Double Cross

by Ben MacIntyre

  The squabble over control of Pujol was finally won by Tar Robertson, who was delighted by this inventive new addition to his team. The Catalan was smuggled out of Lisbon on a steamer to Gibraltar and then flown by military aircraft to Plymouth, arriving on April 24, 1942. After two weeks of interrogation, MI5 declared that, despite his “inexhaustibly fertile imagination,” he was telling the truth. The Twenty Committee initially wondered whether he might be a plant, but evidence from Most Secret Sources (which MI6 now, reluctantly, agreed to share in full with the Double Cross team) proved the truth of his story beyond doubt. Pujol’s wife and young son were brought out of Lisbon, and the family was reunited in a safe house at 35 Crespigny Road, Hendon, in the north London suburbs. Pujol was provided with a housekeeper and a cover job translating for the BBC. Most important, he acquired a case officer.

  Once again, Tar’s choice was inspired. Tomás “Tommy” Harris was a thirty-four-year-old half-Spanish artist whose imagination was as vivid as Pujol’s but tempered by solid common sense. The son of a rich Mayfair art dealer, Harris moved in bohemian circles and was friendly with the trio of Soviet moles, Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, and Guy Burgess, an association that would later lead to the (baseless) claim that he too had been a double agent. Of all those recruited to run double agents, Masterman considered Harris to be “in some ways, the most remarkable.” One colleague described him thus: “With fierce black eyes and a hawk-like nose, thick well-oiled hair slicked back from a low forehead, he looked like a casting director’s ideal choice for a desert sheikh or a slinky tango lizard.” Harris and Pujol made an extraordinary double act. They spoke the same language, literally and metaphorically, and in time the combination of Harris’s artistry and Pujol’s flamboyant ingenuity would spin a web of deception that is as close to a thing of beauty as espionage can offer. Pujol’s lexophilia had led him into spying: over the next three years, he and Harris would bombard the Germans with hundreds of thousands of words, 315 letters in secret ink, and more than 1,200 wireless messages. Pujol would clock up an innings like no other double agent. “He played his game with masterly skill,” wrote Masterman, who dubbed him the Bradman of the Double Cross team, after the Australian cricketer Donald Bradman, the greatest batsman of all time.

  MI6 had given Pujol the code name “Bovril” after the thick, salty meat extract that, like Marmite, appeals only to British palates, and only to some of those. It was possibly intended as a compliment, since Bovril was seen as a “war food” that had sustained soldiers in the trenches during the previous war. MI5 changed his code name, partly to make a point to MI6 and partly because, after his dramatic work of subterfuge in Lisbon, he deserved something grander, more befitting “the best actor in the world” of spying. Juan Pujol García became Agent Garbo.

  Where Garbo had been secretly smuggled to London from Lisbon, Tricycle openly shuttled back and forth between the two capitals, ostensibly as director of Tarlair Ltd. but in reality building up his credentials with both his German and British spymasters. The British authorities furnished the necessary paperwork for his “mysterious business deals,” while noting: “We are going in very deep with Popov.” Seats on civilian flights between Lisbon and London were in hot demand, but space was always made for Popov, creating another source of concern. “In time of war only diplomats, journalists and spies can travel about freely, and everyone knows Tricycle does not come into the first two categories.” Popov was confident von Karsthoff suspected nothing, but Luke was not so sure. “The Germans may know he is doubling, but may consider that they get more information by letting him continue doing so than they would if he disappeared. I am not suggesting that Tricycle is aware that they know he is doubling.” Dusko Popov might be an unwitting pawn in a clever German bluff.

  From Lisbon, Popov kept MI5 fully updated on his love life, which now incorporated Maria Elera, the twenty-two-year-old Brazilian journalist whose home in Lisbon had been supplied by von Karsthoff as the cover address for sending secret letters. Popov sent back photographs of Maria posing in sultry fashion on the steps of an airplane. In his file, these are labeled: “His latest girlfriend.” But he did not neglect Gwennie: “Missing you terribly darling, I adore you, hope to be back soon.” Was it possible, MI5 wondered, that someone so pathologically faithless in his romantic life could be loyal to one cause?

  By the summer of 1941, Popov had passed over to the Germans vast swaths of information, some of it true, none of it harmful, and much of it merely confusing. He described various new military inventions: a new antigas battle dress that the troops hated because of the smell; a silent aircraft engine; a high-velocity ammunition for machine guns; and an incendiary bomb made from a derivative of tar. His reports were garnished with snippets of political gossip, such as the news that Oswald Mosley, the interned British fascist, was “degenerating in prison and has lost his personality.” Popov’s subagent Dickie Metcalfe also began passing information, distinctly flavored with the personality of a former soldier. The British infantry, “Balloon” reported, had been issued a new seven-inch bayonet, “which makes for much easier withdrawal from Huns.” MI6 was appalled by this joke: “I wonder whether Balloon realises he is working for the Germans.”

  The Double Cross “traffic” sent to Germany was growing more sophisticated as the Twenty Committee served up an increasingly potent cocktail of information and deception, mixing falsehood, half-truth, and real, verifiable information approved by the relevant military authority. Gisela Ashley analyzed incoming messages, and Tar began “submitting to her all the traffic in its original German as a matter of routine.” It was she who first argued that the double agents should be used not just to deceive individual spymasters but to influence German thinking. “We are the Double Cross section in that we send over to the Germans information which is either misleading or which we want them to have. It seems to me there is a much wider scope for such a section. Would it not be possible to push across propaganda or to give the Germans ideas that we want them to have?” The men of Double Cross tended to think exclusively in military terms, but Gisela suggested that they paint a misleading picture of Britain itself by exaggerating anti-Jewish feeling, domestic fascism, and industrial unrest: “After all, any decent spy would naturally try to get over warnings and pointers with regard to domestic news in the country in which he is spying.”

  Popov was supposed to be gathering his information from senior figures in the British establishment, so to fortify his cover story he was introduced to some. Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, met the young spy and wrote up his impressions. “He is by temperament an adventurer who is very partial to the fleshpots of this world and he realises that a person of his type can enjoy the fleshpots better under democratic than totalitarian conditions.” There was some truth in this cynical assessment, but Popov was more than a mere sybarite. In lieu of payment, he hinted that he would like to be made British consul in Dubrovnik after the war and receive “some sort of decoration” for his services. For all his insouciance, he was playing a deadly game, particularly after the German occupation of Yugoslavia from April 1941 left his family under direct Nazi threat. The Germans had reassured him that his relatives would be protected. “I do not like this ‘protection’ much,” he told Tar. “My own life is much less important to me than that of my family.” Brave, self-indulgent, committed, venal, and unfaithful, Popov was a man of the strangest honor: “I am still satisfied that he is playing straight with us,” Luke reported to the Twenty Committee.

  When in Lisbon, Popov stayed at the Palacio Hotel, gambled in the Estoril casinos, and squired one woman or another around town, often in the company of his spymaster and friend, whom he was comprehensively betraying. Ludovico von Karsthoff took his duties lightly and his pleasure seriously, and professed himself “extremely pleased with the information provided.” Von Karsthoff rarely rose before midday and spent much of his time in the gardens of Villa Toki-Ana, playing with his pet monkey, Simon, an
d his twin dachshunds, Ivan and Ivan. He had found in Popov, he believed, a man as self-indulgent as himself, who could improve his standing in the Abwehr and perhaps make him some money on the side. One evening, over cognac, he announced that Berlin wanted Popov to go to America. German espionage operations in the United States were a mess; the FBI was picking up German spies “like whores on the Reeperbahn.” Popov should go to New York and build a spy network from scratch, just as he had done in London. That way, when the Americans finally entered the war, Germany would be ready. Popov would be paid a great deal of money.

  When Popov returned to London and reported this approach, Tar Robertson was initially resistant, arguing that he was too valuable to be spared. Tricycle was running smoothly, highly respected in Berlin and a means of direct personal contact with the enemy. But if he refused this mission, it might raise German suspicions. Popov himself was eager to go. He had never visited the United States, and New York sounded like his kind of town. If the FBI played its cards well, here was an opportunity to create an American version of Double Cross. Von Karsthoff seemed most accommodating and unsuspicious. And Johnny Jebsen, his best friend and patron, could be relied on to watch his back.

  Whenever Popov returned to Lisbon, Johnny would come to meet him. Their friendship was as solid as ever, though neither could afford to be fully candid. To Popov’s surprise, Jebsen revealed he had recently gotten married, to Eleonore Bothilde Petersen (known as Lore), an actress and the leading lady at the Frankfurt Theatre, though he still maintained a mistress in Paris and another in Dublin. Jebsen seemed able to travel freely, but his activities, as both a businessman and a freelance spy, were deeply mysterious: he told Popov he had recently visited Finland, Sweden, Greece, Persia, and the coast of Italy to draw up a report on Italian defenses for Japanese intelligence—Japan was not yet in the war, but Tokyo’s secret interest in coastal defenses would take on an ominous significance after Pearl Harbor.

  Jebsen was supposed to be recruiting spies, but he happily admitted that the enrollment of Popov was his only success to date “in this business.” He was clearly a figure of some importance within German intelligence. When the conversation shifted to one Professor Miller, a teacher and Nazi at Freiburg whom they had both disliked, Johnny remarked, half casually: “I am not cruel enough, but now I am in a position to get rid of anyone I hate. If I want to get rid of that man all I have to do is say that Professor Miller said this and that, and they will kill him at once, without question.” Then he added: “If there is anyone you particularly want to have set free I might be able to arrange it.”

  The situation in Germany was deteriorating, Jebsen reported. Aircraft production was down; food was becoming scarce and even clothing was in short supply. The dapper Jebsen, still styling himself as Anthony Eden, was having trouble maintaining his wardrobe: “I would be willing to pay £600 for a suit of English clothes, but you cannot get them,” he complained. Even more intriguing was Jebsen’s description of the infighting between factions within German intelligence, some of which were secretly opposed to Hitler. The turf war between the Abwehr and the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party) was particularly venomous, and getting worse. “They are like cat and dog with each other,” Johnny observed.

  This sort of information was intelligence gold dust, which made Jebsen’s remarks either extraordinarily indiscreet or entirely calculating. He made no secret of his disdain for Hitler and dropped hints that he had fallen afoul of some powerful people who disapproved of his louche lifestyle. “Whenever I go to Germany, I can never be sure whether I will get out alive,” he said. Jebsen seemed thinner and more ravaged than before. His limp was worse and his teeth stained brown from the cigarettes he smoked in a never-ending stream. Jebsen had good cause to fear returning to Germany, though he did not yet divulge the real reason to Popov. The Gestapo was after him. More than a year earlier he had been approached by one Heinz Jost, a high-ranking official in the SD, who said he had some forged British banknotes that he wished to exchange for dollars. Jebsen cautiously observed that the Reichsbank had “advised it was contrary to international law to forge currency.” There the matter rested for a while. When Jost reappeared with bundles of five- and ten-pound notes, Jebsen was told (or chose to believe) that this was genuine British currency, seized in Paris. Through a contact named Avramedes at the Bank of Greece in Switzerland, he began exchanging the notes for dollars, passing the bulk to Jost and keeping a substantial commission for himself. Some senior Gestapo officers also began passing him British cash to exchange. For nine months the arrangement had proved most satisfactory, as larger and larger amounts passed through Jebsen’s hands.

  Jebsen spent his profits on his wife, his mistresses, himself, and his favorite novelist—for some of the ill-gotten gains ended up in the hands of P. G. Wodehouse. The British writer had remained in France at the outbreak of war and was duly interned, as an enemy alien, in Upper Silesia (“If this is Upper Silesia, one wonders what must Lower Silesia be like,” he wrote). Released in June 1941, just before the age of sixty, under the terms of the Geneva Convention (he was playing a game of cricket in camp when he heard he was to be freed), Wodehouse and his wife, Ethel, eventually took up residence in occupied Paris, but since the royalties from his books were blocked, they were extremely short of funds. Jebsen gave money to his old friend. After his release, Wodehouse made a series of whimsical and deeply foolish radio broadcasts through the German propaganda service, in the naive belief that he would be admired for keeping a “stiff upper lip” during his internment. Instead, he became a hate figure in Britain, accused of collaborating with the Germans. It can only be imagined what Wodehouse’s critics would have said had they known that this comic genius was being bankrolled by a German spy through an illegal currency scam involving the Gestapo, the Nazi security service, and a fortune in forged British banknotes.

  The forgery fiddle worked well for nine months and then dramatically unraveled. A Swiss bank spotted the fakes, and Jebsen’s Greek middleman refused to deal in them anymore. Jebsen would later claim that he had honestly believed the notes were legal tender and, when he found out about the counterfeiting, “did all he could to stop it” by reporting the matter to his superiors. More likely, he had known all along that he was dealing in duds and cut his losses when he discovered the fiddle had been found out. In the ensuing row, Heinz Jost was dismissed from his comfortable post in the SD’s foreign intelligence department and sent to the eastern front, where he was placed in command of Einsatzgruppe A, the death squad responsible for killing thousands of Jews. Jost was now Jebsen’s sworn enemy, whose friends in the Nazi hierarchy were determined “to take revenge on his behalf.” Jebsen also had allies, most notably Canaris, the Abwehr chief. He confided to Popov that he had set up a crude form of insurance policy: “I know too much about the dirty things that happen. I have got papers in a bank abroad, and if the bank does not receive a cable from me on this or that day, they will send the papers to a publisher.”

  Jebsen’s anti-Nazi remarks, and his willingness to discuss the most secret aspects of German intelligence, could only mean one thing: Jebsen knew that Popov was working for British intelligence and that the secret information he was supplying so casually would be passed straight back to London, as indeed it was. Popov was convinced his old friend knew what he was up to, a conviction that was strengthened when Jebsen observed: “If you are caught by the British, you can tell them that I will come over to the British side and work in whatever way I can.” Jebsen was no more a loyal Abwehr officer than Popov was a genuine German agent. Each was lying to the other, and both knew they were being lied to. Theirs was a curious dance of deception in which neither could afford to admit the truth.

  Popov again urged MI5 to approach Johnny Jebsen in a neutral country and recruit him. “He is very pro-British and I think if he was sure he would be safe he would come over here. At heart he is anti-Nazi and he is always in difficulties with his super
iors owing to his extravagant habits.” If Jebsen was smuggled to Britain, Popov urged, he would reveal everything he knew and could then be “placed in honourable retirement at some resort.”

  Billy Luke was doubtful. “I am not at all sure we could gain very much by having him here as he seems very much of the playboy type.” MI6 was also unconvinced by Popov’s character reference for his friend, and “not as confident as he is that Jebsen is anti-Nazi.” It would be better to keep an eye on Jebsen and wait to see what else he might reveal.

  Like all start-ups experiencing rapid expansion, a flood of new employees, and increasing overhead, the Double Cross operation faced cash-flow problems. No double agent was cheap to run; those with extravagant tastes, like Dusko Popov, were fantastically expensive. But the Abwehr’s money problems were even more acute: MI5 had to ensure that the Abwehr found a way to pay its spies; otherwise it would soon stop believing in them, because if a spy continues to work without getting paid, then someone else must be paying him. The spies sent to Britain were always short of cash. The Abwehr attempted to get money to its agents in a variety of ways, including airdrops, but with little success.

  Knowing this, B1A had the double agents make ever more pressing demands for cash. Wulf Schmidt (Agent Tate) kept up a steady litany of complaint in what Masterman called his “virile telegraphese”: “I am beginning to think you are full of shit,” he told his Hamburg controller when the latter failed to supply funds. “I shit on Germany and its whole fucking secret service.” Tate was finally told to wait in Victoria Station, follow a Japanese man carrying a copy of the Times onto a double-decker bus, and then pick up the newspaper when he left it on the seat. The entire episode was covertly photographed by MI5. It yielded two hundred pounds in one-pound notes and the identity of a Japanese diplomat, assistant naval attaché Mitinori Yosii, who was working for German intelligence in violation of his country’s neutrality. But leaving packets of cash on buses was no way to finance an entire spy ring. The Abwehr needed a better way to get money to its agents, and MI5 needed to find a way to help it do so.