Snow (28 page)
Authors: Madoc Roberts
On 10 April 1941 Owens attended a meeting with Robertson and
Masterman
to hear MI5’s decision regarding his future. This decision would have
implications for the future of the whole double-cross system and the entire conversation was recorded.
‘Will you sit here?’ asked Robertson.
‘I generally sit here,’ replied Owens.
‘I will come alongside you, if you like,’ offered Robertson.
‘Yes.’
‘We have come to the conclusion that the only line that we can take with regard to your particular case is that, as far as you are concerned in connection with us, you are no longer of any use to us. We are therefore proposing that you should send a message over tomorrow, saying that you are exceedingly ill and that your nerve has gone and that you are not prepared to go on with the game. Is that alright?’
‘Um…’ said Owens.
‘And also ask for instructions from the other side as to what you are to do with the various equipment that you have got.’
‘Yes,’ replied Owens.
‘Naturally the Doctor must expect that the British Intelligence Service knows exactly what message is being sent over by you.’
‘Quite, quite – I follow.’
‘Therefore this will give him cause to think and it throws the ball into his hands. Do you follow?’
‘Exactly. Quite.’
‘Now that is the situation.’
‘Can’t I do anything to help the country at all?’
‘What do you suggest you should do?’ asked Robertson.
‘I will do anything.’
‘I mean, what description…’
‘Well, I am not a fool. I have a good education and I have had excellent experience and if my education and my experience is wasted…’
‘You have had ample opportunity all these months of doing jobs, haven’t you?’
‘I have done them, too.’
‘I mean apart from the one that you have been doing for us.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, I mean it would have been quite simple for you to have kept on a job.’
‘Well, I did not want complications at all in that way.’
‘I mean, quite frankly, you have been tremendously idle.’
‘Oh, there is no doubt about that. I haven’t bothered with anything.’
‘No. You have done nothing. You have just lived on the fat of the land with an enormous salary – a salary which would make a Cabinet minister’s salary look stupid at the present rate of taxation.’
‘Quite.’
‘Well then, roughly speaking, you will accept that position, will you?’
‘Well, if you say so, I have nothing more to say. I should certainly like to do something for the country, all the same and I certainly have got experience and I shall do what I can. Not that I want to be paid for anything.’
‘But you see the difficulty; that as they know all about the set and know we are controlling it, there is no more value in it.’
Owens flailed around, but failed to come up with a viable plan of his own that might enable him to carry on working for MI5. But in introducing the other agents he had turned the conversation onto the topic of whether MI5 would be able to carry on with the double-cross system.
‘Isn’t he rather upset at having lost all the contacts which you are supposed to have had in the shape of C
HARLIE
, G.W. and B
ISCUIT
?’ queried Masterman.
‘He doesn’t regard those as his men – he regards me as his man, but not them at all. I don’t think they mean anything to him at all, not in the slightest. If he lost them all, it would mean nothing to him. He is very cold blooded when it comes down to business.’
‘One has to be in this game – very,’ added Robertson.
With this ominous thought filling the room, Robertson then moved on to the subject of T
ATE
, proving to be a great success for MI5. It was believed that if the Germans were able to trace that he had been in contact with Owens then he too would be finished. There was also the question of his loyalty to Britain because, according to Owens’ testimony, the Doctor considered this agent as a personal friend.
‘Might I just have from you again the conversation which occurred between you and the Doctor with regard to the sending of £100 to T
ATE
?’
‘Yes’ replied Owens. ‘He asked me if the £100 had been sent to this Post Office and I said yes as far as I knew it had been sent. And he said, “Well my God,” he said “is that man alright?” I said, “I don’t know.” I said “Why?” “Well,” he said, “That’s a very good friend of mine and I hope he’s alright.” And he conveyed to me that he was a very great personal friend of his.’
‘Does he regard the whole of our intelligence services as being decadent and incompetent?’
‘They haven’t got a very good impression of your people.’
‘Of our people here. They think we’re saps.’
‘Yes. Yes,’ agreed Owens.
‘Yes. But you have no more to tell me about this man T
ATE
at all – about the Doctor’s observations about him. Did he give you any indication that he thought that, from his point of view, the man was still alright, or did he think, shall we say, that the man had been taken by us?’
‘He didn’t know.’
‘He didn’t know. I see. He hadn’t any idea who he was outside of the fact that he was a very great personal friend of the Doctor’s.’
‘That’s all. I feel quite sure that he was a great friend after the way that he spoke about him. He said he was a good friend of his and he didn’t want him damned.’
‘Quite. And you have no more to say about that.’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Well now, I am going on to a second point now. We have been through your statements, very carefully. We have been through C
ELERY
’s statements very carefully and we are unanimous in our opinion that you did not tell C
ELERY
that the game was blown before he went into Germany.’
‘Well, I did tell him before he went into Germany.’
‘Well, that is our opinion and that being the case, you definitely sent a man on a most dangerous mission.’
‘That is a lie.’
‘You sent him knowingly, I maintain, to put the worst construction on it, to his death probably.’
‘I did not. I did nothing of the kind,’ insisted Owens.
‘Doesn’t it seem to you that it was a very treacherous act, to say the least of it, not to tell him before he got to the Doctor?’ asked Masterman.
‘I am positive that I told him before I went to the Doctor.’
Owens then proceeded to change his story again, at times saying that he was sure that he did tell Dicketts and at times saying that he wasn’t sure.
Finally, Robertson slammed the door shut:
‘Tomorrow you must say that your nerve and health have gone, that you can’t go on any longer and what are you going to do with your explosives and with your sets. Instructions will be given to the operator to send that over and we shall have to consider what becomes of you afterwards. I don’t think that we need say any more at this stage, do you?’
