Dancer, singer … spy: France’s Panthéon to honour Josephine Baker | Espionage | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/28/dancer-singer-spy-frances-pantheon-to-honour-josephine-baker
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/620dd02a4cd37652d2019f42477c8466ef645343/127_60_2788_1673/master/2788.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali
Her supposed assistant was Jacques Abtey, a French intelligence officer developing an underground counter-intelligence network to gather strategic information and funnel it to Charles de Gaulle’s London HQ, where the pair hoped to travel after Portugal.
Ostensibly, they were on their way to scout venues for Baker’s planned tour of the Iberian peninsula. In reality, they carried secret details of German troops in western France, including photos of landing craft the Nazis were lining up to invade Britain.
The information was mostly written on the singer’s musical scores in invisible ink, to be revealed with lemon juice. The photographs she had hidden in her underwear. The whole package was handed to British agents at the Lisbon embassy – who informed Abtey and Baker they would be far more valuable assets in France than in London.