Operation Garbo (11 page)

A lengthy debate followed Juan Pujol’s approach to the British embassy in Lisbon: should
ARABEL
be accepted and taken into MI5’s fold of double agents or not? Was he genuine or a plant by the Germans? Would it be best to leave him alone?

The head of Section V, Felix Cowgill, pointed out that very little was known about Pujol apart from information that he had volunteered himself in Madrid and Lisbon, and his
ISOS
dossier, which contained copies of his three decrypted messages and several appreciations of him as a reliable source that had been intercepted between Madrid and Berlin. Having once been deputy commissioner of the Calcutta Special Branch (before his recruitment into the Secret Intelligence Service in February 1939), Cowgill was acutely anxious to preserve security and, in particular, to protect the integrity of
ISOS
. In the realm of
intelligence
gathering there will inevitably arise a conflict between the desire to avoid compromising existing sources and the need to develop new ones. Such conflicts had hampered Section V’s operations because Cowgill had been reluctant to exploit new channels of information if there was any risk to the mother lode, the flow of signals intelligence from GCHQ. The debate over Pujol simply reopened many of the old disputes. Did he represent a genuine offer, which should be taken up before he changed his mind, or was he something more sinister? The Abwehr’s internal communications, which had also been
intercepted
, revealed
ARABEL
to be highly regarded by the Abstelle in Madrid and Abwehr headquarters in Berlin. Such opinions might, in some circumstances, have counted against him, but there would have been little logic in ‘turning’ an agent who did not enjoy the enemy’s full confidence. Indeed,
counter-intelligence
officers argued for his recruitment, pointing out that Pujol’s recruitment would enhance B1(a)’s existing double agents and provide an unrivalled conduit for misinformation. After all, they insisted, Pujol had got over the first hurdle, that of establishing himself with the enemy as a credible source. The controversy over the advisability of accepting Pujol raged on, with the more experienced members of Section V taking the safer line. Some of V(d)’s younger staff, such as Kim Philby and Desmond Bristow, were determined to seize an
opportunity
which, they felt, might never be repeated.

The stakes were certainly very high. If Pujol was exactly as he appeared, then MI5’s total domination over the Abwehr would be confirmed and could be exploited further. If, on the other hand, he turned out to be a deliberate plant, the entire double-cross system might be placed in danger. As Cowgill had pointed out, even the integrity of
ISOS
might be
jeopardised
. There were also a number of other possibilities. Pujol’s offer might be part of an elaborate trap to identify or kidnap a British Intelligence officer on neutral territory – an event that was not entirely unknown. A similar incident in November 1939 in Holland had resulted in the loss of two experienced SIS men. Another alternative scenario had the Abwehr anxious to promote a ‘triple agent’ so they could learn the fate of all the rest of their spies. If Pujol gained the confidence of the British, he might be able to judge the reliability of the Abwehr’s other sources.

Pujol’s approaches were debated in London, St Albans and all the meeting places where Britain’s counter-intelligence experts gathered. On the whole, the opinions divided along organisational lines. Section V was against taking on a relatively unknown agent in a neutral environment where no physical control could be exercised over him; MI5 advocated his being brought to England so he could complete his mission before the Abwehr tripped him up and discovered how easily they had been duped. The concluding factor in the decision to recruit
Pujol was a series of decrypts from Bletchley which showed that the Germans were planning to ambush an Allied convoy in the Mediterranean that had apparently left Liverpool bound for Malta. Although plenty of convoys had attempted the
perilous
journey to relieve the siege of Malta, then at its height, none sailed from England. Most of the ill-fated supply ships had come from Alexandria and had been sunk by German and Italian bombers. The hard-pressed island was enduring constant air bombardment and, during the first thirty days of 1942, Malta endured more than two thousand attacks from enemy aircraft. During February 1942 more than one thousand tons of bombs were dropped on the island. On 7 February Malta underwent a record thirteen hours of air raids, involving sixteen separate enemy sorties. The RAF had only a handful of fighters to defend Malta, so even a few hours’ respite was welcomed by those on the ground.

