For the moment, the war refused to come to the boil. With the RAF dropping more leaflets than bombs on Germany, Hitler remained confident that peace would prevail, offering broad hints in speeches from the Reichstag and putting out feelers via neutral diplomats and the Vatican. The Phoney War was real only at sea, where U-47 penetrated the Grand Fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow to sink the battleship Royal Oak, killing 800 sailors and triggering panic over Scottish sleeper spies and secret submarine bases in Ireland. Time and again, British intelligence failed to see the wood for the trees. After Hitler ordered his generals to attack Belgium, Holland and France in the middle of November, a staunchly anti-Hitler Abwehr officer named Hans Oster leaked details and dates to his opposite number in the Netherlands, Colonel Gijsbertus Sas. Yet Sas was ignored, and even dismissed by some as a German mole.
Already there were dark mutterings that MI5 and MI6 were punching well below their weight. ‘A suggestion has come through that we might scatter dud banknotes in millions over Germany,’ mused Guy Liddell. ‘But it hardly fits with the high moral tone of the war. Perhaps when things have deteriorated through the use of poison gas, bacteria etc a suitable occasion may arise for a venture of this sort.’
Blitzkrieg had given way to Sitzkrieg, a veritable Bore War. With no sign of the airborne mayhem promised by Rantzau in Rotterdam, Colonel Johnny bided his time and sent daily weather reports laced with scraps of anodyne chicken feed authorised by MI5. ‘At the moment very few troop movements around London,’ Owens buzzed innocuously at the beginning of October. ‘Same news received from other centres.’
Meanwhile Robertson scrambled to activate Snow’s fictional Welsh sabotage ring ahead of the next treff in Brussels. Through Maxwell Knight, a Secret Service veteran whose autonomous sub-section B5B specialised in infiltrating radical political groups, Tar located a retired police inspector from Swansea named Gwilym Williams. Lately employed as a court interpreter, Williams spoke several dialects and languages, German included, and ran a sideline as a legal-enquiry agent. A big man – six foot two, and eighteen stone – he had served in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the previous war, and despite a career record marked by a fondness for beer and fisticuffs, seemed likely to convince as an ardent Welsh Nationalist and man of action. Following a preliminary vetting session conducted in Swansea, the burly ex-policeman travelled up to London on 16 October, a Monday. There he reported to Knight’s flat-cum-office in Dolphin Square, the luxurious Pimlico development where recent near neighbours had included Sir Oswald Mosley and William Joyce, the latter now broadcasting from Germany as Lord Haw-Haw.
‘I asked Williams whether he was willing to undertake the work which we hoped to assign to him,’ wrote Knight, a past master of intrigue. ‘He said, “Yes, sir, I will go and I will do my best”.’ Following detailed discussion of ways and means, it was agreed that those involved in the case would use the password ‘Crowhurst’, answerable by ‘Ginger’.
With Agent Snow due in Brussels as early as Wednesday there was no time to lose. Hastily codenamed G.W., at midday Gwilym Williams was introduced to Owens at the Bonnington Hotel on Southampton Row. Here the pair spent three hours discussing the imminent mission to Belgium, during which Snow instructed G.W. to keep his distance on the journey over, but to maintain visual contact at all times, and tell inquisitive officials that he was travelling to Rotterdam to meet a Canadian friend.
A subsequent Crowhurst–Ginger call from Knight to Robertson confirmed that this initial meeting had gone well. ‘Williams very sensibly suggested that his occupation should be what it actually is – an enquiry agent willing to act in cases of injury caused by road accident. Owens has invited him to Kingston tonight. As Williams is quite new to the whole of this business, the opportunity of discussing it again with Owens – who has a keen mind – will probably be of considerable benefit.’
During the afternoon Williams was issued with an exit permit and £25 to cover expenses. Regrettably, stealth and tradecraft were nowhere in evidence when Agent Snow turned up to collect his latest sidekick from the Bonnington in a hired Daimler limousine, complete with uniformed chauffeur.
‘Don’t be surprised if I’m addressed as “Colonel” over there,’ Owens announced grandiloquently as they pulled away. ‘That’s the rank I hold in the German army. In fact, I outrank Captain Robertson.’
