The Hornet's Sting (25 page)

‘Sir, my apologies for turning up without prior warning, but I am looking for Christian Michael,’ said Sneum.

‘He hasn’t been seen since July,’ replied Christian Michael’s father accusingly. ‘Don’t you know anything about his movements? After all, you promised me that you would look after him.’

Tommy wanted to explain about the Hornet Moth, the escape to Britain and his recent return. He wanted to tell the older man how he had ordered Christian Michael to stay put, at least until he could send a message from England about how a mass escape from Denmark might be organized. Instead, he just stood there silently.

Rottboell’s manners would not allow him simply to slam the door on a visitor, so he invited Sneum in and poured him a drink, then revealed that he was pretty certain Christian Michael had gone to Sweden. Again, Sneum said nothing. It wouldn’t have been so hard, the older man continued, because the family had plenty of connections there. Perhaps someone had helped him reach England? Tommy again resisted the temptation to tell his host that Rabagliati had quizzed him about Christian Michael just a few weeks earlier. But surely their paths would have crossed in August if his friend had made it to London? Having finished his drink, Tommy made another promise to Rottboell: that he would try to find out what had happened to his son.

If Christian Michael was not going to be any help, at least there were other old associates Tommy could count on. Kaj Oxlund was already proving to be a tower of strength. And a small but highly motivated band of men, from all sections of Danish society, would help him coordinate a fresh survey of German positions throughout the country. Sneum also learned what he could about the political situation in Copenhagen through more loyal and well-placed contacts. His high-flying uncle, Axel Sneum, and the Conservative leader, John Christmas Moeller, had opened political doors before his flight to England. However, the more he looked at Danish politics, the more it occurred to Tommy that there was no one charismatic or powerful enough to inspire a counter-movement against the depressingly passive toleration of the Nazi occupation.

Frustrated on a number of levels, Tommy returned to St. Annaegade and allowed Emmy Valentin to seduce him. Although this was a development which would eventually lead to priceless intelligence, Tommy put his liaison with a middle-aged woman down solely to his own impeccable manners:

I
N HIS HEART, Tommy had already left his wife Else for good, even though she was living just a few kilometers across central Copenhagen with their baby Marianne at Else’s parents’ home in Harald Jensensgade. He knew he had failed in his responsibilities as a father and a husband. But he convinced himself that he had taken on new and more far-reaching responsibilities. And Emmy seemed crucial to the success of his mission, to his very survival. She was reassuring and fascinating, and now she was central to his world, one in which he could be double-crossed, tortured or shot at any time. He decided to live for the moment, and embraced the mutual attraction. Emmy had a ‘mature arrangement’ with her husband, who was unlikely to cause problems. Her daughter would almost certainly be less understanding, so Tommy and Mrs Valentin were careful to hide how close they had become from Birgit.

Sneum needed all the comfort he could get, because he was about to make his mission a lot more dangerous. Daringly, he decided to return to the Hotel Cosmopolit in order to renew his acquaintance with some of the Abwehr officers based there:

Though his story was plausible, Sneum’s tactic represented a massive risk. One phone call to Hauptmann Meinicke on Fanoe to check the facts could have been catastrophic. At first there would have been confusion since, as far as Meinicke was concerned, the plucky young flight lieutenant was dead. But with the help of a detailed description the penny would have dropped soon enough, leaving Sneum’s capture inevitable. Indeed, had any suspicious Abwehr officers made the link between the young man standing before them, beer in hand, and the spectacular escape attempt by two Danish pilots back in June, it would all have been over.

Perhaps the horrendous penalty for anyone caught spying served to protect Sneum during these dangerous exchanges. If his sudden reappearance in the Cosmopolit did set off alarm bells inside the heads of any German officers, they must have dismissed such concerns as foolish. After all, no one implicated in the June escape, or secretly loyal to the Allies, would be stupid enough to walk into German Intelligence Headquarters in Copenhagen and casually prop up the bar there. The pilots who had tried to escape to England were supposed to be dead anyway. And even if they had survived somehow, it was highly unlikely that either man would be back in Copenhagen so soon, and certainly not in the Cosmopolit. Simple geography was also on Sneum’s side: Odense and Andersn’s farm seemed a world away, just like Fanoe. The Abwehr men based in the capital were primarily concerned with events in Copenhagen, and how to keep the occupation there peaceful.

So Tommy was able to exude his usual relaxed confidence, keep his cool and hope that his luck held. He tried not to express any emotion when the conversation in the bar turned to Britain one night. A German intelligence officer, drunk and treating Sneum like a long-lost friend, clearly felt as though he could speak freely, particularly when his boastful revelation merely served to confirm Nazi superiority over the enemy. ‘We get running information from England,’ he confided with a smile. ‘The British think they have caught all our spies, but we still have a good organization over there.’