ARABEL
’s non-existent convoy offered just a pause in the Axis onslaught. According to his messages, he had recruited a spy who worked in Liverpool. This notional agent, who later took the identity of a certain William Gerbers, eventually was to succumb to a convenient illness when his continued
presence
in the area was considered too dangerous. But, in the meantime, Gerbers reported regularly to
ARABEL
and described the tempting convoy apparently bound for Malta. This news was relayed to the Abwehr, causing elaborate plans to be made in the Mediterranean. Subsequent decrypts confirmed that the German admiralty had prepared their attack on the basis of information received from
ARABEL
via the Abwehr. U-boats were diverted to an ambush site just east of Gibraltar and Italian planes armed with torpedoes were transferred to Sardinia. The Axis amassed an impressive force with which to sink the British shipping, but they achieved precisely
nothing
. Even when the long-awaited convoy failed to materialise, having wasted thousands of man-hours and tons of valuable fuel, the blame for the operations failure was left with the
Italians and not the Abwehr. Indeed, the intercepts proved that no one had actually doubted the veracity of
ARABEL
’s messages. The entire exercise, which resembled a fiasco from the German viewpoint, was an eloquent demonstration of
ARABEL
’s standing with the enemy. In Malta the brief respite was an opportunity to regroup the defences and provide a well-deserved breathing space.

If it was within Pujol’s power to cause such mischief
unwittingly
, what might be the result if his efforts were directed in concert with other weapons of deception? This was the carrot dangled by MI5, although Section V of SIS seemed reluctant to grasp the opportunity. When the idea was originally proposed by MI5 it was formally rejected on security grounds, and MI5 concluded that SIS was reluctant to cope with the logistics of giving Pujol a means of surreptitious exit from Portugal, perhaps thereby compromising their secret fishing-boat ferry service. Throughout the war SIS ran a very useful, very illicit shuttle between Lisbon and Gibraltar. Did their refusal to deal with Pujol conceal an unwillingness to provide valuable covert transport facilities for an untried agent? Did they still fear
penetration
by an enemy agent provocateur who might denounce the boat service to the PVDE (Polícia de Vigilância e de Defesa do Estado)? Was the possible prize of a direct line into the enemy’s intelligence and decision-making structure not a worthwhile risk? Might Pujol, who was, after all, already well established, deliver an invaluable insight into the Abwehr? Such tempting imponderables won the day and it was agreed that Pujol should be invited to travel to London and continue under MI5’s
supervision
. The Secret Intelligence Service eventually agreed to this idea and nominated a Spanish-speaking Section V(d) officer, Desmond Bristow, to supervise the case for SIS and liaise with MI5 and the Twenty Committee. He, more than any other Section V officer, had been in favour of pursuing Pujol’s offer, and he accepted the task with enthusiasm. SIS also agreed to convey the invitation to Pujol, so a coded message was sent by
courier to the SIS station in Lisbon. Delivering the message was one thing; executing it under the watchful eyes of the Germans and the Portuguese was quite another.

At this time, in March 1942, the situation was extraordinarily complicated. Although Portugal was Britain’s oldest ally, the
president
of the council of ministers, Dr António Salazar, showed a distinct reluctance to honour his obligations and oppose the Axis. The 500-year-old mutual defence treaty of 1373 required Portugal to support the Allies and declare war on Germany, and a somewhat half-hearted offer to this effect had been made in 1941, although the War Cabinet in London had decided that it would be more advantageous not to invoke the ancient treaty and let Portugal retain its neutrality. However, it was suggested that the Portuguese government might grant the RAF
permission
to base aircraft in the Azores so the Atlantic convoys could be protected. (In August 1943, after many lengthy negotiations, Dr Salazar secretly gave his consent to the plan and allowed the RAF facilities on the strategically located islands.)

It did not pass unnoticed in London that little progress was made in the diplomatic exchanges until the military balance began to alter in favour of the Allies. Victory in North Africa cemented Portugal’s cooperation, but in the meantime the Nazis never missed an opportunity to woo Salazar. The principal German suitor was Baron von Hoyningen-Huene, an aristocrat who had been born in Switzerland to an English mother and Baltic German father. He was Ribbentrop’s long-serving ambassador in Lisbon, who had deftly courted influential friends among those close to Salazar. And von Hoyningen-Huene’s embassy also housed a very substantial Abwehr presence headed by Major Albrecht von Auenrode, a colourful Viennese intelligence officer who invariably masqueraded as ‘Ludovico von Karsthof’ and kept a pet monkey named Simon in his office. According to rumour, von Auenrode’s secretary, Mausi, was also his mistress.

Responsibility for maintaining surveillance on all the suspect personnel of all the belligerents’ diplomatic missions
was left to the dreaded international police, the PVDE. This internal security force, which had acquired a particularly grim reputation during the Spanish Civil War, was headed by Captain Agostinho Lourenço and, in theory, was under the direction of the interior minister. In practice, Lourenço answered only to the premier, Dr Salazar, and was generally considered to be one of the country’s most powerful (and ruthless) men.

Lourenço was a professional army officer and had fought with the Portuguese contingent in France with the Allies during the Great War. He also held a British decoration, having been made an honorary Companion of the Royal Victorian Order for services performed while head of the Lisbon division of the security police during the brief visit in April 1931 of the Prince of Wales. In spite of these apparent qualifications as

One of Lourenço’s senior lieutenants, Captain Paulo Cumano, was believed to be very pro-German, having been trained in police procedures in Berlin before the war. He had also been to a German engineering college, where he attended a mining course with Erich Emil Schroeder who, by coincidence, happened to be posted to the German legation in March 1941
as a scientific aide. In reality, he was the Gestapo’s local
representative
, with special responsibility for liaising with Lourenço’s PVDE. Another senior PVDE official with close German links was Lourenço’s deputy, Captain Jose Catela, who also headed the security department.

In addition to the dreaded PVDE, there was another,
unofficial
, intelligence service known as the Legião, or Portuguese legion. This was a powerful paramilitary group run by
well-known
Fascists who based it on similar blackshirt
organisations
. By far the most important branch of the Legião was the intelligence section, which was generally regarded as enjoying a fraternal relationship with the German embassy. There was hardly an area of Portuguese life that had not been thoroughly penetrated by the Legião.

Section V’s representative in Lisbon was Ralph Jarvis. London’s order in March 1942 to find
ARABEL
placed Ralph Jarvis in considerable difficulty. He and his staff at the British Repatriation Office (located on the other side of town from the embassy) were constantly followed by none-too-subtle PVDE agents. It was equally difficult for the head of station to undertake the mission as all the diplomatic personnel were watched and Ambassador Sir Ronald Campbell had already warned Commander Johns not to engage in any activities which might compromise the rest of the embassy. The building itself, in the heart of Lisbon’s old quarter, was surrounded by narrow streets and was quite unsuitable for exotic, clandestine manoeuvres. The PVDE had no difficulty in keeping tabs on everyone, including the Americans who, since December the previous year, had lost their neutral status and were therefore equally vulnerable to Lourenço’s attentions.

However, Section V had a couple of people working for them who had considerable freedom of movement: Jarvis’s most trusted aide, Graham Maingot, and Maingot’s contact, Risso-Gill.

Maingot was a veteran British agent with film star good looks who had spent the pre-war years in Rome under
commercial
cover. He had been obliged to leave Italy when Mussolini declared war in 1940, and since that date he had been
operating
within the expatriate community in Portugal, recruiting informants and running the occasional double agent. By far his best catch was Eugene Risso-Gill, a Briton of Gibraltarian extraction who worked in the oil division of the Seconi Vacuum Corporation.