March 16, 2021 • 30 mins
The daughter of a Jewish heiress and Polish count went on to become one of the most infamous secret agents in British history. The story of Krystyna Skarbek reads like part-spy novel and part-political thriller.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minkie. Listener discretion is advised.
In nineteen fifty one, the passenger ship Ruhein was set
to embark on its maiden voyage, a four month trip
(00:21):
from London to New Zealand. For the crew, their uniform
required that they all wear whatever medals or ribbons they
had been awarded during the Second World War. Most of
the stewards had served, and some even had a few
glistening gold medals that made them puff out their chests
proudly while chatting with the guests. But then there was
(00:41):
one Polish maid who caused a mixture of fascination and
consternation among her colleagues. Her name was Christina Scarbeck, although
she went by the Anglicized name Christine Granville, and though
her job on the ship was sweeping and dying bedrooms
and bathrooms, her uniform was a constellation of military acclaim
(01:07):
nearly a dozen medals and honors that would be impressive
on a general medals that included the incredibly prestigious French
Quadi Guerre and the British George Medal. She's lying clearly.
Some of the other maids whispered to each other, rolling
their eyes whenever the male passengers on the ship sought
(01:27):
out Christina for conversation. She probably stole those medals, or
got them from a guy she slept with. Though Christina
had quickly charmed many of the passengers on the ruine,
her coworkers were suspicious and resentful of the attention that
she got. Only one steward, an awkward looking man named
(01:48):
Dennis Muldoni, stood up for her when the rest of
the crew mocked her. Thank you, Christina said to Muldoni,
after he deflected a particularly vicious act us a shim
that one of the other maids had made against her.
Christina smiled at him, that charming smile that had made
dozens of men across Europe fall in love with her.
(02:11):
Muldoni was smitten. More than smitten, he became well obsessed.
He followed Christina after they docked, wrote her dozens of letters,
and watched her in the small hotel in London where
she was staying, watching as she came and went. He
wanted to know everything about her. Who was this woman?
(02:34):
The maid with a dozen medals on their chest? But
even he would never fully be able to understand the
strange path that Christina's life had taken the adventures of
a woman driven by passion and by bravery, who had
wanted to live life to the fullest. Even those who
loved Christina Scarbuck would never fully know her during her
(02:58):
life or after her death. I'm Danish Schwartz and this
is noble blood. As the century turned into the tent,
an impoverished count in Poland married the daughter of a
wealthy Jewish banker. It was a marriage of convenience, not love.
(03:23):
The count used his new bride's dowry to pay off
his debts. The pair did go on to have two children,
but the count continued to have debts. He spent lavishly
and gambled indiscriminately, and so by the time the count
finally died of tuberculosis, the family had already been forced
to sell their lavish worse at home. The widowed countess
(03:47):
barely had enough money to support herself, and so she
and her children would need to work for a living.
Their daughter, Christina, aged two, quickly found work at a
Fiat dealership. Christina was beautiful and charming. She had actually
placed six that year in the Miss Polonna beauty contest.
(04:09):
But the beauty queen was not suited to a life
of office work. The clerical work in the car dealership
was dull and monotonous, and to make matters worse, the
office was above the poorly ventilated garage, so Christina breathed
in so much exhaust that her lungs would have permanent
(04:29):
scars on them, scars that you would have for the
rest of her life. She dreamed of a much bigger
life for herself, something exciting and glamorous. She was more
than ready then to say yes immediately when a businessman
named Gusta Getlich came into the dealership one day and
proposed to her. The marriage wouldn't last long. Within a
(04:53):
few short years they were divorced, but thanks to the settlement,
Christina now at least had enough money to to live
relatively independently in inexpensive in bohemian but still fashionable apartments
in the city. She's a nice girl, her ex husband
would say, but she's always looking for change. She's young,
(05:15):
and she's romantic. As a young woman, Christina found that
she was more compatible with the single lifestyle. She drank
champagne with her friends wore silk stockings and orbited a
circle of equally glamorous writers, poets, and politicians. Her status
(05:38):
as a young divorcee seemed glamorous when she spun it
out at cocktail parties, but Christina soon learned that it
was making things very hard when it came to finding
another husband for herself. She was already getting a reputation
that she was more suited to being a mistress than
a wife, and that she wasn't the kind of girl
(06:00):
that a respectable, prominent Polish man would want for his wife.
If she had any doubts as to her prospects, well,
those doubts would soon be put to rest. For a
few months, Christina had been dating a young man named Adam,
with whom she fell in love. She was half expecting
a proposal when Christina accepted an invitation from Adam's mother
(06:24):
to meet her for tea at her house. Adam's mother
squeezed lemon into her mug of tea and stirred with
the silver spoon as she looked Christina up and down.
The mother informed Christina that her relationship with her son
was over. Christina was broken up with by her boyfriend's mother.
(06:49):
In her loneliest moments, Christina wondered if she was destined
to be alone forever, a divorcee, verging on penniless, nearing
the end of her twenties, and bouncing from meaningless relationship
to meaningless relationship, and then, like it always happens, life
found her where she least expected it. Christina had been
(07:13):
skiing since she was a young woman, particularly in the
mountains of southern Poland, where doctors had told her that
the air would help her scarred lungs. While skiing down
a particularly treacherous slope during a snowstorm, Christina's wooden skis
slid on the ice and she flew off the trail,
(07:34):
only to be rescued, literally swept off her feet by
a hulking man over six feet tall, who reached out
his arms to grab her. His name was Yurjah gishki.
