Agent Zigzag

by Ben MacIntyre

  The next few days were anxious ones. Chapman deliberately left Dagmar alone in the company of Praetorius, Holst, or von Gröning, and then carefully studied their faces for any “change of attitude” that might indicate a betrayal. He detected not a flicker of suspicion. Two days after his confession, Dagmar whispered that she had found the information he wanted: the Abwehr headquarters was at 8 Klingenberggate, and the head of station was a naval officer, with four rings on his sleeve. Chapman began to breathe easier. Not only was Dagmar apparently faithful; she might also prove a first-class subagent, a formidable new branch of Agent Zigzag.

  Dagmar seemed to be privy to all sort of interesting information; moreover, she was a vital prop. A man taking a photograph of a military installation would arouse suspicion, but what could be more natural than a young man taking snapshots of his Norwegian girlfriend? Von Gröning threw a party for Chapman’s twenty-ninth birthday at his flat: Thomas gave him a radio; Holst, an ivory ashtray; and von Gröning, a van Gogh print. Dagmar baked a cake and took lots of photographs of the revelers, as souvenirs. That night, Chapman climbed into the attic of Kapelveien 15, peeled back the metal sheet that protected the wooden girder next to the chimney stack, and hid the film inside: Here was a complete photographic record of the Oslo Abwehr team, “obtained discreetly” by a vague, pretty Norwegian girl no one could ever suspect of spying.

  The espionage partnership of Eddie Chapman and Dagmar Lahlum was also an alliance, at one remove, between the British secret services and the Norwegian underground. Dagmar had hinted at her links with the resistance movement, which subsequent events confirmed. One summer evening, they found themselves near the university, where a student demonstration was taking place, a protest against the latest attempt to Nazify the education system. Suddenly, the police attacked and began hauling off the student leaders. Dagmar pointed to a young man being hustled away, and whispered that he was a member of Jossings, another underground resistance group. Brandishing his SS pass, Chapman intervened and “obtained the immediate release of Dagmar’s young friend,” but not before a loud “argument with a German soldier and a German officer in the street.”

  On July 10, 1943, as they were walking arm in arm through Oslo, Dagmar told Chapman to wait in the street, and then darted into a tobacconist. She returned a few minutes later, empty-handed, looking flushed and excited, and whispered the news: “The Allies have invaded Sicily.” In the early part of 1943, Allied military planners, concluding that France was not yet ripe for invasion, had opted to deploy troops from the successful North African campaign to the island of Sicily. Code-named “Operation Husky,” it was the largest amphibious assault of the war so far, and opened the way for the invasion of Italy. The news of the invasion had not been broadcast on Norwegian radio, and Dagmar could only have obtained the information through the underground. Under Chapman’s questioning, “she intimated, without revealing the names of any of her contacts, that this information came through the patriotic Norwegian Jossings.”

  Not for the last time, Chapman wondered who had caught whose eye at the Ritz bar.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Sabotage Consultant

  AT THE END of the summer of 1943, with the first chill settling on the fjords, Chapman was summoned to von Gröning’s flat and presented with a contract for “new sabotage work”1 in Britain. Chapman should sign on the dotted line, the German blandly declared, shoving a piece of paper across the desk and unscrewing the lid of his silver fountain pen. The contract was similar to the first, and promised the same financial reward. Chapman read it carefully, and handed it back, politely observing that he “did not consider2 the proposition of sufficient importance.” He had plenty of money already.

  Von Gröning was astonished, and then enraged. A furious row erupted, with the German bitterly pointing out that without his support Chapman would still be rotting in Romainville prison, or dead. Chapman declined to budge, saying that the job was too imprecise, that mere sabotage was an unworthy task, and that the money was insufficient. His refusal was partly a ruse to buy time and delay the parting from Dagmar, but also a bid for a more explicit mission that he could take back to his British spymasters. Robertson’s instructions had been clear: Find out what the Germans desire, and we will know what they lack. Von Gröning’s authority had been fatally compromised by his dependence on Chapman, and this was a defining moment in the relationship between patron and protégé. Von Gröning now needed his spy more than Chapman needed his spymaster. The older man raged and sputtered, threatening all manner of punishment, until his face had turned an alarming scarlet and the veins stood out on his neck. Finally, he dismissed Chapman, telling him that his allowance would be cut. Chapman shrugged: If his own income was reduced, then von Gröning would also find himself out of pocket.

