The Hornet's Sting (17 page)

An ugly tension hung in the air for the best part of an hour, until two fresh faces appeared. A gentle-looking giant was first through the door, followed by another man who looked as though he enjoyed a good argument. Reginald Victor Jones, head of Britain’s Scientific Intelligence and a personal adviser to Winston Churchill, had just arrived with Charles Frank, his assistant. Gregory, who had made the decision to call in the experts, brought up the rear.

Unbeknown to Sneum, the interrogator had believed far more of the story than he had allowed to show. As a German Jew, he was no stranger to the concept of being doubted for no good reason. But while he had a natural tendency to side with the underdog, he knew that some of Sneum’s claims had to be verified by scientific experts.

Jones and Frank were just the men to have alongside him when the remains of Tommy’s films were examined. Jones, in particular, had a calm aura about him, which helped diffuse some of the hostility still in the room. Sneum recalled: ‘He treated everyone as though they had some good in them, and it was his job to find it.’ Soon Jones was studying the precious surviving images as if in a world of his own, with Frank and Sneum looking over his shoulder. Tommy explained: ‘They could see what it was but they couldn’t really make out the detail because of the damage done, so I tried to explain what was shown. I wasn’t an expert but he made me feel like I was. Then we noticed a few clearly definable images. It was an exciting moment, and the scientists eagerly went to work.’ They traced the shapes on to clean paper, hoping to form a clearer view of what the devices could be. From frame to frame, a subtle revolving action could be detected. The huge sensors at the center of each image appeared to be encyng towards the sky, which allowed Sneum to write in his wartime report: ‘One specialist on this subject, Dr R.V. Jones, got the film which showed this apparatus actually functioning.’

As Jones examined the film further, his face lit up. Even Tommy noticed the sparkle in his clear blue eyes. ‘Freya radar,’ the scientist announced. ‘Hitler’s latest defense system. We’ve seen aerial photographs of these things from France. But we didn’t know the Germans were using this type of radar in Denmark.’ At last, here was someone who could understand and appreciate the enormity of what Tommy had done for the Allied cause.

It was the latest breakthrough in the intelligence battle against Germany’s formidable scientists. From offices on the upper floors of 54 Broadway—the Secret Intelligence Service building in St. James’s, London—Jones had dedicated all his energies to helping Churchill stay one step ahead of Hitler in the race to develop new technology. The struggle for radar supremacy was crucial to Allied hopes of victory. Only by understanding Nazi advancements in this area could British bombers hope to avoid German night-fighters during raids over the European mainland.

‘These are the first pictures I’ve seen of Freya taken on the ground,’ Jones purred. ‘Moving pictures, that’s a first too. Imagine what he had to go through to get them.’ He looked over at Sneum and said: ‘Our bomber crews will be very grateful.’

For the benefit of Jones and Frank, Tommy told the dramatic story of his escape yet again. Gregory and his colleagues listened just as intently as the newcomers, checking for inconsistencies with the Dane’s previous accounts, and in case they had missed anything which might yet be regarded as suspicious.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Jones when Tommy had finished. ‘I think we have to accept that what we have here is not a double-agent but a man who has demonstrated bravery of the highest order.’ He later confirmed Sneum’s account of events that day in his book
Most Secret War
:

Gregory agreed that the valour Tommy had shown in order to bring the British this precious intelligence had been truly exceptional. So much so that Sneum later claimed: ‘Otto Gregory told me that if I had shown such bravery in a combat situation, I would probably have been the Britmended for a Victoria Cross. He said he thought I deserved one for what I had done.’

While such an accolade was gratifying to hear, Tommy was already thinking of his colleagues back home, and how he could help them. His stock had suddenly risen so dramatically that he sensed it was the right moment to renew his plea for a Sunderland sea-plane. His wartime report stated the following:

Perhaps Tommy was a victim of his own success. Although his audience showed a pleasing enthusiasm for the plan, they were far more interested in what he had achieved (and what he might achieve in the future) as a spy than in any friends he had back home. Gregory would doubtless have made all the right noises about seeing what he could do to get the Danish pilots picked up. But he would already have been consumed with other, more pressing questions. Who in Britain should be granted access to Sneum’s gold-mine of intelligence? And how could one British covert organization recruit such a valuable man without the other British covert organization knowing anything about it?

Being from the Air Ministry, Gregory was attached to the Secret Intelligence Service (or MI6, as it is more commonly known nowadays, the branch of the British Secret Service responsible for overseas security), rather than the newly formed Special Operations Executive, which had been created to cause chaos behind enemy lines in occupied Europe. So he and his masters in SIS set about trying to keep Sneum and Pedersen to themselves, at least until a further plan of action could be devised.

But none of this potentially damaging interdepartmental rivalry would become clear to Tommy and Kjeld until much later. Having made his fresh request for the pick-up of his colleagues back home, Tommy just wanted to get out of the Royal Patriotic School and find his way into the thick of the wartime action.

His hopes were raised when Gregory, brandishing his Air Ministry credentials, cut straight through the red tape and released both newly arrived Danes immediately. Sneum and Pedersen were escorted to a hotel in central London, and waited to see what would happen next. At least they were free.

The following day, however, Gregory turned up at the hotel looking worried. He said they would have to go back to Battersea to ‘take care of a few formalities.’ When they arrived, it was clear that they were at the center of a tug of war. Sneum explained: ‘The commanding officer at the school was furious because we had been taken away without his permission. We had to go back and sleep one more night there while it was all cleared up. So then it was Gregory’s turn to be furious, and I was just as angry. But I controlled myself and just told everyone that I was sure it would be perfectly OK in the end.’

