by Nigel West
The complications over the BEETLE case were rather more challenging, as Guy Liddell’s version infers in his diary entry for 30 September 1943:
Blanshard Stamp and I went over to see General Crockatt about the Icelandic subject Petur Tomsen who arrived a short time ago in Iceland ostensibly from Bodo. His story was obviously a poor one and when reported to Harold Blyth the SIS man he communicated with his headquarters. We also expressed doubts and said we thought it was desirable that the man should be sent here. The Americans, however, took a different view. They believed in Tomsen and very reluctantly agreed to us having him sent to this country, provided he were treated as a guest and remunerated for the information that he had provided. There appears to have been some undertaking of this sort between the American general in command and the British admiral who was responsible for bringing him to the country. When we got him to the London Reception Centre and heard this story Baxter was quite convinced he was a spy. Taxed with this he collapsed and has now made a full confession. He was, in fact, dropped by submarine from Bergen. He had a wireless set, $5,000 and a code and instructions, all of which he had buried in Iceland. He has pinpointed the place where they are hidden. We broke this news to General Crockatt, who called in Colonel Calvert and also Colonel Stevens, who recently arrived from Iceland and was conversant with the case of COBWEB. It seems that Tomsen was to communicate with his masters by wireless and would then be informed how to dispose of the money. He would be given the name of a contact, which it almost certain would be COBWEB. We impressed upon Crockatt and Calvert that, by virtue of the large fund of information carefully indexed here, we had a very definite advantage over any intelligence people in Iceland. We thought therefore that some arrangement by which characters of this sort were put on a plane at once and sent here for examination would be profitable to all concerned, particularly since the time factor might on occasion be important. In this particular case for example it would be for consideration whether Thomsen should be turned round. Crockatt and Calvert were more than co-operative and said that they would be delighted to fall in with any recommendations that we liked to make. I made it clear that the disposal of the body was really a matter between G-2 and SIS since they operated in Iceland and we did not. We would let them have a full report on the case at the earliest possible moment.
BEETLE would be run in Reykjavik by Harold Blyth of SIS’s Section V, which meant that three Abwehr agents were under local SIS supervision: Ib Riis, code-named COBWEB, who had been landed near Langanes by the U-2523 in April the previous year, and a seaman code-named LAND SPIDER. The fact that BEETLE had duped the Americans upon his arrival meant that potentially he could have jeopardised the other two cases, but fortunately the episode ended happily, with the Americans learning an important lesson about the handling of plausible enemy spies. The only remaining curiosity in Petrie’s report is his identification of Tomsen as Jens ‘Fridriksen’, which was his alias.
Although Tomsen initially had claimed to have landed from a Norwegian fishing boat, he had in fact been delivered to the coast near Glettinganes by the U-279,4 having embarked at Kiel on 2 September. Nevertheless his American captors believed his story, which disintegrated upon his arrival at Camp 020 where his interrogators had been expecting the arrival of an ISOS character code-named ILSE. Tomsen signed a confession within two hours of encountering Colonel Stephens in which he explained that his cooperation had been coerced under the threat of imprisonment for his black market activities in occupied Norway. He also claimed that the Germans had seduced his wife and threatened his mother, who was living in Iceland. After six weeks in custody, Tomsen was returned to Iceland to begin his role as BEETLE.
* * *
FATHER was Pierre Henri Arend, who reached England from Lisbon in June 1941. In June 1943 he was posted to India to avoid answering some increasingly difficult technical questions submitted by the Abwehr, and supplied with a transmitter code-named DUCK, which became operational in August 1944. When FATHER was posted back to Belgium in October 1944 his radio was operated until the end of the war by a police officer in Calcutta, supposedly a disaffected Indian courier based at the Strategic Air Force’s headquarters.
8
EIGHTH REPORT,
1 DECEMBER 1943
The eighth report, delivered to Churchill in the first week of December 1943, introduced a British traitor, Oswald Job, who would be the first Briton of the war to be hanged in a London prison. It also dealt with two other interesting categories, those of MI5’s double-agents, DRAGONFLY, TREASURE and SNIPER, and the enemy defector, Hans Ruser.
