Chapman dispatched a triumphant wireless message: FFFFF WALTER BLOWN15 IN TWO PLACES. That night, an exultant Stephan von Gröning ordered “champagne all round”16 at La Bretonnière. A reply duly arrived: CONGRATULATIONS17 ON GOOD RESULT OF WALTER. PLEASE SEND INFO ON NEWSPAPER REPORTS. WILL DO ALL WE CAN ARRANGE YOUR RETURN. STATE PROPOSITIONS.
The Daily Express
Monday, February 1, 1943
FIRST EDITION
FACTORY EXPLOSION
Investigations are being made into the cause of an explosion at a factory on the outskirts of London. It is understood that the damage was slight and there was no loss of life.
The very terseness of the newspaper report was designed to imply there was more to the story. The first edition was printed at 5:00 a.m., and copies were dispatched, as usual, to Lisbon.
By a pleasing coincidence, the day after the bombing, Hermann Göring, who had boasted that no enemy aircraft could fly unscathed over Berlin, was due to address a military parade in the German capital. Before he had begun speaking, Mosquitoes from 105 Squadron droned overhead and began pounding the city, disrupting the procession and enraging the head of the Luftwaffe. The same afternoon, Mosquitoes from 139 Squadron inflicted similar indignity on a parade being addressed by Dr. Goebbels. Once more, the Mosquito had demonstrated its worth. With what satisfaction the German High Command must have received the news that the Mosquito factory was now in ruins, thanks to a German sabotage agent.
The tone of von Gröning’s congratulatory message to Agent Fritz suggested that the Abwehr was in no hurry to bring him back, given the excellent results achieved so far. MI5, however, wanted to return Chapman to France as soon as possible, before the police found out that they were sheltering a known criminal. As Tar remarked: “The Security Service18 is, as matters stand, compounding two felonies at least, and a great many more which it believes to have been committed.” Chapman, buoyed with newfound confidence, was just as keen to get to work, either as a spy, a saboteur, or an assassin.
Chapman’s offer to kill Hitler was rejected, without fanfare or explanation. MI5’s files are suspiciously silent on the subject. Although the proposition must have been debated at the highest levels, in the declassified documents there remains no trace of this. The official report on the Zigzag case describes in detail Chapman’s proposal to blow up the Führer, but the passage immediately following—which presumably records the response to the offer—has been blanked out by MI5’s internal censor.*2 Perhaps the veto came from Churchill himself. In May 1942, British-trained Czech partisans had killed Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler’s potential successor and the head of Reich security, but the hideous wave of reprisals that followed had persuaded the British cabinet to rule out further assassination attempts. Perhaps Chapman was too loose a cannon to be fired at such a moving target. It is equally possible that Chapman, now he had discovered love and fatherhood, was no longer so keen “to depart in a blaze of glory.”19
Reed believed that von Gröning’s promise to send Chapman to a Nazi rally had been “vague.”20 On the contrary, it had been most specific. Despite his own reservations about Hitler, von Gröning had responded enthusiastically to the idea of placing Chapman in close proximity to the Führer, even if that meant disguising him as a German officer. This raises another, intriguing possibility. Von Gröning, like many members of the Abwehr, was fundamentally opposed to the Nazi regime. Some Abwehr officers had been plotting to bring down Hitler since 1938, and the July plot to assassinate the Führer the following year would lead to the abolition of the Abwehr and the execution of Canaris himself. Had von Gröning seen in Chapman a potential tool for assassinating Hitler? Did the German aristocrat himself cherish an ambition “to be immortalised21 in history books for all time”? Had he divined that his prize spy, for all his apparent commitment, might have an ulterior motive for wanting to get alongside the Nazi leader? Were Chapman and von Gröning secretly working together to this end? The answers will probably never be known, because British intelligence quietly quashed the idea. John Masterman seldom made, and almost never admitted, a mistake. Yet after the war he still wondered if a grave error had been made when MI5 “declined to encourage”22 Chapman’s proposal to kill Hitler: “Perhaps we missed an opportunity,23 for Zigzag was an enterprising and practical criminal.”
