Contents Dedication Epigraph A Note to the Reader Part I STORMING THE CASTLE Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Part II “A TERRIBLE RESTLESSNESS” Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Part III “HIDDEN IN MY YESTERDAYS” Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Part IV ENIGMA Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Part V THE LONG WAY HOME Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Part VI WASHINGTON Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Part VII BIG BILL AND LITTLE BILL Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Epilogue A Note on Sources Acknowledgments Bibliography Index About the Author Also by Howard Blum Credits Copyright About the Publisher “Army Offers Its Fairest Daughter to Society: Miss Betty Thorpe, beautiful daughter of Colonel and Mrs. George Thorpe, who will be the loveliest of the army set to be presented to Washington society this season.” (August 29, 1928) Reprinted with the permission of The Baltimore Sun Media Group. All rights reserved. Dedication For Lynn Nesbit and Bob Bookman Friends, wise counselors, and magicians who never failed to pull rabbits out of the hat Epigraph The last person to whom you say goodnight is the most dangerous. —WARNING PASSED ON TO CIA TRAINEES ABOUT THE PERILS LURKING IN THE BEDROOM Using the boudoir as Ian Fleming’s hero uses a Beretta, she was described by her wartime boss as “the greatest unsung heroine of the war.” —“A BLONDE BOND,” TIME MAGAZINE’S OBITUARY FOR BETTY PACK A Note to the Reader I the CIA’s sprawling Virginia campus, past the security guards and N THE MAIN BUILDING OF the detection machines, up a staircase and at the end of a winding corridor that doglegs to the left, is a windowless conference room. There is no name or number on the door. Inside, it has the feel of a space that might be used for a graduate seminar; there’s a whiteboard on one wall and a table long enough to sit a dozen or so intelligence analysts. But there were only two other people seated at the table on the June day when I was there—a distinguished agency historian and a press officer to watch over both of us. I had come with the hope of picking the scholar’s brain about Betty Pack, the British and American secret agent who had done so much to help the Allies win World War II. It was, for me at least, a tense conversation. The CIA official knew, I suspected, a lot more than he was revealing, and I had the difficult task of trying to pull the information out of him. But he was a shrewd man who had spent a lifetime guarding secrets; he was not about to make an indiscreet revelation to me. Nevertheless, we both seemed to be enjoying the game until he took offense at something I had said. I had announced that the book I intended to write would be a true story. He laughed dismissively, and then launched into a lecture on the epistemology of espionage. Even nonfiction spy stories, to his way of thinking, were a search for ultimately elusive truths. The best that can be hoped for is a reliable hypothesis. No spy tale is ever the whole story; there are always too many unknowns, too many lies being passed off as facts, too many deliberate miscues by one participant or another. I listened; argued meekly and defensively; and then did my best to move the conversation along to another hopefully more fruitful topic. And now, having finished writing the nonfiction book that had prompted my visit to the CIA, I want to reiterate to its readers that this is a true story. I have been able to draw on a treasure trove of information to tell Betty