by Larry Loftis
On New Year’s Eve he sent a telegram to J. C. Masterman at the United University Club: “Wishing you and all our friends a Happy New Year.” Masterman and MI5, he believed, would see the greeting as a sign of the locked loneliness in which he lived. Efforts by Ewen Montagu and BSC had done little to ameliorate Hoover’s xenophobia, and everyone in British Intelligence knew that Popov was wasting away in his persona non grata status.
Five days later Lanman called and Popov returned to New York. That night they met to strategize a new plan, and Charlie said the FBI would begin transmitting to the Germans the following day. Urging Lanman to send enough material to compensate for his long silence, Dusko suggested a meeting with the radio operator. Lanman shunted the notion, saying that per Washington, Dusko was not to go near the radio or the operator. The danger was obvious; if the Germans asked about information sent in his name, or about the operator—which was almost a certainty—Popov wouldn’t have the answers.
“You know what that means,” Dusko said, “finished, curtains. . . . Washington is putting a bullet in the back of my neck.”
Lanman had his orders, Popov knew, but the situation was maddening. The Bureau was working a double standard—Dusko could not speak with the radio operator or even see the messages the FBI was sending in his name, yet they wanted his help in doing so. To his credit, Popov complied. And all the while, the FBI continued surveillance, tapping his phone and keeping files on his girlfriends.
The only one that counted, at least as far as Dusko was concerned—the one who had captured his heart in 1939—was Simone Simon. They had dated briefly in Paris before the war, when Simone was an up-and-coming actress and he a budding lawyer, but 1940 called her to Hollywood and him to London. When Dusko arrived in the U.S., he contacted her and they connected in Sun Valley or New York as work permitted. When Simone finished shooting, she moved to Manhattan and took an apartment close to Dusko’s on Park Avenue.
It all started for Simon in June 1931. She had been sipping coffee on the terrace of Café de la Paix, a favorite haunt of Oscar Wilde’s decades earlier, when a well-dressed man noticed the twenty-one-year-old’s sparkling blue eyes and angelic face. The man was Viktor Tourjansky, Russian director of over twenty silent films and for the past three years a director at MGM. Tourjansky launched Simon’s career in France, which led to her breakout movie in 1936 for Twentieth Century Fox, Girls’ Dormitory. The following year she costarred with Jimmy Stewart in Seventh Heaven, and with Walter Winchell in Love and Hisses. After two movies in 1938 she took a year off, perhaps because of the war, perhaps because she had met a real-life leading man—Dusko Popov.
Aside from missing Simone, Dusko also had to consider his dwindling bank account. In addition to his Park Avenue penthouse, he had rented a house on the Gold Coast of Long Island. With two properties to maintain, domestic servants, ski vacations, and expensive girlfriends, he had burned through the money the Germans had given him and was now tapping into personal reserves. While living in London and Lisbon, his overhead had been well within what the Germans were paying him. Now, however, things had changed. Because the FBI hadn’t allowed him to send anything useful—bogus or otherwise—the Abwehr had shut off the spigot.
Lanman agreed to help, perhaps because the FBI wanted to catch a courier, and they cooked up a message from agent IVAN: “Please remember to send for first of March money for next three months. A. Me and Ralph − six thousand. B. Me, special American, three thousand. C. Radio operator and house, three thousand. D. Radio equipment, six hundred. Being out of resources, need urgently. Thank you.”
Lanman radioed it to von Karsthoff on February 25 and they waited. Two weeks later, on March 11, the German responded: “Keep main attention on preparation for action of expeditionary corps and shipping of troops. Give exact details of embarkation, destination and kind of troops.”
Von Karsthoff suggested that Popov return to Lisbon but made no mention of money.
Dusko was worried. Had the Abwehr given up on him or were they testing?
Without telling Popov, the FBI sent a reply: “Difficult to obtain diplomatic courier status and difficult to secure passage on Clipper due to war. Could you help me?” The Germans gave no reply, which Dusko later considered a logical result of the poor quality of information they were receiving.