If ever Tommy needed further incentive to drink with the loosetalking officers of the Abwehr, this was it, whatever the dangers involved. The problem was that the threat didn’t come solely from the occupiers. Occasionally, his arrival or departure from the Cosmopolit was noticed by observers from groups trying to form a resistance to the occupation. To them, Sneum’s actions appeared to be those of a man with a death wish. Either that or he was a German agent who couldn’t be trusted. Tommy knew he was treading a thin line because pro-Nazi Danish spies often went to the Cosmopolit to give their reports to the Germans. It wouldn’t have taken the anti-German elements long to decide that Danish Intelligence should know of Sneum’s movements, and the suspicions they had aroused.

Of course, the Princes were already riled by Sneum’s mere presence in their sector. They maintained their own indirect contact with London through the smooth-talking Ronald Turnbull, but they had no idea that Turnbull was a field chief in a newly formed ‘amateur’ organization rather than an agent of the long-established British Intelligence. It therefore hadn’t occurred to Nordentoft, Lunding or Gyth that Tommy Sneum might have been sent to Denmark by a rival British covert service to Turnbull’s. The idea that British-run agents could be dropped not only without Ronnie’s approval but without his knowledge seemed inconceivable to the Princes. Which explains why they were suspicious of Tommy from the start.

When they heard he was mixing with the Abwehr, the alarm bells began to ring even more loudly. They now considered Sneum to be a security risk, and finally complained to Turnbull about the agent’s presence in Copenhagen. Bitterly, they said they felt betrayed by Britain’s contravention of the agreement they had struck with SOE. No agents should have been sent to Denmark without the say-so of Danish Intelligence, and yet Tommy continued to insist that he had been recruited in London and sent on a mission to his home country by British Intelligence.

Naturally, Turnbull was confused and then angry to hear about the agents London had sent to Denmark without his knowledge. The last thing he needed was SIS causing complications in his theatre of operations. He felt he already had the territory well covered, and he was confident that it would be only a matter of time before the links he had forged with the Princes bore fruit. They had told him yet again that the best way to handle the occupation was to do nothing until the time was right. Turnbull agreed, and argued their case passionately in communications to London. Sending in British-run agents behind his back, whichever organization they represented, wasn’t the way to ensure the help of Danish Intelligence, he explained.

When urged by his own superiors to be more aggressive in his support for subversive activity in Copenhagen, Turnbull responded with the appropriate reassurances. Privately, though, he shook his head sadly at what he regarded as London’s total lack of understanding of the situation in Denmark. He posed the question: what would have a more profound effect on the outcome of the war—to blow up the odd train and suffer inevitable reprisals, or to enjoy the continued support of the men who knew Denmark best, the Princes? Arguing his case with great diplomatic skill, he continued to do nothing. He even protected the identities of the Princes from his bosses, to the exasperation of the SOE hierarchy in London.

It was against this background that Tommy Sneum’s high-risk approach to intelligence-gathering had created ripples in Denmark, the previously calm Scandinavian backwater. For Turnbull, this represented an embarrassing situation. Though he could hardly tell the Princes, it was obvious to him that MI6 spymasters had been busy behind the backs of their SOE ‘cousins.’ SIS had clearly won the race to land the first covert team in Copenhagen, beating their SOE rivals to the punch. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the SIS agent sounded like a loose cannon. Turnbull knew that SOE would now be more anxious than ever to send in their own British-trained agents, to strike back against SIS in the battle for control of Denmark. The rivalry would escalate until one side prevailed, and only then would all the dangerous misunderstandings come to an end.

Thomas Sneum still knew nothing of this as he prepared for his first transmission in the autumn of 1941. While others viewed his activities with dismay, Tommy himself was satisfied with how he was handling an extremely difficult mission. He had achieved contact with Danish Intelligence and forged a basic understanding with their top officers, despite lingering resentment on both sides. He had found two possible bases for future radio transmissions. And he had gained a foothold in Copenhagen. Furthermore, he had learned plenty about the Nazi occupation from his audacious dealings with the Germans and from Kaj Oxlund’s meticulous reports. It was time to tell his spymasters back in London of his successes.

Sneum decided that he and Christophersen would try to transmit from Oxlund’s apartment, not least because he didn’t want his fellow agent to know the location of his hideaway in Christianshavn. Perhaps he ought to have been more concerned about what Oxlund’s neighbors already knew about Christophersen and his increasingly bizarre behavior.

The caretaker, Hans Soetje, was still calling Christophersen ‘The Russian’, and the picture he later painted of his new neighbor while helping Danish police write a report would have been funny had it not constituted so much danger for the two agents. The report said: