by Larry Loftis
He wasn’t exaggerating. The Clipper could hold as many as seventy-four passengers and had sleepers for thirty-four. The seating area boasted deeply upholstered chairs and sofas, and the service from the white-coated staff mirrored what one would expect from a fine hotel. The Clipper’s chefs, John Salmini and Bruce Candotti, had, in fact, been trained at the Waldorf-Astoria.
When it was time for dinner, Aline was amazed to see that the dining room was like an elegant restaurant: white linen tablecloths, silver and china, and the ever-present steward with a napkin draped over his arm. The meal matched the five-star accommodation, too: shrimp cocktail, turtle soup, salad, filet mignon, mashed potatoes, and asparagus, with peach melba and petit fours for dessert.
From the Clipper’s bar, one could order martinis, manhattans, scotch, bourbon, rum, brandy, or wine. This was more than a flying boat; it was a flying hotel.
During the flight, James MacMillan and Larry Mellon formally introduced themselves, telling Aline that they would be working with her in Spain. The Clipper would refuel in Bermuda and again in the Azores, the men said, and then they’d land in Lisbon, where they would spend two nights before catching a flight to Madrid.
When they landed in Bermuda, however, there was a surprise. Shortly after refueling the pilot announced that the waves were too large for the plane to take off. It wasn’t until several days later that the water runway was smooth enough to allow them to continue on.
February 8, 1944
Lisbon
It was an unforgettable sight. The pilot had invited Aline to watch the landing from the cockpit, and the lights of Lisbon shimmering at dusk were mesmerizing. Paris is known as the City of Lights, but Lisbon is the City of Light, and Aline could see why. A yellow tint hovered over the entire area and ancient castles seemed to glow as they rose up from the sea.
Waves of spray splashed across the cockpit windows as the Clipper touched water and bounced. Quite a show for Aline’s first plane ride.
When everyone had gathered their luggage, MacMillan and Mellon told Aline that they would not be staying in Lisbon, but in Estoril, about half an hour up the coast. Once a quaint fishing village, Estoril was now a world-class resort, they said, something akin to the French Riviera. It had Europe’s largest casino and one of the finest hotels in the world—the Palacio. That’s where the OSS trio were headed.
* * *
When they arrived at the hotel, Aline gazed across the façade. The Palacio was immense, like the Hay Adams, but more elegant. A smartly dressed bellman helped them with their luggage, and Aline noticed that the spacious lobby felt stately but not in the least stodgy. One thing was for sure: it was expensive.
They handed over their passports at the front desk, and Aline noticed that the clerk began filling out special forms for her and her colleagues. It was a foreigner’s registration that the Polícia de Vigilância e de Defesa do Estado (PVDE)—the secret police—required, she learned later. Portugal had been at this espionage game since 1939—watching over countless “diplomats” from Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Britain, France, and other countries—and wanted a paper trail for every potential spy.
Aline’s Palacio registration on February 8, 1944. Her departure date of February 10 can be seen at the bottom of the reverse side. Cascais Archive
Palacio registration of James MacMillan, Madrid deputy chief and finance officer. Cascais Archive
Palacio registration of Madrid agent William Larimer Mellon, Jr. Cascais Archive
MacMillan headed up to his room, leaving Aline and Larry Mellon to finish their registration. Larry glanced at his watch and asked Aline if she’d like to visit the casino with him. Not only was Casino Estoril Portugal’s top attraction, but it was the favored nightspot and meeting place for every spy in Lisbon.III Aside from the gambling areas, it boasted a fine restaurant, a cinema, and the WonderBar—a massive nightclub with a live orchestra and dance floor.
Aline was tired from the trip, but she wasn’t about to miss her first night on the job. She quickly unpacked and changed and met Larry in the lobby. They strolled together through the gardens between the Palacio and the casino and, though it was dark, she could see thousands of rose and geranium bushes in beds the length of a football field.
At the entrance she marveled at the bronze-embossed mahogany doors, but the magnificence inside was even more spectacular. Crystal chandeliers hung from cavernous ceilings, and red velvet drapes and carpets gave the place the feel of a royal palace. In the background she could hear the clatter of chips and the whir of roulette wheels.
