Operation Garbo

by Juan Pujol Garcia

While I was in Portugal I received only one message from the Abwehr; this asked for more detailed and weightier reports on troop sightings and movements. From this I gathered that my coded messages were neither as good nor as consistent as had been expected. The farce was coming to an end. Apart from the risks that my continued presence in Lisbon posed, I was extremely worried because I did not know what to do or say in order to keep my operation running efficiently. I had never been to England and my knowledge of English was confined to a fleeting study of the language during my schooldays. And what of my military knowledge? I didn’t have any idea about the composition of a foreign army, let alone the British military set-up. Given my inability to obtain direct British contacts, I therefore decided to abandon the whole operation and disappear from Europe altogether. But before doing so I thought I’d have one last try and risk all on the play of a card.

  I went to the American embassy in Lisbon. The United States, it must be remembered, had just come into the war as a new belligerent against Germany, Italy and Japan. It must have been during one of the first days of February 1942 when I walked in and asked to speak to either the military or the naval attaché.

  This time around my luck held. I was met by an official who, after I had been frisked by the marine on duty, ushered me into the naval attaché’s office to meet Lieutenant Demorest. I cannot tell you what a relief it was to be able to sit opposite someone who was in a position to make decisions, even though I was aware that his powers were limited. I began to unburden myself by telling him about my attempt to contact the British in Madrid, my rejection and then my resolution, fired by amour-propre, to obtain some practical and useful information that would capture their imagination, vindicate my humiliation and enhance myself in their estimation so that they would believe that I was motivated by a desire to defend democracy.

  I briefly outlined my contacts with the Germans and mentioned that they had given me invisible ink, a code book and money; I told him about my trip to Portugal, my second attempt to contact the British through their Lisbon embassy, my second rebuff, my resolution to press on with work begun and, finally, my last desperate move of coming to see him; I said that if that too failed, then all the work I had done so far would come to nought.

  Demorest showed keen interest right from the very beginning and seemed amazed by my story. He asked me for proof, which I proceeded to give him. For the first time there seemed to be a distinct possibility that I had found the right person; at last, someone was going to help me to complete the mission I had set myself. It was precisely while I was telling him my story that its full implication struck me: I started to realise the potential value of the trick I had begun to play on the Third Reich.

  Demorest asked for two days in which to follow up my story, confer with his British colleagues and convince them that they must get in touch with me. He gave me his phone number and urged me to be very careful and to avoid going out unless I had to.

  Then Demorest evidently tried to make his British counterpart, Captain Benson, see that he had nothing to lose by telling his superiors that this alleged agent wanted to hand over some invisible ink and a code book, and he advised Benson that he must act swiftly as I had either to continue with the game or stop altogether.

  Someone in England had already had the perception to suspect that the spy they were hunting for was probably the same person as the freelance agent at large in Portugal, so some days later Captain Benson asked Demorest to give me his phone number. I then telephoned Benson, who arranged for me to meet Gene Risso-Gill, an MI6 officer in Lisbon, on the terrace of a refreshments shop overlooking the beach at Estoril. Three days later Risso-Gill telephoned me to say that he had received instructions that I should be taken to London.

  Old Risso-Gill was a most polite and elegant gentleman with a dark complexion and a short thick beard, who overwhelmed me with his affability. He seemed delighted to hear about my adventures, laughed heartily and immediately began to plan how I could leave Lisbon in secret, without alerting German informers in the aliens department or the border police. Sometime later he came around to my place to tell me that a four-ship convoy that was heading for Gibraltar lay in the Tagus and that he had arranged for me to leave on one of the ships the following evening. I was not to take any luggage but to give him the invisible ink and the code book and he would see that they reached London. It was my one chance to travel in safety, so I had better be quick about sorting out my Portuguese affairs.

  I left Estoril at five o’clock the next afternoon for an unknown destination; I had to trust that the British would indeed get me to London from Gibraltar, but did not know how, when or in what capacity I would travel there and couldn’t help wondering what treatment the British would have in store for me on arrival. Risso-Gill seemed to read my thoughts, for he kept reassuring me during the short walk down to the harbour. It will only be a short journey, he said, no need to worry. All I had to do was to board the ship right behind him and then go straight to the crew’s dining room when he gave the signal; the captain had precise instructions what to do with me when we reached Gibraltar: he was to hand me over to two officers, who would provide me with money and find me somewhere to stay.

  My legs were shaking as I walked up the gangway past the Portuguese policeman at the top. Risso-Gill said something to him, then led me down to the captain’s cabin. The captain told Risso-Gill to warn me not to talk to any of the crew, but to have dinner with them and then go straight to my bunk, which the quartermaster would find for me as he knew of my arrival.

  After Risso-Gill had left the ship, I went down to the crew’s mess; so far all the arrangements for my departure from Portugal had been faultless, which increased my confidence. Sometime after supper, when I was lying on my bunk, I heard the bang and rattle of the engines as the ship slipped her moorings. Early next morning one of the crew tapped me on the shoulder and made signs for me to follow him to the mess for breakfast. Afterwards he signalled for me to follow him up on deck for a breath of fresh air.

  It was a beautiful day; we seemed to be sailing twelve miles or so off the Portuguese coast, gently cruising along in convoy with three other merchantmen. The fresh air did me good, for I had found it rather claustrophobic shut up down below and had not much cared for the smell, which made me feel sick. At about ten o’clock an alarm went off, everybody raced to action stations and a sailor threw a life jacket at my feet, indicating that I should put it on. Were we in danger? Had they spotted an enemy submarine or a plane? Then I realised that this was not a genuine emergency, just a practice drill.

  We coasted along the shore for twenty-four hours and then, very early the next morning, I heard the ship’s engines stop. When I went on deck I found the Rock of Gibraltar towering overhead. At about 8 a.m. a small boat approached and two officers stepped on board. The captain sent a sailor to bring me to his cabin and there introduced me to the two officers, who both spoke Spanish: one said he was a port official and the other that he had been instructed by London to look after me. I took leave of the captain and followed them into the small boat; we landed and walked unchallenged through the passport police check and customs and headed straight for a restaurant. Over a large English breakfast, I was informed by one of the officers that there was a room at my disposal for my own exclusive use and that I could come and go as I pleased. He then handed me a wad of sterling notes and suggested that I buy some clothes as he knew I had brought no luggage whatsoever with me, not even a change of clothes. He ended by telling me that I might have to wait for two or three days before getting a plane for London, as I would be travelling on an unscheduled flight.

  He then took me to my room, gave me his telephone number in case I needed it and said that he would call as soon as he knew when I was leaving.

  I spent the whole morning exploring Gibraltar, which I found to be a huddle of small shops, restaurants and hotels all along one main street, the adjoining small alleys leading to the harbour being of little import. I bought some u
nderclothes and a Spanish newspaper and sat in a café. After lunch in a restaurant, I spent most of the afternoon watching some people play tennis who seemed to be naval officers and their wives. The truth is that there wasn’t much to see in Gibraltar; it is not endowed with many tourist attractions and most people only go there to buy things because they are cheap and duty free. I visited a large nightclub cum coffee house filled to the brim with soldiers listening to a Spanish all-girl band, but the din was so great that I couldn’t hear the music. I didn’t see any fights, but was told that scuffles frequently broke out between the soldiers and the sailors.

  Two days later I left Gibraltar in an extremely uncomfortable military plane that had no seats, just long benches, which made me think that it was meant for transporting paratroopers. There were two other passengers, but we were never introduced, nor did we speak to each other throughout the long eight-hour journey. They were carrying mail so were probably diplomats or special couriers.

  In order to avoid German fighter planes, we headed far out into the Atlantic and so did not reach Plymouth until late afternoon, when we arrived tired and hungry as all we had had during the flight was tea. I don’t think I’ve ever drunk so much tea in all my life as I did during that long, cold journey, not even during the London Blitz when we used to spend hours on end in underground shelters. I must have had more than twenty cups in a desperate attempt to keep myself warm.

