Charles van den Kieboom’s hopes of reprieve were forlorn. Under close interrogation at 020, Karl Drücke fingered the distinctive Eurasian as a former cashier at the Hotel Victoria, known to be a centre of Abwehr activity in Amsterdam. This contradicted claims by Kieboom to have been unemployed in July, after losing his job at the YMCA. In the light of this damning disclosure the spy who had landed below Dymchurch Redoubt with binoculars and tennis shoes draped around his neck could do little but hope for a miracle.
Fifteen miles west of Ham Common, at Homefields, Agent Snow’s transmitter once again began delivering results. Though the arrival of Jan Willem Ter Braak had passed unnoticed, at the end of November Wohldorf warned Owens to expect another batch of spies and asked for three extra ID serials, including one suitable for an unmarried woman. These were followed by yet another urgent demand, this time requesting details for a male living in London at an unverifiable address. After due consideration, Snow (or rather B1A) obliged Wohldorf with James Rymer, identity number ARAJ 301-29, residing at 33 Abbotsford Gardens.
The dope was plausibly specific. However, James Rymer was the long-dead author of countless Victorian penny dreadfuls, including The First False Step, and the house he called home, an unremarkable semi in Woodford Green, had already suffered damage in an air raid. Any V-man using this telltale name and address would find his own cover blown sky high.
Inconveniently, Ritter continued to press to meet Owens in Lisbon, where fierce rivalries had flared up between MI5 and its overseas counterpart, MI6. The rapid expansion of the double-cross system required an unprecedented degree of cooperation between the two warring agencies, yet at the same time the potential for territorial friction was also increased, not least because MI6 set about recruiting their own double agents in Spain, Portugal and Turkey. The first of these was a libidinous Yugoslav playboy named Duško Popov, codenamed TRICYCLE on account of his penchant for three-in-a-bed sex. Popov was soon followed by Juan Pujol Garcia, who as GARBO would go on to become the most successful XX agent run by B1A. Unhelpfully, SIS Section V fought long and hard to keep these exotic assets for themselves, even going so far as to withhold vital intelligence from the all-powerful Twenty Committee.
For Tar Robertson there was also competition from within MI5, after a new Wireless (W) Branch threatened to poach work – and even agents – from B1A. After one especially savage spat with its director, an incomer from the BBC named Malcolm Frost, Tar found himself threatened with exile to Jan Mayen Island, a barren volcanic outcrop off the coast of Greenland. Liddell lodged a complaint with their shared nemesis, Lord Swinton. ‘I said that I did not see how there could be any peace while Frost remained. He was obviously an intriguer first and foremost. This cannot continue, and Robertson and the double-cross business must come back where they belong.’
Against this background, the complexities of sending rogue Agent Snow on a mission to Lisbon were a headache that B1A would not suffer gladly. With McCarthy still exiled to Lielow, and Rolph still dead, Tar was obliged once again to cast around for a suitable sidekick – one with sufficient experience to undertake such a delicate assignment, yet also robust enough to resist being corrupted by Owens. Ironically, the only viable candidate was Walter Dicketts, the amiable fraudster whose work with Gösta Caroli at Hinxton had been put on hold following the Swede’s messy suicide attempt at 020.
In a clumsy stab at serendipity Owens ran into Dicketts at his local pub in Addlestone, a chance reunion carefully choreographed by B1A. ‘Dick knew a hell of a lot more than I thought he knew,’ the Little Man rued later. ‘In the first place he was very much against Major Robertson and leaning towards the German organisation. He came down to The Otter and showed me letters from Robbie and said he’d had a rotten deal right from the beginning. Registered letters with a pound here, two pounds there. He said, “How can I and my wife live on this dirty deal?”’
In truth both men were playing one other, just as they had over drinks in The Marlborough eight months earlier. ‘Dicketts says that Snow is very artful,’ wrote Robertson, ‘and keeps laying traps to try and find out why Dick has been put in touch with him.’
By December relations had improved sufficiently for Dicketts to relocate from Hinxton to Homefields, joined soon after by glamorous chorus girl Kay. Her presence provided company for Lily, and welcome help with the baby, Jean Louise. ‘Celery is back in the bosom of the family,’ Tar remarked wryly. ‘He is to take his lead from Snow. If Snow becomes pro-German he is also to become pro-German. And if by any chance the opportunity presents itself for Dicketts to go into Germany then it should be taken.’
