Sifting through declassified documents from World War II — as well as hotel bills, letters and long-forgotten memoirs are the traces of the remarkable life of British double-agent Dusko Popov.
There was only one appropriate codename for a playboy double agent who had a penchant for ménage a trois.
But although Agent Tricycle may have come across as an early James Bond-type, he was vital to Britain’s intelligence gathering and, some say, the country’s most important agent.
Born Dusko Popov, into a wealthy Yugoslavian family in 1912, he was recruited by MI5 to run as a double agent between 1940 and 1944.
Communicating by wireless, invisible ink postcards and a special code of microdots, he convinced his German employers that he was passing them important British military intelligence – but in fact all he gave them had been carefully cleared and construed.
Under the heading “most secret,” one part of Tricycle’s file outlines how he was given a questionnaire on British arms and weaponry by a German officer and asked to gather the answers.
It asked what was being constructed at various factories in Weybridge, Wolverhampton and Dartford and for “exact details” of the “guns and apparatus” belonging to the British military.
It also wanted to know about fighter squadrons, how many Spitfires and Hurricanes the British had, and what the Army’s armoured division consisted of.
Each time, British officers would construct realistic, though inaccurate, answers for Tricycle to deliver to them. His formula for making invisible ink is also in the records. Aptly, he mixed it in a wine glass.
Tricycle’s files – which number more than a dozen – are packed full of dated documents, invisible inked postcards, airmail letters stamped with “opened” and “examined“, letters to his girlfriends – naturally sent “On His Majesty’s Service” – and minute-by-minute accounts of his movements. The agent, who spoke English, Italian, French and moderate German, also described Allied bomb damage to German cities.
In one account, he said the harbour at Hamburg had been hit, but it could still be used. Hanover, he said, had “suffered badly”.
One British Army officer said Tricycle lost “no opportunity of disparaging the Germans” and had at one point in 1941 said he was “convinced Great Britain will win the war within two years, due probably to German’s moral and economic collapse”.
“World War II offers us far more interesting, amusing and subtle examples of intelligence work than any writer of spy stories can devise,” noted Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Ian Fleming’s boss in Naval Intelligence. Eventually Fleming and Popov crossed paths.
It happened, of course, at a baccarat table.
During the war, Ian Fleming (James Bond Author) worked for British naval intelligence, overseeing operations designed to confuse the Germans in a fog of misinformation. In the summer of 1941, Fleming spent several weeks in Lisbon, Portugal. One of his favorite haunts was the Casino Estoril, which would become the model for Casino Royale, the setting of Fleming’s first Bond novel.
Popov was in Lisbon at the same time, and he too spent many nights at the Casino Estoril. He was pretending to spy for the Nazis but in fact was working for the British.
Named Tricycle by the British MI5, because he was the head of a group of three double agents. Apart from MI6 and the Abwehr, he also reported to the Yugoslav intelligence service, which assigned him the codename Duško. His German handlers referred to him by the codename Ivan.
Fleming, as an intelligence officer, would have known all about Popov. During his stay in Lisbon, Popov was carrying $50,000, which belonged to His Majesty’s Government. Fleming was assigned to keep tabs on the Popov — and to make sure that the $50,000 did not became a casualty of the war.
Fleming never forgot what he saw at the baccarat table that night.
He was at the bar, drinking a martini, we can safely say, when Popov arrived. The agent slipped into a seat at the gambling table and sized up his opponents. One of them was named Bloch, a rich Jewish merchant from Lithuania who was fleeing the Nazis. Popov had seen him at the table before and thought he was an arrogant gambler.
Bloch announced the stakes that night were “unlimited.”
Fine, Popov said, and then placed Her Majesty’s $50,000 on the table.
“Players and onlookers gasped,” . “The amount was more than 10 times what most people made in a year. The casino fell silent. Dusko glanced at Fleming, thinking he might be pale. He wasn’t. His face was green.”
Bloch demurred, and the casino refused to stake him $50,000. Popov swept all the money off the table and said, “I hope the management will not permit such irresponsible play in the future. It is a disgrace and annoyance to serious players.”
Popov, a Serbian, pursued a doctorate in law at the University of Freiburg before being arrested and banished from Germany for bad-mouthing the Third Reich. Danger was a stimulant for him, and he eventually was recruited by British intelligence for his sharp instincts, intuition and ruthlessness.
Popov’s virtuoso skills seduced the Nazis as well, and the British initially had him steal money from them as part of a laundering scheme.
In August 1941 the Abwehr assigned Popov to construct a spy network in the U.S. and to gather intel on the defense installations at Pearl Harbor. The British loaned him out to the FBI because J. Edgar Hoover thought he could be useful in weeding out German spies.
Popov came armed with proof that the Germans were gathering information about an attack on Pearl Harbor on behalf of the Japanese, using Britain’s successful aerial attack of Taranto, Italy, in 1940 as tactical inspiration.
But Hoover, who disliked Popov’s lifestyle, ignored the warning about Pearl Harbor four months before the devastating surprise attack. He never told anyone, including President Franklin Roosevelt, and after the attack spearheaded a cover-up that lasted until 1972 when British intelligence declassified the document.
Popov was crushed about Pearl Harbor, and his cover was nearly blown when legendary New York columnist (and Hoover friend) Walter Winchell reported that he was cavorting with actress Simone Simon (Cat People), the love of Popov’s life.
Deceptions in which he participated included Operation Fortitude, which sought to convince German military planners that the Allied invasion of Europe would take place in Calais, not Normandy, thereby diverting hundreds of thousands of German troops and increasing the likelihood that Operation Overlord would succeed.Thus, the Nazis were left vulnerable for the Normandy invasion of June 6, 1944. The diversion was further aided by the fact that the weather was abysmal the day before.
The virtuoso spy pulled it off, knowing full well that if he didn’t, he’d be brutally tortured and killed by the Nazis.
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thank you!
Interesting story.