Nina of the Folies Bergère (pronounced /Nee-nah/ of the /Fow-leehBerr-syerr/) was the Russian danseuse to whom Kairos lost his virginity and who protected him from the Nazis. This is a true story and this is the original picture Nina gave Kairos!

Opening in 1869, this music hall and variety-entertainment theatre became one of the most visited entertainment venues. Especially from the 1930s till well after WWII, the Folies Bergère (pronounced /Fow-leeh Berr-syerr/) became known for lavish, exotic, and daring shows with scantily clad beauties, and stars like Charlie Chaplin, Maurice Chevalier, and Josephine Baker( and later Zizi Jeanmaire who sang “Mon Truc en Plume,” most recently performed by Lady Gaga at the 2024 opening of the Paris Olympic Games).

This is a picture of the original program that Kairos managed to carry with him (along with the pictures of Nina and La Capitaine’s helper, Yette Lubin)! During this show at the Folies Bergère, Kairos foolishly climbed onto the stage, got noticed by the same Nazi he had met in the train, and thought he could garner some intel from. Wisely, Nina whisked him away before any harm could come to him!

By the time Kairos made it to Paris, Josephine Baker had already been recruited by the “Deuxième Bureau” as a spy; mixing with enemy generals at soirées and embassies, she gathered intel that she wrote in invisible ink on her sheet music. After the war, she would receive the Croix de Guerre and the Medal of the Resistance, become a staunch Civil rights activist (who spoke right before MLK delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech), and would return in triumph to the Folies Bergère.

The Dutch Chris Lindemans quickly rose to fame as an agent of the SOE. Because of his large stature, uneven gait (due to an accident), and his penchant for danger, he was better known as King Kong or “Pimme Le Gorille.”

Lindemans used to smooch with rich women so that they would donate jewels and money to fund Escape Lines from the Netherlands, Belgium, and Northern France towards Spain and Portugal. Before he made the acquaintance of his wife Gilou (pronounced /Sjee-loo/) and later Vic Swane in Paris, Lindemans killed 27 Nazis in a shoot-out on the outskirts of Antwerp. He maintained his contacts in the Antwerp “White Brigade,” a Resistance group that also worked with Andrée de Jongh’s Brussel’s Comet Escape Line. Once Chris and Gilou married in Paris, they did Resistance work for several escape lines. Until the beginning of 1944 when his brother Henk was awaiting execution by the Nazis, Chris be friended and saved hundreds of refugees, like Kairos.

When his wife Gilou was captured as well, King Kong is said to have given information about “Operation Market Garden” to the Abwehr in exchange for the freedom for his brother Henk and wife. Whether he was indeed to blame for the failure of the largest airborne operation in history is questionable as is portrayed in the movie A Bridge too Far. The Allies losing the Battle of Arnhem prolonged the war by six months, not only enabling the Red Army to enter Berlin first but also indirectly causing the Holland “Hunger Winter.”

Two days after a captured Abwehr agent nicknamed “Satan Face” told MI-5 that Lindemans was a double spy, the latter was arrested, locked up in the Tower of London, and interrogated for two weeks until he started having epileptic seizures and confessed. He was then transported back to a Dutch prison, where the once powerful King Kong, now a mere shadow of his former self, allegedly committed suicide by swallowing pills.

Fact or Fiction: Everything about Chris Lindemans is as truthful as possible. In fact, I started my research some 50 years ago. As a child, I grew up reading hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles about the infamous, yet legendary double-spy King Kong whose body had been exhumed to quell the wild rumors that he was alive and hiding out in South America. Therefore, when Kairos told me years later about a whole other, more tender side of the man who rescued him, I knew that there had to be more to the story…

While hundreds of articles and books have been written about Chris Lindemans, details about the private life of his wife Gilou are hard to find. Interviews and notes from Kairos helped separate the media’s wild speculation, sensationalism, and malicious gossip from the truth.

Gilberte Letuppe aka “Gilou” was in the Resistance when she met Dutch daredevil Chris Lindemans. They married and later had two daughters. First based in Lille and then in Paris, they both became increasingly involved in the Resistance until each got caught at different times. While her husband turned into a double-spy, Gilou remained steadfast and never betrayed a soul–not even while pregnant and being tortured. She helped hundreds of people escape the Nazis, and her testimony was written down by the AIS (Allied Information Service). From November 14, 1945 till October first, 1946, over 200 of the most high-ranking Nazis were tried and convicted at the Nuremberg Trials thanks to the evidence provided by brave people like Gilou Lindemans.

Fact or Fiction: Except for the feelings and dialogues, every detail is fact-based. Sadly, Gilou’s heroic deeds were never acknowledged; instead of being recognized or decorated, she was merely a disgraced widow of whom no picture can be found anywhere. She may have wanted it that way; perhaps she retreated into the shadows to protect her daughters.

Bob Celosse was a serious, quiet former member of CS-6 who along with Kas de Graaf (a more frivolous guy) met Kairos in Paris. The trio would all cross the Pyrenees and make it to London. There, Bob and Kas warned the Dutch authorities about the “Engelandspiel” (that over 50 Dutch SOE secret agents had been set up and killed). Despite this, when by the Spring of 1944, Bob and a crew parachuted back into Holland, they too were betrayed. Bob Celosse was executed at Camp Vught on “Terrible Tuesday.”

While Bob got killed, Kas de Graaf survived; in London, he helped Dutch Prince Bernard organize a new branch of Dutch secret agents to “set Europe ablaze” as Churchill had directed.

Vic Swane aka “le Chef de Paris” (pronounced /lu Shyaf da Pah-reeh/), the son of a prominent Dutch member of parliament grew upon an estate in Vught, the Netherlands. Vic’s brother, Albert became a volunteer who helped Jews and prisoners in camp Vught. Vic himself, used to be a law student in Leiden, but joined what was later called the Comet Escape Line.

Vic Swane became one of the most important organizers of the network in Paris, so he was known as “le chef de Paris.” In 1944, together with Gilou Lindemans (double-spy King Kong’s wife), he was arrested and died that same year in a subcamp of Buchenwald. Unlike Kas de Graaf, Vic Swane never talked about his exploits, the mark of a real hero. Vic Swane was awarded the Medal of Freedom posthumously.