John le Carre and Ben Macintyre are the reigning British spy writers. John le Carre is now 85, and has just published 'A Legacy of Spies.' something I'll soon have on the nightstand. It seems to have been well received.
Just back from vacation at racing's Holy Land, Saratoga, which always puts me inside the Northshire book store in Saratoga Springs, New York and Manchester, Vermont. This year I came back with the paperback edition of Ben Macintyre's Agent Zigzag, a tale of Edward Arnold Chapman, the only Britisher to have been awarded Germany's Iron Cross. He basically spied as a triple agent, appearing to his British handlers as being a double agent, and to his German handlers as their double agent. He spied for the Germans, while feeding them diluted intelligence on British activities. The Germans loved him. After the war his German handler, Baron Stephan von Grunen, even came to his daughter's wedding.
The book has been out for several years now, so a paperback is what was easily available. On the top of the front cover is a blurb written by William Grimes of the New York Times..."Ben Macintyre's rollicking, spellbinding Agent Zigzag blends the spy-versus-spy machinations of John le Carre with the high farce of Evelyn Waugh." No wonder it's on the front cover. Two literary names are dropped.
The Times's London journalist, Sarah Lyall, recently did an interview with le Carre and Macintyre in advance of the release of le Carre's latest. Birds of a feather flock together.
Yesterday's NYT obits page brought us the passing of Jeannie de Clarens, 98, a British spy who uncovered rockets used by Hitler, "using charm and guile to coax the Germans into revealing secrets."
There are some photos of Jeannie taken well after the war, but surely several years before she died. There are more than the remains of a fine looking woman about her, one who even at an older age looks like someone whose ashes could be banked into flames again. At the age she would have been when she was sweet-talking Germans, the woman must have been a complete knock-out. The Germans didn't stand a chance.
Jeannine passed away in Montaigu, southeast of Nantes, France. The obit is by William Grimes, whose blurb was just discovered on the cover of Agent Zigzag.
Chapter 5 of Agent Zigzag has Eddie Chapman being transferred from a German prison, Fort de Romainville, a 1830s fortification in the suburbs of Paris being used by the Germans to imprison anyone they don't like. Chapman has wound up there because he was doing time in a British prison on the Channel Islands, the one land mass of Great Britain that was occupied by Germany. Bad luck can sometimes be someone's only luck. Or maybe not.
Mr. Chapman is as wily a character as there is, and he applies to become a spy for Germany. It is not likely the Germans put up a job posting on the prison's stone walls describing vacancies in that department. Mr. Chapman thought that one up on his own. He obviously figured they needed a few good men.
Time passed, and low and behold, his application was accepted! One day he was transported to Villa de la Bretonniere, a residence that was larger than a mansion, but smaller than a chateau, appropriated by the Nazis from a wealthy Jew who they reasoned no longer needed to live there. Here, Eddie was going to be trained to become a spy for Germany. Or, so they thought.
And where is Villa de la Bretonnire? In Nantes, France. I've now heard of Nantes, France in a span of two days. And William Grimes has been somewhat responsible. Round and round we go.
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