I n a small subterranean office at the Admiralty, a cluster of men and women wait in a state of agonising anticipation. The Allied forces are landing in Sicily, and this small group of intelligence operatives has just bet the invasion – tens of thousands of lives – on a prankish piece of spycraft involving the body of a homeless man dressed as a pilot, carrying false news of an attack on Greece. It’s a second world war legend whose real story is no less strange than the myth that surrounds it – and something about it has clearly caught...