For all concerned, the prospect of sending Agent Celery to Hamburg or Berlin stirred a strange sensation of déjà vu. Sam McCarthy had accepted the same hazardous assignment in May, only to be deterred by Snow’s antics on the train journey to Grimsby and the early arrival of Ritter’s seaplane off the Dogger Bank. So far as Robertson was concerned, Owens was no more trustworthy now than when he had connived with Rolph to sell a list of Intelligence People to the other side, and thrown Nazi salutes in a Cleethorpes hotel. Then again, Doctor Rantzau had recently paid over £3,900 to the London stelle via Pogo, the dilettante Spaniard. If Snow failed to show in Iberia, his threadbare network seemed likely to fall apart entirely.
Upping the ante still further, it was decided that Dicketts would pose as Jack Brown, a disgraced Royal Air Force officer cashiered for dishonesty, with financial worries and an axe to grind. On Monday, 9 December, Robertson summoned Dick to London for a meeting at White’s, the private members’ club used as an unofficial office by MI5. Neither man’s journey was easy, for the previous night the capital had suffered its worst raid for several weeks, during which German bombers dropped 100,000 incendiaries and 400 tons of high explosive over twelve hours, igniting ten large fire areas. Two hundred and fifty civilians died, with more than 600 seriously injured. For war-weary Londoners, the fact that British and Commonwealth forces were drubbing the Italians in North Africa came as small consolation.
At White’s Dicketts ordered his customary gin fizz. No less predictably, Agent Celery claimed to be in low water and required a sub of £20, along with a docket for six gallons of petrol. The atmosphere at Addlestone was much improved, so he said, although Dick expressed concern that Snow seemed to know ‘a tremendous lot’ about his colourful past.
‘That’s probably Gagen,’ guessed Tar. ‘The Special Branch inspector. They keep in touch, apparently.’
‘What about Burton?’
‘He’s perfectly all right, so far as I know.’
‘Because it’s odd. Burton says he doesn’t like Owens, but they’re thick as thieves – always sloping off to the pub together and having private conversations. Kay doesn’t like him much, either. She says he’s fast.’
‘What about Lily?’
‘Oh, Lil can look after herself well enough. The Little Man’s drinking worries her though. I tell you, the bottles disappear like magic. Yesterday I saw him fill a tumbler of Scotch at half past seven in the morning. When he’s not tight, he’s bone idle.’
‘And pro-German?’
‘He’s still playing both ends against the middle. And I swear he’s in contact with the other side.’
‘How so?’
Dicketts leaned forward in his chair. ‘Yesterday afternoon he warned me about the big raid on London. He was desperate to get hold of his son.’
Tar nodded. Snow Junior had recently been conscripted into the Auxiliary Fire Service and was based at Chertsey. The Blitz had already cost the lives of more than a hundred London firefighters. His father, meanwhile, remained preternaturally terrified of air raids.
‘What time was this?’
‘Oh, several hours before the sirens went. I’m telling you, Snowy has a line of communication we know nothing about.’
Robertson considered this for a moment. Rolph was dead, the Sackville Street office closed and Owens had been rusticated to the Surrey countryside. If Agent
Snow had managed to suborn Burton, or still had access to a secret transmitter, it meant that much of the double-cross system was insecure, and perhaps even blown. The implications were horrendous beyond words.
‘This trip to Portugal,’ ventured Dicketts. ‘Just how important is it?’
‘Very,’ confessed Tar.
‘If I do get into Germany, and I don’t come back, I need to know that my boy will be properly looked after. Kay as well.’
‘Agreed.’
‘Because we’re not married . . . ’
‘I know.’
Dick cleared his throat. ‘I had in mind three pounds, ten shillings a week for life. That, or a lump sum.’
‘How big a lump?’
‘Say, six thousand pounds?’
A single cruiser tank cost far more. Robertson already knew that Jasper Harker, the Director-General of MI5, was unlikely to authorise even half this amount. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he hedged. ‘You’ll be working overseas, so it may be that MI6 can contribute.’
