Hitler's Spy (28 page)

Plainly a spy, Jakobs was taken to Camp 020. After a short preliminary interrogation, conducted on a wheeled gurney, the truculent German was transferred to the hospital wing at Brixton.
Questioned further, he claimed to have been imprisoned in the concentration camp at Oranienberg and had volunteered to jump over England with the object of making his way to America, where an aunt
resided in Illinois. The story closely resembled that offered up by Kurt Goose, the Brandenburg commando captured in October, and briefly turned as Agent Gander.

‘It is difficult not to be sceptical about these people,’ wrote Liddell. ‘Firstly, it seems almost incredible that, if his story is true, the Germans could imagine he was going
to be of any real
value. Secondly, why did they give him an identity card with no letter prefix? We know that the Germans are extremely crude and sketchy in their methods,
but a clerical error is difficult to believe. Did they intend that Jakobs would be captured, or send him over to test Snow in some way? The Germans must now be wise to the game of collaring an
agent and forcing him to use his wireless set in our interests.’

Liddell was closer to the truth than others in B Division dared to admit, Robertson included. But what the Twenty Committee had no way of knowing was just how many unknown German agents might be
at large in Britain, and which of the agents already turned were still considered reliable by the Abwehr. ‘We could not bring ourselves to believe that we did in fact control the German
system,’ Masterman recalled of this baffling period. ‘Innumerable precautions had to be taken on the assumption that they had several and perhaps many independent agents of whom we had
no knowledge, and that these could be used to check the reports of our own controlled agents.’

Like Jan Willem Ter Braak, still at large in Cambridge with a working Afu transmitter, and living just fifty yards from the local RSLO.

Owens’ credibility was partially restored a week later when he was asked to assist yet another agent in distress, this time Wulf Schmidt. After faithfully transmitting from England for
sixteen weeks, and in the process winning an Iron Cross, verisimilitude dictated that the V-man codenamed Leonhardt should run short of money. Since Josef Jakobs was missing in action, along with
£497 meant for Schmidt, Wohldorf again asked Johnny to help a friend in distress.
‘Please send hundred pounds to Mr Williamson, Radlett General Delivery, with fictitious addressor.
Mail letter in London on Feb 11th.’

Schmidt was still residing with the Robertson family at Round Bush House, and received the money safely. For Jakobs,
however, the breaks remained bad. ‘He was
manifestly unemployable as a double agent,’ recalled Tin-Eye Stephens, ‘and blank as a tome of reference in the living counter-espionage library at 020. There was no good reason why he
should continue to live.’

Lord Swinton, at least, would be pleased.

As these various strands unravelled Walter Dicketts set out for Lisbon, sailing from Liverpool on 4 February on board the SS
Cressado
, a cargo steamer bound for Gibraltar as part of
convoy OG.52. As a commercial traveller in ‘sardines, corks, fruit and wolfram’, verisimilitude dictated that Dick should travel steerage; the Little Man would follow on
Valentine’s Day, by air. If the
Cressado
was hardly the
Queen Mary
, the long sea voyage at least allowed Dicketts time to rehearse his mission as disgraced air force officer
Jack Brown – and set up a profitable card school. ‘He is a first-class cribbage player,’ an observer told B1A, ‘and spent most of his time playing with the chief
steward.’

No doubt giddy on gin fizz, Dick also dropped hints that he was an important government agent, whose business in Lisbon was strictly hush-hush. ‘As a matter of fact he got the captain to
give him £10, for which he gave him a cheque from Barclays Bank.’

Back in London, Owens continued to clamour for high-grade intelligence and was rewarded with a counterfeit contact inside the War Office. The lucky officer concerned was an urbane lieutenant
named Richardson, then acting as a personal assistant to General Sir Robert Haining, Vice-Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Richardson carried off his role with no little aplomb, joining Owens,
Lily and Kay for a meal at the Anchor Hotel in Shepperton, then reporting back in bemused fashion to Gilbert Lennox, a deception specialist.

‘Owens seemed very keen to get my address and telephone number but I managed to avoid this. He appeared to be well-known at The Anchor, and at dinner there appeared to be no
secret about the fact that he was an agent, or the fact that Mrs Celery’s husband was also an agent. Several toasts were drunk to Owens, wishing him luck on his forthcoming
travels abroad. Apparently the hotel people at The Anchor had been instrumental in obtaining a maid for Lily, and, in turn, they were trying to get a nursemaid through him.’

