The Spy with 29 Names (7 page)

The problem was that although he was in a relationship with Mercedes, Juan’s father was already married – to a woman called Teresa Llombart Puig. Teresa’s story with Pujol Sr did not end happily.

It is not known what separated the couple. They had no children – perhaps that was a reason. Teresa was born around 1870. Before she turned forty her husband had started his relationship with Mercedes, a younger woman who worked for them as a cleaning lady. Mercedes gave birth to her first child by Pujol Sr – Joaquín, Juan’s elder brother – in 1908.

At that point Juan Pujol Sr and Mercedes became, to all intents and purposes, ‘married’, living together and raising a family: Juan was their third child. There was no divorce at the time. Perhaps they erased Teresa from the story, pretending to their bourgeois neighbours that they had taken their vows.

Teresa was still around, however. While Pujol Sr and his new family lived comfortably in one of the city’s better quarters, her lot was considerably worse. She was living in the Poblenou district, to the north-east of the port, not far from her husband’s factory. The area had been the centre of Barcelona’s industrial expansion from the end of the nineteenth century and had even been dubbed ‘the Manchester of Catalonia’. Yet as in Britain’s industrial north, living conditions were appalling. Teresa lived on the ground floor of a small building at Carrer Sant Pere IV 58 – today an abandoned former truck depot.

It was here, at 2.00 in the afternoon on 10 August 1915, that Teresa died. Her death certificate gave cause of death as ‘mucomembraneous enteritis’, an acute inflammation of the gut producing colic and diarrhoea. There is no indication of how she became ill, but sanitation in the area at the time was minimal, resulting in numerous cases of typhoid and cholera – both illnesses that can cause acute enteritis. Thousands were dying from drinking dirty, bacteria-infected water – an epidemic in the second half of 1914 had infected over 9,000 people, killing around 2,000. Teresa may have been a victim of a similar outbreak. It is perhaps no coincidence that she died in August, when the summer heat made such cases more common. Her death was brought to the attention of the authorities by a man called Agustín
Cádiz, described as a married carpenter who lived nearby on Carrer Mariano Aguiló.

For Juan Pujol Sr, his estranged wife’s death removed a problem: he was now free, and less than three months later, on 3 November 1915, he and Mercedes wed at the Church of Los Angeles, a five-minute walk from their upmarket home. Now the process of legitimising their children could begin. Juan Pujol was three and a half years old.

It seems apt for someone who would later play such an important role in history as a storyteller, moulding, turning and shaping the truth for great effect, that there should be uncertainty and subterfuge concerning his entry into the world. In spite of the religious and social mores of the time, his mother and father raised a family – for the first few years at least – without the official blessing of either Church or State. It showed bloody-mindedness and an ability to shape the world rather than be shaped by it – both attributes that characterised Pujol in later life.

Pujol himself never mentioned the complications in his parents’ marital affairs. His autobiography portrays his father as an upstanding character: ‘the most honest, noble and disinterested man that I have ever known’. He was a role model, someone who taught Pujol the values of tolerance and non-aggression that he followed throughout his life. ‘He despised war, and bloody revolutions, scorning the despot, the authoritarian . . . So strong was his personality and so powerful his hold over me and my brother that neither of us ever belonged to a political party.’

Later, during the most intense period of his adult life, Pujol would do much to live up to the ideals of liberalism instilled in him by his father.

Despite their secret, the family was otherwise respectable and well-off: they never suffered the kinds of privations of the city’s poorer inhabitants. Politically and socially, however, it was a difficult time in Barcelona, with growing workers’ movements, social unrest and assassinations. The recently formed CNT anarchist trade union was engaged in frequent battles with gangs organised by company directors. During the worst period, between 1916 and 1923, 27 bosses, 27 managers and 229 workers were killed in the violence. One of Pujol’s earliest memories was of his father leaving for work in the mornings during these troubles, saying goodbye to his wife and each one of his children as though he might never come back.

