The one-man spy factory who changed history

With two new biographies of Kim Philby out, an espionage drama by Sir David Hare on BBC2, and the recent revelation that the aristocrat superspy John Bingham was the model for George Smiley, there is little doubt that Britain is currently going through one of its fitful bouts of spy fever, and this book can only add to the excitement.

Philby has a walk-on role in Jason Webster’s gripping and stylish new account of the extraordinary career of Juan Pujol, aka Agent Garbo — and a multiplicity of other monikers — arguably the second world war’s most successful double agent apart from Philby himself.

Pujol first crossed British Intelligence radar when the clever boys and girls at Bletchley Park codebreaking centre noticed  signals from a new German agent, code-named ‘Arabel’, who claimed to be operating inside Britain. Arabel’s reports, however — including the important information that Glasgow shipworkers relaxed of an evening over fine wines — made clear that his information came from a fertile imagination.

Philby and other counter-intelligence officers quickly realised two things: that the Germans were apparently swallowing even the most absurd of Arabel’s inventions, and that if he were rumbled the whole British Double Cross system for turning and controlling captured German spies would be blown wide open. Arabel had to be found, stopped and turned in his turn.

They soon found that Arabel/Pujol had already been beating on British embassy doors in his native Spain and Portugal, begging to be allowed to spy for London, only to be turned away. But as soon as MI5 discovered his identity, Pujol was flown to Britain and put to work manufacturing a small army of totally fictitious sub-agents, all feeding false and misleading information to Pujol’s Abwehr controllers in Iberia.