Snow (7 page)

MI5 and the Abwehr shared uncertain histories: neither had performed
particularly
well during the 1930s and neither had the complete trust of their political masters. MI5 began the war disastrously, completely unprepared, leading to Churchill’s sacking of its long-serving founder Vernon Kell. It began to pick up momentum, running agents into the neutral embassies still based in London, but missed the presence of four of the infamous Soviet Cambridge spy-ring inside British intelligence, including Anthony Blunt as a senior officer within its own ranks. The Abwehr had been set up in 1921, taking its name, which means simply ‘defence’ in German, as a sop to the stringent restrictions imposed by the Versailles Treaty, which prevented Germany mounting any offensive military activity. It would fight a long and ultimately unsuccessful turf war with the Nazi Party’s internal intelligence and security service, the Sicherheitsdienst, which would see the latter taking over responsibility for intelligence-gathering in 1944 after the 20 July plot to kill Hitler. While the Abwehr had some good successes against the Special Operations Executive in France, the British ambassador in Turkey and most spectacularly against the SOE in Holland, its operations against Great Britain were completely flawed, largely because having sent their agents into Britain, the Abwehr agent-runners believed them implicitly, a failing exploited
brilliantly
by the MI5 and MI6 officers running the double-cross system.

Upon the declaration of war on 3 September 1939, following the German invasion of Poland, Detention Orders under Regulation 18(b) of the Defence Regulations 1939, as predicted, were made against Owens and his girlfriend Lily Bade. A Special Branch detective, Inspector Holmes, visited Owens’ home to arrest him, but he was not there and could not be traced. Then, perhaps sensing trouble, Owens contacted MI5 and once again offered his services to his country. A rendezvous was arranged at Waterloo Station, where Owens separated from Lily, and was approached by three detectives who arrested him. Seeing Owens being escorted by the policemen, Lily slipped away and returned to their flat in Parklands, the house in Surbiton where they had been living as man and wife. There the owner of the property, a 44-year-old Scot who had accompanied Owens and Lily on their recent trip to Germany, was asked by her to hide a parcel which she retrieved from the bathroom. This he did by burying it in the garden.

Meanwhile, Owens was taken to Wandsworth prison where the
Detention 
Order was served on him formally. Initially, Owens refused to disclose his address but, just as he entered the prison, he revealed that he was living in Surbiton, adding that the transmitter he had previously shown to MI5 could be found in his bathroom.

On this occasion the police were accompanied by Major Tommy
Robertson
, the MI5 case officer who had exercised supervision over the S
NOW
case. A Scot who transferred from his regiment, the Seaforth Highlanders, to join MI5 in 1932 at the suggestion of his friend John Kell, the Director-General’s son, Robertson had cut his teeth with the investigation of the Invergordon mutiny in which Royal Navy ratings had refused to obey orders for thirty-six hours in September 1931 in protest at pay cuts. Most recently he had been preoccupied by a case of Soviet espionage, a Foreign Office cipher clerk who had been suborned into betraying copies of sensitive telegrams. Angry at not being eligible for a pension, despite his creditable service in the First World War, Captain John King had opted to supplement his meagre income by
selling
secret correspondence to the NKVD. Finally identified by a defector who volunteered details of his treachery to the British ambassador in Washington, King had been confronted by Robertson in a Mayfair pub, and had confessed.

A kindly man with great charm and twinkling blue eyes, Robertson was an unconventional infantry officer and an inspired counter-intelligence
professional
. Far from being repulsed by Owens, whose behaviour appalled the staid Hinchley-Cooke, Robertson recognised a scoundrel and a not-very-lovable rogue. However, his style was very different to the older man. Robertson preferred to meet Owens in pubs, and was often accompanied by his wife Joan who was an exceptional judge of character. Although not formally employed by MI5, she was close to Lady Kell and would undertake voluntary work with her in the staff canteen. Always colourful, but not flamboyant, Robertson often wore tartan trews to his office, and was popular with his subordinates. While Hinchley-Cooke was confrontational, Robertson’s approach was more subtle, and he at least gave the impression of being more pragmatic. He referred to the older man as ‘Cookie’ and was fond of him, as he might have regarded a past mentor. But Robertson also possessed a certain cunning, and never appeared hostile to Owens, thereby gaining a degree of co-operation that the half-German Hinchley-Cooke never achieved.

