Operation Garbo (9 page)

MI5 quickly realised that every care had to be taken to protect both the double-cross system and Bletchley’s ‘most secret source’. Accordingly, the circulation of the
ISOS
decrypts was rigidly controlled. Measures to conceal the existence of the system itself were rather more complex. In January 1941, with the appearance of
TRICYCLE
, yet another German spy – of the real variety, equipped with a transmitter – the Wireless Board authorised the formation of a subgroup of specialist
intelligence
officers to develop the double-cross system further and coordinate the real and notional activities of their charges.

One problem associated with B1(a)’s work was the necessity to supply the enemy with a convincing volume of plausible
intelligence
. If MI5’s double agents only communicated banalities while working in harness the Germans might understandably lose interest, and a valuable conduit would be lost to the Allies. But spicing the harmless information with more attractive tidbits required considerable skill and judgment, and a precise knowledge of future plans. It would be entirely
counterproductive
to guess at proposed operations and hope that coincidence did not bring the notional idea into conflict with reality. In such circumstances a well-meaning case officer might invent what he believed to be a non-existent military operation, perhaps a raid on a particular target in France, and then discover later that his chosen target had indeed been selected for attack. It would be equally embarrassing to suggest the location of a heavily camouflaged ammunition dump, and then learn that there was indeed some sensitive site located in the neighbourhood. If such an incident ever occurred, the military authorities would
justifiably cease cooperating and the informal flow exchange of information, upon which B1(a) relied, would be jeopardised.

During the months of late 1940 B1(a)’s eight double agents were being serviced with a satisfactory amount of intelligence, but the routing required much more refinement. The Wireless Board itself met infrequently, owing to the elevated status of its members, who had many other demands on their time. The business of acquiring and collating information for the enemy was a trifle haphazard and was left largely to the initiative of the individual case officers. They would travel the country, acting out the role of their charges, and would note various items of interest. Before inserting such material into the texts of messages for delivery to the Abwehr, the case officers would secure an unofficial consent from the intelligence division of the interested authority. If, for example,
TATE
had been asked to confirm the location of a particular aerodrome in East Anglia, his case officer, Bill Luke, would ask Major Robertson to clear the information with the director of intelligence at the Air Ministry, Air Commodore Archie Boyle. As it happened, Boyle was one of Robertson’s most enthusiastic supporters and probably would have given every assistance, but his views were not always shared by other senior intelligence bureaucrats who were doubtful about the advantages of giving the enemy our secrets. Less constructive colleagues opted for the altogether safer choice of substituting entirely innocuous or erroneous information. Such manoeuvres were less controversial and therefore easier to defend at a later date, but they also weakened the credibility of the agent in whose name it would be
transmitted
. In the interests of watertight security, only a few officers in the service intelligence departments could be advised about B1(a)’s work, and those who had not been indoctrinated were reluctant to disclose operational details without formal
sanction
. The ideal solution to the continuing dilemma was the introduction of a new coordinating body, staffed at a lower level than the Wireless Board and chaired by a non-partisan
figure who could command everyone’s respect. That man was J. C. Masterman, then a don at Christ Church, Oxford.

The son of a naval officer, Masterman had been educated at Osborne and Dartmouth before going on to graduate from Worcester College, Oxford, and Freiburg University. He was an accomplished athlete and played cricket, hockey and tennis for England. During the Great War he had been interned at Ruhleben, the notorious civilian prison camp constructed on a racecourse near Berlin, where he gave memorable history lectures and captained the camp’s cricket team. His well attended courses were only interrupted by his brief absence early in August 1918, when he escaped. His four years in
captivity
made a lasting impression on Masterman who, along with many of his Oxford contemporaries, joined the intelligence corps in 1940. On 2 January 1941 Masterman took the chair of the Twenty Committee, so-called because of the two Roman numerals of double-cross.

Although Masterman was a newcomer to B1(a)’s work, his agile intellect soon grasped the intricacies of the operation. He was also assisted by a permanent committee secretary, John Marriott, who was also Robertson’s deputy. The creation of the Twenty Committee, which coincided with the welcome arrival of
TRICYCLE
, marked a turning point for the Security Service. From this stage onward, the progress of each agent was
monitored
by the committee, with responsibility for the day-to-day running of each remaining in the hands of the individual MI5 case officer. The new scheme freed the case officers from the sometimes dangerous chore of collecting information. Instead, the Twenty Committee was required to obtain the cooperation of the services and supply the case officers with suitable
material
for the enemy’s consumption. To cut red tape and expedite B1(a)’s plans, each service intelligence department was invited to second a representative to the committee. These liaison officers were thus able to serve the committee’s interests and simultaneously allay the fears and suspicions of their masters.