Yrjah was approaching fifty, but he was charming, smart, and
worldly in a way that drew Christina towards him. Unlike Christina,
(07:56):
he hadn't come from a noble family. His father was
well off, but Usia had no interest in the responsible
future that his father envisioned for him. He failed out
of an engineering course and set out for America, where
his list of jobs reads a bit like an early
nineteen hundreds Forrest Gump. Rsia was a prospector, a trapper
(08:19):
and actual cowboy, and even a chauffeur for J. D. Rockefeller. Eventually,
his skills with language and his connections brought him to
a job with the Polish legation in Washington. D c
Usiah helped Poland's first ever Olympic team prepared to compete
in France, and then he joined an expedition with a
(08:41):
Polish explorer in Africa, where he hunted elephants and survived malaria,
only to make it back to Poland and run into
Christina on the ski slope. Here was the man Christina
had been waiting for, someone who was mature and financially secure,
but above all interesting. The pair were married and they
(09:02):
set off for Europe together. The photo in Christina's passport
was one of the head shots she had used in
the Misspolonia pageant. Yujiah was a powerful man, and he
was domineering. It didn't take long for Christina to feel
claustrophobic in her role as a diplomat's wife. Still in
(09:23):
nineteen thirty eight Yrsiah was assigned to help open a
Polish consulate in Kenya, and so the pair moved to
London while they prepared for their journey together to Africa.
What Christina hoped at least would be a new start,
a type of adventure that would make her marriage feel
well worthwhile again. On the ship to South Africa, though
(09:45):
Christina began to wonder if she had made a mistake
in her marriage. Yujiah had become more of a which
she called quote Sfengali than husband. He dominated her life
in a way that she hadn't anticipated. Unfortunately, Christina's marriage
would soon be the least of her problems. The pair
(10:08):
reached Johannesburg just days before Hitler invaded Poland. The two
of them, Poles in Africa, were panicked and terrified, terrified
for their loved ones and for the fate of their
beloved country, and they were five thousand miles away, unable
(10:32):
to do anything to help. Of course, they immediately turned around.
They sold their car in Cape Town and boarded a
ship for Southampton, embarking on what would become a journey
fraught with distress, the constant worry about what was happening
in Poland, and the feeling of impotence that they weren't
doing anything to help. Every morning they received more news
(10:57):
on the radio about the German armies steady advance. On September,
one of the British officers aboard the ship updated the
lost and found board in the ship's common area. Underneath
a notice for a lost pair of ladies panties was
a new notice on the bulletin board. It read lost Warsaw.
(11:27):
By the time Christina and Yuge finally reached Europe, two
hundred thousand Polish men and women were dead, arrested and
killed by the German invaders. Neither had any idea as
to the fate of their families. Usa tried to join
the military in France, but his advanced age over fifty
(11:49):
at this point, combined with numerous skiing injuries, including a
recovering broken collar bone, meant that he was rejected for service.
Christina also attempted to enroll in active combat, but being
a woman, she was rejected as well. But Christina was persistent.
She knew that with her language skills, her social contact
(12:12):
she had made across Europe, she would be an asset
to the resistance, and so with her relationship with her
husband dissolved in all but name, Christina built a new
future for herself as an agent with the British Secret
Special Operations Executive or s o E. The organization wasn't
itself fully formed yet, and it wouldn't allow women to
(12:35):
enlist technically for another two years, but Christina demanded that
she'd be put to use. I know Poland, she said,
I know the mountains to the south. I can ski
across the border of Hungary and into occupied territory. Just
let me, and so they did. Christina convinced a former
Polish Olympic skier to join her skiing across the Tatram Mountains,
(13:00):
where she helped to deliver British propaganda and news material
to underground printing presses in Poland so that they could
reprint and distribute them. Christina recognized how starved the Polish
people were for news. Their only source of information about
what was happening around them was the German propaganda, and
(13:22):
as she brought information in, she also smuggled secrets out,
data and information on Germany's shipments and transportations. She traveled
back and forth between then neutral Hungary and Poland undercover
as a journalist. Her first time back in Poland, she
kept a hat low over her head so she wouldn't
(13:43):
be recognized by any friend. Still, an old acquaintance came
up to her at a cafe one morning, Christina, Christina Scarback,
What in Heaven's name are you doing here? We all
heard you went abroad. Christina shook her head. I'm sorry,
that's not me. I'm not Christina. Why how odd? The woman,
(14:05):
oblivious exclaimed, I could have sworn you were my friend,
Christina Scarback. It's uncanny people were looking now. Christina just
shook her head and to ally suspicion, she hung around
a little while longer, pretending that she hadn't been deeply
spooked by what had just occurred. How risky it was
(14:26):
for her, as a British agent to be moving in
occupied territory. On her final visit to Poland, she met
with her mother in secret. Christina had never registered as
a Jew, but her mother had. Christina knew what Germany
was doing around Eastern Europe, and she begged her mother
(14:47):
to leave, to stay in a cabin outside the city
until she could be smuggled out. Her mother refused. She
was loyal to Poland and she was teaching an underground
French class. She were a used to leave her students.