‘Well…’
‘If you wish to make any suggestions of that sort, you had better put them in writing after you have thought it over. Right, that’s all.’
‘Who can I write to?’
‘You know my address.’
‘Thank you very much.’
* * *
It was not of course available to S
NOW
’s interrogators at the time, but later there was to come to light a key source in the S
NOW
saga. After the German surrender MI5 conducted a lengthy search among captured German
intelligence
records for information about the double-cross spies, and one item, a report written by Nikolaus Ritter dated 31 July 1941, was found to be a summary of his work with Owens, revealing that when Owens had arrived in Lisbon he had told Ritter that he thought Dicketts was suspect. Ritter had asked why he believed this, and why, if he felt he was not legitimate, Owens had brought him to Lisbon. Owens claimed that he had only recently become suspicious due to having overheard Dicketts say that he was working in the interests of the British. Owens pointed out that to end the mission at this point would have caused suspicion about his own position, but Ritter had been unconvinced and had suggested that if a British agent had been in touch with him, then he must have been put up to this by the British
Security
Service. Ritter believed that if this was the case then the only reason that the British had not arrested Owens at once was to allow him to incriminate himself further during the Lisbon mission. Dicketts’ role would be that of a witness who could pass on what he learned to MI5 upon his return. Ritter was also well aware of the implications for the future of Owens’ network of sub-agents and all the agents with whom he was in contact.
Ritter claimed in his report that he had told Owens that because he knew so much about him and his organisation, he would have to consider whether he could let him return to England at all, informing him that it was entirely within his power to liquidate his case instantly. Owens was frightened by this threat and revealed that he had met Dicketts ten weeks previously in a public house where he had confided the details of his RAF career and the criminal record which had prevented him from regaining his
commission
. Supposedly, this had made Dicketts angry towards the authorities and Owens accordingly had cultivated him as a potential agent. However, when Owens finally asked Dicketts if he was interested in working for Germany, he had accepted so readily that Owens’ suspicions had been aroused. Owens had then made some enquiries about Dicketts and had discovered that he had been asked by the British Security Service to hang around in bars and report any suspicious individuals to the authorities. As payment for carrying out this work, Dicketts was to receive thirty shillings a week which he was also unhappy about.
Ritter’s report stated that this revelation had put Owens in a serious predicament because if he broke off contact with Dicketts he knew
Dicketts
would be likely to report this suspicious behaviour to MI5, so he had decided to go ahead with the mission to Lisbon despite the dangers. Owens had gambled that if Dicketts wanted to win back his commission he would come along in an effort to build up a cast-iron case against Owens. He also let Dicketts see that he had a lot of money from a source which
Dicketts
would be encouraged to speculate about. Owens had told Ritter that Dicketts was ‘an extremely grasping man’ who was genuinely impressed by tales of German efficiency and strength. Knowing all this, Owens believed that, despite his connection to the British Security Service, there was a good chance that Dicketts could be persuaded to work for Germany.
According to Ritter, Owens had claimed not to have included any of this in his messages to Hamburg because the issue was too complex to insert into his short, nightly transmissions. He also claimed that he had once sent an SOS, but had received no response from Hamburg.
Owens had conveyed this tale in a disjointed and confused manner, but from his long acquaintance with Owens, Ritter said that he was inclined to believe that ‘he was telling the truth so far as he knew it.’
Unable to be sure whether Owens’ assessment of Dicketts was accurate, Ritter decided to postpone his planned return to Germany and meet him, but he was concerned that maybe the
Cressado
had been sunk by a U-boat and he would never learn the truth about his main asset in Britain.
According to Ritter, Dicketts had arrived in Lisbon on 21 February 1941 and, having met him, Ritter quickly agreed with Owens that he looked like a crook who would probably do anything for money. Owens had been present at the first meeting between the two men but had been under instructions from Ritter not to mention anything of their previous conversation as Ritter had wanted to hear what Dicketts had to say before reaching any conclusion. Despite his first impression, Ritter thought that the only way he could be certain about Dicketts was to take him back to Germany for a full interrogation. This, he thought, would also impress, or frighten, Dicketts into working for the Abwehr, and he reckoned it would be much easier to dispose of him on German soil than in Lisbon, should the need arise. To keep the two men apart, Ritter had told Owens that he could not accompany Dicketts on his trip to Germany.
Ritter had calculated that if Dicketts was incorruptible then Owens was already lost, but even in those circumstances he would gain a conduit through which he could convey false information to the British. This could only be
achieved by keeping Dicketts in the dark about what Ritter had learned from Owens. If Dicketts thought he had genuinely fooled the Germans into accepting him, then they could use him in a similar way to MI5’s use of Owens. Somewhat surprisingly however, this was a trade-off which Ritter was not willing to make. Ritter’s reason was that Owens had not only been his main source of information and control in Britain – but he had also come to like the little Welshman.
Ritter acknowledged that the interrogation of Dicketts in Germany would have to be carefully planned to avoid him realising that Ritter knew he was working for MI5. The Germans were more than happy that fear, combined with the temptation of money, should be employed to persuade Dicketts to reveal his true position and come over to the German side. According to Ritter, the subsequent interrogation, conducted in Hamburg, confirmed Owens’ version of events, and Ritter bribed Dicketts to switch his loyalty and keep quiet about Owens. Dicketts was to be given some money but was then to become dependent on Owens for any further instalments. This procedure was designed to ensure that it was in Dicketts’ interest that Owens was at liberty and available to make the payments. Ritter considered that this situation need only last for a few weeks, by which time it would be too late for Dicketts to credibly denounce Owens, and this expedient would ensure the Abwehr would benefit, whatever the truth was. Either Owens continued to operate as before, or a channel had been acquired to pass false information to the British, through an agent who had no idea that his cover had been blown.