Agent Zigzag

by Ben MacIntyre

  The safe house on Crespigny Road, Chapman’s unextraordinary home for three extraordinary months, was packed up. His wireless set was stacked away in a cupboard—he planned to tell von Gröning he had buried it—along with the fake ID cards, the cash, and the poison pill. He solemnly shook hands with Paul Backwell before climbing into the waiting Black Maria with Reed and Tooth, who would accompany him to Liverpool for the next stage. Robertson had told him: “Except in special circumstances63 we do not expect to hear from you, if at all, for a considerable time.” What Tar did not say, and both men knew, was that there was a strong likelihood, once he left British shores, that they would never hear from Zigzag again.

  It fell to Lieutenant Colonel Stephens to write the final report that sent Chapman on his way, and he rose to the occasion magnificently, pulling out all the literary stops. Tin Eye wrote with professional pride and frank admiration, in prose of the deepest purple.

  The story of many a spy64 is commonplace and drab. It would not pass muster in fiction. The subject is a failure in life. The motive is sordid. Fear is present. Patriotism is absent. Silence is not the equipment of a brave man, rather it is the reaction to a dread of consequence. High adventure just means nothing at all.

  The story of Chapman is different. In fiction it would be rejected as improbable. The subject is a crook, but as a crook he is by no means a failure. His career in crime has been progressive, from Army desertion to indecency, from women to blackmail, from robbery to the blowing of safes. Latterly his rewards have been large, and no doubt he despises himself for his petty beginnings. The man, essentially vain, has grown in stature and, in his own estimation, is something of a prince of the underworld. He has no scruples and will stop at nothing. He makes no bargain with society and money is a means to an end. Of fear, he knows nothing, and he certainly has a deep-rooted hatred of the Hun. In a word, adventure to Chapman is the breath of life. Given adventure, he has the courage to achieve the unbelievable. His very recklessness is his standby. Today he is a German parachute spy; tomorrow he will undertake a desperate hazard as an active double agent, the stake for which is his life. Without adventure, he would rebel; in the ultimate he will have recourse again to crime in search of the unusual. The risk is considerable, but so long as there is a chance of success I think the risk should be taken.

  For Chapman, only one thing is certain, the greater the adventure, the greater is the chance of success.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Stowaway Spy

  CAPTAIN REGINALD SANDERSON Kearon, master of the merchant ship MV City of Lancaster, had spent his war being shot at by German torpedoes. He had taken command of the MV Assyrian in 1940, only to have it sunk under him by a U-boat. Then he took the helm of the MV Belgravian, until that was also torpedoed. On both occasions, he had been the last man to leave his sinking ship.

  Kearon was one of thousands of unsung heroes of the Merchant Navy who continued to ply the oceans throughout the war transporting vital supplies. The merchant ships traveled in convoys, often undergunned and ill-defended. This was not like other forms of warfare: It was dirty, often boring, and enormously dangerous. The enemy was usually invisible.

  The three-thousand-ton City of Lancaster had been built by Palmers of Jarrow in 1924 as a coal ship; now she carried food, building supplies, munitions, and anything else needed to sustain the war effort, wherever the empire required it. Her thirty-man crew were mostly Liverpudlian Irishmen, hard men who worked their hearts out at sea and drank themselves insensible on shore. The Lancaster was as battle-scarred as her captain. She had evacuated twenty-five hundred people from Saint-Nazaire in 1940, and seen the ship alongside her bombed and sunk with all hands. She had been stalked by German U-boats and attacked by Heinkel bombers, and she had fought back with her 10-and 12-pounders, two antiaircraft guns, and a pair of machine guns, fore and aft. No one pretended it was a fair fight.

  A big, bluff Irishman born in Arklow on the coast of County Wicklow in 1905, Kearon looked like Neptune in uniform. His hair had gone gray, but the edges of his wide beard were still rust-red, as if corroded by salt spray. A strong mixture of seawater, rum, and rage ran in his veins. He was entirely fearless, beloved and feared by his crew in equal measure, and blessed by an almost mystical capacity for survival against the odds. Having spent three years as a floating target, and having had two ships sunk under him, this sea dog was longing to bite back.

