Agent Garbo (7 page)

Days went by. Pujol drank in the hotel bars, hoping to buttonhole a Spanish diplomat, looking for an edge, an opening, while his Portuguese escudos ebbed away. His hopes rose when he met an agent for the Spanish security agency, the Seguridad, who was attached to the Lisbon embassy, a man named Varela, but nothing resulted from the brief encounter. Araceli, now pregnant, was waiting back in Madrid, trusting her husband would find a way for them to flee to England. “I was getting desperate,”
he remembered.

Hope arrived in the form of a fellow Spaniard. The hotel manager introduced Pujol to a friend, Señor Souza, a pudgy Galician who gave off the self-confident glow of a comfortable, well-connected man. On one of their excursions to Estoril, Señor Souza produced with a flourish a document that proved more than interesting to Pujol. It was a diplomatic visa from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, embossed with Spain’s coat of arms, stamped and signed in the indecipherable scrawl of a high official. Even better, in Pujol’s eyes, the foreign minister had typed a personal note on the visa asking that every courtesy and assistance be granted to the bearer. Souza was planning to use the visa to take the Pan Am hydroplane whose whine could be heard every day in Lisbon harbor as it set off for South America, where he would undertake a special mission to Argentina on behalf of the Spanish government. Every other person in Lisbon wanted on that plane, but Souza had the document to claim a seat.

Pujol’s eyes grew large. “I resolved to become better acquainted
with the owner of such a magnificent document.” He began to charm Señor Souza as they ducked into amusement parks and the nightclubs and cabarets of Rua Augusta, stopping at cafés to refresh themselves with coffee and to hear Portuguese
fado,
the national music. By the time they rolled back to the hotel, the sun was beginning to light the horizon beyond the sea. Pujol was an excellent companion, half genuine and half mercenary, and to repay Señor Souza for the meals they’d enjoyed, he invited the older man along for a week of gambling and sea breezes at the Casino Estoril. A makeshift plan was already taking shape in his mind.

Pujol was down to his last chance. Either he would pull in this big fish or his espionage career would likely be over before it had really begun. As he got ready for the trip, Pujol borrowed a camera and packed it in his luggage. Then he and Souza took the train to the resort town and, to save money, took a single room at the Monte Estoril Hotel, three blocks from the casino. Pujol chipped in the rest of his bankroll, Souza did the same, and they hit the roulette tables. Their luck was running high when one afternoon Pujol began to complain of stomach cramps. He patted Souza on the shoulder and told him to keep playing, as the Galician had a hot hand. Souza nodded, thinking nothing of it. Pujol made his way back to the hotel, slipped into the room, pulled out the camera and found Souza’s visa secreted in a compartment of the man’s luggage. A few minutes later, he strolled out of the hotel, close-up shots of the document now stored on the film tucked in his suitcase.

A few days later, Señor Souza was preparing for his trip to South America and Pujol was back in Lisbon, standing in an engraver’s shop. He held a crisp photograph of the visa with the Spanish seal carefully trimmed off. He asked the engraver to make a steel photographic plate of the image, and several hours later he was on his way, plate in hand, to 7 Rua Condessa do Rio, which housed an old printing firm. Pujol announced that he was an employee of the Spanish chancery, the Office of Public Records. He handed over the plate and the photograph and said he required two hundred copies of the visa as soon as possible. Pujol’s confidence, and his natural instinct for the con—who would order
two hundred
copies if he only wanted one for himself?—allowed for no questions. The visas were printed, Pujol disposed of all but a dozen of them, and he was soon on his way to an office supply store. He told the workers there that the rubber stamp shown in the photo had been used so often that the imprint was beginning to blur. Could they make him an exact replacement? They could.

Next, Pujol stopped into a photography shop, posed for a head shot, cut copies of the picture to size, pasted them on the documents and signed his name. He now held in his hands something only a few of the tens of thousands of refugees in Lisbon could boast: a Spanish visa. It could take him anywhere in the world. Men would kill for that document. In a few short months, he’d gone from a bumbling amateur to an operative of the first rank. And he was completely self-taught.

He returned to Madrid, to Araceli and their new baby boy, Juan. The young family moved out of the crumbling Hotel Majestic into a small bed-and-breakfast on the bustling commercial street called Gran Via. Pujol knew that he was exposing his family more with each step along the dark path of espionage. “I was fully aware of the risks
I was running and always had a lurking fear that my operation would collapse.” But he pushed on. Pujol called Federico at the German embassy and arranged a rendezvous.

