Hitler's Spy (35 page)

Kein glas bier.

Two weeks later, the idiot scion was served with an 18B Order as he clocked off the night watch at Chertsey. ‘This does not surprise me,’ he told Inspector Curry, the same detective
who had lifted his father in April. ‘I was expecting it.’

Bob Owens was conveyed to Brixton. After supervising the arrest in person Robertson drove over to Addlestone, where Lily Bade still occupied Homefields and herself remained liable to arrest
under Plan Hegira. ‘She was very anxious to know for how long Snow Junior would be detained. I said I was unable to tell her. She did not seem to worry, and offered no comment apart from the
fact that she asked what he had been up to.’

Still Lily resisted all contact with fallen Agent Snow. Would Lavinia Cantello show greater devotion when it came to Snow Junior?

This rapid reversal of fortune continued in Stafford. After Dirk Boon betrayed their escape plan in August, Owens
received another visit from Robertson and Masterman,
followed by a stiff boarding from the governor. The various punishments imposed included seven long months in solitary confinement, and a complete loss of privileges which extended even to basic
tonsorial care. ‘I was forbidden a haircut for ten months until my hair was down to my shoulders,’ Owens complained later, following a welcome transfer to Dartmoor. ‘I was made
the laughing stock of all the prisoners.’

Another good kick in the pants.

Ritter, too, found his career locked in a vertiginous downward spiral. Attempts by his new special unit to insert agents into Cairo met with no more success than Operation Lena, after which
Ritter fell out with his chief North African adviser, and broke an arm while ditching a Junkers-88 in the Mediterranean. After a lengthy stay in hospital Ritter landed a cushy posting to Rio de
Janeiro, only to see the offer withdrawn following newspaper coverage of the sensational trial of American spy William Sebold in September 1941. ‘Nikolaus Adolf Fritz Ritter is named as a
co-conspirator in the indictment,’ trumpeted the
New York Times
. ‘A Gestapo agent, he is identified by Sebold as the man who persuaded him to become a German spy during a visit
in 1939.’

Three months later the United States entered the war, effectively ending Doctor Rantzau’s inglorious Abwehr career. Determined to retain his rank, and a smart Luftwaffe uniform, Ritter
retrained as an anti-aircraft officer, serving in Sicily and Italy with the elite Hermann Göring Division, then returning to Germany to command flak defences in Hamburg and Hanover. Sadly, his
astonishing facility for skewed analysis meant that the civilian population of these cities paid a price even higher than that met by the V-men sacrificed in Operation Lena. ‘Ritter was the
commanding officer for the anti-aircraft defences at Hanover on the occasion of the last saturation raid,’ a bemused MI5 interrogator noted two years later. ‘That night
he studied very carefully the reports received from radar and ground observers, and formed the view that the various small-scale diversionary attacks in progress in other parts of
Germany represented our main effort for the night. He therefore gave orders for the defence of Hanover to stand down. Precisely six minutes later some 1,500 bombers arrived over the town with
results that are still visible.’

The good doctor, it was noted, had run true to form. MI5 later calculated that the Abwehr had paid over at least £13,850 to Arthur Owens, worth more than a million pounds in terms of
earnings today. ‘Although Snow’s career ended more or less disastrously his case was by no means unprofitable,’ maintained Masterman. ‘At the beginning of the war he gave us
information which formed the basis of our knowledge of the Hamburg stelle, which was of considerable value when that office was the one principally concerned with work against this country.
Similarly through McCarthy and latterly Dicketts he provided valuable information about the German organisation in Lisbon.’

The Selfridge’s shopper Mathilde Krafft might have been the only Nazi agent whose detection was solely attributable to Owens, yet the planting of false papers on almost every incoming
V-man between September 1940 and May 1941 made most of them much easier to break at Camp 020 and flip for double-cross work by B1A. ‘The part which Owens played in these early cases shows
that he was then regarded as the lynchpin of the Abwehr organisation in England,’ Masterman concluded. ‘Consequently we were able to form an impression of their methods which have been
of incomparable value since.’

Unfortunately plans to resume controlled transmissions as Snow were abandoned after it was discovered that the last code issued to Owens in Lisbon, based on an obscure Penguin paperback, had
been mislaid. In the final analysis much of the Little Man’s value to the British war effort was inadvertent, after the failure of Operation Lena cost Ritter his job at Stelle X, to be
replaced by new case officers with little or no inkling that their agents and networks were rotten to the core.

