Harold Deardon, the resident psychiatrist Major Sir John C. In addition to my fictionalized version of Tar Robertson, other key British military and intelligence figures in Bodyguard of Deception that truly did inhabit this particular time and place in history include: the fearsome, monocle-wearing, and larger-than-life Colonel Robin “Tin Eye” Stephens, commandant of the infamous Camp 020 at London’s Latchmere House, who worked closely with Tar Robertson and truly was a first-rate interrogator as well as a raging xeno- and homo-phobe Tin-Eye’s clever assistants at Camp 020, Captains Short and Goodacre, as well as Dr. For those who prefer the original, I can only apologize for my selfish American literary transgression. This bloody Yank, yours truly the author, was so enthralled by the real-life Tar Robertson that I had to adopt him as my own.
The real-life Tar Robertson really did wear a Glengarry cap and McKenzie tartan trews of the Seaforth Highlanders, was the brains behind Double Cross, and was universally well-liked by those who knew and worked with him. Most prominent among them was Scottish MI5 intelligence officer Thomas Argyll “Tar” Robertson, whom the astute reader will recognize that I have only superficially disguised in the novel as Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Abernathy MacGregor, or “Tam” MacGregor. With that in mind, most of His Majesty the King’s characters in my novel were either actual Double Cross spymasters or major contributors to the deception during the critical days leading up to the D-Day assault on Hitler’s Festung Europa. Let’s face it, no one does espionage like the Brits (WWII spymaster Ian Lancaster Fleming and his iconic literary creation James Bond anyone?). Its operations were overseen by the Twenty Committee under the chairmanship of John Cecil Masterman the name of the committee comes from the number 20 in Roman numerals: “XX” (i.e.
German agents in Britain – real and false – were captured, turned themselves in or simply announced themselves and were then used by the British to broadcast mainly disinformation to their Nazi controllers. For those who don’t know, the Double Cross System or XX System, was a World War II counter-espionage and deception operation of the British Security Service, a civilian organisation usually referred to by its cover title MI5.
But it is the British “Double Cross” spymasters in the novel who steal the show. There are numerous real-life American and German characters in Bodyguard of Deception, Book 1 of my World War Two Trilogy.
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