Canaris had come to inspect the Wilhelmshaven station, and he delivered a rousing speech to the staff, describing the United States as “one of the key targets” in the Abwehr’s worldwide operations.

“The USA must be regarded as the decisive factor in any future war,” the admiral exclaimed. “The capacity of its industrial power is such as to assure victory, not merely for the USA itself, but also for any country with which it may be associated.”

Across the Atlantic Ocean, eight months after Canaris’s speech at Wilhelmshaven, Pier 86 on the Hudson River in New York City was teeming with passengers preparing to board the luxury liner Europa, pride of the North German Lloyd Line. Morris Josephs, a U.S. Customs agent, was mingling with the crowd when he spotted a thin, bespectacled man carrying a violin case.

“What kind of violin do you have there?” Josephs asked pleasantly.

“Oh, just an ordinary fiddle,” William Lonkowski, the American correspondent for Luftreise, a popular aviation magazine in Germany, replied.

“Is that so,” Josephs said. “Mind letting me look at it?”

The Customs agent’s request was due to his personal interest in violins, not to a suspicion that this man might be trying to smuggle out merchandise without paying duty on it.

Lonkowski opened the case, and as the agent lifted out the violin, his eyes widened. Under the instrument was a collection of papers that looked like photocopies of airplane blueprints.

Josephs replaced the violin and said, “Please come with me.”

In the Customs office at the pier, Josephs and John W. Roberts, who was in charge of Customs for the New York City area, searched Lonkowski and found in his pockets film negatives and several letters written in German and addressed to various persons in the Third Reich, as Hitler had proclaimed the nation. The film appeared to show drawings of airplanes, and the letters contained wording that looked like aircraft specifications.

Lonkowski explained that the materials were to illustrate an article he was doing for Luftreise.

Not certain about what action, if any, to take, Roberts telephoned Major Stanley Grogan, the Army intelligence officer for the region, at Governor’s Island in New York harbor. An hour later Grogan arrived at the Customs office, glanced at the detainee who was seated calmly in a corner, and began examining the materials Lonkowski had in his possession.

Grogan asked the magazine writer to explain several pieces. “Much of this looks curious for an article in a civilian aviation magazine,” the major declared.

One letter especially aroused Grogan’s interest. It indicated that secret military information was being stolen at Langley Field, an Army air base in Virginia. Portions of other letters gave evidence that defense secrets were also being pilfered at several other military facilities and defense plants.

There was much more in Lonkowski’s cache: photographs of a new Curtiss fighter plane and of a Voight scout bomber. Attached to the pictures were highly technical reports on each aircraft’s design and capabilities. A sheaf of papers told of a top-secret four-engined bomber to be known as a B-17, or Flying Fortress, that was being built by Glenn Martin Company in Baltimore.

After an all-night session, Major Grogan and the Customs supervisor discussed what action, if any, to take. They realized that they didn’t even know the detainee’s name. One called across the room, “Hey, fellow, what’s your name?”

Lonkowski paused momentarily, then replied, “William Lonkowski.”

“Well, Mr. Lonkowski,” the Customs supervisor said evenly, “you can go now, but be back in three days. We might have a few more questions to ask.”

Casually, Lonkowski put on his hat and with a pleasant “Good morning, gentlemen,” strolled out the door. Flagging a Yellow Cab, he leaped inside and headed for his home on Long Island.

Lonkowski could not believe his amazing good fortune. He had been caught red-handed while loaded with stolen U.S. military secrets. But these incredibly naïve Americans had turned loose one of Nazi Germany’s most dangerous and productive spies—without taking down his home address.

There had been an even more astonishing aspect to this bizarre episode. At the time Customs Agent Morris Josephs had approached him, the spy was in the act of handing the violin case to the Europa’s steward, who was actually the ship’s Orstgruppenführer, the Nazi Party functionary who had total control of the vessel. An Orstgruppenführer could even issue orders to a ship’s captain—orders that had better be obeyed. When the Nazi official saw Josephs, he dashed back into the ship.

