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Outwitted Watchman. For the U.S. as well as Britain, Cynthia's most valuable coup was to capture the secret code used by the Vichy government's diplomatic missions as well as the French fleet, which might otherwise have taken thousands of Allied lives during the invasion of North Africa. Posing as a Washington newshen, Cynthia had already seduced the dashing Captain Brousse, then the press attache in the Petain government's Washington embassy; by playing on his hatred of the Nazis, she made him a willing ally. "I was not just indulging his desires so as to get him to disclose military and diplomatic intelligence," wrote Cynthia. "I was fulfilling a deep need of my own." Brousse more than satisfied her bosses' needs as well by supplying daily copies of all French diplomatic cables. In 1942, when the embassy's naval attache proved seducible but obdurately pro-Vichy, Brousse even agreed to help her filch the code books from the attache's office so that they could be copied and returned to the embassy safe unnoticed.
Their tactics were exquisitely Gallic. Charles showed up at the embassy with Cynthia one night and, rustling a few dollar bills, whispered to the understanding watchman that Mme. Brousse was suspicious of their liaison (she was, indeed, and later divorced him). The embassy, Brousse explained to the guard, was the only place where he and his girl could rendezvous, and they soon became regular visitors. On the night they planned to lift the code, with the help of a safebreaker called the Georgia Cracker, they put the watchman to sleep with drugged champagne, only to find that the locks were so tough that they had to complete the job a few nights later.
By now, they guessed, the night watchman must suspect that it was not just amour they were after. Sure enough, soon after Cynthia and her lover entered the darkened office, the door burst open and the watchman studied them under a powerful flashlight. Finally, he blurted, "I beg your pardon, madame, a thousand times," and fled down the corridor. Before going to work on the safe, Cynthia had taken the simple precaution of removing all her clothes.