She was now operating in occupied France, in formal collaboration with French intelligence, sheltering enemies of the German occupation, and gathering whatever information she could pass to the Free French forces in London. The specific risks of this period — the arbitrary arrests, the informants, the increasingly brutal enforcement mechanisms of the German occupation apparatus — were not abstract. People were being arrested, deported, and shot for less than what she was doing.
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## Sheet Music and the Journey South
In November 1940, Josephine Baker and Jacques Abtey left France.
The departure was organized around a cover story: Baker was embarking on a concert tour of South America, a touring engagement that would take her through Spain and Portugal before crossing the Atlantic. The story was plausible. She was a touring performer; international concert engagements were normal for someone of her stature. The logistics of such a tour would naturally require travel through neutral countries.
What the cover story concealed was the nature of their actual mission. Abtey traveled as Baker’s personal secretary — a role that attracted no particular attention, since wealthy entertainers typically traveled with staff — and they carried with them a substantial collection of intelligence documents.
The specific form in which the intelligence was hidden has been described consistently across multiple accounts of this period: information on German troop movements and military installations was written in invisible ink on pages of Baker’s sheet music. The sheet music was legitimate — it was the actual music she performed, and her possession of it was entirely consistent with her stated purpose of touring. The information written on it in invisible ink was not visible to the naked eye and would not appear in routine inspection. The photographs and other documents they carried were hidden on Baker’s person, pinned inside her clothing.