‘That can’t be easy,’ joked Williams. ‘Seeing as you don’t speak the lingo.’
‘I’m their big nut over here. There’s £50,000 on the table if I can bribe an RAF pilot to steal a Spitfire and take it over to Germany. Job for life for the flyboy, too.’
It seemed not to matter that the man behind the wheel of the Daimler heard each and every word. As his conspicuous staff car circled Green Park, recently scarred with air-raid trenches, Colonel Johnny handed Williams a sheaf of Welsh Nationalist literature.
‘When you meet the Doctor, tell him you get about Wales a good deal as a private detective. That you’ve seen for yourself the condition of the working man, how the people are oppressed and exploited by laws handed down by a government made up of Englishmen.’
‘That hardly makes me a Nazi.’
‘Then say some nice things about Hitler and Germany too. That they’re a fine race of people who get things done.’
Williams frowned. It was hard to tell where the British double agent ended and his German doppelgänger began. At Norbiton Avenue Owens introduced Williams to Lily, then ushered him through to the small back room. Waving aside Burton, the former prison warder seconded as his operator, Snow fiddled with the klamotten until the sound of rapid Morse became audible.
‘Direct from Berlin,’ he announced proudly.
‘Can you understand it?’
‘One hundred per cent. Mind you, they slow right down for my benefit.’
At six o’clock Owens, Williams and Lily rode the Daimler into Richmond for drinks at the Castle Hotel, picking up a lively young couple on the way, and then trawling round several more pubs. Williams danced with a girl named Maude, and was pronounced a ‘grand man’ by Lily. The former policeman noted that Snow imbibed heavily throughout the evening, mixing whisky and beer, yet remained remarkably clear-headed. Back at the flat, he looked on as Owens and Burton transmitted a suitably inaccurate weather report. Finally Williams returned to the Bonnington, having arranged to meet Owens on Trafalgar Square at ten o’clock the following morning.
‘Williams’ first impressions of Owens are that he is very alert and highly strung,’ noted Robertson. ‘He does not rest much, has tremendous willpower, and is a fairly heavy drinker. In the latter capacity Williams confesses he cannot compete.’
Snow and G.W. finally left London on Thursday, crossing to Belgium from Folkestone, and profoundly apprehensive now that the German navy had promised to sink passenger ships sailing in convoys, or without lights. On reaching Brussels the pair checked into the Savoy as instructed. ‘Owens was exceedingly nervous,’ observed Williams. ‘He expressed constant fear that a German contact might have seen the police visiting his house and sent word over, which would mean the end of us both.’
The histrionics increased with each hour that passed. ‘Brussels is infested with German secret service men,’ Williams learned. ‘They can do exactly as they please.’ Claiming to be a crack shot, Owens decided to buy a pistol, and asked Williams to help him fill out the necessary forms at the Commissaire de Police. The bizarre claim that he needed a gun ‘to shoot rats in Canada’ was accepted without question, and endorsed on his permit. A local gunsmith happily supplied a suitable automatic, and threw in 25 rounds of ammunition.
Perhaps Owens was enacting a charade for the benefit of Williams. Possibly he feared being double-crossed himself. Whatever the truth, on Friday afternoon an Abwehr emissary appeared to fix a meeting with Ritter the following day. Still Owens remained on edge, fretting now because the Doctor wished him to meet with a female agent who was being trained for a mission to England. ‘Snow was much upset,’ not
ed Williams, ‘because he considers it dangerous to work with women.’
Or wives, at any rate.
On Saturday Ritter and his assistant arrived at the Savoy fully three hours late. The party of four left immediately, and at the Gare du Nord boarded a train for Antwerp, the strategic port city famously described by Napoleon as a pistol pointed at the heart of England. From the ornate central station they took a cab to an undistinguished office building on the waterfront. Glancing around, Owens recognised the liner moored on the Canadian Pacific wharf as the SS Pennland, on which he had crossed the Atlantic almost six years earlier.
Following his gaze, Ritter complained that Canada was far too busy producing tanks, aircraft and Bren guns from Long Branch. ‘I can find work for you over there, Arthur, should you wish.’
