Lilac Paper

Paris, Wednesday, 7 February 1917, 11 pm. In suite 112 of the Hôtel Bellerive, on the most elegant avenue in Paris, there are still flowers from an admirer and a smell of face powder. Outside, the city is turning off its lights because of the zeppelinszeppelin Large German rigid airship, also used for bombing raids in the First World War..

Today Captain Lazare Brémont, of counterespionage, decoded a German radio message from Madrid to Berlin. An agent codenamed "R-7" handed over a name from a list of French agents in Brussels.

The six names on that list were entrusted on 16 January, in this suite, to its owner, who had offered to work for France. On 1 February, the Germans shot the third name on the list in Brussels, Achille Dierickx, the agent "Periwinkle".

Three people were close to those names. One of them sold them.

Salon of a luxury Paris suite, 1917, at night, with a screen hung with dance costumes and blackout curtains.