Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal - Ben Macintyre

Written by Ben Macintyre
Read by John Lee
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: October 2, 2007
Duration: 10:54:00

Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. 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 persona ended and the other began.

In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman was orders orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory in Britain. Instead, he contacted MI5, the British Secret Service. For the next four years, Chapman worked as a double agent, a lone British spy at the heart of the German Secret Service. Crisscrossing Europe under different names, all the while weaving plans, spreading disinformation, and, miraculously, keeping his stories straight under intense interrogation, he even managed to gain some profit and seduce beautiful women along the way.

The Nazis feted Chapman as a hero and awarded him the Iron Cross. In Britain, he was pardoned for his crimes, becoming the only wartime agent to be thus rewarded. Sixty years after the end of the war, and ten years after Chapman’s death, MI5 has now declassified all of Chapman’s files, releasing more than 1,800 pages of top secret material and allowing the full story of Agent Zigzag to be told for the first time.

“If someone at British Intelligence wrote a spy novel, it wouldn’t be any more convoluted, brimming with intrigue, or shocking than this true account of Edward Chapman, one of WWII’s most colorful spies. John Lee’s voice is appropriately smooth or smarmy, upper crust or lower class as he presents Chapman, the small-time crook, escaped convict, and wily con artist trained by the German Secret Service for sabotage against Britain. Instead, Chapman becomes an effective double agent, leaking disinformation to Germany and supplying Britain with valuable intelligence. Lee brings listeners a Chapman who “out-Bonds” Bond. He loves beautiful women, luxury, and his country. As Chapman handles his German spymasters and the British, who call him “Agent Zigzag,” Lee displays a biting sense of the ironic. Fascinating listening.” AudioFile 2008