Double Cross in Cairo (8 page)
Read Double Cross in Cairo Online
Authors: Nigel West
a large detachment of the Italian fleet which had been ruthlessly blockading Malta detached itself and shot off to Crete to intercept the invasion from Cyprus and the expected threat of the Italian heavy surface forces never materialised. The result was that a high proportion of the convoy got through to Malta and enabled it to remain a thorn in the side of Rommel's supply services. Fortunately the Italians chose to consider this scare, which may have tipped the balance in favour of the survival of Eighth Army in front of Alexandria, as a merciful deliverance enacted just in time.
The Axis failure to eliminate the threat from Malta would have many consequences. The ability of the RAF to deploy Bristol Beaufort torpedo bombers from 39 Squadron and Wellingtons from 69 Squadron, coordinated with the submarines, proved decisive when on 30 August a relief convoy destined for Tobruk was ambushed and three vessels were sunk. Then the
San Andrea,
a tanker laden with 3,198 tons of fuel for Rommel, was sunk. Increasingly desperate, the Germans
assembled another convoy of nine ships, but it too was betrayed by
ULTRA
and five were sunk. In these circumstances, on 1 September, the Afrika Korps began its long retreat from El Alamein, in vehicles dependent on Luftwaffe fuel, thus making air protection from Albert Kesselring impossible. Further losses meant that during the first week of October, at an absolutely critical moment in the conflict, two tankers were destroyed, and the DAK received not a drop of gas.
During September 1942 the DAK took delivery of only 24 per cent of the 50,000 tons of supplies required each month to sustain the offensive. In that same month 33,939 tons of Axis shipping, mainly destined for Tripoli, was sunk.
In a prelude to the main offensive, Rommel attempted, at the end of August 1942, to break through the British defences at El Alamein to reach Alexandria, Cairo, and the Suez Canal, but his plans had been compromised by
ULTRA
. Instead of taking Montgomery by surprise and sweeping through relatively weak lines, many of Rommel's 203 tanks unexpectedly found themselves in a minefield sown with 18,000 mines and attacked from the air at night under the light of parachute flares. Worse, Rommel had gambled on the imminent arrival of six ships from Italy loaded with fuel and ammunition, but
ULTRA
had identified the vulnerability, and four of the merchantmen were found and sunk, and while the battle raged, the last two tankers, the
San Andrea
and the
Picci Fascio,
were destroyed as they approached Tobruk. After six days of intense fighting, in which the DAK lost thirty-eight tanks and 400 trucks, Rommel began to withdraw, blaming the failure on a leak from the Italians.
By the time the British offensive at El Alamein began on 23 October,
ULTRA
had revealed the extent of the DAK's plight, and on 25 October three tankers and one other merchantman were given a heavy escort and air cover, as learned from
ULTRA
, and another aerial ambush was prepared three days later, which resulted in the loss of three more
tankers. Altogether the depleted DAK lost 44 per cent of its supplies in October, representing an increase of 24 per cent over September.
When Montgomery counter-attacked in October, Rommel was caught off guard and, short of fuel and ammunition, lost most of his tanks to new Allied weaponry. Overestimating his adversary's strength and down to his last thirty-two tanks, Rommel led his 70,000 men on a long retreat 800 miles across the Libyan desert, constantly harassed by the 8th Army and the Royal Air Force.
The options for the pivotal role in
RAYON
to be played by
CHEESE
(referred to as
LAMBERT
) were set out in a proposal dated 29 September 1942:
1.
LAMBERT
'
S
friend (the
BGM
) meets a Polish officer in Cairo on a mission from Syria who says that the British seem anxious about the Russian threat and that there has been a large increase in the British troops in General Wilson's command.
2.
LAMBERT
meets a friend recently returned from Alexandria via the desert route who says that there is a marked decrease in military traffic on that road since his last visit in August. He reports many Greek soldiers in Alexandria and gathered from a Greek officer that they were destined for Crete.
3.
LAMBERT
'
S
Greek merchant friend on his return from Aleppo reports seeing large troop movements by road in Syria and by road and rail in Palestine towards the North and the North East. He saw many tanks in the coastal plain in Palestine and US Airforce in Palestine and Syria.