Within MI5, debate still raged over what to make of Chapman. Reed, Masterman, and Robertson were certain that he was “frank and straightforward,”24 though mercurial. “His sincerity can hardly be doubted,” insisted Reed. The Cockney scholarship boy from the tenements of King’s Cross understood Chapman’s harsh background and could speak his language. Others were unconvinced. Captain Shanks, one of Reed’s brother case officers, decided Chapman was a fraud, “a man whose stock-in-trade25 is the attractive, suave and agreeable manner, a superficial elegance…He gives the impression of the rolling stone who has gathered no moss, but acquired a certain amount of polish.” Shanks thought it “possible” that Chapman’s character contained “a spark of decency,”26 but he was doubtful. Here was a profiteer and a pirate who had agreed to work for the Germans out of pure self-interest, and was now offering his services to Britain with the same base motives. “Chapman is no fool, he may have decided to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. It is difficult to accept that a man who has all his life been an enemy of society should be actuated by any patriotic sentiments.” Shanks conceded that “whether a patriot or opportunist, Chapman has undoubtedly done this country a service,” but he could not conceal his distaste.
Such observations were partly true, but they also reflected the gulf between the predominantly upper-class and well-educated doyens of the secret services and the working-class, unschooled crook with whom they were now in league. It had not escaped the notice of the more snobbish case officers that Chapman tried to cover up his Northern accent with “a refined manner27 of speaking,” but that he struggled to sound educated. “His natural and instinctive speech28 is at times ungrammatical,” noted one interrogator. “But I think it is to be admired that a man of his background and character should have acquired even the rudimentary culture which he has.”
In no instance was the social gulf wider than between Eddie Chapman and Victor, Lord Rothschild—peer, millionaire, scientist, and the head of B1C, MI5’s explosives and sabotage section.
Lord Rothschild was the product of Eton, Cambridge, the clubs of Mayfair, and the topmost drawer of British society. He had an inherited title, everything money could buy, and an IQ of 184. Malcolm Muggeridge, the journalist and writer who worked in intelligence during the war, found him unbearable, suffused with “the bogus certainties of science,29 and the equally bogus respect, accorded and expected, on account of his wealth and famous name.” But he was also oddly shy, and entirely fearless, with a boyish love of explosions. As head of B1C (with a staff of exactly two secretaries) Rothschild’s role was antisabotage: to identify parts of Britain’s war effort vulnerable to attack, and to defeat German sabotage plots. One of his tasks was to ensure that Winston Churchill’s cigars were not booby-trapped. Another, far less amusing, was to dismantle German bombs: explosives concealed in coat hangers, bombs disguised as horse droppings, thermos flasks packed with TNT. This he did with astonishing coolness in a private laboratory paid for out of his own capacious pocket. “When one takes a fuse30 to pieces,” he wrote, “there is no time to be frightened.” Most people were happy to take Lord Rothschild’s word for this.
As a trained German sabotage agent, Chapman obviously needed to be dismantled and examined by Lord Rothschild as carefully as any bomb. They met twice, talked for hours, and got on famously: the crook and the peer, two men with nothing in common save a shared interest in loud bangs. They discussed booby traps and incendiary devices, coal bombs, train bombs, and the various ways to scuttle a ship. Chapman explained German techniques for making fuses out of wristwatches, ink bottles, and electric bulb filaments. He showed Lord Rothschild how to conceal a rail bomb with a butte
rfly, how to hide dynamite in blocks of marzipan, and how to make a detonator from a patented stomach medicine called Urotropin.
Rothschild absorbed it all with astonishment and admiration: “I think it’s terrific31 what you’ve kept in your mind. It’s a hell of a sweat committing things to memory.”
“I’ve had quite a lot of experience of setting these things,” Chapman replied.
“Of course you knew a certain amount about this business before, didn’t you?”
“I’ve had quite a little experience getting into places.”
“Are you an expert on electrical matters?”
“Not an expert, but I did start my hectic career as an electrical engineer.”