EIGHTH REPORT
A. SPIES ARRESTED.
The special interrogation camp staff continues to be extremely busy as in the past month eight new spies have arrived there, three of them being arrested overseas.
One of the most interesting of these spies is Oscar John Job, a British subject of German parents, and a resident for many years in France. Job escaped from France, where he had been in internment, but the story which he told in Lisbon regarding his escape aroused our suspicions and we gave instructions that he was to be interrogated carefully on his arrival in the UK. During the course of the examination, it was noticed that he was carrying certain pieces of jewellery which corresponded closely to the description of jewellery which the Germans had intended to send by courier to our double-cross agent DRAGONFLY, who has been working under control for the last two and a half years. Job was allowed to proceed normally to London and his suspicions were not aroused. He was kept under close observation for twenty days, in the hope that he would disclose his hand and deliver the jewellery to DRAGONFLY. He made no attempt to do this, and as it was certain that he was DRAGONFLY’s courier, he was arrested.
Under interrogation Job admitted, not only to having the mission to deliver jewellery from the Germans to an address in London, but also that he was a spy as well. He had secret ink concealed in the hollow handle of an old razor and in the hollow shank of a key, and was to receive instructions broadcast in code over the ordinary German radio network. He himself was to write letters in secret ink to ten internees at St. Denis Internment Camp, purporting to come from people in this country whom the Germans knew to be writing regularly to these internees. Job has not told the full truth, as he stated that his instructions were to obtain information regarding bomb damage and political feeling in this country, while we know from Most Secret Sources that he was in fact a spy sent by the Section of the German Secret Service based on Bordeaux dealing with technical Air Force matters. Job is an unpleasant character and a crook as well as a spy. He clearly had no intention of passing the jewellery to DRAGONFLY, but was going to keep it and sell it himself. It has been decided that Job should be prosecuted under the Treachery Act and the DRAGONFLY case should be closed down.
Hans Ruser, a German who has been connected with the German Intelligence Service from at least 1937, has also arrived in this country. Since the outbreak of war he has been working for the German Secret Service in the Iberian Peninsula, mainly recruiting agents. He fell into disfavour on the suspicion of double-crossing in 1942 but managed however to satisfy his German masters though remaining under a cloud. A short time ago, he was reported again to be in grave danger from the Gestapo, and in view of the serious damage which he could have done to the British Intelligence Service by revealing information under Gestapo interrogation, he was induced to flee from Spain and was detained on arrival here.
Mention was made in the last report of Hellmuth, who was being sent from the Argentine on a special mission to Berlin as a personal emissary of President Ramirez to the Germans. He has arrived in this country and confessed. The full nature of his mission has not yet been revealed by him, but it included the procuring of technicians, arms and precision instruments from Germany which were to be transported in an Argentine tanker now in Gothenburg. He has also given us the name of the Head of the Argentine branch of the section of the German Secret Service dealing mainly with political intelli
gence.
B. DOUBLE CROSS AGENTS.
Two new double-agents have arrived in this country in the last month. The first arrival was TREASURE, a French citizen of Russian origin. She has lived most of her life in Paris, where she occupied herself with journalism, and at one time gained considerable reputation as an artist. As a journalist she travelled all over Europe, and at the outbreak of war found herself in Syria city while undertaking a bicycle trip from Paris to Saigon.
Through a fellow journalist, a German whom she had known before the war, TREASURE obtained her first introduction, after the fall of France, to the German Secret Service. It was a long time before TREASURE was able to persuade her German masters to send her to this country as they planned various other missions for her in different parts of the world, all of which, for one reason or another, broke down. She has had extensive training in wireless transmission and reception and in secret ink writing. She did not bring a wireless set with her, but was assured that arrangements had been made for one to be sent. Her mission is primarily to collect information on air matters.
The other double-agent is SNIPER, who is also concerned with air affairs, as he was recruited to come here by the Head of that section of the German Secret Service dealing with technical Air Force matters. SNIPER is a Belgian, educated in London and Brussels, who joined the Belgian Air Force just after the end of the last war. He left the Air Force in 1926 and from then till 1940 he was a mining engineer in the Belgian Congo. On his return to Belgium he re-joined the Air Force and was under training when the Germans invaded. SNIPER’s escape from Belgium through France was facilitated by the Germans, but after crossing the Franco–Spanish frontier, he freely reported the true facts to the Belgian Authorities. His instructions from his German masters were that on his arrival here he was to buy a wireless receiver on which he would receive his instructions from Brussels. He was told that he would be sent a transmitter in due course, either by parachute, or delivered to him by another German spy in this country. In the meanwhile he was to communicate in secret ink to cover addresses in Switzerland, Spain and Portugal. Apart from being given a certain amount of money for his immediate needs, SNIPER was promised very large rewards for technical information on anti-submarine devices, night-fighter devices etc. One of the most interesting points regarding SNIPER’S instructions was that he had been told to contact two other German spies who were already in this country.
One of them, Leon Jude, had already been arrested, and the other one, Jean Creteur, is one of those who were sent to our special interrogation camp this month. He has not yet admitted to being a spy, or that he was sent here as one. Like SNIPER, both Jude and Creteur were Belgian Air Force officers.
C. SABOTAGE.
Since the capitulation of Italy the German sabotage service in Spain and Spanish territories has been engaged in frantic endeavours to sabotage Italian merchant ships in Spanish ports and prevent them from falling into British hands. So far these efforts have only proved partially successful. The first scheme was to bribe the crews to flood the ships by opening the sea-cocks, but this idea was abandoned. The Germans, therefore, had to fall back on sabotage, using as their instruments either members of their crews who were faithful to Mussolini or independent saboteurs.
Apart from a number of ships in the Canary Islands, there were three Italian ships in Spanish ports, at Cádiz, Huelva and Cartagena respectively. The German Sabotage Service attached a bomb to the ship in Cádiz which exploded and damaged the hull and propeller shaft, but the ship was refloated, partially repaired and will, it is hoped, be towed to Gibraltar.
The ship at Huelva was partially flooded by the crew, who opened the sea-cocks. The Germans later tried to damage this ship in the same way as the one at Cádiz, but the attempt failed owing to the boatman who was involved becoming frightened. The Germans were forced to leave the task of sabotaging this ship to the Captain and First Officer if and when they were ordered to sail.
The Germans’ attempt to sabotage the ship in Cartagena ended rather unfortunately for them, as the bomb which was being taken by boat from the German sabotage depot ship, SS Lipari in the same port, exploded prematurely and killed a member of the sabotage service. This premature explosion was probably due to the Germans using British time fuses and mistaking the meaning of the colours on them, a mistake which may lead to a bomb exploding in ten minutes instead of ten hours.
An attempt to sabotage the British SS Greathope at Huelva was foiled by our underwater counter sabotage squad which had recently been instituted. This squad is composed of trained divers, and one of them discovered an object wired to the ship’s rudder. As there was a very strong tide running at the Bay, the help of a Spanish diver was enlisted to remove the object. After removal it fell to the bottom of the harbour and was lost.
D. GENERAL SECURITY MEASURES.
Evidence from the field has recently suggested a leakage to the Germans in France, possibly originating from this country, as to the real names of agents employed by the French in France. It has been stated by a Free French agent who is still operating in France that the Gestapo have a list of all the French agents sent to France in September. The antecedents of all the personnel who might have had access to this information in either the French or British organisations concerned are being investigated, it is also proposed to censor fully all documents carried by departing agents, and also to search them thoroughly before they leave, both for their own protection and that of the organisations to which they belong. Neither step has been taken to date, and it is hoped that the British and French organisations will agree to the application of this very necessary security procedure.
