The Hornet's Sting (45 page)

Their conversation was suddenly cut short by the warder: ‘Right, that’s enough, you two! Sneum, back to your cell.’

But at least Tommy now had new hope.

For a few anxious days, Bill was nowhere to be seen. Then one morning Sneum spotted him leaving the exercise yard, and managed to slip him a tiny scrap of paper with the information he would need. Tommy felt strangely elated. No one could keep him down for long, he told himself. The Germans hadn’t managed it when they invaded his country, and the British who had stabbed him in the back wouldn’t manage it either. But he never saw Bill again.

Arne Helvard was freed in mid-July, at about the same time that the Free Danish leader, John Christmas Moeller, learned of Thomas Sneum’s imprisonment in Brixton. Even before Helvard reached him with the news, Christmas Moeller might have been tipped off by Frank Stagg, a pro-Danish member of the Special Operations Executive. Stagg, a naval commander, had joined SOE in the autumn of 1940 as principal assistant to Harry Sporborg, then head of the Scandinavian Section. By the summer of 1942 he had climbed sufficiently high in the SOE hierarchy to be privy to information regarding Sneum’s incarceration, and he was not afraid to speak his mind. Just as Helvard was being released, Stagg hosted a dinner for Christmas Moeller and other friends of the Danish cause at the Thatched House Club in west London. At that event it seems likely that the SOE man expressed similar views to those he would later put in writing: ‘The treatment of Sneum on his return to London in 1942 was a disgraceful chapter in the English handling of one who had given us what radar specialists described as “the most valuable piece of radar intelligence yet received”—and the damnable handling also went over to his companion in flight, Helvard.’

Stagg and Christmas Moeller decided to campaign on Sneum’s behalf, even if it made them unpopular. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Stagg left SOE later that month, at the height of the controversy over Sneum. His records are said by the Foreign Office to give no official reason for his departure, although Ralph Hollingworth, the London-based head of SOE Denmark, described Stagg at around this time as ‘irresponsible and erratic.’ Maybe Hollingworth meant that Stagg had decided to speak out about Britain’s treatment of Sneum, against SOE wishes.

As Free Danish leader, Christmas Moeller was appalled that he had been kept in the dark about Sneum’s imprisonment. Neither, he soon discovered, had he been informed of other key SOE developments, which he knew would have a vital bearing on the situation back home. For instance, no one had told him of a proposed meeting in Stockholm between Captain Volle Gyth of Danish Intelligence and Ronnie Turnbull, or the preparations for the dropping of a fresh wave of SOE agents into Denmark. Incensed, Christmas Moeller decided to hit back. He demanded that Mogens Hammer, codenamed ‘Arthur’, must be contacted in the field and told that Moeller had severed his SOE links. Moeller’s letter was dated 19 July 1942:

F
IGHTING FOR HIS CREDIBILITY, Commander Ralph Hollingworth wrote to George Wiskemann, head of SOE Scandinavia, to defend himself over the Sneum affair and the complaints of the Free Danish leader: ‘Since SNEUM belongs to SIS and has never been one of our bodies I was not at liberty to tell Christmas Moeller that he was in the hands of MI5 interrogators until I had obtained permission from SIS.’

Fearing his job was on the line, Hollingworth then came out with all guns blazing. He decided that he would indeed have his SOE team get in touch with Hammer. And if he was going to tell Hammer that Christmas Moller had washed his hands of SOE, he was determined to land his own blow first. With regard to Christmas Moeller’s grievance over Sneum’s imprisonment, he mounted an argument designed to make a mockery of the politician’s objections. In the message, which he sent to Hammer on 22 July 1942, Hollingworth alleged that Sneum and Christophersen had ‘given a great deal of information to the Germans about our activities in Denmark.’ In particular he emphasized that ‘Sneum had spilt the beans.’

The timing of SOE’s ‘warning’ to Hammer about Sneum’s alleged treachery seems strange, unless the main motivation behind it was to strengthen Hollingworth’s defense in the face of Christmas Moeller’s onslaught. After all, SOE must have known for several months what Sneum told the Swedes during his time in Malmo Prison. The Princes of Danish Intelligence would have kept Ronnie Turnbull fully informed of the agent’s desperate tactics under interrogation. Therefore, if Hollingworth had really seen Sneum as a security risk to Hammer in Denmark, he could have warned his agent to that effect between April and June.

On the very day that the message was sent to Hammer, SOE’s latest crop of agents held a farewell luncheon at the Three Vikings restaurant in Glasshouse Street, London, before preparing for a parachute drop into Denmark. This meal would spark a full-scale hunt by MI5 for a possible traitor. During the investigation, Hollingworth tried to implicate Sneum, even though the Dane was still in prison at the time of the party.