Inside the building an elevator conveyed them to the third floor. Owens and Williams were ushered into a spacious board room, where Ritter introduced to them two men known as the Commander and Doctor Kiess. These aliases disguised Leutnant Lothar Witzke, a ‘stiff Bavarian type’ in charge of sabotage operations against England, and Hauptmann Brasser, a specialist in aviation intelligence.
‘How many men do you have at your disposal, Mr Williams?’ asked Witzke, taking charge straight away.
‘In South Wales, about thirty.’
‘And are they willing to commit acts of sabotage on behalf of the Reich?’
‘Where our interests coincide.’
Evidently satisfied, Witzke went on to suggest that supplies for the Welsh ring might best be delivered by U-boat. The explosives would be landed in bulk but broken down into smaller parcels, concealed in bottles, canned goods and so forth. This made storage easier and prevented deterioration.
‘Dynamite?’ asked Williams. ‘TNT?’
Witzke shook his head. ‘You’ll be mixing the ingredients yourselves. Three parts potassium chlorate to one part sugar, detonated by sulphuric acid.’
Williams glanced at Owens. ‘He’s the chemist, not me.’
‘I’ve laid on some basic instruction tomorrow. Then, in a month or so, you can come over to Germany for a more comprehensive sabotage course. And collect a wireless too, if you want one.’
‘Wash that out,’ snapped Owens, keen to protect his own patch. ‘All signals traffic between England and Germany goes through me.’
Ritter raised a calming hand, then reached into his pocket and slid a buff manila envelope across the table towards Williams. Peering inside, Williams counted £50 in Bank of England notes. The former policeman hesitated, torn between the demands of his novel new role as a double-cross asset and his relatively law-abiding past.
‘Take it!’ urged Ritter, his gold tooth flashing. ‘Only fools and fanatics work for free. Whenever you need more, simply call on Johnny.’
Arthur Owens bit his lip, after which Ritter derived further amusement by booking his Welsh Nationalist cadre into the Hotel London. The next day Leutnant Witzke took the pair to a flat in the centre of Antwerp, where a Flemish Nazi instructed them in the art of mixing explosives, laced with elementary tips on arson. At the end of the session Owens was handed a number of detonators concealed in a block of wood. The would-be saboteurs then retired to the Taverne Sonia, where Witzke was evidently a regular, and soon became exceedingly drunk.
The next day, while Witzke nursed his hangover, Owens conferred in private with Ritter and Brasser. As played back to MI5, at his second wartime treff Agent Snow discussed only trivia, including troop movements, petrol rationing and the ‘jitterbug’ effect of propaganda broadcasts by captured RAF aircrew. In fact Owens delivered up solid intelligence on the strength of fighter squadrons at Northolt and Croydon, Short Sunderland flying boats based at Pembroke Dock and the embarkation of 80 tanks at Avonmouth, bound for France. The location of several key war factories was also revealed, including a Rolls-Royce aero engine store in Didcot and a synthetic fuel plant at Methyr.
None of these disclosures stood approved by Tar Robertson or the newly formed Wireless Committee. By way of reward, for these revelations and his betrayal of British radar secrets a month earlier, Owens received an extravagant cash payment of £470 – the price of a modest house in 1939.
Henceforth, explained Ritter, Owens should expect regular payments through a woman in Bournemouth. Another sleeper agent in Manchester named Charles Eschborn was able to process tiny microdot photographs. ‘He’s entirely reliable,’ vouched the Doctor. ‘Besides which, the Gestapo are holding one of his brothers in Dachau.’
Next Ritter handed Owens a postage stamp. ‘Your new questionnaire in microdot form,’ he explained. ‘A little on the sticky side, you might say. But much easier to smuggle across frontiers than paper or film.’
‘I’ve just the place,’ grinned Owens, reaching to remove his false teeth.
Ritter looked quickly away.
Their business concluded, agents Snow and G.W. returned to Brussels, checked back into the Savoy, and boarded a ferry at Ostend on Wednesday. The two men found British newspapers full of scorn for a speech delivered by Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, holding England responsible for the outbreak of a second Great War and portraying the Reich as the injured party. On disembarkation at Folkestone Owens was tailed discreetly by a Special Branch detective, who reported an emotional reunion with Lily on the platform at Victoria but failed to spot Williams at all.
