They crossed the border into Spain. Spanish border guards examined their documents and their luggage. Neither the invisible ink on the sheet music nor the documents hidden in Baker’s clothing was detected. They moved through Spain to Portugal, which was also nominally neutral but under the authoritarian government of António de Oliveira Salazar, and in Lisbon they made contact with the British intelligence network that served as one conduit for passing information to the Allied cause.
The specific intelligence they carried — the details of German troop deployments and military installations that Baker had gathered through her Paris social networks — was relayed onward. The Free French forces under de Gaulle were operating from London, and the information flowing to them from networks inside occupied France was essential to their ability to plan and to advise the broader Allied command on conditions within France.
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## Lisbon, Morocco, and the Setup for Operation Torch
From Lisbon, Baker and Abtey continued south to North Africa. In January 1941 they arrived in Morocco, then part of French colonial territory. Their mission in Morocco was to establish a liaison and transmission center in Casablanca — a base of operations for passing intelligence between the North African networks and the Free French command.
Baker traveled to Morocco with twenty-eight pieces of luggage and a collection of pets. The luggage and the animals were not simply personal eccentricity; they were cover, drawing the attention of officials and observers to the spectacle of a famous entertainer’s elaborate traveling arrangements and away from any scrutiny of the intelligence mission the trip was actually serving. The animals created scenes. The luggage created questions about storage and customs. The administrative noise of managing a famous person’s elaborate travel requirements was itself a form of concealment.