The Spy with 29 Names

by Jason Webster

  MI6 were calling him ‘Bovril’ because, they said, like the drink, he helped ‘avoid that sinking feeling’. All those messages to Madrid about non-existent convoys had something to do with it, perhaps. It was not clear who had come up with the code name. It was said that MI9’s man in Gibraltar, Donald Darling, who helped Allied soldiers escape from behind enemy lines, had given it to the Spaniard when he arrived from Lisbon a couple of weeks before. But ‘Bovril’ had been used to describe him earlier than that – at least a month before. Were MI6 trying to wash their hands of him, knowing full well they were about to lose him to MI5?

  Perhaps Philby, Harris’s close friend in Section V, had something to do with it. Philby was one of the regulars at Harris’s grand Mayfair home, using number 6 Chesterfield Gardens as a kind of private club, as did Victor Rothschild, Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess – a small set enjoying one of the best wine cellars in London.

  Arabel might never have been brought to Britain had it not been for Philby, often acting behind Cowgill’s back. It was now becoming clear quite how much Bletchley material on him Cowgill had been keeping from MI5. The head of Section V saw a threat, knowing perfectly well that the Spaniard might be perfect double agent material. Which is why he had tried to hide him from MI5 for so long.

  ‘I do not see why I should get agents and then have them pinched by you,’ he told Guy Liddell, Harris’s boss and the head of MI5’s B section. As far as Cowgill was concerned, ‘the Yanks’ had brought Arabel to him. If he was to belong to anyone it was to MI6 – he would be their man working from Lisbon.

  But double-cross was not about winning battles, it was about winning the war itself. And from operating as a means of controlling and curtailing German espionage work inside Britain (why send any new agents over when the ones they had were working so well . . .?), it would eventually move into a new, more significant phase, that of actually deceiving the enemy.

  The car had driven far from London now, with fewer reminders around them of the war, except the military vehicles and lack of road signs. The flying boat from Gibraltar was scheduled to arrive just before sunset. The flight lasted twice as long as in peacetime as they had to fly so far out into the Atlantic to avoid German fighters.

  If they could just make things with this new man work . . .

  The double-cross system was not without its problems. Many captured spies who were ‘turned’ to work for the British had to be threatened to assure their cooperation. Few were willing double agents, and the business of building them up in the Germans’ eyes, making them increasingly credible so that eventually false and misleading information could be fed through them, was fraught with difficulties.

  With Arabel, however, if he was who he said he was, some of the teething problems might be avoided. If he was already trusted by the Germans, MI5 had a chance to use a fully fledged double agent who had been willing to work for the British in the first place.

  They would have to proceed cautiously. In the past double agents had shown promise and then had to be dropped over fears that they might be compromised. Security was paramount, and as with the Bletchley material, double-cross could only work if the enemy suspected nothing.

  But still, Arabel, or Bovril, or whatever name they gave him in the end, had promise. He had made it this far on his own. And after the Malta convoy message, what might he be capable of once they finally got him under their wing?

  It still was not clear if Arabel had been behind the report on the convoy to the besieged island. The Abwehr report had not said, putting it down to Kühlenthal’s ‘V-Mann 372’. It was one of the many points that would be covered over the coming days of questioning and interrogation. Bletchley had picked it up on 2 April, over three weeks previously. By then the decision had already been taken to bring Arabel over to Britain. In the meantime, however, while the would-be British agent waited in Lisbon for the territorial battles between MI5 and MI6 to be sorted, he was still sending messages to his Abwehr controller.

  That last one had created ripples – in more ways than one. There was, it said, a convoy of fifteen ships, including nine freighters, heading from Liverpool with relief supplies for Malta. Not only food, but war materiel including anti-aircraft ammunition and RAF personnel, were also on board.