The meet was at the Café Negresco, not far from the Puerta del Sol, one of the ancient gateways of the old walled city where centuries before couriers from distant countries would arrive on secret missions. Pujol sat down opposite Federico and began to weave a rich fabrication concerning the “Dalamal Operation,” complete with currency smugglers named the Zulueta brothers
(two very real, “picaresque” Basque-Cuban adventurers and police snitches he’d met at the Hotel Majestic), a surprise offer from the Bank of Spain’s Foreign Exchange Police section, thousands of pesetas and pounds changed one for the other . . . It went on and on. Federico’s mind must have whirled as Pujol regaled him with a highly detailed account of his adventures. Here the fledgling spy used a technique that would become one of his hallmarks: basing his fabulous tales in grains of truth, sprinkled like a bright trail through the lies. From now on, Pujol would always prefer to have his fantasies rooted in reality.

The nugget here was Varela, the real-life Seguridad agent whom Pujol had met briefly during his first days in Lisbon. Now Varela, instead of being a passing acquaintance, became the brains behind the Dalamal Operation. It was
he
who was secretly trying to exchange huge amounts of pesetas for British pounds, most likely on behalf of the Spanish government, which was starved for foreign currency. And it was Varela who was trying to get Pujol a diplomatic visa so he could go to London. Pujol had stashed the fake diplomatic visa back at the bed-and-breakfast, his hole card kept hidden for the right moment.

Federico bit. “He was becoming increasingly interested
and spent hours advising and training me.” In the next days and weeks, the spy and his runner met all over Madrid: the aquarium, the Café Calatrava, the Maison Doré. In the meantime, the Abwehr had its agents confirm that Señor Varela was a real person and worked as the head of security at the embassy. Pujol’s contact, who’d actually never heard of him, checked out.

This went on for a month. Pujol must have been aching to dazzle Federico with the visa, but his patience was sublime. At one meeting, Federico told him his bosses at the embassy were very interested in his work, so long as what he’d been telling them was true. But he confided he’d recently been burned by an “agent” who’d absconded with the money Federico had given him. For the first time, Pujol realized that men like Federico had skin in the game, too: one more failure and the Abwehr agent could be sent to the front lines. “He did not wish . . . to be caught a second time.”
Pujol sensed an opening.

With Federico pressing for more, Pujol called up a man he’d met in Lisbon, a Spaniard named Dionisio Fernández. He told Dionisio that he wanted to return to Lisbon to meet a lover he’d met there (another lie), but his wife, as wives tended to be, was suspicious. Could Dionisio impersonate a business contact and send him a telegram requesting his presence in Lisbon?

Pujol was a very likable man, and his friends, even instant ones like Dionisio, always seemed ready to do him favors. The telegram soon arrived in Madrid: “You must return urgently.
The matter is closed.”

It was signed with the fake businessman’s name that Pujol had given his friend: “Varela.”

Pujol met Federico and handed over the telegram. Federico scanned the contents—surely noticing that it had been sent from Lisbon—and stuffed the piece of paper in his pocket. He asked for a meeting the next day. The process was accelerating. The next afternoon, Federico slipped Pujol 500 pesetas and told him to go to Lisbon and finalize the Varela affair. He also gave him a contact name in case he should need more money when in Portugal.

Pujol headed back to Lisbon, booked a hotel room and stayed as far away from the real Varela as he could. He called up Federico’s contact to ask for more money, confirming to the Abwehr that he’d actually been in Lisbon. Then he headed back to Spain, met with the German spy-runner, confirmed that everything had gone well and told him the Spanish Seguridad was making all the necessary arrangements for him to work under Varela on the fake Dalamal Operation. He should have the documents soon.

It was time for Pujol to spring the trap.