For the 18B detainee known as Thomas Wilson there would be no immediate reward. Despite submitting regular petitions to the Home Office, Snow Junior was denied permission to join his father at
Stafford or Dartmoor and instead served his time on the Isle of Man. Long estranged both from Arthur and Bob, Patricia Owens completed her studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and by 1943
had landed her first movie role in
Miss London Ltd
, a comedy vehicle starring Arthur Askey. As the war entered its fourth year the contrasting fortunes of the fallen spies and the rising
starlet could hardly have been more pronounced.

At the same time the tide was turning in favour of the Allies. Following the humiliating surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in February 1943, and the rout of the Afrika Korps,
British and American forces embarked on the liberation of Europe, landing first in Sicily, then gaining a toehold on the boot of Italy. With the eventual defeat of the Axis powers inevitable by the
close of the year, the great majority of prisoners interned in Britain under 18B were released from custody, a process which culminated in the release of dilettante fascist Sir Oswald Mosley
shortly before Christmas, provoking a storm of protest and demonstrations countrywide.

Snows Senior and Junior remained firmly under lock and key. Owens was furious, and broke two years of silence with an indignant letter to Tar Robertson. ‘I am not worried about the loss of
my liberty,’ fibbed the former Colonel Johnny. ‘But I am worried that I am unable to help my mother country in these difficult times. I have done a considerable lot for this country and
your department, although perhaps not seeing eye to eye in our methods in arriving at a given point. However, since Mosley is now released, together with Sir Barry Domvile, I must frankly say I am
consumed with rage to have to waste my time here when I can be doing useful work.’

After two miserable years in Stafford and Dartmoor, countries had come to count after all.

Yet much of the useful work had already been done. The Allied success in Sicily owed much to Operation Mincemeat, a macabre deception scheme which drew on elements rehearsed in 1940 through
Agent Snow. In order to convince the Germans that the Allies would land in Greece and Sardinia rather than Sicily during the summer of 1943, the Twenty Committee lit upon the idea of tipping a dead
British officer into the sea off the Spanish coast, apparently the victim of a plane crash, and still handcuffed to a briefcase containing plans for an attack on Greece. In truth these documents
were convincing forgeries, and the corpse of ‘Major William Martin’ that of an insane Welsh vagrant named Glyndwr Michael, who had committed suicide by swallowing rat poison laced with
phosphorus.

Some within the British intelligence community might have preferred to use the corpse of another unstable Welshman, still rattling the bars of his cage on the special wing at Dartmoor. Lingering
resentments notwithstanding, Operation Mincemeat owed no small debt to rogue Agent Snow. The falsification of death certificates for Glyndwr Michael and ‘Major Martin’ followed the
precedent set by the inconvenient suicide of William Rolph in May 1940, and was undertaken by the very same coroner, William Bentley Purchase. As for the central strategic deception, causing enemy
troops to be diverted elsewhere, this echoed Snow’s false dope on landings at Trondheim during the Norwegian campaign. The crucial difference was that in May 1943 Operation Mincemeat was
swallowed whole: German reinforcements were directed to Greece, Sardinia and Corsica, thus laying the ground for the successful Allied assault on Sicily, which was taken in just five weeks.

For Robertson, Masterman and the Twenty Committee this grisly stunt by ‘the man who never was’ embodied signal
success. Where a live electrical engineer from
Pontardawe had failed, a dead tramp from nearby Aberbargoed delivered famous victory.

A humdinger, in fact.

Owens knew nothing of Operation Mincemeat, and a visit by Masterman to the bleak wilds of Dartmoor in December gave the Little Man scant cause for celebration. ‘I told Snow that you were
entirely unable to consider his request to be interned in the company of his son,’ he informed Robertson, who still declined to communicate with Owens direct. ‘On the other hand, I said
I knew you wished to recommend his release as soon as you felt it was safe to do so, which might or might not be accepted. Snow expressed the liveliest gratitude for this information.’

Wisely abandoning rants about Oswald Mosley, Owens adopted an obsequious tone in his next note to Tar. ‘After being for three years in the closest contact with Germans and other
foreigners, I have a very good insight into their mentality and outlook. I trust that you will be able to obtain something for me to do. Once again I thank you sincerely for your kindness, and take
this opportunity of wishing yourself, Mrs Robertson and your daughter all the very best for Xmas and the New Year.’

