The Hornet's Sting (8 page)

Three days later, just before dawn, Tommy set off again with his shotgun and Movikon, bagging some ducks and rabbits on his way north. Would he too know what it was like to become prey before the day was out? All his life, he had been taught to suppress his fear. Now, though, as he approached the installation in a wide loop, he was finding it harder than ever to hold his nerve.

About fifty meters from the radar station, on a small, natural mound, stood a water tower, which was often used by the Nazis as a lookout point. However, ‘I thought I might still be able to reach it unnoticed, because the trees came right up to the tower on one side,’ Tommy said later. The installation was crawling with Germans, but there was one place the guards wouldn’t be looking: ‘Their blind spot was at the foot of the water tower itself,’ Tommy remembered. ‘When you are up in the tower, you are not going to be looking directly below you for the enemy, in your own area. You are going to be looking out to sea for ships or aircraft. It wasn’t easy for them to look down anyway, because they had fortified the water tower like the wall of an old castle.’

As he crouched behind the trees, Tommy could see the outlines of guards moving in the tower and could even hear them talking and laughing. Although they were only silhouettes, he felt he knew when they turned around because their voices grew fainter. Reckoning they were facing away from him, he sprinted for the base of the tower, grateful that the sandy soil cushioned his approach. But the tone of the German voices above suddenly changed dramatically, as if someone had seen or heard something. Very gingerly, Tommy peered upwards. The guards were looking out in almost all directions—everywhere but directly below. He hardly dared breathe as he carefully reached into his jacket to extract the camera. The sun was still rising, but by now there was enough light in which to work. The radar station was directly in front of him, and it looked even more impressive at close quarters. It was about to demonstrate its intimidating power again.

Tommy heard a faint drone in the sky as a patrolling German Junkers set about its morning business, though he couldn’t pinpoint its position. However, the vast rectangular sensors turned immediately in the direction of the plane’s engines. They had spotted their potential target long before Sneum could see anything specific. Though the giant, revolving structures seemed to be performing a dance just for him in the perfect morning light, Tommy knew he had to pick the right moment to take advantage.

The guards seemed to have calmed down, perhaps assuming that the noise below had been caused by a frightened rabbit. Impatiently, Sneum waited to hear some German voices again, and he was delighted when the majority began to poke fun at whoever had reacted to the sound of his approach. The increasingboisterous conversation was the cover Tommy had desired. He clicked on the Movikon.
Action!
Frame by detailed frame, one of Hitler’s most precious secrets was being stolen from under German noses. The stakes were unbelievably high. This time, there could be no cover story if he was caught; no reasonable explanation for his presence.

As soon as Tommy knew he had what the British wanted, he turned off the camera, tucked it back into his jacket and waited for an opportunity to reterat. The guards in the water tower, who were making the mistake of acting as a unit in everything they did, crossed their perch to survey the north-western horizon. Sneum made a dash for safety, back the way he had come, still scarcely daring to breathe. At any time he knew he might hear the order to stand still and raise his hands. ‘I had already decided to keep running if that happened, even if it meant I risked being shot in the back,’ he recalled. ‘To be captured would have meant torture.’ He ran like the wind and heard nothing but his own deafening gasps for breath. Finally, the last remnants of fear left him. ‘I wanted to shout with joy, but I couldn’t,’ he said.

It wasn’t easy to act normally. No Hollywood film director had ever managed to create anything quite like this. One of the most priceless war movies ever made was safely in the can. The only problem now was how to get Tommy’s precious, undeveloped prize to the British.

T
OMMY DECIDED THE REELS of film were too bulky and therefore too dangerous to be taken to Sweden by Kaj Oxlund. Besides, he had risked too much to see the results of his heroics carried away by another man. Kaj was a highly proficient courier, but the security checks were becoming more thorough between Denmark and Sweden by the day. And that gave Tommy the excuse to insist upon taking his precious intelligence to England directly. His reward for bringing the British such valuable cargo, he believed, would be the chance to fly a Spitfire in the RAF. The chance to test his skills against the Luftwaffe was Tommy’s ultimate target. But there was only silence from Captain Henry Denham in Stockholm on the Sunderland sea-plane Tommy had requested for Danish pilots with similar ambitions. The proposed airlift from Lake Tissoe seemed as far away as ever.

While Tommy wondered about the best way to escape, he realized he had a more immediate problem. As he attempted to liaise with Oxlund, Kjeld Pedersen and Christian Michael Rottboell, he was forced to abort several arranged meetings because he had the impression he was being followed. At first he thought it might just be his imagination, a symptom of the pressure he had begun to feel, but as he made several unorthodox twists and turns through the streets of Copenhagen, the same faces kept reappearing behind him. Three- or four-man teams seemed to be taking it in turns to trail him. But if that were true, Sneum didn’t see why he hadn’t already been dragged away for interrogation. Perhaps the enemy were after bigger fish than a young naval pilot. Maybe the Abwehr had suspected him all along, and thought he could lead them to more important resistance figures. Tommy explained later: ‘I don’t think I was under surveillance every day, and I always managed to shake them off eventually. But just when I had begun to relax for a day or two, they were back.’

At no time was Sneum challenged or arreste, so it occurred to him that the surveillance team, which might report to the Danish police or directly to German Intelligence, were unsure of his role in any subversive activity. If they were still guessing, that was fine with Tommy. Perhaps he had already done enough to confuse them. But he decided that the safest course of action was to get out of Denmark as soon as possible.

As a pilot, he naturally favored an escape plan that would allow him to bring his flying skills into play. There had to be civilian planes in Denmark, aircraft which hadn’t yet been found and disabled by the Nazis. But where? He knew that the British company de Havilland had always employed a representative in Copenhagen. Such a man ought to know the whereabouts of enough civilianowned planes to be able to form a squadron, and it seemed reasonable to ask him for some practical help. But when Tommy tracked down and called the representative, whose name was Thielst, he was distinctly unhelpful. Perhaps he feared his phone line had been tapped by the Nazis. At the end of an awkward conversation, giving the man the benefit of the doubt, Sneum decided to visit him at the de Havilland offices in the city center.

Tommy arrived hoping that Thielst would prove more amenable in person. Unfortunately, the rep remained as evasive and suspicious as he had been on the phone. Tommy’s only success during another tense conversation was to steal a manual from one of the office desks. But his disappointment evaporated when he opened the manual and found inside a list of all the owners of de Havilland planes in Denmark. Now it was just a question of picking the name and address that were most likely to bear fruit. And for this task he decided that two heads were better than one.

Tommy contacted an army pilot called Holger Petersen, an old friend, and they met up in Copenhagen to go through the manual together. They noticed that a Hornet Moth was registered to a lieutenant in the Army Reserve named Poul Andersen, who owned a dairy farm called Elseminde near Odense on the island of Fyn. Petersen—who was known simply as ‘H.P.’—thought he remembered something about the history of this plane. He was convinced that Elseminde had been used as a base by Sylvest Jensen, an aerial photographer who had made a fortune just before the war by snapping people’s houses and charging huge amounts for the souvenir pictures. He also believed there might be more than a Moth on the farm: crucially, there could be stockpiles of fuel, since Jensen had run several planes from Elseminde’s very basic airfield before the arrival of the Germans had brought an abrupt halt to his lucrative enterprise. Although H.P. wasn’t keen to fly to England himself, he seemed to share his friend’s excitement as the bare bones of an audacious plan began to form in their heads. And Tommy could hardly wait to follow up this new lead.

First, however, he had to face new responsibilities, however temporarily. His daughter, Marianne Sneum, had arrived on 14 April. With a mixture of excitement and apprehension, Tommy visited his wife and child in hospital that evening. When he held the infant in his arms and saw the sheer pride on the face of his beaming, exhausted wife, he was surprised by a strange elation he hadn’t known before. But deep down he knew more than ever that the war would soon take him away from his new family. The spying, the adrenalin, the refusal to be bullied during the occupation, these were all factors which consumed him. And he felt no more ready for fatherhood than he had for marriage.

By now, his relationship with Else was beyond repair. He had never been faithful to her, primarily because he liked other women too much—the excitement they bought and the independence they guaranteed. Trips around the country, picking up intelligence reports here and there, had afforded him many opportunities for casual conquests. The thrill that came with danger meant everything to him, though he was never stupid enough or sufficiently smitten to tell the girls his real name. And he was even able to justify his behavior by arguing that his infidelities helped his resistance missions: ‘Talking to the girls was a good way to get the true picture in an area, and to understand where local loyalties lay. And which was better, to stay in a private bedroom or in a hotel, where the Nazis might have a sympathizer working? I used to say I was on business and never let anyone too close. The women never suspected what I was really doing. I gave them other things to think about.’

He always managed to remain detached from romantic and family complications. The desire to escape to Britain with his recently shot films dominated his feelings and thoughts. If that footage could help prevent British planes from being blown out of the sky, it would surely book his passage into the RAF. He already missed flying more than he would ever miss another human being, including his wife and baby. And at least he knew they would be supported by four loving and healthy grandparents, who could offer comfort while he risked his life overseas.

The day after Whitsun 1941, Tommy Sneum took a taxi to Elseminde. He was driven down a track through dusty fields full of turnips and knee-high barley, past a herd of more than a hundred cattle and up to the manicured lawns of an impressive old farmhouse.

The lady who opened the front door seemed surprised at the intrusion.

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ Tommy said. ‘May I speak with Lieutenant Poul Andersen, please?’

‘My husband is officiating at the racecourse,’ the woman said suspiciously, as though this information were common knowledge.

Sneum thanked her and headed straight for the race meeting in Odense. Battling his way through the crowds, he found a steward and asked him to tell Andersen that Flight Lieutenant Nielsen would like to speak with him.

Before long, a very stern-looking man in his forties approached from the main stand, clearly caught somewhere between curiosity and irritation. With slicked-back hair and cheekbones of granite, Poul Andersen cut an intimidating figure. Tommy was glad he hadn’t used his own name, and was suddenly concerned that this might not be the right plane-owner to approach.

Andersen looked even more suspicious of Tommy than his wife had been. ‘You’ll have to make it quick,’ he said impatiently. ‘There’s another race in fifteen minutes.’

‘Then I’ll come straight to the point, sir. I hear you have a few planes on your farm. I’m looking for a bargain now, so that I’ll have something to fly after the war. If the price is right, I’m interested in buying one.’

Andersen shook his head. ‘I have only one left, Nielsen, and I wouldn’t want to sell her. As you say, the war has to end some day.’

Sneum wasn’t about to give up. ‘I could give you cash.’

‘Sorry, Nielsen. She’s not for sale. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must—’
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