Code Name 'TIGER'

She's the spy who came in from the ball. From her life as a best friend of the Windsors, and her starring role on the international social scene, you'd never have guessed that American-born Aline, Countess of Romanones, was once Agent 527 of the O.S.S. Now, as WILLIAM P. RAYNER reports, she reveals all in her new book

WILLIAM P. RAYNER

One evening last summer, as I was riding with Aline Romanones over a comer of her husband's vast finca in southern Spain, the countess turned to me and said, "You know, I have written a book about my war experiences in Spain when I was in the O.S.S."

"The O.S.S.?" I asked, thinking I had misunderstood her.

"Yes. You know, the forerunner of the C.I.A."

I didn't know that she had written a book, and I certainly wasn't aware that she had ever been in the secret service. But then, over the years I have learned that nothing should surprise me about this woman. The old radio soap opera Our Gal Sunday began every day by asking, Can a girl from a small mining town in the West find happiness married to a rich and titled lord? The former Aline Griffith is living proof that the question can be answered in the affirmative. She wasn't actually born in the West. She was born in Pearl River, New York, but let's not quibble. Since her marriage to a Spanish grandee in 1947 she has been one of the most glamorous figures on the international scene, on close terms at various times with everyone from the Windsors to the Rothschilds, from the King of Spain to Nancy Reagan.

Her friend Lady Keith, familiarly known as Slim, whose years of living in England have taught her something about the art of understatement, says of Aline, Countess of Romanones, "She is not constructed to be an idle woman." When Aline is at her residences in Madrid and New York, she is in constant motion. At the finca, she swims for half an hour each morning before breakfast and rides each evening for several hours. Even if she did not exercise at all she would probably keep her terrific figure, which is almost boyish, just because she is so supercharged. She never stops, and listening to her talk is like experiencing the David Letterman show without commercials. One friend says Aline could walk into a room on those long legs, talking a mile a minute, as animated as a whirling dervish, in a basic skirt and blouse, and go mano a mano with the whole of French couture. Time after time she has made the best-dressed list, but what is really interesting is that she is probably the only woman on it who sometimes wears clothes made by her maid.

She almost started out rich. Her Grandfather Dexter, on her mother's side, moved back east from Iowa in the 1880s and was so prosperous that the local newspapers took to calling Pearl River Dexterville. People used to say of the Dexters that they came over on the next boat after the Mayflower, because they had sent the servants ahead on the Mayflower. Then came the crash of 1929, and it all went. Aline was six years old at the time, so she and her two younger brothers, as well as the three siblings yet to come, had a no-frills childhood. From the beginning she exhibited two characteristics that were to stay with her for life: a vivid imagination and a love of adventure. Her brother Mark sums her up very well: "When my twin sister, Peggy, and I were children, it was Aline's responsibility to look after us. I remember she painted a magic house and hung it on the wall of her room. On entering, we were told to close our eyes, and she would mumble a few magic words, and all of a sudden two pieces of candy would appear. In that same room ten years later, during the war, when she was packing to go overseas, I saw a revolver fall out of her bag. We only found out later that she had joined the O.S.S." That magic house and that revolver are still the flip sides of Aline Romanones's personality.

According to Mrs. Griffith, Aline's mother, who at ninety paints oils and goes square-dancing every Thursday, the adventurous side of Aline's nature became evident early on. "She was a great one for running away. At times I used to have to tie her to the fence post in the backyard to keep her from taking off." While it was relatively simple to restrain her wanderlust in this way during childhood, there was nothing anyone could do to suppress it once she had graduated from the College of Mount Saint Vincent. Half the young men in town wanted to marry her, but Aline had other plans. She went to work in New York City, and soon every tongue in Pearl River was wagging over her career choice: she became a model at Hattie Carnegie's.

Frank Ryan, who was then recruiting for the O.S.S., recalls the night he met Aline at a dinner party. She told him that her brother Dexter was a fighter pilot and her brother Tom was aboard a submarine and that meanwhile all she could do was "stand around like a brainless piece of furniture, being fitted in party dresses." She said she wanted to serve her country too. Ryan told her that if she was really serious, he would see what he could do.

"I continued modeling for the rest of the summer while they investigated my family," Aline says. "In the fall I received a notice to travel to Washington under a false name with a suitcase of simple country clothes from which all labels had been removed. In Washington I was directed to proceed to the Hay-Adams Hotel and wait until a black Chevrolet with the license number TX 16248 appeared, at which time I was told to say to the driver, 'Is this Mr. Tom's car?' I told my family I was going to Washington to do clerical work in the War Department." She ended up in an espionage school known as the Farm, near to where Camp David is located. There her clerical duties included learning how to kill a man with her bare hands, how to break open safes, and how to handle a machine gun and fire a .45 revolver. She became Agent 527, and her code name was Tiger. During her training she met Whitney Shepardson, who was one of the heads of the U.S. counterintelligence service, and as soon as he had talked with her he told Ryan that with her looks and personality "she could penetrate groups more easily than any man." Because she spoke French, she had "hoped to be dropped behind enemy lines in France," but the O.S.S. had other plans. She was taught Spanish and flown to Lisbon on a Pan Am clipper. Among the thirty-two passengers on the luxurious aircraft were a four-star general and William J. Casey, the future head of the C.I.A. From Lisbon, Aline proceeded to Madrid.

During World War II, Madrid was to espionage what Manhattan is to the United Nations—that is to say, no selfrespecting nation would be caught without representation there. Aline's cover was her job at the American Oil Mission; her real job was to organize a network of subagents across Spain. Far from keeping a low profile, the twentyone-year-old knockout went dancing every night, copped Spain's number-one bullfighter for a boyfriend, and led a social life that would make Jerome Zipkin appear a recluse. In her book, which Random House has just brought out under the title The Spy Wore Red, she recounts her exciting years of espionage, when, among other things, she was jailed in Malaga, kidnapped in Madrid, and attacked in Switzerland.

She had several rivals among female spies in Spain. One was a German agent by the name of Countess Gloria von Fiirstenberg. The countess was, in Aline's words, "a very glamorous woman who in later life became a friend," but during the war neither of them would turn her back on the other. The other woman, who also worked for the Gestapo, loved bullfighting, and once at the ranch of Jose Gandarias, who bred bulls for the ring, Aline was almost killed trying to outdo her.

On that occasion, Aline was told that two weeks before, her rival had dazzled the company by going into the ring and performing a pase. Aline was not to be shown up, particularly since she thought she had learned enough about bullfighting from her boyfriend, Juan Belmonte, the famous toreador, to match any Gestapo agent's daring. The other reason for her bravado was that Luis Figueroa y Perez de Guzman el Bueno, Grandee of Spain, Marques of Santa Marta, Count of Quintanilla, one of the richest men in the country, had taken her there that day, and she wanted to impress him. This blond, green-eyed nobleman had been introduced to her a year earlier by Prince Hohenlohe, the brother of Alfonso Hohenlohe, who would later create the Marbella Club, which is the Palm Beach of Spain. Luis recalls their first meeting. He and his girlfriend of the moment went with a group to the Madrid country club, and there he was introduced to Aline and asked her to dance. "She danced much better than anybody. We danced the whole night long together. And that was the end of my girlfriend." Mrs. Griffith says Aline must have been equally beguiled, for she remembers a letter she received from her a short time later. "I met the man I am going to marry, but he doesn't know it yet." That day at the Gandarias ranch was the day she let him know it. Without warning, she jumped into the bullring, grabbed a cape, and executed a very graceful pase. The crowd went wild, and as Aline was acknowledging their oles the bull suddenly swung around and charged. "In that one split second he came from behind and threw me up into the air, and I thought this must be the end of me. Then I was pulled to my feet, and I realized I could move and see, and I heard this fellow Luis say, 'I think you'd better stop doing these foolish American things and marry me.' "

