Hitler's Spy (3 page)

Others received a more candid explanation. In 1940, with Britain and Germany again at war, the Welshman born of English parents, who had spent much of his adult life in Canada, insisted that
nationalities did not count. All that mattered, Agent Snow claimed, was to be on the winning side.

Moreover, times were hard. With Owens Battery Equipment struggling to win contracts and cover his outgoings, Owens was forced to move his family from smart Sloane Avenue to downmarket Brixton.
In February he met ‘Peeper’ again, greeting the veteran German spy off the Harwich boat train at Victoria, then adjourning to the nearby Eccleston Hotel, where the pair discussed
pooling resources and profits. Afterwards Owens was introduced to a mysterious Canadian named Gorringer, ‘busy
getting through a thousand pounds’ at the Strand
Palace Hotel with the aid of a ‘foreign princess’, both provided by Pieper for services rendered. A vast sum of money in 1936, worth perhaps £50,000 today, Owens was powerless to
resist such lavish financial inducements. The addition of glamorous, available women made the short, puny Welshman all the more easy to seduce and suborn.

Operation Legover.

Right hot.

It was a package that MI6 could hardly hope to match. In April Colonel Peal handed Owens just £20 towards the cost of travelling to Brussels to wheedle further information from Pieper.
There, comfortably installed in the Hotel Metropole, Pieper introduced Owens to one ‘Doctor Hoffman’ – notionally a business colleague, but in fact a senior German intelligence
officer named Hilmar Dierks. A professional spy since 1914, Dierks now ran the naval section at the Abwehr station in Hamburg known as Stelle X, whose wide-ranging brief included espionage
operations against Britain. With its work somewhat complicated by the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935, Stelle X used neutral territories such as Belgium and Holland as buffers and springboards
for clandestine activity, building a network of shady front companies and dead-letter drops, and holding discreet meetings (
treffs
) in select hotels.

Sizing up the little man for the first time at the Metropole, Hilmar Dierks might have recognised something of himself. As a tyro agent during the First World War, Dierks had tried twice to
infiltrate the British Isles on behalf of the Kaiser, and when broke in 1925 had even offered his services to MI6. Untroubled, therefore, by Owens’ contact with MI6, and swallowing the
plausible fiction of the Zeppelin shell fraud, Dierks divined promising agent material and moved their discussion across the border to Cologne. ‘I was asked if I could give them certain
information for which they were prepared to pay very well,’
Owens said later. ‘All expenses to and from Germany, all travelling and hotel expenses in England, and
any money I thought reasonable for bribes. I was given a list of the information required and methods of communication, and a government paper which enabled me to pass without questions at the
frontier.’

Designated A.3504 by the Hamburg stelle, Owens returned to London determined to pursue a mercenary middle way by peddling low-grade information to the highest bidder. Since MI6 were starved of
funds, his preferred employer would be Hitler’s Abwehr, who promised generous expenses and a monthly stipend. This treasonous scheme allowed no room for Erwin Pieper, who had outlived his
usefulness by introducing Owens to his controller, Hilmar Dierks. Just one flaw threatened this cynical masterplan: a distinct lack of hard intelligence. True, Hans Hamilton knew people, and MI6
might be prevailed upon to provide a light dusting of low-grade chickenfeed. For the most part, however, the material Owens had gathered for Stelle X during the spring of 1936 was of no real value,
having been cobbled together from public domain sources such as newspapers and magazines, and obscure technical manuals from specialist suppliers.

‘I am sending you today Sample Number One,’
Owens wrote to Dierks disingenuously, a humbug merchant once more.
‘The other samples will follow in rotation, so
please be on the lookout. The cost of making up samples here is £9.18.6 to be exact, including trips etc, and I trust you will find it in order. It was very difficult to produce. I will bring
all test papers and reports with me when I next come over.’

Still believing Snow to be loyal to the Crown, Colonel Peal contributed £30 towards costs incurred on his next trip to Germany. Owens returned to Hamburg that summer, the Abwehr stoking
his vanity with a room at the plush Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten. At this, their second treff, Dierks got down to brass tacks. ‘I was shown maps of aerodromes, factories, stores and
stations in England, and told that these must be kept up to date,’ recalled Owens. ‘As time progressed, they would supply me with names and addresses in England where
information would be received and sent. In fact I was to act as a sort of central agency between Hamburg, Berlin and London.’

