The Hornet's Sting (42 page)

Unless Tommy gambled soon, he feared he could be left to rot behind bars until the end of the war. He had realized that the spy world was a murky one long before he had left Denmark. Either you played dirty or you lost—and he didn’t intend to lose. He insisted upon a new meeting with Einar Karstengren. ‘Because of the time I have now spent here,’ Tommy warned the prison governor, ‘a very serious situation has developed outside, which could present a grave threat to Swedish lives. You need to contact Captain Wahlqvist of Swedish Naval Intelligence, here in Malmo; and Kriminal-Kommissarie Runerheim of the Malmo police. I suggest you do it straight away. Tell them to hurry to the prison without delay.’ Karstengren knew that Wahlqvist and Runerheim were key spymasters in Swedish Intelligence, and it was with some satisfaction that Tommy noted the concern etched on the governor’s face as he left the cell. He had set the wheels in motion for a bitter game to begin. Sure enough, Runerheim arrived at the prison later that day.

Tommy recalled: ‘He was a tall fellow, good-looking, well dressed, probably in his mid-forties. He looked strong, confident and formidable. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. He was accompanied to my cell by the Nazi, Karstengren. Then the prison governor left the cell to Runerheim and myself.’

‘Why have you brought me out here?’ demanded the police chief, clearly irritated. ‘I’m extremely busy.’

Undaunted, Sneum drilled him with a stare. ‘You know why. You made an agreement with some Danish officers we both know. The agreement was that I would be released within two weeks. Now there is talk that I could be handed over to the Germans. If that happens, I promise you I won’t be the only one.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m talking about your precious agents in Poland and Germany,’ said Sneum menacingly. ‘I know you have networks there. And I gave one of my people in Denmark some instructions. If he doesn’t get my coded postcard from Stockholm by the end of the first week in June, he’s going to send a letter to the Germans. He’ll tell them all about your spies in Poland and Germany. Your name is on the list, too. It could be messy.’

Runerheim tried to smile. ‘You’re bluffing. We haven’t any such spies.’

‘Haven’t you?’ Tommy asked knowingly.

The Swedish policeman looked at the prisoner disdainfully. ‘Give me some names, if you’re so clever.’

Sneum laughed. ‘So that you can warn them and work out how I got the information? Don’t be so bloody stupid.’

‘I knew it,’ said Runerheim dismissively. ‘You don’t have any names.’

‘I knew your name, Runerheim, and I know a lot more. I have a lot of information that you really wouldn’t like to come out. You’d better be careful, or I’ll revealhe whole lot.’

Runerheim just stood there, seething. It was as though he were about to ask Sneum what he wanted, but had too much pride.

So Tommy made it simple for him: ‘You’d better find an excuse to release me and my friend—and quick.’ Then he turned his back and began to make his bed.

Runerheim stormed out of the cell, and Sneum listened as the furious clatter of the Swede’s footsteps on the stone corridor grew faint. Sitting on the bed, Tommy suppressed any sense of guilt by remembering the significance of the scientific and military intelligence he had sent to the British, and reminding himself that he needed to be free to do such work again. Furthermore, it was not only the Swedish spy ring that was in danger of being blown if he were ever delivered for torture by the Germans. People he knew and cared for, professionally and personally, would be at risk if he cracked.

Back in Copenhagen, Niels-Richard Bertelsen was well aware that his brother-in-law’s postcard from Stockholm hadn’t arrived, and it didn’t take the policeman long to find out why. Late night checks in Politikommissaer Odmar’s office revealed that the Danish police chief had approved Tommy’s long-term incarceration in Malmo. Bertelsen knew that Tommy would want him to start issuing threats to all the relevant people in Copenhagen, warning that agents in Nazi-occupied Europe risked discovery if the Swedish didn’t let Sneum go. However, Bertelsen knew he could never go through with it. So he hoped Tommy would prove convincing enough in Malmo to win his ugly game of brinkmanship without further assistance.

Since Tommy believed he could be handed back to the Germans at any time, he hadn’t lacked motivation as he played his part. He felt abandoned, and a cornered animal’s survival instinct had kicked in. Later, he insisted:

B
EFORE MAY HAD COME to an end, prison guards marched into Sneum’s Malmo cell with Arne Helvard. ‘Get your things together,’ said Helvard with a smile. ‘Looks like they’re finally releasing us. Christophersen has already gone.’

Starved of company for so long, they talked without sleeping as the night train made its way from Malmo to Stockholm. If there were sensitive matters to discuss, they moved into the corridor outside their compartment. No guards watched over them, but Tommy occasionally imagined that some of their fellow passengers might be members of Sweden’s secret service. As long as these observers said nothing and did nothing, Tommy didn’t care. As for Karstengren, Runerheim and the rest, they could all go to hell.

When the two Danes arrived in the Swedish capital the following morning, Sneum sent the vital postcard with its coded message to Bertelsen. As he did so, he told Arne how he had secured their release. Helvard looked shocked, scared and grateful all at once. Tommy, for his part, was relieved that his brother-in-law would no longer be dragged into his cut-throat world. Now that the dirty tricks were no longer necessary, they could focus on reaching Britain so that they could return to war.

As a first step, they made their way to the British Legation at Strandvagen. There, Tommy was relieved to find the familiar face of Henry Denham, the Naval Attaché, still serving Britain from his Scandinavian outpost. It seemed an eternity since Denham had sent Sneum back into Denmark to photograph the Fanoe radar installations. In reality, it had been little more than a year, though much had changed.

