Schreiber told his captives what would happen next: “They would be knocked out and while unconscious placed in two large trunks, in which they would be shipped by car the same evening over the Portuguese-Spanish and Spanish-French borders to Biarritz. To guard against all possible surprises at the borders, he had decided to drug them by injections.” Schreiber asked them to surrender without a struggle. Jebsen seemed to realize that the time to fight would come later. “Both of them submitted to the injections.”
At around 2:00 a.m., a Studebaker sedan with diplomatic plates and two large trunks in the boot arrived at Badajoz, the border crossing into Spain. In the rear seat sat Schreiber. Meier knew “border conditions and officials personally,” and the car was waved through. They drove north, stopping only for “a few rests in the open.” From Madrid, Schreiber sent a telegram to Hansen: “Mission has been carried out as far as Madrid.” At midnight, the party crossed into France. In Biarritz, Jebsen and Moldenhauer, still heavily drugged, were removed from the trunks and handed over to an intelligence officer named Fuchs. Schreiber sent another cable: “Luggage handed over Biarritz to be sent on to Berlin. Undertaking was successful and everything all right.”
The following day, Hans Brandes in Lisbon received a message of congratulations from Georg Hansen: “Many thanks for reports and special recommendation.”
Plans for the kidnapping of Johnny Jebsen had been laid two weeks earlier. The message from Brandes, warning that Jebsen might be about to defect, had “provoked considerable excitement” in Berlin. “Jebsen’s desertion had to be prevented at all costs,” Hansen told Kuebart, who was instructed “to see personally that Jebsen reached German-occupied territory or at any rate to thwart any attempt on his part to reach Allied territory.” Kuebart briefed Schreiber, telling him that “Berlin had proof that Jebsen had been working for both sides for some time and was now prepared to go over to the Allies” while also “seeking to take financial advantage of the Abwehr.” Stopping this defection was “of extreme importance to the war effort.” Schreiber had tried to object, pointing out that this was surely “a police matter,” but Kuebart was insistent. The operation should be conducted in strict secrecy: neither the counterespionage section in Lisbon nor the Gestapo nor the Portuguese police “were to know anything about the affair.” The Abwehr and the SD, the Nazi Party intelligence service, were not yet fully merged, and this was strictly a matter for the Abwehr: “Once Jebsen was in Berlin, he would have to answer only to the military authorities and under no circumstance to the SD.” Still dubious, Schreiber cabled Berlin asking Hansen to “accept full responsibility, in case the abduction caused difficulties with the Portuguese.” Hansen replied by “specifically charging Schreiber with the task” and telling him to hurry up: how Jebsen was bagged and delivered to Berlin was “left entirely up to Schreiber.”
The Nazis had a taste for attaching female code names to the most secret operations. Their espionage campaign against Britain was “Lena”; the plan to seize the Canary Islands was “Isabella.” The kidnapping of Jebsen was code-named “Operation Dora.”
Jebsen was suspected of being a double agent and probably a crook, but the real reason for the urgency and secrecy of Operation Dora had little to do with either his spying or his dodgy dealings. Hansen, Kuebart, and many other intelligence officers were now actively plotting to kill Hitler. Jebsen, if he absconded, would derail those plans.
Hansen was deeply implicated in the anti-Nazi conspiracy that would culminate in the 20 July Plot to assassinate the Führer. His home at Rangsdorf was used as a meeting place for the conspirators. Like many of the plotters, Hansen’s loathing for Hitler was coupled with a deeply conservative patriotism, the urgent desire to save Germany before Hitler destroyed the Fatherland utterly. He wanted to remove Hitler and then launch a concerted assault on the Soviets, even if that meant Germany ended up with the “status of a British dominion.” Kuebart shared his views, believing Hansen was “the man to put things right.” The previous March, Hansen had begun to “instruct Kuebart in the details of his machinations against the German regime.” By May, a plot was in place: Hansen told Kuebart he had “arranged for someone to place some British-manufactured explosives in an aircraft in which Hitler was to fly.” Once Hitler was dead, the anti-Nazi resistance would rise up and overthrow the regime. But Jebsen was in the way.
