For Britain, one of the great intelligence triumphs of World War II was the Double Cross System, whereby German spies were captured and, with scarcely credible success, ‘turned’ into double agents who fed a stream of disinformation back to the enemy. Ben Macintyre’s rollicking, thriller-paced account of Double Cross focuses on one particular agent – Eddie Chapman, a former small-time career criminal with a talent for safe-cracking.
Imprisoned in Jersey for housebreaking and larceny, he offered his services to the German occupying forces and, after a nasty spell in the notorious Fort de Romainville prison, was whisked to a villa in Nantes and trained in espionage by a team of Abwehr officers.
On December 16 1942 he was dropped by parachute over Ely in Cambridgeshire. His mission was to make his way to the De Havilland aircraft factory in Hatfield, source of the wooden Mosquito bombers that were the RAF’s pride and joy, and sabotage it by blowing up its boiler. But Chapman didn’t get further than a farmhouse down the road, where, after stuffing himself with toast and tea, he declared to waiting police: ‘I need to speak to the British secret services, when I will have a very interesting story to tell.’ So began his career as double agent Zigzag.
As far as the Germans were concerned, Chapman’s sabotage of the factory was a complete success. In fact, it was a hoax devised by MI5’s in-house illusionist Jasper Maskelyne – the book includes a photo of the buildings draped in tarpaulins and painted to simulate fire damage. There was much British sniggering when, in 1943, the Germans awarded Chapman the Iron Cross in recognition of his ‘outstanding zeal and success’.
Chapman’s story is so incredible it needs little dramatic embellishment. Recognising this, Macintyre concentrates on getting the details right, making the most of recently declassified files. The result is a Boy’s Own adventure par excellence and a gripping psychological case study of a man ‘torn between patriotism and egotism’ but motivated chiefly by a need to be occupied – and excited – at all times.