Richardson found Owens’ table manners sorely lacking. ‘Owens has one peculiar habit. He only wears his false teeth when he is eating, and has a sort of sleight-of-hand trick of
slipping the dentures into his mouth under cover of a handkerchief before a meal.’

True to form, Owens attempted to suborn Richardson, inviting him for cocktails the following Tuesday. The young lieutenant politely demurred. ‘I excused myself, as I thought I had probably
done enough.’

Passing on his report to Robertson, Lennox observed that young Richardson seemed wasted in a Whitehall posting.

As Dicketts steamed onwards to Lisbon, Owens put the frighteners on Kay. ‘He told her that she could expect me to be away for six months or longer,’ Dick groused later, ‘and
that I should be in a situation of great danger the whole time. He painted a very vivid picture of what I might be going through, and how only he could look after me. The poor girl was worried to
distraction.’

With good reason. According to the scheme hatched by Robertson and Dicketts, renegade flyboy ‘Jack Brown’ would reach Lisbon ahead of Owens, meet Rantzau, usurp Snow, and proceed on
to Germany if all seemed well. Regrettably, in war even the best-laid plans seldom survive first contact with the enemy – an aphorism doubly true of U-boats. Convoy OG.52 consisted of thirty
merchant vessels, one of which, the SS
Canford Chine
, was torpedoed off the west coast of Ireland six days out, with the loss of all hands. Moreover, the need to avoid German bombers
operating from the coast of Brittany
necessitated a long, circuitous Atlantic passage, added to which the convoy encountered bad weather. The result was that the
Cressado
was delayed by a week, triggering panic in Addlestone and Hamburg.

Beside herself with worry, Kay demanded a meeting with Robertson at the Grosvenor Hotel. ‘She was of course very worried because she had not heard from her husband, and asked me a great
many questions with regard to the possibility of him going into Germany. I said that this rested entirely with Snow and Rantzau, but that I was sure he would not take any unnecessary risks. This
did not altogether convince Mrs Celery.’

When Robertson met Snow for a final briefing they were joined by Felix Cowgill of MI6, whose support was required in Lisbon. ‘I reminded Owens that he must be ready to discuss his North
Sea trip with Rantzau, and gave him very brief outlines of Summer and Pogo. He is going to complain of the inadvisability of sending agents over here without previously warning him.’ For the
rest, Tar spoke more in hope than expectation. ‘If it was at all possible he was to get information from Rantzau about any impending invasion since this would be of real assistance, as well
as anything relating to secret weapons.’

Ten remarkable months after his last treff with Ritter, Agent Snow finally flew out from Whitchurch on 14 February, posing as a sales agent for a large manufacturing concern. After a long,
anxious flight over a thousand miles of grey Atlantic waves Colonel Johnny touched down at Sintra airport and was faintly astonished to see the field ringed with Axis aeroplanes – Italian
machines decked out in dazzling white, and Lufthansa trimotors adorned with crooked swastikas. Security was tight, with armed Portuguese guards beside each and every aircraft. No doubt Owens wished
he had a pistol of his own. Lisbon was, as Mac had warned, full of rats.

Agent Snow took an antiquated taxi into Lisbon and checked in to the Metropole Hotel, an opulent deco
establishment facing onto the smart Pedro IV Square. Still there was
no sign of Dicketts. Following procedures rehearsed during earlier treffs on neutral ground, Owens left a cryptic note at the Grande Hotel Duas Nacoes, then returned to the Metropole to wait. In
due course instructions came back to stand outside the main entrance at nine o’clock. His nerves winding tighter as the minutes ticked past, Colonel Johnny sought refuge in the hotel bar.

At nine-fifteen Henri Döbler drew up in a grey Opel saloon. Sprawled across the back seat was Major Nikolaus Ritter, gold tooth flashing behind the widest of smiles. As Döbler drove
the two men through the glittering port city, worlds away from the inky blackout of London and Hamburg, Johnny and the Doctor swapped notes on events since their last treff in Antwerp in April
1940. ‘He asked me if I had sent £100 to this Williamson man as arranged,’ recalled Owens. ‘I said that as far as I knew it had been sent. “Well,” he said,
“he is one of my best friends and I don’t want anything to happen to him.” The conversation then turned to more general matters, such as conditions in England, and Lily and the
baby. I showed him some photographs, and he said his wife wanted to be remembered to me.’

