Dread throbbed through the building at 58 St James’s Street. “Anthony Blunt told me Tommy Harris was extremely worried about the Artist situation,” Liddell wrote. “The whole situation is rather worrying. Tricycle has been told that all is not well with Artist who has disappeared. This news obviously caused Tricycle considerable worry as it obviously showed it was possible that Artist had been kidnapped.” MI5 could not reveal Most Secret Sources evidence of his abduction, but Popov soon reached the independent realization that his friend had, “by trick or by force, been taken back to Germany.” Another Abwehr defector, Hans Ruser, who knew Jebsen well, was asked whether his former colleague would be able to withstand interrogation. “Jebsen was a mine of information and had always talked too much,” he said. “Under third degree pressure, he would tell the Germans everything.”
As the crisis erupted, Winston Churchill was kept, if not exactly in the dark, then certainly in the shade. Blunt’s report was a masterpiece of deliberate understatement:
There has been an unfortunate development in the case of Tricycle, the true purport and consequences of which have not yet been determined. It was learnt from Most Secret Sources that Artist, his spymaster, was lured with great secrecy into France and there dispatched to Berlin. The reasons for this action are for the moment obscure, but it is certain that the Tricycle case is passing through a most critical phase and must be handled with the greatest care in view of Overlord.
“Unfortunate,” “rather worrying,” “most critical”: these were delicate British euphemisms for what one officer described as “near-panic.” MI5 had once worried Churchill might go “off the deep end” if he knew too much about espionage matters. It can only be imagined how far off the deep end he would have plunged had he learned not only that the Double Cross system was in danger of unraveling but that the invasion itself was in jeopardy.
Popov had already sent the Germans copious deceptive material relating to Fortitude. But could he continue to do so, given that Jebsen might expose him at any moment? If he suddenly ceased to send good information or altered the thrust of the deception, the Germans would smell a rat. One option was to shut him down, but as Liddell pointed out, this “would undoubtedly put Artist completely in the cart and seriously jeopardise Tricycle’s brother.” By sheer good fortune an opportunity presented itself to suspend the Tricycle network without further endangering Jebsen. Earlier in May, a message had been intercepted revealing that German intelligence knew Frano de Bona, Agent Freak, was suspected by some of his fellow Yugoslavs of spying for Germany. If de Bona was under suspicion, he would naturally be brought in for questioning. “This gives us an opportunity of closing down Tricycle’s transmitter, at any rate temporarily,” wrote Liddell. “If we see from the traffic that Artist is once more on a good wicket we can go on the air again.” On May 18, de Bona sent a message to Lisbon saying he was going off the air, which was followed by a letter from Popov, in secret ink, reporting that “certain inquiries were in progress against Freak and for that reason they had temporarily hidden the wireless set.”
The other double agents would continue building Operation Fortitude to its climax. Henceforth, Brutus, Garbo, Bronx, and Treasure would only hint that the Pas de Calais was the target but not state this as bald fact in case Jebsen revealed the deception. Once the troops had landed, the spies would point specifically to Calais as the target of a second, even bigger assault by the fictional FUSAG: “After D-Day we can go absolutely all out.” At the same time, Most Secret Sources would be dissected daily for any indication that Jebsen had confessed, either willingly or under duress. If it became clear he had told all, B1A would shut down Double Cross and hope the Germans would not have time to work out Operation Fortitude. The race was on: to put as much of the deception in place as possible before D-Day and pray that Jebsen did not crack too soon.
The deception—and perhaps the success or failure of the invasion itself—now depended on the fortitude of Johnny Jebsen, a strange and dishonest spy with unhealthy habits who might, even now, be languishing in a Nazi torture cell.
Masterman was pessimistic: “Under interrogation it was to be presumed that much, if not all, of the history of his activities would come to light, and in that case many of our best cases were doomed. The whole deception through Double Cross was in danger.” Every hour mattered. The longer Jebsen held out, the less time the Germans would have to unravel the deception.
