Hitler's Spy (14 page)

For Dicketts, business as usual meant black marketeering and long firm fraud. With mustard off the menu, he now proposed buying up bulk stocks of cheap gin and whisky, then relabelling the
bottles and passing them off at inflated prices. Using Rolph’s contacts in the West End hospitality trade, Dicketts would take care of sales and distribution for £10 a week plus
expenses. Much enthused by the scam, and unaware that he was himself the ultimate mark, Owens gave Dicketts £50 to pay off personal debts and a further £97 to buy cut-price spirits.
Sensing easy pickings, Dick also sought to persuade Owens to invest in The Rialto, a shabby nightclub next to the Café de Paris.

On the last Sunday in March Owens and Lily drove Dick and Kay to Brighton for a spirited joint anniversary bash. Feeling the love, or the pressure, Agent Snow grew tired and emotional.
‘The very great amount of drink he had consumed somewhat overcame him,’ said Dicketts. ‘He said that the British air successes reported are chiefly lies, our machines not nearly
so successful or as fast as the Germans’. RAF casualty lists show an appalling roll of dead and wounded. Pilots are refusing to go up, and several officers had been court-martialled and
shot.’

Hitting his stride, Owens added that dissatisfaction was rife among BEF troops sent to France, and that wealthy British citizens were moving their money abroad with indecent haste. ‘Hitler
has Germany solidly behind him, and the British public
are being consistently fooled. He then spoke out for peace and said that nationalities did not count.’

As if to emphasise the point, Owens announced that he would be travelling to Germany on 4 April. ‘He told me Germany was certain to win the war and that he and Lily were going there to
live as soon as his work was complete in England.’ Owens added that as chief of the German secret service in Britain he could call on two million pounds. ‘He said, be loyal to me and
you’ll be on the winning side, generously provided for all your life. I said I didn’t want to do anything against the British Empire.’

Dicketts may or may not have been genuinely conflicted. Too old to join up, and reduced to living hand-to-mouth in a shabby furnished room, the impecunious fraudster found himself torn between a
frayed sense of patriotic duty and a pressing need to make money. Reporting Owens to the authorities might count for something at the Air Ministry, might even lead to gainful employment with
restitution of rank. Then again, turning the Little Man in was complicated by the small matter of an outstanding arrest warrant in Birmingham.

Dick felt squeezed, like mustard in a tube. Deciding to infiltrate Snow’s Nazi spy gang deeper still, the con artist became a supremely untrustworthy V-man. With Owens due to fly out to
Brussels on Thursday – apparently en route to Berlin – the next few days would surely prove highly revealing. Indeed, detailed notes kept by Dicketts offer up a unique insight into a
day in the life of a low-level spy in wartime London.

On Wednesday morning Dick collected the Little Man from Marlborough Road and drove into central London. ‘At the office he told me to take a taxi and arrange the whisky and gin. Rolph was
arranging with a printer to print new labels for the bottles. Whilst walking down Sackville Street I noticed one and then a second taxi draw out slowly. I therefore went into the Yorkshire Grey
Hotel in Piccadilly, ordered a drink, came out,
and jumped into another taxi. Watching carefully through the back window I saw the two taxis, following at intervals. To see if
I could get a view of the occupants I told my taxi to stop at the Phoenix in Palace Street. As he pulled up he said, “You are being tailed, guvnor.” I thanked him and said I was on
government service.’

Electing to return to Sackville Street, Dick warned Owens that he had been followed. Owens disposed of the problem with a call to the Branch. The two men then drove to Euston, where Owens was to
meet Charles Eschborn off the train from Manchester. ‘The agent was introduced to me as Charlie,’ continued Dicketts. ‘He was obviously a German and appeared to be very scared. We
went back to the office and I was asked to leave the room for ten minutes, which I did. On my return I saw on the table a large pile of photographic enlargements of docks, airports and buildings
such as factories. On the top of the photos was a minute roll of film. The photographs were put away, and Owens remarked that they were very good.’

While Dicketts copied out a list of shipping movements, Charlie told Snow that he needed a new enlarger. ‘Owens took a roll of notes from his pocket, gave the requisite money to Charlie,
and told me to take him to a large photographic shop in Bond Street. On the way Charlie was very frightened, and asked if we were being followed. While he was in the store a tall man in a Burberry
mackintosh was standing at the counter near the entrance, focusing cameras in our direction, and I am of the opinion that he was photographing us.’

