Despite such woolly thinking, the Security Service hurriedly expanded onto a war footing. With space at a premium at their central London premises, however, large parts of MI5 had to be relocated four miles west to Wormwood Scrubs, a grim Victorian prison complex in the hinterlands of Hammersmith. Evacuation of the previous occupants took several days, resulting in chaos, overlap and no little bemusement. Several staff stumbled upon unemptied chamber pots in the malodorous cells now requisitioned as offices, while one Registry girl spotted her father’s solicitor among the prisoners taking exercise in the yard. ‘Don’t go near them,’ warned a vigilant warder. ‘Some of them ain’t seen no women for years.’
The steady stream of ‘Mayfair types’ heading through the imposing Gothic gateway each morning also attracted unwanted attention. On reaching the prison, several among the more waggish bus conductors took to calling out loudly: ‘All change for MI5.’
As August gave way to September, others inside the Scrubs were also disinclined to view the prospect of war too seriously. The ageing Director-General of MI5, Sir Vernon Kell, in post for almost thirty years, suggested calling in Sir Oswald Mosley and Harry Pollitt for a cosy fireside chat, keen to know ‘what their attitude is’, and confident of obtaining their help in ‘dealing with the Fascist and Communist problem.’
Adolf Hitler cared less. At dawn on Friday, 1 September, 1939, several small commando units from the Abwehr’s elite Brandenburg battalion crossed the Polish border, followed by almost 2 million troops and 2,000 combat aircraft. Two weeks later Stalin’s Red Army joined in the pillage from the east. Polish resistance was heroic and fierce, but would crumble in just four weeks.
The Second World War had begun.
3
OIK Calling Hamburg
On the morning of Saturday, 2 September 1939, again at 04.30, Colonel Johnny buzzed Wohldorf from the bathroom at Parklands, encrypting his message in CONGRATULATIONS code, and using a highly apposite call-sign: OIK. ‘Situation in England extremely serious. Planes loaded Biggin Hill, Hornchurch. Blenheims. Will radio during day. Stand by day and night.’
Wohldorf stood by, but no updates followed, and as the day developed the atmosphere grew increasingly sultry and oppressive, conveying to many a sense of impending doom. On Saturday night a series of violent thunderstorms swept the country, cutting power and communications, and causing panic in Portsmouth when four barrage balloons were struck by lightning, lighting up the night sky with clouds of eerie, floating flame. Quite literally, war was in the air. Although Sunday morning dawned bright and sunny, tension continued to mount as cathedrals and churches filled to overflowing, the nation hoping against hope for a miracle, some small retreat from the edge of the precipice.
As Arthur Owens fiddled nervously with his wayward klamotten most listeners tuned in to the BBC. The first news bulletin at 07.00 confirmed that Hitler had failed to respond to the Allied ultimatum issued two days earlier, and that German forces remained inside Poland. Finally, at 11.15, the Prime Minister addressed the nation. Now a frail old man of seventy, racked by terminal cancer, Neville Chamberlain’s voice sounded weary, even sepulchral. Britain, he announced, was again at war with Germany. ‘You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. It is evil things that we shall be fighting against – brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution. And against them I am certain that right will prevail.’
Chamberlain’s downbeat speech was followed by the national anthem, for which not every citizen stood. Eight numb minutes later came the dread sound of air raid sirens, a banshee wail that carried across London like a great cry of pain. Gas masks in hand, the population filed towards the shelters and ‘bogey holes’ in orderly fashion, some regarding the sky expectantly, others staring glumly at their feet. Three years earlier moviegoers had been horrified by scenes of urban apocalypse in Things to Come, glimpsing fact in science fiction. Now, with war a reality, most expected to emerge from underground to find their homes reduced to cinders and rubble, and the streets choked with corpses and poison gas.
Lazy Arthur Owens stayed tucked up in bed. Now that the BBC had pulled weather reports from the airwaves, the Luftwaffe would be reliant upon Colonel Johnny for accurate meteorological data. Already, however, there were rumours that MI5 had commandeered a fleet of Post Office mobile detector vans in order to hunt down enemy wireless spies. Fearful of betraying his location, Hitler’s chief spy in England remained silent until early evening, then warmed his valves to buzz Ritter details of a brand new strategic fuel reserve depot, lately and discreetly cut into a hillside in Hampshire. ‘Eastern side of long Winchester-Basingstoke railway line between Micheldever station and tunnel, 10 million gallons of aviation fuel in chalk cliff. Easiest to bomb from southern end.’