Left: Casino Estoril and gardens. Right: The WonderBar nightclub. Cascais Archive
There was an energy here, a buzz, unlike anything she’d felt before. Throngs of patrons filled every room, and she heard conversations in Portuguese, Spanish, English, German, French, Italian, and Japanese.
It made sense. Since Portugal was neutral, Lisbon was a hub of espionage second only to Madrid. Among the diplomats and embassy staffers around her, she realized, there were surely other spies.
Mellon called her attention to a group of Japanese men standing near them. “Aline, watch those fellows. Here in Lisbon they receive information about troop departures from seaports on our west and east coasts, which they relay to Tokyo and Berlin. The Japanese have an excellent worldwide espionage network.”
They made their way into the gaming room, where smoke hovered over the players in a hazy gray cloud. As they approached a baccarat table, Mellon leaned close and murmured in her ear that she should never speak above a whisper near a game table. “Gamblers are superstitious, especially when the stakes are high.” He nodded toward the table. “There are over ten thousand dollars in escudos and chips on that table right now.”
Around midnight they moved on to the WonderBar nightclub, which was bustling. The orchestra was playing a rumba, the dance floor was packed, and every table was taken. Mellon said that the club was famous for its cuisine, and they waited until a table came free to eat a late dinner.
On the way out, Aline saw the cinema’s lineup for the week. On tap for the next day was an Errol Flynn swashbuckler, The Sea Hawk. It would have been fun to watch, but her life now was more exciting than any film, and it was best to concentrate on her job.
All in all, it was quite a first day for a girl who until quite recently had never been more than a stone’s throw beyond her own backyard.
* * *
After spending the next day briefing with local OSS agents in Lisbon, Aline, Mellon, and MacMillan checked out of the Palacio the morning of February 10 for their flight to Madrid.
Aline peered out the window of the small Iberia Airlines plane, gazing at the fallow fields of Castile and, beyond that, the outskirts of Madrid. In the distance she could see the snow-capped mountains of the Sierra de Guadarrama. Her eyes followed endless rows of prairies plowed in symmetrical stripes of orange, brown, and red, and the sky was a shade of blue so vivid that it softened the austere landscape.
As they approached Madrid, she started to feel apprehensive. Part of it was that she worried that she might not be up to the assignment, her training notwithstanding. But there was something else, too. “I sensed a mystery,” she recalled later, “a sort of magic, not unlike the feelings mentioned by Mérimée or Gautier in their books or any of the other foreigners arriving a century before in stagecoaches or on horseback. Spain during the past century and even before had attracted courageous visitors looking for adventure in this country so unique and unlike the rest of Europe.”
Aline’s adventure was about to begin.
* * *
The plane touched down at Madrid’s Barajas Airport, and as it taxied to the terminal, Aline noticed that there was only one other aircraft in sight. As they moved closer, she saw the red-and-black swastika on its tail. It was a Junkers, perhaps a Ju-52.
Her first sighting of the enemy reminded her of the complexity that was Spain. Since the country was neutral in the war, German and British planes coul
d be parked side by side on the tarmac, and Nazi and English propaganda stores could be nextdoor neighbors in town. And that was where the US Embassy and Aline’s job at the Oil Commission came in. While the Germans and British openly courted the Spanish public for support, the Americans operated in more subtle ways. Ambassador Carlton Hayes, when he wasn’t meeting privately with General Franco to push him toward Allied-friendly decisions, was hosting cocktail parties and showing Hollywood movies for Spanish diplomats and military officials.
Aline knew that Franco had made countless concessions to Germany to keep Wehrmacht troops out of Spain, but as the war progressed and a German victory seemed more in doubt, he had been slowly drawing closer to the Allies. His decisions on valuable commodities were telling. While he sold wolframite to Germany, he rebuffed Hitler and sold even more to the British and Americans. And he had no problem when the United States said it wanted to open the Oil Commission in Madrid—with its own representatives in place at the docks—to make sure that not one ounce of American petrol made it onto German ships or submarines.
It was a chess match of attrition, really, where Franco quietly slid a German pawn or bishop off the Spanish board each time the Allies progressed on the battlefield.