Mercedes, the mother, was more of a disciplinarian than Pujol Sr, instilling in her children the strict Catholic ideas that she had inherited from her own Andalusian family – Los Beatos as they had been known in Motril for their rigid adherence to Church doctrine. Yet despite this the young Juan was a difficult child, unruly, headstrong, whimsical, and he would frequently break all his own toys, as well as those of his brothers and sisters. His father may have tried to teach him the values of pacifism and tolerance, but by nature he was rebellious and combative.

For a time he was sent with his elder brother to a Catholic boarding school in the town of Mataró, to the north of Barcelona, in an attempt to discipline him. It worked, to a degree, but his adolescence was marked by frequent radical changes of direction. He left school aged fifteen to become a blacksmith’s apprentice. After a matter of weeks he decided that he wanted to get a place at university studying philosophy and literature instead. There followed a period in which he read almost every book in his father’s ample library, fascinated by history and etymology. At this time the family moved house as their fortunes rose, first to Carrer de Septimania 21, then to a magnificent home in the same neighbourhood on Carrer de Homero. All the children received private French lessons three times a week with a tutor from Marseilles.

In 1931, when he was nineteen, Pujol’s intense self-education was cut short by an acute case of appendicitis. The wound became infected after the operation and he came close to death, passing in and out of consciousness and suffering a high fever. His father held his hand through the night, weeping at the thought that he might lose his son.

When Pujol eventually recovered some weeks later, he emerged into a changed country: during his illness the Spanish monarchy had fallen and a republic – the Second Republic – had been proclaimed in its place. Whether this was the cause of his next change of direction is unclear, but from philosophy he now decided that chicken farming was where his future lay. On finishing his studies in
avicultura
, he carried out his military service, being drafted in 1933 into a light artillery regiment where he learned to ride a horse, although only after several beatings from his commanding officer.

His father’s death from flu in January 1934 came as a severe blow, and seemed to presage a new phase in which the comforts of his
middle-class life were exchanged for intense hardship and suffering. At first, the shift was gentle: his mother sold the family share in his father’s company to the other business partners; a transport company that Pujol set up with his brother soon folded, as did a chicken farm they established together. In later life almost every business that he set up – from cinemas to farms and hotels – ended in failure. Yet he was an impresario by nature, never happier than when engaged in a new project.

More serious problems arose a couple of years later.

The Civil War began in July 1936. Like many Spaniards, Pujol heard the news of a military coup over the radio, apparently starting in the Spanish territories in northern Morocco. He had plans for a trip with friends to the nearby Montseny mountains that hot day, but as the news seemed to get worse with each bulletin, and there was talk of barricades being erected in the streets and people being shot, he headed over to his fiancée Margarita’s house, also in the Eixample area, on Carrer Girona. Margarita’s parents were old family friends. Around them, neighbours were hanging white sheets from their balconies to show that they were peaceful and wanted no trouble, but soon events were to change everyone’s lives dramatically.

At the start of the coup Barcelona, like most of the major cities except Seville, failed to fall into the hands of the rebel generals and remained under government control. Barcelona, however, quickly became a centre of a radical counter-coup movement. Anarchists and different left-wing groups took over: checkpoints were established in the streets, curfews imposed; people were shot for suspected sympathy with the military rebels. Overnight the city became a dangerous place.

Pujol’s family was caught up in the chaos. His sister and mother were arrested as ‘counter-revolutionaries’ because their names were on a parish list for a visit to the monastery at nearby Montserrat. Anti-clerical fever was at its height, and they were only saved by a friend in the anarchist trade union, who managed to get them released. Their jailers never found out that during those first few days of the conflict, Mercedes had been hiding other Catholics in her home, including a priest called Celedonio. He would later play an important role in Pujol’s story.

Meanwhile, Pujol’s brother Joaquín was press-ganged into the army to defend the Republic against the rebels. He managed to escape from
the front, crossing a great distance almost naked through the snow before finding refuge with family members in the Pyrenees. The experience took a heavy toll, and years later Pujol would blame it for his brother’s death at the age of sixty-two.