No one could foresee such repercussions on the day of the luncheon itself, which began at midday and lasted four boozy hours. Hans F. Hansen, Knud Erik Petersen and Anders Peter Nielsen wanted to relax and enjoy themselves one last time, knowing that a dangerous mission lay ahead. What they didn’t know was that the Germans would be warned not only of their imminent arrival in Denmark but of plans to send a further three Danish agents back to their homeland soon afterwards.

Convinced, as ever, of Sneum’s loyalty, Christmas Moeller continued to vent his fury about his fellow countryman’s imprisonment in meetings with the British later that week. On 27 July, M.L. Clarke, secretary of the Danish Committee and an official in the Northern Division of the Foreign Office, made a list of Moeller’s grievances, as they had been told a few days earlier to his confidant, Christopher Warner, the committee’s chairman and another key figure in the Northern Division. The grievances included the controversial treatment of Sneum:

By this last remark, Warner meant that he had originally believed that Sneum’s fate lay in the SOE chief’s hands, since he thought Sneum had been an SOE agent. When he made further enquiries, however, he learned that Sneum had in fact been an SIS agent, which explained the necessity for further investigation.

But Christmas Moeller wasn’t prepared to wait around while the matter was ‘looked into’ by the appropriate British department, and demanded the right to visit Sneum in Brixton Prison. He had known the young man for years through Tommy’s uncle, Axel, who was also a politician. Fully aware of Sneum’s efforts on behalf of the British since the German occupation, Christmas Moeller trusted him completely. When he was granted permission for the visit, he was accompanied by his wife Gertrud, who brought jam as a gift for her compatriot. The couple both expressed their surprise at Sneum’s haggard appearance. Tommy looked so much older than the young man they had known during happier times in Denmark.

Christmas Moeller outlined his efforts to secure Tommy’s release, and claimed that neither SOE nor SIS seemed willing to take any responsibility for his imprisonment.

Sneum was baffled. ‘Sorry, sir, but I don’t know what you mean by all these initials.’

‘Don’t you know who you were working for?’ asked the Free Danish leader, clearly shocked.

‘I just assumed it was British Intelligence,’ replied Tommy.

So Christmas Moeller had to explain the difference between the Special Operations Executive, which had facilitated his own escape from Denmark a couple of months earlier, and the Secret Intelligence Service, which had dropped Tommy into Denmark. He also had to break the news that the man who had recruited Sneum no longer had any influence, and that SOE was now the only service running active agents in Denmark. As far as Christmas Moeller could see, Sneum had been the victim of a political game, but he assured the young man that he wasn’t going to stop bothering the British until they let him out.

Even the tenacious Christmas Moeller probably didn’t understand the size of his task. To release Tommy would require the British to defy the Princes, who were still arguing that Tommy was a traitor. And as SOE relied on the Princes for the vast majority of their information from Nazi-occupied Copenhagen they didn’t want to offend them.

Decades later, the celebrated Danish resistance hero Stig Jensen wrote to Tommy to confirm that Danish Intelligence had made Sneum pay for his threat to expose Swedish spies in Germany and Poland:

The smear campaign against Sneum used whatever tools it found handy. At the end of summer 1942, Mogens Hammer sent the British the disturbing news that a German-run spy was operating in London. Of course, one of the last things Tommy had done in Denmark had been to instruct Duus Hansen to link up with Hammer, the SOE radio operator, in order to strengthen the resistance network in Copenhagen. So it was thanks to Sneum that Hammer was now up and running. Yet his important communication, relayed via Sweden, could have been the final nail in Tommy’s coffin.

On 1 September 1942, Commander John Senter, director of SOE’s Security Section, wrote to Dick White of MI5:

The hunt fo that traitor was on, and it wouldn’t be long before Sneum’s name found a prominent place on the list of suspects. The shadow of the noose loomed large again. Tommy needed a friend like never before.

W
HEN BRITAIN’S FIRST AGENT into Denmark was frog-marched into the governor’s office at Brixton Prison, he feared yet another interrogation. Instead, he was astonished to see Squadron Leader Otto Gregory of the Air Ministry and SIS sitting in the governor’s chair. Mr Benke had apparently been told to make himself scarce.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing here, Sneum?’ The dashing squadron leader looked genuinely baffled.

‘I’ve been here for months. Where the hell have you been?’

‘My dear boy, I had no idea you were here. I’ve been away.’

It was true: Gregory had been on SIS business in Russia, and there had been plenty of changes in his absence. On his return he had discovered that a message had been left for him at the RAC Club. He had heard about Tommy’s imprisonment and here he was, though he had to admit that he was powerless to do very much. From what he could gather, the ‘security people’ still weren’t satisfied with some of Tommy’s answers, and it would suit the political climate to keep him exactly where he was. Gregory suggested that it might even be safer for Sneum to stay inside.