to co-ordinate the activities of the local maquis in sabotaging communication lines during German attempts to stem the Normandy landings. When he arrived in the Limousin, Philippe Liewer found the local maquis to be poorly led and less prepared for action than he expected. To better co-ordinate Resistance activity against the Germans, he decided to send his courier, Szabo, as his liaison officer to the more active Maquis of Correze and the Dordogne, led by Jacques Poirier (SOE), head of the renamed Digger circuit, who had taken over from Harry Peulevé of the Author circuit, upon the latter's arrest. However, due to poor intelligence gathering by the local Resistance, Liewer was unaware that the 2nd SS Panzer Division was making its slow journey north to the Normandy battlefields through his area. Capture and interrogation At 9.30 am on 10 June Szabo set off on her mission, not inconspicuously by bicycle as Liewer would have preferred, but in a Citroen driven by a young maquis section leader, Jacques Dufour ('Anastasie'). He had insisted upon using the car, even though the Germans had forbidden the use of cars by the French after D-Day, to drive her half of the of her journey. At her request to Liewer, Szabo was armed with a Sten gun and eight magazines of ammunition. She was dressed in a light suit, flat-heeled shoes and no stockings. On their way across the sunlit fields of south-central France they picked up Jean Bariaud, a 26-year-old Resistance friend of Dufour, who was meant to accompany them on the return journey. Their car raised the suspicions of German troops at an unexpected roadblock outside of Salon-la-Tour that had been set up to find Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe, a battalion commander of the 2nd SS Panzer Division, who had been captured by the local resistance. When Dufour slowed the car, the unarmed Bariaud was able to escape and later warn the Salesman team of the arrest of his two companions. According to Minney and Vickers, when they had stopped, Szabo and Dufour leapt from the car, he to the left and she to the right and the cover of a tree, as Dufour opened fire. A gun battle ensued during which a woman emerging from a barn was killed by the Germans. As armoured cars arrived at the scene, Szabo crossed the road to join Dufour, and they leapt a gate, before running