This rich and titled lord who proposed to her, this blood sports and master of five languages, had been brought up, like so many generations of European aristocracy, with a first-rate education, a complete assurance of who he was, a definite distaste for commerce, and a clear sense that the only place to be in August was Biarritz. Luis's title—at least the Marques of Santa Marta part—was inherited from a branch of his family which originated with Richard the Lion-Hearted in the twelfth century. He can also trace his family directly back through fourteen generations to Christopher Columbus. But while other people may be impressed by the man's lineage, he himself shrugs it off. Once when Aline was researching the history of the family, she reported some fact about an ancestor who lived four hundred years ago. Luis responded by saying, "Who could be interested in that? I daresay you had an ancestor four hundred years ago as well." Luis is a painter, and his work has been much in demand. For the World's Fair in New York in 1964, he was commissioned by Spanish officials to paint a gigantic mural in one of the major pavilions. He maintains one of the best stables of horses in Spain (his Lunar won the Spanish Gold Cup last summer), he is a crack shot, and he used to play scratch golf. Whatever he does, it seems, he does well. The day he proposed to Aline, he took out of action one of the most eligible bachelors on the Continent.

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Luis said, "I think you'd better stop doing these foolish American things and marry me."

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The marriage did not take place until two and a half years after the proposal, and much of that time they were separated. Once the war ended, Aline was sent by the secret service to France for eight months and then to Switzerland for another eight. At that point an agent arrived from Washington to try to persuade her to operate for a period out of Czechoslovakia, but she declined—luckily, because right after that the Iron Curtain fell.

Aline and the Count of Quintanilla (that was Luis's title before his father died and he inherited the Romanones title) were married in June 1947, and the wedding was one of the most spectacular ever held in Madrid. Almost every grandee in the country attended, including the Prince and Princess of Baviera, the Duchess of Montpensier, and the Duke and Duchess of Medinaceli, not to mention Manolete, Spain's greatest toreador, who changed the date of a bullfight in order not to miss the great event. He was killed in the ring a month later. The wedding will never be forgotten by Spanish society, and one reason is that in the course of it an ex-boyfriend of the bride's, in a fit of jealousy, tried to shoot the groom. Perhaps that is why Luis once described their life together from the beginning as "exciting."

After the wedding, they went on a yearlong honeymoon. They started in Capri, hit every romantic spot on the Continent, and then headed for Pearl River, New York. Aline says she had trepidations. Luis, after all, had been brought up in a palace with sixty servants. As a child he had three governesses—English, French, and German— but absolutely no idea where the kitchen was located. He never was allowed to dress himself. Aline, who speaks with the rapidity of a Sten gun, in phrases that come out in bundles, says, "I thought he would be horrified. I was afraid he would hate the small-town atmosphere of Pearl River—population then of 3,500. In fact, Luis became fascinated with the place—going into the kitchen and cooking with my mother, shopping in the village." She remembers Mr. Prezioso, the local barber, who had fourteen children, one of whom had been her classmate throughout public school, telling her they were "delighted to have a count"—Pearl River's first—but "disappointed that he didn't wear his crown."

When Luis and Aline returned to Spain, they became the golden couple of Madrid society. Mrs. John Davis Lodge, whose husband was the American ambassador to Spain at the time, says, "There was never an important social function or diplomatic event at which they were not present." According to Swifty Lazar, who has known them for years, even Franco was very taken with Aline, so much so that she became a part of his inner circle. Lazar recalls too how each August, when the summer crowd was in Biarritz, the Romanoneses, Peter Viertel and his wife Deborah Kerr, Ernest Hemingway, Sam Spiegel, and he would all drive down to Spain for "a little death in the afternoon." Bill Paley, another friend, remembers one afternoon when he thought the death was going to be his own. He had just been in the Congo, on a mission for President Eisenhower, and he had brought to Spain with him one of the Congo's most celebrated exports— an unknown virus. Paley maintains that it was thanks only to Aline, who galvanized a whole team of doctors and nurses, that he is still alive.

Many Spanish aristocrats have vast landholdings spread over the country, but until the 1950s it was rare for them to visit these estates. Instead, they would summon their estate managers to them once or twice a year to review the accounting—in other words, to bring home the bacon. One of Luis's properties, Pascualete, which has been in his family since 1231, is in southwestern Spain near a town called Trujillo. No one in Luis's family had been near Trujillo for 150 years when Aline decided that it was time to pay a visit. It took her three years to persuade Luis to go, and by then they had two sons to take with them. A third was bom the following year.

