Double Cross

by Ben MacIntyre

  German intelligence, watching and listening, could not fail to realize that the Schwerpunkt, the focal point, of the cross-Channel attack must be the Pas de Calais. The only problem was that the Germans were not able to see clearly and were hardly listening at all. Indeed, it has since emerged that they barely bothered to pick up the vast scree of wireless traffic and were unable to locate where it was coming from when they did. Allied air supremacy meant that German reconnaissance was strictly limited. Huge effort went into physical deception, camouflage, and signals traffic, but the Germans were not really paying attention. And why would they? They had numerous spies on the ground providing copious evidence of exactly what was going on. Why go to the trouble of intercepting, deciphering, and translating an avalanche of 13,358 coded wireless messages, when they had direct information from Garbo and Brutus?

  On January 21, Tar Robertson had announced to the “W Board,” which provided operational intelligence for Double Cross purposes, that the moment of truth had arrived. He was, he said, “ninety-eight per cent certain that the Germans trusted the majority of their agents,” although “there must always remain the additional two per cent of doubt.” The odds were good enough for the board, which authorized the Twenty Committee to deploy the Double Cross agents in the way that had always been envisaged: to blow the entire project in the most elaborate and dangerous deception yet. Only agents in whom the Germans had absolute faith, as reflected in Most Secret Sources, would be selected, and since the postal service would be cut off in the run-up to invasion, active deception would be restricted to agents with wireless transmitters: Garbo, Brutus, and Tate (Wulf Schmidt) all had well-established radio contact; Treasure, it was hoped, would soon get a radio set from Kliemann. Bronx would continue her letters as long as possible and then send a last-minute message by telegram using the agreed plain-language code.

  That left Popov. Lingering uncertainty over Jebsen’s safety and reliability provoked another heated debate, with some arguing that the Tricycle channel should not be used and should possibly be dismantled altogether. It fell once more to Ian Wilson, Popov’s case officer, to mount the defense:

  It has been suggested that Tricycle and his group are barred from conveying deceptive material because of the risk that Artist will, willingly or under duress, disclose the fact that this group is controlled. The risk is extremely slight. It seems unthinkable that Artist would voluntarily blow this case in view of the care he has taken in the past to protect double agents and of the very considerable body of information he has given us, which has proved true whenever we have been able to check it. His motives for working for us are extremely complex [but] he is absolutely sincere in his actions. He cannot blow Tricycle without imminent danger of death to himself, his family, and Tricycle’s family. Artist will be protected by the Abwehr from any attack on him by the Gestapo. Whatever danger existed has now diminished. Even if the Gestapo could get hold of Artist’s person and extort a confession that Artist’s agents were double-crossing, then the Abwehr would have to believe the confession. All the Abwehr officers, from the highest to the lowest, have a vested interest in supporting the bona fides of Tricycle. I very much doubt any of them would have the moral courage to admit that for years they have been fooled.

  The Twenty Committee agreed to lift the veto on using Tricycle for deception. “No ban,” Wilson scrawled triumphantly across his memo. Popov was “passed fit” to play in the final championship match.

  The Double Cross team had presented their case with supreme confidence, but there was apprehension in St James’s Street. Knowledge of the double-agent network, “once confined to a small esoteric group of persons,” was now widely distributed among civilians and military personnel, with an increased danger of leakage. Paul Fidrmuc, the rogue freelancer in Lisbon, was still spraying conjecture and fantasy at the Germans, but “it was not impossible that Ostro might by fluke give the exact area of attack on the Continent, and thus destroy the deception plan.” And the Abwehr, the familiar enemy, was falling apart. If the organization collapsed or was subsumed by Himmler’s SD, the intelligence agency of the SS and Nazi Party, then the corrupt, lazy, and gullible officers B1A had gotten to know so well might be replaced by men of a different, more effective stamp. Rats would begin to desert the leaking ship. Already a number of disaffected Abwehr officers were extending feelers, hinting at possible desertion. Here was the Artist problem writ large. If an officer with knowledge of the German spy network in Britain defected, his colleagues would naturally assume he had betrayed those networks; and if the networks continued regardless, they would realize the spies were under Allied control. “In short, the German turncoat, in trying to assist us, would in fact destroy our entire system.” Even stone-souled John Masterman confessed to a “gnawing anxiety” as the pace of deception accelerated. “The whole existence of the double cross system hung in the balance just before D-Day,” he wrote. “Failure was dangerously close.”

