In 1942, Strangeways' career in military deception began in earnest. Sent from the War Office in London to Cairo, he reported to General Sir Harold Alexander with deception plans designed to fool the Axis powers as to the time and place of the Allied invasion of North Africa. The deception relied upon convincing the Axis powers that the massed landing craft were destined not for North Africa but to relieve beleaguered Malta. To bring about the deception, novelist and fellow deception officer Dennis Wheatley, based at the London Controlling Section, supplied Strangeways with a letter to an acquaintance in Cairo and a copy of his latest novel. The book, with the letter left inside, was then left at a Cairo hotel for enemy agents to find.