The White CityLISBON WAS THEN KNOWN as “the capital of espionage,” a vast open market for illicit information, casual betrayal, currency smuggling, drugs, murder and deception. Portugal was neutral in the conflict, and Lisbon’s airport was the only one in Europe that still maintained flights to both Berlin and London, making it the last stop before freedom for the one million refugees—including Peggy Guggenheim, Marc Chagall and Arthur Koestler—who passed through it during the war. Men, women and children from all over occupied Europe—Polish counts, Belgian millionaires, Bulgarian adventurers and Jews from every quarter of the new Reich—had washed up in Lisbon, where they mixed uneasily with a floating population of black marketeers, prostitutes, informants and double agents. Many of the refugees had no visas to travel onward, and they’d spent fortunes just getting to Portugal, trading in the family silver and selling their wives’ engagement rings and diamond brooches to last another week or two.