Maybe she didn't believe how bad it would become, or
didn't want to believe. Maybe she was scared. It was
(15:08):
the last time Christina saw her mother. Countess Stefanie scar Buck,
was killed by Nazis in a Warsaw prison. Soon it
was too risky for Christina to even remain in Hungry,
as Hungry, too fell to the occupying Nazi forces. In Budapest,
(15:31):
she connected with another Polish agent working for the British,
a man named Andreas Kowski, who would go by the
alias Andrew Kennedy. Don't you remember me, he said, grinning
when he shook Christina's hand. We used to have play
dates when we were toddlers. My father took me over
to play at your house in Warsaw when he had
(15:51):
business meetings with your father. Andre's fell in love with
Christina almost immediately. He was a brilliant tactician and dedicated
Polish patriot. Thanks to a hunting accident before the war,
where a friend accidentally shot him in the foot, he
was missing most of one leg, but still he had
served with the Polish Army during the invasion and had
(16:14):
been awarded their highest honor for bravery. From the time
he and Christina reconnected in Hungary, they would remain associates, partners,
and sometimes lovers for the rest of their lives. While
working in Budapest, the pair was captured by Hungarian police
officers and turned over to the Gestapo for questioning. Ever,
(16:38):
the quick thinker Christina bit her tongue hard enough to
draw blood, which she then coughed all over herself and
the Gestapo guards. She claimed to have tuberculosis, and an
X ray scan revealed the scars on her lungs remnants
from her time working at the Fiat dealership, but the
(16:58):
Hungarian police and Gestapo didn't know that. Disgusted at this woman,
presumably moments away from dying of active tuberculosis, the Gestapo
released Christina and Andres from custody. The pair realized that
they needed to get out of occupied territory. They got
a pair of fake passports in which Christina became Christine
(17:22):
Granville and took seven years off her age. In the
trunk of a Chrysler driven by an ambassador, Christina made
it to Yugoslavia and then Bulgaria, Andres drove across the
border in an opal, claiming that he owned a car
dealership and that he was driving a car that he
had sold to deliver it from Bulgaria. Christina Andres were
(17:45):
able to pass along the military intel that would eventually
help convince Winston Churchill that Germany was planning an invasion
of the Soviet Union. They say that Winston Churchill himself
actually looked at the micro film that Christina delivered. From
(18:08):
this point on, the stories of Christina's various exploits in
the war just become a string of heroic anecdotes, new lovers,
new countries, new missions. But I think my favorite story,
the one that best embodies her combination of quick thinking
and independent spirit, came after she had parachuted into France
(18:30):
to join the resistance there as part of a network
led by a man named Francis camer. One afternoon, three agents,
including the network's leader, came here. We're driving through the
French countryside when they hit an unexpected Gestapo roadblock. The
three men, almost immediately identified as agents, were brought to
(18:52):
a nearby prison and sentenced to be executed. Christina told
the rest of the resistance group that they needed to
get them out. It's too risky. The rest of the
group said, we'll see about that, Christina replied. She rode
her bicycle twenty five miles to the Digna prison, where
(19:13):
she suspected that the three captors were being kept, but
she couldn't be sure, and so she circled the walls
of the prison, humming the song Frankie and Johnny, an
old song that she and Camaire had sung together. From
the other side of the stone walls, she heard humming
back the counter melody to what she herself was humming.
(19:35):
The agents were inside. Gathering herself up, Christina approached the
guard of the prison and began one of the most
dangerous feints possible, I admit, she said, I'm a British agent.
In fact, I am the wife of one of your captives,
Francis Camire, and the niece of General Bernard Montgomery. Of course,
(19:58):
she was neither. I'm not supposed to be here, she said,
but I care about my husband, and so I'm going
to be straight with you. You and I both know
that Allied forces landed in Normandy last month, But what
you don't know is they made it through the country
and they're just miles away. Now they weren't, but Christina continued,
(20:19):
and when they reach your prison and find out you
killed these men, my husband and his friends, there is
going to be hell to pay. I don't need to
tell you that the soldiers aren't going to have mercy
on you. Retribution on you personally will be swift and terrible.
The nervous guard relented. Some sources say that she paid
(20:42):
them off with two million francs that she had wired
to her, or that the money was air dropped directly
to her, but the sources on that payment isn't quite clear.
What is clear is that the three resistance men were
led from their cells in the early hours of the morning,
sure that they were being taken into the yard to
be shot. Instead, as they shielded their eyes from the sun,
(21:07):
they saw Christina Scarback, leaning on the door of an
idling car to take them back to safety. Christina often
spoke half jokingly about her horror of peace, how nervous
she was for the end of the war when she
(21:27):
would no longer have a job or a noble purpose.
From the time the war ended, she had a pension
that lasted five months from the s Oe, but her
application British citizenship kept getting tangled up and delayed in bureaucracy.
