CHAPTER ONE

The Hotel de la Plage Spring came early to the island of Jersey in 1939. The sun that poured through the dining-room window of the Hotel de la Plage formed a dazzling halo around the man sitting opposite Betty Farmer with his back to the sea, laughing as he tucked into the six-shilling Sunday Roast Special "with all the trimmings." Betty, eighteen, a farm girl newly escaped from the Shropshire countryside, knew this man was quite unlike any she had met before.

Beyond that, her knowledge of Eddie Chapman was somewhat limited. She knew that he was twenty-four years old, tall and handsome, with a thin mustache--just like Errol Flynn in The Charge of the Light Brigade--and deep hazel eyes. His voice was strong but high-pitched with a hint of a Northern accent. He was "bubbly," full of laughter and mischief. She knew he must be rich because he was "in the film business" and drove a Bentley. He wore expensive suits, a gold ring, and a cashmere overcoat with mink collar. Today he wore a natty yellow spotted tie and a sleeveless pullover. They had met at a club in Kensington Church Street, and although at first she had declined his invitation to dance, she soon relented. Eddie had become her first lover, but then he vanished, saying he had urgent business in Scotland. "I shall go," he told her. "But I shall always come back."

Good as his word, Eddie had suddenly reappeared at the door of her lodgings, grinning and breathless. "How would you like to go to Jersey, then possibly to the south of France?" he asked. Betty had rushed off to pack.

It was a surprise to discover they would be traveling with company. In the front seat of the waiting Bentley sat two men: the driver a huge, ugly brute with a crumpled face; the other small, thin, and dark. The pair did not seem ideal companions for a romantic holiday. The driver gunned the engine and they set off at thrilling speed through the London streets, screeching into the Croydon airport, parking behind the hangar, just in time to catch the Jersey Airways plane.

That evening, they had checked into the seafront hotel. Eddie told the receptionist they were in Jersey to make a film. They had signed the register as Mr. and Mrs. Farmer of Torquay. After dinner, they moved on to West Park Pavilion, a nightclub on the pier, where they danced, played roulette, and drank some more. For Betty, it had been a day of unprecedented glamour and decadence.

War was coming, everyone said so, but the dining room of the Hotel de la Plage was a place of pure peace that sunny Sunday. Beyond the golden beach, the waves flickered among a scatter of tiny islands, as Eddie and Betty ate trifle off plates with smart blue crests. Eddie was halfway through telling another funny story when he froze. A group of men in overcoats and brown hats had entered the restaurant and one was now in urgent conversation with the headwaiter. Before Betty could speak, Eddie stood up, bent down to kiss her once, and then jumped through the window, which was closed. There was a storm of broken glass, tumbling crockery, screaming women, and shouting waiters. Betty Farmer caught a last glimpse of Eddie Chapman sprinting off down the beach with two overcoated men in pursuit.

• • •

There was much that Betty did not know about Eddie Chapman. He was married. Another woman was pregnant with his child. And he was a crook. Not some halfpenny bag snatcher, but a dedicated professional criminal, a "prince of the underworld," in his own estimation.

For Chapman, breaking the law was a vocation. In later years, when some sort of motive for his choice of career seemed to be called for, he...

 

"Macintyre is the more graceful writer; Agent Zigzag has a clarity and shape that make it the more fluid account... I would give a personal nod to Macintyre's as the better book... A review cannot possibly convey the sheer fun of this story... or the fascinating moral complexities."

 

"[Agent Zigzag's] incredible wartime adventures, recounted in Ben Macintyre's rollicking, spellbinding Agent Zigzag blend the spy-versus-spy machinations of John le Carré with the high farce of Evelyn Waugh."

 

"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....Eddie Chapman was a patriot, in his fashion, and this excellent book finally does him justice."

 

"Fact sounds like fast-moving fiction in this espionage saga of a man who was probably the most improbable double agent to emerge in World War II. ... The author has written an enormously fascinating book about an enormously fascinating man. The late Eddie Chapman would have been delighted to at last capture the limelight denied him by the restrictions of his wartime profession. The question now is, who will make the movie and who will play the lead? Too bad Errol Flynn is dead."

 

"[R]ichly descriptive, marvelously illuminating, and just plain brilliant....One could not think of a better subject for Macintyre's curious mind than the man whom British intelligence dubbed Agent Zigzag in December 1942.... [A] plot - impossible and pointless to summarize - that is as briskly paced and suspenseful as any novel's. Macintyre's diligent research and access to once-secret files combine here with his gift of empathetic imagination and inspired re-creation. He writes with brio and a festive spirit and has quite simply created a masterpiece."

 

"Superb. Meticulously researched, splendidly told, immensely entertaining and often very moving."

 

"Macintyre [relates] his compellingly cinematic spy thriller with verve."
--Entertainment Weekly (an "EW Pick"

 

"Agent Zigzag is a true-history thriller, a real spy story superbly written. It belongs to my favorite genre: the 'Friday night book'--start it then, because you will want to stay with it all weekend."

 

"A portrait of a man who double-crossed not only the Nazis, but just about every other principle and person he encountered. In doing so, Eddie Chapman made all thriller writers' jobs harder, because this spy tale trumps any fiction."

 

"One of the most extraordinary stories of the Second World War."

 

"This is the most amazing book, full of fascinating and hair-raising true-life adventures...and beautifully told. For anyone interested in the Second World War, spying, romance, skullduggery or the hidden chambers of the human mind, it would be impossible to recommend it too highly."

 

"Speaking as a former MI6 officer, take it from me: there are very few books which give you a genuine picture of what it feels like to be a spy. This is one.... an enthralling war story."

 

"Macintyre tells Chapman's tale in a perfect pitch: with the Boys' Own thrills of Rider Haggard, the verve of George MacDonald Fraser and Carl Hiassen's mordant humor. . . . Hugely entertaining."

 

"If Ben Macintyre had presented this story as a novel, it would have been denounced as far too unlikely: yet every word of it is true. Moreover he has that enviable gift, the inability to write a dull sentence. An enthralling book results from the opening up of once deadly secret files."

 

"Splendidly vivid. . . . There are endless delightful twists to the tale."

 

"Ben Macintyre's rollicking, thriller-paced account...is a Boy's Own adventure par excellence and a gripping psychological case study of a man 'torn between patriotism and egotism.'"

 

"Macintyre succeeds in bringing Chapman vividly to life. It is unlikely that a more engaging study of espionage and deception will be published this year."

 

"A preternaturally talented liar and pretty good safecracker becomes a "spy prodigy"