After this close call at Pier 86, Lonkowski hid out for four days in Manhattan, and then he was driven to Canada by one of his German spies, Ulrich Haussmann, who was in the United States under the cover of being a reporter for a Berlin magazine. At a port on the broad St. Lawrence River, a German freighter had just finished unloading, and Lonkowski was smuggled abroad.

After arriving in the Fatherland, Lonkowski was hailed by the Abwehr as a conquering hero. During the past few years, he had organized a widespread spy ring, mainly in the New York City area, and collectively they had stolen about every major military secret the United States possessed. He was not only eulogized by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, but also given a hefty cash bonus. A delighted Adolf Hitler provided him with a top job in the Air Ministry.

One of the greatest spies in history would never know that there had been no real need for his frantic escape from the United States. The incriminating espionage materials found on him at Pier 86 were pigeonholed at Governor’s Island and the episode largely forgotten.¹

Farnborough was the site of the secret Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), where some of Britain’s top scientists and engineers conducted experiments on new aircraft and studies on foreign planes. Lieutenant Gardiner’s flight was wrapped in a cocoon of secrecy.

The Vickers-Wellesley bomber, which had been designed to fly a world’s nonstop record (or to strike at Germany in case of war), vanished. When no trace of the mystery plane or its pilot could be found, rumors spread about their fate.

One report being widely circulated was that fighter planes in the rapidly growing German Luftwaffe had laid in wait for the experimental aircraft and then shot it down off the coast of Scotland. Later, it was alleged, a team of German divers, operating mostly at night, salvaged the wreckage and carried it back to the Third Reich on a U-boat (submarine).

German intelligence supposedly had been tipped off about the flight of the mystery plane by a spy whose task was to keep watch on the RAE at Farnborough. But whether the Germans had indeed scored this spectacular intelligence bonanza would never be known for sure.²

On February 15, 1938, the thirty-nine-year-old Block arrived alone in London, presumably to look into his export business. But actually, he had been sent there by Erich Pheiffer, who held a doctorate in political economy and was second in command of the Wilhelmshaven branch of the Abwehr, Germany’s secret service agency. Pheiffer’s title was V-Mann Leiter (leader of agents).

Several weeks earlier Block had volunteered to be a spy for the Abwehr. After being checked out he was dispatched to London for the mandatory field test for new agents. His assignment was to take photographs of sensitive installations.

When Block returned to Wilhelmshaven, Pheiffer was astonished. The embryo spy had brought back scores of photos, including the water storage reservoirs of King George and Queen Mary, eight of the thirteen main sources of London’s water supply, and relay stations of the Metropolitan Electricity Board.

Later this key information was incorporated into the special target maps that would be used by the German Luftwaffe when it hammered Britain in mid-1940.

Erich Pheiffer knew now that he had an ace agent. So in the months ahead he had Block return to London many times to visit his wife’s parents. He collected more than four hundred photographs, sketches, and maps, along with some one hundred and fifty reports on British defense facilities.

His “album” contained snapshots of such strategic targets as airfields around southern England, shipyards, and gun emplacements along the White Cliffs of Dover facing France across the English Channel. His “scrapbook” of reports focused on aircraft factories.

Amazingly, although Adolf Hitler was vigorously rattling his saber, Fritz Block was never accosted a single time by law enforcement officers or security agents. Conceivably, the spy’s unpretentious demeanor and professorial countenance contributed to his seeming immunity from suspicion.

Block had another attribute to deflect attention—brains.

At this time the British government was distributing secret notices to newspaper editors and radio officials, listing defense installations, fortifications, and ammunition depots. These civilian media were asked not to mention them in print or broadcast. Block gained access to these secret “D” documents through a friend on Fleet Street, the London newspaper district. This intelligence proved to be a bonanza for the Abwehr. These papers not only listed the “secret” installations, but also included a description of them and their purposes and where they were located.

Fritz Block was an enigma. Why did he risk his freedom, even his life, by spying? He expected no praise from German leaders, and got none. He was not gripped by a superpatriotism, and he may not even have belonged to the Nazi Party. Money was no factor; throughout his brilliant espionage career the Abwehr paid him the equivalent of $200 per month.

