Agent Zigzag

by Ben MacIntyre

  British destroyers, frigates, and corvettes had recently been fitted with a device called a “hedgehog,” a mortar bomb that exploded on contact with a submarine. The Most Secret Sources revealed that German intelligence had found out about the hedgehog through “careless talk38 by merchant seamen.” Since they knew something about the weapons already, a great deal of misinformation, wrote Montagu, could be loaded onto a little information: “While we should not39 disclose details of their design and construction, we should notionally increase their range and explosive effect and, more important, try to convince [the Germans] that they were fitted with proximity fuses which would go off on a near miss without actual impact.” This “proximity fuse” would supposedly trigger other depth charges once it had located the submarine. There was, of course, no such thing, but by making the humble hedgehog appear to be a beast of terrifying ferocity, Naval Intelligence hoped further to erode German morale, and make the U-boat fleet more wary of attacking convoys. Most important, if U-boat commanders feared that the Royal Navy had a rocket-propelled device that could hunt them at the bottom of the ocean, then they would be less likely to dive deep. Nearer the surface, they were easier to kill.

  Chapman duly sent out a message saying that he had heard about this proximity fuse, smaller than a normal depth charge and developed by Cossor’s to attack deeply submerged U-boats. The response was encouraging: “After passing the40 information on to the German navy, the Abwehr came back to Zigzag with much praise and an insistent demand that he should get more details.” Chapman reported (incorrectly) that “all secret manufacture41 by Cossor’s is now done in St. Helens,” and announced that he was heading north to try to gather more information. The stage was set for Operation Squid.

  While the Admiralty worked out the details, Chapman was encouraged to enjoy himself. Agent Zigzag was still “worth keeping sweet,”42 yet a distinct sourness had begun to creep into the relationship between Chapman and the British secret services, for reasons that had little to do with the war and everything to do with personality—the warp and weft of espionage.

  Ronnie Reed’s role in the Zigzag case came to a sudden end when he was posted to the American forces as intelligence liaison officer in France. Reed’s reputation (and, for that matter, his mustache) had grown over the previous two years, and he had eagerly embraced the “wonderful experience”43 of seeing France for the first time. For Chapman, however, Reed’s departure was a heavy blow. The two men had grown deeply fond of one another, sharing so many anxious moments hunched over the wireless. On the day of Reed’s departure, Chapman presented his departing case officer with a small parcel, wrapped in tissue paper: inside, still in its leather case, was Chapman’s Iron Cross. It was a typically spontaneous Chapman gesture of admiration and friendship. Reed was profoundly touched.

  To replace Reed as the Zigzag case officer, in a rare but calamitous misjudgement, Tar Robertson appointed a man who could not have been more different, or less to Chapman’s taste.

  Major Michael Ryde was a crisp, by-the-book professional, with an overdeveloped sense of moral rectitude, an underdeveloped sense of humor, and a drinking problem. The son and grandson of chartered surveyors, Ryde had married the only daughter of Sir Joseph Ball, a notorious political fixer and the head of MI5’s investigative branch. Ball had steered his son-in-law into the security services just before the outbreak of war, and for three years Ryde had performed an exceptionally boring desk job as regional security liaison officer in Reading. Newly promoted to B1A, he was clever, fastidious, and moralizing; Ryde could be charming when sober, but was invariably unpleasant when drunk. He and Chapman loathed one another on sight. In the tangle of Chapman’s loyalties, there was now an ironic symmetry. His closest friend, a German spymaster, must be betrayed out of a duty to his country; but the man who should have been his ally in that enterprise would soon become his sworn enemy.

  Ryde regarded his vulgar new ward as an encumbrance and an embarrassment, and within hours of taking on the case he had made it his personal goal to expel Chapman from the British secret services at the first opportunity.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Going to the Dogs

  THE WAR STAGGERED toward its finale. Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944, and the Allies advanced steadily eastward while the Red Army marched west. With victory in sight, the British secret services looked to the future and began to see their spy networks in a new light. Wartime espionage was a dirty business, and Chapman was by no means the only person of dubious character to find a home in MI5. But with victory in prospect, an element in the intelligence hierarchy now wondered whether there ever could—or rather should—be a place in it for a scoundrel like Eddie Chapman.

