Agent Garbo (14 page)

The second objective in these early days was to peer into Hitler’s brain. That is, to reverse the telescope that the Abwehr thought they’d trained on England and look into the heart of the war machine in Berlin, without the Germans knowing it. This was done by listening carefully to what information the Abwehr was requesting, and pushing its officers to reveal their secrets. As the eyes and ears of the German forces, the Abwehr often sent signals about future operations before a panzer ever roared to life or a destroyer changed course in the Baltic Sea.

In the autumn of 1940, the Abwehr asked its spies about food depots in England, even demanding to know the price of bread and milk. Why would the Germans care about how much grain the English had stored in Devon? There was no question of starving the island into submission. British analysts came to the conclusion that Hitler was thinking about how to feed his army once it had conquered England, which told Churchill and his ministers that the Germans were still contemplating an invasion. Yet by the late summer of 1941, the tenor of the questions changed. The Abwehr stopped asking about food depots and began telling their agents to lie low and stay safe. The invasion of England was off. These questionnaires from Berlin were almost as good as having a mole in the Reich Chancellery.

The reverse telescope also revealed what obsessed Hitler on any given day. It became clear, for example, that the Führer was deeply concerned with the threat to Norway, close to his northern border and an important transshipment route for raw materials from Sweden, including iron ore. Throughout the war, the Führer kept hundreds of thousands of badly needed troops in the remote northern countryside to guard against invasion there. This gave the XX Committee something to threaten Hitler with: almost every major invasion deception included some feint toward Germany’s northern neighbor, which kept those troops in place and away from the real battle zones. “If these two conditions exist,”
wrote Sir Ronald Wingate of the London Controlling Section, “namely apprehension and plausibility, then deception can turn what was a vague fear in the enemy’s mind into a certainty.” Norway was like a bogeyman that the Allies kept whispering about, while dragging a chain across a floor now and then, as Hitler, eyes agape, put one more lock on the door.

Tragically, this reverse telescope method failed when it came to the Americans. The risk-taking double agent known as Tricycle, a Serbian playboy, received a questionnaire from his German handlers before he went to the United States on August 10, 1941. Buried in the notes were questions about one naval installation in particular: “Exact details and sketch
of the situation of the State Wharf and the power installations, workshops, petrol installations, situation of Dry Dock No 1 and the new dry dock which is being built.” The place in question was Pearl Harbor.

In the spring of 1942, Federico rattled off a series of disturbing questions to Garbo early in his London stay. In one letter Madrid asked: “Can you get hold of a gas mask?
Give technical information about the canister. Against what types of gas is this a protection? What information can you give us about the manufacture or storage, in the coastal areas or inland, of protective materials to be used against any type of chemical warfare?” The implications were grim: clearly the Germans wanted
to know how to render the crystals in the masks ineffective.

Harris sprang into action. MI5 ordered British scientists in the Gas Warfare Department to produce a fake chemical compound for the Germans. When the batch of “3 3/4 oz of Plain Nut Charcoal,
Grading 8-18, Volume activity 17” arrived from the lab, he and Pujol packed it in a tin of Andrews Liver Salts and mailed it off to the Lisbon cover address that had been designated for parcels. The phony crystals sent German scientists on a wild goose chase, trying to find gases to overcome them.

Along with the phony compound, Garbo composed a letter filled with news of his subagents, questions about buying a wireless and requests for money for his expanding network. Then he added: “I have been passing through a long period
of nervous strain . . . You do not know how homesick I sometimes feel for my own country. You cannot imagine how miserable life here is for me since I arrived . . . My Catalan character does not adapt itself to casual friendship more so when it concerns Spaniards who talk through their ass and compromise one for less than nothing.”

Garbo was dabbing a few more paint strokes on his self-portrait, which revealed an isolated man, tetchy but absolutely committed to the Nazi cause. Garbo would do anything for the Reich, and his integrity could only be questioned at the risk of setting him off into a violent explosion. More and more, Federico and Kühlenthal came to accept this fragile hero, and even to be moved by him. He was a better Nazi than either Federico or Kühlenthal. He’d risked his life for the Führer—what were they doing besides swilling
cerveza
in the cafés of Madrid? The letter, and the phony crystals, struck home in Madrid. Federico immediately upped the payments to Garbo and began to write longer and more frequent messages, giving MI5 a deeper understanding of the Abwehr’s thinking.

