Double Cross

by Ben MacIntyre

  It fell to Ian Wilson, Popov’s case officer, to make the opposing argument. A solicitor by training, dry and precise, Wilson had made a study of Johnny Jebsen, and he leaped to his defense with lawyerly ferocity.

  I find myself in complete disagreement with Mr Harris and Mr Astor. I think I can claim to have a more detailed knowledge of Artist’s outlook and position than anyone else in the office. The risk of Artist disclosing information has been greatly exaggerated. I cannot imagine circumstances in which it would cease to be to Artist’s own interest, as well as his inclination, to continue to act in a manner advantageous to ourselves. I entirely disagree that he is unscrupulous and dishonest. He may be unscrupulous and dishonest towards the present German government, but he has been taking every care to protect the double agents of whom he has knowledge [Tricycle, Balloon, and Gelatine]. Jebsen has been endeavouring to tell the truth to Tricycle, and has been doing so in the knowledge that Tricycle will pass the information to the British. There is no evidence that any statement he has made to us was not true. Of his own accord he ran the personal risk of endeavouring to maintain his own position. I do not, therefore, agree that he has always acted out of the sole desire to serve his own interests. Artist himself fears that he is in jeopardy, but we have no independent evidence to that effect. If Artist is grilled by the Abwehr or Gestapo, he will obviously endeavour to conceal that he has directly been giving information. It seems to me the height of folly deliberately to throw away a large part of our organisation at this stage.

  Like most official bodies, when faced with competing factions and equally unpalatable alternatives, MI5 opted to do nothing but wait, watch, and worry. The fate of the Double Cross system now hinged on the character of Johnny Jebsen, a brave and loyal spy in Wilson’s estimation but a dodgy, self-serving opportunist in the eyes of his MI5 colleagues.

  There was “less danger of Gestapo surveillance” in Lisbon, said Wilson, and Most Secret Sources would be scanned for any hint that the authorities were closing in on Jebsen: “Should Artist find himself in danger of being kidnapped, he will be evacuated forthwith.”

  On October 16, 1943, Jebsen arrived in Lisbon, where he was taken “under the wing” of a local MI6 officer, Charles de Salis. A thirty-three-year-old linguist and poet recruited to MI6 by Kim Philby (the head of MI6’s Iberian desk, later exposed as a Soviet spy), de Salis had spent much of his early life in Spain, where he became a friend of the poet Federico García Lorca. He was “a modest aesthete,” according to one account, “an amusing raconteur and a mimic.” He and Jebsen hit it off at once. De Salis was under strict instructions: “Artist is determined to carry on to the last possible moment, but should it become clear that the game is up, we feel that to prevent his being grilled we should send him to Gibraltar. You have full authority to get Artist out if, in your judgment, the game is up, leaving his associates in complete doubt as to his fate and destination.”

  The Abwehr station in Madrid was large and well organized, with more than two hundred officers and some three hundred secretaries. It spied around the clock, in obedience to the strenuous work ethic of Karl-Erich Kühlenthal, who, though gullible, was considered by MI5 to be “a very efficient, ambitious and dangerous man, with an enormous capacity for hard work.” By contrast, the Abwehr in Lisbon, under Ludovico von Karsthoff, ran at a leisurely pace. The Abwehr headquarters, a comfortable flat near the embassy, consisted of about thirty personnel, half of whom were secretaries, as well as a number of dubious hangers-on with indeterminate roles. The Abwehr officers did little other than collect letters sent to the various Lisbon cover addresses. Indeed, there was very little work to do, since the Germans believed that “the characteristics of the Portuguese—their love of the melodramatics, their rumour-mongering and their general undependability—made them poorly fitted for the work of agents.” The only local informant of note was Paul Fidrmuc, Agent Ostro, who was, of course, a charlatan.

  While Kühlenthal and his colleagues sweated away in Madrid, the officers of the Lisbon Abwehr station devoted themselves to pleasure, led by von Karsthoff, who “set the example for their gay existence.” With money skimmed from Popov’s payments, von Karsthoff had purchased a new Cadillac, a house in the country near Sintra, and another pet monkey. An Abwehr officer who arrived in Lisbon shortly before Jebsen was shocked by the behavior of his new colleagues, who “were leading a rather loose and immoral life in Lisbon, with little concern for their duties.” Some were sleeping with their secretaries. Others were cocaine abusers. “All had enormous amounts of money, most had their own cars, made frequent pleasure trips throughout Portugal and spent their evenings gambling in the casinos.” Jebsen felt entirely at home. Since von Karsthoff was as dependent on Popov as he was, the Abwehr station chief was unlikely to make trouble—particularly after Jebsen promised him a “post-war job as manager in a Vienna firm.” Jebsen began to relax, confident that his friends in Berlin would tip him off if his enemies were closing in, and the British would whisk him to safety.

  There was even a possibility, if a crisis occurred, that Jebsen could be extracted without wrecking the Tricycle setup. For Jebsen had contrived a bizarre fallback plan, convincing his bosses that he might be able to smuggle himself into England as a spy, with the help of one of the richest men in Britain. The tale Jebsen spun for the Abwehr went like this: his father had once saved the life of Lord Rothschild, of the banking family, who therefore had “a debt of gratitude which he is anxious to repay by doing everything possible to assist him”; Rothschild had agreed to ask his “influential friends” to arrange for Jebsen to enter the country as a refugee and avoid internment; once in Britain, posing as “a discontented German out of favour with the regime,” he would spy for Germany.

  This story was completely fabricated, but to lend it credibility, Jebsen had “for some months been conducting a completely fictitious correspondence with the Lord Rothschild whom he has invented.” British intelligence had followed this peculiar plot through wireless intercepts and knew that “there is a whole file deposited with the Abwehr containing carbon copies of Artist’s letters and Rothschild’s replies.” In reality, it would have been quite impossible for any private citizen, no matter how rich, to bend the rules so that a German citizen could enter Britain and “remain at large.” The Abwehr did not know this, and in accordance with Nazi convictions about the power of Jewish bankers, it was assumed that with “the powerful backing of Lord Rothschild,” any string could be pulled. When told about the Rothschild ruse, one senior Abwehr official observed: “Was diese Juden sich alles leisten” (These Jews can get away with anything).

  If Jebsen discovered that he was about to be arrested by the Gestapo, he would tell his Abwehr colleagues that the visa promised by his friend Rothschild had come through, and then vanish. The British would spirit him to London; the Germans would believe he was a loyal agent working in the UK, and B1A would deploy him as yet another double agent. To bolster the deception, MI5 faked a letter from the Home Office stating that “Lord Rothschild has made a request that the case be given special treatment,” which Jebsen could show to his colleagues as proof of his story. Robertson gave cautious approval to this convoluted charade, pointing out that the plan was “ingenious, but not without dangers.”

  Victor Rothschild, MI5’s sabotage expert, was a real Lord Rothschild and somewhat put out to discover that his name was being manipulated in this way. He had no connection whatsoever with Jebsen and worried that if the story leaked out, people might leap to the wrong conclusions. “It might appear unnecessarily finicky on my part but it might be as well to have it permanently on record that the whole Lord Rothschild–Artist saga is imaginary.”

  On November 10, 1943, the DC-3 to Lisbon took off from Whitchurch Airport with no fewer than three Double Cross aficionados on board. Ian Wilson of MI5 and Major Frank Foley of MI6 traveled together as Mr. Watson and Mr. Fairclough. In another seat, studiously ignoring his case officers and traveling under his own name, was Dusk
o Popov. It had been decided that sending Tricycle back to Portugal would further strengthen his hand in the run-up to D-Day: “After he returns to England, any deceptive material which we can pass over through him will have greater prospect of being implicitly believed.” Because of the uncertainty surrounding Jebsen, Popov did not yet pass over any positively misleading material, in case he was found out. Instead, he carried a Yugoslavian diplomatic bag stuffed with the highest-grade chicken feed for von Karsthoff: notes, photographs, and documents, information that was accurate and apparently useful to the enemy but essentially worthless. If all went according to plan, he would be back in Britain soon after Christmas, “in time to participate in any major deception.”

  Wilson and Foley intended to meet Jebsen in Lisbon, assess his character, debrief him, and boost his resolve: “To make him feel that we regard him as being of great value to us; to prevent him from feeling he is betraying his own country; to treat him as a far-sighted and internationally minded man, who realises that the war is going to be won by the Allies, and that the Nazi party and military power in Germany will be eliminated.” They would tell him that “any action that helps towards bringing the war to a speedy end will be to the advantage of Germany as well as the rest of the world in saving unnecessary loss of life by continued warfare.” Then they would quiz him on every aspect of German intelligence, from spies to secret inks to pigeons.

  Charles de Salis of MI6 had arranged a rendezvous at a safe house in Lisbon. They had been waiting an hour when Jebsen shuffled in, an unkempt figure in a dark homburg, dirty raincoat, and unpolished shoes. He smiled broadly and stuck out a hand. Wilson noted his nicotine-stained fingers and ostentatious ruby wedding ring. Wilson was a deeply conservative English lawyer, a stolid upholder of all that was traditional and established; Johnny Jebsen was an international playboy louche and unconventional. They had almost nothing in common. Yet from first sight they established an affinity that would deepen with time. Johnny was a deal maker, and before getting down to business, he wanted some guarantees: immunity from prosecution for anything he might have done in connection with the forgery swindle; help in obtaining Danish or British citizenship after the war; and a promise that “should anything happen to him, we will take care of his wife.” The final clause was a characteristic touch: Jebsen had started an affair with a secretary in the Lisbon Abwehr office; he had one mistress in Paris and another, of more recent acquisition, in Madrid. Yet he remained, despite his chronically adulterous habits, profoundly loyal to his actress wife, Lore. His final request was a humane one: “If through information obtained through Artist we are successful in arresting German agents, such agents will not be executed.”

  Wilson’s response was carefully couched: “I made it clear that any assurances which he might receive from us were conditional on our being satisfied, when we had full information after the war, that he had in fact assisted us to the best of his ability and had not at any time endeavoured to mislead us.” This was enough for Jebsen: for all his cynicism, he believed profoundly, as a devotee of P. G. Wodehouse, that an Englishman’s word was his bond.

  Reassured, Jebsen began spilling the beans. Over the next four days, smoking an endless succession of cigarettes and drinking champagne as if it were water, he painted a detailed picture of the interior workings of the Third Reich intelligence apparatus and the battle for power within the Nazi High Command. “The Abwehr generally is demoralised and cynical and in fact the OKW [Oberkommando der Wehrmacht] have known for at least a year past that Germany has lost the war,” he said. German intelligence was in disarray, riddled with corruption and beset by internal feuding. Canaris was under intense pressure, with Himmler actively plotting to take over the Abwehr with his own SD, the Nazi Party intelligence service. “Himmler is the most ambitious man in Germany but knows that the army would not tolerate him in Hitler’s place, so remains loyal. Contrary to popular belief, Hitler does not believe in shooting his old friends unless they have become a danger to himself. The leaders of the SS will remain loyal to Hitler and the rank and file of the SS are entirely under the influence of their leaders.” Jebsen’s powers of recall were extraordinary; this peculiar man was “a living dictionary on the whole of the Gestapo.”

  Earlier that year, in Madrid, Jebsen had told Benton the rumors about a “rocket gun” being developed by Hitler’s scientists. Now he had more solid information, picked up not on the grapevine but in the bedroom. While in Spain, in between defecting to MI6 and visiting his favorite pornographic cinema, Jebsen had found time to start an affair with a married woman, one Baroness Gertzen. She was secretary to a German aircraft manufacturer named Henschel, whose factories supplied parts for the flying bomb project. “The Baroness is very much in love with Artist [and] was easily induced to talk about the likelihood of severe bombardment of the UK.” Jebsen told her that he would soon be traveling to Britain and slyly pretended to be fearful “of going to a country which might be the object of an attack by Hitler’s secret weapon.” Jebsen even “spun a yarn to the effect that there had been a prophecy about him being struck by lightning in December!”

  Baroness Gertzen was privy to all her boss’s correspondence and remarkably naive: “She immediately promised to give him all details of the weapon [and] guarantees to send a cable to Artist wherever he is as soon as she gets information that the rocket will be used. If he is in England, this will give him time to escape to Scotland!” The rocket gun, Jebsen reported, was being built at an “experimental station located at Peenemünde” on Germany’s Baltic coast. The British already had an idea of what was happening in Peenemünde. Indeed, the RAF had attacked the site back in August. Jebsen’s willingness to hand over such explosive information, gleaned from pillow talk, was a measure of his commitment and his guile.

  One by one, he listed the German spies operating on British soil, and how they were rated in Berlin: Popov, under suspicion during his American sojourn, was once again cherished by the Abwehr; Balloon was “lazy”; Gelatine was patchy but occasionally useful. The much-feted Agent Ostro “never disclosed to anyone who his agents are or where he gets his information.” He promised to find out more about the mysterious Ostro. Jebsen went on to recite chapter and verse on the Garbo network, with “full details of most secret agents,” including how and what they were paid.

  This was exactly what British intelligence had hoped he would not do. Wilson was dismayed: “He has given us certain information which ought to have assisted us to trace these agents if they really existed and we did not already control them, and he may have drawn correct inferences from our reactions.” Jebsen observed that he had long been suspicious of the ease with which Garbo (Agent Arabel, as he was known to the Germans) transmitted reports from Britain, and speculated that Kühlenthal himself might be in the pay of MI6: “He left us in no doubt that he was personally convinced that we control that organisation.” Wilson did his best to “confuse Artist’s state of mind about B1A agents” and put him off the scent. Rooting out spies in Britain was “relatively unimportant work,” he blustered. But Johnny Jebsen was no fool. “Artist left me with the clear impression that he did not believe that any agents purporting to write letters or send messages from England were genuine” and suspected that these spies were all either “controlled or non-existent (or partly one and partly the other).” When MI5 failed to act on the information he had supplied, he would know for certain that the German espionage network was a sham.

  Jebsen’s own position, he said, had “considerably improved” since his arrival in Lisbon. Both Canaris and Georg Hansen, the head of Abwehr foreign intelligence, were protecting him, and he was under specific orders not to return to Germany until the Gestapo business had been sorted out. He knew there was still a danger “that the Gestapo will effect his return to Germany and he will be summarily disposed of,” but a friend in the SD had told him that “kidnapping in Portugal was now almost impossible.” Even so, Jebsen knew what would happen if he was uncovered as a British spy
: the Ablege Kommandos hit squad would be sent to get him. “They have a poison which can be dissolved in water or added to food which is quite tasteless,” said Jebsen grimly. “Twenty minutes after death there is no trace in the body.” He was confident he would be alerted to any imminent threat in time to act, but as an extra precaution he had started an affair with Lily Grass, secretary to Aloys Schreiber, the newly appointed head of counterintelligence in Lisbon. If the Gestapo made a move on Jebsen, they would tell Schreiber beforehand, in which case Lily Grass would hear of it and tip him off.

  “Jebsen has been giving Lily Grass considerable attention,” reported Wilson. “She is in love with Artist and if the latter takes the trouble to hide the fact that he finds her tedious, he will able to count on her support.” Wilson was impressed by Jebsen’s resolve and ingenuity: “We have formed a favourable impression of his nerve and do not believe he will seek shelter unless it is necessary.”

  Wilson ran through Jebsen’s “highly complex” motives: “a genuine dislike of Nazism; a belief in the British political system; a conviction that Germany has lost the war; a fear of communism which can only be avoided by increased English influence in Western Europe; a contempt for the corruption and inefficiency of the Abwehr; the realisation that his own future as a big businessman depends on the restoration of normal trading activities; a desire to reinsure himself.” Jebsen seemed impelled by a combination of opportunism, idealism, and above all personal loyalty to Popov. If he had a credo, it was P. G. Wodehouse’s “Code of the Woosters”: “Never let a pal down.” “He at no time spoke of any financial reward and I am sure he does not expect any financial assistance.” He was even prepared to fake information for the Germans on Britain’s behalf: “Artist says that if we want foodstuff we should let him write it—he knows exactly what the Germans want and has been writing the stuff for years.”