Owens’ jumpy paranoia increased tenfold when Bob called to warn that the Branch had come calling at Grosvenor Court, anxious to detain his absent father under Defence Regulation 18B.
This was Plan Snuffbox, by which known enemy agents were to be rounded up as soon as war broke out. The select arrest list compiled by MI5 included Arthur Owens, whose own 18B Order was issued within hours of German troops crossing the Polish border. The Branch had missed him in Morden, while illicit transmissions were difficult to pinpoint, B1A having found that the balloon barrage now floating above London served to distort radio signals. Nonetheless, it seemed that it would be only a matter of time before the ‘political cops’ from Scotland Yard located Owens at the Surbiton bolt-hole thoughtfully provided by Alex Myner.
Everywhere events moved quickly. The governments of France, Australia, New Zealand and India joined Britain in declaring war on Germany, while Holland, Belgium, Denmark and Spain declared strict neutrality. Seeking to preserve his own non-aligned freedom, at noon on Monday Owens called Bill Gagen and arranged to meet him at Waterloo station at four o’clock. ‘He stated he wished to offer his services to the British government,’ the Special Branch inspector wrote, ‘but declined to reveal his address.’
Snow knew full well that this meeting was a calculated risk. Travelling into central London with Lily, he told her to keep her distance on the crowded concourse at Waterloo, and warned what to do next if the Branch failed to greet their star double agent with chocolates and flowers. These fears proved well founded. After Owens again refused to confirm his address, Gagen placed the Little Man under arrest, then bundled him into a shiny Vauxhall saloon and sped him directly to Wandsworth gaol.
A grim Victorian complex south of the river, Wandsworth was the largest prison in London by some measure, able to accommodate more than fifteen hundred inmates and with a working gallows still in situ on E Wing. Gagen endorsed and served the 18B Order en route, whereupon Agent Snow became suddenly cooperative. ‘Just before we entered the prison Owens gave his address as 12 Parklands, and added that a transmitting set would be found in his bathroom.’
Despite this belated admission, Owens soon found himself cooling his heels in a spartan cell. Fellow 18B detainees ranged from suspect German nationals to Percy Rapp, a thuggish fascist taxi driver whose regular visits to the German embassy had earned him a place on the Snuffbox list. For the most part, Mosley’s Blackshirts remained at liberty. With no idea of Owens’ whereabouts, Lily hurried back to Surbiton, reaching Myner’s flat at around five o’clock. ‘Three men have taken Arthur away,’ she told the tyro sidekick. ‘He told me to tell you to get rid of that parcel in the bathroom.’
Myner’s version of events was the work of a practised liar. ‘Although I was suspicious at the time, I buried the parcel in the corner of the garden. I now realise that my action was indiscreet, but thought I was doing him a good turn owing to his domestic troubles with his wife. I now understand it was a transmitting set belonging to Owens. I had seen him tinkering with it in the bathroom.’
‘Alex said he would help Arthur for my sake,’ agreed artful Lily, who helped Myner bury the set in a brown paper sack. ‘Then I went out for
a walk.’
Miss Bade was still absent when Gagen arrived at Parklands an hour later, accompanied by Tar Robertson and another MI5 officer, Colonel Adrian Simpson, the author of Notes on the Detection of Illicit Wireless. ‘At first Myner and his wife denied all knowledge of Owens,’ noted Gagen. ‘Later they admitted he was living there as the husband of Lily Bade.’ A thorough search of the flat failed to locate the transmitter, though a crude receiver, apparently constructed by Owens himself, was found in the bathroom cupboard. After a short, sharp interrogation, Myner broke down and led the intelligence men outside. ‘He pointed out the spot where we found the transmitting set in a paper carrier. By this time Lily had returned to the house, and she and Myner were taken to Kingston police station, where statements were taken.’