The Twenty Committee met on a weekly basis during the course of the following four and a half years (until 10 May 1945) – a total of 226 times, usually on Wednesday
afternoons
. Although its composition was to vary, the longest serving members were Robertson, Bill Luke (who succeeded John Marriott as committee secretary), Martin Lloyd (the SIS representative), John Drew from the Home Defence Executive and Ewen Montague from the Naval Intelligence Division. Whenever necessity demanded it, individual B1(a) case officers attended the committee’s meetings, and from the spring of 1942, Tomás Harris frequently dominated the proceedings on behalf of
GARBO
. From 1943 onward, when the American Office of Strategic Services created a
counter-espionage
branch, Norman Holmes Pearson was delegated from their London office to liaise with MI5. This crippled academic, then professor of literature at Yale University, was granted the unique privilege of sharing Masterman’s office in St James’s Street, and was therefore privy to all the Twenty Committee’s secrets.

As the double-cross system grew more sophisticated, and the
ISOS
decoders gained in experience, so the demand increased for some plausible ‘covers’ to mislead the enemy. One vital objective was to convince the enemy that British Intelligence was no match for the Abwehr, and in September 1941 an opportunity presented itself for MI5 to demonstrate some deliberate ineptitude. The purpose of the exercise, which bore a close resemblance to the wretched experience of Carl Muller in the Great War, was to persuade the enemy that MI5 were novices in the art of running double agents, and an
uncooperative
double agent code-named
SCRUFFY
was the chosen vehicle.

SCRUFFY
was a genuine German spy and his real name was Alphons Timmerman; he was a twenty-eight-year-old Belgian ship’s steward. He had presented himself at the frontier at Gibraltar, claiming to have trekked across Europe. He had been given a passage to Holland, but by the time his ship had docked
he had been betrayed by an
ISOS
text from Spain reporting the successful conclusion of the first part of his mission. The
reference
to Timmerman had been linked to a further
ISOS
message reporting that a Belgian recently recruited by the Abwehr was to have his pay sent straight to his mother, whose address was provided. Having landed at Glasgow, Timmerman underwent a routine examination at the Royal Victorian Patriotic School, the reception centre where all new arrivals were
accommodated
before being cleared for official entry into the United Kingdom. Headed by Major Ronald Hayler of MI5’s B1(d), this huge establishment in Battersea processed many thousands of genuine refugees, and a small number of enemy agents. During his RVPS examination Timmerman was found to be
carrying
an unusually large sum of money and the ingredients for making secret ink. He was promptly transferred to the harsher regime at Camp 020, where skilled interrogators extracted an admission that his mother was living in the same Belgian village that had been mentioned in the
ISOS
decrypt. A confession soon followed, and Timmerman was removed to Wandsworth Prison for trial and eventual execution. In the meantime, an MI5 officer corresponded, somewhat ineptly, with Timmerman’s German controller, using his secret ink and his post office box number in a neutral country. The idea was to persuade the Germans that their agent was still at liberty. As soon as the details of his arrest were made public, it was hoped that the Abwehr would realise that Timmerman’s correspondence had been faked by MI5. According to the theory, the Abwehr would then congratulate themselves on MI5’s incompetence, demonstrated by their poor choice of agent. The Belgian was found guilty under the Treachery Act and sentenced to death, and the
execution
was duly carried out on 7 July 1942. As was customary in those days, a brief public statement was released the following day and carried in most newspapers. MI5 had calculated that immediately the official announcement had been spotted the Abwehr would realise that all the letters purporting to have been
written by their agent had been forgeries. A detailed review of the Timmerman letters would have confirmed the
deception
and revealed a number of deliberate errors. All had been thoughtfully constructed by B1(a) and then inserted into the covert texts but, much to MI5’s chagrin, the Abwehr appeared to ignore Timmerman’s death notice and the deliberate mistakes. Instead of suddenly breaking off contact, as had been expected, the Abwehr continued the traffic as if nothing was amiss, and the Twenty Committee decided to abandon the exercise before it got completely out of hand. The Abwehr could hardly have failed to spot Timmerman’s death notice, yet they seemed
willing
to continue with the bogus correspondence. Evidently, the Abwehr considered MI5 to be even less sophisticated than MI5 had anticipated or wanted!

Although this particular ploy failed, it is an illustration of the extraordinary lengths MI5 were prepared to go to in order to develop the double-cross system. On this occasion, a real German spy,
SCRUFFY
, had been hanged simply to promote MI5’s interests. As it turned out, the execution had failed in its prime intelligence purpose, to demonstrate MI5’s inefficiency. If anything, the episode, and certainly the Abwehr’s apparent willingness to remain in contact with an agent they knew to be dead, illustrated how easily the enemy could be taken in.

By the time Pujol emerged on the scene the Allied
intelligence
Machine had accommodated the Twenty Committee and had given due recognition to its achievements. The double-cross system now embraced the entire Abwehr effort in Britain, and was poised on the brink of much greater successes. B1(a)’s ever-expanding stable of real and notional agents had completely eliminated every independent German spy and had enabled the port security staff to prepare reception committees for new arrivals. RSS cryptanalysts were supplying GCHQ with valuable clues to the construction of the enemy’s latest ciphers, and their study of the opposition personalities had enabled them to build an accurate order-of-battle for both the Abwehr
and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). The B1(d) investigators at the Royal Victoria Patriotic School also benefited from the system because they frequently received advance warning of suspects. Clues from B1(a) also helped the B1(e) interrogators at Camp 020 to extract damaging admissions from even the most well-trained of spies. Most were genuinely astonished at the extraordinary depth of MI5’s knowledge about the Abwehr’s operations and intentions which, of course, had been obtained from the invaluable
ISOS
.

By the spring of 1942 the British intelligence machine had gained sufficient experience to carry the double-cross system into the dangerous area of large-scale strategic deception. The necessary foundation had been laid; all that was needed was a suitable agent.

I
had smuggled the $3,000 that Federico had given me in Madrid into Portugal without any trouble. I had rolled the money up tightly and slid it into a rubber sheath, then I had cut a tube of toothpaste open at the bottom end, emptied out all the toothpaste, inserted the notes and rolled the bottom of the tube up to look as if it were half empty. I couldn’t get all the money in one tube, so I had put the rest of the 100-
denomination
notes into a tube of shaving cream using the same method. It was perfect camouflage and I had no problems at the Fuentes de Oñoro checkpoint at the border.

With this money I now bought a Baedeker tourist guide to England, Bradshaw’s railway timetable and a large map of Great Britain, and retired to Cascais to study them in detail. Then, in October 1941, I sent my first message to the Germans from Cascais, although, as far as Federico was concerned, I was already in England; it was quite a long message.

In invisible ink, I told them that before leaving Portugal I had posted the key to a safety box in the Espírito Santo bank to the German embassy in Lisbon, with instructions that they should send it to Federico at the German embassy in Madrid. I went on to explain that on arriving in Britain, I had got talking to the KLM pilot who flew us in to London and had become very friendly with him, introducing myself as a Catalan political exile who had had to flee because of my political views. I had then persuaded the KLM pilot to take my Spanish mail to the
Espírito Santo bank in Lisbon on a regular basis. In my letter I also said that he had not at first been too keen to help, perhaps because he suspected something, but that I had assured him that none of my envelopes would be stuck down so he could always see for himself what the contents were; my letters were meant, I had explained to him, to give my fellow Catalan patriots information about other Catalans in exile in England. I had also told the pilot, I said to the Germans, that this, my first letter, would merely be informing my fellow Catalans in Spain of my arrival in the British Isles. Finally, I suggested to the Germans that I was thinking of going to live near Lake Windermere in the centre of Britain because I had heard that there were a fairly large number of troops stationed up there.

I had had to devise this ploy about the KLM pilot because, as I was still living in Portugal, there was absolutely no possibility of my letters being franked by the British Post Office. So this, my first letter, consisted, on the surface in ordinary visible ink, of an enthusiastic account of England by a passionate Catalan democrat with all the information for the Germans written in between the lines in invisible ink.

I had become a real German spy.

I sent three messages to the Germans from inside Portugal (purporting to come from England), all of which were worded with the care and attention worthy of the most adroit German field agent. I tried hard to introduce new information gradually and to be cautious when I mentioned the new contacts I had recruited to help me. In my first message I told them that I had found three people who would continue to supply me with further information, whom I had made my subagents: one in Glasgow, one in Liverpool and one from the West Country. The naivety with which I told them the facts I had discovered
probably
contributed to the conviction that I really was in London.

In the second message I said that I’d been offered a job at the BBC and was about to accept. I also said that I’d heard that the navy was carrying out landing-craft manoeuvres on Lake
Windermere and described in detail how I had grappled with a whole string of obstacles.

The third message, which as always was a complete
invention
, had a unique impact, although it was not until much later that I learned of the stir it caused in the British Secret Service. In this third message I said that a convoy of five ships had left Liverpool for Malta, although neither the date nor the number of ships actually tallied exactly with my message. But the
coincidence
was sufficiently close for the British to think that a German agent was loose in England.

This worried the British enormously, especially when they were able to confirm that the Germans had carried out an aerial reconnaissance of the projected route and of Malta’s Valletta Harbour. Who was this agent? Where was he getting all this information from which endangered British security?

The British were going crazy looking for me as they had no idea where I was and, indeed, whether I existed at all. Cyril Mills told me later that he was in Portugal at the time and that he had mentioned to the intelligence gatherers in Lisbon and to those in Madrid that the German agent
ARABEL
could have come from either of those cities. If so, how had he got into Britain? Everyone in Britain was hunting for me and trying to discover how I was getting information through to Madrid.

So much of this reads like a fairy story that it will not come as a surprise to readers to learn that it was this third message which led to the British accepting me, and which eventually enabled me to become both the German’s top spy
ARABEL
and MI5’s counterspy
GARBO
.

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 underclothes 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.