Operation Garbo (28 page)

Though the agent himself was not discovered, the incident greatly shook his confidence, and when
GARBO
accordingly came to realise that his morale was seriously shaken he decided a few months later to pay him off and allow him to resign from the service.

This agent, one of
GARBO
’s creations during the period he was
working
in Lisbon, was perhaps one of the most colourful characters of the organisation, though he came to an untimely end. Not only was he responsible for the Malta convoy report but for numerous other Naval reports of a rather high grade, which were forwarded after
GARBO
’s arrival in the UK. He worked well until the
preparations
for Operation TORCH had commenced, when it was realised by the Admiralty that his presence in Liverpool was most undesirable. The agent was therefore reported as having fallen ill and to be about to have an operation for what appeared to be cancer. Three months went by, during which time the agent was paid, though due to his illness he was unable to contribute any information.

On visiting Liverpool during November 1942,
GARBO
discovered that the agent had died on the 19.11.42 and an obituary notice, which was inserted at our request in the
Liverpool Daily Post
, was forwarded to the Germans in evidence.

Following the death of her husband, Agent No 2, she found herself in a very difficult financial situation and stated her willingness to do anything to help
GARBO
in return for employment.
GARBO
,
realising
that she was not well suited to engage in espionage, decided, nevertheless, not to abandon the loyal wife of an ex-collaborator and that it would be wise to employ her to look after his household, as, by having a woman of complete confidence about the house, there would be less danger of his activities being discovered. One or two low-grade reports were sent over as attributed to her, but they were so bad that
GARBO
decided to suppress any further reports she might submit to him.

She did, however, serve a very useful role in the organisation. When the volume of wireless traffic became great she assisted
GARBO
with the enciphering of messages, and later she was used as a
cut-out
for contact between the agents, and finally as a contact between
GARBO
and Mrs
GARBO
,
GARBO
and Agent No 3, and between Agent No 3 and the operator after
GARBO
had gone into hiding.

This was the third and last of the agents recruited by
GARBO
while he was operating in Lisbon. He was represented as having been educated at the University of Glasgow and was still in the UK at the outbreak of war. Though his exact means of livelihood were never disclosed, the impression was given that he was a man of means whose family had properties in Venezuela, one near Comuna and another in Caracas.

From the outset,
GARBO
showed a preference for this agent and, being the oldest survivor of the network, after disposing of Agents Nos 1 and 2 it was natural that he should have finally gained the rank of deputy chief of the
GARBO
network.

He was the first to be given secret ink to write directly to the Germans, who furnished him with a cover address in Lisbon for this purpose. The letters were written in this office. They were written in English, a language which the Germans were told he knew as well as his native Spanish, if not better, since he had been absent from Venezuela for many years. His traffic was, on the whole, higher grade than that of any other agent during the first two years of the history of the network.

After
GARBO
’s first arrest in 1944 the entire organisation was directed by this agent, and the Germans came to regard him as an able substitute for the chief of the organisation. The purpose of handing over the organisation to this agent and removing the control from
GARBO
was primarily with a view to being able to run the organisation entirely through this office, without the personality of
GARBO
entering into it, and this was achieved. Thus, during the last months of the running of the case, this office was in direct communication with the German Intelligence Service, utilising only officers of this
department
to communicate in English on a wireless transmitting set which was installed within our office building.

This man was represented as a drunkard and gambler with whom Agent No 3 made contact, believing him to have been capable of parting with confidential information for a monetary consideration. We did acquire through this source an aircraft recognition manual, which helped considerably in building up the case. We also used this character as a means of demonstrating to the Germans the complete integrity of
GARBO
and his Agent No 3. When the opportunity first arose to acquire this book,
GARBO
decided that he should consult the Germans before parting with cash and ascertain from them the approximate sum which this information might be worth. He was authorised to pay up to
£
100 for it. However, when it came to discussing the price with 3 (1), Agent No 3 discovered that this man, contrary to his expectations, was very small-minded so far as
financial
matters were concerned, and thus he succeeded in getting the book for the small sum of
£
3. Through this incident the Germans were able to appreciate that
GARBO
and his Agent No 3 were honest: though they had been authorised to pay
£
100 for the book, they did not take advantage of the fact that they were able to purchase it for so small a sum as
£
3, which is what the Germans were charged.