With the war just one day old, the Abwehr’s London stelle had collapsed like a house of cards. ‘The Germans refer to Snow as their number one man in England,’ Robertson remarked wryly. ‘If this isn’t a bluff – which seems likely – then they are pretty badly off!’
At Wandsworth, Owens languished in solitary confinement. Tuesday brought a visit from Robertson, Gagen and Lieutenant Colonel J. S. Yule, a coding expert attached to MI5, and the originator of the RAF motto per ardua ad astra (‘through adversity to the stars’). After testing Snow’s proficiency in Morse, judged by Yule to be limited, the discussion moved on to wireless procedures and the Abwehr organisation in Hamburg.
‘There’s a man called Theile,’ Owens lied smoothly. ‘He’s in charge of their radio section. As for the transmitter, I’m to send over the dope at four in the morning, when everything’s dead quiet. Wavelength 60 metres. The operator on watch speaks English, to give an immediate reply.’
‘What dope do they want?’ asked Robertson.
‘Weather reports, like I told you people before. Visibility, wind speed, cloud cover and whatnot. Until I give the word there’ll be no bombs on London.’
This bold assurance rang hollow, since wireless-equipped spies had suddenly become a matter of acute concern for Robertson and MI5. In the late afternoon of 4 September Bomber Command launched its first daylight bombing raid on Germany, sending a mixed force of Blenheims and Wellingtons to attack enemy warships in Wilhelmshaven and the Kiel Canal. The result was a disaster, with seven out of twenty-nine aircraft dispatched shot down, a crippling loss rate that nudged 25 per cent. Although determined pilots scored two hits on the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, both bombs failed to explode, while other crews mistakenly attacked friendly vessels in the North Sea. Bad weather compounded the debacle, with at least one Wellington missing Kiel by a hundred miles and unloading its bombs over neutral Denmark. Ironically, two of the air gunners from 9 Squadron who failed to return were members of the British Union of Fascists.
The chief cause of this calamity was radar. Germany’s early warning system might not have been as complete or efficient as the British Chain Home, yet their Freya apparatus was technologically superior, and a mobile unit had tracked the raiders as they approached across the North Sea. None of this was known to British intelligence, who feared instead that the raid had been defeated by radiolocation of a different kind. In his diary Guy Liddell confided: ‘Tar Robertson’s section reports that warning signals by an enemy agent were intercepted before the raid on Kiel somewhere in the vicinity of Driffield, from which the raid started. This seems to call for some action to clear all areas in the vicinity of aerodromes and I am taking this up.’
More suspicious signals were detected at Driffield two nights later. Owens remained under lock and key in Wandsworth, with a watertight alibi, yet Tar remained convinced that the Welshman was holding back. ‘There are inconsistencies in Snow’s interpretation of various points in the transmission code, and it is my impression that he is not telling us by any means all he knows.’
MI5 now stood at the Rubicon. Owens could be detained indefinitely under Regulation 18B, or even put on trial, yet both options would render him useless as an intelligence asset. Pursuing a bolder agenda, the Little Man might yet become the Adam agent of a viable double-cross system, planting disinformation on the Abwehr and unravelling their British espionage network from within. Yet these were uncharted waters, stirred by uncertain tides. During the Great War each and every spy caught in Britain had been promptly dispatched by firing squad at the Tower of London, while Mad Major Draper, loyal and keen though he was, had achieved little of consequence. Then again, Draper had never been entrusted with a wireless transmitter, or been appointed Hitler’s chief spy in England.
Nonetheless, the Security Service knew that a double-cross game could win actual battles. Late in August 1914 the War Office had sent 3,000 Royal Marines to Ostend in an effort to stiffen the crumbling Allied line, a force quickly transformed by wild rumour into 30,000 ferocious Russians, shipped via Archangel and Aberdeen ‘with snow on their boots’. At the same time MI5 shadowed a German spy named Carl Lody, whose letters home were intercepted and read. One such informed his masters of the ‘great masses of Russian soldiers’ passing through Edinburgh ‘on their way to London and France’. Lody put the number at 60,000, a fiction which MI5 saw no harm in allowing to reach Berlin. The Germans subsequently diverted precious reserves, and in consequence – some said – lost the Battle of the Marne.