Unable to find a government position without citizenship, she bounced
(21:52):
between a few odd jobs in London. Too proud to
take any gifts or money from friends, Christina worked as
a telephone operator, saleswoman, waitress, and then finally as a
steward on the passenger liner Rouhin, one of the three
men that she had rescued in France. Zann Fielding wrote
(22:14):
of Christina in his memoirs about how she chose to
work on board a ship rather than take any of
her friend's hospitality. Quote she embarked on a life of
uncertain travel, as though anxious to reproduce in peacetime the
hazards she had known during war. On board the Rouhin
(22:36):
as a foreigner with a strange array of impressive medals,
the rest of the crew quickly grew to resent her,
while the rest of the crew, except for Dennis Muldoni.
He stood up for her that one time and Christina
had thanked him, and from then the two became friendly.
He claimed later that they were lovers, but Christina described
(22:58):
him to a friend as obstinate and terrifying. Once he
latched his attention onto Christina, he just wouldn't let go.
Christina was still a relatively young woman, younger even according
to her passport, and while on leave from the ship
in London, she made the decision that she would marry Andres.
(23:19):
After all, he had been proposing to her continually. He
had loved her his entire life, and she did love
him too. In her way. She had been running for
so long, trying to find that rush of adventure, but
maybe love could be an adventure too. She was living
at a hotel in London, the Shelburne, but maybe it
(23:42):
was time for her to build a more permanent life,
and so, to the delight of Andres, plans were made
she would meet him in Belgium and the two would
get married and continue on together to build a life together.
She packed her suitcase the night before her flight. She
was clothes, but also stowed away in the bottom of
(24:03):
the trunk her old s Oe wireless radio and the
commando knife that she had always kept on her person
while in service. Even as she was flying away to
a more stable life of marriage, she was still prepared
for adventure, but her flight was canceled because of an
(24:26):
engine failure and pushed back to the following morning, and
so Christina had one extra day in London. That day,
she met a friend for coffee and neatly laid out
her travel outfit on her chair. For the next morning,
she borrowed an ink and pen from the hotel housekeeper
and neatly labeled her linens with her name so that
(24:48):
she could put them in storage. And then that night
she met a few more friends for supper before she
boarded the two and walked from the station back to
the hotel. Unbeknownst to her, Dennis Muldoney was watching her.
He slipped into the shellbourne after her and waited until
she was in the stairwell to confront her. He demanded
(25:11):
his letters back. I don't have them, Christina said, I
burned them. Muldoni sputtered in something like despair. To Christina,
he was pathetic, he had no self respect, he was obtuse,
and worse than that, he was boring. There's nothing here
between us, Dennis, she said. He charged at her. A
(25:36):
porter heard Christina shout, get off of me, and he
raced into the stairwell. Where he saw a man pressing
Christina against the wall. The porter assumed that the man
was forcing himself onto her, and so he ran ahead
and yanked the man off of her. Christina crumpled to
the floor. Dennis muldoney had stabbed her with a five
(25:59):
and a half blade into her chest, and Christina Scarbuck
was already dead. Oh Christine, Dennis Muldoney shouted, I did
it because I loved her. The police arrived shortly after,
and Maldoni offered his full confession, but he also tried
to pour a bottle of powdered aspirin into his mouth
(26:21):
that the police had to not go out of his hands.
In the end, he was as impatient as Christina. I
killed her. He told the police, let's get away from
here and get it over quickly. Andres flew to London
the next morning and identified the body. He was the
last to say goodbye to her. Christina Scarbuck was buried
(26:51):
in the cemetery of Kensal Green in London under a
dusting of Polish soil, with all of her medals and
honors buried with her pinned on a velvet cushion. The
Polish national anthem was sung as the coffin was lowered
into the ground. During the funeral, a strong gust of
wind blew over the iron cross at the head of
(27:13):
her grave, and Andres raced forward to write it. He
would be protecting Christina and her reputation for the rest
of his life, until he would eventually be buried too.
His ashes at the foot of Christina's grave. Her death certificate,
which said that she was thirty seven, got her age rung.
(27:36):
Christina Scarbuck was forty four when she died, killed by
a man who claimed he loved her but only wanted
to possess her. She was the first female British Special
agent and their longest serving female agent. A woman who
had lived a life filled with adventure and bravery, the
daughter of a count and a Jewish woman killed by
(27:58):
the Gestapo, who had lived life only on her terms,
who had probably imagined death a thousand times coming in
the glory of battle or in the line of duty,
but had died instead in a hotel stairwell. That's the
(28:23):
story of Christina Scarback. But keep listening after a brief
sponsor break to hear a little bit more about her legacy.
Even if you've never heard of Christina Scarback up until
(28:44):
this podcast, there's a good chance you've heard of one
of the characters that she's inspired in fiction. Rumor has
it that Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels,
was inspired by Christina while writing the character of the
double cross the agent vesper Lynde in his novel Casino Royale.
(29:05):
Some sources even claim that Fleming and Christina were secretly lovers,
although some others argue that there's no evidence the pair
actually met in person. Ever, still one can easily understand
that Fleming would have only needed to hear rumors of
this glamorous, globe trotting beauty queen spy who spoke multiple languages,
(29:26):
and create in his mind the architecture of what would
become that famous archetype, the Bond Girl. Still, I think
one of Christina's biographers, Claire Mali, says it best when
she says that in real life, Christina wasn't a Bond Girl.
Christina Scarbuck was James Bond. Noble Blood is a production
(29:52):
of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky.
The show was written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and
produced by Aaron Manky, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young.
Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales,
and you can learn more about the show over at
Noble blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(30:15):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minkie. Listener discretion is advised.
In nineteen fifty one, the passenger ship Ruhein was set
to embark on its maiden voyage, a four month trip
(00:21):
from London to New Zealand. For the crew, their uniform
required that they all wear whatever medals or ribbons they
had been awarded during the Second World War. Most of
the stewards had served, and some even had a few
glistening gold medals that made them puff out their chests
proudly while chatting with the guests. But then there was
(00:41):
one Polish maid who caused a mixture of fascination and
consternation among her colleagues. Her name was Christina Scarbeck, although
she went by the Anglicized name Christine Granville, and though
her job on the ship was sweeping and dying bedrooms
and bathrooms, her uniform was a constellation of military acclaim
(01:07):
nearly a dozen medals and honors that would be impressive
on a general medals that included the incredibly prestigious French
Quadi Guerre and the British George Medal. She's lying clearly.
Some of the other maids whispered to each other, rolling
their eyes whenever the male passengers on the ship sought
(01:27):
out Christina for conversation. She probably stole those medals, or
got them from a guy she slept with. Though Christina
had quickly charmed many of the passengers on the ruine,
her coworkers were suspicious and resentful of the attention that
she got. Only one steward, an awkward looking man named
(01:48):
Dennis Muldoni, stood up for her when the rest of
the crew mocked her. Thank you, Christina said to Muldoni,
after he deflected a particularly vicious act us a shim
that one of the other maids had made against her.
Christina smiled at him, that charming smile that had made
dozens of men across Europe fall in love with her.
(02:11):
Muldoni was smitten. More than smitten, he became well obsessed.
He followed Christina after they docked, wrote her dozens of letters,
and watched her in the small hotel in London where
she was staying, watching as she came and went. He
wanted to know everything about her. Who was this woman?
(02:34):
The maid with a dozen medals on their chest? But
even he would never fully be able to understand the
strange path that Christina's life had taken the adventures of
a woman driven by passion and by bravery, who had
wanted to live life to the fullest. Even those who
loved Christina Scarbuck would never fully know her during her
(02:58):
life or after her death. I'm Danish Schwartz and this
is noble blood. As the century turned into the tent,
an impoverished count in Poland married the daughter of a
wealthy Jewish banker. It was a marriage of convenience, not love.
(03:23):
The count used his new bride's dowry to pay off
his debts. The pair did go on to have two children,
but the count continued to have debts. He spent lavishly
and gambled indiscriminately, and so by the time the count
finally died of tuberculosis, the family had already been forced
to sell their lavish worse at home. The widowed countess
(03:47):
barely had enough money to support herself, and so she
and her children would need to work for a living.
Their daughter, Christina, aged two, quickly found work at a
Fiat dealership. Christina was beautiful and charming. She had actually
placed six that year in the Miss Polonna beauty contest.
(04:09):
But the beauty queen was not suited to a life
of office work. The clerical work in the car dealership
was dull and monotonous, and to make matters worse, the
office was above the poorly ventilated garage, so Christina breathed
in so much exhaust that her lungs would have permanent
(04:29):
scars on them, scars that you would have for the
rest of her life. She dreamed of a much bigger
life for herself, something exciting and glamorous. She was more
than ready then to say yes immediately when a businessman
named Gusta Getlich came into the dealership one day and
proposed to her. The marriage wouldn't last long. Within a
(04:53):
few short years they were divorced, but thanks to the settlement,
Christina now at least had enough money to to live
relatively independently in inexpensive in bohemian but still fashionable apartments
in the city. She's a nice girl, her ex husband
would say, but she's always looking for change. She's young,
(05:15):
and she's romantic. As a young woman, Christina found that
she was more compatible with the single lifestyle. She drank
champagne with her friends wore silk stockings and orbited a
circle of equally glamorous writers, poets, and politicians. Her status
(05:38):
as a young divorcee seemed glamorous when she spun it
out at cocktail parties, but Christina soon learned that it
was making things very hard when it came to finding
another husband for herself. She was already getting a reputation
that she was more suited to being a mistress than
a wife, and that she wasn't the kind of girl
(06:00):
that a respectable, prominent Polish man would want for his wife.
If she had any doubts as to her prospects, well,
those doubts would soon be put to rest. For a
few months, Christina had been dating a young man named Adam,
with whom she fell in love. She was half expecting
a proposal when Christina accepted an invitation from Adam's mother
(06:24):
to meet her for tea at her house. Adam's mother
squeezed lemon into her mug of tea and stirred with
the silver spoon as she looked Christina up and down.
The mother informed Christina that her relationship with her son
was over. Christina was broken up with by her boyfriend's mother.
(06:49):
In her loneliest moments, Christina wondered if she was destined
to be alone forever, a divorcee, verging on penniless, nearing
the end of her twenties, and bouncing from meaningless relationship
to meaningless relationship, and then, like it always happens, life
found her where she least expected it. Christina had been
(07:13):
skiing since she was a young woman, particularly in the
mountains of southern Poland, where doctors had told her that
the air would help her scarred lungs. While skiing down
a particularly treacherous slope during a snowstorm, Christina's wooden skis
slid on the ice and she flew off the trail,
(07:34):
only to be rescued, literally swept off her feet by
a hulking man over six feet tall, who reached out
his arms to grab her. His name was Yurjah gishki.