  Previous aid convoys to Malta had sailed from Mediterranean ports with the loss of many ships, sunk by the Germans and Italians. This was the first such convoy reported to be sailing from Britain itself. The enemy responded to the intelligence handsomely. German U-boats were sent to ambush the convoy as it passed close to Gibraltar on its way into the Mediterranean, while Italian planes armed with torpedoes were amassed in Sardinia for later strikes.

  All to no avail. The convoy to Malta never appeared. The Germans were angry – they blamed the Italians. A great deal of war effort – man hours, fuel, supplies – had gone into the operation, with no result.

  For there had never been a Malta convoy. It was made up.

  Amazingly, no one on the German side blamed the intelligence or the agent who had supplied it. As far as the enemy were concerned, the convoy had existed; they had simply failed to find it. So whoever had sent that report – and there were still doubts about whether Arabel was behind it – had not only proved his credentials with the Germans, but had single-handedly had an important, if relatively minor, effect on the war itself.

  It had been enough to tip the balance in favour of those wanting to get Arabel to London. Even Cowgill gave in eventually. He could still claim it was his idea to bring him over, but no one from MI6 would be there for the reception.

  They finally reached Plymouth and Jock Horsfall pulled the car in behind the Mount Batten flying-boat terminal. Rooms had been booked at a nearby hotel where they could have dinner and spend the night before driving back to London the next morning.

  It was sunset when the launch finally brought the passengers over from the flying boat. Harris watched as a short Spanish man stepped on to British soil. He looked older than his thirty years – prematurely balding on top – although his small yellow-brown eyes had a keenness about them, mischievous almost. It was extraordinary that someone so unassuming and humble in appearance could have caused so much trouble, for both the Germans and the British.

  Harris stepped forward and held out his hand in greeting. Then spoke in perfect Spanish:

  ‘Bienvenido a Inglaterra, señor Pujol. Welcome to England. My name is Tomás Harris, and my colleague here –’ he used the false name they had agreed for Mills – ‘is Mr Grey. We will both be taking you to London.’

  Juan Pujol smiled politely at them. He had finally made it – in Britain at last, with the people he had been trying to work with for a year and a half. He shivered, and made a comment about the cold. Harris and Mills grinned. No, Harris said, this was not southern Europe. He would have a lot to get used to.

  Pujol chuckled with his characteristic laughter, like a ‘sly rabbit’.

  Days later, in London, when they had heard and been amazed by Juan Pujol’s story, Mills spoke to Harris.

  The code name Bovril did not fit. Besides, Pujol was their man now, he belonged to MI5. Mills proposed a new code name, one which suited him better. Pujol, he said, must be the ‘greatest actor in the world’ to have fooled so many people and survived. They should name him after that other great actor: Greta Garbo. A film of hers was showing, Two-Faced Woman, about a character living a double life. What could be better?

  Yes, it was ideal. Not only because of Pujol’s acting skills, but, Harris also knew, because of an intelligence and liveliness about the man. The Spanish word garbo had no direct translation into English, but it could mean ‘graceful’, or ‘panache’, with connotations of perfectionism and generosity.

  Mills had no Spanish, but he had found the perfect code name.

  PART TWO

  ‘One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead.’

  Oscar Wilde

  5

  Spain, 1912–39


  THE ORIGINAL BUILDING at 70 Carrer Muntaner was pulled down in the early 1980s and replaced by a modern block of flats, but most of the neighbouring structures from the end of the nineteenth century still stand, and the character of the street, in the heart of Barcelona’s modernist Eixample, remains virtually unchanged from when it was first conceived. It was and remains a residential and shopping district for the wealthy middle classes, Catalan merchants and traders. The Pujol family, owners of the Juan Pujol y Compañía textile-dyeing firm, celebrated for the quality of its black silk dyes, had made their home here.

  And it was here, on Valentine’s Day 1912, that Juan Pujol García was born.

