Operation Garbo (12 page)

Risso-Gill’s father had been an engineer who had married into an old Portuguese family and settled in Lisbon at the turn of the century, when British companies were modernising the country. Lisbon’s tram system had been built by a British company, and forty years later even the telephone company remained, under license, in British ownership. Eugene
Risso-Gill
, known to all his friends as Gene, had been born in Tangier in 1910 and was sent to school in England, where he attended Prior Park in Bath. He was a natural linguist and became completely fluent in French, German, English, Spanish and Portuguese. When his education had been completed he returned to Portugal, where he acquired rather a dashing reputation as a sportsman, gambler and womaniser, and eventually married his childhood sweetheart, Guilhermina Soares de Oliveira, whose family owned an apartment in the same building as his parents. At the time of their wedding, in October 1934, Guilhermina’s father had been president of Portugal’s Council of Ministers for four years. Before that, General Domingos de Oliveira had been military governor of Lisbon and the minister with special responsibility for internal justice. The general was his country’s strongman for more than a decade, until his retirement in 1938 when he became head of the Supreme Military Justice Tribunal. He was a committed Anglophile and had represented his country in London at the coronation of King George VI. He was also on very good terms with Dr Salazar, whom he originally brought into his administration as minister of finance. In other words, Gene Risso-Gill was superbly well connected. In addition, his wife
had no less than four brothers, who all achieved high rank in the military (the general’s eldest son was appointed
governor
of Macao) and two of her three sisters married senior Portuguese army officers. To cap it all, Risso-Gill was very friendly with Captain Lourenço of the PVDE and enjoyed a close relationship with Selgado, the head of the Legião’s
intelligence
branch.

In view of these influential family ties, it is not entirely surprising that when Risso-Gill approached the British embassy in 1940 with an offer to join up he was given an interview with the ambassador, Sir Walford Selby. Selby asked him to remain in Portugal, where he believed he might be more useful to the British government, and then discreetly passed his name to Commander Johns’s predecessor at the SIS station, Commander Austin Walsh RN. Armed with an introduction from Selby, Walsh approached Risso-Gill and asked if he was prepared to undertake ‘work of a secret and dangerous nature’. Risso-Gill agreed, and in due course Graham Maingot contacted him with the proposal of a wartime career in espionage: Risso-Gill would spy for Britain, and in return he would be seconded to the embassy with the rank of an assistant attaché, a cover which would offer him some diplomatic immunity. But instead of working from the main Chancery building, he would operate from accommodation at the consulate in the Rua da Emenda which, coincidentally, housed the passport control office. Later in the war he was to use an office on the first floor at 178 Rua de S. Bento as a cover address and safe house where he could meet agents.

Risso-Gill’s recruitment was a brilliant coup for SIS, and he became a valuable go-between with the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, especially during the delicate negotiations for the Azores. Risso-Gill continued to operate as Maingot’s chief agent until he was involved in a post-war scandal and cited as a correspondent by Sir Donald Campbell in his much-publicised divorce case.

Risso-Gill’s large, modern apartment, at 34 Avenida Álvares Cabral, in Lisbon’s smart residential district of Estrela, made an ideal safe house and was used as a convenient rendezvous for covert meetings. Although he came into contact with numerous wartime agents, including many fleeing from occupied France, by far his most important contribution was his role as
ARABEL
’s first British case officer.

When Ralph Jarvis therefore received London’s request to find Juan Pujol García, code-named
ARABEL
, he got in touch with Gene Risso-Gill and asked him to track down the man, win his confidence and persuade him to travel to England. Coincidental with this happening, Pujol made an approach to the American legation, where he met the assistant naval attaché Captain Arthur Benson RN. Benson had his own channels to London and, having bypassed the local SIS station, got a message through to Section V(d) describing Pujol’s offer to help the Allied cause. Although Benson’s route took some time, it arrived at the right moment: just as Risso-Gill was
starting
to look for
ARABEL
, he had identified himself to the very people who were anxious to trace him and transform him into a controlled double agent.

Lieutenant Demorest and Benson gave Risso-Gill Pujol’s address at his new rented house just a matter of yards from the Estoril casino. Fortunately, Gene Risso-Gill’s family kept a seaside villa, the Chalet Rola, at Oeiras, halfway between Lisbon and Estoril, and this made an ideal location for the two men to rendezvous away from the watchful eyes of the PVDE. The exact details of Risso-Gill’s meetings with Pujol are unknown, but more than forty years later the double agent still kept a record of Risso-Gill’s home and office telephone numbers: Lisbon 61089 and Lisbon 60402.

