Master Spycatcher

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29850, 16 June 1962, Page 3

Master Spycatcher

The Spycatcher Omnibus. By Lt.-Col. Oreste Pinto. Hodder and Stoughton. 479 pp.

At first sight a book of this length, and with the title “omnibus” seems to present a formidable task to the timid reviewer, but when it can be truthfully stated that as the last page approached he was reluctant to reach the end the fascination of the work is made manifest. This is no ordinary cloak-and-dagger stuff.

The author (who died recently) was Britain’s master spycatcher during the last war, when the “sth column” first became a significant phrase in our language. A Dutchman, long since settled in • England, Colonel Pin co was a man pf outstanding talents which in business or the learned professions would probably have ensured him a large income. Besides being a linguist to whom no tongue, from Swedish to Swahili, presented any real difficulty or comprehension, he Was also a. crack snot, an amateur boxer of international dis tinction, and a first-class bridge-player. He was, too, a dedicated man, for, having joined while still very young the Deuxieme Bureau —the French information centre—because of his love for France and his hatred of Germans, he thereafter gave up his life to a profession without material rewards but demanding nevertheless all those qualities necessary fci summing up his fellow men On his retirement after the war he wrote a series of books on methods of catthing spies of which the present volume is a symposium From 1939 to 1945 the author worked first in M l 5 and subsequently as head of the Netherlands counter-intel-ligence mission. Most of the stories he tells are about Dutch patriots and traitors, though in the early part of the war when Hitler noped to mount his invasion of England a number of German agents came into his net

Many posed as refugees, and in a fascinating chapter the author explains how an examination of their property often gave them away. For example, a piece of cotton wool, plus a few wooden toothpicks, plus some innocent looking patent medicine powder, exposed a complete equipment for invisible writing. In one case a suspect was only discovered after a dictionary he was carrying revealed on page 457 a single pinprick above a letter of

one word. In conjunction with subsequent pricks this spelt out an elaborate code. Interrogations—always friendly, but quietly inexorable, might sometimes go on for days before a single small slip would give away the identity of an enemy agent. Many Dutch refugees arrived on British shores in open boats, starving, bedraggled and exhausted Others arrived in England by way of neutral countries. Those carrying more than a token sum of money were invariably suspect. Unexplained wealth was accounted for by what the author calls “the story within the story.” Having told a plausible tale, another one would emerge which was always against the speaker. He had robbed a woman who had befriended him, or have otherwise obtained the money dishonestly. This particular ruse never tor one moment deceived his vigilant interlocutor. No woman, in Colonel Pinto’s opinion, could ever make a good agent. The highest type would willingly surrender their lives for their country, but their virtue was another matter, and while the better types would shrink from this particular sacrifice their more accommodating sisters could never oe dependable patriots. Furthermore, there was always toe fear that a woman might f’ll in love with her quarry, and go over to the enemy on ’.hat account.

Colonel Pinto schooled himself never to be influenced by personal impressions. In a revealing phrase he says “One of the world’s most famous criminologists once stated that the person who had made the best impression on him was a woman who had poisoned her children for the insurance money; and the one who had made the worst had been a famous philanthropist and reformer.” In a story told against himself he instances the case of a Dutchman who as a well-known resistance leader, fled to England, and told the thinnest story in explanation of his escape which his interrogator had ever heard Yet he turned out to be a genuine patriot in the end. The career of “King Kong,” the notorious “traitor of Arnhem” has never been satisfactorily explained, as the man committed suicide, and his treachery is still a matter of doubt, though Colonel Pinto was convinced of his guilt. The author has a magnificent flair for story-telling If he is given to repetition of certain statements this can be explained by the fact that his anecdotes were compiled from different books.