Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies by Kristie Macrakis

Author:Kristie Macrakis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press (Ignition)
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

10 The Mystery of the Microdot

ON A PLEASANT SUMMER DAY in August 1941, Dusko Popov got out of a taxi at the Park Avenue entrance to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The twenty-nine-year-old Yugoslavian visitor carried a briefcase containing seventy thousand dollars in cash, a vial with white crystals to make invisible ink, and four telegrams concealing eleven microscopic dots that hid information with the potential to change the course of history.1

Changing the course of history was the last thing on Popov’s mind when he rode the elevator up to his room in the opulent Art Deco hotel. He was ready to see New York City. The British Security Coordination (BSC) minder who had joined him in Bermuda during the refueling stop from Lisbon thought Popov should rest from the twenty-two-hour Pan Am Flying Clipper trip. Instead, he took a refreshing cold shower, ordered a club sandwich from room service, and prepared to stroll down Park Avenue.2

When Popov left the hotel, he was not alone. Despite the warm recommendation by MI5, Britain’s counterintelligence agency, the FBI, which had been apprised of his arrival several days before, “requested that a very discreet surveillance be maintained concerning [Popov’s] activities during his stay” at the Waldorf.3

The FBI had good reason to watch Popov, or so they thought. The German intelligence organization, the Abwehr, had sent agent “Ivan” to America to build a new agent network after the loss of Kurt Ludwig and the Ritter-Duquesne ring several months before. The FBI wanted to catch, arrest, and convict any German spies Popov might contact. By contrast, the British, who had turned Popov into a double agent, thought the heart of good counterintelligence was playing the double-cross game discreetly and without publicity. Popov was run by MI5 as part of the scheme to turn Nazi agents to their side. For the FBI he was lowly “Confidential Informant ND-63,” a criminal not to be trusted. For MI5 he was star agent Tricyle, who ran two sub-agents, and for the Abwehr he was prized agent Ivan, who sent valuable information from England to neutral Lisbon, the spy capital of World War II.

Usually code names are meant to conceal an agent’s identity. The British, however, gleefully ignored this rule and had fun punning or joking or hinting. Tar Robertson, one of the creators of the double-cross system, initially provided Dusko Popov the code name Skoot as a play on his last name Popov (“pop-off”), because Robertson thought he might leave in a hurry.4 Some months later Robertson rechristened the prized agent Tricycle because Popov received two subagents and was thus leading the two smaller wheels. But the code name was also a double entendre. By the time the case officer had gotten to know Popov, he realized that he was a playboy who liked to bed two women at a time, a predilection that marked Popov’s experience in America as well.

But to court and play with women, Popov needed a fun car. When he strolled down the street on his first

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