For Aline and the OSS, though, the difficulty was that Germany’s immense presence in Spain was largely invisible; the Junkers and propaganda shops were merely the tip of the iceberg. American and British intelligence knew that below the surface of Madrid lurked hundreds of German operatives from the Abwehr, Gestapo, and SD. Perhaps more sinister was the fact that Germany had untold numbers of fake corporations throughout Spain. Many were likely involved in espionage, and countless others were fronts for laundering Nazi money and loot for delivery to Argentina and Brazil.IV
Aline stepped down from the Iberia aircraft into a biting winter chill. The wind was whipping so furiously that she had to hold on to her hat to keep it from being blown off.
The taxi to town was a history lesson in itself, the pitted dirt roads and pockmarked buildings evidence of the country’s recent civil war. As they neared the city, the road narrowed and took them through a blighted area where children played in the streets, oblivious to the world around them. There were few cars on the road—automobiles were scarce in Spain—but they passed plenty of bicycles, donkey carts, and carriages hitched to feeble-looking horses.
They came upon a massive redbrick structure, circular in shape, and Aline knew that it was the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas, Madrid’s famous 24,000-seat bullring. It looked like the Colosseum in Rome, with its four stories and arched entryways, and the comparison was not inappropriate: the gladiators here still fought beasts, but they did so in brightly colored silks and slippers. It wasn’t exactly the kind of spectacle Aline longed to see, but she knew the popularity of bullfighting would mean she’d have to attend eventually.
After passing through a few more neighborhoods crammed with old, dilapidated buildings, they arrived at a series of impressive plazas, all with fountains and grand statues. Beyond them the street opened onto a wide boulevard lined with stone palaces and manicured gardens behind iron-grilled fences.
The taxi came to a circular drive known as the Plaza de Cánovas del Castillo, and suddenly the Old-World Spain she had expected came alive. The Fuente de Neptuno (Fountain of Neptune)—an eighteenth-century sculpture of the sea god holding a trident atop a carriage being pulled by two creatures, half horse, half fish—stood boldly in the center. On one side of the plaza was the Ritz, and next to it the Prado, one of the greatest museums in the world. On the other side was their destination, the famous Palace Hotel.
Commissioned by King Alfonso III in 1911, the Palace had opened the following year to tremendous fanfare. Not only was the eight-hundred-room Palace the largest hotel in Spain, it was the first in the country to have a bathroom and telephone in each guest suite.
Uniformed bellmen fetched Aline’s bags and escorted her inside. In the lobby, Aline peered up at the spectacular glass dome. It was a cylindrical design composed of thousands of small pieces of stained glass, the bottom and top rings of which sparkled in various shades of blue, the others off-white, yellow, and orange. Perhaps by design, the infusion of natural light seemed to evoke a certain felicity from employees and guests alike.
After she checked in Aline saw that a young man was waiting for her with her suitcases at the elevator. It seemed a bit strange, though, as the man wasn’t in a bellman’s uniform. The elevator opened and in perfect English he asked for her room number. She obliged and discreetly tried to size him up. He was tall, handsome, and well-dressed, with brown hair and green eyes.
He didn’t look Spanish.
Something wasn’t right. He set her bags inside the door and she tried to tip him, but he refused.
She couldn’t close the door fast enough. If the man wasn’t Spanish, who was he? It seemed highly unlikely that he was a German agent who just dropped by the hotel to deliver bags for a few hours, but given what she’d heard about the Abwehr’s presence in Madrid, it was possible.
* * *
That night after dinner Aline walked down the street to the Teatro de la Zarzuela, an opera house built in 1856 and modeled after La Scala in Milan, with a horseshoe design, box seats, and three tiers of balconies. The theater typically offered zarzuela—a traditional Spanish form of musical theater—or opera, but this night it showcased one of the city’s most popular flamenco dancers, Lola Flores.
During her research at The Farm, Aline had learned that Spaniards were united around two particular forms of entertainment: bullfighting and flamenco. Both were weekly rituals and the similarities between them were obvious to even the most casual observer. The brightly colored costumes, the graceful moves, the twisting and turning, and the almost mystical experience felt by spectators made one activity seem like an extension of the other. Flamenco was invented by the Roma, often called Gypsies, and it was no surprise that many great bullfighters—like El Gallo, Cagancho, and Gitanillo de Triana—were of Roma descent.