  I caught a glimpse of Plymouth from the plane and was suddenly acutely aware that I was away from home and about to enter an alien land. Would the English be friendly toward me? Would they believe my story about the tussles I had had with their embassies in Lisbon and Madrid, which showed how inefficiently these places were being run? Would they understand my motives for all that I had done and honestly believe that I wished to work for the good of mankind?

  I thought about the city states of ancient Greece, of Cleisthenes’s Athens, or Pericles and of the beginnings of democracy. I reiterated to myself my firm belief that individuals should have a say in their own government and knew that I had been right to put all my efforts into upholding such a doctrine. I entered England full of restless anticipation. What would my future hold?

  My first recollection of England on that calm, clear day in April 1942, as I walked down the steps of the plane, was of the terrible cold – cold outside and icy fear inside. At the bottom of the steps stood two officers from MI5, who would shape my destiny. The one who introduced himself as Mr Grey didn’t speak a word of Spanish; I didn’t say anything to him in my faltering English. The other, Tomás Harris, whom everyone called Tommy, spoke perfect Spanish.

  7

  LONDON

  What Juan Pujol could never have anticipated was the British reaction to his three messages to Madrid, which were included in routine Abwehr transmissions to Berlin. Nor could he have guessed that the British were intercepting and decrypting a substantial part of the Abwehr’s wireless traffic to and from Madrid.

  The German intelligence organisation in Madrid was impressive: some eighty-seven Abwehr personnel were directly attached to the German embassy, along with a further 228 other assorted intelligence staff. The full total of 315 greatly outnumbered the genuine foreign ministry diplomats, of whom there were only 171. The Abwehr contingent was believed to control no less than 1,500 senior agents spread throughout Spain. Headed by Commander Gustav Leisner, this remarkable network produced such a volume of information that some thirty-four wireless operators and ten female cipher clerks were required to handle the radio traffic. Madrid was a sufficiently important cog in the German intelligence machine to keep up an hourly wireless schedule with an Abwehr relay station near Wiesbaden. As well as intercepting this radio traffic, the Allies were also monitoring the signals passing between the Abwehr representatives in Lisbon and Madrid.

  Literally translated as ‘defence’, the Abwehr was centred in a four-story office block in Berlin’s elegant, tree-lined Tirpitzufer Street, overlooking the Landwehr Canal. The organisation was divided into three main branches, dealing with espionage, sabotage and counter-intelligence. Within those three divisions there were numerous subsections, but most of the Abwehr’s work was conducted by twenty-three overt suboffices spread throughout Germany’s military districts. Each of these ‘Abstelles’ (usually abbreviated simply to ‘Ast’) had responsibility for particular foreign countries. Abstelle V, located in Hamburg’s residential Sophienstrasse, was the headquarters of those groups targeted against Britain and the United States. Although the work of the Abstelles was secret, their physical presence in each German military district was not concealed. However, in neutral and allied countries the Abstelles were known as Kriegsorganisationen (literally, war organisations, and invariably abbreviated to KO). By 1942 the Abwehr had established ten KOs, each with an internal structure divided into three branches, mirroring the headquarters in Berlin. They were located in Lisbon, Berne, Stockholm, Helsinki, Zagreb, Ankara, Casablanca, Bucharest and Shanghai, the first and largest being in Madrid.

  The Madrid KO or Abstelle had been established in 1937 by Leisner, who had been recruited into the Abwehr the previous year by his former brother officer in the navy, Wilhelm Canaris. Soon after the First World War, Leisner had emigrated to Nicaragua to open a small publishing house, but on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Canaris had persuaded him to go to Spain as his personal representative. With the blessing of General Campos Martínez, the head of Franco’s intelligence service, Leisner the publisher was transformed into ‘Gustav Lenz’, an apparently respectable businessman operating from the offices of the Excelsior Import and Export Company, a commodity brokerage firm dealing in strategic metals, which, in reality, was a front for the Abwehr’s undercover operations. On the outbreak of war, Leisner transferred his activities to the German embassy, situated at 4 Castellana, and eventually built a huge network, incorporating some thirty suboffices spread throughout Spain. Where possible, these field sections were housed in German consulates, thus giving a measure of diplomatic protection to the Abwehr’s personnel. By detailed analysis of the wireless signals passing between the suboffices and Madrid, the British succeeded in identifying all the permanent members of the Madrid Abstelle and all their duties. They also knew all about the officers who came into contact with ARABEL.