All the Double Cross team knew was that Jebsen had been bound for Berlin. “We do not know how quickly the interrogation of Artist will be started,” Wilson remarked miserably. “I hope the RAF have made the train journey from Biarritz to Berlin a lengthy matter.”
22. Guest of the Gestapo
The double-crossers needed to get inside Hitler’s head, and for their purposes the most direct access to the mind of the Führer was via Lieutenant Colonel Alexis von Roenne, the head of Fremde Heere West, or FHW, the intelligence branch of the High Command of the German army. The FHW gathered information from all branches of German intelligence—aerial reconnaissance, wireless intercepts, POW interrogations, captured documents, and spy reports—and tried to make sense of it. Every letter from Bronx, every transmission by Treasure and Brutus, every report from Tricycle, ended up, eventually, with this “erudite, imaginative, level-headed” intelligence expert, whose monumental task it was to explain what, in military terms, it all amounted to.
Every day von Roenne’s intelligence branch, a secret hive inside a concrete bunker at Zossen, south of Berlin, produced a three-page situation report with an update on enemy military activity. The intelligence unit also compiled a more detailed picture of the order of battle every fortnight and an occasional long-range forecast of Allied intentions. These were distributed to the relevant intelligence agencies, the High Command, and commanders in the field: in the case of France, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, supreme commander of the German armies in the West. Von Roenne, an aristocrat with refined manners, pious beliefs, and a sinuously clever mind, was aided by the head of the English section, Major Roger Michael, who could not have been more different from his boss. Half English and half German, Michael was a bald, backslapping, heavy-drinking hearty who had played rugby for Germany. He had a “jolly, easy, happy disposition” but “a quick understanding of essentials.” He was also credited with insight into the British mentality, having spent much of his youth in Britain. He was Gisela Ashley’s opposite number.
Hitler had complete faith in von Roenne. As Anton Staubwasser, Rommel’s intelligence chief, put it, “the opinions held by Hitler and OKW [the Supreme Command of the German Armed Forces] about the invasion were based principally on the information supplied by FHW and did not deviate from that department’s ideas in essentials.” If von Roenne and his analysts could be fooled into thinking that another army, far larger than the real D-Day force, was assembling on Britain’s coast, then Hitler himself would probably fall for the deception. What Hitler did not know, and never knew, was that Alexis von Roenne and Roger Michael were running their own deception operation.
From 1943 onward, von Roenne overestimated the strength of Allied forces in Britain consistently, massively, and quite deliberately. Once an enemy army unit had been identified and logged by the analysts, it was never removed from what von Roenne called the Feinbild, his picture of the enemy. More than that, by the spring of 1944 he was intentionally embellishing the picture. In January 1944, Michael told von Roenne that the troop estimates they sent to the High Command were being deliberately reduced by the SD (which took every opportunity to undermine the experts in military intelligence) before being passed to Hitler. Michael reckoned the numbers were being halved. So he made a suggestion that was logical, daring, and extremely dangerous. Why not double the figures? Then something close to the right number would be achieved. That, at least, was how he rationalized the plan to von Roenne, who went along with it, knowing that inflating these vital numbers might cost him his life. Every single sighting of an All
ied unit was chalked up as genuine, no matter how feeble the evidence; if only part of a troop was spotted, it was assumed the entire force was present, even when other parts of the unit were spotted elsewhere. Every anomaly was quietly wished away. Gradually at first, and then faster and faster, the numerical gap between the forces that were really poised to invade France and the statistics being relayed to Hitler grew ever wider. At the beginning of 1944, FHW estimated there were fifty-five divisions in Britain, when there were really only thirty-seven. By mid-May, von Roenne calculated that seventy-seven enemy divisions were in place. And by D-Day he had magnified the forty-four divisions in Britain to a remarkable eighty-nine, more than enough men under arms to launch diversionary attacks on Normandy and Norway and a main assault on the Pas de Calais.
Quite why von Roenne exaggerated the Allied order of battle so extravagantly remains a matter of debate and conjecture. He may simply have been covering his back, knowing that if he underestimated enemy strength he would be in serious trouble. Perhaps, like many purveyors of official statistics, he molded his numbers to fit what his audience wanted to hear. Perhaps his act of rebellion was just another skirmish in the bitter internecine battle within German military intelligence.
