Czerniawski was eagerly cooperative and happily resumed a life of full-time espionage. Unlike so many of the spies sent to Britain, Brutus was a professional military observer. His first reports gave details of the Polish armed forces in Britain (which the Germans already knew) and political attitudes within the Polish community. After a month, he visited Scotland and sent a description of military deployments in the north that the Germans hailed as “exceedingly good.” This was followed by a “lengthy report on the south coast.” These field trips followed a pattern: Czerniawski, accompanied by his case officer (initially Harmer and later Astor), would tour a given area and then draw up his genuine observations and discoveries, complete with maps, insignia, and even the identities of individual commanding officers. Much of this information was far too important to be passed on to the Germans: the Twenty Committee would whittle it down and add new touches, which Czerniawski would translate into his own distinctive “telegraph French.” Sometimes he operated the wireless himself, at others he was mimicked by one of B1A’s radio operators: “Brutus is very easy to imitate because he is a very bad operator and commits very distinctive faults.” His messages to Colonel Reile were larded with self-praise: “Several of my old agents who work in this country are very discontented on account of their treatment at the hands of the British. They are still bound to me by intense personal loyalty and will work for me without question.”
Czerniawski continued to behave as if the destiny of Poland lay in his hands, insisting he would continue to spy for Germany only “if I have your government’s undertaking, after the defeat of the Allies, to offer through me to the Polish government liberal peace terms.” There were moments of high anxiety. Whoever was operating the transmitter at the German end sometimes tried to trip him up, to test if Czerniawski was really the recipient: “Every now and then they’d send us a trick question. ‘What is the name of your mother-in-law? When was she born?’ ” Astor noticed that when Czerniawski was operating the transmitter himself, he spelled London in the French way, “Londres,” but left off the s. Could this be his control signal, the distinctive “mistake” to alert his German masters that he was operating under British control? Astor casually asked him to address a handful of envelopes to London addresses: it soon became apparent that Czerniawski simply couldn’t spell. Gradually, the fear that Czerniawski was working with the Germans ebbed: “Almost certainly Brutus did not have a triple-cross mission,” wrote Harmer. “His position as a German agent is clear. Namely, he is working for us.”
The secondary anxiety, that the Germans might suspect he was working for the British, lingered longer. Three months after the first radio transmission, Robertson was still feeling “a little anxious about Brutus,” keen to use him in active deception but worried that in so doing the British “might warn the Germans instead of deceiving them.” He wanted “evidence that he is fully trusted by the Germans, in which case he would be eligible for use in deception.” Most Secret Sources duly obliged, revealing that Abwehr reports on Agent Hubert contained “no qualification to suggest that the source was not a genuine one.” Berlin described him as a “very valuable wireless agent.” Brutus was becoming a trusted source of military intelligence. “As confidence grew both in him, and in the Germans’ belief in him, he was used more and more.”
While Czerniawski’s stock rose with both his British and German spymasters, it plunged to new lows within the Polish government-in-exile. He “threw his weight about and gave himself airs” and was “at loggerheads with all the other officers.” Harmer had grown fond of this bullheaded Pole but had to concede that “he is a vain and conceited man who spent a considerable period of the war in exciting activities and now found himself doing a largely academic job.” Colonel Gano, the head of Polish intelligence, wanted this “infernal nuisance” sent on a mission to Persia to get him out of the way: “He spends his whole time making very damaging criticisms of other people’s work [and] is inordinately ambitious, prying into everything.” Within weeks of arriving in Britain, he was “embroiled in Polish politics” which, as in many small and unhappy expatriate communities, were deeply rancorous. Czerniawski espoused “extreme anti-Bolshevism,” lecturing anyone and everyone on the iniquities of the Soviet regime. He was a pathological plotter, reflected Harmer, and dreamed of setting up a new network, this time to mislead the Germans. He suggested that he recruit his lover Monique as a subagent. Harmer firmly told him to do nothing of the sort, and “sensed that he was hurt.” Restless, troublesome, and self-important, Czerniawski needed another outlet for his boundless capacity for intrigue. He soon found one, with calamitous results.