  Or at least that was what he always said, and 14 February was the day that he celebrated his birthday. His birth certificate in the Barcelona civil record, however, tells a different story. There, his mother Mercedes registered his birth on 1 March 1912, stating that he had been born two days earlier, on 28 February (it was a leap year). The surnames that she gave her baby boy were García Guijarro – her own. Only four years later did Juan’s father legally adopt him, and his surname changed: Pujol from his father’s side; García from his mother’s, as is Spanish custom.

  For the first few years of his life, Juan’s parents were not married, and all four of their children were born out of wedlock. It was a curious, even scandalous, situation for a religious, middle-class family, particularly in such conservative times.

  The problem was that although he was in a relationship with Mercedes, Juan’s father was already married – to a woman called Teresa Llombart Puig. Teresa’s story with Pujol Sr did not end happily.

  It is not known what separated the couple. They had no children – perhaps that was a reason. Teresa was born around 1870. Before she turned forty her husband had started his relationship with Mercedes, a younger woman who worked for them as a cleaning lady. Mercedes gave birth to her first child by Pujol Sr – Joaquín, Juan’s elder brother – in 1908.

  At that point Juan Pujol Sr and Mercedes became, to all intents and purposes, ‘married’, living together and raising a family: Juan was their third child. There was no divorce at the time. Perhaps they erased Teresa from the story, pretending to their bourgeois neighbours that they had taken their vows.

  Teresa was still around, however. While Pujol Sr and his new family lived comfortably in one of the city’s better quarters, her lot was considerably worse. She was living in the Poblenou district, to the north-east of the port, not far from her husband’s factory. The area had been the centre of Barcelona’s industrial expansion from the end of the nineteenth century and had even been dubbed ‘the Manchester of Catalonia’. Yet as in Britain’s industrial north, living conditions were appalling. Teresa lived on the ground floor of a small building at Carrer Sant Pere IV 58 – today an abandoned former truck depot.

  It was here, at 2.00 in the afternoon on 10 August 1915, that Teresa died. Her death certificate gave cause of death as ‘mucomembraneous enteritis’, an acute inflammation of the gut producing colic and diarrhoea. There is no indication of how she became ill, but sanitation in the area at the time was minimal, resulting in numerous cases of typhoid and cholera – both illnesses that can cause acute enteritis. Thousands were dying from drinking dirty, bacteria-infected water – an epidemic in the second half of 1914 had infected over 9,000 people, killing around 2,000. Teresa may have been a victim of a similar outbreak. It is perhaps no coincidence that she died in August, when the summer heat made such cases more common. Her death was brought to the attention of the authorities by a man called Agustín Cádiz, described as a married carpenter who lived nearby on Carrer Mariano Aguiló.

  For Juan Pujol Sr, his estranged wife’s death removed a problem: he was now free, and less than three months later, on 3 November 1915, he and Mercedes wed at the Church of Los Angeles, a five-minute walk from their upmarket home. Now the process of legitimising their children could begin. Juan Pujol was three and a half years old.

  It seems apt for someone who would later play such an important role in history as a storyteller, moulding, turning and shaping the truth for great effect, that there should be uncertainty and subterfuge concerning his entry into the world. In spite of the religious and social mores of the time, his mother and father raised a family – for the first few years at least – without the official blessing of either Church or State. It showed bloody-mindedness and an ability to shape the world rather than be shaped by it – both attributes that characterised Pujol in later life.

  Pujol himself never mentioned the complications in his parents’ marital affairs. His autobiography portrays his father as an upstanding character: ‘the most honest, noble and disinterested man that I have ever known’. He was a role model, someone who taught Pujol the values of tolerance and non-aggression that he followed throughout his life. ‘He despised war, and bloody revolutions, scorning the despot, the authoritarian . . . So strong was his personality and so powerful his hold over me and my brother that neither of us ever belonged to a political party.’

  Later, during the most intense period of his adult life, Pujol would do much to live up to the ideals of liberalism instilled in him by his father.

