Into the Lion's Mouth: The True Story of Dusko Popov: World War II Spy, Patriot, and the Real-Life Inspiration for James Bond

by Larry Loftis

  After serving with the Royal Marines for six years, Fairbairn in 1907 had joined the International Police Force in Shanghai—a lawless city ruled by thugs, drug dealers, and criminals. The following year he was attacked by a gang, reputedly stabbed a dozen times, and left for dead. Fairbairn survived and, over the next eighteen years, turned himself into a lethal weapon. With extended stays at Tokyo’s Kodokan, he studied under Kano Jigoro, founder of judo. By 1926 Fairbairn had earned black belts in judo and jiu-jitsu, and had supplemented those with training in boxing, savate, and kung fu. Combining these skills with lessons learned from the street, Fairbairn developed his own system and taught various police forces over the next fourteen years.

  After a thirty-year career policing “red-light” and other tough districts, he was said to have been in some six hundred fights. His arms, legs, torso, and hands bore scars from knife attacks, and his nose appeared to be permanently broken. Thick-necked and broad-shouldered, he was lithe and explosive. When recruited to SOE in 1940, even at fifty-five, he remained one of the most dangerous men in the world. Students called him the “Shanghai Buster.” In spite of his roughneck profession and back-alley history, Fairbairn neither drank nor swore. In civilized company he was an officer and a gentleman; in uncivilized, a killing machine.

  Exactly what Gubbins had in mind.

  Eric Sykes, the weapons expert, had met Fairbairn in Shanghai while working for the Remington rifle company. Together they invented the Fairbairn-Sykes commando fighting knife, a double-edged dagger used today by most elite forces. As Gubbins had dreamed, Fairbairn and Sykes would give the SOE commando agents every bit of training they needed, and more.

  The small arms course included practice with every conceivable weapon, especially those stolen from the enemy. They shot German, Italian, American, and British pistols and rifles. Machine guns they fired included Germany’s Schmeisser, MG 34, and MG 42; Britain’s Vickers and Sten; America’s Tommy Gun; the Anglo-Czech Bren; Italy’s Fiat-Revelli; and the American-Greek Hotchkiss. They practiced firing at pop-up targets—including at the end of a rigorous obstacle course—and were expected to strip, reassemble, and load in total darkness every weapon they handled.

  Fairbairn instructed his students to fire in a new, double-handed crouch position. In addition, he instituted the “double tap,” used now by virtually every special ops squad in the world. Fairbairn also taught his commandos to be quick on the draw, so candidates practiced speed shooting from the hip, shoulder, and pocket.

  Finally, Fairbairn taught his men how to fight. Dusko could not have had a better teacher. Even before he retired, Fairbain was widely regarded as the father of hand-to-hand combat. His tactics, by design, were “drastic and admittedly unpleasant.” One commando remembered that Fairbairn’s instructions typically ended with: “. . . and then kick him in the testicles.”

  The SOE training manual mirrored Fairbairn’s serious, humorless approach: “Your object here is to learn how to kill but it is quite unnecessary to kill or damage your sparring partner, you will get no credit if you do.” Fairbairn’s specialty—the “art of silent killing”—was an integral part of the course. Dutch operative Pieter Dourlein explained this as creeping up on an enemy and dealing with him “in a way that prevented him from uttering a sound.” Dusko described it more bluntly: strangling and cutting throats.

  In addition, students were taught how to slip tags, survive interrogation, board moving trains, and escape cafés and other meeting places by side and back doors. At night, staffers would listen to see if any candidates spoke in their sleep and if so, in what language. To prepare them for capture and ruthless cross-examination, Arisaig staffers would wake the commandos in the middle of the night, rush them before men dressed as Abwehr or SD officers, and interrogate them for hours. At the end of the program, up to a third of the students would be told that they had failed or were otherwise unqualified for service.