Elena, Pujol’s younger sister, was even less fortunate. Her boyfriend was arrested by the city’s revolutionaries as a suspected Franco sympathiser, taken to the hills nearby and shot.

During these difficult first few days and weeks, Pujol remained in his fiancée’s house, not daring to walk out into the street, too frightened to try to get out of the city, where the danger was greatest. Patrols and checkpoints were everywhere on the lookout for ‘fifth columnists’ – a phrase recently coined by one of the rebel generals – and he lacked any forged paperwork that might aid his escape.

The weeks turned into months. He could not appear at the window, or speak in a loud voice for fear of being heard by the neighbours. Whenever anyone knocked at the door he had to hide in a back room.

Shortly before Christmas armed men burst into the flat. Pujol was in the kitchen breaking nuts with a hammer, but he heard the noise as the militiamen began their search. As things turned out, they were not looking for him, but for valuables left in safekeeping with his host family by others who had fled the city. Someone – they did not know who – had tipped the authorities off. It did not take long for the search party to find what it was looking for – gold and jewels stuffed inside a door frame. But as the men passed through each room in the flat, they also discovered Pujol with the hammer in his hand. Along with Margarita’s father and brother, he was whisked away.

Pujol was relatively fortunate that his destination that night was the Police headquarters on the Vía Laietana. It offered some minor guarantee: had he been taken to one of the less formal ‘police’ stations –
chekas
, they were referred to, after the kangaroo courts of the Russian Revolution – he might well have been killed out of hand. As it was, he was placed on his own in a dark cell, unsure if these moments were to be his last.

He remained there for a week. Then one night, in the early hours, his cell door was opened and he was asked to step out. A mysterious man took him through a labyrinth of empty offices to a small side door which opened out into the street, thrust a piece of paper in his hand with an address on it, and sent him on his way.

Confused and frightened, Pujol set off. It was cold, but thankfully he only had a short distance to go: the address scribbled on the piece of paper was in the Barri Gòtic, the medieval part of the city between the Cathedral and the port. Arriving at a little street just behind the Town Hall, not sure what he was letting himself in for, he walked up the stairs in the dark and knocked softly. A woman opened and silently let him in.

Pujol discovered later that he had been helped by an organisation called Socorro Blanco, a secret Catholic group operating in Republican territory which rescued people who had fallen foul of the authorities. Fearful for his safety in prison as a draft-dodger, Margarita had got in touch with them and they had made efforts to get Pujol freed, using one of their operatives – a woman posing as a ‘revolutionary’ who was having an affair with an officer at the police station.

All this would become clear later. For now he was in hiding again, living in the home of a taxi driver who had been forced to drive soldiers to the Aragón front. His wife and nine-year-old boy offered Pujol what security they could. Again Pujol was reduced to silence, to living inside, never showing his face at a window. Conversations, for example when the taxi driver returned with news from the front, could only take place with the radio on, drowning out any sound of his voice that might be picked up by neighbours.

Months passed. In the mornings the wife went out in search of food, leaving Pujol with her little boy.

One day, while she was gone, the police raided the flat. In the seconds before they managed to get inside, Pujol indicated to the boy that he was going to hide under his bed.

The boy showed the police around with unusual
sangfroid
, telling them that his mother was out and that his father was at the front fighting the rebels. The policemen looked carefully in each room, finding nothing. When they were about to enter the room where Pujol was hiding, the boy himself opened the door for them, switched on the light and declared it was his own room. At which point the policemen turned and left. Pujol had been saved once again.

He was so grateful that for the next few months he did his best to teach the little boy whatever he could: the schools had closed and his education had suffered. It was a new form of stimulus for Pujol as well, helping to pass the time. But life in the city was getting worse:
it was being bombed by the Francoists and the queues for food were getting longer. By the middle of 1937 the taxi driver’s family could stand no more, and decided to leave the flat to stay with relatives out of town.