What is certain is that von Roenne was bitterly opposed to the Nazi regime and actively plotting to oust Hitler, whom he detested. He had already played an important part in Operation Mincemeat in 1943 by giving the firm stamp of approval to documents he had every reason to distrust. Some historians believe von Roenne was deliberately sabotaging the German war effort from within. His precise motives may never be known, because Hitler, when he discovered von Roenne’s disloyalty, had him murdered. Roger Michael’s purpose was possibly more straightforward. After the war, unlike most officers of the German general staff, Michael was quickly released. He was said to have been seen in Heidelberg, wearing an American army uniform and claiming to be part of the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps. He then vanished, having apparently defected to the Soviet Union. He was never seen again. The cheery, rugby-playing, half-English Major Michael may have been a spy, for Britain, America, or the Soviets, or conceivably all three.
Piece by piece, the double agents dropped the pieces of the jigsaw into the hands of FHW, where they were slotted together in the ever-expanding projections of von Roenne. Czerniawski reported the Fourth U.S. Armored Division in Bury St Edmunds; one of Garbo’s Welsh Aryans saw the Sixth Armored Division in Ipswich, while another spotted the Twenty-eighth Infantry Division in Kent. Pujol himself reported troops of the Eighty-third Infantry Division gathering in a Dover car park. Lily sent a wireless message confirming that the First U.S. Army was serving under Montgomery, to reinforce the idea that U.S. troops could serve under British command and vice versa. Bronx was vaguer, but the very insouciance with which she relayed her information lent it greater force: “To Newmarket for the races. Expected invasion has produced political unity. Many US troops in East Anglia.” On May 18, as planned, Czerniawski told his handlers that he had joined FUSAG itself. Henceforth he would be able to relay the fake order of battle from within the fake army. The loss of the Tricycle network, wrote Masterman, meant that “a heavier burden had to be carried by Brutus.” He lifted it with ease.
Pujol told Kühlenthal he had obtained a job in the Ministry of Information and now had access to propaganda documents intended to “hide the facts in order to trick us” that would offer new insight into the Allies’ real intentions. Wulf Schmidt, Agent Tate, was the longest-serving double agent of all, but B1A had doubts about using him, largely because his handlers communicated with Berlin by telephone and there was therefore no way to check his status through Most Secret Sources. Even so, it was decided to move him, in German minds, from a farm in Hertfordshire to another in Kent, where he could observe the deployment of the fictional FUSAG at first hand. “Have found first-class lodgings with elderly couple in Wye,” he told his handler. “So far as I can see, ideal for radio purposes.”
Von Roenne was too busy adding weight to his already bloated order of battle to wonder why three key agents had suddenly and almost simultaneously moved into positions where they had access to the highest-grade information. Perhaps, through his monocle, he turned a blind eye. At the expeditionary force headquarters, Fleetwood-Hesketh and Harmer moved their fake units to where they wanted them to be in German minds; the double agents passed the information on, bit by bit, to the Germans; and von Roenne and Michael reassembled the map and passed it up the military chain to Hitler.
The pins on the board at the intelligence office in Zossen were massing in the right places, but MI5 remained fretfully aware that if Jebsen cracked and Double Cross was revealed, von Roenne’s projections, built up from the spies’ reports, would show exactly where the Allied armies were not assembling. Guy Liddell was certain that once the Gestapo went to work on Jebsen, he would eventually crack “under duress.”
Ian Wilson scanned the intercepts with dread. If Jebsen’s friends and associates were rounded up, if his Abwehr colleagues were interrogated, if Popov’s brother was arrested, then that would prove the game was up. The moment Jebsen revealed that the double agents were all part of a grand sham, the evidence would crackle like lightning across Most Secret Sources. Incompetence was a crime under Hitler’s rule, and guilt came by association: Kühlenthal, Kliemann, Reile, Bleil, and von Karsthoff would all find themselves hauled in to explain how they had been hoodwinked for so long. Everyone Jebsen knew would be considered suspect and probably arrested: wife, lovers, friends, even Mabel Harbottle. The bloody retribution would start immediately and be reflected in the intercepts. Here was cold consolation: if Double Cross was laid bare, at least they would know it.