Yrjah was approaching fifty, but he was charming, smart, and
worldly in a way that drew Christina towards him. Unlike Christina,
(07:56):
he hadn't come from a noble family. His father was
well off, but Usia had no interest in the responsible
future that his father envisioned for him. He failed out
of an engineering course and set out for America, where
his list of jobs reads a bit like an early
nineteen hundreds Forrest Gump. Rsia was a prospector, a trapper
(08:19):
and actual cowboy, and even a chauffeur for J. D. Rockefeller. Eventually,
his skills with language and his connections brought him to
a job with the Polish legation in Washington. D c
Usiah helped Poland's first ever Olympic team prepared to compete
in France, and then he joined an expedition with a
(08:41):
Polish explorer in Africa, where he hunted elephants and survived malaria,
only to make it back to Poland and run into
Christina on the ski slope. Here was the man Christina
had been waiting for, someone who was mature and financially secure,
but above all interesting. The pair were married and they
(09:02):
set off for Europe together. The photo in Christina's passport
was one of the head shots she had used in
the Misspolonia pageant. Yujiah was a powerful man, and he
was domineering. It didn't take long for Christina to feel
claustrophobic in her role as a diplomat's wife. Still in
(09:23):
nineteen thirty eight Yrsiah was assigned to help open a
Polish consulate in Kenya, and so the pair moved to
London while they prepared for their journey together to Africa.
What Christina hoped at least would be a new start,
a type of adventure that would make her marriage feel
well worthwhile again. On the ship to South Africa, though
(09:45):
Christina began to wonder if she had made a mistake
in her marriage. Yujiah had become more of a which
she called quote Sfengali than husband. He dominated her life
in a way that she hadn't anticipated. Unfortunately, Christina's marriage
would soon be the least of her problems. The pair
(10:08):
reached Johannesburg just days before Hitler invaded Poland. The two
of them, Poles in Africa, were panicked and terrified, terrified
for their loved ones and for the fate of their
beloved country, and they were five thousand miles away, unable
(10:32):
to do anything to help. Of course, they immediately turned around.
They sold their car in Cape Town and boarded a
ship for Southampton, embarking on what would become a journey
fraught with distress, the constant worry about what was happening
in Poland, and the feeling of impotence that they weren't
doing anything to help. Every morning they received more news
(10:57):
on the radio about the German armies steady advance. On September,
one of the British officers aboard the ship updated the
lost and found board in the ship's common area. Underneath
a notice for a lost pair of ladies panties was
a new notice on the bulletin board. It read lost Warsaw.
(11:27):
By the time Christina and Yuge finally reached Europe, two
hundred thousand Polish men and women were dead, arrested and
killed by the German invaders. Neither had any idea as
to the fate of their families. Usa tried to join
the military in France, but his advanced age over fifty
(11:49):
at this point, combined with numerous skiing injuries, including a
recovering broken collar bone, meant that he was rejected for service.
Christina also attempted to enroll in active combat, but being
a woman, she was rejected as well. But Christina was persistent.
She knew that with her language skills, her social contact
(12:12):
she had made across Europe, she would be an asset
to the resistance, and so with her relationship with her
husband dissolved in all but name, Christina built a new
future for herself as an agent with the British Secret
Special Operations Executive or s o E. The organization wasn't
itself fully formed yet, and it wouldn't allow women to
(12:35):
enlist technically for another two years, but Christina demanded that
she'd be put to use. I know Poland, she said,
I know the mountains to the south. I can ski
across the border of Hungary and into occupied territory. Just
let me, and so they did. Christina convinced a former
Polish Olympic skier to join her skiing across the Tatram Mountains,
(13:00):
where she helped to deliver British propaganda and news material
to underground printing presses in Poland so that they could
reprint and distribute them. Christina recognized how starved the Polish
people were for news. Their only source of information about
what was happening around them was the German propaganda, and
(13:22):
as she brought information in, she also smuggled secrets out,
data and information on Germany's shipments and transportations. She traveled
back and forth between then neutral Hungary and Poland undercover
as a journalist. Her first time back in Poland, she
kept a hat low over her head so she wouldn't
(13:43):
be recognized by any friend. Still, an old acquaintance came
up to her at a cafe one morning, Christina, Christina Scarback,
What in Heaven's name are you doing here? We all
heard you went abroad. Christina shook her head. I'm sorry,
that's not me. I'm not Christina. Why how odd? The woman,
(14:05):
oblivious exclaimed, I could have sworn you were my friend,
Christina Scarback. It's uncanny people were looking now. Christina just
shook her head and to ally suspicion, she hung around
a little while longer, pretending that she hadn't been deeply
spooked by what had just occurred. How risky it was
(14:26):
for her, as a British agent to be moving in
occupied territory. On her final visit to Poland, she met
with her mother in secret. Christina had never registered as
a Jew, but her mother had. Christina knew what Germany
was doing around Eastern Europe, and she begged her mother
(14:47):
to leave, to stay in a cabin outside the city
until she could be smuggled out. Her mother refused. She
was loyal to Poland and she was teaching an underground
French class. She were a used to leave her students.