  The City of Lancaster, bound for Freetown, Sierra Leone, via Lisbon, was at Liverpool docks taking on a cargo of pipes, mail, and parcels for British POWs when Captain Kearon was summoned to the shipping office on the quay. Waiting for him was a thin, slight man in civilian clothes with an inadequate mustache. He introduced himself as Major Ronald Reed (he had been promoted). Politely, but authoritatively, the little man explained that he worked for British intelligence. Captain Kearon, he said, would soon be taking on a new crew member, one Hugh Anson, as an assistant steward. This man was a double agent, performing a vital secret mission for the British government, and Kearon would be responsible for his well-being on board. In Lisbon, he would jump ship. The desertion would leave the City of Lancaster shorthanded, Reed said, but this was unavoidable. Kearon should report the incident as normal, just as he would for any other crew member. The crew should be told that Anson was a former criminal who had served five years in prison in Lewes, but who had been released early, with the help of the Prisoner’s Aid Society, on condition that he join either the Merchant Navy or the armed forces. His cover—as “a man who had a bad record1 but who it was thought had turned over a new leaf”—would help explain his lack of nautical experience, and when he vanished in Lisbon, it would simply be assumed that he had turned over an old leaf.

  Reed was grave: “From now on this man’s life2 is in your hands. It is absolutely essential that no word of his mission should become known to the crew.” Finally, he produced a large bulky envelope, tied with string, sealed with a blue seal, and stamped “OHMS,” On His Majesty’s Service. The package should be locked in the ship’s safe, and then handed to “Anson” on arrival in Lisbon. Inside was Chapman’s Colt revolver with a spare loaded chamber, fifty £1 notes, and a ration book and a clothing book made out in the name of Hugh Anson. There were also press clippings, describing an explosion at a factory in northern London.

  Back in his hotel room, Reed wrote that Captain Kearon “impressed me as being discreet.”3 Reginald Kearon, in truth, was thrilled to have a British spy on board his ship.

  Chapman and Tooth had checked in to the Washington Hotel. Reed was staying at the rather more comfortable Adelphi. Even in the secret world, the officer class had privileges, and it was safer that the three conspirators not be seen together, just in case anyone was watching.

  Hugh Anson was the name of the petty criminal who had been the driver of the Jelly Gang’s getaway car. In his cover story, Chapman would explain to the Germans that he had paid Anson £100 for all his identity cards, and had then substituted his own photograph for that of Anson, who agreed to “lie low”4 for two months before reporting the missing documents. Chapman would claim that he had obtained his seaman’s papers by bribing one Frani Daniels, a criminal contact at the shipping office. The real arrangements for shipping out Chapman had proved far more intricate. The MI5 counterfeiters had put together a “complete set of forged5 civilian papers,” including a National Service registration form, a National Health Insurance card, and an unemployment book. But obtaining the correct seaman’s papers was proving a “vast and complicated”6 business. Finally, with the help of a local MI5 operative named Hobbes, Reed decided to steal a selection card from the catering department of the Merchant Navy. Hobbes walked into the Liverpool shipping office pretending to be inspecting the fire precautions, and walked out with the necessary papers—which Reed then fraudulently filled out over a beer in the corner of the Flying Dutchman pub next door. “This course,7 though morally incorrect, was practically suitable,” Reed reported.

  T
hat evening was spent going over arrangements for communicating with Britain when and if Chapman gained access to a German radio. Reed decided that the best way to send simple messages was by means of a simple code embedded in Chapman’s “ham chat,”8 the little flourishes he had always added to his messages, notably his “laughing out” signs.

  The message QLF is a jocular sign meaning “please send with your left foot,” and 99 means something a little more insulting. If Chapman sent QLF, it would indicate that his German spymasters were “completely satisfied” if he sent 99, it would mean they were “suspicious.”9 More complex messages could be sent using the various combinations of the laughing sign:

  HU HU HU: No information to impart.

  HA HA HA: Nantes Abwehr unit is closing down.

  HI HA HU: I am going to Berlin.

  HA HU HI: I am going to Paris.

  HU HI HA: I am going to Angers.

  HE HE HE: I am going to America.