  Years after the war Dusko spoke of surviving Arisaig, describing the training as merciless. It was “the hardest thing I ever had to go through in my whole life,” he confessed to an interviewer. But the school fulfilled its purpose—those graduating were fearless and lethal, with or without a weapon. George Langelaan, an SOE operative who underwent plastic surgery so that he could reenter Vichy France, testified to the transformation:

  The “Shanghai Buster” gave us more and more self-confidence which gradually grew into a sense of physical power and superiority that few men ever acquire. By the time we finished our training, I would have willingly enough tackled any man, whatever his strength, size or ability. . . . It is understandable when a man knows for certain that he can hurt, maul, injure, or even kill with the greatest of ease. . . . [Fairbairn] made each of us a terribly dangerous man.

  Langelaan wasn’t exaggerating. The SOE training manual taught that blows with the side of the hand, properly executed to the the neck, were lethal. Popov’s son, Marco, confirmed his father’s training in this deadly game: “I remember very clearly Dusko mentioning he learned combat techniques whilst in Scotland. He once told us he learned how to kill a man with one blow of his opened hand on the neck.”

  The silent kill.

  Fairbairn’s reputation and training would soon cross the Atlantic. With the success of Arisaig, William Stephenson suggested to William Donovan that they open a similar, British-American commando school in Canada. Wild Bill’s OSS men, after all, would benefit greatly from the rigorous course, and the BSC could send qualified Canadian trainees. Donovan agreed and Stephenson went to work. The course would be conducted on his farmhouse property in Oshawa, a village on the shores of Lake Ontario, near Toronto. The location, like Arisaig, was ideal—rural, isolated, and near water. Stephenson had several huts and other buildings constructed, and planned the course. He brought in Fairbairn and Sykes and gave them free rein.

  Recalling the assistance he had received in drafting the OSS charter, Donovan invited Ian Fleming as an observer. Once there, Ian asked if he could participate in the exercises and everyone agreed. In addition to the normal instruction in firearms, hand-to-hand combat, and demolition, Stephenson added underwater operations. Using an old tanker moored on the lake, candidates would practice night swims to place limpet mines. A strong swimmer, Fleming was one of the few trainees who successfully placed the mine without detection.

  Pleased with Ian’s progress through the training, Stephenson chose him for a post-course assignment. A dangerous enemy agent had just checked into a cheap hotel in downtown Toronto, Fleming was told, and had to be eliminated. They went to the hotel, and Stephenson gave Ian the room number. Handing him a loaded police .38 revolver, he said the games were over.

  “Open that door, draw fast, and shoot straight. It’ll be his life or yours.”

  Fleming took the gun and headed up the stairwell.

  In a small, dimly lit room with only table and chair, William Fairbairn was waiting.

  19

  “TURN AROUND SLOWLY”

  Fairbairn had no weapon and wore no bulletproof vest. There would be no tricks. Fleming’s gun was real and fully loaded. He had his instructions. The range would be close, fifteen feet or less. Ian merely had to pull the trigger, as Stephenson intended.

  William Fairbairn would dodge the bullet.

  It was a unique combat skill—diverting a shooter five yards away so that the shot would go wide—that Fairbairn had honed through the years. At fifty-five, however, his reaction time and movement would be considerably slower, the margin for error zero.

  Fleming quietly crept up the stairs.

  At the landing platform, he paused. Could he shoot a man in cold blood? For several moments he stood there, clutching the .38. Behind the wall in Fairbairn’s room, Sykes watched through a peephole.

  After another minute, Fleming turned back. He couldn’t do it. “I just couldn’t open that door,” he told Stephenson. “I couldn’t kill a man th
at way.” The genteel Canadian understood. “Although Ian was an outstanding trainee,” he told Fleming’s biographer, “he just hadn’t got the temperament for an agent or a genuine man of action.”

  Another SOE graduate would have gladly tested Fairbairn’s reflexes.

  »

  As Ian Wilson spoke to an ill Popov, he didn’t have the heart to tell Dusko that Cairo was off and that all of his rigorous training with SOE—for which he now likely suffered—was for naught. At the beginning of March, MI5 had again received warning signals about Popov’s standing with the Germans. Days later Dick White sent a telegram to a Colonel Maunsell in Cairo, notifying the SOE officer that “our plans for sending TRICYCLE to you temporarily suspended owing [to] uncertainty as to enemy attitude towards him.” Then, on April 13, the Political Warfare Executive, which would have run Popov in conjunction with the SOE and the Foreign Office, decided that running a covert operation with TRICYCLE would be unwise given the PWE’s difficult situation in Cairo and its “delicate” relationship with the SOE.