As he lay on a rock-hard bed, Sneum wasn’t sure what to make of the British any more. He mused later: ‘It seemed to me that for the most part the British were disorganized, deeply incompetent, and hostile to all foreigners, even those foreigners who wanted to help them. With a combination like that, I thought it was no wonder that the G taks looked like winning the war. But the British never know when they have lost, so they never give in.’

C
UTHBERT EUAN CECIL RABAGLIATI, head of MI6 Denmark and Holland, was small and slightly built, but instantly recognisable as a character of fearsome intensity. He had grey-red hair, thinning and slicked back, a sharp moustache and a noticeable dent in his head. The depression, large and circular, like a volcanic crater, was visible thanks to his receding hairline. Below it, a silver plate had been inserted to prevent the skull from caving in completely. The plate’s owner, as usual, was impeccably dressed in the uniform of a British officer. When he appeared from behind his huge desk inside 54 Broadway, his shiny black shoes gleamed brightly, as if to compensate for the fact that they were almost too tiny to encase adult feet.

Rabagliati spoke in the clipped accent of an English aristocrat, even though his family roots were Scots-Italian. When he met people he didn’t know, he preferred to call himself Colonel Ramsden, a name plain enough to be soon forgotten. Although ‘Ramsden’ had joined the SIS from the Ministry of Information, the forty-nine-year-old’s past was far more colourful than that of most civil servants. He had shown tremendous personal courage in the First World War as a fighter pilot in what was then the Royal Flying Corps, becoming the first British ace to shoot down a German plane in the new form of warfare known as ‘aerial combat.’ He did so by manoeuvring alongside the enemy aircraft and shooting the pilot with a pistol. On another occasion, when he himself was shot down, he survived in no-man’s-land for days before crawling to safety.

Rabagliati often flew behind enemy lines and once noticed a substantial build-up of German troops opposite a weak point in the British line. He landed in a field on the British side of the trenches and informed the relevant officers immediately. To his astonishment and fury, they hardly seemed to care, as if they had seen too much carnage already to worry about the fresh threat. The infantrymen were more interested in his plane, still a battlefield rarity in those brutal days of bayonets and trenches. Rabagliati had to use all his tenacity to make sure the war-weary officers reacted swiftly enough to his intelligence to avert a crisis.

It was that kind of initiative and bravery which earned him the Military Cross, the Air Force Cross and six mentions in dispatches. And his courage also won the lasting respect of the enemy, a fact he used to his advantage when the Great War was over. During the 1920s and 1930s, he managed to build up important contacts among the best pilots in Germany. When he went into the insurance business, one of his main clients was Jauch and Hubener in Hamburg.

Hooked on the adrenalin of speed and danger, Rabagliati found his peacetime fix in motor-racing, and drove in the Double Twelve Hours race at Brooklands. There, on 10 May 1930, disaster struck on the notorious banked corner as he pushed his car and body to the limits of their endurance. He clipped another vehicle at 160 kilometers per hour and his co-driver, who had doubled as his mechanic, was killed. Rabagliati himself, having suffered devastating head injuries, was almost left for dead. Then someone noticed he was still breathing, pulled him out of the wreckage and got him into an ambulance. In hospital surgeons patched him up ed the reerted the plate in his skull, though without much optimism. He spent two weeks in a coma before stunning the nurses by opening his eyes. With his first words after returning to the land of the living he ordered a bottle of champagne.

Though Rabagliati’s career in the Ministry of Information was never going to provide a similar buzz to motor-racing, the SIS offered some respite from day-to-day routine as they began to consult him on German matters. Powerful figures at MI6 soon decided they could use a man of Rabagliati’s strength and style on a more regular basis, so he was invited to join even before Churchill declared war on Germany. Unsurprisingly, he accepted immediately.

When Britain entered hostilities, Rabagliati sent his third wife Beatrix and her two sons to South Africa for their own safety. Then he moved into a flat in St. James’s to be near his new office, with only his black Bentley and Hotchkiss sports car for company. Before long, though, he consoled himself with a new infatuation—an SIS secretary called Joan Duff. She was twenty years his junior, over six feet tall and determined to wear high heels. When they walked into London’s top restaurants together Joan looked almost twice Euan’s height, but he didn’t seem to care, displaying a confidence that could never be diminished by his physical limitations.

Back at 54 Broadway he soon became the SIS liaison officer for Holland and Denmark, a strange appointment since he spoke neither Danish nor Dutch. The chief of SIS, Stewart Menzies, and his experienced deputy, Claude Dansey, must have seen other exceptional qualities in Rabagliati, however, for he now ran both departments, which were known collectively as ‘A2.’

Without an effective Danish agent, Rabagliati had been waiting for suitable candidates to arrive from the occupied country. So when Flight Lieutenant Gregory called in late June with news of two interesting possibilities, Rabagliati ordered them to be sent directly to his flat at 5 St. James’s Street, above a hat shop. Next he requested the assistance of a man who passed as Broadway’s linguist, a certain Major Thornton, who seemed to have no defined position in the SIS hierarchy, nor even much flare for languages. His job was to assess the linguistic ability of potential new agents and to translate for chiefs of section like Rabagliati. However, since he spoke only very poor German, he was scarcely up to either task.