The Woman Who Smashed Codes

by Jason Fagone

there was no harm in revealing its activities. There was enough truth in the book to scandalize U.S. officials. Yardley disclosed, for instance, how his country had been reading the diplomatic traffic of Japanese ambassadors, information that Japanese readers were surprised to learn; the book sold 33,119 copies there. He also tantalized with anecdotes of sex and deception. “A lovely girl dances with the Secretary of an Embassy,” Yardley wrote in the book’s introduction, promising more details within. “She flatters him. They become confidential. He is indiscreet.” He devoted a full chapter to a bewitching female spy named Madame de Victorica, “the beautiful blonde woman of Antwerp,” who worked for the British and French during the Great War and employed ciphers and invisible ink. Yardley claimed that an unknown enemy once enlisted a blonde spy to seduce him at a New York speakeasy: “It did seem to