Pujol was delighted to accept the British invitation, but there was a major obstacle in the way. Travel to and from Portugal was strictly controlled by the authorities, and the PVDE were known to sell the list of arriving and departing passengers
to the German legation. In addition, Corte Real, the
principal
PVDE supervising officer at the Cabo Ruivo flying boat terminal on the river Tagus, was definitely in the pay of the Gestapo. How could Pujol leave Portugal without the PVDE reporting the matter to Germans? If he left the country by any ordinary route his name would certainly be spotted by the Abwehr who, of course, had been led to believe that
ARABEL
had been living safely in England since the previous July. No amount of explaining would be likely to regain the Germans’ confidence once they realised they had been deceived for the best part of nine months. Nor could he be allowed to use SIS’s secret shuttle to Gibraltar in case he was an enemy plant and under Abwehr surveillance.

Jarvis and Risso-Gill overcame this obstacle by
arranging
a rendezvous at sea with a British steamer heading for the Mediterranean. Captain Benson, the shipping attaché, persuaded the skipper of a merchant vessel to smuggle Pujol aboard and give him a berth as far as the Rock. The following morning the steamer rejoined its convoy, and two days later Pujol was met in Gibraltar by Donald Darling, representing the local SIS station. Darling, who had recently been
transferred
to the Rock from Lisbon, had the job of a glorified transport officer, welcoming escaped Allied servicemen and other resisters onto the only territory on the continent of Europe left in British hands. For unexpected arrivals there were days of inevitable, frustrating delays awaiting
confirmation
of their bona fides. Other agents, who had been able to send an advance warning, were luckier and given places on the next ship returning to England. In very special cases
much-prized
seats were found on transport aircraft and seaplanes which flew the 1,500-mile trip entirely over the sea. Naturally, Pujol fell into this latter category, and he was accommodated in Darling’s spare room, which doubled as a safe house for evaders, while space was found for him. Darling also provided him with some temporary travel documents and confided that,
because SIS had failed to inform him of Pujol’s code name, he had taken the liberty of selecting one himself. He had chosen the name of his favourite hot drink:
BOVRIL
.

J
uan Pujol's arrival in England on Saturday 25 April 1942 concluded SIS's contribution to operation
BOVRIL
and marked the opening of a new career for Pujol with MI5. He was met at the flying boat terminal at Mount Batten, Plymouth, by a B1(a) representative, Cyril Mills (calling himself ‘Mr Grey'), and Tommy Harris from B1(g), who acted as interpreter. Also present was MI5's senior driver, Jock Horsfall. After welcoming Pujol to England and clearing him through the port security formalities, they drove him to a hotel in Plymouth, before setting out early the next morning for London and a safe house at 35 Crespigny Road, Hendon, NW4. This discreet,
semi-detached
family home in north London was similar to many hundreds of others in the area and boasted just three bedrooms upstairs and a sitting room, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor. It was a modest, typically late Victorian,
middle-class
property, which had been rented by the Security Service for the duration of the war from a young Jewish army officer. Before
BOVRIL
took up residence it had already accommodated a number of other double agents, including two Norwegians code-named
MUTT
and
JEFF
. But by April 1942 both
MUTT
and
JEFF
had moved on, and Pujol shared the entire house with a trusted MI5 housekeeper named Miss Titoff, and, a week later, with his wife and son, whom MI5 had had brought over to England.

The day after Pujol's arrival he was visited by Cyril Mills and Tommy Harris who, on this occasion, were accompanied by Desmond Bristow, the Section V officer who had been
monitoring
ARABEL
's progress for some months. Bristow had been
brought up in the south of Spain and, like Tommy Harris, spoke fluent, idiomatic Spanish. This was the first of many debriefing sessions at which Mills, Bristow and Harris examined
BOVRIL
's bizarre story. They continued from 26 April, with a one-day break on 5 May, until Monday 11 May. When they were all convinced of Juan's bona fides, Harris collaborated with the double agent on the construction of his first genuine message from London to his German controllers. At subsequent
meetings
, Juan was collected by Cyril Mills and Tommy Harris, and driven by Jock Horsfall to a small office located in Regent Street, close to the Café Royal. This office was used by several MI5 case officers as a convenient place to hold the occasional meeting with an agent, but it soon became evident that Harris and Juan would have to spend many hours together, piecing together the many complicated strands of his non-existent organisation.