Eschborn’s raw nerves owed something to the fact that he was also scamming Snow by securing the enlarger on part-exchange. After returning Charlie to Euston, Dicketts reported this
duplicity to his employer. Agent Snow merely shrugged. ‘Well, he’s got away with an easy £50.’

Towards the end of the afternoon the pair were joined by Lily and Kay and strolled half a mile to Charing Cross Road, where
Owens spent £4 on expensive aviation books
at Foyles. Back in Richmond, after an eventful day as an enemy of the state, Dick watched with interest as the Little Man grew increasingly anxious about his mission to Belgium, refusing even to
play darts, and foregoing their customary nightcap. ‘Later he warned me again of secrecy, and instructed me to call the following morning and go with him to Victoria to see him off on the
9.45 to Shoreham aerodrome.’ By way of a bonus, Owens pressed on Dicketts a full bottle of genuine Mountain Dew whisky. ‘I protested that he had been generous enough, and he replied,
“You are having this with the Führer. Enjoy it, and don’t worry about anything.”’

Unbeknown to Hitler’s chief spy in England, for the last twelve hours Dick had been playing his own double game. That morning, instead of keeping his appointment with a drinks supplier in
Hammersmith, Dick stopped off at 151 Victoria Street, a security-service office since 1909. There he asked to speak to Air Commodore Archie Boyle, the newly appointed Director of Air Intelligence,
with whom he had served two decades earlier. Boyle declined to see him, so Dicketts gave his statement to an aide, claiming that he had penetrated ‘the heart of the German secret service in
this country.’

This wholly unexpected development finally allowed Tar Robertson to identify Dick Moreton as Walter Dicketts. For B1A, the unauthorised admission of a career criminal into Snow’s inner
circle was yet another worrisome security breach. ‘Owens is a stupid little man who is given to doing silly things at odd moments,’ Tar fulminated. ‘At this stage there must be a
large number of people in this country and elsewhere who are quite au fait with what he is doing. If possible, we could in some way make arrangements to frighten Snow in order to prevent him from
doing this sort of thing again.’

On Thursday morning Dicketts drove Owens to Victoria station. Less than a mile away, Neville Chamberlain prepared to
tell a meeting of Conservatives at Central Hall that
Hitler had ‘missed the bus’ by failing to deliver a knockout blow against Britain and France. Colonel Johnny saw things very differently indeed. Boarding the train to Shoreham airport,
his parting shot to Dicketts was typically opaque. ‘After Owens told me to stay with my wife at Marlborough Road and look after Lily, his last words were: “If I am successful I shall be
able to do anything I like.”’

This vaulting claim was no idle boast. Back in Antwerp, Owens kept his complex triple-cross game in play with fresh dope on the so-called wireless cloud, detailing a string of new radar stations
between Grimsby and Southend, far smaller than the Chain Home sites but, like them, able to detect the approach of hostile aircraft by means of UHF radio waves. This latest innovation was Chain
Home Low, able to track raiders down to 500 feet, and only just operational. There was even a detailed description of the CHL installation at Hopton, halfway between Yarmouth and Lowestoft,
including the wooden tower and aerial array. ‘The whole area was strongly guarded and I had to pass through at high speed,’ Owens boasted. ‘It’s impossible to get close to
the towers but I hope to get details from other sources. Do all you can to jam these signals, or knock out the power source.’

Plainly the Little Man had accomplished more in Suffolk in January than digging his Ford out of snowdrifts. To Ritter, dope of such potent strength served to excuse the clodhopping
Krafft–Dargel fiasco in Denmark, and calamitous exposés in the
Daily Herald.

Owens also promised to deliver up a suitable agent for sabotage training in Germany as early as May. Three months earlier Gwilym Williams, the former police inspector from Swansea, had been put
forward for this high risk-assignment, only to fall victim to an outbreak of cold feet following the Venlo incident. Now Owens proposed a far better candidate: tall, aged about
forty, knew his way around boats. Had knocked around the world a bit, too.

Walter Dicketts was absolute jake.

Unfortunately MI5 took a dimmer view of the
Police Gazette
regular as agent material. On Saturday morning, as Snow sold out Chain Home Low to the Abwehr in Antwerp, the telephone tap at
Marlborough Road revealed that Dicketts proposed to meet Lily and Kay at noon on the platform at Putney station. Calling on Scotland Yard rather than the Branch, Robertson arranged for CID officers
to arrest Dick on the Birmingham warrant, and reserved a cell for him at Richmond police station. Britain’s least wanted was duly lifted without fuss, his enforced departure passing unseen by
Lily and Kay.

