When World War II started, Amy Pack offered her talents to the British intelligence service. She soon was writing political articles for Spanish- and English-language newspapers in Chile. Britain was then gearing up its intelligence and propaganda efforts in the hemisphere, placing them in the spring of 1940 under the British Security Coordination (BSC), headed by Canadian William Stephenson.

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Amy Pack left her husband and sailed to New York, where she was given her code name, 'Cynthia,' and an assignment to set up shop in Washington, D.C. As her cover, she posed as a journalist. Her first major assignment was obtaining the Italian naval cryptosystem. Given her mission, it was only logical that Cynthia look up her old friend Alberto Lais, now an admiral and naval attaché at Italy's Washington embassy. Virtually all published accounts say that Cynthia pried from the 60-year-old admiral the Italian navy's code and cipher books, as well as plans to disable Italian ships in U.S. ports to prevent their seizure. The literary consensus is that Cynthia's amorous success contributed to British victories in the Mediterranean. The lady herself, who described her relationship with Lais as'sentimental and even sensual rather than sexual,' said she received the ship sabotage information directly from the admiral and access to the sensitive books from his assistant with Lais' full cooperation.

Heirs of the admiral sued a British author in an Italian court for defamation in 1967, insisting Lais (who had died in 1951) had not betrayed military secrets, and won. In 1988, Lais' two sons protested publication of the seduction account in David Brinkley's best-selling Washington Goes to War and persuaded the Italian defense ministry to publish denial ads in three leading East Coast newspapers.

Cynthia's next assignment was one that assured her place in the intelligence hall of fame. The Vichy French government, established after France's collapse in 1940, was vehemently anti-British. Posing as an American journalist, Cynthia phoned the French Embassy in May 1941 and introduced herself to Charles Brousse, the press attaché. Right away, Brousse–49 years old, several times married and anti-Nazi–was besotted with Cynthia.

The relationship began with elicited material and intelligence tidbits. But by July, Cynthia felt confident enough to make a false flag recruitment, telling Brousse she worked for the Americans. The French official soon was offering his mistress embassy cables, letters, files and accounts of embassy activities and personalities. Before long, to foil FBI surveillance, she moved into the hotel where Brousse and his wife lived.

'London would like to have the Vichy French naval ciphers,' Cynthia was told in March 1942. Informed of her latest request, Brousse threw up his hands. Only the chief cipher officer and his assistant had access to the code room. The cipher books were in several volumes, locked in a safe. A dog-escorted watchman guarded the premises at night.

After a series of stymied efforts, Cynthia finally tried the direct approach–burglary. Tapping his friendship with William 'Wild Bill' Donovan, head of America's Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA), the BSC's Stephenson acquired the services of a thug nicknamed 'the Georgia Cracker.' Brousse was to tell the embassy night watchman that he needed a discreet place to conduct an affair and was prepared to pay him to look the other way. The couple would then visit the embassy for several nights to get the guard used to their presence. On the night of the burglary, they planned to slip the watchman a drugged glass of champagne. After that, they would admit the safecracker, go to the ground-floor code room, open the safe, pass the cipher books to a BSC man waiting on the tree-shaded lawn below and then wait for the volumes to be returned after they were photographed.

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