48 • BEST, SIGISMUND
his origins and a lasting inferiority complex. During World War I, his
poor eyesight and his knowledge of French, German, and Flemish,
acquired while attending university in Munich, brought him into the
Intelligence Corps. He started by interviewing Belgian refugees at
the Channel ports, but later was transferred to Holland to help orga-
nize the networks of trainwatchers operating behind enemy lines.
After the war, following his marriage to the daughter of a Dutch
Marines general, Best ran a small import-export business in The
Hague dealing in Humber bicycles. He was something of a Wodehou-
sian figure, sporting a monocle and spats, but was very well con-
nected in the British expatriate community. He was also the local
representative of a branch of theSecret Intelligence Service(SIS)
known as theZ Organization, a network of agents operating inde-
pendently of the BritishPassport Control Offices, the more usual
Secret Intelligence Service cover.
Best’s career as a secret agent came to grief in November 1939
when, accompanied by SIS colleague MajorRichard Stevens,he
drove to Venlo on the German frontier with the intention of meeting
a senior anti-Nazi dissident, allegedly a Luftwaffe general. The en-
counter turned out to be a trap, and the two SIS officers were bundled
across the border by a group of heavily armed Nazis.
Best and Stevens underwent lengthy interrogations, and after the
war, following their release from concentration camps, each accused
the other of having betrayed SIS’s most sensitive secrets. That the
Germans had acquired a detailed knowledge of SIS’s internal struc-
ture could not be denied. Captured documents proved conclusively
that the enemy had acquired first-class information about SIS, and
there were indications that, despite their protests, Stevens and Best
had been played against each other in a skillful exploitation of the
two prisoners. Indeed, when Best demanded financial support from
SIS, he was warned that he was lucky not to have been prosecuted.
SIS was reluctant to accommodate Best and he was excluded from a
list, drawn up in 1964, of victims of Nazi persecution eligible for
compensation from the postwar German government. Best, who had
become a bankrupt, demanded to be included and his claim was
eventually accepted.
The financial settlement achieved by Best did nothing to diminish
his sense of grievance, and he insisted that he had been victimized