At first, Most Secret Sources were mute, save for some baffled enquiries from German officials in Lisbon who were not privy to Operation Dora, wondering where Jebsen had gone. But within a week of the kidnapping, it became clear that an interrogation must be under way, as a flurry of messages were intercepted relating to Jebsen’s financial activities. Berlin asked Madrid to “report whether 2.7 million Moroccan francs which Johnny is alleged to have remitted to Tangier have been received.” This was followed by an even more cryptic message from Schreiber to Berlin: “French money Dora can be received to the full amount through Dora friends here. Furthermore we may also count on receiving shortly through Dora friends here the original material about Dora which was asked for by his fat friend.” Dora was a reference to the kidnapping, and “his fat friend” was probably Hans Brandes; but the only thing to be deduced with any certainty was that Jebsen’s finances were being probed, and large sums of money were involved. Berlin was also trying to trace the cash handed to Jebsen for Popov.
After two weeks, Ian Wilson reported that there was still “no evidence to prove conclusively what effect the return of Artist to Germany has had.” Encouragingly, there was not yet a general roundup of Jebsen’s contacts. Freak’s control station in Germany was still sending messages on the agreed frequency; if the Germans were trying to get in touch with Popov, then they must still trust him, which might indicate that Jebsen had not betrayed the network. Unless, of course, that was just what the Germans wanted the British to think. Wilson allowed himself a glimmer of hope. The references in Most Secret Sources, he wrote, “are consistent with the theory that Artist was taken to Germany so that his financial dealings could be probed and for fear that at some future date he might come over to the Allies. If he has confessed, one would have expected that some of the Abwehr officials closely connected to Artist and Tricycle would have ceased to carry out their normal functions”—like breathing.
Wilson began to wonder if, by some miracle, Jebsen could yet be rescued. Hans Brandes had betrayed him; perhaps he might now be bribed, beguiled, bullied, or blackmailed into saving him, or at least providing information on what had become of him. Might now be the moment to revive Kim Philby’s idea of recruiting this horrible man to British intelligence?
If Brandes could be p
ersuaded to play with us, he could as well as informing us of the position of Artist, give us a lot of information about what is going on in the inner circles of the Abwehr, and particularly the political struggle which seems to have resulted in the Abwehr coming under the control of Himmler. I do not regard Brandes as being in the least bit reliable. There is plenty of evidence that Brandes is unprincipled [but] if the proposition was put to him that he should re-insure himself with the British he might accept it. If he reported the approach to the Germans we would know that fact from MSS.
John Masterman stamped hard on this idea. Brandes was a snake, and if he told Berlin that British intelligence was sniffing around, this would reinforce suspicion that Jebsen was a British spy and plunge him into even hotter water. “I do not agree with the proposal to approach Brandes,” Masterman wrote on Wilson’s memo, underlining the word “not” three times. But Wilson was not going to give up on Jebsen. “I feel a strong personal sense of responsibility in this matter,” he wrote. Wilson liked and trusted Jebsen; he had encouraged him to stick to his mission, and he had lost him. He would make it his own mission to find him.
Popov waited anxiously for news. Frano de Bona, no longer transmitting to Germany, was also at a loose end. They distracted themselves in the usual way. When MI5 found out that women of the Auxiliary Territorial Service were “being introduced to the Clock House for immoral purposes and that there might be security interest involved,” Wilson told them sharply to “stop drawing attention to themselves in this manner.” Unable to play an active part in the deception, Popov fired off letters to Churchill, offering to intercede in Yugoslavia between the forces of Mihailovic and Tito’s communists. He was told that while Churchill “had a paternal interest in his wellbeing,” he did not want him meddling in politics. He should stay calm, stay put, and stand ready in case there should be news of Jebsen: “This was not the time for hasty or violent action.… The only course for the time being was to take no action and await results.”
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