Twenty-five years later – almost to the day – MI5 decided once more to steal a march on their German counterparts. With Snow on their boots.
There was no time to lose. On Friday afternoon Robertson transferred Snow’s klamotten from the Scrubs to Wandsworth, where it was set up in an empty cell by a wireless expert from GCHQ named Meakin. At six o’clock that same evening Owens was invited to resume wireless contact with the Abwehr signals centre at Wohldorf. At short notice, a prison warder named Maurice Burton, who happened to be proficient in Morse, was briefed to listen in. His expert ear would ensure that the message buzzed by Owens corresponded to the text agreed by Robertson, and was clean of obvious cheats (‘tells’) which might alert Stelle X to the fact that Colonel Johnny was operating under control.
What happened next did little to assuage Tar’s myriad doubts about Snow. ‘Unfortunately, in looking over his set Owens pushed a switch which caused a fuse to blow. This ended our activities for the day, as we were unable to repair the set before the following morning.’
No signal, just noise.
Apprehension over Snow’s bona fides only increased with the simultaneous arrival of a registered letter from Amsterdam containing four £5 notes, addressed to ‘Mr Wilson’ at 112 Stratford Road. Having sided with her forsaken sister-in-law Irene, Esther Ferrett took the incriminating package to West Ham police station. On returning to Wandsworth on Saturday morning, Tar initiated a robust exchange with Owens, during which he made it ‘abundantly clear’ that it was in his best interests to establish contact with Stelle X. ‘Since our conversation it is now my impression that Snow is doing all he can to get in touch with Germany.’
Owens’ change of heart owed less to a sense of patriotic duty than a desire for simple self-preservation. There was also Lily, his Achilles heel, now back with her parents in West Ham, exposed to the fury of the Ferretts, and perhaps even that of the public at large. His choice was no choice at all. By six o’clock on Saturday evening Meakin had managed to repair the faulty klamotten. With Owens on the key, his Morse signature slow and apprehensive, B1A’s first double-cross signal flashed across the ether to Wohldorf: ‘All ready. Have repaired radio. Send instructions. Now awaiting reply.’
No convoys or Blenheims, no fuel dumps, no weather.
Not even ein glas bier.
And no reply.
A repeat transmission at 19.45 gave the same disappointing result. According to boffins at GCHQ the strength of both signals was poor, with no definite reply detected. Owens suggested buzzing the message for a third time at 04.00 on Sunday morning, when the funkers at Wohldorf would be listening in for Johnny. Again, however, the test proved negative. ‘Unfortunately ou
r transmission was reported as completely jammed by a powerful unidentified station,’ Tar wrote ruefully. ‘It is of course possible that the message might have been received in Germany, but no reply was picked up by GCHQ.’
Desperate to escape Wandsworth, Owens offered to contact Hamburg by letter, though Robertson demurred. Besides, there were now indications that the future security of London might not rest entirely on the feeble shoulders of Agent Snow. ‘Klop Ustinov has reported,’ wrote Liddell, ‘that the reason for the German abstention from bombing England or France is that Hitler intends to destroy Poland, then offer to make peace on the grounds that he has taken no offensive action against the Allies.’
During this brief interregnum Arthur Owens and Tar Robertson struck an unprecedented deal. This bargain – more a Faustian pact – involved the provision of a new home for Snow in Kingston-upon-Thames, an upmarket suburb not far from Surbiton, together with false identity papers in the name of Thomas Wilson. In return for relative personal freedom, and a small monthly retainer, Owens would transmit controlled messages to the enemy, continue to treff with Rantzau on neutral territory, and maintain the fiction of a zealous Welsh sabotage ring. Best of all, Lily would also reside at the new London stelle.
The complexities were considerable, not least the small matter of housing Snow and his klamotten. ‘Enemy agents in this country using radio transmitters would be operating under difficulties,’ observed a specialist from the Radio Security Service. ‘It was not easy for a man to take lodgings, put up an aerial and lock himself in his room for a period each day while he sent messages and received replies on equipment which, if it were seen by the landlady, would certainly cause her to call the police.’
Hitler's Spy Page 6