This, at least, was how Snow reported their happy reunion to MI5. In reality, with the London stelle blown wide open and everything to lose, Owens delivered Dicketts to Ritter on a plate. In a
comfortable apartment on the Rua dos Sapateiros, a bottle of Scotch loosened the Little Man’s tongue with remarkable speed. ‘I built Dicketts up,’ confessed Owens. ‘Told
Rantzau all about his past history.’

Initially Ritter was not best pleased. ‘Owens immediately told me that his sub-agent was working for British intelligence. I asked why, if that were the case, he had taken the risk of
bringing Dicketts to Lisbon. Owens replied that he dared not break off the relationship, as to do so would be regarded as a sign of guilt.’ Ritter noted that Johnny was ‘abnormally
difficult’ to
interrogate, and told his story in a confused, disjointed and reluctant manner. ‘Owens added that he had first met Dicketts approximately ten weeks
before in a public house.’

Kein glas bier
.

Interrogated by Allied intelligence officers five years later, Ritter weaved a narrative which carefully avoided any hint of triple-cross. ‘If, as Owens said, a British agent had been in
touch with him for ten weeks, it was practically certain that the authorities already knew enough to arrest him. Moreover, his sub-agents might already be implicated, and perhaps under arrest,
including Schmidt. I told Owens plainly that I would have to consider if it would be safe to allow his return to England, seeing how much he knows, and that I should have no difficulty in
liquidating his case promptly in Lisbon. Owens was clearly very much frightened by this threat.’

No Iron Cross for Colonel Johnny. Nevertheless, with Operation Lena long abandoned, and a brand new mission in mind, Ritter tempered his ire with mercy. ‘In view of our long acquaintance I
was satisfied that Owens was telling the truth so far as he knew it. He said that despite Dicketts’ connection with British intelligence, he could, if properly handled, be recruited by us.
For Dicketts was an extremely greedy man.’

A bemused Abwehr subordinate later summarised the situation rather more succinctly. ‘It was all a big tangle.’

Jack Brown, so it seemed, was already dead. Word now reached Lisbon that the
Cressado
had been sunk by a U-boat, with only a handful of survivors landed on the island of Madeira. Ritter
made discreet enquiries, and after satisfying himself that the steamer was still afloat handed Owens a generous bounty of £5,000. Taxed by Robertson on this payment some time later, Owens
spoke of a reward for his ongoing loyalty. In truth the vast pile of dollars and sterling was meant as bait for Walter Dicketts, the ‘extremely greedy’ British secret service agent due
in port any day.

Ritter, however, was a man in a hurry. Desperate for news of the
Cressado
, Owens checked in with the British Embassy, where Richman Stopford was now head of
station for MI6. The result was a flurry of anxious telegrams, one of which Owens sent directly to Lily at Homefields.
‘Dick not arrived. Worried. Can you help? See that Kay doesn’t
break down. I will cable as soon as he arrives.’

Effectively a hostage in Lisbon, Owens joined Ritter for a refresher course on sabotage at a hillside villa in fashionable Estoril. There, in a well-kept garden, a technician named Rudolf
demonstrated how to use a wristwatch as a timing device, as well as a range of novel explosive devices disguised as batteries, flashlights and fountain pens. Ritter rejected an example of the
latter, patiently explaining that while Pelikan might be a fine German brand, V-men operating in England might be best advised to carry Montblanc or Parker.

‘I hadn’t spotted that!’ said Johnny approvingly, nodding.

Impressive though this was, Ritter’s belated grasp of elementary fieldcraft came too late for the unlucky Lena agents dispatched to England bearing chunks of German sausage, torches
stamped ‘Made in Bohemia’ and poorly forged ID papers bearing 7s crossed in the Continental style.

There was more. As well as a brand new code book, based on
Warning From the West Indies
by William Macmillan, Ritter dropped dark hints of arcane new developments in chemical warfare,
against which British respirators would offer no protection. Poison gas and Pelikans aside, Owens undertook little if any useful work for MI5 while in Portugal, being laid low, so he said, by
Lisbon Fever. ‘I was ill at that time and in bed,’ he swore later, complaining also of duodenal ulcers. ‘My temperature was 104. I was in such a state that I couldn’t carry
on. If I thought I could go out I saw people outside. At other times they came to my room. I could only just manage to crawl around.’