Authors: Madoc Roberts
‘He did know at the first meeting,’ said Owens.
‘Therefore you told him in that hour.’
‘I think I must have warned the man. If he knew at the first meeting he could only have known a short while before.’
‘When he was with you.’
‘I feel sure I must have warned the man.’
‘Can you be certain about it.’
‘No, I can’t say I am certain.’
‘If he didn’t know at his first meeting with the Doctor it must have been a very interesting one.’
‘I was in the room and I was talking to Duarte most of the time. What passed between him and the Doctor I know very little about. What I do know is that I heard in the conversation C
ELERY
tell the Doctor that he had been promised when he got back here a staff appointment and that he could be of valuable service to him.’
‘Promised by whom?’ asked Marriott.
‘You people.’
‘Who is you people?’
‘British Intelligence.’
‘What reason could we have in promising C
ELERY
this job?’
‘He said that he had been sent out to get all the dope about the invasion.’
‘Any information therefore that he has got about the invasion is bound to be wrong.’
‘I told the Major it may be correct. I think it is false.’
‘Supposing his information about the invasion is the same as yours?’
‘All I do know is that I talked to the Doctor. I said to him, “I am in a very dangerous spot. I am in south-west London and I don’t want to be mixed up in this invasion.” He said “The mass attack of the invasion is going to come from Gravesend. If you think you ought to go to Wales go. That is all I can advise you at the moment.”’
‘If you did not tell C
ELERY
before this first meeting that the Doctor knew that he was connected with us what would his object be in saying that the British Intelligence had promised him a staff job unless he knew?’
‘Unless the Doctor asked him about me and that?’ asked Owens.
‘C
ELERY
would not have known what to say unless you had told him.’
‘Yes that may be right. I am not quite clear on that.’
‘What were the Doctor’s opening words to C
ELERY
when he saw him at the first meeting.’
‘I said “This is my man C
ELERY
. Here is a man returned from the grave.” “Yes” he said, “We have been trying to find him for a long time. We had submarines looking for him. I am very glad he is here. I have put off so many appointments because I knew he was an important man.” Then Doebler started to talk to me and we had some drinks. And what the rest of the conversation was I don’t know. I definitely heard him tell the Doctor I was going to be shot when we got back to England. He told the Doctor that he was going to get a staff job in the RAF.’
‘Would C
ELERY
have used the exact expression Lieutenant?’
‘As far as I know. He told me afterwards. What kind of a job is this going to be, £3 or £4 a week. His wife even told Lily that she should get some dresses because they would go to Buckingham Palace for the decoration.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Marriott.
‘How did she know what he was going to do?’
‘Kaye knew he was going into Germany.’
Owens now played what he believed to be something of a trump card by introducing the fact that he had told Walter Dicketts that he was
double-crossing
British Intelligence. However, Marriott did not react in the way that Owens seems to have intended.
‘He is alright if he tells you that I was double-crossing you and Robertson and working for the Germans,’ said Owens.
‘But how does he know that you are double-crossing us?’
‘I told him so.’
‘No you didn’t. He knows you are double-crossing the Germans. When the Germans said to you, you are in touch with the British Intelligence. If you had been double-crossing us you would have said, “You know I am. I have been for eighteen months.” Instead of which you said for two and a half months. That was not double-crossing us.’
‘I said I was one hundred percent for the Germans.’
‘Yes, but he knew that you were one hundred percent as you had told the Germans a lie.’
‘There is another point. As far as he knew I was one hundred percent for the Germans. He said are you really one hundred percent for the Germans I would like to know that because I am.’
‘He knew you weren’t one hundred percent for the Germans if you told them a lie about how you got into touch with us.’
‘He doesn’t know that unless the Doctor told him.’
‘Then you didn’t tell him before he saw the Doctor.’
‘I can’t tell you. I am not quite sure.’
It seems that Marriott was at least as quick at thinking through the various possibilities and implications of the situation as Owens, and then set about trying to disentangle Arthur Owens’ version of events. But at the heart of Owens’ statement was his uncertainty as to when he actually told Walter Dicketts that the Doctor knew that British intelligence had walked in on him.
‘If you did tell him, he knows and he knows that you are not one hundred percent pro-German. Therefore if C
ELERY
does not say to us S
NOW
is
double-crossing
us it must be because of the known facts. I.e. that you told the Germans you got into touch with us two and a half months ago and are not one hundred
percent for the Germans and are not double-crossing us. How could C
ELERY
come to me and say S
NOW
is double-crossing us?’
‘Because I told him I was one hundred percent for the Germans.’
‘If you only told him half the facts.’
‘I told him nothing that transpired at the first meeting.’
‘Why didn’t you tell him?’
‘I was suspicious of the man. I was doubtful before I left this country.’
‘On mere suspicion you took a tremendous decision not to tell him the most important thing that had happened to you since you arrived in Lisbon. The only thing that mattered.’
‘I am not sure.’
‘I have simply got to know before I can form any opinion about C
ELERY
.’
‘I don’t think I told him. I told him later on. I told him everything before he went to Germany. I went and saw the man at the embassy myself, I explained to him he knows.’
‘You say that definitely and can’t remember whether you told him.’
‘I told him after. I am not sure. It was done in such a hurry. I told him definitely afterwards. I don’t think I told him before. I have been suspicious of that man for a long time. I didn’t want to tell you direct but I hinted to the major direct.’
‘This was a matter of your life. You don’t safeguard your life by a mere hint. I know that you think you know the Doctor so well that you could get away with anything.’
‘That is true. I know this game so well. They can’t double-cross me that way. The Doctor is a personal friend of mine. I told that man to say everything that he knew.’
‘You do appreciate the importance of the exact moment when you told C
ELERY
?’ asked Marriott.