Around this time, Dusko remembered Lanman coming out to the Long Island house. A message had come in, Charlie said, stating that money had been forwarded to the hairless doctor. Engels had apparently sent money with the microdot apparatus, Dusko assumed, and he was to pick up both per the Rio instructions. Charlie asked who the doctor was and Dusko said he didn’t know, only that the man was to meet him in Quebec. Two days later, Popov wrote, Lanman was back, saying that Hoover wanted the doctor’s name.
“Blindfold me. Maybe I can pin a tail on the donkey.”
Lanman didn’t laugh. “We sent a message to Germany suggesting that the hairless doctor come to New York.”
Charlie’s words confirmed Dusko’s worst fears. By sending messages without consulting him, the FBI was bound to botch a code or otherwise suggest that IVAN was under American control. The FBI knew nothing of the hairless doctor, only that they might catch him so that Hoover could post it on his public report card. Given Engels’s specific instructions, IVAN’s request for the mysterious man to come across the border had to raise a red flag in Berlin.
It did.
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Meanwhile, Popov’s relationship with Simon flourished. Simone’s mother lived with her, but that was no obstacle. Dusko and Madame Simon (Monique Ciorcelli) got along well, in part because he was the perfect gentleman, and in part because Mother often chaperoned. Their relationship was “very proper,” Simone would say later. Not surprisingly, Simone’s mother shared her likeness. “Her mother is a sensationally beautiful woman,” a reporter noted, “extremely young looking. They are roughing it on Park Avenue.”
Amid the FBI turmoil, Simon blessed Popov with distraction and joy. She was “enthusiastic about everything,” he wrote later, “the most agreeable girl in the world.” Without disclosing that he would be attending an air conference in Ottawa, he invited her to Canada. Simone had recently received an invitation to perform in Quebec City as part of a war bond drive and readily accepted. They planned the trip, and Simon flew out early for her appearance. A day or so later, as Dusko awaited departure, a U.S. Immigration officer appeared on his plane and asked for his exit permit. Popov was stumped. Simone had crossed the border days earlier without one, he was sure. The officer removed him from the plane, and Dusko’s complaint to Lanman was useless. The FBI agent was either unable or unwilling to resolve the matter, and Popov’s trip to Ottawa was canceled.
But Dusko’s troubles with the Americans were the least of his worries. On March 20 Station X* intercepted a German radio message from Berlin to Rio:
Station X intercepts of Abwehr messages between Rio, Lisbon, and Berlin on March 20 and 21, 1942.
National Archives of the UK
As there is a suspicion that IVAN is working for both sides, we recommend extreme care in dealing with him.
The following day Berlin also notified von Karsthoff, telling him that:
IVAN may be playing a double game.
Unfortunately, Dusko couldn’t be told of the intercepts without revealing that the British had broken the Enigma code. If MI5 told Popov of ULTRA and he was later arrested by the Gestapo, they feared, he’d disclose the breakthrough during torture and all future German messages would be lost. If it came to sacrificing a spy—even their best—the British would have no hesitation in protecting Bletchley’s baby.
Instead, William Stott of British Security Coordination notified Sam Foxworth and shortly thereafter sent him a scathing memo, criticizing the FBI over their handling of TRICYCLE:
Before he left England . . . Popov was regarded, as he still is by my colleagues in London,
as an agent of supreme importance and the very highest of value. The work which he did in England was of the utmost consequence in the revelation of enemy espionage network. . . . From that date until the present time we have not received, with one exception, any communication from you on the subject. . . . Furthermore we have never been informed by you what members of your staff are handling the case, nor any suggestion . . . that your agents in charge of the case should work with us; nor have we received copies of any messages dispatched or received since the W/T station commenced operation.
Meanwhile, pressure ratcheted. Near the end of March Dusko had exhausted his funds and asked the FBI for a loan. At the same time, the Germans increased their demands. On March 26 he received two letters and seven microdots from von Karsthoff. A week later, he received another letter, this one with four dots. Combined, the eleven microdots contained over 150 questions—most containing several subparts—about every aspect of highly classified U.S. military production and war capability: production capacity for airplane and anti-aircraft weapons; armament of fighters; destination of war shipments; departure dates for aircraft carriers; casualties to aircraft and personnel to date; number of pilots in the army, navy, and civil aviation; methods of anti-craft and other defenses for shipping; and more.
