15. Enriching the Chicken Feed
As 1944 dawned, Juan Pujol was in the highest spirits: he was beloved of both the British and German intelligence services, and he had a new girlfriend. Somewhat ungallantly he described her to his German handlers as “less than beautiful and rather dowdy in her dress [and] unaccustomed to attentions of the opposite sex” but “delightfully indiscreet”—which was ideal since she worked as a secretary in the War Office and had access to useful information on the forthcoming invasion. She was also imaginary. Garbo’s acquisition of a fantasy lover was part of his job, but it was also surely a reflection on the state of Pujol’s marriage.
Tommy Harris led Garbo into ever more extreme and colorful realms of make-believe. “I would never have had the nerve to allow any of my agents to be as audacious as he was,” Christopher Harmer later said. In addition to his plain new lover, Garbo’s fictitious web now included an American sergeant (“jocular and fairly talkative”), a Greek deserter, a commercial traveler, and, strangest of all, a group of fiercely anti-Semitic Welshmen dedicated to bringing National Socialism to the valleys and toppling the British government by a campaign of assassination. “The Brothers in the Aryan World Order” had just twelve members, led by an Indian poet named Rags. Three of the “Brothers” were brought into the network, along with a “Sister,” Theresa Jardine, a Wren (in the Women’s Royal Naval Service) and the Hindi-speaking girlfriend of Rags. None of these people existed.
It would be reasonable, at this point, to wonder if Garbo and Harris had gone wildly over the top. Rags and his posse of Welsh fascists seem like caricatures, the villains of cheap melodrama. Could the Germans really be expected to believe that a gang of murderous racists planned to destroy the government and seize power, killing Jews, communists, and other “undesirables”? They could; because, of course, that is exactly what had happened in Germany. Importantly, the new recruits offered an opportunity to establish the network in sensitive coastal areas, ahead of the travel ban that would precede Operation Overlord, the invasion of Europe.
The Garbo network now consisted of a staggering twenty-four agents, of whom only one, Pujol himself, was real. With a secure telephone link to both MI5 and the Expeditionary Force headquarters, Pujol and Harris fed directly into military planning and the overarching deception. Over the next six months, Garbo’s network would send an average of four wireless messages a day. Pujol himself was privy to Operation Fortitude, the cover plan and the real plan; he knew which divisions were genuine and which false, where the attack would take place and where it would not. He was more trusted than ever, by both sides. The Germans began submitting wish lists of secrets: the dates and targets of the invasion, the troops involved, types of landing craft and warships, and embarkation points. He was specifically asked to inspect the coast between Weymouth and Southampton, where troops were already massing for the Normandy invasion. “There is no concentration at special points,” he reported. The Brothers in the Aryan World Order were deployed to Brighton, Exeter, Harwich, and Southampton, where they would be ideally situated to relay misinformation about the forthcoming invasion.
The poultry farmer from Barcelona was getting all his ducks in a row.
Elvira Chaudoir, Agent Bronx, was also wheedling her way deeper into German affections, by rather different methods. Her early letters had contained snippets of political and economic gossip supposedly gleaned from the military officers, politicians, society ladies, industrialists, and journalists she encountered around the gaming tables of fashionable London. From late 1943, Hugh Astor began to make her letters “more military in character to enable her to play a part in current deception policy.” The response from Germany was swift and gratifying. She was bombarded with questions about military installations, troop movements, and even the possible use of radar to divert “radio controlled rockets.” Bronx reported rumors that “big magnetic deflecting fields” were to be deployed. The exchange, Tar observed, “showed German faith in Bronx on a crucial matter.” She passed on harmless information about egg rationing and small items she imagined might be true (“Great invasion problem is seasickness. Canadians studying new cure”), but also deceptive material to suggest that the vast, slowly assembling U.S. Army was plagued by logistical problems that would delay any attack. In Liverpool docks, she reported seeing “hundreds of American tanks, many Jeeps, cases, cranes etc.” but added that the newspaper baron Lord Kelmsley had told her there would be “no invasion for months” owing to a “shortage of barges.”
The Germans were pleased: “Good work. Good reward. Information wanted. Movement of troops in Scotland and S. England. Details of preparations for European landing.” A gambling party girl picked up in a French casino was being transformed, in German eyes, into an important agent with access to top-grade military information: “The principal thing is the invasion of Europe, above all in France,” Helmut Bleil told her.
For all Elvira’s apparent capriciousness, Bronx was no Brutus, playing one side against the other: “Of the cases I have had to deal with, Bronx is the only one who has told the entire truth about her recruitment and mission,” reported Harmer. The tap on her telephone had produced only “a lot of perhaps interesting, but irrelevant details about her private life,” including a close relationship with Monica Sheriffe, a racehorse owner. “Bronx assures me that Miss Sheriffe knows nothing about her work with this Department and I think that this is true,” wrote Hugh Astor, who took over the case when Harmer was transferred to the Expeditionary Force HQ. Her loyalty was beyond question. “She was a British agent before she was ever recruited by the Germans, and is probably one of our most reliable agents.”
The regular German payments into her Swiss and Portuguese bank accounts now included a substantial bonus, yet Elvira was flat broke, with ballooning debts. Dunning letters from her bookmakers, dressmaker, and various casinos mounted up on the doormat of her Mayfair flat. She did not open them. MI5 already had. She owed the Hamilton Club alone more than one thousand pounds. Elvira begged her mother for more money. “It is absolutely impossible to pay for lodging, food, clothes, dentists, medicine, amusements etc., with the amount I receive.” She did not mention that her amusements included a gambling habit worthy of a shipping tycoon and a whopping drinks bill. As ever, her most sympathetic listener was Claude Dansey of MI6, who clucked with disbelief when told what MI5 was paying her. He gave her fifteen pounds and seemed determined, Harmer reported, “to twist our tails by telling Bronx to get as much out of us as she could.” MI5 was livid that an officer in the sister service was interfering in this way: “She has no right to discuss the matter with Dansey at all.”
Bronx could communicate only by secret letters (of which she had now sent more than fifty), but the postal service was so slow that anything she sent in the immediate buildup to invasion would arrive too late to be of any use. This thought seems to have occurred to her German handlers, for in February 1944 a letter arrived at Elvira’s flat, written in secret ink, suggesting that if she uncovered invasion information she should send a message to the bank in Lisbon to indicate where and when the attack would take place. The warning should be in a “plain language code,” a message that looks perfectly innocuous to the uninitiated. Here was a perfect opportunity to plug Bronx into the heart of the D-Day deception.
The code suggested by Bleil was very simple. If and when she discovered the target, she should send a telegram, in French, to Antonio Manuel de Almeida, director and general manager of the Banco Espírito Santo in Lisbon, asking him to make a money transfer. The sum requested would indicate the target area. If she asked for eighty pounds, that meant the attack was aimed at the Atlantic coast of France; seventy pounds would indicate northern France and Belgium; sixty pounds for northern France; fifty pounds for the Bay of Biscay; forty pounds, the Mediterranean; thirty pounds, Denmark; twenty pounds, Norway; and ten pounds, the Balkans. Elvira was told to send the message only when “absolutely certain of what will happen and a week before the la
ndings are to take place.” The Portuguese bank was known to have links to Deutsche Bank and had been under British surveillance for some time. Its owner, Richard Espírito Santo, was a personal friend of the Portuguese dictator, Salazar, and had played host to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1940. (He was also the brother of Edgar Espírito Santo, the sometime lover of Yvonne Delidaise, Emile Kliemann’s French mistress.) The plan set out by Bleil proved that, although Portugal was neutral, “the general manager of the bank had certainly lent his name and good offices to the Germans in an attempt to obtain from this country most vital information about forthcoming military operations.” There was enough evidence here to warrant a formal complaint to the Portuguese government, but this would instantly end Elvira’s career as an agent, and “in view of the part which Bronx should be able to play in current deception plans, it is clearly against our interests to blow Bronx.”
Harmer pointed out that the geographical areas indicated by the plain-language code were broad and did not fit precisely with the Bodyguard plan. “If it is desired to send a telegram indicating that the landing will be in the Pas de Calais area, the difficulty is that the codeword covers the whole of northern France and Belgium.” But improving the code by subdividing the target areas “would appear too professional for someone of the character of Bronx.” Elvira nonetheless sent back a letter suggesting some refinements: if she wrote that she needed the money “pour mon dentiste,” that would mean the information was “certain”; if she wrote “pour mon docteur,” it was “almost certain”; but if the words used were “pour mon médécin,” it was only “probable.” She also added a timescale: “tout de suite” meant the landing would be in one week’s time; “urgent” indicated an attack in a fortnight; “vite” would indicate a month; and if she asked for the cash “si possible,” then the date was still uncertain. Here was a simple, swift, and effective way of sending the Germans barking up the wrong tree, neatly disguised as a medical bill.
In August 1943, a Polish court-martial had found Roman Czerniawski guilty of gross insubordination. “Anxious to hush the whole matter up,” the Polish authorities sentenced him to just two months’ imprisonment. Since he had already been inside for six weeks, the remainder of his sentence was postponed until after the war. He never served it.
Czerniawski was vigorously unrepentant. Indeed, his rebellion and punishment raised him yet higher in his own estimation. His handler, Christopher Harmer, reported wearily that Brutus “declined to give any promise that he will not interfere in Polish internal affairs.” Monique Deschamps, once Czerniawski’s subagent, now his lover, was waiting for him when he got back to the Brompton flat, and he immediately asked her to marry him. She was somewhat taken aback by this “most unorthodox proposal of marriage” but told MI5, with an irony that suggests she knew exactly what she was dealing with, “Ah, but you must remember that he is a super-man, and super-men are always eccentric.” She accepted his proposal. An internal MI5 memo wondered how much she knew about Czerniawski’s espionage but concluded that if he had let her in on the secret, “her personal loyalty to him was sufficient to make her keep her mouth shut.”
Czerniawski saw no reason why he should not immediately resume his role on the Double Cross team. MI5 was less sanguine. The Germans were likely to be suspicious at the “peculiar circumstances of his arrest and release.” Czerniawski was fickle, irritating, and meddlesome. “We can never guarantee that he will not intrigue,” wrote Harmer. “He can be a great nuisance to us if he gets into trouble again.” Yet he had also shown how useful he could be. Until Czerniawski’s arrest, the Germans had shown complete faith in him, and as a professional intelligence officer, his information was taken seriously in Berlin: “Of all the agents, Brutus appears to be the one who works most directly to the military authorities.” Harmer insisted that despite his vexatious personality, Czerniawski was “dynamic and industrious” and “an excellent agent who is very easy to run—of all the people I have run he is the only one who has never complained.”
It was agreed that Brutus would resume contact with the enemy, but cautiously and under close supervision. He would be steered away from active deception since, if he was suspected, this could backfire. Left idle, Czerniawski would certainly start plotting again, but perhaps, wrote Harmer, the run-up to D-Day would “become sufficiently exciting to occupy his thoughts.” Most Secret Sources would be combed for evidence of German mistrust, and he would no longer operate his own wireless. Instead, he would tell the Germans he had recruited a wireless operator, a disgruntled and cash-strapped Polish former air force officer living in Reading, whose family had been killed by the Soviets and who was therefore willing to aid the Germans against the Bolsheviks for ideological reasons. In intelligence jargon, radio operators were known as “pianists”; this fictional subagent was therefore given the code name “Chopin,” in honor of Poland’s great pianist and composer. Chopin’s compositions would be performed by MI5 from a transmitter in Richmond.
In late summer 1943, Czerniawski resumed radio contact with Paris. Colonel Oscar Reile’s response was welcoming but reserved. Sure enough, Bletchley Park intercepts indicated that “Agent Hubert” was no longer fully trusted. Reile had begun to wonder whether the radio was really being operated by Czerniawski or by “an enemy radio-operator who transmitted only what the Intelligence Service allowed.” In his memoirs, written many years later, Reile claimed that he had made up his mind, with “a probability bordering on certainty,” that Czerniawski was a British double agent. “Not the least of my reasons for arriving at this conclusion was that none of the radio messages which came from England contained any enquiry about the sixty-six members of the Résau Interallié who were still in the hands of the Germans.” Czerniawski had agreed to spy for Germany on the condition that they were not ill treated, yet he never inquired about the well-being of these hostages. This was a serious mistake on the part of Czerniawski and his handlers, but it seems unlikely that Reile really spotted it at the time. If Reile was genuinely suspicious, he kept his doubts to himself.
As the weeks passed, German concerns about Brutus seemed to evaporate. Czerniawski kept up a stream of chatty, informal banter with Reile. Indeed, their relations appeared so cordial that Harmer “suggested, half-jokingly,” that Brutus should “send a personal message to the Colonel saying that in his view Germany had lost the war but might still save Europe from Bolshevism if the High Command were prepared to let the English and Americans land unopposed.” Czerniawski leaped at the idea of interceding personally with Hitler to ensure the success of D-Day and pronounced it “an excellent idea.” More surprisingly, Tar agreed: “I like the suggestion,” he wrote. Czerniawski set to work drafting a message to Reile in which he assumed the role of spokesman for the Polish nation.
Colonel! I conceive it my duty to speak frankly to you. I am now convinced that Germany has lost the war.… I must ask you to state precisely the terms on which Germany is prepared to collaborate with my country. What will be our status in Europe and how far is Germany prepared to grant concessions before the end of the war? You know that I have risked everything for the ideals we have in common. The greatest service Germany could now offer to European civilisation would be for your High Command to indicate to the Anglo-American armies that when they land they can do so unopposed. Your armies could then unite with those of un-Bolshevised countries to save Europe from Communism.
It is not clear whether this message was ever sent. If it was, it had no effect.
By December 1943, Most Secret Sources had proved that the Brutus case was firmly back on track: “The Germans appear to have regained confidence in him. They regard him once more as being genuine [and] once they have accepted him and regard him as an important agent, they are unlikely to go back on their judgment.” A few days before Christmas, the decoders sent through an intercepted message in which “the Germans expressed their great appreciation of Brutus’s work.” Harmer began lobbying for Czerniawski to be used for activ
e deception in Operation Fortitude. “The Brutus case could be developed as an effective means of deceiving the enemy,” he wrote. If not, it should be shut down, since continuing to stuff Reile with chicken feed was “a complete waste of time.” If the case was closed, Harmer suggested that MI5 send Reile a personal message saying: “We have caught your man. It was clever of you to recruit him, but we know everything now. We think he is a little mad, and so we are not going to shoot him. We will, however, communicate with you from time to time to discuss matters of mutual interest.”
If, on the other hand, it was decided to keep the case running, then Czerniawski should send over high-grade military misinformation. Reile was asking specific questions about the forthcoming invasion, so “the opportunities for using this case for deception are very great.” Indeed, with Chopin tapping out regular messages to Paris, he might eventually rival the star of the team. “Brutus is getting questions on the same level as Garbo,” and the Brutus channel was an “even better wireless link than Garbo.” In a note on the Brutus file, John Marriott observed: “The objectives to be gained by running double agents are numerous, but there is one overriding objective: to delude the enemy to his undoing.” Czerniawski was reintegrated into the great deception.
Brutus marked his return to the team with a message to Reile laying down his conditions: the secret of the D-Day landings in exchange for Poland’s liberty.
The risks involved in helping the Axis to resist the coming offensive are justified only if I have your government’s undertaking, after the defeat of the Allies, to offer through me to the Polish government liberal peace terms. In setting up an organisation to give you full and up-to-date information about military preparations for an invasion, I am acting solely from ideological motives and with the object of securing for Poland an honourable place in the new Europe. This is the only reward I ask.
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