1st December 1943
* * *
TREASURE would make an appearance in three of the Prime Minister’s reports, and was not just an adventuress, but one with some potentially sinister connections. For example, her uncle had been General Yevgenni Miller, the White Russian leader who had been abducted in Paris in September 1937 by the NKVD. The crime was never solved but Miller had left a written record of his rendezvous with his intelligence chief, Nikolai Skoblin, thereby implicating him and his wife, the singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya, who was imprisoned while her husband escaped abroad. Miller’s daughter, Lily Sergueiev’s cousin, was (Dame) Elizabeth Hill, then a lecturer in Russian at Cambridge University, who acted as her referee when she applied in June 1943 for a British visa.
Another example of Sergueiev’s unconventional life was her approach to journalism, in which she was the centre of attention. In 1933 she walked from Paris to Berlin, arriving in October, and then continued her tour a month later, returning to France via Denmark. Over the next six years she embarked on numerous similar journeys, often writing about her experiences in books and articles, gaining a reputation too as a painter. When she was in Belgrade, to report on the Yugoslav king’s funeral, she had obtained an interview with Hermann Göring, a scoop that was rewarded with employment by the French newspaper Le Jour. This was followed in March 1935 by a longer visit to Berlin, sponsored by the official press bureau and Le Petit Journal, and two tours, one to Norway and the other to Bad Ems.
TREASURE had been in Aleppo when war broke out, and had abandoned her travel plans to train as a Red Cross nurse in Beirut. Upon her return to France she sought out a German acquaintance, Felix Dressel, who turned out to be an Abwehr recruiter, and it was his introduction that launched her espionage career, which became known to MI5 through ISOS in July 1943 when an Abwehr report of her arrival in Madrid was intercepted. Sergueiev’s link to Dressel, she later explained, had been driven by her suspicion that he had been implicated in Miller’s assassination.
When SIS and MI5 debated the merits of accepting Sergueiev’s offer to act as a double-agent, there was an adverse report on her from Virginia Hall, an American SOE agent who had known her in pre-war Paris and suspected she might be a Nazi sympathiser. She was also known to Anthony Blunt, who declared that she had been ‘slightly left-wing’. However, by October
the decision had been taken to enroll Sergueiev as TREASURE, and she was flown from Gibraltar to Whitchurch via Rabat on 5 November 1943.
Long before TREASURE arrived in England she had earned a lengthy MI5 file, based on ISOS, dating back to September 1942:
1Sergueiev’s name first appeared on MOST SECRET SOURCES on 24 September 1942 in a message from Paris to Lisbon. This message requested Lisbon to despatch immediately a telegram to Nathalie Sergueiev chez Cholay, Finances Exterieurs, Charlton, Vichy France, purporting to come from her Aunt Louise, asking her to come immediately because her aunt Marie Therese was very ill. The message ended by saying that the telegram was only to serve as a basis for the issue of a French passport and exit permit.
2Nothing further was seen until 11 June 1943 when Paris asked Lisbon to supply an address and telephone number where TRAMP could make contact.
315 June 1943. Lisbon replied giving the name Morgener of Rua Joaquim Antonio de Aguiar, Telephone 52030. They advised caution in telephoning and visits after dark. Also, they requested advice of TRAMP’s arrival in good time.
429 June 1943. Paris asked Madrid whether Vaufrau TRAMP had reported to Miret under the name of Canuto and given special information. Also, saying that if any letters arrived with Miret for Octave Bernhard signed Solange they were to be sent as soon as possible to Paris for Kliemann.
5Nothing more was seen on these sources until 3 March 1944 when Lisbon informed Paris that Madame Solange had arrived from London and reported under the password CANUTO. They wanted to know what assignments she had and what arrangements were to be made for looking after her. They ended by saying that their relevant documents had been destroyed.
64 March 1944. Lisbon informed Paris that Solange was going back to London in a week and wanted to see Kliemann in Lisbon without fail.
75 March 1944. Paris replied saying that contact by Madame Solange was quite unexpected but was, nevertheless, an excellent piece of luck. Paris went on to say that she had repeatedly sent reports by letter which were of great value and that she was a first-class Paris link. Great caution in meeting her was advocated. Paris stated that the object of her making contact was to meet Kliemann and to take over a W/T set. Paris also said that if she wanted money she was to have an advance up to 5,000 escudos.