  HE HE HE HA: A group of Americans have gone to the USA and are operating there.

  “The ‘laughing out’ sign10 occurred throughout Zigzag’s traffic [and] it is not thought that any question will be raised by the enemy,” wrote Reed.

  If he gained unsupervised access to a wireless, he should send messages in the usual way but encoded on the word “DELIGHTFUL.” Chapman had been invited by the Germans to invent a code word for his first mission, and had come up with CONSTANTINOPLE. If, in the future, he was asked by the Germans to think up another code word, it was agreed that he would select POLITENESS. Unbeknownst to Chapman, Bletchley Park could already read any message he sent, but having the code word beforehand would make the lives of the codebreakers even simpler. “We shall not have11 the bother of having to attempt to solve his messages but will be able to do so immediately,” wrote Reed.

  Von Gröning had always passed on his copies of the Times to Chapman. When a message from Zigzag had been safely received, Reed would post a message in the personal columns of the newspaper, on either the Tuesday or Thursday after receipt, stating: “Mrs. West thanks12 the anonymous donor of the gift of £11.” The second digit of the number would describe the number of the message received. So if MI5 had picked up six messages, Mrs. West would thank her unknown benefactor for £46. With luck, the fictional Mrs. West (a small tribute to the housekeeper at Crespigny Road) should end up a wealthy woman.

  Finally, Reed and Chapman laid an “elephant trap.” Chapman was instructed to tell his Abwehr masters that before leaving Britain, he had made arrangements “that if any other members13 of the German secret service require assistance,” they could contact the safecracker Jimmy Hunt at the telephone number Gerrard 4850. When the phone was answered, the caller should say: “It is Lew Leibich14 speaking, and I would like to speak to Jimmy.” The number would be directly linked to a telephone on Ronnie Reed’s desk at B1A, who would arrange an appropriate reception committee.

  With a map of Lisbon, Reed and Chapman located the German safe house on the Rua São Mamede, and the German consulate. Reed also made Chapman memorize a Lisbon telephone number, to be called in case of emergency. Ralph Jarvis, the MI6 representative in Lisbon, had already been alerted that an important agent was en route. The Radio Security Service and Bletchley Park were instructed to keep a watch for any reference to Fritz in the Most Secret Sources.

  At the end of the evening, Chapman announced that he wished to write a farewell letter to Freda. Reed suggested he send it via Laurie Marshall, who would forward it. The letter was copied and duly sent on to Freda. The letter of adieu remains classified, but the covering letter to Marshall reads: “Goodbye for the present,15 I shall soon be back with you at 35—thank you for your kindness to me—please give or forward this letter to Freda.” This was not the tone of a man in fear for his life.

  The following day, Chapman presented himself at the Board of Trade office. The clerk accepted the forged paperwork without demur, merely remarking that the shipping company had sent another assistant steward to the City of Lancaster and clearly “did not know what they were doing.”16 Chapman was told to report to the ship and prepare to sail the following day. They returned to the hotel, where Tooth packed Chapman’s belongings, including two new white steward’s uniforms and fourteen sheets of what, to the naked eye, appeared to be plain white writing paper, and searched his clothing for anything that might betray him, just as Praetorius had done so many months before. Chapman then set off for the docks, Reed reported, “in the approved style17 with kitbag over his shoulder.”

  Tooth and Reed followed “at a very respectable distance.” Possibly the distance was too respectable, for “somehow or other, after trudging for a number of miles around the docks, Zigzag disappeared.” One moment he had been walking ahead, doing a very reasonable impression of a jolly jack-tar, and the next he had vanished. Reed wondered if Chapman had suddenly had second thoughts and absconded. With rising anxiety, they searched the docks but could find neither Chapman nor, infuriatingly, the City of Lancaster. Finally, they gave up, and began walking dejectedly back to the hotel. They had told Chapman to meet them at the Adelphi, but “some sort of feminine intuition” told Reed that his spy might just have returned to his own, less classy hotel: “Sure enough Zigzag was in the bar, with a prostitute.”