Whatever had motivated the shy, soft-spoken Block, he may have been Germany’s ace spy during the war.³

The mystery deepened when crews descended upon the grounds immediately and began laying telephone lines, and the foreman on the site refused to disclose anything about the cables.

Unbeknownst to anyone outside of a handful in Whitehall (the government offices in London), the mystery buyer was Admiral Hugh Sinclair, head of the cloak-and-dagger agency known as MI-6, which was responsible for collecting intelligence and conducting espionage abroad.

Within MI-6 was the supersecret Government Code and Cipher School, which was responsible for breaking foreign cryptograms. Deducing that war with Nazi Germany was inevitable, Sinclair wanted to move the GC&CS to a remote locale in anticipation of German bombings of London. Bletchley Park, he concluded, was ideal, and he petitioned the Treasury for 7,500 pounds sterling (about U.S. $35,000) to buy the property. Frustrated by the refusal of the Treasury to put up the money to buy what he was convinced were needed accommodations, Sinclair dug deep into his savings and bought Bletchley Park himself.

It was while Sinclair, an energetic, charismatic leader who had the reputation for being something of a lady’s man, had been inspecting his new holdings a few days later that he bumped into a Bletchley District Gazette reporter who demanded to know what use was going to be made of the property. Forced to create a cover story on the spur of the moment, Sinclair said it was to be used in the air defense of England.

That offhand explanation had triggered the Gazette “mystery story.” But the mystery grew thicker when the Air Ministry in London stated it knew nothing about Bletchley Park.

On August 1, 1939, precisely one month before Adolf Hitler would ignite what came to be known as World War II by invading neighboring Poland, Admiral Sinclair ordered the GC&CS to move immediately to Bletchley Park. Staff members were shoehorned into the mansion and other buildings on the grounds. Barely controlled chaos erupted.

When Great Britain declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, leading British scientists, mathematicians, and cryptanalysts even more energetically plunged into the primary mission of GC&CS: break the “unbreakable” Enigma code used by the German military and government to send out hundreds of messages each day.

All the while Bletchley Park was searching for cryptanalyst (those who break codes) talent from the general population. Cracking Enigma would be a task requiring teamwork by hundreds of people. Many techniques were utilized to locate and recruit the desired talent, but perhaps the most imaginative focused on crossword puzzle addicts.

For nearly fifteen years, Leonard S. Dawe, a quiet, unassuming physics teacher, and his friend, Melville Jones, also an educator, had created each morning’s London Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle. In that time, their tough, intricate puzzles had exasperated and enthralled countless millions.

In 1941, the Telegraph, amidst much hoopla, published its five thousandth puzzle. That announcement generated a blizzard of letters from addicts who claimed they had never failed to solve each day’s puzzle. An avalanche of mail resulted in the Telegraph’s holding a competition to determine the champion solver.

Twenty-five men and women were invited to compete. Each was given a puzzle to solve, and the winner’s time was seven minutes and fifty-seven seconds. Others followed within only short intervals.

A few days later, each of the contestants received a letter on official government stationery inviting him or her to call on a certain army officer to discuss “a matter of national importance.” Most of the curious contestants responded. Many of these crossword puzzle geniuses had accepted the invitation out of curiosity. Only after they had been interviewed at length—grilled would be a better description—the mystery colonel identified himself as being with GC&CS and the prospect was asked to join the Bletchley Park team. Most eagerly joined up.

Much of the actual work of breaking codes was not a matter of science or mathematics, but the mental habits the job required were ones that crossword puzzle solvers possessed, psychological studies had disclosed. They tend to think in ways that separate them from most men and women.

Through the diligent efforts of the brainy people and after countless thousands of hours of painstakingly scrutinizing huge masses of intercepted Enigma wireless messages, the Bletchley Park team cracked the code. The seemingly impossible feat would prove to be an intelligence bonanza of unprecedented magnitude.

German deciphered information was given the code name Ultra. Throughout most of the remainder of the long war, the British (and later the Americans) would have the enormous advantage of knowing in advance the precise plans of Adolf Hitler and his military commanders.

