On Writing The Last Goodnight
On Writing The Last Goodnight
In the main building of the CIA’s sprawling Virginia campus, past the security guards and the detection machines, up a staircase and at the end of a winding corridor that doglegs to the left, is a windowless conference room. There is no name or number on the door. Inside, it has the feel of a space that might be used for a graduate seminar; there’s a whiteboard on one wall and a table long enough to sit a dozen or so intelligence analysts. But there were only two other people seated at the table on the June day when I was there—a distinguished agency historian and a press officer to watch over both of us. I had come with the hope of picking the scholar’s brain about Betty Pack, the British and American secret agent who had done so much to help the Allies win World War II.
It was, for me at least, a tense conversation. The CIA official knew, I suspected, a lot more than he was revealing, and I had the difficult task of trying to pull the information out of him. But he was a shrewd man who had spent a lifetime guarding secrets; he was not about to make an indiscreet revelation to me. Nevertheless, we both seemed to be enjoying the game until he took offense at something I had said.
I had announced that the book I intended to write would be a true story.
He laughed dismissively, and then launched into a lecture on the epistemology of espionage. Even nonfiction spy stories, to his way of thinking, were a search for ultimately elusive truths. The best that can be hoped for is a reliable hypothesis. No spy tale is ever the whole story; there are always too many unknowns, too many lies being passed off as facts, too many deliberate miscues by one participant or another.
I listened; argued meekly and defensively; and then did my best to move the conversation along to another hopefully more fruitful topic.
And now, having finished writing the nonfiction book that had prompted my visit to the CIA, I want to reiterate to its readers that this is a true story.
In writing The Last Goodnight, I have been able to draw on a treasure trove of information to tell Betty Pack’s story: her memoirs, tape-recorded reminiscences, childhood diaries, and a lifetime of letters; the Office of Strategic Services Papers at the National Archives; Federal Bureau of Investigation files; State Department records; the British Security Coordination official history; Foreign Office archives at the Public Record Office; and interviews with members of both the British and American intelligence services.
And yet I am also forced to acknowledge that there is a cautionary kernel of truth in the CIA scholar’s warning. There are, among the official sources, contradictory versions of events. And another caveat—governments, even more than half a century later, hold on to their secrets. Betty’s sixty-five-page FBI file is heavily redacted; tantalizing files at the National Archives are marked “Security Classified information, withdrawn at the request of a foreign government”; and the files assembled by H. Montgomery Hyde, Betty’s wartime colleague in the British secret service and her first biographer, which were bequeathed to Churchill College, Cambridge, have been edited. Parts of this collection are “closed indefinitely”; individual documents have been removed by intelligence service “weeders”; and some papers have been officially “closed until the year 2041.
In writing narrative nonfiction, you’re guided by – as the name of genre makes dauntingly clear – two essential rules: you need to tell a story; and it needs to be true.
The Last Goodnight is the deeply personal narrative of Betty Pack. It’s part love story, part spy tale, part psychological detective story. When there were two (or more) versions of an incident, I stuck with the one that made the most sense.
I wanted to capture the resourcefulness, self-reliance, and tenacity of a woman who helped shape a still vibrant strand in the American character. I wanted to discover the truth about the attractive blond, codenamed “Cynthia,” who seduced diplomats and military attachés across the globe in exchange for ciphers and secrets; cracked embassy safes to steal codes; and obtained the Polish notebooks that proved key to Alan Turing’s success with Operation Ultra. I wanted to capture the moving portrait of an exceptional heroine whose undaunted courage helped to save the world.
And now that The Last Goodnight is out in the world, it’s up to you to decide if I succeeded at that mission. You can order your copy here.
Here’s what people are saying about The Last Goodnight:
★★★★★
“Finding out the extensive research that was done on the characters is amazing and makes the reader appreciate the reality of this story of Betty Pack alias Cynthia.”
—Barb L., Amazon Reviewer
★★★★★
“Howard Blum is an excellent writer and made it easy to imagine the settings, emotions, and suspense of a WWII spy. The history is fascinating, better than fiction!”
—Mark F., Amazon Reviewer