“The trouble about you is that you’re too good at this sort of thing…I mean the average chap who presumably the Germans would get hold of wouldn’t be so skilled with his fingers as you are.”
And thus they burbled on, delighting in one another’s expertise, a highly trained scientist and an equally well-trained burglar.
“How do you open a safe then?” asked Lord Rothschild.
“Well, you stick the dynamite in the keyhole and you don’t damage the safe, only sometimes you put a little too much in and blow the safe door up, but other times you’re lucky and the safe just comes open.”
Thus the scion of a great banking dynasty learned how to rob a bank.
When the conversation turned to the faked sabotage of the De Havilland factory, Rothschild grew wistful. “I’d like to have done it with you,” His Lordship sighed. “It would have been fun wouldn’t it?”
When they had finished with the past, they turned to the future.
“What are you going to do when you go back?” Rothschild asked.
“Well, I’m rather waiting for suggestions. I mean if I can be of any help, I want to do everything I can to assist.”
Lord Rothschild had a suggestion: He would like to get his hands on some German bombs, detonators, and other gizmos. “I think they ought to provide us with a little equipment.”
“Well, what would you like?”
“Some of their gadgets. If you do ever think of paying us a visit again, we’d rather like to have some German equipment instead of our own, you know. It’s more interesting in some ways, isn’t it?”
When Ronnie Reed appeared, in the middle of a discussion about how to make a bomb out of a piece of coal, Lord Rothschild turned to him with all the enthusiasm of a child: “We were just saying that we two would rather like to do a little show together—blow something up.”
Finally, with reluctance, Rothschild wound up an interrogation that reads like a chat between two old friends with a shared hobby. “We’ve been gassing away for a hell of a long time,” he said happily.
Chapman rose and shook hands with the chubby, beaming peer he knew as “Mr. Fisher.” “Well, many thanks, goodbye,” said His Lordship. “And good luck in case I don’t see you again before you go off on one of your trips.” He might have been sending Chapman off on a jolly holiday, instead of a mission into the heart of Nazi Germany.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Greater the Adventure
COLONEL TAR ROBERTSON came in person to congratulate Chapman on the success of the fake sabotage operation. They sat in the front room of 35 Crespigny Road, while Backwell and Tooth busied themselves in the kitchen, and Freda took Diane for a walk, again.
“I consider you1 to be a very brave man,” Tar declared. “Especially in view of the fact that you are prepared to go back to France and carry on working for us.” Of the many spies that had passed through Camp 020, only a “few, a very few,”2 could be considered genuinely stouthearted. Chapman, he said, was the bravest so far.
Tar then set out the broad lines of his mission. Once he had learned his cover story, he would be returning to occupied France as a long-term counterintelligence agent with the principal aim of acquiring information about the Abwehr. He should accept any mission offered to him by the Germans, and then contact Allied intelligence as opportunities arose. Chapman would not be provided with a wireless, since this could too easily lead to his exposure, and nor would he be put in contact with British agents operating in France, being “far too valuable3 to risk by any such link-ups.” Arrangements would be made to enable him to pass on messages, but he should not attempt to communicate, unless he had information of the highest urgency, until contact was safely reestablished.
“I am not at all keen4 for you to take any action in France which might get you into trouble with the German authorities, and I am most anxious for you not to undertake any wild sabotage enterprises,” Robertson declared. Killing Hitler was not on the agenda.
Before Tar could continue, Chapman raised a question that had been troubling him since his conversation with Lord Rothschild. If he returned with an accomplice—Leo, say, or Wojch—“people for whom5 he had a certain liking,” then presumably he would be expected to hand them over to the police on arrival, “knowing that in doing so these people would be sentenced to death.” He was not sure he could do that. He had never betrayed an accomplice yet. Tar responded that although this was a matter for the law, he was “pretty certain that we would take every possible step to see that his wishes were granted.” Chapman would not have to deliver his friends to the hangman.
