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threesubmarines, the submarine escort
Corinthia
, the destroyer
Spetses
and two auxiliary ships were taken over until the Royal Navy arrested the ringleaders, most of whom were concentrated on the destroyer
Navarinon
, and sent them back to a detention camp in Egypt.
    These events demonstrated the volatility of Greek exile politics and the sensitivity of issues which were likely to be exploited by the Axis if the opportunity arose.
    MISANTHROPE ’ S SIME file identifies her as Mrs Evangeline Palidou, born in Canea, Crete on 25 July 1913. Five foot four inches tall, with brown hair and an oval face, her religion was Greek Orthodox. She had been issued with a Security Card, No. 615 on 28 May 1941 and had received a Red Card, No. 017002 on 25 May 1942. Educated at the Lycée in Canea, with a baccalauréat in French, she had been taken to visit Smyrna as a child in 1928. She had worked in the Anti-Fascist Movement in Crete from 1932 and been employed as a journalist on the anti-fascist newspaper
Literia
in 1933 before getting married and moving to Athens the following year. She returned to Crete in 1936, spent four months in exile on Naxos in 1938 after her arrest by the ‘4 August regime’, and then worked first as a mannequin and secretary, and then for counter-espionage in Greece from November 1940. She was divorced from her 33-year-old husband, Evangelos Ktistakis in March 1942 and from July 1942 she worked for SIME’s Greek Section and took up residence at the Metropolitan Hotel in Cairo.
    Within SIME Evangeline was referred to as BGM , an acronym for ‘Blonde Gun Moll’, a name she acquired as a result of her reputation for packing a pistol. Some believed that she had shot one of her lovers dead, but others suggested this tale was something of an exaggeration, as she had simply thrown him off a roof.
    The immense trouble taken by SIME to create MISANTHROPE extended to her entire family. He father, supposedly, was NicholasPalides, aged sixty-four, formerly the director of economic services in Crete’s Ministry of Finance between 1910 and 1918. He then served in Athens for two years, then in Turkey for two years, returning to Crete where he still lived. His wife, Anastasia Kokytha, was aged fifty-eight, MISANTHROPE’ S infant son was still in Crete, and her brother Ionis worked in the port office at Canea.
    Nicossof announced her recruitment in a transmission on 24 July but ‘unfortunately uncertainty of livelihood – curtailment of his black bourse activities’ and the non-arrival of funds from his Axis partners finally forced him to find regular employment. After trying from 7 December until 25 December 1942 he secured a post as an interpreter in the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA), an organisation created in the First World War to govern the Ottoman Empire, CHEESE commenced his duties on 1 January 1943, and on 27 January he announced that ‘she could decode already and was learning to transmit’.
    Nicossof’s employment by EOTA followed a discussion in SIME, led by James Robertson, over the merits of planting an enemy spy in the organisation. A study of his duties for EOTA, and his contact with other EOTA personnel, would be a tremendous advantage and greatly expand his access to information that would be instantly attractive to the Abwehr. As Robertson noted,
    it would appear that in Eritrea OETA interpreters were also used as translators. While it is improbable that CHEESE’S knowledge of English is sufficient to allow him to be employed in this latter capacity under normal circumstances, he might reasonably be employed to translate Italian into French for the convenience of his officers, or to translate simple English phrases into Italian. The publication entitled
Notes on the Military Government of Occupied Territories Part II
defines the duties of OETA and contains some points which might be of use to CHEESE for transmission to the