  Leisner himself was assisted by his secretary, Fraulein Haeupel, who handled his mail, and Frau Obermuller, who arranged his appointments and maintained a card index of the Abstelle’s agents. His administrative secretariat was run by Senior Staff Paymaster Max Franzbach, with Staff Paymaster Zimmer and Private Pfau (who supervised the car pool). Leisner’s principal aide was Lieutenant Colonel Eberhardt Kieckebusche, who headed the Abwehr I group, which supervised the Abstelle’s general espionage operations. His adjutant was Reserve Lieutenant Wilhelm Oberbeil, who handled any special plans, and Fraulein Meyer-Quittlingen, who maintained the registry and discharged the unit’s secretarial duties.

  Under Kieckebusche’s command were seven departments, each with their own clearly delineated responsibilities. The most important of these was the Vertrauensmann section, run by Karl-Erich Kühlenthal. Kühlenthal held the rank of specialist captain and had a personal staff of five: Corporal Gustav Knittel, the office manager, Private Zierath, the interpreter, Private Knappe, agent-controller, Fraulein Heinsohn, the secretary, and Fraulein Mann, the confidential clerk who corresponded with the agents and developed any secret ink messages. All of these individuals handled ARABEL’s traffic at one time or another, although much of the burden fell on Fraulein Mann and the special documents section headed by a scientist, Dr Kuenkele. This section operated from its own sophisticated laboratory and manufactured all kinds of secret inks, which were later used by ARABEL.

  The six remaining sections were devoted to particular aspects of intelligence gathering and consisted of Army, Navy, technical and Luftwaffe, air, radio communications, and documents. All eventually received information from ARABEL.

  As we have seen, t
he British presence in the Spanish capital was almost insignificant by comparison, and was inhibited by official Spanish surveillance and an ambassador who was entirely unsympathetic to the small group of intelligence officers attached to his stall. Hoare was determined not to provoke the Generalissimo or give even the slightest excuse for a diplomatic incident, but in spite of his restrictions, Section V of the British Secret Intelligence Service was able to reconstruct a complete order-of-battle for the enemy’s local intelligence establishment. Very little of this would have been possible without ISOS, which enabled British Intelligence to monitor all the enemy’s activities in the Iberian peninsula from long distance.

  In addition to Section V’s team, there was also a small MI5 section known as special research, and designated B1(b), which analysed the ISOS decrypts relevant to German espionage in England. Headed by Herbert Hart, a future professor of jurisprudence at Oxford University, its staff included the art historian Anthony Blunt, Patrick Day, the Oxford philosopher Edward Blanshard Stamp (later a lord justice of appeal) and a peacetime solicitor, John Gwyer. Together they attempted to build a profile of the mysterious ARABEL and trace his movements. Meanwhile, B1(a) case officers watched their own agents’ traffic for any references to the newly established ring. However, the total burden fell on B1(g), the Iberian section responsible for countering Spanish, Portuguese and South American espionage, headed by a 28-year-old journalist, Dick Brooman-White. Who was ARABEL, and how had he got into the country? Answers to these questions were urgently sought by Brooman-White and his three B1(g) case officers, Paul Matthews, Alicia Pitt and Tomás Harris.

  Dick Brooman-White was a product of Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and, in 1938, had been selected as Tory candidate for Bridgeton, Glasgow. In the same year he had been appointed public relations officer of the Territorial Army and, soon after the outbreak of war, he had been transferred to the Security Service, then housed in Wormwood Scrubs. The other B1(g) officer destined to play an official role in the GARBO case was Tomás Harris.