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importance of southern Italy, you must take that as your first target’. But Algiers replied ten days later that the prospects were not very promising. ‘All our experience so far’, they signalled, ‘emphasises difficulty in finding suitable Italians willing to enter Italy or islands.’ They had consulted the Deuxième Bureau ‘who admit their prospects almost zero’. Sicily and the southern mainland would now be under intensive security, which would make it especially hazardous for operations. ‘Trained Italian agents have always been and are likely to continue to be so scarce that their quick loss in hot areas would appear uneconomic.’ The Auburn network in Corsica, which had been asked to attempt the penetration of Sardinia, was ‘now virtually wiped out’. But there was one hopeful note. Algiers viewed recruiting prospects in Tunis ‘with relative optimism’, as after its capture ‘truly patriotic Italians may take more stock in our victory. A few such should be worth many traitors or cranks.’

Early in May Menzies sent out his newly appointed Assistant Chief, Sir James Marshall-Cornwall, to review the situation on the spot. Perhaps the most important recommendation which Marshall-Cornwall made was the posting of an extremely able young officer, John Bruce Lockhart, to help out in Tunis. A St Andrews-educated schoolmaster in peacetime, a nephew of Robert Bruce Lockhart who had served in Russia during the Revolution and a keen player of real (court) tennis, John Bruce Lockhart had been recruited to SIS only in January 1942. Before becoming involved with counter-intelligence and double-agent operations in the Middle East, he had spent some time in Cairo working on German order of battle and (as he recalled years later) ‘six glorious weeks’ with ‘a Buick, a bag of gold and a heart full of hope’ in the Caucasus organising stay-behind teams in case the Germans penetrated through the mountains.

In June 1943, reflecting the shifting geography of the war, Menzies moved Bowlby and the regional SIS headquarters from Cairo to Algiers, where he was instructed to ‘ensure all liaison with British and Allied Staffs’. This, as is so often the case, was easier said than done. The French, having established their seat of government in Algiers, resented having to refer operational requirements back to London. The Americans were inclined to act entirely off their own bat, and in early July Bowlby worried that, without proper liaison with SIS, OSS would ‘undoubtedly turn to S.O.E.’ for assistance in running their own agents. He reported that the intelligence authorities at the Allied headquarters in Algiers were ‘most anxious’ for closer co-operation between OSS, SOE and ‘other interested parties’, such as Dudley Clarke’s A Force deception team, counter-intelligence and SIS. ‘My experience of working with the Americans in Mideast’, added Bowlby, ‘is that one must at any rate give the appearance of co-operating with them completely . . . To hold back in any manner is a game at which they are likely to be more adept than we, and I feel we should lose by it.’ While this observation has an air of cynical calculation, Bowlby also stressed the overall importance of co-operation. ‘I should like to be certain’, he signalled, ‘it is clearly understood in H.O. [Head Office] that all operational and intelligence activities in North Africa are carried out on a complete fifty-fifty basis. It is most unfortunate that an organisation such as ours should, by unwillingness to co-operate, fail to fall in with this general spirit so carefully fostered by the Commanders in Chief in North Africa.’ In July, Menzies, having spoken in London to Colonel Donovan of OSS, emphasised the ‘necessity for harmonious collaboration with Americans and of pooling our resources, training and transport’, and instructed Bowlby to set up a co-ordinating committee (with French representation) to deal with the problem.

The maintenance of good Allied co-operation was undoubtedly intended to reinforce SIS’s enhanced reputation, which was itself underpinned by the high quality of operational