Snow (18 page)

Owens’ interest always increased when money was involved and he claimed to have been told that Williams should not be allowed to handle large sums of money, suggesting that MI5 should tell the Abwehr that B
ISCUIT
had handed the money in the talcum powder tin to him, with only a small amount having been given to Williams. However, Owens had recently been noticed using the telephone in his house while Burton’s back was turned and, ever wary of Owens’ activities, MI5 decided that when he moved into his new house microphones would be installed. Burton reported that ‘after a long period of quiescence, S
NOW
appeared to be feeling his oats again’ and should be watched very carefully.

The double-cross system got underway in the person of Arthur Owens and it had grown with British-based agents like G.W., C
HARLIE
and
B
ISCUIT
. Now, with the arrival of S
UMMER
and T
ATE
, there was the possibility of controlling further agents who either had been, or were to be, despatched by the Abwehr. However, a German invasion was expected at almost any moment, so time and information were at a premium. With its growing stable of double agents, MI5 hoped that the imminent arrival of agents for Swansea and Manchester would improve the volume and accuracy of information obtained from the enemy, especially if they could be turned. However, despite the elaborate preparations that had been made for the new arrivals, none materialised although, according to S
NOW
’s wireless traffic, a South African agent, whom B
ISCUIT
had been told about, was dropped at some point during the last week of August and the man for Manchester was dropped on the night of 15 August.

What had happened to these two spies? MI5 considered it possible that they had come down in the sea or that some other disaster had befallen them. It was also thought that three Cubans, named Robles, Martinez and
Hechevarria, who had arrived in Fishguard carrying sabotage equipment, were the agents intended for Swansea. The Spaniard del Pozo, who had
contacted
G.W., was also a candidate as he used the password that the Swansea agent was supposed to mention. All MI5 could do was wait and hope that the Germans had not become suspicious, and that the network of double agents in Britain could start to reap the rewards of all their hard work.

Whilst the slow pace of developments was very frustrating for MI5, the next major development in the S
NOW
case would come from a completely different source, would leave the entire double-cross system teetering on the brink of catastrophe – and have disastrous consequences for Owens himself.

I
N
N
OVEMBER
1940 Walter Dicketts, a former First World War air
intelligence
officer who had been cashiered from the RAF for dishonesty, was sent on a mission to an aerodrome near Grantham to collect information for S
NOW
.

MI5 was surprised at the ease with which he managed to retrieve a
considerable
amount of information and that he seemed to have no difficulty gaining access to the establishment. He entered the aerodrome by buying a works badge and was able to learn a good deal of useful information. He did this by engaging people in casual conversation and was surprised that even though he told them he had a Swedish mother, they were still
willing
to tell him all manner of things. In all he spent three hours walking around the facility, including visits to the secretary’s office and the drawing office, without once being challenged. He then walked around the airfield perimeter without being stopped and challenged, and gained a good deal of gossip with an intelligence value by visiting the local pubs in the Grantham area and talking to airmen he encountered.

Codenamed C
ELERY
, Dicketts had been put in touch with Owens by MI5 to find out whether he was double-crossing his case officers. As far as Owens was concerned, Dicketts was a disgruntled MI5 agent whose contact with MI5 depended on Owens himself. However, as Dicketts came to know Owens, he developed the opinion that Owens was exceptionally artful, often attempting to check upon his new friend to establish what, if anything, lay behind the relationship. Dicketts gained the impression that Owens may have learned a great deal about him from sources within Special Branch, with whom he appeared to be very friendly. According to Dicketts, Owens drank very heavily, remarking that he saw ‘bottles of whisky disappearing like magic’. He also claimed to have seen Owens pouring himself a drink as early as half past seven in the morning. Owens was also very free with his money,
and at one point spent £1,500 on a fur coat for Lily. Dicketts also seemed to have little regard for Owens’ wireless operator, Maurice Burton, whom he thought liked and trusted Owens rather too much. Dicketts reported that the two men were becoming close, often indulging in private conversations, and that they frequently visited the local pub together. Burton was also said to be involved with a girl, someone he claimed to have known for a long time, although he sometimes passed her off as a cover to obviate suspicion amongst the locals.

From MI5’s viewpoint, Dicketts represented an opportunity to check up on Owens, and establish an independent channel of reporting on his
activities
, and indeed those closely associated with him, such as Maurice Burton, Lily and the others. His principal objective was to solve the continuing mystery of precisely where the Welshman’s true loyalties lay. If he really was a reliable double agent, firmly in MI5’s camp, then the intelligence rewards could be considerable, whereas any suggestion that he had switched sides and was collaborating with the Abwehr would put lives at risk, and the entire double-cross system in jeopardy.