For all his genius on the page, Garbo couldn’t be contained purely on paper. Occasionally, MI5 needed to prove that he was real. Bent over their desks in Jermyn Street, Pujol and Harris came up with his first real operation, a little caper that would allow Garbo to “pass from the notional
to the factional.” It was called Plan Dream.

Dream was a currency scheme.
It was illegal to transfer money from England to pro-Axis Spain, making it difficult for Spanish businessmen in London to send money home. Taking advantage of this, Garbo told Federico that he’d come up with a way to pay his expanding network of agents, all of whom were clamoring for funds. A syndicate of Spanish fruit merchants in London wanted to send 30,000 English pounds back to Madrid. They’d contacted an assistant military attaché, a man named Leonardo Muñoz, in Spain’s London embassy, to see if he could massage the deal.

So far, this was all true. The facts had been fed to the XX Committee by an informer and later passed on to Garbo, who began turning this tawdry real-world scheme into confirmation that he was alive. He told the Abwehr in Madrid that if they would pay 3 million pesetas to Muñoz, as representative of the merchants, the merchants in London would in turn hand over 30,000 pounds to an MI5 agent, posing as an official of a “big British insurance company” with funds frozen in Spain. The agent would then hand the money to Pujol, who would use it to pay his operatives. No currency-stuffed suitcases would have to be smuggled across borders. Garbo planted a letter on Muñoz before he traveled back to Spain, with a message in invisible ink, giving the Abwehr the order to go ahead with the transaction. The passwords were creaky but serviceable: when Muñoz showed up, he was to be told, “I have a message
for you from Mr. Wills.” If Muñoz answered, “Do you mean Douglas Wills of London?” his identity was confirmed. He was to be given the pesetas, no questions asked.

Muñoz went to Spain, met with the Abwehr, gave the correct password and got the money. The Spanish merchants then paid 30,000 pounds to the MI5 officer, netting the agency more than $1 million in today’s money, a princely sum that was funneled straight into the double-cross operation. And the physicality of the caper—the Spanish diplomat, the wads of money, the secret letter—firmed up Garbo’s image nicely.

Though hugely lucrative, Plan Dream was a mere tune-up. It would also very nearly cause Garbo’s downfall, a twist many months in the future. But in the summer of 1942, a much larger operation came into view: Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa. It would be Garbo’s coming-out party.

9. The Debut

T
HE MOTIVE BEHIND TORCH
was as much political as military: Stalin was pushing Roosevelt and Churchill to open a second front to relieve the tremendous stress on his troops fighting and dying on the Eastern Front. The Americans—and the Soviets—voted for an amphibious landing in occupied Europe, code-named Sledgehammer, but Churchill objected that it was too soon for a continental invasion: the men and materiel weren’t yet available. When 3,500 mostly Canadian troops were killed, wounded or captured in the disastrous invasion at Dieppe, France, on August 19, 1942—what the Germans mocked as the “ten-hour second front”
—the British point was made. The Allies turned their eyes to North Africa.

With a major invasion scheduled, the Allies naturally sought to disguise it as best they could. A deception operation, code-named Solo I, was devised to make the Germans believe that the invasion was coming in Norway, not North Africa. Hitler’s well-known obsession with a possible invasion there meant that the fjords and cities were stacked with highly rated divisions. If those troops stayed in Norway, it would make life easier for General George S. Patton, who would lead his men into Casablanca while two other invasion forces struck Oran and Algiers.

“The job I am going on,”
wrote Patton, “is about as desperate a venture as has ever been undertaken by any force in the world’s history.” More than a hundred American ships carrying elements of the U.S. 2nd Armored, the 3rd Infantry and the 9th Infantry, units that had never seen battle before, would sail straight from Chesapeake Bay to Casablanca, evading packs of German U-boats on their way, then storm the beaches and take the fortified city. Marshal Pétain, the Vichy leader in France who controlled the Casablanca forces, ordered his troops to resist any invasion at all costs.