For most sophisticated people at that time, a trip to Estremadura to visit a finca in ruins was about as appealing as a night out in the Florida Everglades would be to a member of cafe society. "The Spaniards thought I was crazy, and so, I suspect, did Luis," Aline says, "but Annabella, the French actress who was married to Tyrone Power, was eager to go, and so were the Brazilian ambassador and his wife." Pascualete, like many of the old houses in that area, dates back to the second century A.D., when the Romans were occupying Spain. The night the count and countess arrived with their guests, they did a little reconnoitering and discovered Roman tombstones set in the walls of what were supposed to be the guest rooms. "The servants had prepared four rooms for us in various parts of the house," Aline recalls, "but Annabella was in no mood to share her quarters with a stiff. 'Don't think for a minute I am going to sleep so far away from you in this weird place,' she said." The Brazilian ambassador and his wife were also reluctant to be far from the rest of the company, and so, of the finca's twenty bedrooms, only one was occupied that first night. Some years later, when Pascualete was under reconstruction, the body of a fifteenth-century ancestor of Luis's was found entombed in the wall of another guest room. Aline left him where he was. "He was dressed so fine, I hated to disturb him."

More tombstones turned up during further renovations (one in the drawingroom floor), as well as escutcheons and Roman artifacts, until at last Aline became obsessed with learning the history of the place. To do that she had to learn paleography in order to be able to "decipher documents unread for the past four centuries or more." There were only two paleographers in that part of Spain, and they had no intention of expanding their ranks. Once Aline had driven them half-crazy with her determination to conquer the ancient writings, however, one of them decided it would be easier to teach her than to argue with her. In two months she had mastered the old script and begun tracing the history of Pascualete from the time Luis's family first occupied it in the thirteenth century right up to the present.

Trujillo, while charming, was hardly considered a watering spot until Agent 527 went to work on it and began to trumpet its glories, which had gone unrecognized for nearly a millennium. It is one of the best examples of a medieval walled city in Europe, and the surrounding area is the birthplace of many of the conquistadores who explored the New World, particularly Hernando Cortez, Francisco Pizarro, and Francisco de Orellana. My mother-in-law, Chessie Patcevitch, tells how she went with Aline to the village one day to buy a straw hat to protect her from the sun and ended up buying a fourteenth-century house as well. Fleur Cowles, who had the same experience, recently told someone who asked for the address of her house that she didn't own a house, she owned a palace; and that is quite accurate. Ditto with Marylou and Sonny Whitney and an ever increasing number of English, French, and Belgian friends of Aline's, who know a bargain when they see one.

Aline's three sons, Luis, Miguel, and Alvaro, are now grown men with families of their own, so there is almost never a weekend when the house is not full of children and guests, who drop in from all over the world. In the summer they come to ride on the estate, sometimes taking a picnic and making an entire day of it, other times accompanying Aline at eight in the evening on her regular two-hour constitutional. The Romanoneses never dine before 10:30, and they often have flamenco dancers in after dinner to entertain the company.

In the fall, guests come for the hunting and shooting parties, and these have included Ava Gardner, the King of Italy, the Maharaja and Maharani of Jaipur, and Generalissimo Franco's family. Luis remembers one shoot when word came over the transistor radio that Batista had been overthrown by Castro. When Luis passed this information on to the generalissimo, Franco shook his head and answered with total seriousness, "I've always said those dictators end badly."

Aline has been interested in politics since her days in counterintelligence. She organized the first women's political group in the post-Franco era, a group that started with ten of her friends and grew in four months to become 15,000 activists. Later she helped to back Manuel Fraga, Spain's center-right opposition leader. In recent years she has made regular lecture tours around the United States, speaking on subjects ranging from terrorism to the problems in Central America. Since 1978 she has made almost yearly trips to the trouble spots in that part of the world in order to obtain firsthand information for these lectures.

On a visit to San Salvador four years ago, she walked one day into the Camino Real Hotel, which is a hangout for the foreign press and television people. There she ran into a man she had not seen in forty years, since they had been spies together. He approached her and said, "Tiger." Soon they started to recall their wartime experiences, and that conversation made Aline realize that she had a story worth telling. Before she left El Salvador, The Spy Wore Red was formed in her mind.