To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Red Army, General Stanislaw Ujejski, inspector general of the Polish air force, attended a reception at the Soviet embassy in London. Anti-Soviet feeling was running high among Polish expatriates after the Katyn massacre, in which thousands of Polish officers had been murdered on Stalin’s orders. Czerniawski was outraged by what he saw as Ujejski’s cozying up to a murderous regime. In early June, he wrote a blistering attack on the general entitled “In Defence of Our Colleagues,” ran off hundreds of copies, and distributed them throughout London. His denunciation was written in pungent style, littered with exclamation marks, and calculated to cause maximum offense, which it did. “The Soviets committed terrible crimes against the Poles. These Red soldiers ill-treated Polish women and bestially murdered thousands of our defenceless colleagues. It is unworthy for the head of the Polish Air Force to go to a tea party where they danced on the newly made graves of many Polish soldiers.” Ujejski was attacked as an overpaid, immoral, flattering coward who should be sacked. “The Polish Air Force deserves a better leader.” This was a resounding political polemic. It was also an act of mutiny.
Within hours of distributing his “pamphlet,” Czerniawski was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Special Branch at the request of the Polish government and charged with “the gravest military indiscipline.” His flat was searched, and Czerniawski was imprisoned in Scotland to await court-martial. His enemies in Polish intelligence rejoiced that the “little tin-pot hero” was getting his comeuppance. Christopher Harmer and Tar Robertson were appalled. Just as Brutus was developing into a first-class double agent, he had brought matters to a screeching halt and now “threatened the extinction of the case.”
Harmer rushed to his prison cell and found Czerniawski quite unrepentant, declaring pompously that “any patriotic Pole would have done likewise.” When Harmer ticked him off for “meddling in affairs which were not within his province,” Czerniawski insisted “it was the duty of someone to expose this, and he was the only person in a position to do so.” He seemed to be relishing the attention and positively proud of stirring up a hornet’s nest. From his cell he wrote letters to Monique “which demonstrate a desire to dramatise himself and his life and a capacity for exhibitionism which almost shows the first signs of delusions of grandeur.”
If Czerniawski’s radio suddenly fell silent, the Germans would assume he had been caught. A message mimicking Brutus’s wireless style was immediately sent to Paris, reporting that he and other anti-Bolshevik Poles were suspected of distributing anti-Soviet propaganda. “I foresee my arrest as very probable. I am hoping for the best but the situation is very dangerous.” Two weeks later, he sent another message: “20th June arrested in the clandestine anti-Russian affair. Detained in Scotland. Await trial. Foresee light punishment. Fear I am being watched at present. Until the end of the trial too dangerous to transmit. I regret difficulties. Morale good. Am hopeful.” This would explain his absence from the airwaves and was sufficiently near the truth to be plausible if the Germans got wind of his arrest. Whether they would actually believe him was another matter entirely. Harmer was gloomy and doubted “whether the Germans will ever accept Brutus as one hundred per cent reliable.” Awaiting trial on charges of “indiscipline and offensiveness to superior officers,” Czerniawski suffered a (brief) moment of contri
tion and apologized “for the harm he had done to the great game.”
His career as a double agent was over, at least for now. Brutus had managed to stab himself in the back.
11. Cockade
Garbo’s network grew more and more elaborate as new fictitious spies were added to his roster. The widow of Wilhelm Gerbers, the spy killed off in Liverpool, stepped in to take his place; “Agent Dagobert,” the “undesirable” Swansea seaman, began recruiting his own subagents, eventually assembling a team of seven. Most important, Garbo enrolled a radio operator. Letters in secret ink were slow and cumbersome; a wireless link would speed up communication with Madrid. Garbo told his German handlers that the Gibraltarian waiter, “Fred,” had found a friend, a Spanish Republican, with a wireless set he was prepared to operate on Pujol’s behalf. In reality, the set was operated by Charles Haines, a former Lloyds Bank clerk and amateur radio ham now in the Intelligence Corps Field Security Section.