  The “deadlock” persisted for a week. One by one, the other members of the station—Praetorius, Holst, and even the secretaries—approached Chapman and told him of von Gröning’s fury, and the dire consequences of his refusal to sign the contract. Chapman held fast, insisting he was “after some bigger and better job and would not accept anything so vague.” When von Gröning cut off his funds altogether, Chapman responded with an angry letter, saying that if he persisted, he was prepared to go back to Romainville and face his fate.

  Von Gröning caved in, as Chapman knew he must. The German flew to Berlin, and returned the following day in “good spirits.” The Abwehr chiefs had earmarked an important new espionage mission for Chapman, for which “there would be a large reward.” Chapman would be sent back to Britain to find out why the enemy was winning the war under the sea.

  For the first three years of the conflict, Germany’s U-boats had ravaged Allied shipping with brutal success. Prowling in “wolf packs,” the submarines struck with terrifying efficiency, as Chapman knew from personal experience, before gliding away unseen and often unscathed. The U-boats usually patrolled separately across likely convoy routes, and when one located the prey, they would swarm in to the kill in a mass attack. In the course of the war, U-boats would destroy twenty-nine hundred ships, sending 14 million tons of Allied shipping to the seabed. Winston Churchill himself observed: “The only thing3 that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.” Recently, however, the balance of the conflict had altered, and U-boats were being successfully attacked at an alarming rate. In May 1943, some forty-one U-boats were sunk, killing more than a thousand German sailors. The Germans remained ignorant that the Enigma code had been broken, and never knew that the hunters were being hunted through their intercepted radio messages. Rather, Berlin decided that the British must have developed some sophisticated form of submarine-detection system that enabled them to track U-boats from the surface, and then take action, evasive or aggressive. Chapman’s mission was to identify this submarine detector, find out how it worked, photograph it, steal it if possible, and then bring it back. For this he would be rewarded with 600,000 reichsmarks, an additional 200,000 marks in the currency of his choice, and his own Abwehr command in occupied Europe.

  Here was an almost unbelievable fortune, a prize for a virtually unattainable mission, and a ringing declaration of German faith in Chapman’s abilities and loyalty. At first, he hesitated, pointing out that he knew nothing of the technicalities involved and would “need coaching4 in what he was to look for.” This would all be arranged, said von Gröning, with the complaisance of a man whose investment might be about to produce a quite astonishing dividend.

  To find this fabled weapon, Chapman would be exposed to the deepest secrets of Germany’s underwater war. A document arrived from Berlin containing all the information, “known or surmised,” about this supposed submarine detector. A few days later, he was escorted by Holst and von Gröning to the Norwegian port of Trondheim, where three intensely suspicious officers of the marine branch of Abwehr reluctantly described what little they knew about Britain’s submarine-tracking capability. The British, they explained, seemed to be using
some sort of parabolic reflector with a “rebounding ray” to pick up the submarines; the detonators used on British depth charges also appeared to have an built-in device for measuring the distance from the target, and thus exploded with maximum devastation. Quite how the British asdic (later sonar) system worked was a mystery to them: perhaps, they speculated, it used an “ultrared ray device,” or television, or a technique for detecting and measuring heat from the U-boat exhaust.

  Chapman was left with the “impression that these people knew very little about our U-boat detection devices” and were “extremely worried” about this secret weapon able to track a submarine, night or day, from a distance of “up to 200 miles.” One U-boat, they said, had been “attacked in bad weather in thick fog,” something hitherto thought impossible. U-boat casualties were “extremely high,” and mounting. The officers conceded they had no idea where the device came from, but offered “the address of an engineering depot5 in Kensington that might be making it.” Throughout the interview, as Chapman took notes, the senior naval intelligence officer “continually stared at him6 and remarked that he had seen him somewhere before.”

  Back in Oslo, Chapman was summoned to see Kapitän-zur-See Reimar von Bonin, the chief of the Abwehr in occupied Norway. It was the first and only time that they would meet. Over lunch at von Bonin’s grand apartments in Munthesgate, the balding German officer, clad in full naval uniform with four gold bars on his sleeve, explained that the British antisubmarine device was so sensitive that it could detect a U-boat lying on the seabed with its engines off, and surmised that the British must be using “x-ray apparatus7 of some sort.”

  The mission was scheduled for March 1944. As before, Chapman would be parachuted into a remote area of Britain with all the necessary equipment. When he had identified or, better still, obtained the device, he should steal a small fishing boat from the southern coast of England and sail ten miles out to sea, where he would be “picked up by five seaplanes8 and escorted to the coast of Europe.” The Abwehr apparently believed that Chapman would be able simply to steal a boat, in the middle of a war, and set sail; this was either a measure of ignorance or faith in Chapman’s criminal talents, or both. He was taken to Bergen, and spent three days being trained by the harbormaster in “the use of a compass9 on a small fishing cutter.”

  The preparations to pitch Chapman into the war at sea were interrupted, however, by a slightly different outbreak of hostilities: another turf war, this time within the German High Command. In December 1943, an unidentified senior German air force officer arrived from Berlin, declaring that “Chapman was just the type10 of man the Luftwaffe was looking for to send on a mission.” The Luftwaffe had its own plans for the celebrated British spy, and its own paranoia. A second, rival mission was now unveiled. Just as Germany’s U-boats were suffering from some new detection device, so British night fighters seemed to be winning the war in the air with secret new technology. British aircraft had been downed that contained a hitherto unknown radar system; not enough hardware had survived the crashes to reconstruct the equipment, but there was sufficient to alert the Luftwaffe that it was facing a dangerous new weapon. The technology in question was probably the American-designed radar system known as AI 10 (Airbourne Interceptor Mark 10), in use by British fighters and bombers, most notably the Mosquito, since late 1943. “No reward would be too great if he could obtain a photograph or the plans of this device,” Chapman was told.

  Just a few months earlier, Chapman had been the object of profound suspicion. Now, it seemed, with Nazi Germany on the defensive, he was the golden boy of the Abwehr, courted by both navy and air force, “each wanting their part of the mission to have priority.” Von Gröning intervened in the internal tussle: The naval mission would take precedence (and the navy would pay for the operation); the night-fighter radar would be a subsidiary target.

  Chapman found his skills being put to practical use: Like some emeritus lecturer in espionage, he gave seminars as a “kind of honorary consultant11 in sabotage methods” to a select audience of spooks, using the fictional attack on the De Havilland plant as a textbook case. Before he had been kept away from wireless operations, but now he was asked to teach telegraphy to two young Icelanders, Hjalti Björnsson and Sigurur Normann Júlíusson.

  Germany was becoming increasingly concerned that Iceland might be used as the launchpad for an Allied invasion of the Continent, and so the Abwehr had begun to forge an Icelandic espionage network. Björnsson and Júlíusson had been recruited in Denmark by one Gubrandur Hlidar, a slightly peculiar Icelandic vet who was “more interested in12 practicing artificial insemination, in which he was a specialist, than espionage, in which he was not.” Hlidar’s recruitment of Björnsson and Júlíusson suggests that he should have stuck to his test tubes, for these two were not the stuff of spies: Though thoroughly willing, they were also remarkably dense. Several weeks of intensive instruction was needed before they had mastered the most basic wireless techniques.

  The last remnants of the La Bretonnière gang began to break up. The relationship between von Gröning and Praetorius, never friendly, was steadily deteriorating, with Praetorius, neurotic and touchy, accusing von Gröning of plotting to keep him in Oslo to deny him the heroic military future he craved. Finally, after repeated lobbying to higher authorities to deploy him elsewhere, he got his wish. Praetorius was delighted with his new appointment, although his new position was not one normally associated with the fearsome Nazi war machine, let alone the Teutonic heroes of old. Praetorius had long been convinced of the therapeutic physical and cultural effects of English folk dancing. Somehow he had persuaded the German authorities of this and was duly appointed dance instructor to the Wehrmacht.

