The Hornet's Sting (47 page)

Thomas Sneum had been unable to keep the promise he had made to Rottboell’s father at Boerglum Cloisters two years earlier, to ‘look after’ his boy. It was something he regretted later in life, showing more remorse over this particular piece of misfortune than any other: ‘I made that promise but I wasn’t there to honor it, and I’ll always feel bad about that,’ he said.

O
VER IN BRIXTON, the caged agent already sensed that events were moving quickly behind the scenes. For some time, rumours had been sweeping the prison that Governer Benke was in deep trouble over some infringement of security. Then Tommy was called to the interrogation room.

Waiting in the room, situated next to Benke’s office, was an intelligt-looking man of about thirty, whose thin frame scarcely filled out the army officer’s uniform he was wearing. The man leaned forward as Sneum entered, as though compensating for short-sightedness. But beneath his rather intellectual exterior, Major Leslie Mitchell of SIS possessed great courage, a sharp knack for practical diplomacy and a sense of humour which had served him well since the start of the war. Already, however, Sneum’s case had tested his diplomacy and humour to the limit—and the pair hadn’t even been introduced yet.

Like Sneum, Mitchell had distinguished himself with a daring contribution to the secret war in Scandinavia. He had set up a ferry system between Nazi-occupied Norway and a remote cove in the Shetland Islands. Special agents, radio transmitters, ammunitions and explosives were ferried into the fjords for the waiting Norwegian resistance. The transport route was so dependable that it soon became known as the Shetland Bus.

Then, in the late summer of 1942, Mitchell was promoted and brought south to London, in order to oversee SIS dealings with Scandinavia. Charles Seymour, new head of the joint Danish/Dutch A2 Section, had his hands full with Holland. Still adjusting to his wide-ranging responsibilities, he hadn’t been able to address the confusion caused by SOE’s takeover in Denmark. So Mitchell was told to keep a close eye on what was left of SIS Denmark in case the organization was one day invited to assume British intelligence-gathering there again. In the meantime, Denmark could still be used as a transit point for SIS traffic between Germany, Sweden and Poland.

Mitchell’s first major headache at home was how to deal with the lingering problem of Thomas Sneum. Squadron Leader Gregory had submitted a critical report about Sneum’s treatment and detention inside Brixton Prison. Mitchell did not know how Gregory had learned of Sneum’s whereabouts, but he soon discovered that the squadron leader had visited Brixton personally, something he had not been granted authority to do. Mitchell called Governor Benke to demand an explanation. When he received no conclusive reply, he decided to meet the source of the controversy in person.

‘You’ve been rather clever, haven’t you?’ said the major after introducing himself. ‘Somehow you got a message out of this prison to one of my colleagues, Squadron Leader Gregory. Since you had no obvious contact with the outside world at the time, I’d like you to tell me how you achieved that.’

Sneum refused to do so. He enjoyed protecting Bill. It had taken two Brixton prisoners who hardly knew each other to show SIS and SOE what true trust and cooperation were all about.

‘This is a great shame,’ said Mitchell when he had to admit defeat for the day. ‘Because I have just received an SOE report from a barrister called Park and a fellow called Reginald Spink, from their Danish Section. The report recommends that we allow you to be released from here. You are not helping me to follow those recommendations.’

Tommy looked him in the eye. ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, Major Mitchell. But my position remains unchanged,’ he said. It might have been Sneum’s imagination, but he thought he saw something akin to respect in Mitchell’s eyes.

Some time between 25 September and 3 October 1942, Leslie Mitchell returned to the jail with the appropriate papers, bundled Sneum into a car and drove him away. The major said they were bound for Bedfordshire, where a new life awaited Tommy. He wouldn’t be entirely fe, but it would be better than prison. Sneum was to stay on a farm with the father of a junior SIS man called Gordon Andrews.

Tommy wanted to trust Mitchell, but he also remembered Gregory’s warning about it being safer inside Brixton. He remembered his childhood and going on duck shoots, when trained birds would lead the wilder ones to their deaths. He wondered whether he too was being led to his execution somewhere in the English countryside. Sneum watched and waited. If the car stopped in the middle of nowhere he would try to make a break for it. It didn’t, and soon they had reached their destination.

Milton Ernest was picturesque. The River Ouse flowed to the west of the village, though anyone passing through might never have known it was there. On a gentle slope beyond the village green stood All Saints Church, first built almost a thousand years earlier, after the Norman invasion. In nearby Radwell Road, two pubs stood almost side by side; from the outside, the Queen’s Head looked classier than the Swan. All over the village, grand signs pointed the way to large farms and manor houses. The biggest of these properties was Milton Ernest Hall, from which the Americans were coordinating bombing raids on the continent.