  Chapman’s new case officer, Major Ryde, was now his constant companion. It was torture for both, for few partnerships were more ill-matched than that of the roistering crook and his patrician shadow. Chapman insisted on going out on the town at every opportunity and MI5’s expense. The £80 spending money and fifty clothing coupons he had been given on arrival evaporated in a few days. Chapman demanded more, pointing out that he had brought £6,001 in his suitcase when he parachuted into Britain the month before. Ryde tartly informed him that the £10 notes were out of date and unusable. Chapman was “disagreeably surprised”1 but quite unabashed, and demanded that he should allowed to keep the rest of the cash he had brought. MI5 watched the money pour into the hands of various Soho casino owners and barmen “with some apprehension.”2

  Ryde trailed after him resentfully. “I have spent a good3 deal of time with Zigzag at the cost of a certain amount of boredom and a certain amount of money expended on entertaining him,” he complained. Ryde had nothing against strong drink; indeed, quite the reverse. He just did not want to drink in the company of men like Eddie Chapman.

  Early in August 1944, Ryde called a meeting with Tar Robertson to discuss the Zigzag case and, if possible, to end it. Ryde reported that Chapman seemed “most discontented at4 the moment” he was expensive, moody, and entirely disreputable. “He has been keeping5 the bad company of some professional pugilist with whom he has been hitting the high spots” and was “always in the company6 of beautiful women”—a fact that seems to have vexed Ryde in a way that suggests envy more than disapproval. The case officer wrote a report, ending with the conclusion: “The Zigzag case must7 be closed down at the earliest possible moment.” Ryde was immediately slapped into line by his superiors. John Masterman insisted that the word “earliest” be replaced by “latest,” and Tar agreed: The case should be closed only when it was “convenient” to do so. Stung, Ryde backed off. But he was now gunning for Chapman, and collecting all the ammunition he could.

  Robertson took Chapman to lunch at his club, and found him in a state of seething resentment toward Ryde, complaining bitterly about “the way his case8 was being run.” When asked about his future plans, Chapman “did not seem9 to have any very clear ideas on the subject,” Tar reported, though he spoke vaguely of setting up a club, or running a pub, or working for MI5 after the war. “He is quite clearly10 restless and is likely to be so, as long as he is asked to perform the rather humdrum business of tapping a key at our instructions.”

  Relations between Chapman and Ryde might have been reaching a crisis point, but in other respects the Zigzag case was ticking along most satisfactorily. The Germans seemed as devoutly trusting as ever. Early in August, von Gröning had sent a message asking Chapman to suggest a method for delivering the camera and money to his fellow spy, and instructing him to find “a suitable person”11 who could monitor bomber formations at airfields in East Anglia. The Air Ministry had vetoed any deception in this latter area, so Chapman stalled, saying he was still searching for a recruit since “the friends he hoped to employ12 for this purpose are in prison or otherwise not available.”

  Operation Squid, the plan to convince the Germans that Britain had some new and devastating weapon able to detect and destroy U-boats, moved into its next phase. Th
e deception would take two forms. The first was a “stolen” photograph purporting to show an underwater antisubmarine “proximity fuse” that did not, of course, exist. This would have to be smuggled to the Germans via Lisbon. A real hedgehog depth charge was photographed alongside a ruler a foot and a half in length, which had been adapted to appear as if it was only six inches long, thus making the weapon appear one-third of its actual size. Chapman would tell the Germans that he had bribed a merchant seaman bound for Lisbon to act as a “mule,” by hiding the photo “in a French letter13 in a tin of Epsom Salts,” and that he would convince the sailor he was smuggling drugs. In reality, MI6 in Lisbon simply acted as “postman,” and arranged for the fake photograph in its tin to be delivered to the Germans by one of their agents disguised as a seaman. The German reaction was precisely as hoped: “After they had received14 the photo the Abwehr were avid for full details of the fuse,” wrote Ewen Montagu.

  Zigzag duly obliged. With the help of Professor Geoffrey J. Gollin, the brilliant scientific adviser to the Naval Intelligence Division, Montagu drew up a bogus letter from Professor A. B. Wood, an expert in underwater acoustics at the Admiralty Research Laboratory at Teddington, to a scientist at Cossor’s munitions factory named Fleming. In it, he extolled the virtues of a new, top secret antisubmarine device. Chapman told his German handlers that he had found the letter in the Manchester offices of Cossor’s and had copied it. He now sent the fake letter by radio, verbatim.

  Dear Fleming,15

  I feel sure that you will be as pleased as I was to hear the results of the latest squid trials.

  A standard deviation of plus or minus 15 feet is a wonderful improvement on the old method of depth-finding and my only regret is that our present target is incapable of greater speeds. Doubtless 13 knots is as much as the enemy is likely to reach in this war but we must always keep a ‘jump’ ahead, preferably two jumps!

  I thought you might like the enclosed photos of the standard remote setting depth charge fuse for coupling direct to the squid Mk J indicator controller (as suggested by the late Captain Walker).

  I hope to visit Manchester again soon and am looking forward to having another of our discussions which have proved so fruitful during the last three years.

  Yours sincerely,

  A.B. Wood

  Professor

  There was no Captain Walker, no “Mk J indicator controller,” and certainly no depth charge capable of detecting a submarine at a distance of fifteen feet and then pursuing it at a speed of thirteen knots. There was, however, a Fleming—Ian Fleming, the future creator of James Bond—who was then working in Naval Intelligence. Fleming may have been party to this subterfuge, designed to breed maximum anxiety among German U-boat commanders and keep them as close as possible to the surface. Ewen Montagu proclaimed the operation a triumph. “We never found out16 what the assessment of this information by the German navy was, but the actions of the Abwehr [sic] made it seem that they must have been very favorable.”

  Despite the success of Operation Squid, Ryde did his best to undermine the achievement. “I do not myself17 believe there is any substantial chance of these photographs reaching Berlin,” he wrote. “Unless the Admiralty press us to carry on the case, I am convinced that we ought to close it down and part company with Zigzag as soon as possible, giving him such financial bonus, if any, as he is thought to deserve…” Ryde seemed more determined than ever to expel Chapman, and the preparations for handing over the camera to Brutus offered an opportunity. It was decided that Zigzag would arrange to leave the money and camera in a marked package at a railway-station cloakroom, but while the handover was being organized, the Germans sent a radio message hinting at doubts over Chapman’s loyalty. Brutus’s German handler wrote that he did not wish his agent to make direct contact with Fritz, since the latter was, in his opinion, “not quite reliable.”18 This may have reflected no more than internal rivalry, one spymaster questioning the dependability of another’s agent, but it was enough for Ryde to declare that the Germans were “dubious about Zigzag’s integrity.”

  German suspicions, Ryde wrote, may have been further stoked by widely reported statements made in Parliament about the V-1s by Duncan Sandys, the minister who chaired the War Cabinet committee on flying bombs. Sandys had let slip certain crucial details about bomb-damaged parts of London. “The messages sent19 by Zigzag, if compared in detail with the recent speech made by Duncan Sandys in the House, show very serious discrepancies, and there is a possibility that the case will be blown on these grounds.” Then there was the question of Dagmar. “Zigzag is liable20 to be compromised through the girlfriend he left behind in Oslo,” wrote Ryde, slowly but implacably chipping away at his own agent’s credibility. When it was mooted that Chapman might continue to work for MI5 after the war, Ryde was scornful: “It is unlikely that his21 private life will be such that he will remain suitable for employment.” He also pointed out that Chapman’s value was dependent on his relationship with von Gröning and that this link would become worthless with the end of the war.

