Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal »

BEN MACINTYRE is writer-at-large and associate editor of the London Times. He is the author of The Man Who Would Be King, the Englishman’s Daughter, The Napoleon of Crime, and Forgotten Fatherland. He lives in London with his wife, the novelist Kate Muir, and their three children

From the Hardcover edition.

Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a conman and a philanderer; he was also one of the most remarkable secret agents Britain has ever produced. Recruited in occupied Jersey by the German Secret Service at the start of the Second World War, Chapman became a highly prized Nazi agent. But throughout the war he secretly spied for Britain, as Agent Zigzag. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero; the problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers, was to know where one ended, and the other began.In 1941, after training at a secret German spy school in occupied France, Chapman was parachuted into Britain with a revolver, a wireless, and a cyanide pill. His mission was to blow up the factory producing Britain's Mosquito light bomber. Instead, he contacted MI5.

For the next four years, Chapman worked as a double agent, a lone British spy at the heart of the German Secret Service.Chapman supplied MI5 with crucial military information from...

The Washington Post - Patrick Anderson

Agent Zigzag is the amazing but true story of Eddie Chapman, a professional criminal who became a highly effective double agent during World War II, winning the trust of German intelligence services even as he reported back to the spymasters of MI5…Chapman's story has been told in fragments in the past, but only when MI5 declassified his files was it possible to present it in all its richness and complexity. Macintyre tells it to perfection, with endless insights into the horror and absurdity of war…Chapman is an endlessly fascinating figure, a man who would save your life one day and steal your watch the next. It's amusing, at this point, to see how the more aristocratic Brits couldn't quite believe that this degenerate, this criminal, could be a patriot. But Eddie Chapman was a patriot, in his fashion, and this excellent book finally does him justice.

Prologue     1
The Hotel de la Plage     3
Jersey Gaol     11
Island at War     21
Romainville     29
Villa de la Bretonniere     39
Dr. Graumann     48
Codebreakers     61
The Mosquito     72
Under Unseen Eyes     81
The Drop     89
Martha's Exciting Night     99
Camp 020     106
35 Crespigny Road     117
What a Way Out     130
Freda and Diane     139
Abracadabra     152
The Greater the Adventure     164
Stowaway Spy     178
Joli Albert     185
Damp Squib     198
The Ice Front     209
The Girl at the Ritz     220
Sabotage Consultant     233
Lunch at the Lutetia     242
The Prodigal Crook     253
Doodlebugs     262
Going to the Dogs     271
Case Dismissed     280
Aftermath     290
Epilogue     301
Appendix     307
Acknowledgments     309
Notes     311
Selected Bibliography     349
Index     353