The current popularity of WW2 fiction has highlighted something long overdue – the recognition of the unsung heroines of wartime spying, and their contribution to winning the war. Having read Tim Tate’s fascinating book, Hitler’s British Traitors, and Max Hastings’ intriguing The Secret War, I wanted to learn more about the women who risked so much for the war effort. The stories of these women, particularly those who operated on the Home Front, inspired the Sarah Gillespie series of books.
It wasn’t long before the Allies realised the value of using women as spies. They tended to go unnoticed, were rarely stopped and questioned, and were therefore invaluable as couriers. Some played the fragile female card to get out of tricky situations, and who could blame them – it usually worked! In the field, these women were just as ingenious as their male counterparts in fooling the enemy. They were intelligent, brave, and cunning.
There is a long list of female spies, some you will have heard of, others whose names are lost to history. Many of the most famous worked for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France behind enemy lines, such as Eileen Nearne and Odette Hallows. However, it was a double agent, whose work entailed deceiving the Germans about the location of the D-Day landings, whose story caught my eye.
Nathalie Lily Sergueiew (1912-1950)
Nathalie was born in Russia, five years before the revolution. In the years leading up to WW2, she travelled extensively and studied in Paris, becoming proficient in French, German and English. In the mid-1930s, she worked as a journalist in Germany and was approached by German Intelligence, but she refused to work for them. But then things changed. As the temperature in Europe rose, Nathalie’s loyalty was firmly in the Allied camp, and she saw an opportunity to help. She joined the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence Service) with every intention of betraying them.
In Berlin, Nathalie was trained in spycraft, learnt to use secret ink and coded letters, and was trained to use a radio transmitter. Most importantly of all, she was schooled in identifying different Allied uniforms and equipment. The Abwehr plan was to send her to Britain to report on troop locations and movements.
Her German handler sent her to Spain, the plan being that she would continue on to England via Gibraltar, which she would eventually do. However, before her departure, Nathalie went to the US embassy in Madrid and volunteered to work for the Allies. From there she was sent to MI5’s Madrid Station, where she turned up with her pet dog Babs, demanding that her pet bypass quarantine laws and travel with her to England. Much to her displeasure, her request was refused, and she had to leave the dog in Gibraltar.
Nathalie arrived in England at the end of 1943 and within weeks of starting work as a double-agent, she was described as “exceptionally temperamental and troublesome”, leading to her being codenamed Agent Treasure! Despite her behaviour, MI5 put her to work, sending coded letters to her German handler (the code based on a particular French novel). Nathalie passed him a mix of true and false information made up by MI5 as part of a deception plan around D-Day. Agent Treasure reported that there were very few troops in Southwest England (it was teeming with them!) and that she had a boyfriend in the 14th Army from whom she received valuable intelligence (the boyfriend and the unit were nonexistent). Other double agents sent supporting information and all of this helped to deceive the Germans that the Allies would land at Calais and not Normandy on D-Day. This plan was codenamed Operation Fortitude.
But Nathalie couldn’t stay out of trouble. All hell broke loose when she subsequently admitted that she had revealed her true identity to a US Air Force officer during a love affair, giving MI5 nightmares that her identity and the whole double-cross system might implode. But worse was to come! Nathalie, still pining for Babs, her dog, threatened to go on strike due to the delay in their being reunited. Then, when the news that her dog had died came through, Nathalie believed the British had murdered her dog and she wanted revenge. With only weeks to go before D-Day, she told her handler that the Germans had given her a ‘control signal’ to show she was broadcasting under duress. She threatened to use it and to blow the entire double-cross system apart. A sticky twenty-four hours followed, but fortunately, Agent Treasure didn’t act on her threat, and after D-Day, she was hastily retired!
Nathalie was certainly a handful and keep her handler and MI5 on their toes. However, the letters and transmissions she sent contributed to the success of D-Day, and she deserves the credit for this.
Inspiration for Adeline Vernier {Agent Honey}
As you can imagine, Nathalie’s story had my writer’s antennae twitching like mad! I just had to base a character on her in my next book, The Last Letter from London.
And so, Adeline Vernier, was born.
Adeline is as temperamental and manipulative as Nathalie was, but I substituted Babs the dog for a Russian boyfriend, trapped in occupied France and in hiding out with the French Resistance. Sarah Gillespie becomes Adeline’s handler and must deal with the fallout from her agent’s erratic behaviour. To say the women do not like or trust each other would be an understatement. I have to admit that it was great fun to write about the interaction between these two diametrically opposed characters, thrusting them together on a dangerous mission to Lisbon and then writing up the field report with glee!
Two women, one mission. But can they trust each other?
The Last Letter from London will be published on 17th August 2023
Book 3 in the Sarah Gillespie WW2 Series
eBook * Paperback * Audio
Buy Link: https://mybook.to/TheLastLetterFromL
Pam Lecky Books 
Leave a comment