‘I must be in the wrong game,’ snorted Dicketts. ‘Snow reckons to buy Lily a fur coat for Christmas. Says it’ll cost £1,500.’
Half a tin of talcum powder, in fact.
Just dandy.
For three of the Romney Marsh Four life seemed rather more cheap. At Pentonville prison the following morning José Waldberg and Carl Meier were each pinioned in the condemned cell, then bustled into the green-painted execution chamber and dropped by an inexperienced hangman named Stanley Cross. It is not known whether the two V-men died side by side, the preferred procedure for double executions, although an official report would call into question Cross’s fitness for the job. Drop lengths, it seemed, were the problem: too short, and the prisoner strangled slowly; too long, and the neck was likely to be severed. Charles van den Kieboom followed his colleagues to the scaffold a week later, having withdrawn his appeal. Once again the job did not run smoothly, and despite having practised on three worthless spies Stanley Cross was never again employed as a principal executioner.
‘Some had to perish,’ offered Masterman coolly. ‘Both to satisfy the public that the security of the country was being maintained, and also to convince the Germans that the others were working properly and were not under control. It would have taxed even German credulity if all their agents had apparently overcome the hazards of landing.’
Following Churchillian diktat the executions were afforded maximum publicity. Black-bordered death notices were prominently displayed on the prison gate, and photographs of the suitcase transmitting sets distributed to national newspapers as an aid to recognition. Wrote The Times: ‘In official quarters it is suggested that their capture emphasises still more the need for the public to exercise the greatest care when talking among strangers.’
Not everyone took note. In Cambridge, the missing parachute agent Jan Willem Ter Braak failed to register with the police as an alien and, despite being reported to the authorities by his landlady, the lead was not followed up. Not long afterwards an alert official at the local Food Office identified Ter Braak’s pink ration book as a forgery, and discovered that the serials on his identity card belonged to a man named Burton, who lived a hundred miles away at Homefields, Addlestone, Surrey. Asked to provide further information, Ter Braak hurriedly quit his lodgings in St Barnabas Road and moved across town.
Complacent local police reassured Mrs Sennitt that her missing tenant would register in his own good time. Meanwhile the marshalling yards in Cambridge suffered several timely raids, causing locals to remark that the Luftwaffe seemed oddly well informed.
In Addlestone, too, paranoia ran riot. Concerned about the reception he might receive from the Abwehr in Lisbon, Owens alleged that half the village knew Homefields was chock-full of Nazis. ‘The rumour went round we were all German spies. One of the code papers got picked up and taken to the police.’ His reputation was even less savoury in war-torn Stratford, where Lily’s mother Louisa Virgiels, as well as several members of the Ferrett family, still lived. ‘Dicketts accompanied Snow on a visit to his mother-in-law,’ noted Tar, ‘and was not allowed out of his sight. Snow also gave Dick the impression that he is afraid of being seen out in that locality.’
Owens was right to be afraid of a lynch mob. By now MI5 had finalised plans for the evacuation of less reliable XX agents to North Wales in the event of a German invasion, still regarded as a clear and present danger. Under Plan Hegira, Arthur Owens, Wulf Schmidt and a half-dozen others would be dispersed to various hotels around Llandudno, a complex operation jokingly referred to as Mr Mills’ Circus. The local RSLO even took to using appropriate animal metaphors in correspondence with B1A: ‘I have now completed arrangements for the accommodation of the animals, the young and their keepers,’ Captain Finney wrote gaily. ‘It has been impossible to arrange cheaper accommodation in boarding houses, as naturally the proprietors of these want definite dates.’
Some double-cross agents, like Sam McCarthy and Gwilym Williams, were considered sufficiently trustworthy to make their own way to safety. Those who were not – chiefly Owens and Schmidt, but also Lily Bade and Snow Junior – would be arrested and driven to Wales under armed escort. Twelve sets of handcuffs were borrowed from Scotland Yard, together with half a dozen Webley .455 revolvers and 54 rounds of soft-nosed ammunition – for in the last resort the circus animals would be shot.