  Wilson advisedly refrained from telling Popov about the unsteady relationship with the Germans, or the SOE/PWE bureaucratic impasse. But MI5 had to find something their restless agent could do. By this time Dusko had sent twenty-four letters to four different cover addresses, and sick or not, he wanted action. Wilson worked to see what he could do.

  On April 29 he, Robertson, and Masterman met with Dusko at the Clock House to discuss how they could better utilize him. Ian summarized the consensus: “That TRICYCLE should undertake some Intelligence work of a more active, ambitious and dangerous character.” Further, “TRICYCLE stressed the fact that he was ready to take almost any risks to achieve anything that would be really useful.”

  Few agents, double or otherwise, invite risk. Fewer still actively seek danger. Dusko wanted both.

  »

  Tar Robertson, who had been promoted to lieutenant colonel in April, kept Dusko busy in May. Eugen Sostaric, a friend of Johnny’s and Ivo’s, had come through an escape route before one was formally established. An aide-de-camp to the King of Yugoslavia, Sostaric had failed to flee Belgrade during the German occupation. When he was imprisoned, Ivo assumed he would be tortured, and he tried to spare Eugen the ordeal by sending him poisoned cigarettes in a care package. Sostaric, who either didn’t smoke or was exceedingly generous, gave them to fellow prisoners. By the time Eugen connected the deaths to the cigarettes, Johnny had devised a scheme to rescue him: a triple-cross.

  Jebsen persuaded the Abwehr to bring Sostaric aboard as a double agent, and Eugen was transferred to Berlin for a month of training. The Germans sent him to Madrid, where Sostaric contacted the British Embassy. In April MI6 slipped him out to Gibraltar, and then to England. After three days of interrogation at the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building in Wandsworth, euphemistically called the “London Reception Center,” he was cleared for potential work with British Intelligence.

  Throughout his questioning, Sostaric claimed to be working with Johnny and Ivo, and contended that Ivo had instructed him to contact Dusko once he was in London. Initially, Eugen had notions of joining the RAF, but MI5 had in mind a higher calling. Robertson codenamed him METEOR, and tentatively included him in the TRICYCLE network. Tar asked Dusko to meet with Eugen, confirm his bona fides and his relationship with Ivo, and try to persuade him to become a triple. Popov did, and METEOR became Dusko’s third sub-agent.

  Around this time, Popov approached Robertson with an idea Johnny had suggested in Cascais. Dusko had envisioned an Allied escape route, he told Tar, to which Johnny added an ingenious twist. The Yugoslav government-in-exile was anxious to evacuate officers marooned in Switzerland, Dusko said. In addition, the Germans had been executing hundreds of Yugoslavs as punishment for resistance and a large number were being held in Belgrade as hostages. They all needed an escape route to England.

  Johnny’s idea, if they could pull it off, was to get the Abwehr involved. If MI5 approved, Dusko would pitch von Karsthoff on a crafty way of getting German spies into England—a Yugoslav escape route. By allowing a trickle of “harmless civilians” to escape—under the watchful control of Ivo and Dusko—the Abwehr could send in new spies disguised as escapees. Ivo would handle the initial flight from Yugoslavia and Switzerland, Johnny would coordinate transit through France, and Dusko would run the receiving end in Spain. From there the escapees would travel to Gibraltar and on to England. What the Germans wouldn’t know, of course, was that Ivo and Dusko were double agents and the Yugoslavs and Germans coming in would be as well; Ivo would handpick the former and Johnny the latter. The Trojan Horse soldiers wheeled into England would all be friendlies.

  On May 11 Popov met with Masterman to discuss the idea, and how Dusko could otherwise reengage the Germans in Portugal and Spain. J. C. stated that he was in favor of the route, but that it would have to be approved by the Yugoslav prime minister; Dusko would have to sit tight until then. About this time, Dusko received a telegram from a contact in Lisbon stating that von Karsthoff had deposited 187,500 escudos into Popov’s Estoril bank account. The Germans, it seemed, had again placed their confidence in IVAN.