4. The American officer back on leave does not speak of a British offensive but indicates that the British are consolidating their defensive lines. He has not heard of any new formations arriving with 8 Army and says that the British are keeping a wary eye on the Russian situation.
5. The Greek employee of the Egyptian State Railways mentions the specialist training at Qabrit and says that the Greek fleet is in the Port SaidâIsmaelia area. He has seen landing craft near the canal on trains going east. Hears of Greeks going to Haifa after special training.
6.
BGM
'
S
Polish officer friend returns suddenly to Syria leaving the impression of certain Polish forces moving towards the northern front and of impending action. He seemed very excited and pleased.
7.
LAMBERT
sees many British soldiers on leave from WD and gives idents of some units and Divisions of 6 Army.
8. Greek friends talking again of the liberation of Crete and the part to be played by the Greek forces. Greek officer hints at an invasion by Britain and Greeks in November.
9.
LAMBERT
hears of big conference at General Wilson's HQ and notices excitement among Greeks re. Crete.
When Rommel did attack his tanks encountered large minefields in their path, which made their progress slow. Making little headway because of mines, sustained air attacks, and short of fuel, Rommel ordered a withdrawal over three days from 3 September.
This was the crucial turning point in the war in the Middle East, and prepared the way for
LIGHTFOOT
, the Allied offensive scheduled for 23 October. The cover-plan for
LIGHTFOOT
was
TREATMENT
, which was intended to mislead Rommel as to the date and the location of the expected offensive that inevitably would be spearheaded, as usual, by the 7th Armoured Division. Clearly the ruse worked, for Rommel left Africa for medical attention in Germany on 23 October; his temporary replacement was General Georg Strumme who had arrived just four days earlier.
In the battle that followed the British deployed 1,200 tanks which faced a combined force of 525 Axis tanks, and the result was a shattering defeat for the Afrika Korps which lost 213, and for the Italians which had almost all their 278 destroyed, along with three complete divisions. By 11 November, 30,000 enemy PoWs had been captured. Rommel returned on 25 October, to find that Strumme had died of a heart attack two days earlier. Rommel himself would be recalled on 10 March.
Perhaps irrationally, based on this performance, the Abwehr concluded at the end of October 1942 that
ROBERTO
was once again âreliable'.
Nicossof responded positively to the renewed interest and
began to show a new energy and enterprise. Messages were even prepared to indicate that he was beginning to suffer from the monomania common among successful spies; it was not thought advisable to send these, and it was clearly becoming unnecessary to do so.
CHEESE
seemed to be completely re-established, and on the most favourable lines. The enemy had been given every excuse for forgetting the past: new contacts, which Nicossof represented himself as making, could be mentioned or dropped at will; mistakes and deceptions could be explained away on the plea of lack of funds, or of Nicossof's unfamiliarity with the business of collecting military information. Prospects were good either for a renewed course of misleading and fogging enemy intelligence or, with good luck, for a larger and more decisive stroke.
By the end of November 1942 the respective military fortunes in North Africa had been reversed, with the British taking the initiative, and able to operate with relative freedom from Malta which was resupplied in December by
STONEAGE
, a convoy from Alexandria which made the voyage without mishap. In the last naval battle of the year, at
Skerki Bank, off the coast of Tunisia, an entire Italian convoy of four ships, with an escort of three destroyers and a pair of torpedo boats, was wiped out. The merchantmen were carrying troops, ammunition, tanks and vehicles, and they were all sunk, killing some 2,000 Italians.
Between August 1942 and February 1943, at the height of the network's activities,
CHEESE
sent an average of six messages a month on the topic of money, and received four or five from the Abwehr.
After much pressure the Abwehr agreed to
CHEESE'S
proposal, made on 25 September, to send a Greek merchant friend to Aleppo to collect his money, and the man travelled two days later on 27 September 1942. However, he returned empty-handed on 4 October, claiming to have been scared by the execution a few days earlier of five German spies in Aleppo. This left
CHEESE
very disappointed, as did another scheme which was for an intended delivery by a native labourer between 10 and 15 October. Finally,
CHEESE
was informed on 7 December that his money had already reached Cairo and he was asked for a delivery address. He nominated a flat supposedly occupied by a friend of his Greek girlfriend, and was told to expect Hamel to drop off a packet or a milk bottle containing the cash. However, at the last moment the address was raided by the Egyptian police over an unrelated matter, so the plan was scuppered. This unexpected incident âelectrified
CHEESE
' and gave him âa severe attack of the jitters' which he reported to his controller on 17 December, explaining that he had instructed his â
amie
' to find a new and safer flat. Three days later he reported that the police raid had been âa domestic affair' but that he had been âbadly frightened' by it. Nevertheless, on 15 January 1943 he was able to confirm that his â
amie
' had acquired a suitable flat and ask that the courier be diverted to the new address. However, on 6 February the Abwehr report that it has been impossible to change the arrangements, so
CHEESE
reluctantly agreed to use the old address.
