The Spy with 29 Names (39 page)

Authors: Jason Webster

BOOK: The Spy with 29 Names

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The text of Garbo’s crucially important D+3 message.

The Berghof, Hitler’s Alpine home. Here Hitler read the intelligence report based on Garbo’s disinformation. His decision to reroute his Panzer reserves changed the course of the Battle of Normandy.

V-1. The first V-1 flying bomb hit London on 13 June 1944. As more rained down on the capital, Pujol’s German handlers asked for information about where they were landing.

In Madrid, Kühlenthal was using very out-of-date maps to chart the V-1 strikes. It took several days for the Garbo operation to find something that both sides could use, which bought them valuable time.

Sherman tanks of the 23 Hussars set off to attack enemy lines during Operation Goodwood, 18 July 1944. Large numbers were ‘brewed up’ by Peiper’s forces and the operation ended two days later having only advanced seven miles.

The front page of the Paris newspaper
Libération
announcing the arrival of the first Allied forces in the capital. The soldier on the right is the Spaniard Amado Granell.

As part of his cover story, Pujol had to pretend that he was in hiding from the British, and changed his appearance. This is how he appeared for the secret ceremony awarding him an MBE in December 1944. Guy Liddell of MI5 thought the beard made him look like Lenin.

One of Tomás Harris’s self-portraits showing a mysterious and imaginative side to Garbo’s case officer. Harris was as much a story-teller as Pujol, and ‘Garbo’ was a double act where each man was as important as the other.

After the war, Harris moved to Spain, where he returned to his artwork and collecting. Pujol and other friends remembered Harris as ‘always smiling’.

Pujol died in October 1988 and was buried in Choroní, Venezuela.
Notes

The page references in this notes correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the notes, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

With the exception of Chapter 13, I have quoted direct speech verbatim wherever possible from the various sources available.

Prologue

pages
1–4
Poolton’s story is told in
Destined to Survive

1. England 1941–2

page
8
‘a face like a pang of hunger’: Batey p. 111

page
9
‘endearingly eccentric’: ibid. p. 111

page
9
‘We’re breaking machines’: ibid. p.110

page
9
‘Which way do the hands’: Sebag-Montefiore p. 119

page
11
‘On Christmas Day 1941’: Trevor-Roper

page
11
There were rumours: Elliott p. 95

page
13
‘Lack of imagination’: Philby p. 46

page
13
‘to avoid needless trouble’: ibid. p. 43