But could this remarkable situation have been achieved had not the frustrated Admiral Hugh Sinclair personally bought the remote estate to provide space, secrecy, and security for the clandestine experiments? Or would the “unbreakable” German code have been deciphered without the aid of a large number of faceless crossword puzzle addicts with brilliant intellects?⁴

In between these endeavors, he served a short stretch in the peacetime U.S. Army and he wrangled a job as a policeman in Chicago, where he eagerly learned the tricks of undercover work on assignments against the notorious and powerful Al Capone mob.

In late 1938, Pfaus returned to Germany on a nostalgic visit and was smitten by the promise of Nazism. This outlook fit precisely the contents of a newspaper column he had penned a few years earlier in which he proposed a movement to be known as the Global Brotherhood.

While in the Fatherland, the restless Pfaus made contact with the Abwehr and offered his services in whatever capacity needed. On February 1, 1939, he was dispatched to Ireland to coordinate arrangements for the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to step up its sabotage and espionage operations in England.

On the completion of his mission, Pfaus enthusiastically told his Abwehr controller in Berlin that an anti-American IRA underground was organized in New York City. Consequently, Karl Franz Rekowski, a forty-eight-year-old Austrian businessman, was assigned the task of encouraging dissident Irishmen in New York and Boston to launch sabotage operations. Energetic, shrewd, and a devout Nazi, Rekowski was an ideal choice—he had worked for years as a paper salesman in the United States and spoke the language like a native.

Rekowski was briefed by his Abwehr controller and assigned the code name Rex. No doubt realizing the enormous potential of harnessing dissident Irishmen in the United States, Rekowski was given an enormous sum of money—$200,000 (equivalent to some U.S. $3 million in 2002).

He was told to commute between New York and the Abwehr’s major station in Mexico City.

On June 6, 1940, Rekowski arrived by ship in New York City and promptly began contacting leaders of the IRA whose names and addresses had been provided the Abwehr by Oskar Pfaus. One of the first men Rekowski talked to was identified as “the roving ambassador of the Irish Republican Army in the United States.” In a report to Berlin, Rekowski said that “this patriot is the organizer of sabotage in America.”

In another report to Berlin, Rekowski said that “the Irish have agreed to undertake sabotage on a substantial scale ... against British ships in New York, Boston, and elsewhere, and against warehouses filled with war supplies to be sent to England.”

Rekowski listed “a few” of the sabotage operations conducted by “our Irish friends.” An explosion at the Hercules Powder plant at Kenvil, New Jersey, which killed fifty-two people, injured one hundred, and left the facility a charred wreckage. One day, only minutes apart, tremendous explosions virtually destroyed war production plants at Edinboro, Pennsylvania, and Woodbridge, New Jersey. He mailed newspaper clippings to support his claims.

Rekowski realized that he had to cover his trail to his Irish agents, so he spent a good deal of time in Mexico City, where the Abwehr agents masqueraded as employees of the German Embassy. No mission was too bizarre. In one cable to Berlin, he asked for the formulae “of stink bombs to disrupt political rallies in the United States.”

Rekowski explained that he could not safely leave Mexico City to supervise actual operations in the United States because he was convinced that he was being tailed, possibly by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who were operating covertly with the secret blessings of the Mexican government. However, Rekowski held periodic meetings at night at a secluded locale outside of Mexico City with Irish agents coming from New York City.

A major logistics problem for Rekowski was the smuggling of the bulky explosives from Mexico to New York City. He resolved this problem by having Berlin provide his “Northern friends” with the formulae of explosive compounds that they could concoct themselves.

During the next six months, Rekowski bombarded Berlin with vivid accounts of the carnage his “Northern friends” were perpetrating: damaged ships, charred forests, wrecked factories, derailed trains.

At his headquarters in Berlin, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the Abwehr chief, showered his enterprising operative in Mexico City with profuse praise. Only later would Rekowski learn that he had been hoodwinked by his own IRA accomplices. Their highly successful boom-and-bang operations had been largely the product of their own vivid imaginations.

It had been a curious venture. Rekowski had shuttled most of the huge amount of money he had been receiving from Berlin to his “Northern friends,” who had gotten rich and were leading the high life at his—and Adolf Hitler’s—expense. His dreams of becoming wealthy from Operation Rex, as his mission was called, and using his new fortune to get into a legitimate business in Mexico City would forever remain a fantasy.⁵

Two years earlier Krivitsky had emerged from the shadows in The Hague, Holland, and rocked the world’s intelligence organizations by announcing that he had “broken with (Josef) Stalin” and would seek asylum in the West.

Every secret service was eager to make contact with this fugitive, none more so than the Abwehr. Through bribes or by brutal methods, the Germans hoped to obtain information about the large ring of Soviet spies known to be operating in the Third Reich.

Before Abwehr agents could track Krivitsky down, they learned that he had sailed for the United States. So Canaris ordered his ace operator for locating refugees, Dr. Hans Wesemann, to take up the chase in America.

Wesemann was clever and charming. He had been welcomed into the best society circles in European capitals. His specialty, one that endeared him to Adolf Hitler, was kidnapping émigrés.

Two years earlier, Wesemann had engineered the abduction of Berthold Jacob, a famous military writer, who was living in Switzerland. But Swiss police arrested Wesemann, and during his trial he confessed to being associated with the Nazis and declared that he had learned his lesson. After two years in prison, however, he secretly returned to the service of the Abwehr.

Soon he was working on a scheme to kidnap Willie Muenzenberg, a former leading Soviet propagandist, who was living in exile in Paris. Then he was suddenly taken off that operation and rushed to the United States, traveling on a phony passport that listed his occupation as “journalist.”

Wesemann had been in New York City only a few days when he bumped into an old friend, Emery Kelen, at a bus stop on Lexington Avenue. Kelen had a global recognition as a political cartoonist, and he had been friendly with the German during the early thirties in Geneva, where Wesemann headed a news service.

Kelen was astonished that a notorious Nazi spy and convicted kidnapper would be running loose in America. Without a word, Wesemann spun around and fled, losing himself in the throng of pedestrians.

Kelen rushed to a nearby telephone booth and called the local Federal Bureau of Investigation office on Foley Square to give notice that the Nazi agent was in the United States. However, at that time the FBI was not responsible for investigating matters involving espionage, sabotage, and subversive activities, and apparently did not follow up on the report.

Meanwhile, Walter Krivitsky was seeking to hide out in New York City, but Wesemann quickly got on his trail, following the Russian wherever he went. The refugee, an astute man, soon became aware that not one but two agents were tailing him. The second spy was a hit man for the Soviet secret service, the GPU, who was known as “Hans the Red Judas.”

Krivitsky knew that the Red Judas was in the United States to kill him. Even worse, he feared that the slick Hans Wesemann would kidnap him, sneak him aboard a German ship in New York harbor, and send him to the Gestapo in Germany.

One day Krivitsky came out of a restaurant on Times Square and literally bumped into the Red Judas, whom he had known back in Russia. Exasperated, Krivitsky asked, “Did you come to kill me, Hans?” The unexpected question seemed to shock the assassin. He blurted out, “Not me!” and he hurried away.

Presumably the Red Judas deduced that Krivitsky was being shadowed by FBI agents, and he did not want to be caught near the refugee. So the Red Judas was not seen again, and presumably had gone back to Russia.

Hans Wesemann apparently knew nothing about the Red Judas and his confrontation with the target in Times Square. So the German continued to shadow the former Soviet spy chief.

After war broke out in Europe on September 1, Wesemann became extremely nervous. He advised the Abwehr in Berlin that “the American authorities obviously suspect that my presence here is connected with activities for you.”

Wesemann was ordered to remain on the job, which was to kidnap Krivitsky. But a few weeks later, when the secret agent pleaded that “the authorities are closing in on me,” the Abwehr permitted him to take a Japanese ship to Tokyo.

Shortly after the German reached his destination, a cable from Berlin advised him to return to the United States by way of Brazil and resume the Krivitsky chase. He had to spend many months getting out of Japan and more weeks in South America, but by December 1940, Wesemann was back in New York City.

By now, Krivitsky was beginning to find the strain of his exile and being hunted like a beast for eighteen months to be unbearable. On February 9, 1941, he was in Washington, D.C., and checked in at the Hotel Bellevue. It was 6:00 P.M. and the capital was gripped by cold and snow.