And since men and women from all levels of Spanish society enjoyed bullfighting and flamenco, Aline knew that her duties for the OSS would require a deep understanding of both. Madrid’s upper classes, she had learned—including foreign diplomats and royalty—often hired flamenco dancers to entertain their guests after dinner, so she figured her flamenco education would start tonight.
She found her seat and was immediately enraptured.
Lola Flores was curvaceous and graceful, and when “La Niña de Fuego”—The Girl of Fire—began playing, Aline found the dancer’s twisting and gyrating sensual and hypnotic. Snapping her fingers and stamping her feet alongside a singer and two guitarists, Lola mesmerized the audience. This, in fact, was flamenco’s intent. “This perhaps is the secret of flamenco’s fascination,” Aline recalled. “It enables those who partake in it to become intoxicated by its complex musical rhythms. It is an art which opens a magic window to beauty.”
The next morning, Aline awoke to a knock at her door. Sitting up in bed, she reminded herself that only Mellon and MacMillan knew she was here. Well, and that strange man who brought up her bags. She threw on a robe and called out: “Who is it?”
“El mozo de espadas.”
It was too early in the morning for Spanish, but Aline worked the translation.
Man of swords.
I. Aline also would receive a monthly living allowance of $128.25, $92 paid by the State Department, $36.25 paid by the OSS.
II. A round-trip flight from New York to Southampton or Lisbon exceeded $1,000 (roughly $15,000 in 2020 dollars).
III. Casino Estoril was the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale, and what he witnessed there around August 1, 1941 (watching British double agent Dusko Popov) led to his creation of James Bond. See my first book, Into the Lion’s Mouth, chapter 11.
IV. Abwehr agent Johann Jebsen, case officer for British double agent Dusko Popov, told Popov that they had about 520 agents in Ma
drid, 120 with diplomatic cover, another 400 in various phony firms and jobs. The Germans also had 70 to 100 agents working at a secret shortwave listening and decoding station. The city was literally teeming with Germans, and any porter, bellman, waiter, concierge, or driver could be an informant. If that weren’t enough, Nazi secret police (Gestapo) and foreign intelligence (SD) had acquired, with assistance from Spanish authorities, full lists of American and British intelligence officers. Only five months earlier Jebsen had told Kenneth Benton, MI6 Madrid agent, that the Abwehr often had discussions about each member of the British staff. So thorough was their research that Jebsen said he knew, for example, that Benton had previously been posted in Vienna, and had worked under an agent named Kendrick.
CHAPTER 5 MAN OF SWORDS
Aline cautiously cracked the door.
Three Spaniards in black suits bowed. One was holding the largest bouquet of flowers she’d ever seen—bright red carnations—while the other two held some type of garment that seemed to sparkle.
“Señorita Griffith,” one of them said, “I am the man of swords of Don Juan Belmonte, who sends you these gifts.”
“Belmonte?”
“Yes, señorita.”
“If you please, who is Belmonte?”
The Spaniards looked at each other. What a question. In Spain, Belmonte was a name even more famous than Franco.
Juan Belmonte had invented modern bullfighting and many, if not most, regarded him as the greatest matador ever.I In 1919 he appeared in 109 corridas, killing some 218 bulls in 180 days, a record. On January 5, 1925, Belmonte had appeared on the cover of Time and become an international celebrity.
In 1932, Hemingway summarized Belmonte’s impact on bullfighting: “He was a genius who could break the rules of bullfighting and could torear, that is the only word for all the actions performed by a man with the bull, as it was known to be impossible to torear.” And what Hemingway had witnessed watching Belmonte was well known to every Spaniard. Unlike the matadors who came before him, Belmonte stood perfectly still, feet together, and kept the bull as close to him as possible. As he performed his magic with the cape, the bull revolved around him (rather than vice versa, the custom for four centuries), making Belmonte appear as a graceful ballerina. “The way Belmonte worked was not a heritage,” Hemingway explained, “nor a development; it was a revolution.” His style was so dangerous, intentionally bringing the bull’s horns within inches, that Hemingway called it decadent, impossible… even depraved.