And salvation had come – not once, but twice.
Himmler’s Nazi spies – the SD – had been on the prowl. Their Madrid office had found out about Kühlenthal’s grandmother. But then help had arrived. Canaris, his mentor, had almost certainly had a hand in it. A piece of paper that could save Kühlenthal’s career – perhaps even his life – landed on his desk: he had been officially created an Aryan. At the stroke of a pen, like the waving of a magician’s wand, his Jewishness had been made to vanish.
The SD had queried the measure. They were furious. There was ‘no legal authority for such an act’, they insisted.
Drop it, came the reply from Berlin.
The fact was, Kühlenthal’s hard work was paying off. He was becoming too important a person to lose. For the network of spies he had patiently been building up was beginning to show real promise. Not all of them, certainly. The British were skilful adversaries when it came to espionage. Yet Kühlenthal had high hopes for a new network at the heart of enemy territory. Since the summer of 1941, one of his men had been reporting directly from London, writing letters in secret ink sent via courier to Lisbon. He had a keen eye, this one, even if he did get muddled about English ways sometimes. No matter, he would learn. The information he had sent about troop movements and shipping convoys would raise Kühlenthal’s stock in Berlin.
He had first met his new spy a short walk from the embassy, at the Café Correos. At first the little Catalan had not impressed him – Señor López, he had called himself. A false name, of course, just as Kühlenthal had introduced himself as ‘Felipe’ – later he would also use his preferred pseudonym ‘Carlos’. The new agent was inventive, a problem solver: through some clandestine means he had managed to get himself a passport and exit visa for travel abroad, no easy task for an ordinary Spaniard then. And his political leanings were in the right direction. Plenty of Spaniards wanted to help defeat communism. They had, after all, done so themselves at home. Now their anti-Red fervour needed new battlefields.
Gradually, Kühlenthal had been won over. All right, he said, show us what you can do. You’re of no use to us here in Madrid. What we really need is for you to get yourself to London. Then we might be interested.
He and his subordinate gave the man training in secret inks, some money, and a code name: ‘Alaric’, after the Gothic chief who had sacked Rome. Could his new agent help bring down the British Empire from within?
He had had his doubts. Would Alaric even get to England? Then the first letter arrived. His man was in London, passing on his correspondence to a KLM steward flying the civilian route from Portugal to Britain in order to bypass the enemy censors. It was a clever move, if expensive – the courier was demanding a dollar a letter. But it was worth it to have a new agent on the ground.
In their replies, Kühlenthal’s office had to remind Alaric to number his future letters, and his new agent’s baroque prose style made his messages wordier than necessary. But it was a good start. Better even than Kühlenthal might have imagined, for already his V-mann had taken his advice and recruited three other sub-agents to work under him. Abwehr headquarters would be pleased.
Kühlenthal was calling this network, with Alaric at its head, ‘Arabal’, the name of a gushing waterfall in British-held Kashmir.
First the certificate of Aryanisation, and now a new intelligence operation in London itself.
It was just the beginning.
3
Lisbon, December 1941
ARACELI WAS WORRIED. The train journey from their home in Estoril to central Lisbon took a little over half an hour. Before long her husband would be in the city library again consulting reference books and the day’s newspapers. Just a few more reports for the Germans, he insisted, and he would shut everything down.
The emigration paperwork from the Brazilian Consulate was almost complete. Soon they could book their passage and get away. But they were in danger, and time was running out.
She had reason to be frightened. What if it went wrong, if someone found out? Little Juan was barely four months old.
They had not meant for things to turn out like this. Neither of them really wanted to go to Brazil. Or to be in Lisbon, for that matter. Back in Madrid, just after the Civil War, when they had managed the Majestic Hotel together, the dream had been to get to London, or perhaps America, to a better life, away from the misery and austerity of Franco’s Spain. Once the world war had broken out, they eschewed the official reports from the Spanish media, which were careful never to say anything that might offend their German friends. Instead they listened to the news in Spanish broadcast by the BBC. Few people did that: it was risky.
London appeared like a beacon of a better world, a place of higher values, even opportunity. German bombs may have been falling on it, but it was preferable to the grey limitations of Franco’s National-Catholicism, the poverty of a deeply wounded country. Salazar’s Portugal was just as bad.
With curly black hair and fine features, Araceli had a dark, seductive beauty not uncommon to her native Galicia in north-west Spain. She had certain airs – which would later cause frictions – and was convinced that she was descended from aristocracy. But like her husband she was intelligent and had a taste for adventure: she had made the first exploratory approach to the British on her husband’s behalf in January 1941 with an offer to help in the struggle against Hitler. It had been a failure, however: the staff had barely given her the time of day. Later, her husband himself had tried to talk to the British on numerous occasions, all to no avail.
Now it was late 1941. In Madrid a couple of weeks earlier she had been hopeful: a passport official at the embassy had finally agreed to meet her husband. But yet again the people they were trying to help turned them away, uninterested in what he had to offer. There was no choice, her husband said, but to return to Lisbon and prepare to leave Europe altogether. If the Germans discovered the truth their lives would be in danger. And every approach to the British only exposed them even more.