Maybe she didn't believe how bad it would become, or
didn't want to believe. Maybe she was scared. It was
(15:08):
the last time Christina saw her mother. Countess Stefanie scar Buck,
was killed by Nazis in a Warsaw prison. Soon it
was too risky for Christina to even remain in Hungry,
as Hungry, too fell to the occupying Nazi forces. In Budapest,
(15:31):
she connected with another Polish agent working for the British,
a man named Andreas Kowski, who would go by the
alias Andrew Kennedy. Don't you remember me, he said, grinning
when he shook Christina's hand. We used to have play
dates when we were toddlers. My father took me over
to play at your house in Warsaw when he had
(15:51):
business meetings with your father. Andre's fell in love with
Christina almost immediately. He was a brilliant tactician and dedicated
Polish patriot. Thanks to a hunting accident before the war,
where a friend accidentally shot him in the foot, he
was missing most of one leg, but still he had
served with the Polish Army during the invasion and had
(16:14):
been awarded their highest honor for bravery. From the time
he and Christina reconnected in Hungary, they would remain associates, partners,
and sometimes lovers for the rest of their lives. While
working in Budapest, the pair was captured by Hungarian police
officers and turned over to the Gestapo for questioning. Ever,
(16:38):
the quick thinker Christina bit her tongue hard enough to
draw blood, which she then coughed all over herself and
the Gestapo guards. She claimed to have tuberculosis, and an
X ray scan revealed the scars on her lungs remnants
from her time working at the Fiat dealership, but the
(16:58):
Hungarian police and Gestapo didn't know that. Disgusted at this woman,
presumably moments away from dying of active tuberculosis, the Gestapo
released Christina and Andres from custody. The pair realized that
they needed to get out of occupied territory. They got
a pair of fake passports in which Christina became Christine
(17:22):
Granville and took seven years off her age. In the
trunk of a Chrysler driven by an ambassador, Christina made
it to Yugoslavia and then Bulgaria, Andres drove across the
border in an opal, claiming that he owned a car
dealership and that he was driving a car that he
had sold to deliver it from Bulgaria. Christina Andres were
(17:45):
able to pass along the military intel that would eventually
help convince Winston Churchill that Germany was planning an invasion
of the Soviet Union. They say that Winston Churchill himself
actually looked at the micro film that Christina delivered. From
(18:08):
this point on, the stories of Christina's various exploits in
the war just become a string of heroic anecdotes, new lovers,
new countries, new missions. But I think my favorite story,
the one that best embodies her combination of quick thinking
and independent spirit, came after she had parachuted into France
(18:30):
to join the resistance there as part of a network
led by a man named Francis camer. One afternoon, three agents,
including the network's leader, came here. We're driving through the
French countryside when they hit an unexpected Gestapo roadblock. The
three men, almost immediately identified as agents, were brought to
(18:52):
a nearby prison and sentenced to be executed. Christina told
the rest of the resistance group that they needed to
get them out. It's too risky. The rest of the
group said, we'll see about that, Christina replied. She rode
her bicycle twenty five miles to the Digna prison, where
(19:13):
she suspected that the three captors were being kept, but
she couldn't be sure, and so she circled the walls
of the prison, humming the song Frankie and Johnny, an
old song that she and Camaire had sung together. From
the other side of the stone walls, she heard humming
back the counter melody to what she herself was humming.
(19:35):
The agents were inside. Gathering herself up, Christina approached the
guard of the prison and began one of the most
dangerous feints possible, I admit, she said, I'm a British agent.
In fact, I am the wife of one of your captives,
Francis Camire, and the niece of General Bernard Montgomery. Of course,
(19:58):
she was neither. I'm not supposed to be here, she said,
but I care about my husband, and so I'm going
to be straight with you. You and I both know
that Allied forces landed in Normandy last month, But what
you don't know is they made it through the country
and they're just miles away. Now they weren't, but Christina continued,
(20:19):
and when they reach your prison and find out you
killed these men, my husband and his friends, there is
going to be hell to pay. I don't need to
tell you that the soldiers aren't going to have mercy
on you. Retribution on you personally will be swift and terrible.
The nervous guard relented. Some sources say that she paid
(20:42):
them off with two million francs that she had wired
to her, or that the money was air dropped directly
to her, but the sources on that payment isn't quite clear.
What is clear is that the three resistance men were
led from their cells in the early hours of the morning,
sure that they were being taken into the yard to
be shot. Instead, as they shielded their eyes from the sun,
(21:07):
they saw Christina Scarback, leaning on the door of an
idling car to take them back to safety. Christina often
spoke half jokingly about her horror of peace, how nervous
she was for the end of the war when she
(21:27):
would no longer have a job or a noble purpose.
From the time the war ended, she had a pension
that lasted five months from the s Oe, but her
application British citizenship kept getting tangled up and delayed in bureaucracy.
Unable to find a government position without citizenship, she bounced
(21:52):
between a few odd jobs in London. Too proud to
take any gifts or money from friends, Christina worked as
a telephone operator, saleswoman, waitress, and then finally as a
steward on the passenger liner Rouhin, one of the three
men that she had rescued in France. Zann Fielding wrote
(22:14):
of Christina in his memoirs about how she chose to
work on board a ship rather than take any of
her friend's hospitality. Quote she embarked on a life of
uncertain travel, as though anxious to reproduce in peacetime the
hazards she had known during war. On board the Rouhin
(22:36):
as a foreigner with a strange array of impressive medals,
the rest of the crew quickly grew to resent her,
while the rest of the crew, except for Dennis Muldoni.
