88 pages • 2 hours read
Code Name Verity
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Part 1, Chapters 12-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Verity”
Chapter 12 Summary: “Ormaie 24.XI.43 JB-S”
Julie writes this chapter on November 24, 1943. She performs as Eva Seiler when von Linden comes into her cell to question her, refusing to believe that she could be the infamous British interrogator. When Julie successfully demonstrates her abilities, by getting von Linden to tell her his daughter’s name, he is forced to recognize that she is as good—or better—at interrogation as he is, and without having to resort to torture. He is thrilled that she is Eva Seiler; he can use her capture to improve his position within the SS.
Julie recounts the flight into France, with Maddie at the helm. They are hit by antiaircraft flak and the tail catches fire. Maddie puts the plane into a dive to put out the fire, but the tail is damaged. They successfully reach the rendezvous point.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Ormaie 25.XI.43 JB-S”
Julie writes this chapter on November 25, 1943. Pushed beyond her endurance by the sounds of von Linden’s interrogation of a French girl, Julie screams at her to end the torture by lying to the Nazis. Von Linden brings Julie into the interrogation room to give her advice up close. Julie exhorts the French girl to save herself by lying. The French girl asks her if that is what Julie does.
Trapped, Julie must think quickly. She turns on von Linden, calling him a hypocrite, for treating his prisoners this way when he has a daughter their age. She challenges him by asking him what he tells his daughter about his work, or whether he lies to her. Von Linden orders a phenol mouthwash for Julie. No one knows how to administer it, or if von Linden wants them to kill Julie with the phenol. She is reprieved until the next day.
Julie and the French girl are taken to the guillotine. Believing they are both about to die, the two women exchange their real names. The French girl is executed. Julie is not. She knows that her survival is intended as a punishment; she is the reason that the French girl was executed. Von Linden wants Julie to confess that she has lied to them.
Von Linden calls Julie “Scheherazade,” as he taunts her to finish her tale. Julie recounts Maddie’s bravery, and their parting, as Maddie holds the aircraft steady to allow Julie to jump over the rendezvous point. Julie writes that she has told the truth.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Ormaie 28.XI.43 JB-S”
Julie writes this, her last chapter, on November 28, 1943. Knowing that she is out of time, Julie reveals her real full name for the first time: Lady Julia Lindsay MacKenzie Wallace Beaufort-Stuart. Insisting that she has told the truth, Julie writes that line repeatedly. The chapter ends with a cryptic code in Julie’s handwriting.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Note to Amadeus von Linden”
This chapter consists of a note—dated two days after Julie’s last chapter—from von Linden’s boss, Nikolaus Ferber, to Amadeus von Linden, ordering him to send Julie to the Natzweiler-Struthof camp or face execution himself. This note marks the end of Part 1.
Part 1, Chapters 12-15 Analysis
These chapters continue to reveal the immense psychological pressure upon Julie. The revelation that she is actually Eva Seiler, interrogator, is a significant plot twist. Knowing who she is, von Linden should immediately advertise her capture to his bosses and claim a reward, but he doesn’t.
Furthermore, von Linden now knows that Julie is not just a wireless operator and that the codes she gave him for the burned up wireless sets in the plane could not be her real mission. However, he does not try to discover what her true mission was: Why would an expert Nazi interrogator fail to follow up on that lead? Julie makes it clear that the Nazis are under tremendous pressure, as the tide of the war has turned against them. Von Linden might be losing his grip as the multiple pressures on him take their toll.
As the Nazi interrogators fail to take down the French Resistance, though they execute and torture people with impunity, von Linden seems unable to act. Two days after Julie finishes her “confession,” she is still alive and imprisoned in Ormaie. Supporting the motif of literary references, von Linden refers to Julie as “Scheherazade,” a direct reference to Scheherazade’s character in The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights, wherein Scheherazade weaves a tale so gripping, the king allows her to live another day because he needs to know how the story ends. Ironically, Julie, unlike Scheherazade, will never be freed from her death sentence; she only has three weeks, not 1,001 nights, to achieve a pardon that she knows will never come. In that sense, von Linden’s teasing Julie with the name “Scheherazade” is yet another psychological cruelty.
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