GO GO … COAL? GADGET
At the International Spy Museum in Washington DC, some of the world’s most intriguing and ingenious gadgets can be found:
● An unassuming lump of explosive coal was issued with its own dinky camouflage kit so that spies could colourmatch it to local coal.
● America’s dog poo homing beacon directed planes to missile strikes in the 1970s. It doesn’t look very convincing, truth be told, but who’s going to be staring that intently at it, really?
● The trees have ears! During the Cold War, a solar-powered tree stump listening device was placed near a Soviet airbase to eavesdrop for the CIA.
● Pigeons are the world’s most decorated birds, and for good reason – 95% of wartime pigeons successfully completed their missions. Some even wore a tiny camera to spy on the enemy.
● The KGB’s lipstick pistol could dispense the kiss of death in a flash. Not one to be fished out of a make-up bag by mistake on a bleary morning, though.
● Closer to home, the Derwent Pencil Museum in Keswick has a rather nifty deception device of its own. In 1942, Charles Fraser-Smith – the man who inspired Ian Fleming’s character of Q – asked the Cumberland Pencil Factory to design a special hollowed-out pencil that could house a secret map, to be given to Lancaster Bomber pilots. A compass was hidden under the rubber, something we’d be bound to lose within about three minutes. was the first recipe of her cookery career (we’ll stick to her boeuf bourguignon).
One celebrity spy even managed to fool the Führer himself. English opera singer Margery Booth made her name at the Berlin State Opera, and lulled the Nazis into a false sense of security while she was at it – they welcomed her into Stalag III-D prisoner of war camp to sing. Hitler sent her a swastikawrapped bouquet of 200 red roses after one memorable performance – what he hadn’t realised that day, however, was that Margery had stuffed her dress with secrets to smuggle back to the British.
GREAT ESCAPES
When things go pear-shaped, the finest spies are ready to hatch a plan, from elaborate jailbreaks to quick-thinking tricks. In 1966, MI6 spy and notorious double agent George Blake had served five of his 42 years for sharing secrets with the Soviet Union when he used a ladder made from knitting needles ( he favoured Milward and found no.13 to be the best size for ladder rungs) to escape from Wormwood Scrubs. He lived out the rest of his days in Moscow.
When another double agent – this time the KGB’s Oleg Gordievsky, who was actually spying for MI6 – was suspected of being a traitor, Operation Pimlico was set in motion by a group of British agents to smuggle him out of Russia. Rather than use sophisticated technology and techniques, they deployed some secret weapons: their wives, a packet of Golden Wonder, and a
I spy with my little eye… an unlikely line-up of secret agents. Far from going incognito, some of the greatest spies of all time were world-famous names. All working undercover in a bid to keep their country in the know
dirty nappy. At a Soviet checkpoint on the Finnish border, one agent’s wife distracted sniffer dogs by feeding them the cheese and onion crisps she’d bought at the embassy shop before leaving Moscow, while another masked the smell of Gordievsky by changing her baby’s nappy on top of the car boot he was crammed inside.
Sometimes, a spur-of-the-moment decision can save a life. Britain’s first female special agent was the Polish countess Krystyna Skarbek, better known as Christine Granville, who was a favourite of Churchill and one of the country’s most respected SOEs. When she was arrested by Nazis, she bit her tongue and dramatically coughed up blood to pretend she had TB. Scared of the disease, the officers sent her packing immediately.
THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
Using charisma to coax out secrets is a ruse as old as time. The most notorious honeypot is Mata Hari, who was convicted of spying for Germany during the First World War. But sexpionage isn’t the preserve of women. During the Cold War, the Stasi Romeos headed to West Germany to woo secretaries working in government offices.
These unsuspecting women, nicknamed ‘Juliets’, weren’t chosen at random – they were selected for their vulnerability, perhaps having suffered a recent heartbreak or bereavement, and for their easy access to classified documents. The Stasi were courteous and chivalrous boyfriends, and were intent listeners, too – they wanted to find out as much useful information as they could glean, after all – so some relationships continued for decades (a handful even ended in marriage). A lot of women kept gathering secrets for their lovers long after they’d discovered who they really were. Forty Juliets were charged with espionage, but many more hearts were shattered into smithereens along the way.
The Romeos had nothing on Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu, however, who managed to convince a French diplomat that he was a woman for almost two decades. Smitten Bernard Boursicot shared secret documents from his embassy, and even believed they’d had a child together (in fact bought from a local doctor). When Boursicot finally discovered Pei Pu’s true identity in the early 1980s, he attempted suicide.
To prevent its spies from falling for the charms of honeypots during the Second World War, the SOE sent agent provocateur Marie Chilver, code-named Fifi, to seduce trainees in bars. If they slipped up and spilled their secrets, they failed her test. Several did, of course, and their careers ended before they’d even begun.
Others managed to keep their lips sealed, and went on to join the ranks of the mysterious, courageous and sometimes treacherous agents, for whom sex, lies and videotape were all in a day’s work.
“Using charisma to coax out secrets is a ruse as old as time”