He stood up for her that one time and Christina
had thanked him, and from then the two became friendly.
He claimed later that they were lovers, but Christina described
(22:58):
him to a friend as obstinate and terrifying. Once he
latched his attention onto Christina, he just wouldn't let go.
Christina was still a relatively young woman, younger even according
to her passport, and while on leave from the ship
in London, she made the decision that she would marry Andres.
(23:19):
After all, he had been proposing to her continually. He
had loved her his entire life, and she did love
him too. In her way. She had been running for
so long, trying to find that rush of adventure, but
maybe love could be an adventure too. She was living
at a hotel in London, the Shelburne, but maybe it
(23:42):
was time for her to build a more permanent life,
and so, to the delight of Andres, plans were made
she would meet him in Belgium and the two would
get married and continue on together to build a life together.
She packed her suitcase the night before her flight. She
was clothes, but also stowed away in the bottom of
(24:03):
the trunk her old s Oe wireless radio and the
commando knife that she had always kept on her person
while in service. Even as she was flying away to
a more stable life of marriage, she was still prepared
for adventure, but her flight was canceled because of an
(24:26):
engine failure and pushed back to the following morning, and
so Christina had one extra day in London. That day,
she met a friend for coffee and neatly laid out
her travel outfit on her chair. For the next morning,
she borrowed an ink and pen from the hotel housekeeper
and neatly labeled her linens with her name so that
(24:48):
she could put them in storage. And then that night
she met a few more friends for supper before she
boarded the two and walked from the station back to
the hotel. Unbeknownst to her, Dennis Muldoney was watching her.
He slipped into the shellbourne after her and waited until
she was in the stairwell to confront her. He demanded
(25:11):
his letters back. I don't have them, Christina said, I
burned them. Muldoni sputtered in something like despair. To Christina,
he was pathetic, he had no self respect, he was obtuse,
and worse than that, he was boring. There's nothing here
between us, Dennis, she said. He charged at her. A
(25:36):
porter heard Christina shout, get off of me, and he
raced into the stairwell. Where he saw a man pressing
Christina against the wall. The porter assumed that the man
was forcing himself onto her, and so he ran ahead
and yanked the man off of her. Christina crumpled to
the floor. Dennis muldoney had stabbed her with a five
(25:59):
and a half blade into her chest, and Christina Scarbuck
was already dead. Oh Christine, Dennis Muldoney shouted, I did
it because I loved her. The police arrived shortly after,
and Maldoni offered his full confession, but he also tried
to pour a bottle of powdered aspirin into his mouth
(26:21):
that the police had to not go out of his hands.
In the end, he was as impatient as Christina. I
killed her. He told the police, let's get away from
here and get it over quickly. Andres flew to London
the next morning and identified the body. He was the
last to say goodbye to her. Christina Scarbuck was buried
(26:51):
in the cemetery of Kensal Green in London under a
dusting of Polish soil, with all of her medals and
honors buried with her pinned on a velvet cushion. The
Polish national anthem was sung as the coffin was lowered
into the ground. During the funeral, a strong gust of
wind blew over the iron cross at the head of
(27:13):
her grave, and Andres raced forward to write it. He
would be protecting Christina and her reputation for the rest
of his life, until he would eventually be buried too.
His ashes at the foot of Christina's grave. Her death certificate,
which said that she was thirty seven, got her age rung.
(27:36):
Christina Scarbuck was forty four when she died, killed by
a man who claimed he loved her but only wanted
to possess her. She was the first female British Special
agent and their longest serving female agent. A woman who
had lived a life filled with adventure and bravery, the
daughter of a count and a Jewish woman killed by
(27:58):
the Gestapo, who had lived life only on her terms,
who had probably imagined death a thousand times coming in
the glory of battle or in the line of duty,
but had died instead in a hotel stairwell. That's the
(28:23):
story of Christina Scarback. But keep listening after a brief
sponsor break to hear a little bit more about her legacy.
Even if you've never heard of Christina Scarback up until
(28:44):
this podcast, there's a good chance you've heard of one
of the characters that she's inspired in fiction. Rumor has
it that Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels,
was inspired by Christina while writing the character of the
double cross the agent vesper Lynde in his novel Casino Royale.
(29:05):
Some sources even claim that Fleming and Christina were secretly lovers,
although some others argue that there's no evidence the pair
actually met in person. Ever, still one can easily understand
that Fleming would have only needed to hear rumors of
this glamorous, globe trotting beauty queen spy who spoke multiple languages,
(29:26):
and create in his mind the architecture of what would
become that famous archetype, the Bond Girl. Still, I think
one of Christina's biographers, Claire Mali, says it best when
she says that in real life, Christina wasn't a Bond Girl.
Christina Scarbuck was James Bond. Noble Blood is a production
(29:52):
of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky.
The show was written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and
produced by Aaron Manky, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young.
Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales,
and you can learn more about the show over at
Noble blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(30:15):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M
Host
Dana Schwartz
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