Hitler's Spy (10 page)

On turning the corner into Norbiton Avenue the intelligence men watched as an expensive-looking car drew up outside number 9, disgorging Owens and Lily, along with two unidentified men. Electing
to telephone Robertson, Stopford retraced his steps to the station, only to find that he was being followed by a third unidentified male. Moreover, the dark, dumpy girl still stood guard at the
mouth of the subway.

Happily the mystery was soon dispelled. The men in the car were Bill Gagen and his sergeant, and the tail behind Stopford one of the Special Branch watchers detailed to keep tabs on Owens,
plainly good at his job. But who was the mysterious female in the blue felt hat? ‘I told Owens that we were suspicious someone had been watching us, possibly a girl,’ warned Stopford.
‘This news made him somewhat nervous, so much so that I had to code most of his messages myself.’

Stopford took security very seriously indeed, and poured
scorn on the amateurish conduct of their rival spooks from Scotland Yard. ‘The fact that neither Mr Ryde nor
I were aware that Inspector Gagen was intending to appear at Snow’s flat very nearly resulted in a major calamity. It is essential that the minimum number of people should be seen to enter
and leave, and it is taking a quite unnecessary risk to allow Gagen, in a large and shiny car, which he parked outside the door, to go in and out as he chooses. The good lady in the flat opposite
did in fact put her head out of the door to see who all the people were going up and down her back stairs.’

Thanks to these various misadventures, Owens only just managed to transmit on schedule at 22.00. Numbering his message #13, OIK informed Wohldorf that he was now:
‘Leaving for Wales.
Will radio Friday night at 12. Seeing Williams. Please reply.’

After requesting a repeat, Wohldorf replied:
‘Need military and general news urgently daily.’

Ignoring this plea, Owens buzzed over a mundane weather report, reception of which was confirmed after two repeats.
‘Visibility 900 metres. Cloud base 400-500 metres. North-easterly
wind, Force 2. Temperature 50 Fahrenheit.’

Apparently happy, the distant Abwehr operator signed off with some light-hearted banter:
‘Good night, old boy.’

Seldom had war seemed more phoney.

4

Unreliable Special Branch officers aside, worried Agent Snow had not long to wait before uninvited guests began to darken the door of the new London stelle. Responding to a
knock on the morning of Tuesday, 3 October, Owens found himself face to face with a tall, thin, bespectacled man whose voice when he spoke carried the faintest hint of an American accent.

The stranger asked whether Owens knew ‘the Doctor’, and asked for a telephone number. Owens hedged artfully. What with the war situation, he said, the Post Office would take at least
a week to connect a line. The sinister American promised to return. Closing the door in his face, Owens called Major Ryde to demand increased protection. ‘We must assume,’ Tar remarked,
‘that from now on Snow will probably be followed by someone from the other side.’

Even if the thin man really existed, the Security Service stood no chance of tracking him down. Despite having doubled in size since the outbreak of war MI5 found itself swamped by a rip tide of
urgent requests, all of which competed for top priority. For Liddell and Robertson in B Division, the investigation of innocent foreign nationals and suspected Fifth Columnists took up fully
three-quarters of their time, an absurd state of affairs epitomised by a report from a clergyman’s daughter in
Winchester, who confidently denounced a lodger as
‘un-English’ for failing to flush a lavatory.

This left B1A with insufficient resources for proper counter-espionage work, such as identifying Snow’s mystery visitor, and investigating reports of clandestine signalling from
Land’s End to John O’Groats. Much of this technical toil was undertaken by the Radio Security Service, in truth little more than a collection of pre-war radio hams. ‘Tar tells me
that our DF organisation is virtually no organisation at all,’ Liddell fretted. ‘We require 60 experts at least. At the moment we have 27 amateurs twiddling knobs. In the meantime
another station has been located in Belfast. This is interesting as Owens had already told us of its existence. There seems no reason to doubt his loyalty at the moment, but he is under close
supervision. When things begin to warm up we hope to do useful work by sending misleading messages.’

