Bingham John - The Man Who Was George Smiley: the Life of John Bingham

I t was mid-afternoon before the agent was able to leave London. There had been a panic about two spies who, the Abwehr suspected, had been turned by MI5, the British Security Service. Since the cancellation of Operation sea lion and, more markedly, since the launching of BARBAROSSA , the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June, the infiltration of German spies into Britain had slowed to a trickle. Moreover, the flow of refugees from western Europe had eased after the panic-filled days of July and August 1940, and MI5 was now able to free resources and focus more on weeding out German agents already in Britain. When the invasion scare had been at its height after the fall of France in 1940 and the sheer volume of refugees from France, Belgium and the Netherlands had occupied all the British interrogators at the reception centres, Abwehr agents had been able to move about Britain more easily. All that had changed by November 1941.

The agent shivered and pulled his travelling rug around him. This month had brought the worst weather since the winter of 1843 and, as he headed north on the A5, his thoughts turned to the soldiers in the army group centre engaged in the Battle of Moscow, which had started a week before. Over there the temperature was minus 12 centigrade and the 3rd Panzer Group was lurching east towards the Moscow Canal, hampered by a supply crisis that had slowed it down since October. However cold it was in England, it was nothing compared with what the Wehrmacht was being subjected to on the Eastern Front.

Finally, he was out of Londons northern suburbs with a clear road ahead. As he passed the road to Coventry, he cast his mind back a year almost to the day, to 14 November 1940, the night that 515 bombers of Luftflotte3 had carried out Operation MONDSCHEINSONATE and smashed one of the principal manufacturing centres of the British war effort. A new word, coventriert, had entered the German language after that raid. Reichsminister Goebbels now talked of cities being coventried . That was a night that the British would take a long time to forget.

He was a natural agent, thirty-three years old, unglamorous, stocky, slightly above average height, taciturn, a patient listener. He spoke fluent English as well as German with a compelling, mellifluous voice, and had that ability all the best agents have: to efface himself, to vanish into a crowd. People thought of spies as being exotic, demonstrative, he reflected, while he was the opposite. Mild, almost shy, he took pride in being a forgettable man, someone who could pass unnoticed among his fellows.

He would need to be unnoticed tonight, he thought, if he was to get what he wanted. His appointment outside Stafford was at 7:30 p.m. and he needed to park his car in the outskirts of the town and walk a mile and a half through the early snow, anonymous , unremarkable, to meet Irma Stapleton when she left the factory. He checked his watch. More than halfway to Stafford with two hours before he met her. If the snow didnt get worse, he was in good time.

He thought ahead to the meeting. If Stapleton was telling the truth which he knew was a rare commodity in his world she would bring him a 22-millimetre Oerlikon shell, which the factory was manufacturing. He had also sent a secure message to her to bring the details of the location of the Royal Ordnance factory and of the several factories around Stafford owned by Wades Chain Garages, together with their production figures, if possible. If he succeeded in getting hold of these, he reckoned, the drive from London would have been worthwhile.

He was in Stafford by 6:30 and the streets were quiet in the blackout. The shift changed at the factory at 7:00 that Wednesday night and Stapleton had a ten-minute walk to their rendezvous. Stepping out briskly, he was at the meeting point by 7:25.

When Stapleton arrived, she looked about her cautiously before digging in the bag she carried. She had brought everything he had asked for: a map with the location of every Wade plant, their production figures and, as she had promised, an Oerlikon 22-millimetre shell, as well as a two-pound anti-aircraft shell igniter and a 22-millimetre shell base plug.

As Irma Stapleton handed them over to the agent, three burly men appeared from the shadows and handcuffed her. The agent turned to flee but he too was almost effortlessly overpowered and handcuffed. The men identified themselves as officers of the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police.

Screaming that she was a loyal British subject who had been approached by German Intelligence, Stapleton pointed at the agent and denounced him. She had gone along with the meeting, she protested, only in order to hand him over to the police as soon as she had the chance. She was innocent; the agent had come from the Abwehr, from the