PublishedBloomsbury, May 2012 |
ISBN9781408819913 |
FormatSoftcover, 432 pages |
Dimensions21.6cm × 13.5cm |
By 1942, all of the German agents still active in the United Kingdom were controlled by MI5 and working to the orders of the Twenty Committee, named for the number represented in Roman numerals by a double cross. Its aim was nothing less than to deceive Hitler as to the location and timing of the D-Day landings by feeding him false reports.
Macintyre places five of these double agents at the heart of his tale. These five were one of the oddest military units ever assembled, a bisexual Peruvian playgirl, a tiny Polish fighter pilot, a Serbian seducer, a wildly imaginative Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming, and a hysterical Frenchwoman whose obsessive love for her pet dog very nearly wrecked the entire deception. Their enterprise was saved from catastrophe by a shadowy sixth spy whose heroic sacrifice is here revealed for the first time.