Dicketts suspected that Owens had lines of communication with
Germany
outside MI5’s ken, a view reinforced by his knowledge that Owens had been able to alert his son Robert about an imminent Luftwaffe air-raid on London. How could he have done so when there was nothing in his declared signal traffic to show the source of his warning? Dicketts had a very low opinion of Owens and told MI5 that he was ‘an inveterate liar and lies even to his wife about everything. He is terrified of air raids and is bone idle.’

On 18 December 1940 Owens and Dicketts were sent to Manchester to see C
HARLIE
in the hope that the wireless agent or his replacement might still appear, but upon their arrival they found him in a very anxious state and Dicketts thought that C
HARLIE
’s demeanour would be likely to give him away to the German spy if he ever turned up. Whether Owens had developed any suspicion that C
HARLIE
was really under MI5’s control is unknown, but McCarthy’s unfortunate visit to Manchester earlier that year was now to have further repercussions for the S
NOW
network because C
HARLIE
revealed that B
ISCUIT
had informed him that Owens had sold him out to MI5. C
HARLIE
also said that he did not know who he was working for, and that he had been present when Burton had installed listening equipment at the Manchester address, and that he knew exactly how it worked. All this made Owens very suspicious of C
HARLIE
, and threatened the unity of the developing
double-cross
system. Once MI5 became aware of Owens’ suspicions the decision
was taken to tell C
HARLIE
to let Owens know the truth about his position, that he was in fact pro-British and had been contacted by MI5 and turned into a double agent before Owens had first gone to Manchester to meet him. This revelation must have come as a surprise to Owens, and perhaps created doubts in his mind about exactly how much control he actually exercised over his network. Combined with C
ELERY
’s appearance, Owens must have been aware that his role at the heart of the double-cross system was not quite what it once was, or indeed what he
thought
it was.

With Owens now apparently able to trust him, C
HARLIE
was instructed to take the wireless agent, when he arrived, to 20 Park Street and to keep him there until Owens could see him. C
HARLIE
was also directed that if he was asked any questions he should tell the man that he had been ordered not to discuss anything with him. This arrangement suited both Owens, as it put him back at the centre of the operation, and C
HARLIE
, whose nervous disposition would not enable him to withstand much cross-examination.

On 28 December 1940 Robertson wrote to the DMI, General Davidson, enquiring about high poles joined by wire in the fields between Aldington, Stowting, Lyminge, Hawkinge and Folkestone. He wanted to know about the materials used on these anti-glider obstacles, the distances between the poles, the gauge of wire, and how they were arranged. This need to canvass the armed services every time an item of information needed to be cleared before it could be conveyed to the enemy became an increasing burden for MI5, and the solution was the establishment of a permanent sub-committee of the Wireless Board, to process requests for permission to transmit
authentic
data. However, the Wireless Board, consisting of the three intelligence service directors, the Chief of MI6 and MI5’s Director-General, was found to be established at too exalted a level to respond quickly to the
increasing
demands of MI5’s double agents, so in December 1940 a new body, designated the XX Committee (for double-cross, but usually referred to as the ‘Twenty Committee’ after the Latin numerals XX) was created under J. C. Masterman’s chairmanship. A respected Oxford don, fluent in German and exuding a natural authority, Masterman had not yet found his niche in the Security Service, but his appointment to run the XX Committee was an inspired one.

Representatives from the Air Ministry’s intelligence branch, the Naval Intelligence Division, the DMI, Home Forces, MI5 and MI6 assembled for the first time in early January 1941 and thereafter met weekly to discuss the performance and needs of the growing stable of double agents operating
under MI5’s control. This excellent innovation offered a practical solution to give Robertson’s team of case officers the support deemed essential if S
NOW
and his subordinates were to fully exploit their status.