  When the final, definitive deception plan was approved by Churchill in late February 1944, with just over three months to go, Christopher Harmer, the link between the double agents and the military planners, turned to Roger Fleetwood-Hesketh and uttered the thought that all wondered but few dared voice: “I can’t believe we will ever get away with it.”

  18. The Double Dash

  The participants in the deception, great and small, set to work. Flight Lieutenant Walker gathered his flock of second-rate pigeons; an Australian actor worked on his Montgomery impersonation; General Patton stamped around England, drawing attention to himself; and the American double agents, led by “Max Rudloff,” the libertine Argentinian, fed shreds of falsehood indicating the attack would be delayed. But the central, swelling chorus of lies would come from the Double Cross spies, Hitler’s most trusted source of information on the military buildup in Britain and Churchill’s trump cards.

  The deception was built from myriad tiny fragments of misinformation, a mosaic for the enemy to piece together. Directly pointing to the Pas de Calais as the target area would be far too obvious, and exceedingly dangerous if the plot was discovered. “You cannot baldly announce to the enemy that such and such an operation is in preparation,” insisted Masterman. “You cannot just volunteer information.” Instead, the great lie would be made up of snippets, gleanings, and hints, buried in a mass of other information, some of it true.

  Roman Czerniawski began implementing the bogus threat to Norway. Chopin, his wireless operator, sent a message to Oscar Reile reporting that the Polish spy was heading north for a Polish military conference. “He had a good reason for visiting Scotland inasmuch as the majority of Polish troops were stationed there and he was recognised by the Germans as a highly trained military observer.” Agent Brutus began relaying the fake Allied order of battle, just as he had once reported on the real strength of German troops in occupied France. He provided the Germans with the Fourth Army’s insignia and headquarters location in Edinburgh, described large bodies of troops in Stirling and Dundee, and offered evidence that American and Norwegian forces were also gathering. Brutus followed up by describing the arrival of Soviet staff officers in Edinburgh, to back up the notion of a pincer movement. The Norwegian agents Mutt and Jeff made similar observations, and Garbo’s Scotland-based subagents pitched in with troop sightings in Dundee and major naval exercises on the Clyde. Freak, Popov’s radio operator, invented a talkative American naval officer who revealed he would shortly be joining General Thorne’s staff. The Germans were pleased. “Your latest wires very satisfactory. Congratulations. Please state exact number of Divisions etc. belonging to Fourth Army under General Thorne.”

  Like a spoiled lover, Czerniawski badgered his German handlers for expressions of affection and support, demanding money “to increase the efficiency of his espionage activities” and new equipment: “Urgently require two new wireless sets and two new codes. As result of my visit to Scotland I have report of many pages to send you urgently, and without the necessary assistanc
e from you it will be impossible to transmit the information which I am collecting at sufficient speed.” The Germans responded soothingly: “Many thanks for your hard and valuable work. What place can we best send you the money and the piano? Can you suggest a place which would be suitable for a plane to come low enough to drop what you want?” Czerniawski advised the Germans to parachute a package to him at a remote spot near Beccles in Suffolk. When there was no response, he sent a peevish message demanding to know “whether the lack of reply was due to a lack of confidence in him.” Reile was unctuous: “I have complete confidence in you but there are still difficulties.” The Germans’ plans for reequipping him came to nothing, but their willingness to try confirmed the esteem in which Czerniawski was held. “He is a man who succeeds in creating the impression of Herculean ability, and from their knowledge of him the Germans will expect him to achieve the impossible or bust. Brutus is a professional spy and an artist at producing the most detailed and illustrated reports.”

