but the mission took longer than expected, and she missed the last train back home. 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 brothel 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 brothel was raided by German military police looking for a deserter. To keep them from entering Odette’s room, the quick-thinking madam claimed that the room housed her niece, who was infected with smallpox.