For the moment, the war refused to come to the boil. With the RAF dropping more leaflets than bombs on Germany, Hitler remained confident that peace would prevail, offering broad hints in
speeches from the Reichstag and putting out feelers via neutral diplomats and the Vatican. The Phoney War was real only at sea, where U-47 penetrated the Grand Fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow to sink
the battleship
Royal Oak
, killing 800 sailors and triggering panic over Scottish sleeper spies and secret submarine bases in Ireland. Time and again, British intelligence failed to see the
wood for the trees. After Hitler ordered his generals to attack Belgium, Holland and France in the middle of November, a staunchly anti-Hitler Abwehr officer named Hans Oster leaked details and
dates to his opposite number in the Netherlands, Colonel Gijsbertus Sas. Yet Sas was ignored, and even dismissed by some as a German mole.

Already there were dark mutterings that MI5 and MI6 were punching well below their weight. ‘A suggestion has come through that we might scatter dud banknotes in millions over
Germany,’ mused Guy Liddell. ‘But it hardly fits with the high moral tone of the war. Perhaps when things have deteriorated through the use of poison gas, bacteria etc a
suitable occasion may arise for a venture of this sort.’

Blitzkrieg had given way to Sitzkrieg, a veritable Bore War. With no sign of the airborne mayhem promised by Rantzau in Rotterdam, Colonel Johnny bided his time and sent daily weather reports
laced with scraps of anodyne chicken feed authorised by MI5.
‘At the moment very few troop movements around London,’
Owens buzzed innocuously at the beginning of October.
‘Same news received from other centres.’

Meanwhile Robertson scrambled to activate Snow’s fictional Welsh sabotage ring ahead of the next treff in Brussels. Through Maxwell Knight, a Secret Service veteran whose autonomous
sub-section B5B specialised in infiltrating radical political groups, Tar located a retired police inspector from Swansea named Gwilym Williams. Lately employed as a court interpreter, Williams
spoke several dialects and languages, German included, and ran a sideline as a legal-enquiry agent. A big man – six foot two, and eighteen stone – he had served in the Royal Garrison
Artillery during the previous war, and despite a career record marked by a fondness for beer and fisticuffs, seemed likely to convince as an ardent Welsh Nationalist and man of action. Following a
preliminary vetting session conducted in Swansea, the burly ex-policeman travelled up to London on 16 October, a Monday. There he reported to Knight’s flat-cum-office in Dolphin Square, the
luxurious Pimlico development where recent near neighbours had included Sir Oswald Mosley and William Joyce, the latter now broadcasting from Germany as Lord Haw-Haw.

‘I asked Williams whether he was willing to undertake the work which we hoped to assign to him,’ wrote Knight, a past master of intrigue. ‘He said, “Yes, sir, I will go
and I will do my best”.’ Following detailed discussion of ways and means, it was
agreed that those involved in the case would use the password
‘Crowhurst’, answerable by ‘Ginger’.

With Agent Snow due in Brussels as early as Wednesday there was no time to lose. Hastily codenamed G.W., at midday Gwilym Williams was introduced to Owens at the Bonnington Hotel on Southampton
Row. Here the pair spent three hours discussing the imminent mission to Belgium, during which Snow instructed G.W. to keep his distance on the journey over, but to maintain visual contact at all
times, and tell inquisitive officials that he was travelling to Rotterdam to meet a Canadian friend.

A subsequent Crowhurst–Ginger call from Knight to Robertson confirmed that this initial meeting had gone well. ‘Williams very sensibly suggested that his occupation should be what it
actually is – an enquiry agent willing to act in cases of injury caused by road accident. Owens has invited him to Kingston tonight. As Williams is quite new to the whole of this business,
the opportunity of discussing it again with Owens – who has a keen mind – will probably be of considerable benefit.’

During the afternoon Williams was issued with an exit permit and £25 to cover expenses. Regrettably, stealth and tradecraft were nowhere in evidence when Agent Snow turned up to collect
his latest sidekick from the Bonnington in a hired Daimler limousine, complete with uniformed chauffeur.

‘Don’t be surprised if I’m addressed as “Colonel” over there,’ Owens announced grandiloquently as they pulled away. ‘That’s the rank I hold in the
German army. In fact, I outrank Captain Robertson.’

‘That can’t be easy,’ joked Williams. ‘Seeing as you don’t speak the lingo.’

‘I’m their big nut over here. There’s £50,000 on the table if I can bribe an RAF pilot to steal a Spitfire and take it over to Germany. Job for life for the flyboy,
too.’

It seemed not to matter that the man behind the wheel of the
Daimler heard each and every word. As his conspicuous staff car circled Green Park, recently scarred with
air-raid trenches, Colonel Johnny handed Williams a sheaf of Welsh Nationalist literature.

‘When you meet the Doctor, tell him you get about Wales a good deal as a private detective. That you’ve seen for yourself the condition of the working man, how the people are
oppressed and exploited by laws handed down by a government made up of Englishmen.’

‘That hardly makes me a Nazi.’

‘Then say some nice things about Hitler and Germany too. That they’re a fine race of people who get things done.’

Williams frowned. It was hard to tell where the British double agent ended and his German
doppelgänger
began. At Norbiton Avenue Owens introduced Williams to Lily, then ushered him
through to the small back room. Waving aside Burton, the former prison warder seconded as his operator, Snow fiddled with the klamotten until the sound of rapid Morse became audible.

‘Direct from Berlin,’ he announced proudly.

‘Can you understand it?’

‘One hundred per cent. Mind you, they slow right down for my benefit.’

At six o’clock Owens, Williams and Lily rode the Daimler into Richmond for drinks at the Castle Hotel, picking up a lively young couple on the way, and then trawling round several more
pubs. Williams danced with a girl named Maude, and was pronounced a ‘grand man’ by Lily. The former policeman noted that Snow imbibed heavily throughout the evening, mixing whisky and
beer, yet remained remarkably clear-headed. Back at the flat, he looked on as Owens and Burton transmitted a suitably inaccurate weather report. Finally Williams returned to the Bonnington, having
arranged to meet Owens on Trafalgar Square at ten o’clock the following morning.

‘Williams’ first impressions of Owens are that he is very alert and highly strung,’ noted Robertson. ‘He does not rest much, has tremendous
willpower, and is a fairly heavy drinker. In the latter capacity Williams confesses he cannot compete.’

Snow and G.W. finally left London on Thursday, crossing to Belgium from Folkestone, and profoundly apprehensive now that the German navy had promised to sink passenger ships sailing in convoys,
or without lights. On reaching Brussels the pair checked into the Savoy as instructed. ‘Owens was exceedingly nervous,’ observed Williams. ‘He expressed constant fear that a
German contact might have seen the police visiting his house and sent word over, which would mean the end of us both.’

The histrionics increased with each hour that passed. ‘Brussels is infested with German secret service men,’ Williams learned. ‘They can do exactly as they please.’
Claiming to be a crack shot, Owens decided to buy a pistol, and asked Williams to help him fill out the necessary forms at the Commissaire de Police. The bizarre claim that he needed a gun
‘to shoot rats in Canada’ was accepted without question, and endorsed on his permit. A local gunsmith happily supplied a suitable automatic, and threw in 25 rounds of ammunition.

Perhaps Owens was enacting a charade for the benefit of Williams. Possibly he feared being double-crossed himself. Whatever the truth, on Friday afternoon an Abwehr emissary appeared to fix a
meeting with Ritter the following day. Still Owens remained on edge, fretting now because the Doctor wished him to meet with a female agent who was being trained for a mission to England.
‘Snow was much upset,’ noted Williams, ‘because he considers it dangerous to work with women.’

Or wives, at any rate.

On Saturday Ritter and his assistant arrived at the Savoy fully three hours late. The party of four left immediately, and at the
Gare du Nord boarded a train for Antwerp,
the strategic port city famously described by Napoleon as a pistol pointed at the heart of England. From the ornate central station they took a cab to an undistinguished office building on the
waterfront. Glancing around, Owens recognised the liner moored on the Canadian Pacific wharf as the SS
Pennland
, on which he had crossed the Atlantic almost six years earlier.

Following his gaze, Ritter complained that Canada was far too busy producing tanks, aircraft and Bren guns from Long Branch. ‘I can find work for you over there, Arthur, should you
wish.’

Inside the building an elevator conveyed them to the third floor. Owens and Williams were ushered into a spacious board room, where Ritter introduced to them two men known as the Commander and
Doctor Kiess. These aliases disguised Leutnant Lothar Witzke, a ‘stiff Bavarian type’ in charge of sabotage operations against England, and Hauptmann Brasser, a specialist in aviation
intelligence.

‘How many men do you have at your disposal, Mr Williams?’ asked Witzke, taking charge straight away.