Known affectionately to colleagues as ‘Tar’, because of the initials with which he marked MI5 files under his supervision, Robertson was a shrewd operator, wise enough to realise that he still had not got the full measure of Owens, who never ceased to surprise. Indeed, when he visited Parklands, the
couple living there initially tried to deny all knowledge of Owens, but Lily soon admitted that she and Owens had been staying there together. A search of the bathroom failed to turn up the radio, but the police did find a receiver which had been made by Owens himself. It was considered very possible that some of the more cryptic language found in Owens’ correspondence with Rantzau, which MI5 had believed was a code, may have been references to this device, perhaps used to test whether the transmitter due to be sent to Owens would be powerful enough to exchange messages with Germany.

When questioned by the police, the Scot who owned Parklands revealed that he was also in the battery business, and that he had joined Owens on his trip to Germany in the hope of making some useful business connections. He said he had buried the parcel given to him by Lily because he thought he was doing a good turn for his friend Owens, who was undergoing some domestic trouble with his wife. When the parcel was unearthed it was found to contain the missing transmitter, and both Lily and her companion were escorted to Kingston for further questioning at the police station.

Under interrogation facts about Lily poured forth. She was a 27-year-old dressmaker, born to a German mother in West Ham. Introduced to Owens as ‘Uncle Arthur’ by a mutual friend, they had known each other for only a few months before Owens whisked her off on holiday to Germany. During the trip she and Owens had lived together, and while they were in Hamburg they met several people who had been introduced to them as ‘doctors’. Then they had travelled to Berlin where in a beer-garden she had met a man known as ‘the Doctor’. Lily insisted that throughout the time she had known Owens she had no idea that he had engaged in any business other than that of the Expanded Metal Company.

During an interview conducted by Robertson in Wandsworth prison, Owens explained that he could get another transmitter and receiver if he wanted. He disclosed that four o’clock in the morning was the time that Germany would contact him on the 60 metre wavelength, but that if
necessary
he could reach them at any time of the day or night. Soon afterwards Robertson returned to Owens’ cell, accompanied by a radio expert, Colonel J. F. Yule, who asked him to make radio contact with – following the
declaration
of hostilities – now officially the enemy.

The decision to establish a radio link between the prison and Germany was truly momentous, for this represented the very first wireless contact of the war with the enemy. At the time MI5 had been preoccupied by the possibility of a hitherto unknown network of German spies operating in
Britain, and Owens offered the opportunity to be in direct touch with the Abwehr. If Owens could be manipulated successfully, there was a chance of learning more about the enemy’s other networks, but his first attempt to send a signal failed when, as he examined the apparatus to make sure that it was properly set up, he pushed a switch at the base of the set which caused a fuse to blow. The transmitter was then removed for repair, and at six o’clock the next morning, on Saturday 9 September 1939, Owens keyed in his first message: ALL READY. HAVE REPAIRED RADIO. SEND
INSTRUCTIONS
. NOW AWAITING REPLY.

MI5 monitored the signal strength, which was found to be poor, and no reply was picked up, so a further attempt was made at four o’clock when Owens had claimed that Germany would be listening for him. The second effort was again monitored and was found to have been jammed by a
powerful
, unidentified station. Once again, no reply was received.

This failure prompted a late-night visit from MI5 officers who tried to persuade Owens that it was in his best interests to get in touch with
Germany
. They gained the impression that Owens had done all he could to make contact, but they were unsure whether he was still withholding some vital information. In casual conversation, while his guard was down, Owens revealed that he did not anticipate any air-raids because the Germans were expecting weather reports from him. He also let slip that if he was unable to make wireless contact, his instructions were to write to a pre-arranged address on the continent with a message that was to read ‘the salesman will arrive (day) at (time).’ The address was Dr Rantzau’s, and the text was to tell him that Owens wanted him to get in touch. However, this version contradicted what Owens had said at an earlier interview, so the incident only served to heighten suspicions.