  The D-Day spies all swung into action for Fortitude South. By mid-February, Garbo’s doughty team of fictional Welsh fascists were deployed all along the south coast, and Pujol was commended by Karl-Erich Kühlenthal for the “amplification of your network”; the Welsh spies in particular were “giving the best results.” The Gibraltarian waiter was also well placed after supposedly getting a job in a canteen at a Hampshire military base. The subagents sent information to Pujol, which he gathered, graded, put into his own inimitably dense prose, and then sent on by radio to Madrid, where Kühlenthal consumed it with insatiable appetite. Garbo sent himself on a notional tour of the south coast: he reported seeing American soldiers but predicted the invasion “would not happen for a long time,” and certainly not “until an assault force immeasurably greater in number than that which exists has been assembled.” The Germans could relax. “I am surprised to hear of the nervousness which exists in official circles with regard to the Allied offensive.… I recommend once again calm and confidence in our work.” That work was already monumental and would grow steadily in the following weeks: between the beginning of January and D-Day, five hundred wireless messages passed between Garbo and his controllers. Harris worried that no single person could, in reality, have marshaled such an enormous quantity of information. This thought never struck the Germans.

  Dusko Popov gathered intelligence of a quality, complexity, and duplicity greater than anything he had supplied before. He made his own tour of the Kent coast and reported that preparations for a great armada were plainly under way, but incomplete. “An extensive programme for preparing and improving cook houses, wash houses, tented camps and landing grounds has been drawn up, but nearly all of it still has to be done. In spite of intensive preparations there are no signs that invasion is imminent.” Dover harbor was being overhauled to accommodate a huge task force, he reported, but again, “a lot of work still had to be done.” From Dover he traveled on to Portsmouth, Southampton, and Exeter, describing intense military commotion in the east and inactivity in the west.

  Tar debated whether to send Tricycle into the enemy camp once again. Alone among the double agents, he could place the deception, physically, in enemy hands. “His stock is very high in German eyes and it is desired to take advantage of this fact, and of the opportunity of his being able to take documents to the Germans.” Popov would go back to Lisbon one last time, carrying a “mass of detailed information” to support the deception: eyewitness reports from the Channel ports, doctored documents, and conversations with Norwegian government officials in London who said they expected to be home before summer.

  Johnny Jebsen reported that von Karsthoff was swallowing Popov’s reports unchewed and proclaiming that “the landing in Western Europe will not take place until next spring.” Berlin’s response was equally positive. Colonel Georg Hansen declared Popov the Abwehr’s top spy and his radio connection “the best in the whole Abwehr.” Jebsen shone a light directly into the minds of his colleagues. “Their chief hope is to receive reports about the date of the landing in France,” he told MI6. “It is quite possible to deceive with regard to the date as Tricycle’s reliability is no longer in doubt, but all reports must contain a saving clause so that when an event which has been announced does not occur, the blame can be attributed to wrong information received. Reports submitted with a reservation are more easily believed than categorical statements.” These reports should be sent “containing a wealth of small detail.” Jebsen was now actively coaching the Allied team.

  While Brutus focused on the north and Garbo and Tricycle worked on the southern deception, Bronx looked west. Most Secret Sources showed that Elvira’s reports were now graded “very important” and distributed to both the operational sections of the Abwehr and army intelligence HQ in Berlin. She still addressed her letters, in secret ink, to Bleil, unaware that the man who had recruited her in France was no longer handling her case. Her new controller was one Hauptmann Dr. Berndt Schluetter, a former officer in the Paris Abwehr now operating out of Cologne and an altogether more formidable figure than the feckless, drunken Bleil. Incoming letters to Bronx took on a more urgent tone: “Important. Invasion details: Eisenhower’s and Montgomery’s HQs? Parts of coast evacuated? Concentration of ships and barges? Admiralty circles talk of invasion? Arrivals of American troops? Expenses and bonus for invasion news.” Bronx bolstered both Fortitudes South and North, but her singular hold on the Germans, it was decided, should be employed elsewhere in the deception.

  The Germans had substantial forces deployed in the Bordeaux area of southwest France, most notably the feared Seventeenth SS Panzergrenadier Division. Once the invasion was under way, its tanks would certainly be deployed north to try to repel the Allies. Every hour the panzers could be detained in the southwest would help. Just as the Fifteenth Army might be tied down in Calais by Operation Fortitude, so a new and equally fictitious threat would be aimed at the Bordeaux area: this was Operation Ironside. The imaginary assault would begin with an attack in the Bay of Biscay from the west-coast ports of the UK, opening the way for an American force sailing directly from the United States. Several double agents would contribute: Rudloff in the United States reported that a force trained in fording rivers was assembling to tackle the watery terrain of southwest France; Tate said his girlfriend Mary, who worked in the admiralty, had returned from Washington after working on a plan for a U.S. expeditionary force.

