The Unlikely Spy by Daniel Silva
For my wife, Jamie, whose love, support, and
constant encouragement made this work possible,
and for my children, Lily and Nicholas
PREFACE
In April 1944, six weeks before the Allied invasion of France, the Nazi propagandist William Joyce--better known as Lord Haw-Haw--made a chilling radio broadcast directed at Britain.
According to Joyce, Germany knew the Allies were at work on large concrete structures in the south of England. Germany also knew those structures were to be towed across the English Channel during the coming invasion and sunk off the coast of France. Joyce declared, "Well, we are going to help you boys. When you come to get them under way, we're going to sink them for you."
Alarm klaxons sounded inside British Intelligence and the Allied high command. The concrete structures referred to by Joyce were actually components of a giant artificial harbor complex bound for Normandy code-named Operation Mulberry. If Hitler's spies truly understood the purpose of Mulberry, they might very well know the most important secret of the war--the time and place of the Allied invasion of France.
Several anxious days later those fears were put to rest, when U.S. intelligence intercepted a coded message from Japan's ambassador to Berlin, Lieutenant General Hiroshi Baron Oshima, to his superiors in Tokyo. Oshima received regular briefings from his German allies on preparations for the looming invasion. According to the intercepted message, German intelligence believed the concrete structures were part of a massive antiaircraft complex--not an artificial harbor.
But how did German intelligence make such a crucial miscalculation? Did it simply misread its own intelligence? Or had it been deceived?
This project is so vital that it might be described as the crux of the whole operation.
--Admiralty memo
Considering the thousands of workers who at one time or another were involved, it was remarkable that the enemy had no inkling of what was afoot.
--Guy Hartcup, Force Mulberry
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
--Winston Churchill
PART ONE
1
SUFFOLK, ENGLAND: NOVEMBER 1938
Beatrice Pymm died because she missed the last bus to Ipswich.
Twenty minutes before her death she stood at the dreary bus stop and read the timetable in the dim light of the village's single streetlamp. In a few months the lamp would be extinguished to conform with the blackout regulations. Beatrice Pymm would never know of the blackout.
For now, the lamp burned just brightly enough for Beatrice to read the faded timetable. To see it better she stood on tiptoe and ran down the numbers with the end of a paint-smudged forefinger. Her late mother always complained bitterly about the paint. She thought it unladylike for one's hand to be forever soiled. She had wanted Beatrice to take up a neater hobby--music, volunteer work, even writing, though Beatrice's mother didn't hold with writers.
"Damn," Beatrice muttered, forefinger still glued to the timetable. Normally she was punctual to a fault. In a life without financial responsibility, without friends, without family, she had erected a rigorous personal schedule. Today, she had strayed from it--painted too long, started back too late.
She removed her hand from the timetable and brought it to her cheek, squeezing her face into a look of worry. Your father's face, her mother had always said with despair--a broad flat forehead, a large noble nose, a receding chin. At just thirty, hair prematurely shot with gray.
She worried about what to do. Her home in Ipswich was at least five miles away, too far to walk. In the early evening there might still be light traffic on the road. Perhaps someone would give her a lift.
She let out a long frustrated sigh. Her breath froze, hovered before her face, then drifted away on a cold wind from the marsh. The clouds shattered and a bright moon shone through. Beatrice looked up and saw a halo of ice floating around it. She shivered, feeling the cold for the first time.