Exhausted, Gwilym Williams went directly to Swansea, where he was debriefed at home by Richman Stopford. ‘G.W. still looks rather tired,’ remarked Tar’s assistant, ‘but his report, attached, is excellent. Everyone is very friendly with Snow, and he is apparently trusted by them all. They refer to him as their number one man in England. So far as Williams can judge, the whole affair is a genuine effort on the part of the Germans, and he sees no sign of wool being drawn over his eyes. But then, he might not.’
In fact, Williams understood the case – and the man – all too well. ‘He thinks that Snow’s object is to get all he can out of the Germans, yet do enough to keep on the right side of us.’
Whether G.W. was prepared to risk going into Germany for sabotage training was another matter entirely. After seeking assurances that his wife and daughter would be looked after should he fail to return, Williams pointed out that his private enquiry business would slide in his absence and demanded a salary. ‘I congratulated him warmly,’ hedged Stopford, ‘and said that his services would not be overlooked. He has spent £30 and been too rushed to keep accounts. Taking into account the German money he is still £45 to the good.’
However, £45 hardly compared to the £470 flaunted by Agent Snow. Already something of Owens’ mercenary approach to the spy racket had rubbed off on the dubious ex-copper from Swansea.
Colonel Johnny nursed doubts of his own. Williams gave every appearance of incorruptibility, like a lily-white G-man from the FBI, and as such was of no value as an Abwehr stooge. Debriefed by Robertson, Owens set about devaluing G.W. as a double-cross asset, claiming that Doctor Rantzau had found him ‘too nervous’ in Antwerp and wanted Johnny to take personal control of sabotage operations in Wales. With G.W. in charge, fibbed Snow, there would be no U-boat, no explosives – and no cash payment of £30,000.
Owens obscured his own treachery by fibbing that the Abwehr had informants inside the Air Ministry and the Admiralty, and that new V-men (vertrauens, or ‘trusted’) were on their way to London. ‘Snow has returned from Brussels and is to receive instructions regarding the appointment of agents,’ Guy Liddell wrote with unwarranted confidence. ‘He also mentioned that they are anxious for him to go to Canada sometime in the near future, possibly with the object of organising a similar show for them out there.’
For all of a fortnight the going seemed good at B1A. At the beginning of November Snow travelled to Manchester to meet Charles Eschborn, standing back as the hapless photographer was quietly lifted by the Branch and flipped as double agent CHARLIE. Unfortunately for MI5 Eschborn was small fry, besides which Owens
ignored protocol by co-opting Lily for his northern mission. By the middle of the month Tar found his patience worn perilously thin. ‘I told Owens we were not at all satisfied with the way things were developing, and taxed him on the fact that we had been at war for over two months, yet so far he had not been contacted by anybody, he had not received the promised wireless set, and we had not received a list of contacts.’
Ironically, Tar also took Snow to task over his reliance on facts and chicken feed provided by British intelligence, rather than obtaining dope of his own. No one, it seems, perceived any vice in Owens worse than laziness, or gave serious consideration to the notion that the Little Man might actually be working for Germany and double-crossing MI5.
Humdinger.
Like Alice en route to Wonderland, the British secret service found itself locked in an endless downward spiral. At the beginning of November the veteran director of MI6, Admiral Hugh ‘Quex’ Sinclair, died after sixteen years in post, creating a power vacuum at the heart of the intelligence establishment. Just five days later, a humiliating debacle in Holland laid bare the dangers inherent in allowing unreliable amateurs to operate abroad. On 9 November German agents snatched two MI6 officers from a Dutch frontier post at Venlo, at the same time killing a Dutch intelligence officer. One of the men abducted was Major Richard Stevens, who ran the MI6 station in The Hague, the other a flamboyant expatriate businessman named Sigismund Payne Best, part of a sketchy SIS shadow network known as Z. The pair fancied they had established contact with a group of highly placed German patriots, who offered to fly a like-minded general to London for secret peace talks. The endgame, so they thought, was a military coup in Berlin and the arrest of Adolf Hitler. MI6 even provided the conspirators with a wireless transmitter, unaware that they were in fact negotiating with double-cross agents from the Sicherheitsdienst – a sister agency of the Gestapo, and sworn rivals of the Abwehr.
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