At the beginning of 1941 Owens received a signal from the Abwehr
instructing
him to meet Dr Rantzau in Lisbon. Evidently the failure of the North Sea rendezvous had not deterred him from setting up a further meeting with his main agent in Britain in person. This development was important as Owens still believed that whoever accompanied him on this mission would be appointed his replacement, and that he would then take up his post in Berlin. This time, however, it was decided that it would be Dicketts, rather than B
ISCUIT
, who would go with him. In order to travel, Dicketts would need a Portuguese transit visa and he suggested that the best way to acquire one would be to apply for an ordinary visa for Colombia, which he thought he could obtain from a friend, which would help him with the transit papers required for Portugal. As the plan called for a sea voyage, no exit permit was required, and Dicketts travelled to Newport, South Wales, to secure a berth. The arrangements for Owens’ travel, including letters of introduction from the London Chamber of Commerce, were also left to Dicketts, but time was precious because Dicketts was due to travel in less than a fortnight by boat, with Owens flying to Lisbon soon after.

During this final period before their departure, Dicketts reported that Owens was ‘running with the hare and hunting with the hounds’ and warned Robertson that Owens was likely to question him about whether Dicketts was trustworthy, to which Robertson confirmed that he would most certainly reply in the affirmative.

Prior to S
NOW
’s departure MI5 undertook some housekeeping to ensure his safety, and reviewed the Abwehr’s traffic with S
UMMER
to determine precisely what the enemy knew of his circumstances. MI5 had attempted to keep the agents separate but a study of the messages suggested that the Germans must have known of the links between them, so it was agreed, with some reluctance, that S
UMMER
should be terminated.

MI5’s objective in promoting the mission to Lisbon concerned the planned German invasion of Britain and the acquisition of any information about German secret weapons, to which Hitler had taken to referring. Robertson asked Owens whether he thought he could persuade Rantzau to take
Dicketts
to Germany for training, saying that if he could, then he might be able to pick up a great deal of information. To assist in communications, Dicketts was to be given a plain language code which could be transmitted from Hamburg, with certain words having a pre-agreed secret meaning which would let the British know his progress. As for Dicketts himself, he asked for some kind of insurance letter, and Robertson assured him that if anything went wrong MI5 would take care of his wife and child.

As they prepared for their mission, Owens appeared to be having second thoughts and told Dicketts that if he decided not to go he would cable him and also send a message to Dr Rantzau. Owens also advised Dicketts that if the Doctor produced a message from Owens containing the word ‘Dicky’, that would indicate that he was authorised by Owens to work ‘hand in glove with the Doctor.’ The true meaning of the message was not entirely clear to Dicketts so he passed it on to MI5. But the organisation was equally puzzled by its ambiguity. Dicketts believed that Owens probably would not tell them its real meaning. And before anyone could get to the bottom of Owens’
cryptic
words he received a message from Germany that added further intrigue: ‘Friend in England has secret material re infrared detector. Can you bring this to Lisbon? How can he be sent to you without knowing your identity?’

This reference to infra-red technology was remarkable, as the secret
equipment
, still in its infancy, was employed by the Admiralty to detect shipping and by the Air Ministry for tracing illicit infra-red beacons. There was also an infra-red telescope under development by EMI which was fitted to Defiant aircraft to assist in the identification of enemy night-fighters. MI5 suspected a leak, and as far as could be ascertained from the Admiralty, there was only one document which detailed the apparatus, and that had been compiled by the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. Dr Hill, the scientist supervising the RAE’s experiments, had been to Eindhoven before the war where he had discussed infra-red technology with the Philips company, which had its own system that, it was claimed, had only been offered to the Dutch navy. However, it was later learned that Philips had also been dealing
with the Germans, and that the device did not work very well because the lenses were the wrong distance apart, a problem that had subsequently been rectified by EMI, thereby producing a much better infra-red telescope. Hill reported that if he saw the leaked document he might be able to identify its source, although the issue had been further complicated – the devices were now operational so there were plenty of potential sources of the leak.

This new and unexpected last-minute request from the Abwehr prompted Robertson to meet Owens and Dicketts at his club where they discussed the implications. Their objectives were first to ‘keep the S
NOW
party going’ and ‘at all costs to identify the individual who had managed to obtain this information.’ Robertson stressed that under no circumstances could
information
about infra-red, which was considered vital to the war effort, be passed on to the enemy, and he made two suggestions. One was that Owens should ask the Germans to tell their agent to deliver the information to a known address so it could be taken to Manchester and turned into
microphotographs
. The second was that the Germans should instruct their source to send an intermediary to meet Owens or his nominee. Owens thought that as the information was so important to both Britain and Germany, it would be best if he attended the meeting himself, but before doing so he would confirm that the Germans had total trust in their source. Accordingly, following a conference attended by Guy Liddell, Dick White, Felix Cowgill and John Marriott, a message was sent to the Abwehr: