The Hornet's Sting (37 page)

It wasn’t the Germans who grew wary of Agent Sneum during these dangerous March days. Naturally enough, there were members of the Danish resistance among the staff and non-German guests inside the Astoria, locals who discreetly monitored the comings and goings of the occupiers. They would also make a mental note of any Danes seen collaborating with German officers. One morning, two Copenhagen men, tough characters who had also been engaged in the silent fight to gather intelligence on the enemy, entered the Astoria’s dining room and spotted Tommy at a table with several Nazis. Sneum spotted the Danish pair, too: ‘These men had been present at the reception dinner the Princes held for my arrival back in September. You should have seen the expressions on their faces when they saw me. They were angry, and looked at me as though I were a traitor. I just tried to ignore them because obviously I couldn’t explain what I was doing there.’ If his own friends on Fanoe had distrusted him earlier in the war, then these acquaintances from the capital would take a far dimmer view of his apparent collaboration. To them, it must have looked as though he had gone over wholeheartedly to the other side, having cracked under the pressure of imminent arrest.

A few days later, an even more dangerous arrival grabbed Tommy’s attention. As he finished off a lavish breakfast with his new German ‘friends’, he saw two Danish detectives, faces he recognized from photographs supplied by Bertelsen. ‘It was a very bad moment,’ he remembered. ‘They were part of the squad whose job it was to hunt down any subversive people who were against the German occupation. I was probably top of their list. I could feel my heart beating and I looked for the best escape route. There wasn’t one because they were standing at the door. And I hadn’t brought my pistol down to breakfast.’ With no exit available, Tommy just sat there, trying to avoid eye contact with the policemen, and continued his conversation with the enemy officers. He felt the Danish detectives studying the guests methodically, as if they were looking for someone in particular, until their gaze settled on his table. ‘To behave normally at that moment was the hardest thing of all,’ he said. ‘I was scared stiff they would recognize me.’ Then, however, the policemen simply walked away. The sea of German uniforms in Sneum’s corner of the room must have thrown the detectives off the scent. Either that or they had come to the hotel with a completely different agenda. As he watched them leave, Tommy hid his relief in the same way he had suppressed his fear, by sipping his coffee as though nothing had happened. However, the incident told him he had to get out of the Astoria as soon as he could. His stay had been interesting and eventful, but it had run its course.

While he was packing his bags after breakfast, there was a knock on the door and Sneum heard someone whistling ‘The Marseillaise’ outside. Taking his pistol, he opened the door cautiously and saw a man he recognized n. messenger for the Princes. He was summoned to meet Lunding and Gyth at the Jaegersborg Kaserne barracks at seven o’clock that evening. No further explanation was given, but Tommy was left in no doubt that he had to comply.

Later, as he checked out, a German officer tapped him on the shoulder. He froze, then turned round with a manufactured smile on his face. The German, an acquaintance during his stay, was smiling too. He just wanted to say goodbye.

Having ensured he was not followed, Tommy arrived at the barracks at the given time. Lunding and Gyth were already there, along with Major Per Winkel. Lunding seemed to be relishing the prospect of this latest encounter with his least favorite spy. ‘Sneum, every day you stay here, you become more of a liability. You’ve recently been seen in the company of German officers again. What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

Tommy was in no mood for a dressing down. ‘Gentlemen, in order to evade capture, it is often necessary to hide in places where you are least likely to be hunted. I’m sorry if that surprises you.’ Later, Tommy revealed: ‘They were scared of me. They thought I was going on too hard and not being careful enough, that the Germans would find out. But I had always told them that if you want results you must take risks. They were scared for their own safety, I think.’

Lunding ordered Sneum to leave Denmark for Sweden immediately, or face the consequences. Gyth tried to soften the threat by suggesting that once the heat had died down, he might be able to return.

Tommy was suspicious, especially when Lunding advised him to reveal his true identity at once if the Swedish authorities apprehended him. He didn’t see why he should cooperate with the Swedes, even when Lunding insisted that it would be in his best interests to do so. The Swedish police would pass the information back to the Danish authorities, the Prince explained, and the Germans would be satisfied that Sneum was safely under lock and key. Then, after a couple of weeks, when the storm had blown over, the Swedes would let Tommy out, so that he could make his way to the British Legation in Stockholm. From there, he could make his way back to England.

It all sounded too good to be true, and Tommy continued to voice his concerns.

Gyth, the most refined of the Princes, saw that the agent remained deeply sceptical. Using his natural charm, he tried to assuage any doubts. ‘Sneum, you have my word of honor as a gentleman. The deal with the Swedes has been done. You just have to put together another plan to escape from Denmark.’

‘And don’t be long, Sneum,’ warned Lunding, with much less warmth.

A
S HE TRIED TO STAY one step ahead of the Danish police, who might yet deliver him to a German torture chamber, Thomas Sneum was contacted in mid-March by his cousin, Knud Nielsen, the port-master in Copenhagen. Nielsen revealed that an entire brigade of German soldiers, accompanied by heavy armoury, was preparing to leave for Oslo in the next forty-eight hours.

The firepower about to sail to Norway was considerable.Squadrons of Hotchkiss tanks, snatched from the French during the lightning advance on Paris in 1940, were at the forefront of the shipment. Knud, Tommy’s doppelgänger, detailed the precise number of tanks involved, as well as the individual names and types of the ships that would transport the armoury and men. Sneum’s vigilant cousin even knew the calibre of the guns and the number of troops for whom bedding on the vessels had been prepared. Despite Lunding’s bleak warning, escape from Denmark was no longer Tommy’s immediate priority.

He contacted Duus Hansen and asked the trusted radio engineer if it was possible to transmit to England that same evening from Skodsborg. However, the weather forecast suggested to Duus Hansen that their best chance of success would be from the island of Fyn, the following day. They travelled separately, with each man showing sufficient nerve to play his part in cordial exchanges with German officers along the way. When they reached their destination, they transmitted as planned in double-quick time. Duus Hansen was helped by the fact that Sneum knew the appropriate coded letters and numbers for every type of German vessel, from battleships to U-boats. His previous summer’s homework in England had paid off handsomely. The British received the intelligence, and Sneum learned later that they bombed and partially destroyed the German convoy before it reached Oslo.

Tommy’s last safe-house in Denmark was the apartment of a longtime resistance sympathizer called Arne Helvard, who had also been a colleague in Fleet Air Arm. ‘We’d known each other even before that,’ revealed Tommy later. ‘We had been at a technical college together.’ It was while at polytechnic in Copenhagen in 1934-5 that Arne and Tommy had first discovered the thrill of flying. They trained on gliders, as many would-be aviators did in those days. Tommy recalled: ‘We flew a glider called a Stamer Lippisch, a big German monster, but with the help of a motorwinch we could gain a height of thirty to forty meters. On a good day, we got down safely without incident.’ The rush of the wind as it whistled past the cockpit was a wonderful substitute for the growl of a powerful engine, and flying soon became an addiction for both men.

Arne was more than two years older than Tommy, who was still a few weeks short of his twenty-fifth birthday when they shared the safe-house. Helvard had a receding hairline and acne, proving that some afflictions arrive before their time while others linger longer than they should. But Arne’s cheeky demeanour won him plenty of friends, and he had one other precious attribute. Tommy explained:

Fortunately for Arne, his superiors liked him, despite his cheek, partly because they new what a plucky individual he was when it came to the crunch. In 1939, as a coastguard and a flight lieutenant in the Reserve, he won a medal for bravery. Somewhat awkwardly, given what happened soon after, that medal was awarded by the Germans. Arne had come to the rescue of German sailors whose ship had struck a mine. A life was a life, and it was Arne’s duty to save stricken mariners, whatever their nationality. As Tommy explained, he had more than enough skill to fulfil the role. ‘Arne was a bloody good pilot and he came down in a sea-plane to save them. He didn’t want to take off again because several of the German crew were hanging on to his floats, so he just eased the sea-plane into shore.’

After being demobilized on 30 April 1940, three weeks after the German invasion, Helvard was unemployed for a time before finding temporary work at Aalborg Airport. In October 1940, however, he landed a dream job with the Danish Airport Authority, the DPPA, at Kastrup Airport. He soon found he could monitor all the comings and goings of German aircraft and dignitaries, and pass the intelligence on to Sneum’s spy ring without arousing suspicion.

Tommy trusted Helvard enough to want to include him in his plans once he accepted that the treacherous ice on the Oeresund would have to be tested again. If Sigfred Christophersen could survive a crossing, then so could he, Tommy reasoned. He asked Arne to join him on the escape attempt, which he believed would be made at some point in the following fortnight. They would walk across the sea to Sweden and then try to reach Britain from there, giving Helvard the chance to fly against the Germans with the RAF. Arne took it as a compliment to be invited, and said he would think about it.

But if he went, Helvard would be leaving plenty behind. Above all, there was his fiancée, Vita Nielsen, to consider. He loved her very much and they had big plans for the future. For the moment, she still lived with her parents in a fifth-floor flat on Leifsgade. But she hoped to start a new life with Arne in a house of their own, which could happen as soon as they tied the knot. Somehow, where others had failed, this romance between Arne and Vita had remained strong enough to withstand the pressures of the occupation—until now. What troubled Helvard most was the idea that, if he went, he wouldn’t even be able to tell Vita why he was leaving her. Furthermore, Arne’s mother, Angla Eugenia, who lived alone in Hobro, would also have to be kept in the dark.

Tulle Oxlund was trying to piece together the events leading up to her husband’s death. Stories from her former neighbors in Noekkerosevej all pointed to Tommy Sneum’s presence in her marital home during the preceding months. What had they been up to? The identity of Kaj’s other flatmate—the strange, tall man with sharp features and a penchant for disguises—was also a mystery. Whatever they had all been doing, it had obviously gone horribly wrong. Now Kaj was dead, and Tommy seemed to be on the run.