Tar resumed: “We are preparing a cover story as near to the truth as possible so that if you are cross-examined in detail by the Germans, you need only tell them the truth.” The chief of Double Cross had studied German interrogation techniques; he knew the dangers Chapman would be facing, and he had even drawn up a checklist of ways to withstand the pressure: “Always speak slowly,6 this enables hesitation to be covered when necessary; create the impression of being vague; do not appear to be observant; give the impression of being bewildered, frightened or stupid; feign drunkenness or tiredness long before they actually occur.” Chapman might well face physical torture, drugs, or anesthetic, Tar warned, but German interrogators generally preferred to get results by “procuring mental breakdown7…by making the witness uncertain, uncomfortable, ridiculous or embarrassed, by stripping him naked or dressing him in women’s underwear, making him stand facing the wall, making him sit on a three-legged chair so that it is a constant effort to keep his balance.” Chapman would probably face two interrogators: “one with a brutal manner,8 the other suave.” Above all, he should stick to his cover story, and never tell an unnecessary lie.
For all his expert advice, Robertson also knew that if Chapman fell into the hands of the Gestapo, and they chose to disbelieve him, they would break him. And then they would kill him.
The first task was to get Chapman back behind enemy lines, but the Abwehr seemed in no hurry to remove him. Despite Chapman’s request to be picked up, the Most Secret Sources revealed that the matter was not even being discussed across the Channel. In response to the request for “propositions,” Chapman sent a message: FFFFF PICK UP BY9 SUBMARINE OR SPEEDBOAT. WILL FIND SUITABLE POINT ON COAST. TRYING TO GET SHIPS PAPERS. SEE BACK PAGE EXPRESS FEB 1.
The response, a few days later, was blunt: IMPOSSIBLE PICK YOU UP10 BY SUBMARINE. Instead, it said, Chapman must return by the “normal” way11—in other words, by ship to Lisbon. This had always been von Gröning’s preferred route, but there was nothing normal about booking a passage to neutral Portugal in the middle of a war. “The suggestion was absurd,”12 said Reed, “for Zigzag, being in the possession only of a poor identity card, aged 28 and having no business whatsoever, could not possibly go as a passenger.” The Germans probably knew this, and the suggestion was merely a ruse to keep him profitably in place. It was clear, said Reed, that “any attempt to return13 to occupied territory would have to be made by Zigzag alone.” To Chapman’s way of thinking, the refusal to send a U-boat was evidence that his German bosses were “not over-anxious to pay him14 the £15,000 they had promised.”
Masterman believed there was a chance the Germans might eventually send a submarine but was “not prepared
to offer15 any odds,” and trying to keep Chapman out of trouble while awaiting that distant possibility was an “unenviable and practically impossible16 task.” Chapman must make his own way to Lisbon, with the help of MI5. Reed asked an MI5 agent in Liverpool to find out how a man might be shipped, under a false identity, as a crewman aboard a British merchant vessel sailing to Portugal. The agent reported that such a scheme was feasible, “provided the man17 could look and behave like a seaman.”
While Reed began planning Zigzag’s departure, Chapman made his own preparations. A handwritten note duly arrived on Tar’s desk under the heading “Points I would like18 to have done.” It was his last will and testament. “The Germans have given me a contract for £15,000,” he wrote:
this contract is at present in Berlin. I am to be given the money on my return to France. If anything happens to me I want the things which I have arranged for my daughter Dianne [sic] Chapman to be carried on—for this I appoint two of my friends—Allan and Laurie [Tooth and Marshall] to see [that] what I want doing is carried out. Freda Stevenson is to divide the money equally between herself and daughter. If it is not possible for me to get the money out of the country, then I hope that when the Allies enter Germany they will make the Germans pay up “Quoi meme.” This I have explained to Ronny [Reed]. In return I offer to do my best and obey any instructions given to me.
Some £350 had already been made over to Chapman from the money he had brought from France; from this, he asked that Freda be paid a regular weekly stipend of £5. When the money ran out, he hoped that MI5 would continue to pay the money until he was “in a position to repay19 and continue the payments.” If he came by additional cash in France, he would try to channel the money back to Freda via a watchmaker he knew in Nantes who made regular trips to neutral Switzerland, whence money could be transferred to Britain.
Agent Zigzag Page 18