The next morning a maid knocked on Krivitsky’s locked door, and when there was no reply, she entered with a passkey. The woman stifled a scream. Sprawled across the bed was the guest, a pistol near one hand. Police ruled the death a suicide.

Reading about Krivitsky’s death in the Washington Star, the deviousminded Wesemann decided to take full advantage of the situation to embellish his own reputation as a cagey operative. Through the German Embassy, he sent a coded cable to the Abwehr in Berlin, taking full credit for the demise of General Walter Krivitsky.⁶

England would most certainly come to the aid of Poland, the führer knew, so he instructed his Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (German High Command) to collect intelligence to pave the way for an eventual invasion of the British Isles.

The burden of gathering information about British ports and bases belonged to “M” branch, the Abwehr’s naval intelligence service headed by Captain Hermann Menzel. A man in his early fifties, Menzel had the ideal attributes for a successful spymaster: cunning, resourcefulness, and a passion for personal anonymity.

It was too late to plant German agents in British ports (Hitler planned to strike on September 1). So Menzel assigned the task to his D-K group, whose specialty was matters dealing with foreign ports and installations.

Two Kriegsmarine (navy) captains, Hans Kirschenlohr and Erwin Schmidt, donned civilian clothes and entered England several times under the guise of businessmen. They returned to Germany loaded with charts of the ports of Plymouth, Swansea, Barry, Greenwich, Dagenham, Gravesend, Purfleet, and all the harbors in the Thames estuary leading from the English Channel to London. The two spies’ reports included detailed descriptions of the port installations and fortifications, along with current hydrographic and topographical data.

In the meantime, Captain Menzel planted his trained and experienced spies on German cargo ships skippered by men of the D-K group known as Dampfer-Kapitaen (merchant marine masters). These merchantmen ostensibly were involved in peaceful commercial trade, but the ships’ captains were ready to launch an espionage mission on a moment’s notice.

When Navy headquarters in Germany called for information on the Isle of Wight, off England’s southern coast, an agent posing as a photographer on a civilian liner was assigned to the task. As the ship leisurely circled the island, the agent clicked away with his camera, returning with scores of photographs of shore fortifications.

Incredibly, with ominous war clouds gathering over Europe, a D-K ship managed to insinuate its way into the major naval base of Portsmouth to monitor the Royal Navy’s wireless traffic, which provided first-rate information on the fleet’s communications patterns.

When England declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939, Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, commander of the German navy, was armed with perhaps as much information about British ports and installations as was the Admiralty in London.⁷

Now, in early 1939, Duquesne had been harvesting bountiful crops of America’s military secrets. He sent to Germany the blueprints of a new bomber, drawings of range-finders, blind-flying instruments, and sketches or blueprints of other top-secret devices of the U.S. armed forces.

Duquesne obtained most of his leads by scanning the New York Times, which historically boasted it covered all the news that is fit to print. Among the “fit” news were items on new military weapons and devices. America was living in an Alice in Wonderland world.

One day the master spy saw an item in the Times that electrified him. It stated that the Chemical Warfare Service of the Army was developing a mysterious new gas mask. Not only would the design of the gas mask be of immense value to Adolf Hitler’s generals, but it would also provide clues about the nature of the new poison gases the U.S. Army was developing.

Duquesne always approached an espionage task as though it were a military operation. He concluded that it would probably be impossible to sneak into the Army’s top-secret Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, where new devices were tested, so he would make a flanking attack instead of a frontal assault.

On stationery carrying his true home address in New York City, he wrote a letter to the chief of the Chemical Warfare Service in Washington, D.C., identifying himself as a “well-known, responsible and reputable writer and lecturer.” Then he asked for information on the new gas mask.

Across the bottom of the typed letter, Duquesne wrote in longhand: “Don’t be concerned if this information is confidential, because it will be in the hands of a good, patriotic citizen.”