Interception of the Abwehr's internal communications revealed the extent to which Athens shared
CHEESE'S
frustration. On 7 January 1943 Captain Rolf von der Marwitz, the naval attaché in Istanbul, was reported to have paid a large sum to a German agent in Egypt identified only as
ARMEN
. Then, on 25 January,
CHEESE
was asked for his girlfriend's Christian name, which he supplied the next day. On 28 January Athens sent
CHEESE
more instructions about the delivery to the Rue Galal and suggested the password âEl Hakim'. This prompted an exchange with Zähringer on 2 February who was ordered to acquire the girlfriend's Christian name and to pass it on to headquarters so the delivery operation could proceed. In compliance,
CHEESE
identified Helene Cabri as an authorised recipient of his Abwehr consignment of cash, and described her as the tenant of a man named Kyriakides. Both, of course, were entirely imaginary.
In another
TRIANGLE
text, on 23 February, Zähringer was told that
CHEESE
was worried about his funds, and was directed to deal with the matter. On 18 March a message to Istanbul demanded to know whether Zähringer had solved the problem and, if not, why not? On 29 March Athens sent an urgent request to Rossetti in Istanbul, where he had arrived on 22 January, to provide an address in Syria where
CHEESE'S
money could be made available. This development fascinated SIME, which speculated that the Abwehr might be contemplating the use of
PESSIMISTS
or even
QUICKSILVER
as an alternative to the Aleppo route proposed by
CHEESE
the previous September. Analysis of
TRIANGLE
later revealed that
PESSIMISTS
were also controlled by Rossetti.
The loss of
U-372
, a Type-VIIC of the 23rd U-boat Flotilla, off Haifa in August 1942, which was carrying his courier, Jawad Hamadi, codenamed
HAMLET
, also prevented further funds from reaching
CHEESE
. The entire crew of forty-eight, and the sole passenger, Hamadi, were captured by the Royal Navy, one of fourteen U-boats sunk in the
Mediterranean in 1942. Under interrogation Hamadi, a Druze student, admitted that he had been recruited by the Sensburg organisation in Athens to deliver money to
CHEESE
. When captured, Hamadi had been wearing a money-belt containing $3,500 and £500 in other currencies.
According to Walter Sensburg, who was questioned about
HAMLET
after the war,
HAMLET
was recruited by Rossetti in Rome and transferred to Athens when Rossetti joined the Ast. An intelligent youth, probably an Arab,
HAMLET
had studied in Rome. He served the Germans out of idealism and would accept no compensation.
HAMLET
left Rome in 1942 aboard a submarine which was to take him to the Syrian coast. The submarine was sunk but, according to Rossetti,
HAMLET
survived and was interned by the British in Cairo. Nothing further was heard of him.
The voyage of the
U-372,
which sailed from the Greek island of Salamis on 27 July, commanded by Captain Heinz-Joachim Neumann, was compromised at the outset by
TRIANGLE
and an ambush was prepared in which the submarine was attacked with depth-charges launched by the destroyers HMS
Sikh
and HMS
Zulu
and the escort destroyers HMS
Croome
and HMS
Tetcott
, and by depth-charges dropped from an RAF Wellington from 221 Squadron. The U-boat's entire complement was placed aboard the
Tetcott
and disembarked in Haifa where they were questioned by CSDIC personnel. On 17 August Hamadi, when cross-examined by SIME, admitted his role, disclosed his call-signs and radio schedules, and volunteered to work as a double agent. According to him, he had been instructed to make his way to Ranlkin, a village about 45 kilometres from Beirut where he was to set up his transmitter and contact Athens on behalf of a man he knew only as âPaul'. SIME subsequently reported that