Himmler’s SD was itching for an opportunity to purge the remaining Canaris loyalists and anti-Nazi elements within German intelligence—men like Hansen, Kuebart, and Schreiber. If Jebsen defected, Hansen feared, then the blame would be pinned on what remained of the Abwehr as yet more proof of treachery: Hitler’s henchmen would “pounce on the Abwehr as they had done after the Vermehren incident,” Hansen told Kuebart, which would “put an end to schemes he was already concocting for the liquidation of Hitler and Himmler and the ultimate overthrow of the Nazi party.” A postwar investigation into the power struggle within German intelligence concluded that Operation Dora was a preemptive strike aimed at shielding the conspirators from their Nazi enemies. “The Vermehren case had been used by Himmler and Schellenberg as a lever for gaining control of the Abwehr. Hansen and Kuebart were particularly concerned to prevent another desertion.”
Jebsen was kidnapped to preserve the plot to kill Hitler, a plot in which Jebsen would have been delighted to participate.
Schreiber had lulled Jebsen into thinking he was safe: the cash, the medal, the soothing words were all aimed at ensuring Jebsen did not flee before Schreiber was ready. The unexpected appearance of Heinz Moldenhauer at Jebsen’s house complicated matters. Moldenhauer was the half-Jewish son of a former German minister and “one of a number of anti-Nazis who have avoided active participation in the war by undertaking service with the Abwehr which they make no effort to carry out conscientiously.” He was regarded with suspicion in Berlin. Schreiber assumed that he must also be planning to defect and decided to abduct him too. “If innocent, Moldenhauer would have no trouble clearing himself with the military authorities in Berlin.” But Moldenhauer was not planning to defect: he was simply in the worst place at the worst possible time.
On April 27, the day after the party for Popov, Hansen authorized the payment of 25,000 escudos to Schreiber “in order to ensure the execution of Operation Dora.” Schreiber bought a sleeping drug from a Lisbon chemist, a syringe, rope, and two trunks “large enough for a grown person, fitted with adequately large openings for ventilation.” Four days later, Jebsen, dazed, battered, and terrified, was lying on the floor of a cell in the Gestapo prison in Berlin.
Jebsen’s disappearance sent a bolt of pure horror through the Double Cross team. The dreadful news arrived in a single line from Lisbon: “Artist has disappeared since the afternoon of 29.4 and investigations have been instituted.” Most Secret Sources offered no clues to explain the mystery. “This has clearly been done in great secrecy,” wrote Wilson. The first the SD in Lisbon knew of it was a message stating that Jebsen had been “taken to France by the Abwehr as he was acknowledged as being unreliable.”
But what did “unreliable” mean? The stakes went far beyond the fate of one man. If Jebsen’s captors considered him untrustworthy, they might well suspect Popov, his best friend and agent, and if Popov was identified as a double agent, that would inevitably cast suspicion on the other controlled agents in the UK. But worse than that, Jebsen knew the entire Garbo network was fiction, feeding false information in huge quantity back to Berlin. He had told Wilson he believed all the German spies in Britain were frauds. If Jebsen revealed this to his captors, the Germans would reexamine all the information received from their agents and look for the patterns of disinformation; they would quickly work out that the spies were directing them to defend the Pas de Calais and Norway. Operation Fortitude would be blown, with incalculable consequences. The invasion was just one month away, and the immense machinery of Operation Overlord was already in motion. Popov had told Ian Wilson he was “afraid that Jebsen would break down if physical
pressure were applied.” His abduction could spell disaster.
Wilson frantically combed Most Secret Sources for evidence of what might have happened to Jebsen: “A number of messages on MSS have become available,” he reported, “but none of them seem very conclusive.” Two days after Jebsen’s disappearance, Popov’s brother in Yugoslavia was still at large; if Dusko was under suspicion, they would surely have pulled in Ivo. Wilson tried to sound a positive note:
Artist’s present troubles arise primarily from the reports against him made by Brandes. The general tenor of the intercepts seems to be that the Abwehr are afraid that Artist was intending to go over to the British or to cause the Tricycle messages to be intercepted rather than that Artist is already a traitor to Germany or that Tricycle is a controlled agent. If they do not yet suspect the latter there is a good chance that Artist will not be subjected to pressure which will break him.
