The Rebecca Code: Rommel's Spy in North Africa and Operation Condor

208 Pages·2013·2.73 MB·English

by  Mark Simmons

Acknowledgements
Like many people my interest in the German use of the Rebecca Code during the
Abwehr Operation Kondor, began with reading Michael Ondaatje’s 1992 Booker
Prize winning novel The English Patient. I was further inspired by the late
Anthony Minghella’s 1996 Oscar winning film of the same name. Much is to be
admired in both, at the heart of which is a love story between the desert explorer
Count László Almásy and the English woman Katherine Clifton.
Most readers I trust will be familiar with the book and/or the film of The
English Patient, so there is no need to relate it here, other than to say much of
the background of the Western Desert and Cairo was the setting for real events.
Also the character of Almásy depicted in book and film is a marked distortion of
the real man, and his end was in real life very different. Many of the other
characters in the real story are discounted, no doubt for good reason in that
fictional account.
The English Patient was not the first attempt in fiction to tell this story. The
first book to cover the Kondor mission was by war correspondent Leonard
Mosley in his 1958 publication The Cat and the Mice. Mosley was in Cairo at
the time the events took place and he interviewed the German spies John Eppler
and Peter Monkaster (Heinrich Gerd Sandstette) in prison. He also kept in touch
with Eppler after the war. However in view of the later accounts, one written by
Eppler, and later firm evidence, it is certain that Eppler strung him along to a
degree in order to embellish his own image as some sort of James Bond. The
1960 film Foxhole in Cairo was based on Mosley’s book, the film poster calling
it ‘the greatest spy story of the desert war’. That is true, but the film has little
else to recommend it. In the film James Robertson Justice plays the British
intelligence officer, a naval commander, tasked with catching the spies, and
Michael Caine is seen in one of his early roles as a German W/T operator.
Other writers also used the bones of the Kondor story in fiction, Ken Follett in
The Key to Rebecca (1980) which was filmed in 1989, and Ken Deighton in City
of Gold (1992). Both books relied heavily on personal accounts. Also Anwar
Sadat’s Revolt on the Nile (1957), A.W. Sansom’s I Spied Spies (1965) and John
Eppler’s Rommel Ruft Cairo (1960) published in English as Operation Condor
Rommel’s Spy (1977). It is doubtful if they would have used Almásy’s Rommel
Senegenal Libyaban (1943), translated into English by Gabriel Francis Horchler
as With Rommel’s Army in Libya (2001). Or for that matter come across
Almásy’s diary of Operation Salam, held by the Imperial War Museum in the
Lloyd Own Papers.
The Secret MI6 files were closed in 2003 and released to the public in 2006. It
was my aim, therefore, to bring the four eyewitness accounts by Almásy, Eppler,
Mosley and Sansom together with the official files and tell the true story of the
Rebecca Code and Operation Kondor.
Secondary sources that have been useful include Hans-Otto Behrendt,
Rommel’s Intelligence in the Desert Campaign (1980). John Bierman’s The
Secret Life of László Almásy (2004), Paul Carell’s The Foxes of the Desert
(1958), Christer Jorgensen’s Hitler’s Espionage Machine (2004) and Saul
Kelly’s The Lost Oasis (2002).
I am grateful to the staff at Bletchley Park, the Imperial War Museum, the
Intelligence Corps Museum, the Public Records Office, Royal Geographical
Society, AKG Images, Hunt Library, US National Archives, Hungarian
Geographic Museum, Bookends of Fowey, and the Forest Park Hotel Cyprus.
I am also hugely indebted to the following people: Shaun Barrington my
Editor at The History Press for his enthusiastic support for this project right from
the start. Group Captain L.E. (Robbie) Robins AEDL, another enthusiastic
supporter, for free use of his extensive library, his hospitality, and for reading an
early draft making many excellent comments and suggestions. My late Aunt
Olive Hard for her illustrations of Egypt during the war years. To Ann Willmore,
book dealer at her shop Bookends of Fowey and an expert on the work of
Daphne du Maurier, who supplied a wealth of information on the publishing
history of the novel Rebecca.
Finally my wife Margaret as always gave her whole hearted support in the
nuts and bolts of building a book, with proof reading, index building etc. Thanks
to all.
Contents
Title
Acknowledgements
Prologue

Part I The Characters
1 Johannes Eppler, Beirut May 1937
2 Eppler, Athens and Berlin, July–August 1937
3 László Almásy
4 Alfred Sansom
Part II The Scene
5 Cairo, Spring 1941
6 The Western Desert
7 Tripoli, March 1941
Part III Operations
8 The Troublesome General
9 Exit Ritter
10 Under the Pagoda Tree
11 The ‘Good Source’
12 Interview with the Führer
Part IV Kondor
13 Planning
14 The Rebecca Code
15 False Start
16 Operation Salam
17 Assiut
18 The Flap
19 Kondor Calling
20 The Ring Tightens
21 Currency Matters
22
The Raid
23 Rommel at Bay
24 Interrogation
25 The Riddle of Alam Halfa

