On the moonlit night of Jan. 29, 1943, a mighty blast awakened residents near the De Havilland aircraft factory on the outskirts of London. As dawn broke, workers returning to the plant, which produced the speedy, efficient Mosquito bomber, shook their heads as they surveyed a scene of awesome devastation. Yet all was not as it appeared. In fact, none of it was. The entire event was staged, all for the benefit of the amazing Agent Zigzag.
Agent Zigzag, known to friends, lovers and the police as Eddie Chapman, was by any measure Britain's most unlikely intelligence asset. He was a longtime criminal turned double agent who, in the course of his career as a spy, would flit back and forth between Britain and Germany, occupied France and occupied Norway on one top-secret mission after another. His incredible wartime adventures, recounted in Ben Macintyre's rollicking, spellbinding Agent Zigzag, blend the spy-versus-spy machinations of John le Carre with the high farce of Evelyn Waugh.
Eddie Chapman was a handsome, amoral charmer with a Ronald Colman mustache, a taste for sharp suits and an insatiable appetite for danger. A career robbing safes and cash registers, punctuated by spells in prison, took an abrupt turn in 1941. After completing a three-year prison term on the Isle of Jersey, he emerged to find himself, like the rest of the islanders, living under Nazi rule. In a rude series of events he was whisked away to a prison in occupied France, where he was recruited as a German spy. On his first mission to Britain he immediately offered his services to his native country.
Britain and Germany, each mistakenly convinced that the other had a highly efficient spy network, were desperate to acquire agents. Chapman, sniffing an opportunity, jumped for it. Macintyre, a writer at large for the Times of London, paints a detailed picture, supported by newly opened MI5 files on espionage training in the Third Reich and Britain's desperate scramble to throw the enemy off course through a campaign of disinformation.
In this fevered atmosphere, Chapman flourished like an exotic flower. He was heedless of danger and cool under pressure. A born liar, he could withstand hours of interrogation without breaking a sweat. He became fluent in French and German, polished his already considerable skills as an explosives expert, learned how to write with invisible ink and quickly mastered the art of extracting large wads of cash from his German and British handlers.
Both sides were unsure what they had gotten themselves into. "It is not easy to judge the workings of Chapman's mind," one British spy handler reported. That was an understatement. On his first mission to Germany, Chapman obtained two explosive devices disguised as lumps of coal, which, he informed German intelligence, he intended to place in the bunkers of the merchant ship he had used for transport to neutral Portugal. (Because the British had broken German codes early in the war, they could monitor all intelligence traffic relating to Chapman.)
Had Chapman turned into a triple agent? As monitors held their breath in London, Chapman returned to the ship and turned over the bombs to the captain, assuming, rightly, that this new bit of German technology would fascinate the boys back home.
Chapman was feckless and erratic but, in his own way, dependable. "Slowly at first, and with great care, Chapman began to build up a stock of secrets that would be of supreme interest to British intelligence," Macintyre writes.
His German credentials guaranteed by the successful De Havilland ruse in Britain, Chapman enjoyed enormous prestige in the Third Reich, where he assumed the status of a superspy. When he proposed that he be rewarded with a ringside seat at one of the great Nazi Party rallies, all the better to gaze upon Hitler, his drunken, aristocratic German handler promised to make it happen. Chapman suggested to the British that he take advantage of the situation to assassinate Hitler. The offer was rejected without explanation.
"MI5's files are suspiciously silent on the subject," Macintyre writes.
As the war progressed, demands from both sides escalated. The Germans, convinced that the British had developed a submarine-finding bomb, dispatched Chapman to get the plans. British intelligence was more than happy to send back some artful fakes. For the British Chapman supplied information on the V-1 rocket and transmitted false data to Germany about where the V-1s were falling. For stellar work throughout the war, the Germans awarded him the Iron Cross; he is the only British citizen to be granted one.
No task was too dangerous, or ridiculous, for Zigzag. "What Chapman seemed to want was another breathless episode in the unfolding drama of his own life," Macintyre writes.
After D-Day, with desperation mounting, the Germans sent Chapman on an absurdly ambitious mission to turn the tide of the war, but not without giving him a party first. Nursing a colossal hangover and clutching a suitcase filled with photographic equipment, Zigzag parachuted over Cambridgeshire and promptly vomited the remains of his banquet on his overalls. From a farmer's telephone he rang up headquarters in London and announced: "It's Eddie. I'm back, with a new task."
Zigzag, despite his many talents, did not fit into the peacetime plans of MI5. His involvement in rigged dog races toward the end of the war certainly dampened enthusiasm for a continued role with British intelligence. Wisely, MI5 paid him off, wiped his legal slate clean and waved farewell. Agent Zigzag was no more. Mission accomplished.
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