It was also vital that Juan's personal security be preserved, and it was agreed that he should only meet the minimum
necessary
number of MI5 officers. Accordingly, new premises near the Jermyn Street shopping arcade were hastily acquired by Tommy Harris in order to brief
BOVRIL
in detail and develop the case further. Security considerations prevented the use of his own office in MI5's headquarters, and the arcade office was conveniently close to St James's Street and just a matter of yards from Section V's London branch in Ryder Street. The
debriefings
that followed must have been truly extraordinary. Pujol had no idea that his activities had been watched so closely, and Harris had yet to realise that he was destined to spend much of the next three years in the company of the young Catalan. Gradually, they fell into a routine of office work in their small office, with occasional meals at the Martinez restaurant in Swallow Street and the Garibaldi restaurant in Jermyn Street. As cover, MI5 equipped Pujol with documents identifying him as Juan García, a translator working for the BBC. During these prolonged discussions, Juan revealed a secret that he had not even disclosed to the Nazis: after the Spanish Civil War he had
got married and had one baby son, Juan Fernando. His wife, Araceli, and their son were still in Portugal, so MI5 promptly arranged for them both to be spirited to London. When they arrived they joined Juan at Hendon, and the security service hired a nanny to help Araceli.

BOVRIL
's debriefing quickly established his credentials once and for all. As well as
ARABEL
, Pujol had, in effect, delivered a ready-made espionage network, even though it existed only in his head. The fact that the Germans had taken it seriously was sufficient justification for MI5 to play along. He boasted two civilians who flew regularly between England and Portugal and willingly acted as couriers for his messages, and Agents
ONE
,
TWO
and
THREE
, who were scattered around the country and were apparently able to report their own independent
observations
. Later on, some wrote their own messages and reported directly to the Germans, but they all received their instructions via
ARABEL
. This administrative bonus enabled Pujol to exercise total control over his subagents, answer for all of them and ensure consistency. It also had the advantage of giving him a unique insight into the Abwehr's handling of a group of agents. Naturally, he received each reply (and acknowledged it on behalf of his agent) and then compared the questionnaires to similar requests sent to his other agents. His comprehensive knowledge of every detail concerning his spy ring demonstrated
BOVRIL
's incredible powers of invention. The particulars of each non-existent agent were duly recorded into a logbook by Tommy Harris, who marvelled at Pujol's remarkable talent for duplicity. Indeed, Cyril Mills was so impressed that he suggested that
BOVRIL
's British code name should be altered to reflect his status as ‘the best actor in the world'. Harris concurred, and the code name
GARBO
was agreed upon. The choice reflected MI5's high regard for their agent and also offered some cover. If the Germans ever discovered that MI5 were operating a double agent with the name of a famous actress, they might assume the agent to be a woman.

BOVRIL
(or
GARBO
, as he had become) was unaware of these developments and concentrated on describing his notional subagents for the benefit of his MI5 audience.

His first recruit, designated ‘J(1)' by MI5 (an abbreviation of Juan's Agent
ONE
), was the air steward who had assumed the role of courier. It had been his job, since his first appearance on 15 July 1941, to fill and empty the bank deposit box at the Espírito Santo bank in Lisbon, which
ARABEL
had established in the ‘typically English name' of ‘Mr Smith-Jones', and Harris therefore made arrangements with Section V for Gene
Risso-Gill
to continue these duties. In the future, Pujol and Harris would prepare and encipher the test of
ARABEL
's messages and deliver them to Section V in London. Thereafter, they would be passed to Risso-Gill via the regular king's messenger service to Lisbon. He continued this routine, without mishap, until the end of hostilities. The Germans, of course, had no reason to suspect any alteration had been made in
ARABEL
's system. Each of Juan's notional agents was designated his own individual code name, and a complete organisational chart of them appears at the beginning of the book. Although MI5 referred to each by their numerical name (Agent
THREE
etc.), the Abwehr personalised Juan's sources and usually mentioned them by their code names. Thus, in the Abwehr's signals Agent
THREE
was always
BENEDICT
.

Pujol's choice of a KLM pilot as a regular courier to England was an inspired one, because the chief KLM pilot on the route was indeed a spy, although Pujol never knew it. The civil air lanes between Portugal and England were maintained
throughout
the war, although the unarmed aircraft were certainly not entirely immune from enemy attack. Nevertheless, the British Overseas Airways Corporation kept a regular seaplane schedule with Empire flying boats of the Clare and Clyde class on the route between Poole Harbour and Cabo Ruivo on the river Tagus. They also offered an alternative service with four
twin-engined
DC-3 aircraft, the forerunner of the famous Dakota, leased from KLM and operated between Sintra (later Portela)
and Whitchurch aerodrome, just south of Bristol. In spite of the wartime conditions, complete secrecy concerning
arrivals
and departures was virtually impossible, and security at the Portuguese end of the flight was, inevitably, extremely poor. In fact, the KLM pilots were often obliged to park their machines next to Lufthansa planes at Sintra. German ground staff were frequently spotted running to a telephone to report an arrival and aircrews of all nationalities mixed together in the transit quarters. At the British end security was a little better, with passengers instructed to report to the Grand Spa Hotel in Bristol rather than the aerodrome at Whitchurch. It is worth recalling that for much of the war this was the chief civilian air link with Europe. A more hazardous and irregular, night-time-only service also operated between Scotland and Stockholm. The Luftwaffe largely dominated the rest of Europe's skies, thus barring them from Allied civil aircraft. It was in these circumstances that Lisbon had become known as the crossroads of Europe.

