The Hornet's Sting (27 page)

When Marianne finally fell asleep, Tommy took Else into another room, and for a while Mr and Mrs Sneum became man and wife again. After so many months of confusion, the passionate Else must have felt that her old life was returning. She was mistaken.

‘We can’t make a habit of this,’ Sneum said as they lay together. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

His wife suggested that once in a while would be better than never, so they arranged to meet on the first Monday of each month near the parliament building, outside Christiansborg Castle. Tommy was relieved to have averted a crisis. Later he confirmed: ‘We met like that a couple of times, and we found the means to go to bed together. After that I didn’t go any more.’

When the police hammered on the door of Carl Jensen’s third-floor flat at 2 Harald Jensensgade, it was Else Sneum they wanted to question.

‘We are e fact tg for your husband,’ they explained. ‘Is he back in Copenhagen?’

The quick-thinking Else promptly produced the evidence which might throw the police off her husband’s trail, just as it had deceived her for so long. ‘This was the last contact I had with him. I received it about three months ago. He is in America.’

The detectives examined the letter. The postmark said 5 July but, intriguingly, the correspondence had been sent from Copenhagen. And, although Sneum had written that he was going to the United States to look for work, there was no hard evidence to suggest he had actually done so.

‘Do you think your son-in-law crossed the Atlantic?’ The question was directed at Mr Jensen, who said he assumed that was exactly what had happened.

It wasn’t clear precisely what had prompted the detectives’ visit. Had Else’s sister been indiscreet after Tommy’s impromptu visit, or was the timing merely a coincidence? Either way, Else must have feared for her husband’s safety that day.

O
NE EVENING TOWARDS the end of October, Emmy kept a discreet vigil for Tommy’s return to St. Annaegade and called him straight into her ground-floor flat. She explained that she had been seeking the company of some of her husband’s German-officer friends, as Tommy had suggested. Some of them were administrators, others worked in intelligence. When she showed her face in the right hotels, they assumed she was lonely after her separation from her husband, and would invite her out to dinner, sometimes three or four of them together. Emmy would tell them her fears, and confide how much the war was getting her down, because sometimes it looked as though it would never end.

The previous night she had dined with two officers, one of whom she believed was attached to the Abwehr. ‘She told me that her husband might have mentioned the Abwehr connection, but I think this German had been one of her lovers in the past,’ explained Tommy. But Sneum was more interested in what the German had said than in his level of intimacy with Emmy. For when she had asked how long the war was likely to last, the officer had replied: ‘Since you hate this war so much, you may soon have our scientists to thank.’

‘It may have been nothing,’ Emmy told Tommy as she recounted the conversation. ‘Perhaps just some vague boast.’

Emmy had asked her German friend what he meant, but the other officer sitting at their table had looked uncomfortable and quickly changed the subject.

Sneum was anxious to get to the bottom of this casual remark as soon as possible. He decided to have Christophersen send Rabagliati an account of the conversation, so that the British could interpret it as they saw fit. In the meantime, he would send Mrs Valentin back into action.

‘Emmy,’ he said bluntly, ‘you must attach yourself to this man in any way you see fit.’

She looked surprised by the suggestion, but Sneum ignored any hint of indignation that she might have wanted to convey. ‘She told herself she did it for the causebut she liked doing it anyway,’ suggested Tommy mischievously in his later years.

The tension between Sneum and Christophersen was rising by the day. Their radio transmissions were tortuous, and not once had they received a reassuring word from Britain. With no contact from London, there was no proof that Rabagliati was receiving their intelligence.

Christophersen continued to show signs of losing his nerve completely. As far as Sneum was concerned, someone who looked too nervous to blend into the Copenhagen scenery was a liability who would get them both caught if something wasn’t done soon. Christophersen was no help with the communication problems either, continuing to blame the equipment while Sneum increasingly blamed the operator. Sneum recalled:

Just as worrying for both men was the suspicion they shared that their transmissions to Britain had not been successful. Something needed to be done, otherwise it was likely that much of Tommy’s work would go to waste.

One lunchtime during the second week in November, Christophersen took an irate Sneum to a smoke-filled bar in central Copenhagen and led him towards a young man who was sitting alone in a dimly lit corner. After looking anxiously around the bar and then threateningly into the seated man’s eyes, Sneum pulled up a chair. Already livid that he had been led into the company of a complete stranger without any warning, Sneum was speechless when Christophersen said: ‘I want you to meet my brother, Thorbjoern.’

For Christophersen, this meeting was like life insurance. Tommy realized that if he tried to liquidate Sigfred, the radio man would quickly be missed. Others within his family might also know of Sneum’s threats. ‘The introduction of Thorbjoern changed things,’ remembered Sneum. ‘To kill a man you were working with on security grounds was one thing. But to kill a couple of people was too much. Thorbjoern was innocent; and then there might have been other parties to deal with, too.’

