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account of an episode in the Great Game descends into the shadowy world of a spy novel: who was the traitor? Soon after returning to Britain, Bodington was accused of being a double agent, as though he had betrayed Agazarian. Sacked from SOE, he was relegated to a non-sensitive post, lecturing servicemen on French politics. Suttill, Norman, Agazarian and several hundred of the PROSPECT agents died in captivity. Post-war interrogations of German counter-espionage officers revealed Déricourt’s relationship with Boemelburg.
    In April 1946 Déricourt was arrested at Croydon airport when about to fly to France with a considerable quantity of gold and platinum, for which he had no export licence. In view of his ostensibly excellent war record, the magistrate let him off with a £300 fine, which was paid by a mystery man, never formally connected with any government organisation. In November 1946 Déricourt was arrested in France and eventually tried in June 1948 for causing the deaths of the PROSPER agents. At the trial Bodington admitted that Déricourt had told him about his contacts with the Germans shortly after he landed in France on 23 July 1943. Largely on the evidence provided by Bodington, Déricourt was acquitted for lack of proof that he divulged any important information or betrayed any specific individual. He continued flying until meeting his death in a crash somewhere in Laos in November 1962.
    Interviewed by author Rita Kramer, another SOE agent who worked successfully in France named Francis Cammaerts told her that he believed Bodington and Déricourt became double agents for the thrill of fooling their comrades, but a shrewd locally recruited radio operator working for PROSPER argued that the winding up of the network was deliberately arranged by MI6. Suttill and the others, he argued, had been given to understand that the planned Allied invasion was scheduled for Autumn 1943 – this in the knowledge that one or more of them would divulge this under torture, causing the German High Command Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) to keep in the north of France forces that could have been deployed elsewhere.
    According to the alternative explanation of the PROSPER fiasco, Colonel Claude Dansey, deputy director of SIS, was using Déricourt as a triple agent inside Section F. In the context of the campaign of deception operations to confuse the Germans about the true date and whereabouts of the Normandy invasion, Déricourt was ordered by Dansey, without Section F having any suspicion of the darker game that was being played out right under its nose, to betray Suttill’s network. Giving the enemy the PROSPER transmitters enabled them to mount a Funkspiel against London, as had been done in Holland with notable success. But that was only a sideshow. The real purpose of the triple agent betrayal was much darker: to sacrifice hundreds of Suttill’s recruits in order to convince the Gestapo of the false information they divulged under torture.
    This version, if true, is typical of Dansey’s cynical worldview. He was a frigid, unlikeable man, known to dislike the French and mistrust all women, especially women agents. Unfortunately for history and historians, he gave orders for his widow to destroy all his confidential papers, secure in the knowledge that she would never dare to disobey him even after his death. And Nicholas Bodington died in Plymouth on 3 July 1974, taking with him, as did many intelligence officers, his secrets – in this case, the truth about the PROSPER betrayal.
    It is against this background of deceit and betrayal that one has to assess what follows.
    Notes
1 Dalton, H., The Fateful Years , London, Muller, 1957, p. 368.
2 Jenkins, R., A Pacifist at War , London, Arrow, 2010, pp. 54–6.
3 Marshall, R., All the King’s Men , London, Collins, 1988, p. 253.
4 Foot, M.R.D., SOE in France , London, HMSO, 1966, p. 302.
5 Kemp, A., The Secret Hunters , London, Coronet, 1988, pp. 776–8; also Kramer, R.,