At the beginning of hostilities the four Dutch airliners had been stripped of their original markings and flown to Heston, where they had been camouflaged and reregistered as British aircraft. Each carried a crew of pilot, co-pilot, engineer and radio operator, and could seat twenty-one passengers. The flight took a very indirect route to avoid encountering hostile fighters, involving a detour of some 1,000 miles, and lasted over ten hours. Under normal conditions the luxury airliner cruised at 165 mph (with a top speed of 210 mph) but in order to cover some 1,500 miles the planes were generally flown at a lower speed and a reduced payload of just thirteen passengers. This circuitous route also demanded a refuelling stop at Oporto.

The four Dutch planes,
King Falcon, Buzzard, Aigrette
and
Ibis
, were flown by a team of KLM aircrew, headed by Koene Dirk Parmentier, a long-distance pilot who had won the handicap leg of the 1934 London to Melbourne air race. In the spring of 1939 he had won the Batavia–Sydney prize. As well as being a renowned aviator, Parmentier was also an occasional employee
of the British Secret Intelligence Service and had performed various secret missions. These included the dramatic rescue of a German diplomat, Wolfgang zu Putlitz, who had defected from the Nazis in 1934 while serving in London and subsequently had been transferred to The Hague, where he continued to provide valuable information from inside the German legation. Late in 1939, the Gestapo had been tipped off to zu Putlitz's duplicity and he had been forced to flee. The British had used Parmentier to fly zu Putlitz out of Holland from Schiphol just hours before he was due to be arrested.

By the time Pujol had landed in England in April 1942, BOAC's KLM charter planes had flown more than 4,000 passengers to and from Lisbon and a twice-weekly run to Gibraltar had been introduced. The airliners were attacked by the enemy on only three occasions. The
Ibis
, the first of the
all-metal
DC-3s in Europe, sustained only superficial damage on 15 November 1942 when a Messerschmitt 110 made a short, strafing attack, and on 16 April 1943 the incident was repeated. Apart from a few bullet holes, including one in a hat belonging to a Swiss diplomatic courier, no serious harm was suffered. But less than two months later, on 1 June 1943, the
Ibis
, piloted by Captain Quirinius Tepas, was shot down, with the loss of all the passengers and the Dutch crew.

The destruction of BOAC flight 777a from Lisbon made headline news around the world because the film star Leslie Howard was among the seventeen people killed. Another victim was Tyrrel Shervington, a Shell Oil executive and a valued member of the British Secret Intelligence Service station in Lisbon. He had been returning to London for some well-earned leave. Others aboard included Leslie Howard's manager, the Washington correspondent of Reuters, a representative of the Jewish Agency, some elderly businessmen, three women and two children.

When news of the loss was announced,
GARBO
complained bitterly to the Germans. Their behaviour had jeopardised
the lives of members of his network and had threatened to destroy his valuable line of communication with the Espírito Santo bank. The Luftwaffe subsequently held an investigation into the incident and it was established that the unarmed plane had been shot down by a Junkers 88 from the mixed fighter wing Kampfgruppe KG 40 based at Kerhouin-Bastard airfield, near Lorient, piloted by a Luftwaffe flight lieutenant named Bellstedt. Bellstedt and his staff had been on routine patrol across the Bay of Biscay when they had encountered the DC-3 shortly after midday. Both he and his crew were described as young and inexperienced, and they made two cannon passes at the defenceless transport before it crashed into the sea in flames. No action was taken against Bellstedt, and he was later killed in combat over Germany, but his radio operator and navigator survived the war. According to one account, they were subsequently forced to ditch in the North Sea and were rescued by an RAF air-sea rescue launch. But when the two Germans had been hauled out of the sea they had inadvisedly boasted of having shot down the airliner ‘for target practice'. Before being put ashore both had been badly beaten up. It is worth recording that although the Luftwaffe did not officially discipline Bellstedt, there were no further attacks on civilian aircraft flying between Portugal and England.

Pujol's second notional agent was J(2), the KLM airline pilot who fulfilled a back-up function as a courier for J(1). He was soon considered superfluous by MI5, bearing in mind the new method of communication offered by Risso-Gill, and he was therefore allowed to slip quietly into the background.