Precisely why Dierks set such store by A.3504 remains obscure. Nevertheless, having gained the confidence of Stelle X, Owens was passed up the line to Berlin, where his status as Hitler’s
chief spy in England was confirmed. Although a promised introduction to the Führer seems not to have materialised, Agent Snow was accommodated at the exclusive Hotel Excelsior, and no doubt
supplied with a foreign princess. Things truly were, in his own curious parlance, ‘on the up and up’. Despite being wholly unconcerned by politics, to Owens the Germans appeared
‘good people’, governed by a dynamic Little Man far more to his liking than the grey bureaucrats of an enfeebled National Government which had failed to pull Britain clear of an
interminable economic slump.

Back in London Owens checked in with Colonel Peal. If MI6 and the Naval Intelligence Division had been expecting solid dope on U-boats in exchange for their £30, they were sorely
disappointed. ‘Owens brought back practically no information,’ carped Peal. ‘He told me that he had made a visit to Berlin but was unable to get any information, as his visit was
too hurried.’ The colonel began to grow increasingly suspicious. ‘On making enquiries I have now ascertained that Owens still has his flat at Sloane Avenue Mansions, and is receiving
letters there. He has not admitted this.’

The Metropolitan Police Special Branch already viewed Snow with particular disdain. ‘Typical Welsh underfed “Cardiff” type,’ read one unkind observation report.
‘Very short and slight, rather thin and bony face, somewhat shifty look. Curious brown eyes set wide apart and slightly oblique. Small bony hands stained from cigarette smoking. Soft-spoken
and lacks assurance
in manner. Usually wears brown shoes or boots. General appearance that of an underfed rat.’

Contrary to popular belief, Arthur Owens was not the first double agent fielded by British intelligence against the Hitler regime. This accolade belonged instead to Major Christopher Draper, a
Great War fighter ace turned film actor and stunt pilot, whose reckless penchant for flying under bridges had earned him a reputation as ‘the Mad Major’. In 1932 Draper took part in a
barnstorming ‘Aces of the Air’ tour around Europe, and in Munich was introduced to Adolf Hitler, whose ascent to power was almost complete. Since the Mad Major was well known as a vocal
critic of Whitehall’s treatment of war veterans, he was earmarked by the Abwehr as a potential asset, and approached by the London correspondent of
Der Angriff
to provide
intelligence on the Royal Air Force.

Draper dutifully reported this contact to the Security Service, MI5, and was instructed to travel to Hamburg. His case officer was Colonel Edward Hinchley-Cooke, a veteran MI5 interrogator who
was half German, and so fluent in his mother’s tongue that he had worked successfully as a stool pigeon inside prison camps during the Great War. For the next three years Draper posted the
Abwehr occasional snippets of disinformation, cunningly disguised as innocuous correspondence about stamp collecting. Over time, however, MI5 ran short of plausible falsehoods, and the Mad
Major’s contact with Stelle X began to wither on the vine.

One of the several addresses used by Draper and Dierks was Postbox 629, Hamburg 1. A Home Office interception warrant placed on mail sent to and from this box meant that MI5 were soon able to
identify virtually all of the Abwehr’s existing operatives in Britain. Crucially, one of the letters examined revealed that Dierks (masquerading as ‘L. Sanders’) was keen to meet
with another of his British agents at the Minerva Hotel in Cologne on the morning of 24 September 1936.

The identity of this new Nazi agent came as something of a shock to British intelligence. For it was none other than Arthur Owens.

Instead of confronting errant Agent Snow immediately, Colonel Peal allowed the letter to proceed to its original destination, which just so happened to be the London office of Expanded Metal. A
port watch subsequently confirmed that Owens had honoured his appointment with Dierks, travelling to Germany on 23 September, and remaining there for six days. Ominously, MI6 had received no
advance warning, and no request for expenses. On his return, Peal summoned Snow to an SIS office on Victoria Street and demanded an explanation. Owens admitted that he had met Erwin Pieper a year
earlier, when the elderly German had offered to sell secrets, but insisted that his own intention in stringing ‘Peeper’ along was to infiltrate the Abwehr.

‘My duty at that time was to get all I could and be in a position to help this country,’ Snow fibbed artfully, feigning grave indignation. ‘I risked my life to get it to you.
At least I deserve a little thanks. Understand that I am one hundred per cent with you, and if I make a slip over there I’m not coming back. I am pro-German completely. I have to
be.’