Tellingly, Owens signed off with a simple letter T. Since fellow inmates on the special wing at Dartmoor included a sprinkling of Nazi undesirables transferred from Camp 020, it was safer to
remain Thomas Wilson. Impecunious warders might, after all, be susceptible to bribes . . .

At Peel Camp on the Isle of Man, Snow Junior also came round to a better way of thinking. Blaming his earlier confession about sketching Fighter Command airfields on an ill-conceived
‘sense of adventure’, Bob also now admitted that his story of the German agent on Frith Street was cut from whole cloth. Despite these revelations, the intertwined cases of Snow and
Snow Junior continued to divide opinion within
MI5. ‘Tar is rather in favour of the release of the Little Man and his son,’ mused Guy Liddell. ‘Personally I
am against this.’

The softer line taken by Robertson was due in part to the defection of Hans Ruser, the flag-flying diplomat befriended by Walter Dicketts in Lisbon. Ruser finally reached London in November 1943
via MI6, and was debriefed at Camp 020 with a view to undertaking double-cross work in Spain. Though the impression he had formed of Owens in Lisbon was distinctly unfavourable (‘he drank a
lot of brandy, and looked like a very poor class of merchant seaman’), Ruser maintained that Agent Celery had shot his own fox. ‘It was all a big tangle,’ swore Ruser.
‘Dicketts told me one day, after a certain amount of drink, that he was a member of the British Secret Service – but that they must not know he was going on his mission to Berlin, as
they had not sanctioned it.’

Dicketts, like Lily, was long since retired from the spy game. ‘Celery has apparently disappeared,’ jotted Liddell in February 1944. ‘Masterman tells me that there is a warning
out for his arrest for embezzlement.’

Dick Moreton was back in business. Or was it Squadron Leader Norman? Or Major Richard Blake?

By now the case of Owens – father and son – had begun to elicit sympathy from senior figures at the Home Office. ‘My own inclination is to believe Owens Junior when he says he
was lying,’ Sir Alexander Maxwell wrote to Sir David Petrie, still in post as Director-General of MI5. ‘He is obviously a most unreliable person, but the risk of him attempting to give
information to the enemy or engaging in sabotage seems remote. It would help the Home Secretary to come to a decision if the Security Service would kindly arrange for some fuller statement to be
given as to the specific reasons on which your recommendation for continued detention is based.’

The reason, quite simply, was D-Day. Thanks to a network of two dozen reliable double-cross agents such as Tate, Tricycle,
Zigzag and the Spaniard Juan Pujol Garcia,
codenamed Garbo, the Twenty Committee now aimed to convince the German High Command that the Second Front would open not through Normandy but the Pas de Calais. Codenamed Fortitude, this bold
strategic deception would be achieved by drip-feeding the enemy a false order of battle, including an imaginary First US Army Group (FUSAG) based in the south-east of England and under the notional
command of firebrand General George Patton. This, it was hoped, would bottle up vital German reserves far to the north of the real landing beaches, including several crack Panzer divisions which
might otherwise throw the Allies back into the sea.

‘In wartime,’ Churchill told Stalin at the Tehran Conference, ‘truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.’

So important was Fortitude that the head of MI5 attended the Home Office in person to explain why Snow and Snow Junior should remain behind bars until the bridgehead in Normandy was secure.
‘We cannot accept the responsibility of having these two individuals at large and uncontrolled at a time of such great security importance,’ Petrie told Maxwell. ‘Special agents
are being used extensively for deception purposes, and although the general theory and practice is well known it would be undesirable that this type of activity should be underlined at the present
moment.’

One such special agent was Wulf Schmidt, the Iron Cross winner codenamed Tate by B1A and Leonhardt by the Abwehr. During one fallow period in 1943 the profane Dane received just fourteen
messages from Wohldorf and came perilously close to being shut down
. ‘You never let me know what you think of my work,’
Schmidt carped in an effort to buck up his
controllers
. ‘An occasional pat on the back would be welcome. After all, I am only human.’
Notionally employed on a farm near Radlett – and therefore far removed from the
phantom American divisions in
Kent – in the spring of 1944 Leonhardt put over to Hamburg that his employer had loaned him to a friend at Wye who needed help with the
harvest. Verisimilitude demanded that Schmidt should actually relocate his transmitter to Kent, where an imaginary railway clerk at Ashford betrayed imaginary FUSAG movement orders, and observed
20,000 imaginary Canadian troops in Dover.