There was no sign that the Germans suspected Popov. Indeed, the capture of Jebsen may have been ordered in part because it was feared that if he defected to the Allies, this would compromise a spy that Hansen considered “the one agent of real value in the UK.” Here was yet more black irony. Jebsen, it seems, had been abducted not because the Germans suspected Popov was a double agent but because they didn’t.
If Jebsen remained out of the hands of the Gestapo and the SD, there was just a chance that the self-interest of those involved might protect him. “All the parties involved have their weak spots. Brandes will fear a counter-investigation. Schreiber will not willingly admit that Tricycle has been fooling them. Hansen will not willingly reach a conclusion that will undermine the whole Abwehr.” But these were fragile hopes, and Wilson knew it: “The next few days will provide evidence to show clearly whether he is merely to be interrogated on relatively minor charges and kept in preventive custody, or forced to disclose the true position of Tricycle and possibly other controlled agents.” If Jebsen was made to talk, then instead of pulling off a great deception coup, the Double Cross team would have set the scene for a bloodbath on the beaches of Normandy.
At a crisis meeting on May 9, John Masterman laid out the grim situation:
The cover plan has been to a considerable extent built up on the reports of XX agents. The fact that Artist, who is fully cognizant of the Tricycle network and has some knowledge of the other cases, has fallen under suspicion and been removed to Berlin therefore threatens the whole cover plan. We cannot tell exactly why Artist has fallen under suspicion—we only know that he is regarded as “unreliable.” His “unreliability” may be connected with his financial operations, his intrigues, or his unwise inquisitiveness about the undertakings of Brandes and Ostro, and not with his dealings with Tricycle at all. There is no proof that treason on the part of Artist is part of the charge. But obviously under interrogation at Berlin, he may reveal what he knows. We must act on the assumption that the Tricycle case may be blown. In these circumstances, what should be done?
We should leave the door open to continue our present policy in the hope that the Berlin investigation may be confined to Artist’s personal delinquencies and leave Tricycle untouched. With good fortune we should get information through secret sources telling us how the inquiry proceeds. It may be that Tricycle will be confirmed in his position of trust and that we can operate him as before. The case of the other agents is more difficult. Clearly they must not change their style in any way, but should they, or should they not, continue to implement Fortitude? The danger of their doing so is that if all or most of them are blown as a result of Artist’s revelations, their traffic will be “read in reverse” and interpreted accordingly.
Masterman laid out the options:
1. They should for the time being continue to operate without change, though specific indication of the false objective should be avoided.
2. Attempt by diversity of messages to create confusion in the enemy’s mind even though we have to abandon the hope of getting a complete cover plan over to the enemy.
3. If we come to the conclusion that practically all the agents are in fact blown we could take the extreme step of abandoning all efforts at deception and deny all information to the enemy by closing down all agents.
Shutting down the Double Cross system would nullify more than four years of hard work and extreme risk, but it would leave the enemy “deprived of all information from agents at a time when he needs it most and would have to prepare himself in the dark to meet any eventuality.” Masterman’s recommendation was to continue the deception, but “if, and only if, the blowing of Tricycle and Garbo is certain, we close down all agents shortly before D-Day.”
Within B1A, Jebsen’s capture sparked a blazing row, the worst so far. Tommy Harris was particularly enraged. He had warned that Jebsen was a liability, and now the delicate structure of deception he had created with Juan Pujol was liable to be smashed to pieces. “The confidence which has been deposited in Artist during the last few months has left him in little doubt that Kühlenthal’s network in this country is controlled by us. Developments in the Artist case have, to say the least, very seriously compromised the Garbo channel for passing operational deception.” Harris did not believe that Most Secret Sources would give sufficient warning of disaster. The intercepts, after all, had failed to alert MI5 before Jebsen was snatched—“the same night that our confidence in him was at its height.” Garbo could be blown “without our getting any warning on MSS that he has been denounced by Artist.” The Tricycle network should be shut down, said Harris, immediately and permanently. It took Guy Liddell to point out that this would amount to Jebsen’s death sentence, for it would prove to his captors that both he and Popov had been in league with the British: “Packing up Tricycle will finish Artist,” he observed.
