Artillery of Lies Read Free Page B

virtually every aspect of the war in which the Abwehr was interested, from Atlantic convoy patterns and scales of food rationing, to secret tank trials and new airfields, as well as political intelligence about the strategic policies of the various Allied governments. Quite rapidly, Abwehr HQ in Berlin began to attach considerable importance to Eldorado reports. Digests and analyses of them were routinely forwarded to the German High Command and even to Hitler’s headquarters.
    Cabrillo has described how he was able to maintain such a continuous stream of apparently high-grade “intelligence.” He names three factors:
    (1) His wide knowledge of English life, the product of two years’ ceaseless reading in Madrid.
    (2) His use of three works of reference which he had found in Lisbon, namely: the 1923 Michelin Guide to Great Britain; Holiday Haunts, published by the Great Western Railway in 1937; and a school geography textbook, Exploring the British Isles by Jasper H. Stembridge, Book 4.
    (3) His creative formula, which consists of looking at what is actually happening in the war, then asking himself the question: “What would the Germans most like to hear?,” and shaping his answer into something that resembles military intelligence.
    Cabrillo wasted no time in recruiting sub-agents and communication assistants. The latter were codenamed BLUEBIRD and STORK, minor officials in the Spanish embassies in London and Lisbon; the former were SEAGULL, a Communist foreman in the Liverpool docks, and KNICKERS, a traveling soft-drinks salesman in southeast England. In due course at least seven more sub-agents were supposedly recruited:
    GARLIC—a Venezuelan medical student in Glasgow
NUTMEG—a retired army officer working for the Ministry of Food in Cambridge
WALLPAPER—a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, probably homosexual
HAYSTACK—manager of a London hotel
PINETREE—British employee in the American embassy
HAMBONE—telephone operator in Plymouth
DONKEY—telephone engineer in Belfast
    Naturally, all these members of the Eldorado Network had to be paid for the information or services they provided, as did Cabrillo himself. Before he left Madrid, the Abwehr had opened accounts for him in Switzerland and Lisbon; now they rewarded him generously. By the end of 1941 he had received almost £50,000.
    During the summer and autumn of 1941, MIS began to receive intercepts of some of the Eldorado reports. At that time, these appeared to be authentic and it was assumed that Eldorado was in fact operating from Britain. All attempts to locate the agent were of course doomed to failure.
    Mrs. Conroy
    In Lisbon there were several interesting developments. Mrs. Conroy stumbled across Cabrillo’s path and tracked him down. It says something for the persuasiveness of his reports that when she first read them (after breaking into his office) she was so convinced that he was a German agent that she tried to shoot him, using an old revolver she had found in a file cabinet. Fortunately, she missed; Cabrillo was able to convince her that he was a freelance operator working entirely for his own benefit and that if anything he told the Abwehr was true, this was pure coincidence. Thereafter Mrs. Conroy joined him; they lived and worked together. She provided a useful double-check on his reports and was instrumental in detecting and correcting several mistakes which might well have betrayed him.
    Bradburn & Wedge
    At the same time the Portuguese Ministry of Taxation took note of the fact that Cabrillo seemed to be running a business of some kind, and required him to supply details. To satisfy the Ministry, and to create a cover, Cabrillo and Conroy set up a genuine business called Bradburn & Wedge, a name they had found in the 1923 Michelin, and began trading in such items as lemonade crystals, de-greasing patents, and soap. (An accountant was engaged to handle their tax returns and the company