Early the next morning, Pujol made a few calls, then phoned Federico, his voice charged with excitement. He demanded a meeting at a café across from the Seguridad building, not in a few days but
now.
“Alarmed and furious,”
Federico probably assumed that the crazy Spaniard had blown the Varela affair and was on the run. He agreed to meet Pujol in five minutes at the café. When Pujol walked in, he found Federico waiting impatiently. The diminutive spy sat down, nodded and said he had only a second to spare. In a low voice, Pujol calmly told the German agent what was going to happen next.
In two minutes,
he told Federico,
I’m going to get up and walk forty feet over to the Seguridad ministry, where a government messenger and car are waiting. They will take me to the Foreign Office, where the special diplomatic visa I’m carrying in my pocket will be stamped and sent on to Lisbon by diplomatic courier. I will travel to Lisbon and pick up the visa in person. From Lisbon, I will travel on to England, and there I will begin my career as a German spy.

Federico gaped. Pujol now said that he wanted to show Federico the document, to dispel once and for all any doubts the Abwehr had about him. Looking around with exaggerated caution, he slid something out of his pocket and passed it under the table. Federico glanced down at the heavily embossed piece of paper and, after a second, nodded. Pujol slid the document back and put it in his lapel pocket. “Greatly impressed,”
Federico slapped Pujol on the back and congratulated him on his coup.

Pujol smiled and, as if he were the teacher and Federico the beginner, whispered that it wasn’t safe for them to exit the café together. He would leave first. He said goodbye, got up and walked across toward the doors of the Seguridad ministry. There was indeed a young man waiting there, just as Pujol had said, scanning the crowd and intently looking for someone. The man wasn’t a special messenger of the Franco government, of course; he was the son of the owner of the bed-and-breakfast where Pujol and Araceli were staying. One of the phone calls Pujol had made that morning was to this young man, who agreed to meet his guest in front of the building. For what purpose, he had no idea. Pujol’s next call had been to a car service, which at his request had sent one of its vehicles to the ministry. It was now idling in front of the Seguridad’s doors. Pujol greeted the hotelkeeper’s son, they got into the car, and Pujol, in a loud voice that carried all the way to the interior of the café, called out, “Foreign Office.” The driver nodded and they drove off.

Through the café window Federico watched the car motor away. In his mind, Pujol was now officially a secret agent of the Third Reich. “[He’d] swallowed the story
hook, line and sinker,” Pujol gloated. The spy even got Federico to send a telegram to the real Varela: “In a few days
I’ll depart for Lisbon. Signed, Juan.”

Pujol was a modest man; he never bragged about what he was about to do. But returning home that night, he must have been brimming with pride. He’d done it. His life to that point had been one misadventure after another, some of them nearly fatal. His family had long regarded him as a lost cause, beloved but a little mad. The Marist Fathers at his school had thought him a dunce with anger issues. But now he’d bamboozled the Abwehr and was about to take Araceli to London, the center of Western civilization, to help save the world from “that psychopath” Hitler.

He was not yet a double agent, but he was fully a spy, and he had gotten himself out of Spain, ready to audition for the British.

“No conquest conquered me,”
he said. “And no defeat defeated me.”

It was late spring, 1941. By this point in the war, Hitler had taken Poland, Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg, France, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Austria. Greece and Yugoslavia were tottering and about to fall. A triumphant Hitler had promenaded through Paris the summer before. German U-boats were attacking merchant ships in the Atlantic, massive Luftwaffe raids were targeting Coventry and central London, and Rommel and his Afrika Korps were sweeping across North Africa. FDR had signed the Lend-Lease Act but America was still neutral, while Italy and Japan had allied themselves with the Third Reich and Stalin had signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler. In Germany, the program of euthanasia of the sick and disabled was more than a year old.
Kristallnacht
had occurred over two years before, and the first experimental use of poisonous gas at Auschwitz was now four months away.

5. The Game

W
ITH A FLURRY OF THEATRICS
—more meetings, another fake telegram—Pujol prepared to start his career as an Abwehr spy. Now that the Germans were convinced of the Spaniard’s bona fides, they rushed to bring him up to speed. Federico trained Pujol in secret writing and handed over four questionnaires detailing what the Nazis needed to know about England’s war plans and preparations. Pujol memorized parts of the document and was then given a miniaturized copy he could carry to England. The questions ranged from the highly technical to the broadly strategic: “In what stage of construction
is the aircraft carrier
Indefatigable
? What is thought of the possibilities of success of a German invasion? What measures are being taken against such an eventuality?” Pujol was given the code name Alaric, and his network was termed Arabel. Federico devoted all his working hours to training his new recruit, even taking him home to his apartment, at 73 Viriato Street, to teach him the art of ciphers.