  Chapman, unaware of Ryde’s machinations, had discovered a new and lucrative pastime. Through some of his old criminal contacts, he learned that dog races in southern London were being “fixed.” With the connivance of the owners, certain dogs were being fed meatballs laced with Luminal, an antiepileptic drug. A mild hypnotic, the Luminal had no visible effect until the animal, usually the favorite, had run some distance, when it would slow down. For a consideration, Chapman arranged to receive a tip-off when a dog had been knobbled; he then bet heavily on the second favorite and usually collected a tidy profit, which he would split with his criminal informant.

  One evening in August 1944, Chapman turned up at his safe house several hours late for an appointment to transmit to Germany, and explained casually that he had been at the dog track. “Zigzag himself is22 going to the dogs,” his case officer puffed, gleeful to have been provided with such a convenient double entendre. Chapman, Ryde reported, was “making quite large sums23 of money by backing the winners of races which have already been fixed.” When confronted, Chapman angrily insisted that he was merely profiting through information gathered from his contacts, a technique not so very far removed from espionage. Ryde, of course, did not see it that way. “To take advantage24 of other people’s dirty work to fleece the bookmakers cannot be regarded as a desirable occupation,” he sniffed.

  Reluctantly, and under intense pressure, Masterman and Robertson accepted that Chapman might soon have “served his purpose.”25 Yet they balked at cutting him adrift. Tar insisted that Chapman had “done an extremely good26 and brave job,” and if the case was shut down, then he should be properly looked after “by giving him27 a fairly substantial sum of money.” With the avuncular concern he had always shown, Robertson wondered whether Chapman might be coaxed toward the straight and narrow by means of a legitimate job. Chapman was duly told that “if he could put up28 some firm business proposition it might not be impossible for us to help him with the capital.” He had seemed enthusiastic, and talked of running a club in the West End or a hotel in Southend (the Ship Hope Hotel was for sale, he said), in order to be near Freda and Diane. Ryde declared that it would be a “waste of money”29 for someone with such a long criminal record to open licensed premises, since the police would simply “close them down as soon as they find out that he is in fact behind the business.” The only way to set up Chapman as an hotelier would be to alert the local chief constable, and explain the situation: “If the latter, notwithstanding Zigzag’s past record, appears willing to give his venture a fair chance so long as the hotel was properly conducted, then it might be worthwhile for Zigzag to go on with it.” Ryde doubted that any chief constable would agree to this proposition, or that Chapman would keep his nose clean: “It is obvious that we cannot assist him financially if his idea of business is to work the dogs.”

  Just as Ryde had predicted, Chapman was drifting back to his old haunts—the Shim-Sham Club and the
Nite Lite—and his old ways. The pull of the criminal brotherhood was growing stronger, yet his years as a secret agent had changed him: His primary allegiance was still to Britain, and the other secret fraternity of which he was now a part. When Ryde hinted that Chapman’s days as an agent might be numbered, he had responded crossly, declaring that “if we no longer require30 his services” he would “get in touch with the Americans.”

  Safe from prosecution thanks to the home secretary’s unofficial “pardon,” Chapman was allowed to move around London more freely, though Ryde followed at a distance, tutting, watching, and gathering evidence. The spy manager was now actively spying on his spy: “I have seen Zigzag31 walk up to a Norwegian and address him in Norwegian, I have seen him in the company of highly undesirable characters, speaking to a German Jewess in German, a Frenchman in French. I have heard him discussing with a man with a known criminal record conditions in Paris in such a way that it must have been apparent that he has been there within the last few months.” Chapman, Ryde reported to his superiors, was keen to write a memoir of his exploits: How soon before his natural swagger got the better of him and he bragged to his nasty friends? he speculated. “I am able to curb these32 indiscretions when I happen to be present,” he wrote, “but there is no knowing what form these conversations take when I am not there.”

  Ryde was overruled again. Whatever his personal behavior, Chapman was still a trusted asset: “The war may end33 at any moment and all contact with the Germans be lost and his case may die a natural death.” If this happened, Chapman should be let go with tact and generosity, and told that “the necessity of closing34 the case was no reflection on him, but forced upon us by the war situation.”