Behind bars once again, Dicketts was quick to volunteer that he had ‘valuable information’ about a dangerous Nazi spy ring. After a lengthy interview, Robertson supervised a search
of his room at Montague Road but found nothing incriminating. ‘I am quite certain in my own mind that Dicketts is not a Gestapo agent,’ he concluded with relief. ‘He tried to
report the facts of the case, and actually paid a visit to the Air Ministry. Although he is a rogue from a financial point of view, he is loyal towards this country, his one motive being to try to
get some sort of job in the air force. He saw his chance when he stumbled by luck across Owens and his nest of German agents.’

Faced with the prospect of being taken to Birmingham under escort, Dicketts put through a call to Kay, explaining that he had ‘got into some wretched business’ with a quarrelsome
family member, the whole amounting to ‘rather a bother’. He was, he said, at his lawyer’s office, and had no choice but to head north to put things right. ‘I told her not to
worry, or discuss it with anybody. I would tell Lily and Snow when I saw them, and wire when I was returning.’

On Sunday Robertson telephoned the Deputy Chief Constable of Birmingham and briefed William Clarence
Johnson on a tricky situation. ‘I said that I was keen, if
possible, to get rid of Dicketts for some time, and prevent him from saying anything in the witness box in connection with the Snow case, which he might easily do in a plea for leniency.’
Since Dicketts had made much the same play before Hampshire Assizes nine years earlier, Johnson promised to do what he could to ensure that the recidivist crook swindler received another long
stretch behind bars.

Owens flew back to Shoreham on Sunday. With £1,000 concealed in his false-bottomed suitcase, and complete freedom of action in Britain, Colonel Johnny breezed confidently through Customs
and Immigration. Annoyingly, however, there was no sign of his sidekick-chauffeur outside the terminal building. Back at Marlborough Road, Agent Snow’s displeasure increased tenfold on
learning that Dicketts had been unmasked, and was therefore unavailable for sabotage training in Germany. ‘I told him to cut adrift from his new friend and his business as soon as
possible,’ insisted Robertson. ‘So far as his connection with Snow was concerned, Dicketts was trying to obtain as much money from him as possible in a long firm fraud.’

Dicketts faced the music at Birmingham Police Court on Tuesday, 9 April, where he was let off lightly with a £5 fine. At dawn that same morning ‘real war’ broke out as German
forces invaded Denmark and Norway, seizing key ports and airfields with the aid of paratroops and local Nazi sympathisers – seismic events which put petty crooks and rubber cheques in their
proper perspective. Scarcely able to believe his luck, Dicketts hastened back to Richmond that same afternoon, intending to collect Kay from Marlborough Road. On arrival, however, a
‘tremendous row’ blew up, with Owens berating Dick over his no-show at Shoreham and abandoning their wives to the mercy of enemies on either side.

‘I heard later in the evening that they had become good friends again,’ Tar noted drily, having received word from
Burton. ‘I took steps to ring
Snow’s flat and insist that Dicketts remove himself at once and never return. Dicketts, fortunately, is under the impression that we assisted him considerably in letting him off with a fine.
He has also been very strongly warned that he must not on any account mention the information about Owens in his possession.’

Robertson offered a carrot as well as a stick, and promised to try to find Dicketts a job. ‘I don’t mind what branch of the service I go into,’ begged Dick three weeks later,
writing from new lodgings in Kilburn. ‘Field force, intelligence, clerical or stores. I am just forty years of age and in a fairly fit condition, with the exception of a certain personal
nervousness engendered by my past of eleven years ago. I can drive any kind of car, handle any small boat, and don’t mind risk or danger.’ Unfortunately the Air Ministry knew Dicketts
of old, and refused point-blank to consider reinstatement.

Having lost a sidekick far more promising than Alex Myner or Gwilym Williams, Owens played back little of value from Antwerp to MI5. The Doctor, he claimed, had advised him to change his code on
a daily basis, and provided two copies of
The Dead Don’t Care
by Jonathan Latimer, published by Methuen at sixpence. It was hoped that the pair might treff again in May. Owens also
warned that the
City of Sydney,
a cargo steamer en route to Mauritius, was carrying two time-fused firebombs in her hold, smuggled on board by Abwehr saboteurs in Amsterdam.