This character was allowed to fade out of the picture in September 1944.

Agent No 3 made contact with this rather talkative lieutenant on a train journey from Glasgow to London. In the first place, the contact was used to confirm and explain certain reports which Agent No 3 had made on his own observations in the Troon area, where a brigade of the 49th Division was represented as undergoing assault training.

In support of
TINDALL
, we implied, through this source, that the 49th Division, which had been trained in mountain warfare, would be an assault division in an attack against Norway. Thus, when the
preparations
for Operation
TORCH
were well advanced, this contact was reported as returning to Scotland to join his division. A great number of troops employed in the
TORCH
operation did in fact leave from the Clyde, and when it was later ascertained that the 49th Division had not embarked we were able to maintain the threat to Norway, instead of, perhaps, exposing it as a cover plan for the
TORCH
operation.

This source played a very small role henceforth. He was active as late as September 1944, when, after the 49th Division had entered operations in France and been identified by the Germans, we had an occasion to make contact with him again through Agent No 3. This officer, now promoted in rank, told the agent of all his adventures overseas and the routing of his division through France. This was passed back to the Germans, who, having taken prisoners, were in a position to prove the accuracy of the information.

When building up the network to implement
FORTITUDE NORTH
and
FORTITUDE SOUTH
, though these cover plans for Operation
OVERLORD
had not then been developed in detail, it was realised that at least two
GARBO
agents would have to operate in Scotland: one on the west coast, the other on the east coast.

Agent No 5, who had at one time worked with Agent No 3 in Scotland, had left for Canada a few months earlier in order to build up a sub-organisation for
GARBO
there. Therefore, this new character was created to substitute Agent No 5.

He was a Greek merchant seaman who had been working on the
SS
Bristol City
at the time she was torpedoed by the Germans, in May 1941. This experience caused him to decide to desert from the Merchant Navy, and prior to his recruitment as our agent he had, for nearly two years, been living on his wits and on small sums of money which he would occasionally borrow from his friends, among whom was our Agent No 3.

Recruiting him, however, was a difficult case, since he was a man of strong communist sympathies. Apart from this he was ideally suited. Therefore, it was decided to recruit him by deceptive means. Agent No 3 approached him as if he himself were a secret agent of the Russians, and stated that as the Russians were unable to get
information
from the Anglo-Americans about the Second Front they had found it necessary, in the interests of their own operations, to try to discover as much as possible about British plans by secret means. He was promised good pay, and at the same time given the assurance that he would be assisting the inter-Allied cause. After accepting, he was warned that any indiscretion might lead to complications between the British and the Russian governments, and that if he were indiscreet the Russians would have no hesitation in liquidating him.

During the first few months of his activities he stayed close to Agent No 3. They made joint reports. Thus, we were able to cut down the volume of information passed over until we were due to
implement
FORTITUDE NORTH
. They parted company and 3(3) was moved over to the east coast of Scotland.

His usefulness to us came to an end shortly after D-Day and so we allowed the standard of his reporting to deteriorate, until November 1944, when he asked Agent No 3 if he might be allowed to resign.
GARBO
had already commented on the very poor grade of his reports by this time and expressed a desire to be rid of him. It was, therefore, much to
GARBO
’s relief that the suggestion to resign came from the agent.

Greece had by then been liberated, and the agent decided that he wanted to return to his native land, even if to do so meant
handing
himself over to the British authorities as a deserter and paying the penalty for this. After being further threatened by Agent No 3 as to the consequences if he were indiscreet about his work for the ‘Russians’, he was told that he might carry out his plan, and he was given the sum of
£
100 as a final pay-off.

His punishment for desertion was a fine and a few weeks imprisonment, after which he was given employment on a coaster prior to signing on a ship going to the Mediterranean, where he again proposed to desert on touching at the first port of call of his native country.