Hitler's Spy (13 page)

By curious coincidence, two days later the IRA detonated a string of bombs in the West End, the worst of which injured twelve people on Oxford Street. Ironically, no German bombs would fall on
London for another seven months, and with Hitler still on a Phoney War footing the Abwehr censured the
Republicans for targeting civilians. Ultimately the Emerald Isle proved
a veritable mare’s nest for the German intelligence service. In an effort to re-establish wireless links with the IRA, one Ernst Weber-Drohl was dispatched with a new transmitter and $14,000.
An improbable agent – as a younger man he had toured Irish fairgrounds as a wrestler-cum-weightlifter, but spoke with a thick Austrian accent and was now over sixty – Weber-Drohl
dropped his klamotten in the Irish Sea while landing in the midst of a violent gale. Having struggled ashore in County Sligo, he was swiftly arrested for illegal entry and interned for the
duration.

Neither Sam Stewart nor the circus strongman proved useful to MI5. Determined to remain neutral, the Irish government denied British intelligence officers access to Weber-Drohl at Mountjoy
prison. Meanwhile Owens failed to provide any useful dope on Stewart, and over the course of several weeks a microphone placed in his Aldgate office failed to pick up any incriminating
conversations. In all likelihood, Owens had tipped his fellow traitor the wink.

Blissfully unaware of Snow’s duplicity, MI5 lavished time and money on setting up a London office for the Abwehr. In order to monitor activities there, Robertson found Owens a
‘business partner’ in the form of William Rolph, a retired MI5 officer of Swiss origin, lately employed as manager of Hatchett’s, a popular restaurant on Piccadilly famed for its
excellent breakfasts. Rolph duly incorporated Aeroplastics, a firm notionally engaged in battery exports to Belgium, and rented basement premises on Sackville Street, a smart Georgian thoroughfare
behind Regent Street, and convenient for the MI5 office at St James’s. Rent was thirty shillings a week; Rolph, somewhat down on his luck, received a pound a day.

Additional funds were earmarked for redecoration, verisimilitude dictating that Aeroplastics should appear to be a genuine trading company and turning a profit. Owens was tickled to
death. As well as paying the rent at Marlborough Road, British intelligence would now foot the bill for his new London stelle.

Dandy.

Fortunately, plans to install the short-wave transmitter at Sackville Street were postponed after Snow again cast doubt on his own reliability. On 8 March, a Friday, Robertson received a call
from his troublesome star agent and agreed to a meeting in Richmond that evening. Accompanied by his young wife Joan, Tar drove down by car, arriving at a pub called The Barn at six-thirty. Still
dressed in uniform, he sent Joan inside to fetch Snow and Lily. Ten minutes later Owens emerged with the women and agreed to follow Robertson to a rendezvous point closer to Richmond.

‘I drove slowly in the direction of Richmond waiting for Snow to catch me up,’ Tar reported afterwards. ‘I noticed a car following me, the number of which unfortunately I did
not take. I stopped, and the car which was following me stopped immediately behind. The young man driving it got out and went round to the back of the car, ostensibly to look at the petrol tank,
but it was quite obvious that he was looking at my car through the back window. In order to get rid of him I decided to go on, and accordingly went up Richmond Hill and into Richmond Park. The car
did not follow.’

Owens had clocked the same man inside The Barn, seated by a window. Joan, too, noticed the mysterious stranger. ‘During the time that my wife was in there, this young man kept a steady
watch on the car park and the road, and left some little time before Snow and Lily and my wife, leaving about two inches of beer in the bottom of his glass. This struck my wife as being most
curious.’

After discussing the incident with Guy Liddell and a Special Branch officer, Robertson concluded that the entire episode was yet another stunt, intended to demonstrate that sinister enemy agents
were at large in London. ‘Snow’s reaction to the
whole affair was one of complete calm, which made me wonder at the time if he was not double-crossing
me.’

Kein glas bier
.

A week later, another busy Richmond hostelry provided the venue for a far more significant contact. Situated on Friars Stile Road, The Marlborough was a large, popular pub a convenient
stone’s throw from Agent Snow’s comfortable town house, and afforded the twin advantages of a sizeable beer garden and incognitious crowds. There, on the afternoon of 16 March, Owens
fell into conversation with a happy-go-lucky commercial traveller named Dick Moreton. Somewhat taller than Snow, with slicked-back hair, large eyes and a dimpled chin, Moreton seemed every inch the
gregarious bon vivant, conversing in loud, extrovert tones, and professing to drink nothing but gin fizz.

For his part, Owens passed himself off as Thomas Wilson, a wealthy businessman dealing in gold, diamonds and general investment capital. ‘I had a few drinks with him, for which he refused
to let me pay,’ Moreton recollected. ‘After a few minutes’ conversation he said to me, “I can see you have travelled a great deal.” He then discussed at some length
the countries in which I had travelled, and he himself appeared to know intimately, including America, Canada and Germany.’

Cosmopolitan men of the world, the two discovered a shared love of exotic cuisine such as chilli con carne. What with all the gratis gin fizz, Dick Moreton omitted to mention that his real name
was Walter Dicketts, and that his broad experience on the international circuit included jail time for fraud in France and Austria, as well as a crook’s tour of America, where his collar had
been felt in Chattanooga and Detroit.

Born in 1899, the son of a city stockbroker’s clerk, Dicketts had obtained a junior commission in the Royal Naval Air Service towards the end of the Great War, followed by a period in an
air-intelligence department (AI1), sifting material gathered
for the Paris Peace Conference. Next, in 1919, came an undercover assignment for MI6 in Holland. Acting on
personal instructions from Sir Mansfield Cumming, Dicketts shadowed the illicit resurrection of the Fokker aircraft company and was successful in locating a large cache of aero engines near
Amsterdam. Or so he said. ‘He often talks of his decorations and of a bad crash,’ noted one authority, ‘of which there is no record.’

Very much a temporary gentleman, back on civvy street Sub-Lieutenant Dicketts fell prey to hard times and bad habits. Still masquerading as a serving officer, in 1921 he was convicted of
defrauding a car-hire company and was soon back in court after bouncing a cheque on Bond Street jewellers Mappin & Webb. Subsequently Dicketts served the first of several prison terms,
punctuated by spells bilking widows and tourists on the Continent and a succession of shady escapades in America. Judged to be an expert and ‘very plausible’ travelling criminal by
British detectives, his career touched bottom at Hampshire Assizes in November 1931, when the former spy received eighteen months’ hard labour on thirty-one counts of larceny and fraud. This
remarkable spree ranged from blagging 500 gallons of aviation spirit for a motorboat on the Norfolk Broads to relieving a Manchester landlord of several gramophone records and a brand new suit:
plum-coloured, single-breasted, with permanent turn-up trousers.

To this sorry catalogue the
Police Gazette
could add two failed marriages, and a string of aliases including Richard Blake, Christopher Welfare and Squadron Leader G. A. Norman. In
short, Walter Dicketts was an incorrigible rogue with an unfortunate knack for getting caught. Indeed, by the time ‘Dick Moreton’ attached himself to Owens at The Marlborough in March
1940 he was again on the run from the law, having bounced a £10 cheque on a Birmingham hotel and nimbly skipped bail.

Each man immediately set about inveigling the other. In Dicketts, Owens discerned a potential new sidekick, in financial low water and ripe for exploitation. For the
seasoned confidence trickster, ‘Thomas Wilson’ was just another mark. ‘When he asked me what I did I replied that I was living on my very small means, and that I had proposed a
patent for ready-made mustard in containers similar to toothpaste. Owens immediately said, “That’s an excellent idea, and if my partner agrees I’ll finance it.”’

Squeezable mustard.

Right hot.

Dicketts and his patent held such promise for Owens that the pair reconvened at The Marlborough in the evening, this time joined by their wives. In truth, Kay Dicketts was no more married than
was Lily. She had ‘chorus girl’ looks and a criminal record for shoplifting in Wolverhampton. Despite all these secrets and lies, the quartet became fast friends quite literally
overnight. For the moment, however, Owens was content to remain Thomas Wilson, and revealed nothing of his double life as a top Nazi spy.

‘We spent the evening together at The Marlborough,’ said Dicketts of the wealthy dealer in diamonds and gold, ‘and at ten o’clock he invited us to play darts at his flat.
We stayed until one o’clock the next morning, during which time we consumed a considerable amount of liquor.’

Sober next morning, yet still crazy for squeezable mustard, Owens advanced Dicketts £25 and told Rolph to apply for a patent. Since emergency legislation now prohibited the importation of
batteries from abroad, forcing a swift revision of the Aeroplastics business plan, the mustard idea made sense of a sort. The scheme also chimed with Owens’ long-held ambition of living off
patent royalties without lifting a finger.

Better still, Walter Dicketts just happened to own a seaworthy boat, conveniently berthed in the harbour at Dartmouth.
Though B1A were able to monitor something of the
pair’s developing ‘intimacy’ via hidden microphones at Marlborough Road, Robertson failed to pick up on the fact that mustard-keen newcomer Moreton might be able to connect Owens
with U-boats in the Bristol Channel and the North Sea.

Within days of meeting the two couples took off in the Ford 10 for a long weekend in the West Country, cruising on Dick’s motor launch safe from eavesdropping microphones and living high
on the hog at hotels in Bournemouth and Brixham. Everywhere, it seemed, wealthy Mr Wilson was more than happy to pick up the tab. Explained Dicketts: ‘He gave me the impression that he was so
overburdened with worry, work and responsibility that he had to have a confidant. Taking a liking to me, he tried me out for a fortnight and then started confiding in me.’

While this charade was enacted, the unwanted arrival of ‘Dick Moreton’ into Snow’s irregular orbit paled beside yet another astonishing gaffe, which now threatened to bring
down the entire double-cross system.

Four months earlier MI5 had moved quickly to spike an article proposed by the
Sunday Graphic
, which threatened to reveal that enemy spies might be turned and exploited as double agents.
Inconveniently, the system of wartime censorship in Britain was voluntary, and on 18 March the
Daily Herald
broke ranks to splash a more or less identical story across its back page.
Beneath the arresting headline
SPIES ALLOWED TO BROADCAST FROM BRITAIN – “NEWS” TO MISLEAD ENEMY PUT IN THEIR WAY
, the tabloid’s unnamed ‘radio
correspondent’ laid bare the secret that
‘radio stations operated by enemy agents are still working in this country – by permission of the British Secret
Service.’

The
Herald
’s astonishing scoop left MI5 wondering where the Fourth Estate ended and the Fifth Column began.
‘Britain’s secret radio squad has tracked down dozens
of short-wave broadcasting stations
worked by spies – but not all of them have been silenced. It pays to let them go on sending out their messages. The efforts of
British wireless engineers and technicians have revealed many German secrets – spies and disaffected persons have been allowed to continue their activities until they have implicated their
friends. Members of the radio squad tune in not to German propaganda broadcasts, such as those of Lord Haw-Haw, but to unregistered short-wave stations which transmit in Morse code.’

The article might as well have mentioned Owens by name and printed a picture of the London stelle at 14 Marlborough Road. Ironically, the leak almost certainly stemmed from the Special Branch,
where a number of officers felt deeply aggrieved that the sudden wartime expansion of MI5 had only found room for detectives from Scotland Yard. One of those snubbed was Inspector Bill Gagen, who
still maintained regular contact with Snow despite having been removed from the case.

In a perfect world, all those involved in the murky
Herald
exclusive would have been given a taste of Regulation 18B. However, since recalling unsold copies would serve only to confirm
the truth of the story, the editor received instead a rap on the knuckles from the chief press censor, Rear Admiral George Thomson.

Dicketts, too, suffered a professional setback. Returning from their long weekend in the West Country, Agent Snow arranged to see his new lieutenant at Sackville Street, only to learn from
William Rolph that Colman’s of Norwich already sold mustard in a squeezable tube. ‘Rolph said that it was impossible to proceed with the mustard patent as it was already on the
market,’ carped Dicketts. ‘I was very upset, but Owens assured me that I had nothing to worry about as he could use me in other directions and money was no object.’

If Dicketts is to be believed, Owens chose this moment to reveal his role as a ‘key man’ in the British secret service. It is more likely, though, that this occurred in Dartmouth,
and Owens already knew of Dick’s past in AI1 and MI6. Be that as
it may, Snow now showed Dick his wireless transmitter and disclosed that he was acting as a double
agent. Anxious not to be outdone, Dicketts laid claim to a photographic memory. ‘He asked me what money I required to work for him, and said his last man had his nerve wrecked after a long
third degree by the Gestapo. He instructed me to carry on normal business under his direction as a cover. I was told not to alter my style of living, not to say a word to anyone, and not to move to
any better address than Montague Road.’