An attack force was assembled. Factories began mass-producing the newest Sherman tanks, while American Grumman F4F Wildcat and Douglas SBD Dauntless fighters were combat-loaded aboard the flattops, or aircraft carriers, that would take them to Casablanca. More than 107,000 British and American troops massed for the attack. “If the assault failed,
it could produce disaster,” the deception planner Dennis Wheatley wrote. “2000 miles from home, there would be no Dunkirk.” Torch was planned for November 1942.

Several months earlier, in the summer, Garbo started to maneuver his network to cover the invasion. Deception was a chess game; one had to put one’s assets in place long before attempting the fatal move. The problem for Garbo was that his Agent No. 2, “William Gerbers,” the man who’d spotted the fake convoy to Malta, was perfectly positioned to see the departure of the
real
task force that would be heading to French North Africa. “For him to remain there
and fail to notice the preparations and the final embarkation would have blown not only the agent, but Garbo’s whole network,” Harris worried. And if Garbo suddenly moved Gerbers to another part of the country just before the invasion geared up, it would look suspicious. Pujol and Harris conferred. There was nothing else for it: No. 2 would have to die.

Garbo informed Madrid that he was worried about No. 2’s health. He was so concerned that he pretended to travel up to Liverpool to have a look. He found the agent’s “wife” frantic and Gerbers himself in bed with a mysterious illness. Tommy Harris had consulted a physician
to make sure the clinical details that Garbo sent to the Germans were accurate. Garbo arranged for No. 2 to be moved to a hospital for an operation, but he told the Germans that his Liverpool agent would be out of commission for the foreseeable future. Garbo managed to replace this single agent with three others (none, however, in the Liverpool area). With this stroke, an operative was removed from the real embarkation point, and two more—Agents No. 3 and No. 5—were shifted to Scotland, the
fake
embarkation point. Pawns on a chessboard, Garbo’s agents were being maneuvered for the final payoff.

Garbo began “spotting” Scottish and Canadian troops conducting training on the west coast of Scotland, near Troon and Ayr, which told the Germans that Norway could be the target. “Although I cannot confirm the rumor
that 1 million troops were passing through Ayr . . . I see that there exist major concentrations of troops and commandos there,” Garbo wrote. His subagents caught glimpses of mountaineering drills and winter equipment. “There were also about the town
[of Moffat] very large stocks of antifreeze.” When the soldiers left the hoods of their jeeps up, the agent glanced down and “saw” labels attached to the radiators: “All radiators to be drained
before embarkation. Antifreeze mixture not to be used in vehicles until orders are given by Chief Transport Officer.” These humble details pointed north, away from Casablanca.

The Germans made it clear to Garbo that they felt an invasion was coming: “Second front! Very important!!
It is of the greatest importance that you should intensify all your efforts to try to get extensive information and transmit it to us quickly direct here by air mail, on concentration of troops and material, motorized units, aviation and air fields.” Federico ordered him to put agents in Wales and on the Isle of Wight, to look for telltale clues. So Garbo hurried “them” off, and they sent back word that a double strike, against both France and Norway, was likely. Then, on October 11, Garbo informed Madrid that “No. 6 tells me that rumors are circulating
among journalists that the objective will be Dakar.” Dakar was in West Africa, halfway down the coast, many hundreds of miles north of the true targets, Casablanca and Oran. Garbo immediately qualified the news by telling Madrid that the war correspondents were in the pocket of the War Ministry, and thus Dakar was probably a false target. He was creating a smokescreen composed of many gray shades.

As the invasion approached, the XX Committee pushed Garbo up to a new level of prominence. They had to sprinkle enough truth in his messages to keep the Germans from suspecting him of disloyalty. One of his agents was allowed to “see” one of the actual convoys leaving the river Clyde for French North Africa on October 27. Garbo quickly flashed the sighting to Madrid. Four days later, he sent another bulletin: more troops were being loaded onto battleships, and the camouflage was in Mediterranean colors: “None of the troops with Arctic uniforms
and equipment embarked as they are still here.” Garbo was beginning to suggest that Norway was a feint. The invasion was heading toward Africa. Finally, the pièce de résistance: while visiting with his Ministry of Information source, Garbo claimed he sneaked into the unsuspecting man’s office and stole a look at a “Most Secret” file titled “Policy—French North Africa.” “It was impossible for me,
in the few minutes available, to get more details. Nevertheless, I am convinced . . . that they are preparing propaganda which would come into force at the moment of an attack against these places.”