Seeing Sneum’s face darken, Christophersen defended his decision to involve his family in the operation. He explained that Thorbjoern could be extremely useful, because he worked for an electrical communications company in Copenhagen that was closely associated with the famous Bang and Olufsen. It was called Gyberg and Jensen. Supporting his brother, Thorbjoern then told Sneum how fiercely anti-German his colleagues were, although no one dared to say as much in public. Even the directors, Werner Gyberg and Robert Jensen, were said to be resistance sympathizers. And from his own dealings with Gyberg, the twenty-two-year-old Thorbjoern felt he could be trusted. It was through his boss that Thorbjoern had heard of a brilliant radio technician, a man knowledgeable enough in the field of communications to have become Bang and Olufsen’s chief engineer. His name was Lorens Arne Duus Hansen, and he ws said to build his own transmitters for fun. Obviously, this man could be the solution to their communications problems.

‘How do you know about the radio?’ hissed Tommy.

‘I told him everything, Sneum.’ Christophersen was unrepentant. ‘He needs to know in order to brief Gyberg and Duus Hansen.’

Sneum fixed his eyes on the younger brother. ‘If anyone is going to talk to this Duus Hansen, it will be me.’ Then, out of anger and because he felt it might help him regain some control over the situation, he issued a new threat, though he knew deep down he couldn’t carry it out: ‘If you say a word about this meeting to anyone, I’ll kill both of you.’

Sigfred, feeling protective of his brother, accused Sneum of overreacting, and claimed his constant threats were putting the mission at risk. The implication that it was Tommy who had begun to show signs of irrational behavior under pressure, rather than Sigfred, was one provocation too many. To be told that he was losing his grip by someone as nervous as Christophersen seemed so outrageous to Tommy that he became incensed, but he managed to leave before succumbing to the temptation to silence his partner immediately and pemanently.

As he said goodbye to his brother and returned to Kaj Oxlund’s apartment alone, Sigfred Christophersen must have sensed the danger he was in. Back in the flat, when the phone rang he forgot protocol and foolishly picked up the receiver. It was Tulle, Oxlund’s estranged wife. She didn’t recognize the stranger’s voice on the other end of the line, and her suspicions cannot have been eased when Christophersen told her she had dialled the wrong number and slammed down the hand-set. Tulle had lived at the apartment for ten years and thought it unlikely that she had made a mistake. When she tried again, there was no answer. She decided that as soon as she had time, she would visit the flat in person to solve the mystery of the stranger’s voice, confront Kaj and try to sort out their differences.

Fearing such a visit, or perhaps a more sinister one from the Abwehr, Sigfred Christophersen must have decided that he could take no more. He opened Oxlund’s writing desk, took a bundle of cash from the funds Sneum had collected, and left as quickly as his long legs would carry him.

From that moment, Colonel Rabagliati’s men were at war—with each other. The only thing they had in common was that they both needed effective radio communication with England. And they both knew where the key to that lay.

T
ROUBLED AS TOMMY WAS by Christophersen’s disappearance, another development soon took priority. For on Tuesday, 25 November 1941, Denmark signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in Berlin. It was a move that incensed not only Danish communists but most moderate citizens who feared that Germany’s next step would be to force Denmark to take action against her Jewish nationals. At 2.00 p.m. the news was broadcast that the agreement had been signed, and almost immediately a large group of students gathered in front of the King’s Palace in Copenhagen to demonstrate during the changing of the guard. They sang patriotic Danish songs with great passion and chanted ‘Down with Scavenius’, a reference to he Foreign Minister who had just signed the pact.

Over the bridge in Christianshavn, Tommy Sneum heard the commotion and went straight to the palace to watch the events unfold. This was, after all, the first substantial public gathering openly to defy the Germans since the occupation had begun. Understandably nervous, Danish policemen began to ready themselves for action under the watchful eye of their German puppet-masters. At this moment Sneum was confronted in the square by Captain Volle Gyth, the lowest-ranking Prince.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Gyth hissed. ‘If anyone recognizes you here, you’ll be arrested. Don’t you realize, you’ll risk all our lives.’

Sneum, who thought the older man was being melodramatic, mocked Gyth’s fear. ‘We only live once,’ he replied. ‘And you’ve got to die some time.’

The police began to move in and demanded that the students leave the vicinity of the palace. The uniformed constables drew their batons to leave the students in no doubt about what would happen if they didn’t comply. The demonstrators moved on, but only to where the Rigsdag and the Foreign Office were situated. Tommy followed at a safe distance and saw more sympathizers joining the throng. After a further stand-off, the police drove the demonstrators back, but the mass of angry young Danes began to march down Copenhagen’s main shopping street, the Stroeget, towards City Hall. On the way, they passed a fashionable restaurant, where a German officer assumed the passing crowd was on the street to celebrate the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact. Arrogantly, he marched onto the restaurant’s balcony to accept their applause with a Nazi salute. Spontaneously, the demonstrators picked up whatever missiles they could find and began to stone the German. This act of violence provided the police with the excuse they needed: they rushed in, swinging their clubs against their fellow countrymen.