But Peal was no fool. The little Welshman was clearly playing both ends against the middle, and in November learned that his services were no longer required by MI6. Peal also threatened Owens
with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, though his genuine dealings with British intelligence, including his successful reconnaissance of Kiel harbour, promised acute embarrassment in a
court of law. True, Owens held a Canadian passport, and still owed allegiance to the Crown if it came to charges of treason. Nevertheless, criminal proceedings might prove a very tricky business
indeed.

At the same time, Owens also aroused the displeasure of his Abwehr handler, Hilmar Dierks. Still writing as Herr Sanders
from Box 629, yet straying from the language of
philately, Dierks upbraided Owens over some decidedly outdated intelligence on British tanks.
‘I’m sorry to say,’
he wrote in December,
‘that the contents of
your letter were not in the least new to me. The newspapers of your country are much quicker than your letters. Since a number of years I am also in possession of the magazine pictures you sent me,
and you no doubt will understand that all this is rather disappointing. I don’t own a museum, you know. Henceforth your letters will have to be a little more up to date.’

The abrupt termination of double agent Snow by MI6 now threatened his lucrative, elevated status as Hitler’s chief spy in England. Arthur Owens needed superior samples, and stronger dope.
By sheer dumb luck, at the beginning of 1937 the embattled traitor would be assigned a brand new case officer, fresh to the Abwehr and Stelle X, whose vaulting ambition far outstripped his limited
experience.

By his own account, Nikolaus Ritter had spent much of the First World War in the United States as a German spy, only narrowly evading capture by stealing an aeroplane and barnstorming across the
border to Mexico. In truth these exploits were just so many Zeppelin shells. A garrulous Rhinelander born in 1899, Ritter served as an infantry soldier on the Western Front, and reached New York
only in 1924, filling a dozen haphazard years as the foreman of a textile works, a brush importer and a loan shark. Though the FBI would later vouch that Ritter acted as a dangerous ‘Gestapo
agent’ in America for an extended period, keeping tabs on the aviation industry, the reality was that Ritter, like Owens, was an unscrupulous opportunist, with a history of failed business
ventures and profligate tastes.

Married with children by 1935, but stony broke, Ritter returned to the Fatherland to find his perfect English highly prized by the Abwehr, first in Bremen, then at air intelligence (
I
Luft
) in Hamburg, a comfortable posting enhanced by a smart
blue Luftwaffe uniform. However, the novice spymaster commonly known as ‘Doctor Rantzau’ was
blithely dismissive of detail and overly fond of delegation. ‘He has a very American attitude to life,’ Owens remarked later, with evident approval. ‘He has wonderful schemes one
moment, then scraps them the next in favour of another.’ Indeed, with his prominent gold tooth and fat cigars, and a broad American accent more appropriate to a Hollywood B-movie than
Hitler’s secret service, Hauptmann Nikolaus Ritter seemed all too often to be acting out a role.

For Owens, Doctor Rantzau’s arrival at Stelle X in January 1937 was a timely development indeed. Choosing to ignore the doubts voiced by Dierks, Ritter set his sole English agent a simple
test. Eschewing naval matters, A.3504 was asked to provide plans of the RAF aerodrome at Northolt, fifteen miles west of central London, together with details of a new munitions factory in the
Midlands. With his livelihood on the line, Owens spied hard for the first time since Kiel. The results were sufficiently impressive to convince Ritter that he might exploit the diminutive Welshman
more fully than had his predecessor, a fresh start deserving of a brand new codename: JOHNNY.

Sceptics at Stelle X came to prefer a more disparaging sobriquet:
Der Kleine
. The Little Man.

The pair met for the first time in the summer of 1937, when Owens travelled to Hamburg on the pretext of drumming up battery sales. Posing as his interpreter, Ritter quickly gained the measure
of Johnny’s peccadilloes, allowing Owens the run of Hamburg’s finest hotels, as well as indulging his fondness for beer and brandy at nightspots such as the Nagel, Hofbräuhaus and
Münchner Kindl. Often the pair were joined by Ritter’s aristocratic secretary, Irmgard von Klitzing, who in turn provided a respectable blind date for Johnny – or a foreign
princess, if all else failed.