The fact that I had never seen or even heard of someone called Edgard de Boudel was neither here nor there. I was doing what I had been told to do by the Americans in Landsberg. And when I returned to my room at the Pension Esebeck in Göttingen, I wrote a note to my CIA handlers describing the full extent of my progress: how the French had listened to me paint a picture of de Boudel at the same time I had also been painting another picture, of Erich Mielke; and that they appeared to accept everything I had told them about Mielke—all of which was false—because of everything I had told them about Edgard de Boudel, which was true. This operation was what Scheuer called “the beautiful twin.” The French—and, more important, the Soviet agent whom the Americans knew to be at the heart of the SDECE in Paris—would, it was supposed, be more inclined to believe my lies and misrepresentations about Mielke if everything they were told about de Boudel coincided with what they knew about him, or strongly suspected. And the icing on this rich cake was a tip-off (supplied to them by the British, who, of course, had received it from the Americans) that Edgard de Boudel was arriving back in Germany as a returning POW, having served out his usefulness to the Russians in Indochina, where, as a political commissar, he had assisted the Viet Minh in the interrogation and torture of many captured French soldiers, most of whom still remained, until the Geneva negotiations were complete, prisoners of war in Indochina. All I had to do was identify de Boudel and the French would, it was supposed, treat me and my information about Mielke as gold-plated; and to this end, before my “deportation” from Landsberg to Paris, I had carefully studied the only known photographs of de Boudel. It was hoped that these two pictures, along with my own familiarity with the life of a German POW—not to mention my background as a Kripo detective—would help me spot him for the French, who forever thereafter would be in thrall to me as an intelligence source. Because Edgard de Boudel was one of the most wanted men in France.

Naturally, I was a little concerned about what might happen to me if I failed to identify de Boudel, so I wrote about that, too, mentioning my continuing concern that he might have changed more than just his name and identity if, as the Americans believed, the Russians were intent on infiltrating him back into West German society in the hope of reactivating him as their agent at some later date. I had little or no chance of success if de Boudel had undergone plastic surgery. I also mentioned what by then would have been obvious: that I was being watched closely.