  Despite their secret, the family was otherwise respectable and well-off: they never suffered the kinds of privations of the city’s poorer inhabitants. Politically and socially, however, it was a difficult time in Barcelona, with growing workers’ movements, social unrest and assassinations. The recently formed CNT anarchist trade union was engaged in frequent battles with gangs organised by company directors. During the worst period, between 1916 and 1923, 27 bosses, 27 managers and 229 workers were killed in the violence. One of Pujol’s earliest memories was of his father leaving for work in the mornings during these troubles, saying goodbye to his wife and each one of his children as though he might never come back.

  Mercedes, the mother, was more of a disciplinarian than Pujol Sr, instilling in her children the strict Catholic ideas that she had inherited from her own Andalusian family – Los Beatos as they had been known in Motril for their rigid adherence to Church doctrine. Yet despite this the young Juan was a difficult child, unruly, headstrong, whimsical, and he would frequently break all his own toys, as well as those of his brothers and sisters. His father may have tried to teach him the values of pacifism and tolerance, but by nature he was rebellious and combative.

  For a time he was sent with his elder brother to a Catholic boarding school in the town of Mataró, to the north of Barcelona, in an attempt to discipline him. It worked, to a degree, but his adolescence was marked by frequent radical changes of direction. He left school aged fifteen to become a blacksmith’s apprentice. After a matter of weeks he decided that he wanted to get a place at university studying philosophy and literature instead. There followed a period in which he read almost every book in his father’s ample library, fascinated by history and etymology. At this time the family moved house as their fortunes rose, first to Carrer de Septimania 21, then to a magnificent home in the same neighbourhood on Carrer de Homero. All the children received private French lessons three times a week with a tutor from Marseilles.

  In 1931, when he was nineteen, Pujol’s intense self-education was cut short by an acute case of appendicitis. The wound became infected after the operation and he came close to death, passing in and out of consciousness and suffering a high fever. His father held his hand through the night, weeping at the thought that he might lose his son.

  When Pujol eventually recovered some weeks later, he emerged into a changed country: during his illness the Spanish monarchy had fallen and a republic – the Second Republic – had been proclaimed in its place. Whether this was the cause of his next change of direction is unclear, but from philosophy he now decided that chicken farming was where his future lay. On finishing his studies in avicultura, he carried out his military service, being drafted in 1933 into a light artillery regiment where he learned to ride a horse, although only after several beatings from his command
ing officer.

  His father’s death from flu in January 1934 came as a severe blow, and seemed to presage a new phase in which the comforts of his middle-class life were exchanged for intense hardship and suffering. At first, the shift was gentle: his mother sold the family share in his father’s company to the other business partners; a transport company that Pujol set up with his brother soon folded, as did a chicken farm they established together. In later life almost every business that he set up – from cinemas to farms and hotels – ended in failure. Yet he was an impresario by nature, never happier than when engaged in a new project.

  More serious problems arose a couple of years later.

  The Civil War began in July 1936. Like many Spaniards, Pujol heard the news of a military coup over the radio, apparently starting in the Spanish territories in northern Morocco. He had plans for a trip with friends to the nearby Montseny mountains that hot day, but as the news seemed to get worse with each bulletin, and there was talk of barricades being erected in the streets and people being shot, he headed over to his fiancée Margarita’s house, also in the Eixample area, on Carrer Girona. Margarita’s parents were old family friends. Around them, neighbours were hanging white sheets from their balconies to show that they were peaceful and wanted no trouble, but soon events were to change everyone’s lives dramatically.

  At the start of the coup Barcelona, like most of the major cities except Seville, failed to fall into the hands of the rebel generals and remained under government control. Barcelona, however, quickly became a centre of a radical counter-coup movement. Anarchists and different left-wing groups took over: checkpoints were established in the streets, curfews imposed; people were shot for suspected sympathy with the military rebels. Overnight the city became a dangerous place.