Most importantly, a dot on the April 2 letter followed up on what Engels had mentioned in Rio—the Germans wanted details on the U.S. atomic bomb development, a program that was supposedly secret. It was a race, Berlin knew, and the German team was close. Dr. Otto Hahn, who would win the Nobel Prize in 1944 for the discovery of nuclear fission, was one of several scientists Hitler was pushing. From 1940 on, the Allies would sabotage and bomb again and again Hitler’s Vemork heavy water production facility in Tinn, Norway.
What Dusko’s questionnaire requested should have shocked the FBI: “Decay of Uran. . . . There is reason to believe that the scientific works for the utilization of the atomic-kernel energy are being driven forward . . . by the use of helium.” The Germans wanted to know how the Americans were sending heavy uran, what other raw materials were being used, and where the tests were being conducted.
While Berlin was latching on to Dusko’s possible doubling, Lisbon continued business as usual. Around this time von Karsthoff sent 250,000 escudos* to an account for Dusko at Manufacturers Trust Company. By May, however, Berlin had seen enough. They warned Ludovico that there were now “sound reasons for suspecting” that Popov was a British double agent.
On May 8 MI6 Major Felix Cowgill received the intercept from Station X and cabled the bad news: “We have heard from another source that Berlin definitely decided on May 5 (repeat May 5th) that both Tricycle and Balloon have been under control since the former arrived in America.” Five days later Charles Cholmondeley, an Oxford-educated flight lieutenant who had joined MI5 from Air Ministry Intelligence, circulated a confirming memo: “Evidence is now available to us that the Germans do not trust this [TRICYCLE network] organisation and we are led to believe that they place the date when Tricycle came under control as being his arrival in America.”
But again, British Intelligence couldn’t reveal the information to Dusko, at least not directly. The dance continued. The FBI kept asking—in agent IVAN’s name—for money from Lisbon. Von Karsthoff continued to stall. On May 20 Ludovico sent a message that he could send money by courier to a cover address. William Stott of BSC thought it was a trap, but Dusko, now running deeply into debt, was anxious to find out. They offered a rendezvous at the New Yorker Hotel and requested a date. Mysteriously, Lisbon never replied.
Three weeks later the FBI tried again and von Karsthoff said he could forward $3,000, a paltry and insufficient amount, Popov felt. Dusko had the FBI send a last request, but Lisbon once more fell silent.
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Through early summer Dusko tried to lay low. With his FBI and Abwehr work stifled, he turned his attention to Simone. They became regulars at the Stork Club, El Morocco, and society parties. The nightlife was second nature to Dusko, but the entertainment was less appealing to his petite girlfriend. “I do crossword puzzles and play gin rummy,” the Hollywood star later told an interviewer. “I drink one drink just to be polite but a second one puts me to sleep.”
Station X intercept of Abwehr message May 5, 1942, warning von Karsthoff that Popov may be a British double agent.
The National Archives of the UK
For Popov, sleep was impossible. Financially, he was at his wits’ end. He had been spending lavishly—upward of $1,900 per month—on entertainment. While extravagant, the expenditures were initially within his income. Upon his arrival in New York, the Abwehr paid him $3,000 a month, and then $4,000. But in May, with little production from agent IVAN, the Abwehr had cut him off. To make ends meet he spent $8,500 entrusted to him by his Yugoslav friends, the Bailonis, and borrowed $4,000: $3,000 from the FBI and $1,000 from BSC.
But the financial problem was merely humiliating; money could be repaid. Popov’s real predicament was the Germans. After more than a year he had given them virtually nothing, and the Abwehr expected a full accounting upon his return. Broke, despairing over his family, and without a dragon to slay, Dusko again slipped into depression.
