The Hornet's Sting (24 page)

‘I believe it is all arranged,’ responded Sneum, trying to maintain an equal air of confidence.

‘Oh, you’re in the right place,’ said Park. ‘But this is not a good time. Try again in a few weeks.’

Tommy was taken aback. He had no choice but to leave the building quietly, since to cause a scene might have compromised both men. He couldn’t understand how the British could let him down during the most dangerous opening days of the mission. Nevertheless, trying to stay positive, he contented himself with the fact that his first objective had been achieved, as he and Christophersen had at least gained a foothold in Copenhagen.

But amateur sleuths were already at work in the building that housed Oxlund’s spacious first-floor flat. The general lack of activity in suburban Noekkerosevej turned out to be part of the problem. It had rendered Christophersen’s arrival on the block more conspicuous, because the other occupants of Kaj’s building had nothing better to do than gossip about any changes to their humdrum little world. Unfortunately, the only other first-floor apartment was home to the most vigilant neighbor of all—the building’s acting caretaker, Hans Soetje. A Danish police report later described how Soetje first laid eyes on the nervous Christophersen:

As can be gleaned from this report, the caretaker’s eye for detail was ominously impressive.

F
RESHLY INSTALLED IN A top-floor flat at 15 St. Annaegade, Tommy aroused considerably less suspicion, and he saw the immediate attraction of the location. Ship movements on the wider waters of Christianshavn, just a few blocks beyond the canal, could be monitored all the way up to the naval base at Holmen. Other factors made the hideout ideal, not least the roof-top escape route it offered, should the Abwehr raid from below.

And Tommy found that his new home contained added attractions. On the ground floor lived an elegant woman named Emmy Valentin, who was, he guessed, ten or fifteen years his elder. He might have been surprised to learn that she had actually turned forty-six on 11 July and was therefore nearly twice his age. However, since his very first lover back home on Fanoe had also been of a different generation, that wasn’t necessarily going to put off Tommy. When Emmy smiled, the years didn’t seem to matter. Time had in no way diminished her ability to captivate the opposite sex, and she was sophisticated in a way that had attracted Sneum to older women in the past. Tommy remembered: ‘Emmy wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she was one of those women who attracted men more than the most beautiful women did.’ Her figure was shapely, her eyes inviting, so for a sex-hungry young spy in fear of his life, the age difference could be overlooked. What did age matter when he could be dead tomorrow? They began flirting immediately, even though they were not alone.

Emmy lived with her daughter, Birgit, who had mousy-coloured hair like her mother but was taller and more buxom. Tommy recalled: ‘Birgit looked good, she was pretty enough, but she was bigger in stature than her mother, and she wasn’t so self-assured. Even though she was two inches taller than me, Birgit was the sort of girl all men want to look after. Her mother was the confident one. Emmy was smaller, more fascinating and charming, and she had all the delicacies of a woman.’

But Tommy had the feeling that Birgit liked him every bit as much as Emmy did. This, he reflected, was a situation which called for careful management if he was going to benefit in the way he thought possible without offending either hostess.

Tommy was still finding his feeere not d assessing the qualities of his neighbors when a meeting took place in Copenhagen that was later regarded as one of the most dramatic events of the scientific war. In many ways it came too soon for Sneum, although even if he had already been at full intelligence-gathering capacity, it is doubtful that he would have got wind of it.

Professor Niels Bohr, who became known as the father of theoretical nuclear physics and would go on to win a Nobel Prize, had once regarded a young German doctor called Werner Heisenberg as a soulmate. Heisenberg had become Bohr’s protégé, and the older man, a Danish Jew, had taught his favorite Aryan student everything he knew. And that was the problem. For what both physicists knew in the autumn of 1941 was enough to threaten the very survival of mankind. Each man realized that science was dangerously close, in theory at least, to constructing a weapon so lethal that its first owner would rule the world. Thanks to uranium and the destructive curiosity of the world’s most brilliant minds, the spectre of the atom-bomb already loomed. Bohr, fifty-five and stubbornly anti-Nazi, knew that if Hitler ever laid his hands on such a bomb the free world would become a memory. Heisenberg, at the age of thirty-nine, was a patriotic German troubled by ethics. He was therefore torn between nationalistic duty and his sense of what was right for the world.

Anxious to discuss the moral and scientific complexities of his research, the younger man attended a scientific conference in Copenhagen in the third week of September 1941. Bohr remained conspicuously absent from the series of theoretical lectures and discussions in order to ensure that he remained above any possible accusations of collaboration. But the two men met discreetly one evening, and walked through the brewery district of Copenhagen, choosing a route around the famous Carlsberg House of Honour. As they nervously paced the lanes, looking behind them at regular intervals, both physicists suspected the Abwehr might be tailing them.