If the double agents were exposed, would the Germans be able “to deduce the cover plan and the real plan from the previous traffic”? Could the Germans extract, in less than a month, the essence of Operation Fortitude from the reams of misinformation they had received? Masterman thought it would require a “lengthy and exhaustive study [to] sift the truth from the falsehood,” but Harris disagreed: “I maintain that the enemy could, within twenty-four hours, analyse the entire B1A traffic for the [last] two months and they would be able to draw the conclusions that the cover plan threat is against the Pas de Calais, and we wish the enemy to believe that the assault will be two-pronged. Such a discovery by the enemy would be catastrophic.”
In the hands of the Gestapo inquisitors, Jebsen might reveal the true state of affairs and so compromise the entire network of controlled agents in this country. From now onwards the Germans might, at any moment, tumble to the fact that all their spies in England were under Allied control. They would then conclude that the messages they were receiving were the opposite of the truth. There could only be two reasonable objectives for the cross-Channel assault, namely the Pas de Calais and Normandy. If the Germans perceived we were trying to induce them to believe that we were coming to the Pas de Calais, the true objective would thus be automatically disclosed.
As the dispute raged, Tar Robertson found himself under attack from MI6. Charles de Salis had lost not only a valued agent but also a friend. The MI6 officer had been instructed only to warn Jebsen that Brandes was an unreliable informant; he was not told that Brandes was informing on Jebsen and had warned Berlin that he was about to flee. When de Salis discovered that he had been given a doctored version of events, he hit the roof and accused MI5 of throwing Jebsen to the wolves.
“Why lead me up the garden path? The obvious way of putting this over to Artist was to attribute the information to one of 23700’s sources [a reference to MI6 informants].” Jebsen’s “respect for 23700 penetration of the German services was profound,” de Salis argued, and if told that the warnings came from a British spy, he “would have been really on his guard, and would no doubt have been suspicious enough not to fall into the German trap.” De Salis accused MI5 of giving him misleading information, of which the
acute danger to Jebsen was “the most flagrant and tragic example.” If he had been allowed to warn Jebsen properly, de Salis railed, then the kidnapping could have been thwarted. “If I cannot be trusted to act a little comedy as simple as this, I should not be here at all.”
Tar struggled to defend himself.
No one can have greater concern than I do over the affairs of Artist, but a direct warning could not be given to Artist. We had no indication that there was any imminent danger of an attempt to kidnap Artist. The most careful consideration was given to whether we should inform Artist that Brandes was reporting on him, and it was accepted by all the numerous officers here that we could not run the risk to the source [Most Secret Sources] that would be involved in warning Artist. All we could do was warn Artist against putting confidence in Brandes. At my suggestion the warning was based on the suspicion we had of the accuracy of Brandes reports. Operation Dora was not known to us until after the event had taken place. There was a message the day before, not mentioning Artist by name which, had we at the time had sufficient knowledge to link it with Artist, would have indicated that he was in danger of some sort. But because of the source, we could not have taken the risk of giving him any additional warning. I have naturally given a great deal of thought to this matter and I am satisfied that we went as far as we possibly could in protecting Artist.
Tar was blustering. His excuses were thin, as he was well aware. He knew there was a world of difference between the suggestion that Brandes was unreliable and a tip-off that he was actively betraying Jebsen. He knew that a warning, carefully couched, would not necessarily have alerted Jebsen to Most Secret Sources. He knew that he and his team, paranoid about protecting the Allies’ most valuable secret, had failed to appreciate the mortal danger to Jebsen, and as a consequence he was in prison, probably undergoing torture, and possibly already dead. Tar was a good and honorable man, and in his heart he must have known that Jebsen had trusted the British completely and they had let him down. This was the worst moment of his war; perhaps the worst moment of his life.
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