Epilogue
Dramatis Personae
Bibliography
Glossary
Plates
About the Author
Abbreviations to Notes
Copyright
Prologue
Troodos Mountains, Cyprus, September 1936

It was not someone ‘Sammy’ Sansom expected to come across on the descent
from Mount Olympus in a small Ford saloon. A young fair-skinned woman was
being sick beside the road. She was sat on a fallen pine tree, in the shade of the
trees, her head between her knees unaware of the car’s approach. Or not caring.
Sansom had to stop. Here was a lady in distress, a European. But more
important to him it was the right action to take.
‘Excuse me Miss, can I help?’ Sansom climbed out of the car and brushed off
his clothes although there was no need. He was a dapper man.
‘Oh dear’ she said looking up at him, ‘I must look a sight.’ Her eyes were
startlingly clear blue. She shook her dark hair away from her face. She noted the
lightweight suit and knew instantly the type, a colonial been here for years. ‘I’m
not a Miss, but Mrs Browning.’
‘Are you ill Mrs Browning?’
‘No, other than being pregnant and suffering morning sickness. Perhaps I was
foolish to try to walk to Mount Olympus.’
‘In this heat, which is deceptive in the mountains even early in the morning,
maybe it was not wise. Where are you staying Mrs Browning?’
‘The Forest Park hotel.’1
‘Yes I know it, near Platres, would you care for a ride back to the hotel? I am
Alfred Sansom, but call me Sammy, insurance salesman for the Gresham Life
Assurance Society from the Egypt office.’2
‘That would be kind Mr Sansom; I doubt this is going to pass quickly. It really
is tiresome, something you men are lucky not to suffer.’ He was strikingly
handsome, with the fashionable moustache that all men seemed lost without.
And his eyes were dark pools, inscrutable but his smile was friendly and not
condescending.
Sansom nodded and waited until Mrs Browning got up in case she felt faint.
Her slim angular face was pale but she was steady on her feet, and strode with
purpose to the car. She caught him by surprise with her height and speed of her
walk, but he reached the passenger car door in time to open it for her.
‘A reader I see Mr Sansom’ she said, picking up the book Sansom had left on
the passenger seat. ‘My goodness’ she said reading the title, ‘how strange, The
Loving Spirit, one of mine.’
‘You are Daphne Du Maurier?’
‘That’s my maiden name.’ She opened the book to the page marked by a scrap
of neatly folded paper and read: ‘Chapter fourteen. For five years Joseph
Coombe was an inmate of the Sudmin Asylum.’3 ‘What do you think Mr
Sansom? It’s not often I meet a reader.’
‘I like it; it inspires me to visit Cornwall one day.’
‘Oh do, how I wish I was there now. Mind you,’ she added quickly ‘I find
Cyprus invigorating away from the heat and multitudes of Alexandria, my
husband’s in the army there.’
She handed Sansom the book and climbed in. It was only a short drive to
Platres and the hotel. The air fresh with the scent of pine and cypress trees was
cooling which did much to restore her. By the time Sansom opened the door for
her the colour had returned to her face.
‘Would you like me to dedicate the book Mr Sansom?’
‘That would be kind.’ He retrieved the book for her and handed her a pen from
his briefcase. ‘Sign it to Sammy please.’
Sansom smiled at the dedication on the title page and read. ‘To my saviour
Sammy in Cyprus, Daphne Du Maurier.’ He closed the book. ‘Thank you. Are
you working on another book Mrs Browning?’
‘Yes Sammy, another Cornish novel about a great house, haunted by the dead
wife of the owner. I will call her Rebecca.’
‘Good I will look forward to that.’ Sansom gave her a slight bow, climbed into
the car and drove away.
Inscrutable she thought, but she did not understand the British, the Empire
builders that is, who could live out here, probably only ever going home to
school as a child. Yet he had been a godsend that morning.
Sansom was 26 and Daphne was 29 that day.*
Notes
See here for a list of abbreviations used in the below notes

* The pregnant Daphne du Maurier did stay on the island of Cyprus in 1936, writing her novel Rebecca
published by Gollancz in 1938. There is no evidence she met Alfred Sansom. This is fiction; however
everything that follows did happen.
1 Forster, M., Daphne du Maurier p.127–128
2 Sansom, A.W., I Spied Spies p.11
3 Du Maurier, D., The Loving Spirit p.191
Part I
T C
HE HARACTERS