There was no time to waste so Heisenberg decided to voice what had been troubling him: ‘Do you think it is right to work on the uranium problem at the moment, Niels? There could be grave consequences for the technique of war.’

The older man demurred and Heisenberg thought his professor might be hiding something about the progress made by the Allies in that area. But in fact the terrified Dane was wondering whether his closest friend and protégé had agreed to help Hitler try to win that race. By way of reply, Bohr eventually asked the allimportant question: ‘Werner, do you really think such a bomb is possible?’

‘It would take a terrific technical effort,’ answered Heisenberg.

This was hardly the answer to put Bohr’s exceptional mind to rest. Heisenberg seemed to be telling him that the bomb was now a very real, if difficult, possibility. For all Bohr knew, the Germans might even be trying to make it already, though he considered success unlikely. A strange psychological stand-off developed between the two men. The meeting had already gone too far for Bohr’s liking, so he wished Heisenberg a polite goodnight and quickly decided to act as though their historic exchange had never happened.

As Thomas Sneum had also discovered, the war put terrible strains upon relationships that once had been positive, productive and even loving. And it was adept at creating distance between those who had previously been very close.

Oblivious to the extraordinary possibilities being discussed by two of the world’s greatest brains in the self-same city, Tommy was already building relationships which would eventually lead him to that same mysterious field of scientific warfare.

On 13 October, Birgit Valentin celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday with a small party, to which Tommy was invited. The new arrival seemed to be the center of the birthday girl’s and her mother’s attentions all evening, and Sneum knew that it would be dangerous to favor one over the other. To give too much attention to Birgit, the woman closer to his own age, risked arousing jealousy in her mother, which was the last thing he wanted. After all, Emmy was effectively his landlady. She took care of all the apartments in the building, which belonged to a countess called Elna Trampe. Since the countess was rarely in residence, Emmy treated the house as her own, and handpicked the tenants accordingly. If you upset her in any way, you would be asked to seek accommodation elsewhere. Emmy’s trusted friends, on the other hand, knew they were safe. Until recently, the most frequent visitor had been Hans Lunding, and it was he who had arranged Tommy’s accommodation, because of his special relationship with Emmy. According to Tommy, they had once been lovers: ‘She met him on a train, on a skiing holiday to Norway. They did more fucking than skiing. Her husband was German Consul in Kalundborg, in the north-west of Zealand. I think they had only just got married, but she had already left him to live in Copenhagen.’ But to favor Emmy would antagonize Birgit, and Tommy wasn’t sure how much the younger woman knew about why he was there. Whatever the truth, it would be advantageous to keep her on side, too. The last thing he needed was the threat of a security leak fuelled by pure petty jealousy.

So there were various complications attached to the sexual adventures Tommy Sneum was contemplating. And that wasn’t the only reason why he felt it wise to get out of the building and take plenty of fresh air each day. ‘I couldn’t just stay in all day because that would arouse suspicion,’ he explained. ‘I had to behave like any other local, and that meant going out.’

For a spy in Copenhagen, the location of the St. Annaegade lair was ideal. Christianshavn was a trendy area, situated quite near the Danish parliament, the Rigsdag. Boersgade and a big old bridge called Knippelsbro were all that separated the two. And yet the island of Amager, of which Christianshavn was a part, had an identity all of its own. It was essentially split in two by the picturesque Christianshavns Canal. The old Snorresbro, an ancient bridge, arched across the canal to link those halves. There was nothing very beautiful about the modern block which included the five floors of 15 St. Annaegade. The building’s light brown brickwork pointed to the fact that it had been built only in the previous decade. Although neat and smart, it hardly seemed suitable for an aristocrat. Sneum’s new base lay between the canal and the tall, green-blue tower of Vor Frelses Kirke, or Our Savior’s Church. Just over the Snorresbro was the old Staerkodder Café, a dark, smoke-filled pub full of simple tables and hard drinkers. Down the road lay the warehouses and offices of the East India Company, handily situated around the harbor itself. The people of Christianshavn were friendly and downto-earth, and along their narrow stretch of canal they had created a unique disctrict of Copenhagen.

Before he allowed himself to feel too at home, Tommy headed off to re-establish contact with one of his earliest resistance associates, Christian Michael Rottboell. No one had seen Rottboell for some time in Copenhagen, so Sneum decided to cross over to Jutland one day and make the long journey to Boerglum, near its northern tip. He took a train to Aalborg and hitched a ride out onto the Hjoerring road. Just past Broenderslev he turned left onto the quiet country road that led to Boerglum Cloisters and the aristocratic splendour of the Rottboell family residence. It was with some apprehension that he knocked on the huge front door to the main house, remembering that Christian Michael’s father had been less than happy about his impact on their lives the previous year. That same overbearing gentleman opened the door and looked at Tommy with a mixture of distaste and confusion.