  Throughout the month, MI5 and MI6 brainstormed to create a suitable cover for Dusko’s return to Portugal. “C” had even weighed in, offering the ruse that Popov had tried to travel to America but was stranded in Lisbon for want of visa clearance. MI5 rejected the idea, but came up with a plan involving the Yugoslav government and Dusko’s position as a reserve army officer.

  Meanwhile, Ian Wilson was concerned that Popov might get tripped up if the Germans inquired about sources or information particulars. While Dusko was in London, MI5 had him send to von Karsthoff various numbers on shipbuilding and other items from unnamed naval sources; Ian expected questions to follow. In addition, Dusko would likely be quizzed on where he’d been. J. C. Masterman explained the risk: “A double agent should, as far as possible, actually live the life and go through all the motions of a genuine agent.” In particular, Masterman wrote, there was an “imperative necessity of making the agent actually experience all that he professes to have done.” The Oxford don’s example of what typically happened during interrogation was especially relevant to Popov. “‘And then you come to the little river,’ says the interrogator, ‘tell me about the ferry there, and what sort of man rowed you across?’ The victim describes the ferry to the best of his inventive power,” Masterman explained, when “he should have said, ‘There is no ferry. I walked across the bridge.’”

  Dusko’s risk of this trap was high so Ian asked Ewen Montagu to supply Popov with verifiable sources, advising that Dusko should personally meet them. He also asked Major E. Goudie in the War Office for real names to connect to information supposedly coming from Canadian, American, and Welsh officers.

  While Wilson sought sources, Dusko worked on the route. On June 3 he met with General Rakic, head of Yugoslavia’s military cabinet and an aide-de-camp to the king. Dusko suggested that he go to Lisbon or Madrid to organize the escape of fifty Yugoslav officers marooned in Switzerland. The general approved, and later that day Dusko informed Ian that, for proper cover, he’d have to be mobilized in the Yugoslav Army. Two days later MI5 received approval from Yugoslavia’s prime minister to conduct the operation in Spain, and the route was initiated on a dry-run basis before involving the Germans.

  What MI5 didn’t tell General Rakic or the prime minister, however, was that the British had another reason for sending Popov to Spain: Ewen Montagu’s Operation Mincemeat. On April 30, a mile off the Spanish coast near Huelva, British submarine HMS Seraph had jettisoned a cadaver. The body, which had been kept in a cooler in anticipation of the operation, was dressed in a British uniform and made to appear as if the man had died from drowning. A briefcase attached to his wrist contained fictitious documents identifying him as “Major Martin.” Also on his person were fabricated letters suggesting that the Allies would soon be invading Greece an
d Sardinia (rather than Sicily, the actual target).

  British Intelligence knew that Adolf Clauss, an Abwehr agent in Huelva, was friendly with local officials. Montagu assumed that the Spanish would allow the German to copy the documents before returning the body to British authorities. As part of the operation, Popov would be sent to Spain to determine if the local officials had, in fact, showed the documents to the German and if so, what credibility the Abwehr attached to them.

  Meanwhile, Ian was gathering a mountain of data for Dusko to deliver to von Karsthoff. In a six-page memorandum dated June 10, 1943—apparently for distribution to MI6 and Army and Navy Intelligence—Wilson set forth the information he wanted, and the details Dusko would have to keep straight. “TRICYCLE is supposed to have written 36 letters since he last arrived in this country,” he wrote, seven of which were notionally intercepted by British censors. Popov’s original German questionnaire, Ian stated, had requested information about the formation of new units, including: the number and location of county divisions; the number, purpose, and location of armored divisions; and how many and which army tank brigades were presently in England. Dusko should have this information when he returned.

  In addition, he should or might also provide to von Karsthoff:

  the names of high-ranking officers and commanders

  bogus figures and tables regarding the output of copper

  American divisional signs published by Reader’s Digest and Newsweek magazine

  documents detailing arrangements for special trains or food to liberated countries

  information about an advance party to resume control of Yugoslav mines

  an anti-aircraft regiment which had finished a course in Wales and was now stationed in Essex