If Denham had been forewarned of the circumstances surrounding Sneum’s release from Malmo, he certainly didn’t show it. Instead, he promised to arrange visas for Tommy and Arne, so that they could fly on the new British air service from Bromme airfield in Stockholm to Leuchars in Scotland. It might take a week or two, he warned, but he would make sure there was space on one of the planes. In the meantime, they would have to survive in Stockholm as best they could, because there was no money available to keep them comfortable.

Tommy’s solution to his latest predicament was typical: ‘I found a girl over there,’ he revealed later. ‘And I think Arne had friends in Stockholm.’

It was mid-June when the two men called the Legation and were finally told to head to Bromme airfield. There, they were directed towards a fifteen-seater Lockheed Hudson that was waiting on the tarmac. Christophersen was already sitting on the plane. However, the seating arrangements seemed to have been planned with this awkward scenario in mind: Helvard joined Christophersen at the front of the plane while Sneum was ushered to the back, and directed to a seat next to a man he thought he recognized. Swiftly, he traced the soft, handsome face to his visits to the British Legation in Copenhagen and the fast-moving days of April 1940; it was Ronald Turnbull. As they exchanged pleasantries, Sneum recalled that Turnbull had been a press attaché two years earlier in the Danish capital, and that they had sometimes attended the same parties. Turnbull was full of charm and fun, so Tommy couldn’t know that his status as an SIS agent meant he had been regarded by SOE’s field officer as the opposition over the previous nine months. He didn’t sense any relief in Turnbull that a dangerous rival had finally been removed from the Scandinavian stage.

Ronnie was leaving his beloved Thereza and their son Michael behind temporarily, while he took part in a series of meetings in London, many of them relating to the situation in Denmark. Sneum’s exit from the Danish stage had made Turnbull’s life simpler in many ways. The loose cannon, the thorn in Ronnie’s side, the SIS man who had tried to upset the Danish status quo with his risk-taking, had become a casualty of SOE’s recent rise to prominence.

The three-hour flight passed amicably enough. Tommy couldn’t deny that Turnbull was a witty, intelligent man whose company was easy to enjoy. He remembered: ‘I was having a nice conversation with Turnbull; he was very charming. We talked about the war, and, since we were both destined for London, we talked about England. He asked if I had been there before and I said that I had, the previous summer. He asked if I liked London, and I said I had enjoyed mlf there.’

As Turnbull went his own way at Leuchars airfield, Tommy, Arne and Sigfred were met by military policemen. Tommy recalled: ‘We were arrested, driven to the nearest railway station and put on a night train bound for London, accompanied by a heavy police escort. I thought it was normal procedure, because the British wouldn’t want immigration officials to know that I was an agent. I didn’t think about trying to escape.’

The silent tension between Sneum and Christophersen was uglier than ever, and even their guards must have felt awkward.

Once in the capital, the Danish trio were transferred to a police car for what Tommy assumed would be a short journey across the West End. He felt sure their destination would be St. James’s Street, where he had met ‘Colonel Ramsden’ for the first time. Sneum hoped to have a long, serious talk with the man who had put him through so much pain. The colonel had become a father figure during the tense days before the mission, for instance when he had shown Sneum some of the basic tricks of motor-racing in his powerful Bentley. He was charismatic and good fun. However, in Tommy’s view, he had made two fundamental errors of judgement at the planning stage: he had selected Christophersen for the mission and he had seen fit to equip his two-man team with a primitive radio.

As he prepared what he wanted to say, Sneum was curious to see Londoners going about their daily business, surrounded by the ruins of buildings destroyed in the Blitz. Nothing seemed to dampen the spirits of these people, who had been bombed but never occupied. Yet Tommy himself became alarmed when he noticed that the police car seemed to have bypassed St. James’s and was heading towards one of the bridges over the Thames.

There was a very good reason why Rabagliati’s office would not be the first port of call. For the head of SIS’s A2 (Danish and Dutch) Section was now too busy trying to save his own skin to devote much time to Sneum. Rabagliati was already falling foul of political games among the Free Dutch, because he had declared allegiance to one of that community’s more controversial figures. Until that summer, the SIS hierarchy had been fairly loosely defined below ‘C’ (the chief, Stewart Menzies), ‘ACSS’ (the assistant chief, Claude Dansey), and the chief of staff, Commander Rex Howard, who ran day-to-day business at Secret Service Headquarters at 54 Broadway. Heads of section were generally considered of equal importance to one another, and with no clear order of seniority these men sometimes competed for resources and respect. Rabagliati, though, with his fine military record and aristocratic breeding, considered himself to be superior to an equally haughty Jewish colleague—Commander Kenneth Cohen. However, the latter was a key player, since he had taken charge of the allimportant French Section.

A personality clash erupted when the undeniably snobbish Rabagliati refused to recognize the seniority of Cohen, who had just been promoted to statutory head of A Section. Effectively, the commander had been handed executive responsibility for France, Holland, Denmark and indeed the rest of occupied Western Europe. Rabagliati went over his rival’s head to complain about the promotion, and even threatened to resign in protest. To his astonishment, he was promptly asked to make his offer of resignation formal. His bluff had backfired disastrously. It seems incredible that a fit of pique, based certainly on snobbery and perhaps on anti-Semitism, could effectively have removed Sneum’s spymaster from the arena just when my needed him most.