by Nigel West
CHAPTER ONE
RENATO’S TALE
A 38-year-old Italian Jew from a wealthy family whose mother, the actress Dolores Domenici, owned the Hotel Miramare in Rapallo and the Hotel Select in Genoa’s Piazza delle Fontane Marose, Renato Levi was known to Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME) as CHEESE (later LAMBERT, and to his German controller as ROBERTO, later designated V-mann 7501). In MI5’s opinion, as expressed in a report dated September 1942, he was motivated by his Jewish heritage, but not a dislike of either the Germans or the Italians. He enjoyed the adventure, and wished to settle in Australia after the war with a British passport. According to German documents, he was registered as an agent of the Athens Abstelle and an Abwehr officer named Heilgendorf acted as his radio control in Bari.
Born in Italy in 1902 of Jewish-Italian parents, Renato spent five years in Bombay, where the prosperous Levi family operated a shipyard, until 1913 and then was educated at Zug in Switzerland until 1918. He remained in Italy until 1926 when he moved to Wentworth, and then East Sydney in Australia, but he returned to Italy in 1937 and settled in Genoa with his Australian wife Lina and son Luciano, who was born in 1925, together with his brother Paulo and step-father Alberico. Renato was good looking, with great charm and a penchant for nightclubs and beautiful women, but was a financial burden for his formidable mother. He was supposed to help her in the management of the hotels, but they often clashed and she occasionally banished him to a neighbouring pension, the Hotel Metropoli.
In 1939 Levi told the British consul in Genoa, Alfred G. Major, that he had been approached by the Germans to spy in Holland, and had been encouraged to accept the assignment. Subsequently, between December 1939 and June 1940, he had been in touch with the French Deuxième Bureau and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in Paris where a former MI5 officer, Geoffrey W. Courtney headed the station. A former MI5 officer, Courtney had been transferred to Paris in 1938 from the Cairo station.
Upon his return to Genoa, his German contact, Hans Travaglio, had persuaded him to go to Egypt with a wireless transmitter to collect military information, and this scheme was approved by Count Scirombo, a senior Italian intelligence officer and formerly the Italian consul in Cairo. Levi was briefed in Bari and the plan changed. He would be sent a wireless after he had arrived in Cairo, probably through the Hungarian diplomatic bag, and he was required to send his encrypted messages in French. He was supplied with two questionnaires, one Italian and one German, and a list of contacts in Budapest and Belgrade, and given the address of two Abwehr officers, Otto Eisentrager and Dr Delius, in Sofia. He was warned to avoid any contact with German consulates in Turkey, for fear of attracting the attention of the British or Turkish authorities, but was told he could obtain assistance from any German consul in a neutral country simply by mentioning ‘Emile from Genoa’.
SIS would later identify Hauptman Eisentrager as an Abwehr personality first identified in a report dated 12 June 1939 who used the alias ‘Major Otto Wagner’ and held a post in Ast III in Berlin. He later appeared in two ISOS decrypts, in October and November 1940, probably working in Sofia, responsible for the collection of economic and Air Force intelligence. Significantly, an ISOS intercept dated 9 November 1940 asked Eisentrager ‘if and when the apparatus was leaving Sofia for Egypt and how long the transport was expected to take’. As SIME later commented, ‘it seems not improbable that this message referred to the original arrangement for providing Levi with a transmitter’. After the war, MI5 learned that Wagner, an attorney from Mannheim fluent in Bulgarian, was Eisentrager’s true name and that was his codename.
Levi’s supervision was to fall to Sonderfuhrer Clemens Rossetti, an Abwehr personality who frequently appeared in Abwehr traffic handling agents across the Middle East. According to SIS, Rossetti had headed the Genoa Abstelle until the end of 1940 when he was replaced by Travaglio, whom SIME described as
Born in Munich, age about forty-five. Over 6ft in height, broad shoulders and stout build. Very large head – when buying hats always found difficulty in obtaining the correct size. Dark brown hair, very thin, particularly in the centre of the scalp. Ruddy fair complexion, fat cheeks. Clean shaven. Eyes dark brown (?). Large nose. Large mouth with full lips, three or four gold teeth. Rounded double chin. Large thick ears. Large very fleshy hands. Big feet. Speaks German with Bavarian accent. Walks ponderously. Large scar on left side of abdomen said to have been the result of a flying accident during the 1914–18 war, when he was a pilot.
Travaglio is very fond of music, particularly opera; plays the piano and sings himself. Jovial disposition and enjoys company. Has a fund of humorous stories about Hitler and Mussolini in particular. Generous, open-handed and romantic nature; professes to be deeply influenced by scenic beauty. Is an amateur antique collector, Levi considers Travaglio to be a very patriotic German but not a good Nazi. He confided to Levi on one occasion that he had been an agent in peacetime, travelling under cover of a guide for German tourist parties, particularly in Italy. He also stated (in strict confidence) that in 1936–39 he had succeeded in penetrating the British Secret Service in the Netherlands posing as an anti-Nazi. To support this cover he had had his name struck off the official list of Party members. Claimed to be responsible for the capture of the British agents on the Dutch-German frontier.
Holds German degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Languages: German, Italian, French, poor English. Has travelled Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands. Private home address in 1940/41 was 10 Mariakirchenstrasse, Munich. May have moved his home since marriage in June 1941 with well-known German opera singer, age about thirty/thirty-five. Father dead, but mother still living, age about sixty-five. Has nervous trick of rubbing the tip of his nose, as though attempting to stifle a sneeze. Heavy cigarette smoker. Dresses smartly and expensively. Fond of motor-cars and women, in that order.
Thereafter Rossetti, codenamed EMILE, appeared in ISOS traffic as being engaged in Abwehr activity in Italy between January and May 1941, and in one intercept his address was given as ‘care of the German consulate in Naples’. An ISOS decrypt dated 7 October 1941 suggested that Rossetti was then in Rome but had been ‘Leiter I Luft’ in the Munich Abstelle. After the war, when Count Scirombo was interrogated by Allied intelligence officers, he identified Rossetti’s real name as ‘Kurt Knabe’. A German defector, Wili Hamburger, would describe Rossetti as ‘the most expensive member of the Abwehr in Turkey’ and suggested that his status has been achieved because of his success in Holland where he had developed a relationship with Anton Mussert’s pro-Nazi movement. His arrival in Istanbul had been sponsored by the former head of the local KO, Walter Schulze-Bernett.
ISOS disclosed that Rossetti
received frequent information from Helfferich in Rome, all of which were apparently concerned with the dispatch of agents. Thus on 3 February 1942 he was advised of Kurt Hammer’s departure from Brindisi; on 5 March 1942 of the arrival of APOLLO and OTTO in Athens; on 13 April 1942 on the arrival of Emil Tisl, and on 6 May 1942 his presence was desired for a personal discussion in Rome with reference to the agent APOLLO. In addition to this Rossetti appears to have private connections of his own in Italy, of which are also productive of agents. On 13 January 1942 Ast Paris consulted him on the provision of a wireless set for WERNER of Rome’s AFU man for Egypt; On 13 April 1942 they again consulted him on concerning the transfer of V-mann 7501, who had previously been working for I.I. Paris to ‘Rome Annabella’. Further references to Rome Annabella occur in messages of Italy of September/October 1942 which seem to suggest that Annabella was a personal agent of Rossetti’s in Italy, who was subsequently transferred to Athens in connection with the agent ARMANDO who set out from Turkey at the end of September. During the same period there were references to a visit paid by Rossetti to Rome to test two agents who were being considered as reserves for HAMLET in the Syrian undertaking; to the ‘new V-mann PAPAS’, who was to be vetted by Rossetti in Turkey; to one Hattenkorn, apparently an untrustworthy agent who
had been dismissed; to two agents HASSAN and LUPO, who arrived in Athens in early October; to ‘a Persian agent of CHARLES’, who was to be visited by Rossetti in Sofia in January 1943; and finally to Rossetti’s agent CARPELLASO who had reported at KO Bulgarien and asked for a German passport in the name of Hoffmann and a travelling allowance to Rome for the purpose of working in Cairo.
Rossetti also occupies himself with looking after the agents of other Stellen who are visiting Athens or are in the area in which Ast Athens works. Then on 13 December 1942 Berlin enquired whether he was in touch with the agent Hamado Amin Bey of IM Ast III whom it had become necessary to arrest; on 23 December 1942 he was asked to assist one Tschanscheff, apparently an agent who was arriving in Athens; on 7 December 1942 Rossetti, who was then in Istanbul, informed Berlin that he wished to speak with their agent T 400 when the latter was next in Istanbul, Sofia or Athens; in February 1943 Rossetti, who was still in Turkey, was announcing that he had been authorised by IM Ost to work upon a considerable scale in Turkey, and for that purpose wanted 20,000 Turkish pounds.
Even this does not reflect the full scale of Rossetti’s activities, for it appears that he is also concerned with matters which usually fall outside the sphere of an Abt I officer. On 23 January 1943 he was provided with false information which he was to pass on to PARKER (presumably of OSS) from which we may assume that he is also concerned in the running of double agents. On 13 March 1942 he requested IH Ost to provide him with supplies of the drug Pervitin and a pistol with a silencer, reminding them that the former had been used with success by Ast Brussels. It is impossible to guess what was the reason for this request, but it suggests on the face of it Abt III rather than Abt I work.
There are two messages from which one can gather some idea of the attitude of Rossetti’s superior officers to him. The first is the rebuke he received from Berlin at the beginning of September 1942, when he was instructed to curtail his endless journeyings about which had so far produced no visible result. This, however, seems to have been a temporary phase, for on 26 September, when Rossetti was in Italy, Sensburg informed him that he had interviewed the head of IH Ost and also the Chief Abt I, as a result of which they both now appreciated the work done by Rossetti in the past and, it was implied, would support his activities in the future. The circumstances of Sensburg having travelled to Berlin and taken up the question of Rossetti’s work with Piekenbrock himself suggests that there must have been fairly serious trouble before. If this is fact, coupled with the general speciousness of the Abwehr, which suggests that Rossetti’s constant activity may after all produce very little that is harmful, or of direct value to the enemy.
While still in Genoa, Levi and Travaglio manipulated the black market to exchange US dollars, which had been supplied by the Abwehr to pay agents, for Italian lira. This netted them almost double the official exchange rate, so the agents were paid in Italian currency, leaving Travaglio with a substantial profit. However, these activities led to Levi’s arrest in Genoa in 1940 on black marketeering charges, although he was released after a few hours upon Rossetti’s intervention with the spurious excuse that Levi had been participating in a clandestine operation. According to SIS, Travaglio was the alias of a Luftwaffe officer of Italian extraction who had been a pilot in the Great War. His dossier noted that he had been adopted by a wealthy widow and that although he claimed to have been an actor, had really earned a living by singing in cafés. SIS also identified him as the tall German officer with bushy eyebrows and a deep scar on his forehead who had used the alias Dr Hans Solms during the Venlo incident in November 1939.
The Venlo episode had cast a long shadow across all SIS operations since November 1939 when two SIS officers, Sigismund Payne Best and Richard Stevens, were abducted while attending what they thought was a rendezvous with anti-Nazi German officers on the Dutch frontier. The hapless pair, who were unarmed and unable to resist, were seized on Dutch territory and dragged across the border to face incarceration and interrogation, and the debacle had been a profound embarrassment for the supposedly neutral Netherlands government, forcing the resignation of the DMI. However, the impact on SIS was lasting, for the assumption was that the two SIS officers would inevitably compromise whatever they knew, and that amounted to the entire SIS structure, its operations and agents in Holland, and much else besides. Thereafter SIS exercised extreme caution in handling anyone claiming to possess anti-regime credentials, and took great care not to endanger other personnel in similar circumstances. The fact that Travaglio had participated in the Venlo affair must have been seen as ironic by Rodney Dennys and Nicholas Elliott, both of whom had served at the SIS station in The Hague under Stevens.
Once in Cairo, Levi was instructed that he would receive a message at the Carlton Hotel about how to acquire his transmitter, and he was given the names of George Khouri and Lina Vigoretti-Antoniada as two of Scirombo’s local acquaintances.
Levi visited the British embassy in Belgrade on 12 September and 15 October 1940 to inform the SIS station commander, Major Lethbridge, of his plans, and this news was sent to Cairo which had been informed on 3 June 1940 by MI5 that he was likely to turn up in Egypt and require assistance. Actually, Levi then returned to Italy, visiting Eisentrager in Sofia, and did not reach Turkey, travelling on a German passport in the name of Ludovici, until 26 December 1940, where he was arrested on a charge of passport and currency fraud, together with his companion, Giovanni Magaracci. Alias Fulvio Melcher, Magaracci was to act as his wireless operator, but after three weeks in a Turkish jail Melcher abandoned his mission and returned to his native Italy. The other members of the gang, led by Joseph Buchegger, did not appear to have any links with the Abwehr or espionage.
Upon his release Levi was given a British passport by SIS and sailed to Haifa. He was interviewed by SIME in Jerusalem and finally reached Cairo on an RAF aircraft to establish himself in the famous National Hotel, on the corner of Talaat Harb and Abdel Khalek Sarwat Streets, on 10 February 1941. He did so, but was never provided with the promised transmitter. Instead, Levi claimed that he had been introduced in March in a bar in the Kharia Malika Farida to Paul Nicossof who had once been a ship’s wireless operator. The meeting had been arranged by an Italian, Antonio Garbarino, who allegedly had access, for £200, to a radio provided by another Italian who had been hiding in his house. Of course, neither Nicossof nor Garbarino ever really existed. Similarly, Levi was initially accommodated in the Abbassia Barracks, and not the National Hotel.
Levi’s case, codenamed CHEESE, was handled by Rex Hamer, Rodney Dennys and John de Salis for ISLD’s B Section, and Terence Robertson, Desmond Doran, Eric Pope and the novelist Evan J. Simpson, for SIME’s Special Section. In one report dated 1 September 1942 Simpson said that ‘Levi, as a result of his successful activities in France, Italy, Turkey and then in Egypt, has acquired an amazing self-confidence and complete belief in his own ability to travel anywhere and deceive anybody’. Simpson, who was only commissioned from the ranks in 1941, considered him
a natural liar, capable of inventing any story on the spur of the moment to get himself out of a fix. He has very considerable intelligence and an inventive mind. For example, he invented ciphers of his own, but immediately grasped the advantages of the one which was put up to him and mastered it in a very short time.
Simpson was born in London in April 1901, and was living in Surrey when he was sent away to school. He was educated at Winchester, where he went as a scholar in September 1914, and then from 1920 read history at University College, Oxford. As soon as he graduated he appeared at the Liverpool Playhouse as Mackenzie in Abraham Lincoln and in 1928 appeared in Napoleon’s Josephine at the Fortune Theatre. He then managed the Festival Theatre in Cambridge before joining the Huddersfield Repertory Theatre. In 1929 he had married the actress Dorothy Holmes-Gore, the star of Midshipman Easy, and in October 1931 their son was born.
Simpson’s first play, The Dark Path, about a pair of Englishmen in Japan, was performed at the Savoy
Theatre in November 1928. Upon the outbreak of war he joined the Intelligence Corps and participated in Operation CLAYMORE, the Commando raid on the Lofoten Islands on 3 March 1941, which led him to write Lofoten Letter. The true purpose of CLAYMORE was to capture one of the enemy’s three Enigma cipher machines known to be there. In the event none were recovered because Lieutenant Hans Kupfinger, the commander of the unarmed trawler Krebs, threw his overboard moments before he was killed. However, the machine’s rotors were seized, and so were cipher documents that disclosed the Kriegsmarine’s Home Waters keys for February, allowing Bletchley Park to retrospectively read the traffic. Other material seized helped Allied cryptographers to solve much of the April traffic, compromising signals sent between 1 March and 10 May. Naturally, the raid’s true purpose was known only to a handful of officers who undertook their special assignments while the rest of the troops engaged the enemy and destroyed economic targets, such as the local fish oil processing plant.
Originally intended as a letter written to his wife while sailing for enemy-occupied territory as a corporal in a Special Service Battalion, Simpson was obliged by the constraints of military security to cut large sections of the text from Lofoten Letter, and not even hint that the raid had an alternative, highly secret objective. The same considerations required him to identify the ship on which he sailed as HMS Domino, a non-existent warship, and certainly not part of the 6th Destroyer Flotilla. Nevertheless, Lofoten Letter was released, and probably stands as the first book of the conflict written by a participant in a clandestine operation undertaken on Nazi-held Europe. He was by then a published author under the nom-de-plume Evan John, and by the time he was transferred to SIME he had written Plus ça change: An Historical Rhapsody in One Act in verse in 1935, and Kings Masque: Scenes from an historical tragedy in 1941. The biographer of King Charles I, he would write five other one-act plays, some of which were performed on the London stage, and go on to publish historical novels such as Crippled Splendour and Ride Home Tomorrow.