‘I understand.’
‘Because C
ELERY
, who has got a time, is going to say that you never told him. So in the future now if possible you have got to be certain of the time. I can’t help you.’
‘No. I don’t think it was at the first meeting. After, definitely. There is no question about that.’
‘You can’t give me any good reason why you didn’t tell him beyond the fact that you had no time. It would not have taken a few minutes.’
‘I was suspicious of C
ELERY
.’
‘He was walking into a trap.’
‘I was in a trap. I and nobody else could get him out of it. I got him out. I got myself out.’
‘Yes but you were going with a man who did not know the position. You had got yourself out of it by quick thinking. What happened when he went to that meeting? Supposing he carried on the conversation on the footing that you are a British agent. You could not run that risk.’
‘The whole thing came on me so suddenly I had to work quickly and work fast. Whether I told C
ELERY
or not before the meeting I told him in the morning.’
‘It would seem incredible that you did not tell him the moment you saw him and tell him that the game was up.’
‘I may have said that,’ acknowledged Owens. ‘It is a possibility. I told him to leave everything in my hands. Not to do anything unless I told him.’
‘In other words you told him that something had gone haywire, but to leave it to you and you would deal with it.’
‘He was in a bad condition when he arrived.’
The interrogation was going round in circles with Owens unable to give a definite time when he had told Dicketts that his cover was blown. MI5 had a similar problem when they tried to work out what had happened during the North Sea trawler mission. One of the reasons that mission went wrong was that Owens had not been told that Sam McCarthy was not a real German agent but was in fact working for MI5. This made it very difficult to unravel whether Owens was telling McCarthy the truth when he said he was
pro-German
. He might have been telling the truth or he might have been playing his part as a German agent. A similar thing was happening in this case as well – part of MI5’s dilemma was that without having a clear and logical version of the order of events they couldn’t really know what motives were in play and who was double-crossing whom. Complicating the matter was the fact that Dicketts was on a mission for Robertson who had asked him to try to establish whether Owens was actually working for the Germans. This meant that
Dicketts
was playing the part of a double-crosser in an attempt to discover Owens’ real loyalties. After the North Sea trawler mission they had to give Owens the benefit of the doubt because they wanted the double-cross system to carry on. By 1941 the system was far more developed, with more agents working for them. Their main problem was that Arthur Owens was central to the system and had been in contact with many of the agents MI5 was currently running. If they couldn’t trust him then they would have to be sure that bringing his activities to an end wouldn’t bring down the whole system.
Owens’ inconsistency was becoming a problem for MI5 as it was crucial to know what had really happened in Lisbon in order to understand the viability of the whole double-cross system. However, despite several
interrogation
sessions MI5 still did not know whether Owens had told his fellow agent Dicketts that Rantzau had confronted him with the fact that he was working for British Intelligence. Owens claimed that he had told Dicketts, but was totally unable to say when he did this. MI5 had also failed to
discover whether Owens and Dicketts had concocted a story to tell MI5 upon their return to Britain.
It was not just the answers to these questions that concerned MI5; they also knew that the credibility of Owens and Dicketts had an impact on the information about the planned invasion that they had brought back from their mission to Lisbon.
When Dicketts was interrogated he said that as far as he was concerned the Doctor had never confronted Owens with the fact that he was working for British Intelligence, and that Owens, never told him this was the case. This suggests that Owens may not have told Dicketts at all, and Owens’ main loyalty may really have been with the Germans. If that was the case why did he come back and feel the need to tell MI5 what the Doctor had said? If Dicketts did not know this had happened, and Owens had wanted to carry on as before, all he had to do was remain silent. He even had the perfect cover of £10,000 and a new code. There was, of course, the
possibility
that Owens had simply endured enough and wanted to settle down with Lily and their baby. Indeed, Guy Liddell confided to his diary that Owens wanted them to go over to Lisbon to join him, which could mean that he intended taking them to Germany to live.
Robertson thought it unfeasible that the Doctor had not conducted rigorous questioning of Owens regarding what had happened when British Intelligence supposedly walked in on him. In his version of events, Owens gave the impression that the Doctor only spent three and a half hours across two meetings with him, and that during that time he had weighed the
situation
up, decided that J
OHNNY
was still a viable German agent, and given him £10,000 and a new code. The only information that the Doctor had to base this decision on was some very poor descriptions of the people who had walked in on Owens. They were a number of men who Owens described only as ‘medium English people, thin faces and I think policemen amongst them.’ He also said that these men went through his furniture and found the radio transmitter and the code. They had then supposedly taken Owens away and questioned him for a few hours before sending him back to carry on as before, but with someone watching him. Robertson found it very difficult, although not impossible, to believe that the Doctor would have accepted this explanation simply because he trusted Owens.
On the issue of whether Owens told Dicketts what had happened,
Robertson
was sure that he was lying. But Owens’ story was so inconsistent that he could not determine the nature of the lie and its purpose. Robertson
believed that there were several possibilities as to why Owens was not telling the truth. First was the possibility that Owens was simply ashamed of the fact that he had let C
ELERY
go on a potentially dangerous trip into Germany while he was unaware that the enemy knew he was working for British
Intelligence
. The second possibility was that the Doctor had never confronted Owens with the fact that he knew he was working for British Intelligence, and that he had invented the whole story.
Robertson believed Owens to be a clever man; after all he had been living on his wits as a double agent for several years and was quite used to
thinking
on his feet. Robertson believed that the logical thing to do if Owens was ashamed of not having told agent C
ELERY
that he had been discovered would be to lie and say that he had told him as soon as they had met in Lisbon. However, even though the importance of this had been brought to Owens attention during the interrogation, he was still sticking to the story that he told C
ELERY
after the first meeting with the Doctor and not before.