  When Chapman asked where the young Nazi had gone, von Gröning said, with a look of disgust, that he was “touring Germany13 instructing the German forces in sword-dancing, reels etc, which he had learned when in England.” Von Gröning was amused but amazed: The decision to deploy his deputy on the dance floor was yet further proof that the German High Command was in the hands of fools. A few weeks later, Praetorius sent a photograph of himself giving a dance lesson to the troops (sadly, this has not survived). The man Chapman knew as Thomas had been an irritating and pedantic companion, but a fund of entertaining eccentricities. Chapman felt a flicker of regret as the Nazi dancer packed his white suit and dancing shoes, and twirled out of his life forever.

  Alone in the evenings, Chapman and von Gröning plotted the future: not the details of espionage, but the sort of plans old friends make together to boost morale in bad times. They agreed to set up a club or a bar together in Paris; Chapman would act as the manager, and Dagmar could be the hostess. Such an establishment, von Gröning hinted, would make “useful background14 for carrying on his activities” after the war. They both knew it was make-believe. With Praetorius out of the way, von Gröning relaxed and became more outspoken. He no longer seemed obliged to proclaim a jingoism he did not feel, nor to conceal his feelings about Nazism. “Hitler is by no means in charge15 of the direction of military operations any longer,” he said. “It is entirely in the hands16 of the German general staff, and one no longer reads ‘I, Hitler, command…’ on army orders…” He confided in Chapman that he had always admired Churchill, and that he secretly listened to the BBC every night in bed. When it was reported that a number of British officers had been shot in Stalag 3, he openly “expressed disgust.” He even “aired his anti-Hitler views in public,” and told Chapman of his revulsion at the mass murder of European Jews. His sister Dorothea, he revealed, had recently adopted a Jewish girl to save her from the gas chambers.

  Von Gröning was an old-fashioned German patriot, committed to winning the war, but equally determined to oppose the horrors of Nazism. Such views were not uncommon within the Abwehr. Wilhelm Canaris had made sure to appoint men who were loyal to him rather than to the Nazi Party, and there is evidence that from an early date he and others within the Abwehr were actively conspiring ag
ainst Hitler. Canaris had employed Jews in the Abwehr, aided others to escape, and is believed to have provided intelligence to the Allies revealing German intentions. The intense rivalry between the Abwehr and the SS had been steadily building, amid accusations that Canaris was defeatist, if not actively treacherous. The Abwehr unit was extruded from actual command, and would soon fall foul of Nazi loyalists in dramatic fashion.

  As the day of departure approached, Chapman and Dagmar also made plans. From the moment he had confessed to her on the boat, Dagmar “knew he would one day17 leave her to return to England.” They, too, built fantasies out of the future, imagining the club they would run in Paris, the children they would have, and the places they would go after the war. Dagmar should continue to act as his agent after he had gone, Chapman told her. She should maintain contact with the various members of the Abwehr, and generally “keep her eyes and ears open18 for information that might later be of interest.” He would arrange for the British to make contact with her as soon as it was safe, but she should “trust nobody19 unless she was approached by somebody who gave, as a password, her full name—Dagmar Mohne Hansen Lahlum.” Since she would be working as a British agent, Chapman grandly announced, Dagmar must be paid.

  Just as he had left instructions for MI5 on looking after Freda, Chapman now set about making provision for Dagmar. Through von Gröning, she should be paid a monthly allowance of 600 kroner from his account until further notice. She should also be provided with somewhere to live. Von Gröning readily agreed: So long as Dagmar was under German protection, then Chapman’s loyalty might be assured. Holst was sent to find suitable accommodation, and Dagmar was duly lodged in a comfortable little flat at 4a Tulensgate. Chapman now had two different women, under the protection of two different secret services, on opposing sides of the war.