  Bronx had already agreed to send a coded telegram to warn of an invasion. “She is independent and aloof from all our other agents, so that reasonable risks can be taken in running her without compromising any other agent.” Elvira would implement Operation Ironside almost single-handedly, no small feat for an agent once dismissed as “a good-time girl with no allegiance to anyone except herself.”

  Timing was critical. “In order to achieve our object of containing the German Panzer division in the region of Bordeaux, it will be necessary to time the telegram to arrive on D-2 [two days before D-Day].” Telegrams to Lisbon took five days. To reach the Germans in time, the message would have to be sent on or before May 29. The telegram, “indicat[ing] to the Germans that an attack will definitely be made against the Bay of Biscay,” would be followed by a letter in secret ink, once the invasion was under way and the postal service was restored, “providing a get-out for Bronx” by explaining how she had made a mistake. The only objection, as usual, came from MI6, sniping from the sidelines. Claude Dansey told Elvira it was “ludicrous” to expect the Germans to swallow such an “implausible” ruse. Astor reported: “I told her I consider his opinion to be completely fallacious and that we were best qualified to decide on running her case.” The secret services tended to get far angrier with each other than they ever did with the enemy.

  Mary Sherer spent three weeks coaching Lily Sergeyev on her cover story. In the evenings she took her to the theater or a movie. “Sometimes Louisa [Gisela Ashley] comes as well,” Lily wrote. “I’m very fond of Louisa, but somehow I just can’t
bring myself to trust her, or Mary, or Robertson. I suppose if I lived a long time in England, I would become like the English: cold, reserved, impersonal.” Even when Mary laughed in the cinema, it struck Lily as forced, “a polite little laugh, prim and restrained, sort of a miser’s laugh.” Since the death of her dog, she had begun to refer to the B1A team as “Robertson and his gang.”

  When Tar came to say farewell, Lily asked him: “If Kliemann questions me about the invasion, do I say yes or no?”

  “What do you think yourself?” he replied cryptically.

  “I think it’ll be soon.”

  “Then tell him so.” There was a pause. “You know how much we are counting on you.”

  Agent Treasure shook Tar’s hand without enthusiasm. “His words don’t make much impression on me.” She had bought a gift for Kliemann at Dunhill’s on Piccadilly, a pigskin wallet engraved with the words: “For Octave. A souvenir from London. 29th February, 1944. Solange.” She told Mary: “I am absolutely sure of being able to cope with him.” In truth, she was looking forward to seeing Kliemann again.

  Treasure landed in Lisbon on March 1, 1944. She had sent a letter ahead telling Kliemann when she would be arriving. Inevitably, he wasn’t there. She checked into the Palacio Hotel, telephoned the German legation, and left a message for Kliemann. A few hours later, “a slim, fair youngster with slicked back hair and an ingratiating smile” knocked on her hotel room door and introduced himself as “Hoppe.” Kliemann, he said, would be arriving soon. Treasure waited. After the damp gloom of London, Lisbon in early spring was enchanting. She wandered the bazaars and fruit stalls, admiring the black-and-white marble pavements and the trees in bloom: these were Judas trees. The irony of the name was not lost on her. She made contact with MI6 and was told to be patient. Privately, the British wondered if Kliemann was a busted flush. A message had recently appeared in Most Secret Sources indicating that “Berlin were very pleased with the work she was doing, but were not pleased with Kliemann who was considered slack and inefficient” and might “get the sack.” After twelve days of waiting, Treasure’s patience was exhausted: she summoned Hoppe to her hotel and blew a gasket. “Kliemann is a saboteur,” she shrieked. “He has no order, no method. He ought to be shot. You are all hopelessly incompetent. I am fed up with it.” Still, it took three more days before Hoppe reappeared, “very excited,” to tell her: “Our friend is here!”