On July 4 he received a carefully disguised letter. Mailed from Zurich, the envelope was in Johnny’s handwriting but the letter in Ivo’s. Dusko could only weep as he read his brother’s words:
Greetings Dear Dule:
I don’t know where to start—first of all we are all well. We all are nice and thin thanks to the rationing of food and from a life full of excitement. Little Mischa alone knows nothing of war. For him we get milk and vegetables and he thrives like a wild plant (weed?). . . .
Our relations are all scattered: those who have paid with their lives so far are Joca, Dusko, Bata, Zagorka, Pejović, Milan from Sofia, Georgević from Bečej, and the brother of Jelić who worked in our shop. The last by the Germans, the others by the Ustashi and the Hungarians . . . and you can’t swim in the Danube and the Sava for the corpses. . . . You have no idea how I long for you. We all think of you every day. When will the happy day come when we can go freely again to Dubrovnik and play in the waves . . . .
All the best from us all and I am dying to kiss you.
Yours,
Ivan
Two weeks later, Dusko received another blow from the unlikeliest of sources—a gossip columnist. No ordinary reporter, Walter Winchell was one of the most powerful—and feared—men in the country. In 1924 Winchell had invented tabloid journalism, filling articles with the latest celebrity marriages, affairs, and scandals. By the 1940s, his “On Broadway” column was carried by two thousand newspapers and his radio program was the country’s top broadcast. Combined, they carried him into the homes of fifty million Americans (out of an adult population of seventy-five million). As one New York Times editor put it, “he possessed the extraordinary ability to make a Broadway show a hit, create overnight celebrities, enhance or destroy a political career.” Winchell became such a household name that he was featured in popular songs, including Lorenz Hart’s “The Lady Is a Tramp” and Cole Porter’s “Let’s Fly Away.”
Like Dusko, Winchell was a regular at the city’s most famous hot spot, the Stork Club. But like none other, Walter made his presence known. A New York Times reporter explained: “From Table 50 . . . Winchell held court like a prince, beckoning prizefighters, movie stars, debutantes, royalty and gangsters to his table.” He was also well connected politically. With Winchell’s support and FDR’s victory in 1932, Roosevelt invited Walter to the White House, telling him to “call whenever he wanted.” Equally important, Winchell was friends with J. Edgar Hoover, who often supplied tidbits and favors in exchange for the columnist’s public support.
Simone Simon.
Corbis Images
One night Winchell apparently saw Dusko and Simone Simon at the club. While the actress was beautiful and famous
, she and her date drew Winchell’s attention for another reason: five years earlier Simon and Winchell had costarred in Love and Hisses, a musical comedy where Winchell had played himself. When Simon suddenly appeared at New York’s top nightclub with a handsome man on her arm, Winchell couldn’t resist. The third week of July 1942, virtually every newspaper in America carried Walter’s latest:
“BROADWAY SMALL-TALK: . . . DUSKO POPOV (WHICH ISN’T DOUBLE-TALK AT ALL) OF THE YUGOSLAVIAN GOV’T AS SIMONE SIMON’S NEW TOY.”
Such exposure was unthinkable for a spy; the Abwehr, MI5, MI6, and BSC would be outraged. On everyone’s mind would be what Hoover’s friend meant by linking Dusko’s name with “double-talk.” In addition, with Simon’s celebrity, journalists might well investigate him to discover salacious details about Simone’s “new toy.”
The Germans saw the column.
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Simone returned to Hollywood shortly thereafter, and Popov continued his downward spiral. On August 3 the FBI formally returned him to British control, wanting nothing more to do with him. It was no secret that Popov’s lifestyle and Hoover’s personality played a part, but the principal reason for the FBI’s dismissal was overall strategy: Dusko had not been the German flytrap J. Edgar had hoped.
Yet Popov’s issues with the FBI were far from over. Simone cabled him from Hollywood, asking why he had not been corresponding with her; it made no sense because he had sent several messages. Was Hoover intercepting his telegrams? Similarly, two cables he had recently sent—one to Gordana Bailoni, the daughter of his Yugoslav friends in Lisbon, and one to a German cover—mysteriously showed the sender’s address as “Kosta 20 S. West St., Indianoplis, Ind.” Dusko sent them from the Waldorf-Astoria; he had never been to Indiana.