Next came the tricky part. Instead of hanging Becker, Vicary turned him--convinced him to go to work for MI5 as a double agent. The following night Becker, from his prison cell, turned on his radio and tapped out a coded recognition signal to the operator in Hamburg. The operator asked him to stay on the air for instructions from his Abwehr control officer in Berlin, who ordered Becker to determine the exact location and size of an RAF fighter base in Kent. Becker confirmed the message and signed off.
But it was Vicary who went to the airfield the next day. He could have called the RAF, obtained the coordinates for the base, and sent them to the Abwehr, but it wouldn't be so easy for a spy. To make the message appear authentic, Vicary went about reconnoitering the air base just the way a spy would do it. He took the train from London and, because of delays, didn't arrive in the area until dusk. A military policeman harassed him on a hillside outside the base and asked him for his identification. Vicary could see the air base on the flats below, the same perspective from which a spy might see it. He saw a cluster of Nissen huts and a few aircraft along the grassy runway. During his return to London, Vicary composed a brief report on what he had seen. He noted that the light had been poor because the trains were late and said he had been prevented from getting too close by an MP. That night Vicary forced Becker to send the report with his own hand, for each spy had his own distinctive keying style, known as a fist, that German radio operators could recognize. Hamburg congratulated him and signed off.
Vicary then contacted the RAF and explained the situation. The real Spitfires were removed to another field, the personnel evacuated, and several badly damaged fighters were fueled and placed along the runway. That night the Luftwaffe came. The dummy planes exploded into fireballs; certainly the crews of the Heinkel bombers thought they had scored a direct hit. The next day the Abwehr asked Becker to return to Kent to assess the damage. Again, it was Vicary who went, gathered a report on what he could see, and forced Becker to send it.
The Abwehr was ecstatic. Becker was a star, a super-spy, and all it had cost the RAF was a day patching up the runway and carting off the charred skeletons of the Spitfires.
So impressed were Becker's controllers, they asked him to recruit more agents, which he did--actually, which Vicary did. By the end of 1940, Karl Becker had a ring of a dozen agents working for him, some reporting to him, some reporting directly to Hamburg. All were fictitious, products of Vicary's imagination. Vicary tended to every aspect of their lives: they fell in love, they had affairs, they complained about money, they lost houses and friends in the blitz. Vicary even allowed himself to arrest a couple of them; no network operating on enemy soil was foolproof, and the Abwehr would never believe none of their agents had been lost. It was mind-bending, tedious work, requiring attention to the most trivial detail; Vicary found it exhilarating and loved every minute of it.
The lift was on the blink again, so Vicary had to take the stairs from Boothby's lair down to Registry. Opening the door he was struck by the smell of the place: decaying paper, dust, tangy mildew from the damp creeping through the cellar walls. It reminded him of the library at the university. There were files on open shelves, files in the file cabinets, files stacked on the cold stone floor, piles of paper waiting to ripen into files. A trio of pretty girls--the shakedown night staff--moved quietly about, speaking a language of inventory Vicary could not understand. The girls--known as Registry Queens in the lexicon of the place--looked strangely out of place amid the paper and the gloom. He half expected to turn a corner and spot a pair of monks reading an ancient manuscript by candlelight.
He shivered. God, but the place was cold as a crypt. He wished he had worn a sweater or brought something warm to drink. It was all here--the entire secret history of the service. Vicary, wandering the stacks, was struck by the thought that long after he left MI5 there would be an eternal record of his every action. He wasn't certain if he found the thought comforting or sickening.