It was Tar who had pointed out that simply capturing, executing, or interning enemy spies, however satisfying as an act of war, offered no long-term benefit. There was nothing tenderhearted in Tar’s desire to preserve German spies from the gallows: this was hard-eyed calculation. The questions asked of spies by their German spymasters offered useful clues to what the Abwehr did not know; if the Germans believed they had a functioning network of spies in Britain, they might feel it unnecessary to send more; if the Abwehr thought its spies were alive, at liberty, and functioning well, it would open up possibilities for dialogue and deception. A live spy was more useful than a dead one, though a lot more trouble. Section B1A was launched, a new subsection of Liddell’s B Section with Tar Robertson at the helm.
The first spies selected as double agents proved to be duds. Georges Graf (code-named, punningly, “Giraffe”) was a Czechoslovak citizen who had served in the French army before being dispatched to Britain by the Abwehr. Popov had been given his name by von Karsthoff, so the Germans obviously trusted him, and Popov’s willingness to pass his name on to the British, unaware that Graf had already been turned, was proof that he was playing straight. Kurt Goose (code-named “Gander,” naturally) landed by parachute in October with only a transmitting wireless; unable to receive messages from his handlers, he was of limited use, and the Gander case was swiftly wound up, as was Giraffe. Of greater interest were two Scandinavians who had trained together in the Hamburg Abwehr station: Gösta Caroli, a Swedish journalist who had lost a fortune in an Uppsala silver fox farm, and Wulf Schmidt, a Danish fascist. Caroli parachuted into the Northamptonshire countryside on the night of September 6, 1940, landed badly, and staggered into a ditch to try to sleep off his concussion; a farmhand spotted his feet sticking out of a hedge. He was carrying a radio transmitter, two hundred pounds, and a loaded pistol. Schmidt landed two weeks later, sprained an ankle, limped into the Cambridgeshire village of Willingham in a natty blue suit but with an unmistakable foreign accent, and was promptly arrested.
Though a “fanatical Nazi” in the view of Tin-eye Stephens, Caroli agreed to work as a double agent if Schmidt’s life was spared. With cruel but effective psychological manipulation, Schmidt was told that his friend had betrayed him; enraged, he spilled the beans and agreed to change sides. Caroli was given the code name “Summer,” but the Swede seems to have had second thoughts. One evening, in his safe house in Hinxton, near Cambridge, Caroli crept up behind his minder while he was playing solitaire and tried to throttle him with a piece of rope. When this failed, he apologized, tied the man to a chair, and ran off with a can of sardines, a pineapple, and a large canvas canoe. He then stole a motorcycle and motored, very slowly, toward the coast with the canoe balanced on his head. He intended to paddle to Holland. A roadman reported to police that a man with a canoe had fallen off his motorcycle on Pampisford Road, and “he had helped the man throw the canoe over a hedge.” Caroli was arrested outside Ely. Clearly unreliable, the Swede was declared unfit for double-agent work and imprisoned for the rest of the war. After initial resistance, Schmidt proved much more cooperative and was given the code name “Tate” because Robertson thought he looked like the music-hall comedian Harry Tate. He would prove to be the longest-serving double agent of them all.
The handling of double agents, Tar concluded, was going to require considerable subtlety: “The double agent is a tricky customer and needs the most careful supervision. His every mood has to be watched.” These erratic characters showed an alarming propensity to swap sides. If any of them managed to break away and make contact with the Germans, Robertson reflected, this could “blow our whole show.” If the Germans invaded and there was a danger the double agents might fall into enemy hands, “they will be liquidated forcibly.” Robertson was becoming fond of his brood of double agents. But he would not hesitate to kill them if he had to.
This, then, was the newly formed club into which Dusko Popov was welcomed by a smiling Tar Robertson in the lobby of the Savoy Hotel. The new double agent had already been given the code name “Skoot,” a play on his name carrying the hint that Popov might “pop off,” or scoot, at any moment. (Under wartime rules, a spy’s code name, or nom de guerre, should contain no hint of his or her identity. Robertson joyously and consistently ignored this directive and established his own rule: every spy name must contain a joke, a pun, a hint, or a nudge.) Tar had already learned enough about his new recruit’s mode of life to know that a cell at Camp 020 and a grilling from Tin-eye Stephens were neither necessary nor advisable. Instead, Popov was lodged in a comfortable room at the Savoy, where Robertson and his colleagues interrogated him on his story: his recruitment by Johnny Jebsen, the meeting with Müntzinger, his encounter with the suave, hairy-handed von Karsthoff in Lisbon, his questionnaire, and his instructions for making secret ink.
Popov struck his interrogators as open and honest, and his story was corroborated by information from Most Secret Sources. He made no monetary demands and seemed to want to work as a double agent for the British out of a combination of anti-Nazi conviction and a thirst for adventure. Tar was impressed. “I have a strong feeling we are on to something good.” As a businessman from a neutral country, Popov could travel freely between London and Lisbon and maintain direct, personal contact with his German handler. The Germans seemed “absolutely obsessed with the idea that he has a wide circle of friends and business connections in England,” even though he knew virtually nobody in the country. “It will be necessary to supply him with the names of a number of supposed friends.”
After four days in his company, Tar was convinced that the young Serb with the carefree attitude was playing straight and prepared to risk his life. “Skoot left an exceedingly favourable first impression upon all of us. His manner was absolutely frank and we all considered without question that he was telling the truth.” A token of appreciation was in order, and Tar knew exactly what sort of reward Skoot would enjoy: on Christmas Eve 1940, MI5 laid on the most extravagant party that bomb-battered London could provide.
Courtnay Young, a junior officer in B Section, was appointed Popov’s carousing partner. They began by consuming a substantial lunch with Robertson at Quaglino’s restaurant. The remainder of the afternoon was spent playing billiards at the Lansdowne Club, with plenty of beer. In the early evening they drank sherry at the Universities’ Club, before heading back to the Savoy for dinner. Young then suggested that they go dancing at the Suivi Club, where they met two attractive young women who danced with them all night. These, too, had been furnished by MI5. Skoot “was obviously pleased by the interest shown by the two girls,” reported Young, who had some difficulty keeping up with the pace of Popov’s revelry. “He enjoyed himself thoroughly [and] took part in the usual Christmas bonhomous rioting, well lubricated with champagne.” In the early hours, Popov and his minder staggered back to the Savoy, “both viewing things through slightly rose-tinted spectacles.”
To retain German confidence, Agent Skoot would need to feed his handlers some true but harmless information—known in spy jargon as chicken feed, filling and substantial but lacking in real nourishment. He would also need a convincing cover story. For this, Tar turned to Ewen Montagu, an officer in naval intelligence who would later devise Operation Mincemeat. Montagu was rich, well connected, and a keen yachtsman—just the sort of person that the Germans would expect Dusko Popov to befriend. They met in the bar of the Savoy, where Montagu handed over a batch of true, low-level information on naval matters that could be passed to the Germans without danger and some minor untruths, including the suggestion that British merchant convoys would be accompanied by at least one submarine in the future. In a small way, that might give the U-boat wolf packs pause for thought. Before they parted, Montagu handed Popov a handwritten note to show to the Germans as proof that he had indeed met this friendly and indiscreet naval officer. “I much enjoyed meeting you,” wrote Montagu. “It is so nice at these troubled times to meet another who is as mad as I am about
sailing.” In response to the question of which British figures were opposed to Churchill, he was told to cite Lords Brocket, Lymington, and Londonderry as “definitely members of the party that would be prepared to accept peace terms with Germany.” The three peers were widely suspected of pro-German sympathies, and there could be no harm in confirming what the Germans must already know.
Montagu was captivated by Popov: “I found him a most charming person and would be most surprised if he is not playing straight with us,” he told Tar. “I hope that his having met me and having laid the foundation for further information will satisfy his employers. I should have thought it ought to be enough to show for a first visit to this country.”
January 2, 1941, saw the formation of the Twenty or XX Committee to oversee the Double Cross system, the first and only government body named with a Roman numerical pun. The committee was formed to coordinate the work of double agents and supply these agents with a stream of chicken feed to build up the credibility of the spies. John Masterman, an Oxford history don, part-time detective novelist, and sportsman, was appointed chairman of the Twenty Committee, which included directors of intelligence for the army, navy, and RAF and representatives of MI5, MI6, Home Forces, and Home Defence. While Robertson and the case officers of B1A would be responsible for the day-to-day running of the double agents, the Twenty Committee would manage overall strategy and cook up a diet of harmless truths, half-truths, and uncheckable untruths to feed to the enemy. The committee met, at MI5 headquarters in 58 St James’s Street, every Thursday afternoon for the rest of the war. “Giraffe’s case died chiefly through lack of nourishment,” in Masterman’s opinion. No double agent would ever go hungry again.
The Twenty Committee was referred to by its members as “the Club,” and Masterman organized it with a particular sort of club in mind: a cricket club. “Running a team of double agents is very like running a club cricket side,” he wrote, and as a first-class cricketer himself, he approached the task exactly as if he were assembling “a thoroughly well-trained and trustworthy team” of cricketers. Masterman was a cold fish, apparently without romantic feelings for either sex. But cricket was different. “Cricket was my first and most enduring passion,” he wrote. He thought of espionage in terms of stumpings, no-balls, innings, and over rates and of spies as “players,” some of whom “required a good deal of net practice before they were really fit to play in a match.” The relationship between cricket (that most English of sports) and spying (at which the British have always excelled) is deep rooted and unique. Something about the game attracts the sort of mind also drawn to the secret worlds of intelligence and counterintelligence—a complex test of brain and brawn, a game of honor interwoven with trickery, played with ruthless good manners and dependent on minute gradations of physics and psychology, with tea breaks. Some of the most notable British spies have been cricketers or cricket enthusiasts. Hitler played cricket, but only once. In 1930 it was claimed that, having seen British POWs playing in southern Germany during the First World War, the Nazi party leader asked to be “initiated into the mysteries of our national game.” A match was played against Hitler’s team, after which he declared that the rules should be altered by the “withdrawal of the use of pads” and using a “bigger and harder ball.” Hitler could not understand the subtlety of a game like cricket; he thought only in terms of speed, spectacle, violence. Cricket was the ideal sport on which to model an organization bent on stumping the Führer.
Tar Robertson was no mean cricketer himself—a left-arm spinner whose specialty was a “cunningly spun, deceptively slow ball.” As Tar assembled his team, Masterman was already imagining a time when they would be “ready to take the field for what might be a decisive match” against German intelligence. “The prime difficulty was that we never knew the date when this decisive match would take place.” It would be many months before the Double Cross players were ready to compete, but Masterman knew that in Dusko Popov he had already found a singularly talented opening batsman.
On the day the Twenty Committee was born, Tar took his new protégé to lunch and rehearsed, in detail, the story he was to tell the Germans. Twenty-four hours later, Skoot was on a plane back to Lisbon. “We have in him a new agent of high quality,” Tar reported, confident that the sheer force of Popov’s personality would protect him. If Tar was right, then Agent Skoot might help win the war; if not, then Dusko Popov was already as good as dead.
3. Roman and the Cat
Roman Czerniawski, the diminutive Polish spy, parachuted back into occupied France at dawn on November 8, 1941. He landed in a melon field, in the rain, not far from Tours. As he headed back to Paris on an overcrowded bus, wearing a beret and raincoat, he reflected: “I wonder if anybody here could imagine that I had my dinner in England.”
Safely back among his family of spies, Czerniawski announced that a celebration was in order. The sixteenth of November would mark the first anniversary of the Interallié network, and there was much to be proud of: some fifty agents, each with two or three subagents, had so far produced no less than ninety-seven reports, furnishing the British with “a complete picture of the German Order of Battle.”
The leaders of the network assembled at the Montmartre flat—Roman Czerniawski, Mathilde Carré, Renée Borni, and Maurice Wlodarczyk, a former Polish naval radio operator who worked the transmitter. They ate sandwiches and sipped the black-market champagne Czerniawski had managed to scrounge. At 8:00 p.m., they gathered around the wireless to listen to the BBC. Each section head of the Interallié had instructions to tune in. At eight fifteen, the BBC announcer played a snatch of patriotic French music and then intoned: “Many happy returns to our family in France on the occasion of their anniversary.” They clinked glasses. Maurice sent a wireless message to London: “AGAINST THE GERMANS ALWAYS AND IN EVERY WAY. VIVE LA LIBERTÉ!”
The team drifted away. Czerniawski, a little tipsy, reflected that their underground work was taking its toll: Mathilde in particular was “overworked and was obviously tired.” As cofounder of the network, she seemed irked that Czerniawski had received a medal, the Virtuti Militari, while her work was barely acknowledged. The next night, Czerniawski and Renée Borni dined in their favorite restaurant. He asked the band to play “Gloomy Sunday,” also known as “The Hungarian Suicide Song,” a hit that year for Billie Holiday. “Why did you ask for that?” asked Renée. “It’s so sad.” In the rainy street, as they were walking home, Czerniawski noticed a man in a raincoat, his face obscured by an umbrella. He tried to place the half-remembered face. “I must be tired,” he thought.
Czerniawski was in deep sleep when a gunshot went off and the Gestapo burst into his bedroom. Renée screamed. “The light was switched on and in front of me I saw the man in the mackintosh and beret with a revolver in his hand.” Now he recognized him: Hugo Bleicher, the most feared German counterintelligence officer in Paris. It was an “intelligent face,” Roman reflected, with eyes that were “sharp, but not violent.” He was bundled into a waiting car and driven directly to the Hôtel Edward VII, headquarters of the secret military police. “If only someone could warn Mathilde,” Roman thought.
When Mathilde Carré got home from her early-morning walk, she saw, without immediately comprehending, that her door was splintered, hanging off its hinges. At the same moment, a burly Gestapo officer appeared at her elbow. She felt oddly calm as he led her away. “It was a great gamble and today I have lost. But I’m a good gambler,” Mathilde reflected.
The Interallié network, so painstakingly assembled, had been torn apart in days, destroyed from within because of “an ordinary denunciation dictated by personal spite.”
Hugo Keiffer, a former airman with a reputation as a “wide boy” or chancer, had been responsible for smuggling messages into France from Britain on the Normandy fishing boats. One of his own informants had ratted on him, a certain Madame Denbié, because, it was said, he had refused to sleep with her. Under torture, Keiffer had revealed the name of his co
ntact in the network, a Pole named Krotki, who in turn had directed the Gestapo to the flat in Montmartre. When Bleicher burst into Roman Czerniawski’s bedroom, he did not even know the name of the man he was arresting.
Mathilde Carré was also brought to the Hôtel Edward VII and cracked at once. “I was like an animal caught in the headlights,” she recalled. Hugo Bleicher offered her a deal. Other senior members of the network had already confessed, he lied, and implicated her. “You have committed enough crimes to be shot several times over.” He offered her the choice between collaboration and death, warning: “If you double-cross me you will be shot immediately without trial.” He pushed a cup of ersatz coffee toward her across the desk. If she cooperated, he would pay her six thousand francs a month. “Great Britain makes other people work hard for her, and doesn’t even pay them decently,” he added sourly. In the First World War, Bleicher had been sent on an espionage mission across the lines dressed in British uniform and had been captured. A prisoner for two years, he claimed he had been treated “inhumanely” by his British captors, “not only with handcuffs on his wrists but manacles on his ankles.” Bleicher “loathed Britain.”
It took Mathilde just ten minutes to accept Hugo Bleicher as her new master. She would look back on this decision as “the greatest act of cowardice of my life.” Yet it had been a “purely animal” reaction prompted by survival instinct: “Winning Bleicher’s confidence seemed the surest means of one day being able to escape.” That morning, Mathilde had a prearranged meeting with an agent at the Pam Pam restaurant. Bleicher told her to keep the rendezvous: “You must behave normally. Your life and liberty depend on it.” The agent was arrested as he entered the café.
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