The Mountbatten letter also contained a deliberate and deniable pun. Mountbatten wrote a line about “our friend who was in Sardines,” which could be read as a reference to a person who had worked in the sardine fishing industry but could also be parsed as a winking reference to Sardinia. This was the kind of offhand remark that, if noticed by a German analyst, would appear to confirm Sardinia as a target while seeming too casual to be deliberate. Whether German analysts actually noticed this pun is not documented.
One frequently repeated detail about the letters deserves careful treatment: the claim that a single eyelash was placed inside one of the sealed letters to detect whether it had been opened, and that the eyelash came from Jean Leslie’s cheek. The first part of this, that a detection mechanism was placed inside the sealed correspondence, is supported by the historical record. When the British examined the returned letters, they found evidence that the envelopes had been opened and resealed. The attribution of the eyelash specifically to Leslie’s cheek has the flavor of embellishment, and appears to have been amplified by the 2022 film adaptation rather than primary historical sources. The important fact is the confirmed one: the letters were opened and read.
The letters were placed in genuine envelopes, sealed with official wax, and placed in the briefcase. The briefcase was chained to Martin. The body was then prepared for its final journey.
H. DELIVERY, RECOVERY, AND THE SPANISH ROUTE
The choice of Huelva as the release point was the result of multiple calculations.