A short time later all the information the German spy had asked for arrived in the mail at his home. A week later it was being read with great interest by intelligence officers in Berlin.⁸

Soon the Abwehr branch in Hamburg responsible for subversive activities against the British Isles had exhausted its pool of potential agents and began scraping the bottom of the barrel. By now Germany was at war with England, so the Abwehr broke a time-tested rule among cloak-and-dagger agencies: never send a fallen agent to his or her old beat. So a not-too-bright Walter Simon was tapped to sneak into Ireland, then infiltrate England.

Simon was well known to British security officers from his having spent a few months in Wandsworth Prison, in late 1939. The Britons had known that he was a spy, but they couldn’t prove it, so he was released.

Now the Abwehr in Hamburg provided Simon with an AFU radio and sent him to Ireland. His phony passport identified him as Karl Anderson.

At dawn on June 13, Simon waded ashore at a remote locale in southwest Ireland, then walked to a nearby railroad station. There he walked up to three Irishmen who apparently were waiting for the next train.

Speaking fluent English with an Irish accent, Simon asked, “When is the next train due for Dublin?”

The strangers eyed him suspiciously for several moments, then one replied: “The last train for Dublin left here fourteen years ago. I reckon it might be another fourteen years before the next train will leave.”

An hour later Simon was ensconced in the local jail. His spying career was over.⁹

Even now, with a woefully weak America being threatened on the east by Nazi Germany and on the west by the powerful Japanese war machine, the covert operation had to be kept under wraps so that so-called civil libertarians in the United States didn’t rise up and howl because foreign radio messages were secretly being intercepted and studied by the SIS.

As a cover in the event of wide public outcries in America, the official instruction for the SIS was that the interception of foreign radio signals was for “training purposes only.” The small number of cryptanalysts that the agency’s budget could retain was told to deny any involvement in breaking codes. If anyone asked, they were to say they were studying War Department communications.

When Adolf Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and Great Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany, Americans demanded that the nation remain out of the conflict unless the United States itself were invaded by “foreign armies,” according to major opinion polls.

At his office in the Munitions Building in downtown Washington, D.C., William F. Friedman, the SIS chief, was a genius, not only in breaking codes, but attracting brainy people who would work at the puny salaries the budget permitted. Because of the nature of the tedious work that demanded long hours and intricate study, most of the SIS cryptanalysts marched to their own drummer and had what outsiders would consider to be “peculiar outlooks.”

One of those in that category that Friedman recruited was John B. Hurt, who joined up after the invasion of Poland. Hurt was a free spirit. He had attended several colleges, but had graduated from none of them. However, he had the type of analytical mind that Friedman was seeking. Hurt had taught himself to speak the complicated Japanese language without ever having been in Japan or ever having taken a course in that vernacular.

Like most of his SIS colleagues, Hurt had his own ideas about what living on Planet Earth should be. One of the theories he practiced was that when crossing a street he would ignore traffic. If a vehicle were bearing down on him while en route to the other side of the street, he stared at it as one would an approaching animal and it would halt.

On one occasion Hurt was crossing a busy Washington street when an oncoming taxi presumably paid no attention to his “stare.” Hurt was brushed by the vehicle and knocked down. The cabbie halted the taxi, leaped out, and ran back to the man he had hit.

Hurt was still lying in the street, and the anguished cabbie repeated over and over: “Are you hurt? Are you hurt?”

The SIS analyst got to his feet, said, “Yes, John B.,” and walked on across the street.¹⁰

Before Salisbury could act, three loud explosions inside the factory killed five people, injured thirty, and badly damaged the crucial plant.

No doubt in an effort to calm jitters among the people, the British government firmly denied that these explosions, and several other bombings that had occurred since war erupted four months earlier, had been caused by “enemy action.”

That disclaimer was technically accurate; none of the perpetrators were enemy nationals. But at Abwehr headquarters in Berlin, the series of bombings were attributed to “a group of Irish patriots with whom we are in contact.”

Ireland had long been in a state of undeclared war against England. Early in 1939 Jupp Hoven and Howard Clissman, two German intellectuals living in Ireland, had become deeply impressed with the “achievements” of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the boom-and-bang arm of the anti-British movement. They took note of the fact that the IRA had blown up power stations and business places in London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Almwick, wrecked a major communications cable, and planted an infernal machine in crowded King’s Cross Station that killed several Londoners.