The Hornet's Sting (23 page)

Sneum called Professor Ole Chiewitz, a tuberculosis expert and known resistance sympathizer, who had helped him in the past. ‘The first time I met Chiewitz,’ Tommy recalled later, ‘I thought, If God came down again in human form His eyes and smile would look like this. He had the eyes of an angel and the warmest smile I have ever seen.’

But Chiewitz wasn’t smiling when he saw the state of Sneum. Quickly he arranged an X-ray in the hospital where he worked. It revealed a vertical crack down the length of Tommy’s coccyx.

‘Are you in pain?’ asked the doctor, his face a picture of bewilderment.

Uncharacteristically, Sneum admitted that he was.

‘You shouldn’t be able to walk at all,’ added Chiewitz’s colleague. ‘I can’t understand it.’

Tommy had marched fifteen kilometers fuelled by adrenalin and cognac when many men would simply have curled up in agony. Now he was told the fracture would mend of its own accord with rest. Chiewitz offered to arrange a bed in the hospital so that Sneum could recover from his ordeal.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ insisted Tommy. ‘Please just prescribe some painers. I’ll come back if I think I’m in trouble.’

Chiewitz persuaded him to wait long enough to see a trusted friend and colleague called Professor Hagedorn, a world-renowned expert on diabetes. When Hagedorn arrived, he collected a urine sample. Although Sneum cooperated, he didn’t see the point of this unrelated procedure and said so.

‘If ever you need to hide,’ Hagedorn explained, ‘you can come back into this hospital and we’ll be able to prove you have diabetes.’

‘One problem,’ replied Tommy. ‘I don’t have diabetes.’

Hagedorn took out some powdered pure grape sugar and dropped it into Sneum’s sample before stirring gently. ‘You do now,’ he said with a smile.

T
OMMY WAS MORE WORRIED about having to work with Christophersen than his own physical problems. He had hoped his partner’s attitude would harden once their mission had begun. Instead it appeared that the reverse was true. Christophersen had just confided to Sneum: ‘Now that we are back in Denmark I feel safe.’

Tommy was astonished at the remark. ‘When you’re with me, you’re not going to be safe,’ he warned. ‘That’s not the way I fight my war.’

He wanted to leave the timid Sigfred somewhere quiet for a few days, allowing him to take the first steps on his mission for the British alone. So he took a tram to the northern suburb of Soeborg, to visit Kaj Oxlund and his wife Tulle. They lived in a leafy boulevard called Noekkerosevej, situated far from the capital’s busy center. Tommy figured that even Christophersen could stay out of trouble there. The Oxlunds had rented a spacious first-floor flat in an elegant four-storey block, the last building on the right-hand side as Tommy walked down the street. He looked forward to the reunion.

When he opened his apartment door, Kaj Oxlund looked shocked to see his old friend standing there. ‘Sneum. I thought you were dead.’

Tommy smiled. ‘Can I come in, or has Tulle banned your friends?’ He saw Oxlund wince at the casual remark, and noticed that the apartment, though tidy, lacked the female touch.

Kaj must have read his mind. ‘Actually, Sneum, you might as well know. We’ve separated.’

Tommy was stunned. ‘After nine years? It’ll only be temporary, my friend. What happened?’

Oxlund explained that all of his trips to Sweden and throughout Denmark had meant he could never honestly explain his movements to his wife. They had drifted apart, and she seemed to think he was having an affair. Kaj had always said he was going away on business; but since the couple’s money worries had worsened, Tulle didn’t believe his alibis. She had left just a few weeks earlier, though Kaj had seen it coming for some time. Sadly, he had felt unable to do anything about it.

Tommy had never loved Else quite like Oxlund loved Tulle, but he too knew how much damage the war could do to a relationship. When y were intelligence-gathering, and you couldn’t tell your wife a thing about it, the excuses you concocted for your absences didn’t do much for mutual understanding.

Nevertheless, before the Nazi invasion, Kaj and Tulle had been as happy and settled as any couple Tommy had ever known. He felt sure those good times still had to count for something. ‘She’ll be back, Oxlund. You’ll see.’

‘No, she won’t,’ the older man replied with a bitter smile. ‘I received a letter a few days ago. She’s filing for divorce.’

Sneum didn’t know what to say by way of comfort, so he told Kaj about his own situation: why he had asked his friend to post that letter to Else during the summer; and that he was no longer with his wife, either. Oxlund offered his friend a beer, as men often do in moments of emotional crisis. Before long they had resolved not to depress each other any further. Seeking to change the mood, Sneum asked if Kaj would like to get involved in something that would be sure to take his mind off his personal situation. ‘Could be risky though,’ he warned. ‘And you’ll have some company too, if that’s all right.’

The brutal fact was that Tulle’s departure was an advantage when it came to the mission. For a start, she wouldn’t be able to ask any tricky questions about Christophersen if he came to stay. And Oxlund could put all his energy into resistance work instead of trying to rescue his dying marriage.

In Sneum’s absence, Kaj had continued with his intelligence-gathering. All summer he had diligently compiled reports and made sure they reached the British Legation in Stockholm. Disappointingly, the proposed landing of a Sunderland sea-plane on Lake Tissoe had remained nothing more than a distant dream. But there was still plenty of interest to Sneum. And, crucially, Kaj said he was willing to welcome Christophersen, temporarily or otherwise. He could do with the company, he said a little forlornly.