When Owens next tried to establish radio contact, a prison warder pushed the cell door open and asked those gathered inside if they minded anyone using the passage outside. At the thought of people being able to see him Owens paled, and was clearly terrified. He turned to the MI5 officer and begged ‘don’t let them see me – whatever happens don’t let them see me.’ He then explained that earlier the same morning a fellow prisoner had cornered him and said that he knew Owens had been ‘quizzed by the intelligence cops’. Allegedly, the man had tried to find out what Owens had told them, and although Owens would not reveal his name to MI5, he claimed that the prisoner had just returned from Germany. When this story was relayed
to Hinchley-Cooke, he recognised the individual immediately as someone about whom he already possessed considerable information.

Soon after this episode, on 11 September, Owens was moved from
Wandsworth
to Kingston police station where he was to be treated as a special prisoner, and was even allowed some liberty under MI5’s supervision. On the following day Owens was taken flat-hunting by a police inspector, and found a suitable flat in the Kingston area. Top-floor accommodation was required to enable a concealed radio aerial to be strung on the roof and, having set up the transmitter, Owens made a further attempt, under MI5’s supervision, to contact Germany and send a brief message: MUST MEET YOU IN HOLLAND AT ONCE. BRING WEATHER CODE RADIO TOWN AND HOTEL. WALES READY.

When challenged about this text, Owens explained that he was supposed to meet Dr Rantzau in Holland to pick up the code for transmitting weather details for areas in England that the Germans planned to bomb. The
mention
of Wales was a reference to Rantzau’s desire to get hold of a Welshman who was a member of the Welsh Nationalist Party because he intended to establish a network of disenchanted Nationalists who would operate in Wales as saboteurs with arms which were to be brought up the Bristol Channel aboard a submarine. Owens suggested that MI5 should supply someone to go over to Germany with him who could fulfil this role. The reply was not immediate but then the letters ‘O E A’ were heard on his receiver. This was the call sign used when the Germans wanted to get in touch with the agent they knew as J
OHNNY
.

In September 1939, within days of S
NOW
establishing contact with the enemy by radio, his traffic had come under the scrutiny of a semi-
independent
intelligence organisation that worked in parallel with MI5 and offered technical support in the wireless field, an area of expertise rather new to MI5’s staff. Based in a pair of neighbouring detached houses in Barnett, on London’s border with Hertfordshire, the Radio Security Service employed a group of amateur license-holders, all volunteer members of the Radio
Society
of Great Britain, to scan the airwaves in the hope of detecting clandestine broadcasts. Upon the outbreak of hostilities there had been an expectation that several enemy spies might resort to the ether to exchange messages with Germany, but as it turned out, there were almost none. Nevertheless, the RSS experts who found themselves listening in to S
NOW
made an
astonishing
discovery. It seemed that his transmissions had been acknowledged by a German radio, but not one broadcasting from Hamburg, as had been
expected. Bearings taken by British direction-finding stations calculated that his messages had been received by an enemy spy ship off the coast of Norway. Better still, his messages had been re-enciphered within a few minutes and then relayed to Germany. However, during this second part of their journey across the ether to the Abwehr’s headquarters, his texts had been encrypted on a cipher generated on an Enigma machine.

Because S
NOW
’s original messages had been drafted by MI5, the RSS cryptanalysts knew the plaintext version of the Enigma signals they were intercepting and were able to reverse-engineer the daily settings of the machine’s rotors. By the end of 1940 the hand cipher traffic was being
circulated
by RSS under the codename ISOS, and the Enigma version as ISK. This remarkable breakthrough encouraged the codebreakers to extend their study of the enemy’s Enigma traffic from the Abwehr to the Luftwaffe, and then to the many other circuits dependent on the device. Thus S
NOW
’s
morning
broadcasts to his Abwehr controllers would become the daily ‘crib’ that helped the teams of RSS cryptographers to break not just his Enigma traffic, but all the rest of the Abwehr’s most secret communications for the rest of the day, until the settings were changed again at midnight. While S
NOW
himself had no inkling of this vital game being played by an organisation he had never heard of, and was never let in on the secret, his contribution to the ultimate Allied victory was far, far greater than even his vivid imagination could ever have guessed.