The Germans provided Pujol with a code, which Liddell described as “perhaps the highest-grade cipher ever used by the Abwehr.” The volume and speed of the Garbo traffic increased exponentially. “The one-man band of Lisbon developed an orchestra which played a more and more ambitious programme,” wrote Masterman. A report to Churchill sang the Spaniard’s praises: “Garbo himself works on average from six to eight hours a day—drafting secret letters, enciphering, composing cover texts, writing them and planning for the future. Fortunately, he has a facile and lurid style, great ingenuity and a passionate and quixotic zeal for his task.” Everyone, it seemed, was pleased with Juan Pujol, except Mrs. Pujol. For while his secret life flourished, his domestic life was floundering.
Aracelli Pujol was lonely, homesick, and fractious. She was banned from contact with London’s Spanish community lest she let something slip. She spoke no English, had no friends, and seldom left the house in Crespigny Road. Tommy Harris disliked “Mrs G,” describing Aracelli as a “hysterical, spoilt and selfish woman.” But her complaints were not unreasonable: her husband was up at dawn and worked late; when he finally came home to Hendon, he was exhausted and irritable; she was expected to cook, clean, and look after their son. She threatened to leave him but had nowhere to go. The house at 35 Crespigny Road echoed with the sound of raised Spanish voices and breaking crockery. The Pujols’ relationship was under the sort of strain familiar to many marriages, the only difference being that their domestic disharmony represented a direct threat to the Double Cross project. Juan Pujol was not the only man to use “winning the war” as an excuse for neglecting his wife. But in his case, it happened to be true.
Aracelli first asked, then pleaded, and finally demanded to be allowed to return to Spain, if only “for a week.” Harris was coldly unsympathetic, suggesting she was “unbalanced.” Aracelli snapped. On June 21, 1942, she telephoned Harris and threatened to destroy the entire Garbo network by revealing his activities to the Spanish diplomatic authorities: “I am telling you for the last time that if at this time tomorrow you haven’t got me my papers ready for me to leave the country immediately—because I don’t want to live another five minutes longer with my husband—I will go to the Spanish Embassy. I shall have the satisfaction that I have spoiled everything. Do you understand? I don’t want to live another day in England.” Harris certainly did understand. Aracelli had to be stopped. He arranged for the Spanish embassy to be put under surveillance, so she could be arrested if she appeared there. He also considered warning the Spanish embassy that “a woman of Mrs G’s description is anxious to assassinate the Ambassador [which] would ensure her being flung out if she attempted to go to the Embassy.” Liddell thought it might be best to lock her up. Robertson wondered whether to go to Crespigny Road himself and “read her the Riot Act.” Even Churchill was informed of the “outburst of jealousy” from Mrs. Garbo and her threat to “ruin the whole undertaking.” But it was Pujol himself who came up with a drastic plan to subdue his wife by subterfuge.
The next day, a Special Branch officer arrived at number 35 and told Aracelli that her husband was under arrest and that he needed to collect his toothbrush and pajamas. Juan Pujol had tried to quit as a double agent, the officer explained, because she had threatened to “give the whole show away.” The belief that she had caused her husband’s arrest produced a “hysterical outburst” from Aracelli. She telephoned Harris in floods of tears and insisted that “her husband had always been loyal to this country and would willingly sacrifice his life for our cause.” Later that day, she was found by Charles Haines in the kitchen, which was filled with fumes from the gas oven, an apparent suicide bid, which Harris coldly dismissed as “ninety per cent play-acting.” Weeping and distraught, poor Aracelli’s capitulation was complete. “She pleaded that it was she who had been at fault and that if her husband could be pardoned she promised she would never again interfere with his work, or behave badly, or ask to return to Spain.” Pujol’s plan had been brutal, effective, and revealing: beneath his gentle manner, he was absolutely dedicated and quite ruthless, prepared to go to extreme lengths to preserve the network he had created, even if that meant double-crossing his own wife.
Dusko Popov, as ever, was living in “considerable comfort.” He moved into Clock House, a charming cottage in Knightsbridge, which he rented for twelve guineas a week, and recommenced his affair with, among others, Gwennie, whose passionate missives were intercepted and copied by MI5: “Please try to be ¼ way decent till I can pick up where I broke off. You are a sweetie and I love you (a little) Gwennie.” He was simultaneously conducting an affair with “Mairi,” who lived on Park Lane, and a young Yugoslavian woman from a wealthy family, Ljiljana Bailoni. (Popov would “undoubtedly be an easier agent to run if he became a little more settled in his domestic habits,” sighed Wilson.) He was heartily congratulated by von Karsthoff for the legibility and content of his secret letters: “Your writing is wonderful.… We can read every word.” His business, Tarlair, was booming, although even Gisela Ashley, monitoring Popov’s activities, found it hard to keep track of exactly how the company worked. “He gets particularly obscure when discussing matters of international finance,” John Marriott noted. Popov’s debts, large and small, trailed after him: more than ten thousand dollars still owing to the FBI, several thousand more to MI6 in New York, several hundred dollars to the Long Island Telephone Company, and $215 to “Trivett’s Tested Seeds.” He paid none of them. He simply forwarded the bills to MI5, along with his tailor’s invoice for eighteen silk shirts and a dozen monogrammed handkerchiefs.
The tide of war was turning. Popov could feel it in the “humour and spirit of Londoners.” The great counterattack against occupied Europe was in sight: “Everyone, the Germans included, knew the invasion was coming.” Again he lobbied his spymasters to recruit Johnny Jebsen, pointing out that once his friend “realised that Germany was going to lose the war he would be only too willing to re-insure himself with the victors by telling them all he could.” Popov offered to make the approach himself on his next visit to Lisbon: “Johnny has never been pro-Nazi,” he insisted, and had access to high-grade information including “full details of the personnel of the Abwehr and its agents in many countries.” Wilson had qualms about Jebsen’s suspect financial activities—“Johnny is always carrying out various more or less irregular deals as well as acting as an agent of the Abwehr”—but he was tempted by the prospect of recruiting an “amoral, opportunist and not particularly Nazi” informant within the Abwehr at this critical juncture. Wilson toyed with getting Popov to offer a promise “to arrange for Johnny to receive favourable treatment, providing that Johnny has something worthwhile to sell to the British.” Jebsen had recruited Popov; now Popov might recruit Jebsen. “The Germans regard their personal friendship as an essential part of the set-up,” Wilson observed, and if Jebsen really was as anti-Nazi as Popov said, then he might make a useful double agent himself: “We must seek to take advantage of Jebsen’s outlook.”
As the winter of 1942 closed in, Pop
ov described himself as “the shabbiest and coldest man in London,” a statement that was demonstrably untrue. He amused himself by demanding additional luxuries and wrote to Colonel “Freckles” Wren of MI6 in New York:
My heart is in very bad condition. My doctor who is my biggest friend says it is too much alcohol, tobacco and sin. The only remedy which I found efficient until now was milk and chocolates. Please send $100 worth of any kind of chocolate you can think of. I don’t mind what they are. I am taking them as medicine. Please send me at the same time $100 of Nylons in 9, 9½ and 10 (Don’t think I’m promiscuous.)
Wren did not swallow Popov’s claim of a medical chocolate emergency. “The chocolates are intended to delight the interiors of those same exteriors which he wishes to decorate with stockings.” But it was a measure of Popov’s status that he could instruct the British secret services to buy nylons for him, and they grudgingly obliged.
We have done our best to carry out Tricycle’s wishes with regard to comforts for his lovelies, but I have a strong feeling that this kind of business should now stop. It is legitimate for an agent working abroad to supply douceurs if it is necessary to do so in the interests of the state at war: I cannot see how that principle can apply to Tricycle. Do you think it would be possible to bring home to Tricycle the fact that his country and we have a right to his unselfish duty?
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