  They decided not to interrupt him, but tiptoed away, leaving him to finish his negotiations. From the Adelphi, they called the bar of the Washington and got Chapman on the line, who cheerfully reported that he had found the boat, left his kit on board, and been instructed to return the next morning at 8:00 a.m. “He did not wish to dine with us as he was ‘busy,’ ” Reed reported, delicately. They agreed to rendezvous in Reed’s room at the Adelphi at 9:00 p.m.

  Reed and Tooth dined at the hotel, and just before the appointed hour climbed the stairs to Reed’s suite. On opening the door, they found Chapman inside: “Zigzag had, in some way, managed to obtain entry and was reclining on the bed awaiting dinner which he had ordered on my telephone, together with a number of bottles of beer.” In the space of a few hours, Chapman had confirmed all the qualities that made him a great crook, a superb spy, and a most fickle man: He had written a love letter to the mother of his child, vanished, slept with a prostitute, broken into a locked room, and helped himself to room service at someone else’s expense. He had also, it emerged, stolen Reed’s gold-plated scissors and nail file, “which he had coveted for a time.” This was all as Young had once predicted: Chapman would do his duty, while merrily picking your pocket.

  Reed could not bring himself to be angry. Indeed, the incident deepened his affection for this strange young man he had known for all of eight weeks. “Zigzag is himself18 a most absorbing person. Reckless and impetuous, moody and sentimental, he becomes on acquaintance an extraordinarily likeable character. It is difficult for anyone who has been associated with him for any continuous period to describe him in an unbiased and dispassionate way. It was difficult to credit that the man had a despicable past. His crimes of burglary and fraud, his association with ‘moral degenerates’, and his description as a ‘dangerous criminal’ by Scotland Yard is difficult to reconcile with more recent behavior.”

  Chapman’s past was despicable; his recent actions had been almost heroic (with lapses); but his future remained quite unknowable. At the docks, Chapman waved, and headed up the gangplank of the City of Lancaster, leaving Reed to reflect: “The case of Zigzag19 has not yet ended. Indeed, time may well prove that it has only just begun.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Joli Albert

  ON MARCH 15, 1943, the City of Lancaster steamed out of the Mersey to join the convoy assembling in the Irish Sea, forty-three merchant vessels in all, escorted by three destroyers and four more lightly armed corvettes. The ships formed into lines, with the escorts on either side, ahead and astern, like sheepdogs, moving the flock forward, wary for predators. Hugh Anson, the new assistant steward, was told to find a berth with the gunners and then report to the captain’s cabin. As the
convoy sailed south, Chapman and Kearon held a hushed and hurried consultation. The captain, “fearing prying fingers,”1 offered to safeguard any of his passenger’s secret spy equipment, and was rather disappointed to be handed some ordinary sheets of writing paper. He locked them away in the safe, being careful not to get his fingerprints on them. Kearon explained that he would treat Chapman like any member of the crew, but in the course of the passage he would expect him to behave in an unruly fashion, since this would confirm his cover story as a “bad lad”2 and help explain his disappearance when they reached Lisbon.

  If they reached Lisbon. That afternoon, a lone German bomber streaked out of the sky and released its payload, narrowly missing a five-thousand-ton cargo boat carrying explosives and ammunition. High above, the Focke-Wulf reconnaissance planes circled. “Nervous expectancy3 showed on every face,” and Chapman noticed that the crew slept fully clothed. Not that he had time to notice much, as Snellgrove, the chief steward, put him to work scrubbing out, serving meals, and generally doing the dogsbody work expected of a rookie. Chapman complained, loudly. Snellgrove noted that “Anson was seasick4 most of the time and quite useless at his job.”

  That night, as the convoy headed into the Atlantic, Chapman was woken from a queasy sleep by the ship’s alarm. On deck, still fumbling with his life belt, he was sent staggering by a huge explosion, followed by another. Two merchant ships and a tanker were burning furiously, and by the light of the flames Chapman could make out the dark shapes of the other ships. A torpedo had struck the ammunition ship. Captain Kearon shut down the engines, and starbursts lit up the sky. The U-boats, it seemed, had slunk away again. The windows of the ship’s bridge had been blown out, and glass lay around the deck. There was no further attack that night, but Chapman could not sleep.