Tommy’s next objective on behalf of the British was to make contact with Danish Intelligence. The German occupying forces, obeying an order from Berlin, had left this organization intact ever since the invasion. Hitler saw no great threat from Denmark, and sought to show the world he was capable of a ‘model occupation’ in at least one neighboring country. Meanwhile, to ensure their continued survival, the leading figures within Danish Intelligence, the so-called Princes, were anxious that no one should upset the delicate peace in Denmark. Any contact with the British would be made in great secrecy, if at all, and they certainly had no intention of leading a full-blown Danish resistance movement. Tommy had been trying to find out if these Princes were already sending information to any organization in Britain. And in spite of their reluctance to rock the boat, he hoped to incorporate them into the new spy ring which Rabagliati had empowered him to create and lead. On hearing of his arrival, however, the Princes warned Sneum, through an intermediary called Bjarke Schou, that they required proof of the incoming agent’s story before they were even prepared to meet him. Only if he could produce sizeable pieces of both parachutes—his and Christophersen’s—would the meeting take place.

Later Tommy explained: ‘The Princes didn’t believe I could have flown out of Denmark in the first place, not without the blessing of the Germans.’ Furthermore, they doubted the Allies would drop agents in Denmark without consulting them first. Such a policy went against everything that had been agreed with the British through their ary calliary in Sweden, a journalist called Ebbe Munck. Not for the last time, the source of this dangerous confusion lay in the interdepartmental rivalry between the Secret Intelligence Service and the Special Operations Executive back in Britain.

Munck, Sneum and the Princes all had no grasp of the difference between SIS and SOE, because the British hadn’t told them. The Princes had simply been informed they were supplying information to a very specialized section of British Intelligence, focused on Denmark in particular. In fact, it was Ronnie Turnbull’s SOE office, based in neutral Stockholm, which had struck the deal with Danish Intelligence. In return for information, the Princes were told they would be left as the sole agents for intelligence-gathering in their own country. No British spies would be sent into Danish territory unless they were in transit, either on their way to or returning from Germany or destinations further east.

It was because this agreement was in place that Sneum’s arrival caused such consternation, and why the Princes demanded such incontrovertible proof of his authenticity. Unbeknown to him, Tommy could hardly have been placed in a more hostile environment if he had landed in Berlin itself. Largely due to the competitiveness among the rival British spymasters, he was already being viewed with extreme suspicion by key compatriots back home. And in this tense climate he could easily be made the scapegoat for anything that went wrong in Denmark.

But all Tommy knew at the time was the importance of recovering the parachutes. The following morning, therefore, he contacted Christophersen and demanded precise details of where the radio man had buried his canopy. Then he came up with a new cover story in case he was challenged: ‘I obtained a smock, an easel, some canvases and paints,’ he explained. ‘Then I went back out to Brorfelde, dressed like an artist in search of a landscape to paint.’ He cut a strip off each parachute and hid them between the canvases, knowing all too well that part of the canopy which had saved his life only hours earlier could now get him killed if he was stopped and searched on his way back to civilization.

When he handed over his proof to Bjarke Schou, the Princes’ intermediary, in a graveyard outside Holbaek that night, he felt more anger than relief. The face-to-face meeting with the men behind these demands promised to be lively.

It took place at the Jaegersborg Kaserne in Kongens, barracks that were home to the Royal Lifeguards. Over dinner, Lunding, the hard man of Danish Intelligence, demanded Sneum’s British codes. Refusing to take orders from someone he had just met, Tommy in turn demanded to know the codes his hosts used: ‘I told them I was serving directly with the British and that made me their superior. They told me I was talking nonsense because their rank was far superior. I wasn’t going to accept that, not when they had done so little against the Nazis since the invasion. They had never taken the sort of risks I had taken, yet they had dared to question my loyalty.’

A furious argument erupted, with Lunding and Sneum almost coming to blows: ‘Nordentoft intervened by explaining that it had been necessary to test me on the question of the parachutes for security, and that I ought to understand, especially since I had acted independently and not through them. Things calmed down after that.’

The Princes offered Sneum lodgings in a safe-house in St. Annaegade, near the Christianshavn Canal, on the Copenhagen island of Amager. In return for the accommodation, and to reaffirm his loylty to his own country, Tommy would be expected to write Danish Intelligence a full report on his time in England. His codes would remain his own secret as part of the deal. Meanwhile, Christophersen would continue to stay with Oxlund. Sneum chose to play along in order to build some mutual trust, knowing that Rabagliati wanted these people on Britain’s side. Besides, to make enemies of the Princes would threaten not just his mission but his very survival in Nazi-occupied territory. His final report, a copy of which he retained into old age, provided some of the source material for the account of his summer stay in England presented above.

Despite his partial cooperation with Danish Intelligence, Tommy wanted to maintain his independence and set his mission for the British in motion. To do so, he needed money. Making sure he wasn’t followed, he headed for the offices of a lawyer called Aage Koehlert Park, who was based in the busy Dronningens Tvaer Gade, near Copenhagen’s spacious Town Hall Square. Rabagliati had assured Sneum that Park would have substantial funds in Danish currency ready for collection. Now was the moment to test that claim.

Tommy gave a false name to a pretty receptionist, who politely escorted him along a carpeted corridor towards a large, plush office. Park was tall, blond and well groomed, so that he looked younger than his fifty-five years. He had the natural authority of a man who had been legal adviser to many of Copenhagen’s foreign consulates and legations, but feigned surprise at being visited by a stranger without an appointment.

Sneum uttered the code words he had been given: ‘Strange weather when you can’t make biscuits.’

He waited for the recognition that would lead to the cash, but Park didn’t seem to want to play along. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,’ the lawyer said.