Perhaps her husband was right about moving to Brazil. They would be safe there, and could start a new life. But he would always bear the weight of failure. He had set so much on this, his pride, his self-esteem. He was more than just a dreamer. His imagination was even more powerful than her own, but he could work things to make those dreams come alive through his scheming, his sleight of hand, his ability to lie with a straight face. Neither of them had thought things would go this far, or get quite so bad, but the rejections from the British authorities – it was easy to lose count of them by now: five? six? seven, even? – had driven them here, to the far edge of Europe. Brazil, far across the ocean, seemed the only escape route left.
There was one last thing she must try, however. Everything had to be prepared before she took her next move – the right papers and proof to take with her, someone to look after the baby for a few hours. Her husband must never find out that she was making her own plans.
German money was paying for all this – the grand house, their Lisbon life. German money paying for the false reports her husband was now working on at the library, pretending to be based in London but actually gathering information from a Blue Guide to Great Britain, French newspapers, a Portuguese book on the British fleet, a French–English dictionary of military terminology, and a map of Britain that he had been given in Madrid. Not having any English made it more difficult.
At home, he would write a cover letter, ostensibly to her, Araceli, detailing his experiences as a novelist in England, wishing her well and hoping that he might see her and their baby son again soon. Other letters might be addressed to a supposed Catalan nationalist friend or a mistress he had invented in Madrid. In between the lines he would write the intelligence reports in secret ink, basing his stories on material in his reference books. Two works of fiction on the same page, running in parallel. One visible, the other hidden. With no word of truth in either.
The Germans had no idea that he was really in Lisbon, and not in London: t
he letters were forwarded to them from a Portuguese poste restante address. But the money could not last for ever. Their situation was all too precarious: the Germans would not be understanding if they learned about her husband’s ruses. A new solution was needed.
She checked her bag to make sure she had everything. The nice American had said he could get a British man to come along as well today.
It had taken a while for Theodore Rousseau Jr, assistant naval attaché at the US Embassy, to consider her proposals seriously. She had first approached him the month before with stories of a Spanish spy working for the Germans against the Americans. The US was not in the war, not yet at least, but she had thought it better to make out that there was a direct threat to them.
And she had been bold, asking for 200,000 dollars for her precious information. Her husband would have been proud. That made Rousseau start taking her seriously. In the end she had given him proof for no payment at all: a message written in secret ink, stating that ‘Agent 172’ in Chicago was ready to start his sabotage plans.
It was written in French. Araceli did not speak French. She thought that producing a message in a language she could not write would help her story. All it took was to ask a French friend to jot down a short note for her, then she changed some of the key words. So ‘Paris’ became ‘Chicago’, and the ‘publication’ of ‘journals’ in the original became the ‘sabotage’ of ‘factories’. She had learned a lot over the past months.
After that Rousseau had become very interested. But in November 1941 the US was not a combatant in the war: that would come a few weeks later, once the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. At this stage, he decided she should talk to a representative of the British government about her German spy.
And so now here she was, about to meet Rousseau for a third time, with his counterpart from the British Embassy in Lisbon, Captain Arthur Benson, who was, Rousseau told her, a member of the British intelligence services.
She started her story, repeating what she had told Rousseau before: she had information about a Spanish spy working for the Germans. To prove it she opened her bag and pulled out a piece of microfilm, a flask of secret ink, and a letter from the spy’s German controller. She thought for a moment of her husband’s reaction: he would be annoyed if he found out what she was doing. Not angry, or furious. He never spoke harshly, that was not his way. But she had no other choice.
Benson glanced briefly at the ‘proof’ she had brought with her, but his expression and manner suggested that he was not impressed. What did he think? That these were fakes? She was risking her life, and her family’s, by coming here.
But yes, that was precisely what Benson thought. There was nothing, he told her, of any interest in what she had to say or show him.
A whole year of having doors shut in their faces by the British, both in Lisbon and in Madrid. She had put everything on this one last chance, hoping that by coming through the Americans she might have a greater possibility of being heard. But in Benson’s eyes she was a mere adventuress, trying to grab some quick money or excitement.
She had had enough. This last-ditch attempt had come to nothing. Her mind should turn to other things: to little Juan, and the emigration papers. They would have to move quickly. If the Germans ever found out . . .
She made to leave. Seeing her stand up, Benson himself got to his feet, and with a cruel grin, leaned over to place a 20-escudo coin on the table in front of her.
‘Here you are. Take this for your trouble and your fare.’
A final insult.
Rousseau could only apologise. He was concerned. There was no need for a scene. Yet there was a question in the air: what was really going on here?
Araceli realised that she had no choice: she would have to tell them everything, to explain to Rousseau – and to Benson – the real reason why she was there, the reason why she had got in touch in the first place.
This man, she started saying. This German spy . . .
Rousseau and Benson listened.
This spy is my husband.
Later, Benson passed the information on – to the Admiralty in London, and to the Section V man in Lisbon, Ralph Jarvis.
The Spanish woman had brought along German secret inks to ‘prove’ her story, and the Americans seemed to be going along with what she had to say, but the British had more experience dealing with the Abwehr – appearances were, more often than not, misleading. And Lisbon was a den of spies, or people trying to become spies.
A Spaniard working for the Germans, pretending that he was in London spying for them. When all the time he was in Lisbon. And, according to his wife, the people he really wanted to work for were the British. So she said. Who could tell? The chances were that he was a plant by the Germans, trying to get one of their men inside British intelligence.
She had given them her husband’s name: Juan Pujol García. It sounded plausible enough. Benson would pass it on.
But making up a name was easy.
4
Southern England, April 1942
A PAINTER AND a circus impresario were chosen for the pick-up.
Tomás Harris sat in the back of the car. They had a long drive ahead and he made himself a cigarette, flattening the paper smooth before adding black tobacco and rolling it into a cylinder. Slim and elegant, with pushed-back black hair and a penetrating gaze, there was a rare power about Harris, an enthusiasm and love of life that few failed to notice.
‘He was ebullient and vibrant,’ recalled a close friend. ‘Everything fascinated him. He was magnetic, unpretentious, and passionate about everything that he did.’
A multi-talented artist, Harris had won the Trevelyan-Goodall scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art when he was only fifteen. He went on to study sculpture at the British Academy in Rome before returning to London. There he set up his own art business on Bruton Street, but later joined his father to run the Spanish Art Gallery, which sold works by the Spanish masters. Lionel Harris was a Jewish businessman who had worked in Spain. He married a woman from Seville – Enriqueta Rodríguez León. Of their seven children, Tomás was the fourth and last son.
When the Second World War started, ‘Tommy’ – as he was usually called by colleagues – took a job with his wife Hilda at the SOE training facility at Brickendonbury Hall after a recommendation from his friend Guy Burgess. In 1940 he moved to MI5.
His self-portraits show a dark, intense side, but outwardly he was a warm, sociable character.
‘He was a wonderful raconteur and was never happier than when telling anecdotes and stories.’
Others were struck by his strength of character.
‘Tommy was a very, very strong personality,’ one colleague said. ‘He was a very persuasive person. If you looked at a picture with him you found at the end of twenty minutes you were thinking the same as him.’
Anthony Blunt, also working at MI5 at the time, was a friend – Blunt had reviewed an exhibition at the Harris gallery – and he, too, held Harris in high esteem.
‘Tomás was one of the most complete human beings I have ever known.’
Harris’s Spanish background gave him a touch of exoticism (his maternal grandfather had been a distinguished bullfighter) and labelled him as something of an outsider – despite his connections he never felt completely at home in British upper-class society. Yet apart from his painting and art dealing, he was also a piano and saxophone player as well being a talented MI5 intelligence officer: there was a whiff of genius about him.
Cyril Mills, from MI5’s B1A section, was next to him as they set off, heading out of London along the A4. Mills was forty and older than Harris by about six years. Before the war he had been a famous circus manager and used to fly a de Havilland Hornet Moth around Europe looking for new acts. Then one day, soaring over Germany in 1936, he had caught sight of a train line disappearing into a mountainside. Mills had studied engineering at Cambridge, and to his technical eye this looked suspicious, not unlike a secret military factory
. He told MI5, who asked him to keep snooping for them. When the war started, it was obvious there would not be many more circuses for a while, so Mills swapped his impresario life for a full-time MI5 position.
The two men sat back in the car. It would be late afternoon before they reached Plymouth. Jock Horsfall was reliable, a former racer and the best driver in the service. They could think and talk for a while.
At long last they had found their mystery Spaniard. ‘Arabal’, ‘Alaric’, ‘V-Mann 316’, ‘V-Mann 319’: the Germans gave this new man and his supposed sub-agents many names. MI5 had been chasing him for months. Now he had been located in Lisbon and was being flown over to Britain for interrogation. Some of their questions would be answered on his arrival, but new queries would inevitably arise. Would they be able to trust him? Was he really as good as he appeared?
MI6 had first heard of him way back in December: a Spaniard asking to become a British spy, claiming that he had already fooled the Germans into thinking he was working for them. And it looked as though the same man had made various approaches, not only in Lisbon, but in Madrid as well. On each occasion he had been shown the door, while all the time he was sending false reports to the Madrid Abwehr claiming that he was actually in London.
Now it was late April. Four months had gone by trying to find the new enemy ‘spy’, wondering how he had escaped detection, while all the time he was in Portugal trying to work for the British. Harris repeated the phrase that kept running through his mind: it was a minor miracle he had survived this long. Which only made the sceptics suspect even more. The man must be a plant, otherwise the Germans would have liquidated him by now.
Yet Dilly Knox’s decoded Bletchley transcripts of Abwehr traffic clearly showed the trust the enemy had in Arabel as their man in London. There was no hint there of a set-up.
For MI5 this was a great opportunity. The double-cross system was working well – a nest of German spies now safely working on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, feeding lies to the other side. Could they take this new man on board as well?
The Spy with 29 Names Page 4