‘If there is danger of any of the more dangerous cases falling into enemy hands they will be liquidated forcibly,’ Robertson told Tin-Eye Stephens. ‘As Snow is a great believer in German efficiency it is highly probable that he would attempt to join the Germans immediately, and could blow our whole show.’
Although necessary, this brutal approach was tempered with mercy. On Christmas Eve, Wulf Schmidt was driven from Round Bush House to the Old Parsonage at Hinxton, where he and Gösta Caroli were permitted to enjoy the festive holiday together, albeit under heavy armed guard. Despite having slashed his wrists ten weeks earlier, the Swede seemed to have shaken off the ‘black mood of despair’ diagnosed at Camp 020 and been coaxed into ‘a better way of thinking’ by the ‘unremitting care and psychological finesse’ applied in the light of his suicide attempt.
Then, with the season of goodwill over and gone, Caroli attempted to throttle his guard and took to his heels.
11
Double Trouble
Shortly after lunch on 13 January 1941, Gösta Caroli was surprised but pleased to find himself under the supervision of a single military guard. ‘I was sitting playing a card game when Summer suddenly attacked me,’ Sergeant Paulton explained afterwards. ‘He sprang from behind with a piece of rope about 20 inches long and tried to garrotte me. I naturally struggled, and succeeded in throwing myself sideways.’ The two men fell on the floor in front of the fireplace. ‘Still holding the rope like a pair of reins, Caroli got his knee into the small of my back and told me not to struggle.’
Exhausted by the struggle, Paulton blacked out momentarily, enabling the desperate Swede to tie his hands. ‘He expressed regret for his treatment of me, and said that I would only have to wait to six o’clock. He said that he had to do it. He knew it was a hanging job, but he could not go on. I told him I could not lie tied on the floor all that time, and asked him to put me on the Chesterfield. Then I asked him to put a pillow under my head – this he did.’
It was fortunate indeed that Tar Robertson had chosen Round Bush House over The Old Parsonage as his family home. Running through Paulton’s pockets, Caroli located the keys to the safe in the study, from which he removed his ID papers, two quartz transmitter crystals and £5 in petty cash. A wider sweep of the house netted maps, matches, a torch and a child’s magnetic compass, as well as a chunk of cold beef from the larder, along with tins of sardines, pilchards and pears. By now twenty minutes had elapsed. Packing his escape kit into a suitcase, Caroli left the house through the kitchen, taking care to close the shutters and doors behind him.
Paulton lay still, then wriggled o
ff the sofa and stood upright. ‘In the half-light I spotted my penknife on the table, and groping behind my back I succeeded in picking it up and set to work.’ After cutting himself free, Paulton crept into the study and called Major Dixon, the RSLO in Cambridge.
Dixon told Paulton to alert the London office. Even as they spoke the still-shaken minder was alarmed to see Caroli pass by the window, pushing a Douglas motorcycle and struggling to carry a collapsible canvas canoe. The machine belonged to another guard (whose unauthorised absence had triggered Summer’s bid for freedom) and was stored in an outbuilding. Paulton made a note of the registration number, then watched as Caroli coaxed the engine into life, wobbled slowly down the drive and disappeared in the direction of Newmarket.
It was hardly the Great Escape. Nonetheless, if V-man Nilberg managed to reach the coast, and paddle back to Holland, the entire double-cross system would sink like a stone. Luckily Caroli was no T. E. Lawrence, and after repeatedly toppling off the unfamiliar machine he decided to surrender to a cordon of police at Newmarket station. By nightfall the recidivist Swede was back behind bars at Camp 020. ‘Clearly Summer can never be allowed to use his transmitter again,’ Liddell noted with genuine regret. ‘We have all come to the conclusion that somehow or other he must be eliminated. This is not, however, an easy matter.’
Via Snow’s transmitter, Ritter learned only that their mutual ‘Swedish friend’ had sent a letter to McCarthy, warning that he was being watched by the police and meant to hide by enlisting on a merchant vessel. In the interests of verisimilitude Caroli’s wireless set was left in the cloakroom at Cambridge station, then offered to Sam Stewart. After Wohldorf confirmed to Snow that the shady shipping agent was still ‘believed to be all right’, Stewart found himself interned for the duration under Regulation 18B.
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