Sneum soon saw that his new home was to be another mansion. A tower, crowned with a weathercock, sprouted incongruously from the more modest contours of the main building’s roof. The sign at the start of a long driveway read ‘Milton Ernest House.’ The establishment thought itself so grand that visitors were even expected to sign in at a lodge by the outer gate. Willow trees adorned lawns in front of the main building. Tucked away to the right were some modest farm buildings, where the bulk of the daily agricultural business was done. At the back of the house nine rolling fields made up the remainder of the three-hundred-acre property. Beyond those fields lay Twinwoods airfield, where American Mustangs took off to do battle in the skies of Europe.

For Sneum, whose love of flying surpassed all other passions, this new existence would be torture. All around him were airfields and American pilots, fighting the kind of war that he had always wanted to fight. Instead he was grounded, sentenced to what amounted to continued imprisonment. His only hope of action, it appeared, would be as a farm laborer, and even that small outlet for his frustration would become a reality only if his behavior in his new surroundings proved exemplary. The British were clearly still at pains to ensure that, one way or another, Tommy Sneum’s war was over. But he wasn’t beaten yet.

Turning on the charm, he received a warm reception from his host, Leslie Andrews, and the farmer’s much younger wife, Irene. ‘He was in his sixties; she was only about thirty,’ Sneum recalled. ‘She was slim, dark-haired and attractive.’

He maintained his charm offensive and soon won concessions. ‘First I was allowed into the village only if I was accompanied by a security man. Then I was allowed in without an escort. “Where’s his manservant today?” I heard one woman say. They thought the security people were my staff and I was some kind of lord.’

Tommy was happy to be put to work on the farm after months of inactivity in prison. Irene seemed to take an interest in his lithe young body as he worked. She began to show the newcomer increasing affection and asked him to call her Reeny. Typically, Tommy took every opportunity to get close to her. ‘She was in love with me from the beginning and we began an affair,’ he confirmed. ‘It was always going to happen. She called me Tommy and I began to call her “sweetheart.”’ They took advantage of her husband’s many trips away and long hours in the fields. Before long, they were so intimate that she was helping Sneum to make secret visits to London, without his absence ever being noticed by those who should have been keeping a close eye on his movements. ‘The security was very slack by then and I was even left to play golf on the farm if I felt like it. Reeny didn’t join me—she was only sporting in bed.’

Gordon Andrews of SIS realized that Tommy was having an affair with his stepmother, but he chose not to tell his father. ‘Gordon said he was sorry for his dad but he knew Mr Andrews was unable to have sexual relations,’ claimed Tommy. ‘The clock had stopped at half past six, so to speak. Gordon told me he could understand why Reeny wanted a younger fellow. I don’t think he really liked his father very much.’

The police in Copenhagen were preparing for the return of Thomas Sneum, and would have been amazed to know that he had been packed off to live anonymously in the English countryside. First, they had prison mugshots of Sneum and Helvard sent over from Sweden; then they dug out records of police interviews conducted with Kaj Oxlund’s neighbors. Paying special attention to any descriptions of the clothing worn by suspicious visitors to Noekkerosevej, two of whom had since been identified as Tommy and Arne, they were able to build up accurate pictures of both men. Using the latest technology, they compiled wanted posters of both Sneum and Helvard, which were promptly distributed around the city. Both the Abwehr and the Danish authorities were convinced that, sooner or later, the British would send their most experienced spy back into the field, perhaps with his sidekick.

Tommy explained:

Sneum’s account was later confirmed by Stig Jensen, the resistance hero who became one of Tommy’s employers after the war. He wrote Sneum a reference which included the following:

I
T IS FAIR TOSAY that the Danish seamen sent back to Copenhagen as SOE agents were not of the calibre of Thomas C. Sneum. Even Ronnie Turnbull later said: ‘My boss, Commander Hollingworth, seemed more interested in quantity than quality.’ Some of the new agents were no more mindful of security than Sigfred Christophersen had been, others even less so. The worst culprit in Denmark itself was Hans Henrik Larsen, who parachuted back into his native country in February 1942. Soon after his arrival, he began to drink heavily and started to boast to strangers about his activities. By spring, he had been identified in resistance circles as a dangerous liability. The final straw came when Larsen, codenamed ‘Trick’, was ordered to escort a Swedish girl who was wanted by the Danish police to safety. He simply refused to comply. London approved his liquidation.

In a communication from Stockholm, Ronnie Turnbull reported what he described as the ‘rather gruesome story’, which he later likened to the murder of Rasputin. It involved ‘L’ tablets—the poisonous capsules that agents in the field were expected to swallow in order to avoid capture and interrogation. Larsen, explained Turnbull, was invited to a party and

Hollingworth was furious that the original execution had been bungled. These were ruthless times, and any threat to security had to be eradicated efficiently and quickly. SOE even launched an inquiry into why ‘Trick’ hadn’t been dispatched more promptly. The investigators were stunned to discover that their agents had failed to distinguish between the lethal ‘L’ and mere knockout pills. But Hollingworth was even angrier that agents had sought to use their ‘L’ tablets to do the job in the first place. They had been prepared to sacrifice their own means of suicide, leaving themselves vulnerable to interrogation if caught.