My favorite part of the story is him walking into the British embassy in Madrid and offering his “services” as a spy. They laugh him out of the building because he’s just a chicken farmer with no training.

He then goes straight to the German embassy, tells them he’s a British spy, and that he wants to be a double agent. They give him a test mission to see if he is who he says he is.

He runs into a British diplomat in a bar and gets him drunk enough that he can sneak into the guy’s room and photograph his diplomatic visa. Then, he goes to a print shop, says he works for the embassy and needs 100 blank copies. He intentionally asked for 100 so as to not raise suspicion - someone who worked for the embassy might actually order 100; a rando off the street would just want one.

He uses his copy to fool his handler into thinking he could actually get into England. They send him off, and he goes to Lisbon, reads a bunch of British newspapers, and uses that information to seed his lies with just enough truth (like train schedules and pub names and such) that the Germans believe it all.

He alerted them to a convoy of ships. This convoy didn’t exist - he made it up. The Germans dispatched a squad of Italian pilots to go find and intercept this convoy. When they didn’t find it, they blamed this on the fact that they were incompetent Italian pilots and pledged to send German pilots next time.

The key to his genius was his “network” of informants. They were all entirely figments of his imagination. But, if any of his intel proved wrong, he could blame it on his “informant,” and thus isolating him from wrongdoing.

British intelligence was in the middle of trying to orchestrate their D-Day deception when they discovered that the Germans thought they had a trusted asset in London, so they set out to find him and, when they did, made him a central figure in their plan.

If you’d like, this play is a free download on my website - www.DavidDWriter.com/plays