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* Home > Spies > Treasure
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* * * Nathalie Sergueiew alias Treasure (1912-?)
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Catalogue reference: KV2/466c; Photograph of Nathalie Sergueiew alias Treasure (link to an enlarged view)
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The double-cross
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Sending false information
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The end for 'Treasure'
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Sergueiew was one of many agents who double-crossed the German secret service during the Second World War. Between 1943 and 1945 Sergueiew’s contacts in the Abwehr believed her to be a loyal German spy. In reality, she was sending them deliberately misleading messages composed by the British secret service. As ‘Treasure’, Sergueiew did valuable work for MI5 yet her British spymasters began to suspect that she lacked discretion and commitment.

Nathalie Sergueiew was born in Russia in 1912. After studying in Paris she traveled around Europe, improving her mastery of several languages including German, French and English. In the mid-1930s she worked as a journalist in Germany, once interviewing Hermann Goering. At this time she began to admire Nazi ideology and personalities. However, when a journalist friend first approached her to work for the German intelligence service in 1937, she refused. By the time the war had started and she agreed to work for the Abwehr, she had already decided that her real loyalties lay with the Allies and she would do all she could to help them from within the German intelligence system.

Sergueiew met her Abwehr boss, Emil Kliemann, in Berlin and began to learn espionage skills such as secret ink writing, ciphers, radio telegraphy and how to identify different Allied uniforms and equipment. She hinted to her German employers that they should send her to England. At the same time she told the British authorities that she intended to double-cross. In 1943 she arrived in England and was immediately interrogated by MI5, who gave her the alias Treasure.
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