Hitler's Spy

by James Hayward

  Kein glas bier.

  Interrogated by Allied intelligence officers five years later, Ritter weaved a narrative which carefully avoided any hint of triple-cross. ‘If, as Owens said, a British agent had been in touch with him for ten weeks, it was practically certain that the authorities already knew enough to arrest him. Moreover, his sub-agents might already be implicated, and perhaps under arrest, including Schmidt. I told Owens plainly that I would have to consider if it would be safe to allow his return to England, seeing how much he knows, and that I should have no difficulty in liquidating his case promptly in Lisbon. Owens was clearly very much frightened by this threat.’

  No Iron Cross for Colonel Johnny. Nevertheless, with Operation Lena long abandoned, and a brand new mission in mind, Ritter tempered his ire with mercy. ‘In view of our long acquaintance I was satisfied that Owens was telling the truth so far as he knew it. He said that despite Dicketts’ connection with British intelligence, he could, if properly handled, be recruited by us. For Dicketts was an extremely greedy man.’

  A bemused Abwehr subordinate later summarised the situation rather more succinctly. ‘It was all a big tangle.’

  Jack Brown, so it seemed, was already dead. Word now reached Lisbon that the Cressado had been sunk by a U-boat, with only a handful of survivors landed on the island of Madeira. Ritter made discreet enquiries, and after satisfying himself that the steamer was still afloat handed Owens a generous bounty of £5,000. Taxed by Robertson on this payment some time later, Owens spoke of a reward for his ongoing loyalty. In truth the vast pile of dollars and sterling was meant as bait for Walter Dicketts, the ‘extremely greedy’ British secret service agent due in port any day.

  Ritter, however, was a man in a hurry. Desperate for news of the Cressado, Owens checked in with the British Embassy, where Richman Stopford was now head of station for MI6. The result was a flurry of anxious telegrams, one of which Owens sent directly to Lily at Homefields. ‘Dick not arrived. Worried. Can you help? See that Kay doesn’t break down. I will cable as soon as he arrives.’

  Effectively a hostage in Lisbon, Owens joined Ritter for a refresher course on sabotage at a hillside villa in fashionable Estoril. There, in a well-kept garden, a technician named Rudolf demonstrated how to use a wristwatch as a timing device, as well as a range of novel explosive devices disguised as batteries, flashlights and fountain pens. Ritter rejected an example of the latter, patiently explaining that while Pelikan might be a fine German brand, V-men operating in England might be best advised to carry Montblanc or Parker.

  ‘I hadn’t spotted that!’ said Johnny approvingly, nodding.

  Impressive though this was, Ritter’s belated grasp of elementary fieldcraft came too late for the unlucky Lena agents dispatched to England bearing chunks of German sausage, torches stamped ‘Made in Bohemia’ and poorly forged ID papers bearing 7s crossed in the Continental style.

  There was more. As well as a brand new code book, based on Warning From the West Indies by William Macmillan, Ritter dropped dark hints of arcane new developments in chemical warfare, against which British respirators would offer no protection. Poison gas and Pelikans aside, Owens undertook little if any useful work for MI5 while in Portugal, being laid low, so he said, by Lisbon Fever. ‘I was ill at that time and in bed,’ he swore later, complaining also of duodenal ulcers. ‘My temperature was 104. I was in such a state that I couldn’t carry on. If I thought I could go out I saw people outside. At other times they came to my room. I could only just manage to crawl around.’

  In reality, the Little Man’s wretched state owed far more to nervous exhaustion brought on by the threat of prompt liquidation by the Abwehr, a grim situation made worse by his excessive consumption of alcohol and Veronal. A barbiturate commonly used as a sleeping aid, Veronal was freely available in certain less scrupulous Lisbon drugstores, with no prescription required.

  It was especially good dope.

  After seventeen interminable days at sea the Cressado finally reached Lisbon late on the evening of Friday, 21 February. The tortuous voyage had reduced Dicketts to a state almost as miserable as Owens, in desperate need of a hot bath and a change of clothes, and racked by fears that Agent Snow and Doctor Rantzau had lost hope and moved on without him. Finding the immigration sheds closed on their quay, Dick managed to persuade the chief steward to smuggle him ashore, then made his way to the Hotel Metropole. Disconcertingly, there were no messages at the desk, leaving worried Agent Celery no option but to sneak back to the Cressado.

  As ‘Jack Brown’ waited impatiently to clear passport control, Ritter prepared to return to Germany. ‘He’d put off several important appointments in Hamburg and Berlin,’ explained Owens. ‘So that night I shook hands with the Doctor and he went back, so far as I knew.’

  Landing legally the following morning, Dicketts returned to the Metropole at noon. There were still no messages, but as he filled out a registration form at the desk Owens suddenly emerged from the dining room, apparently having dressed with a shovel and considerably refreshed by rather more than ein glas bier.

  ‘Good old Dick!’ Colonel Johnny exclaimed, turning heads.

  Dicketts’ heart sank into his boots. ‘The Little Man was so pleased to see me that he very nearly fainted. He had drunk a great deal of liquor. I’m quite convinced his alcoholic state was his relief at seeing me. The Germans had given me up all round.’

  Owens hastened to his room to phone Döbler, leaving Dicketts to wire an urgent cable to Kay: ‘Just arrived darling. Very bad trip. All my love sweetheart. Things are NOT going well.’

  Matters quickly improved upstairs, where Dick sank a gin fizz or three, then watched as Snow threw open his wardrobe and lifted up a pile of dirty laundry. Beneath it sat a small mountain of banknotes.

  ‘That’s £5,000,’ Owens crowed. ‘Look at the way the Doctor gives money away. See how these people treat me. The German organisation doesn’t quibble about expenses at all.’

  Already Celery was beginning to wilt. £5,000 easily trumped the miserly £200 fee paid by MI5 for the Lisbon mission, and his penny-pinching salary of £10 a week. Owens softened Dick further with several punches thrown well below the belt. ‘He started to talk to me about Kay, my wife, and said that at Homefields she was so afraid that she was locking her bedroom door at night because of Ronnie Reed. He told me he had done his very best to calm her fears, cheer her up and that sort of thing.’

  As for progress on their mission for MI5, Snow told Celery nothing at all. ‘Owens refused to give me any information,’ complained Dicketts. ‘Always on the feel that I was an amateur, a novice, whereas he had been in it for years. If I knew everything that was going on it would upset me, for the less I knew the better, and I should not fall into traps.’

  Owens had spun the very same line to McCarthy on board the Barbados, only to find himself bound up in knots. Now Dicketts was about to be cast overboard, hands tied, to sink or swim.

  The two slippery spies carried on drinking until Henri Döbler appeared and drove them out to the hillside villa in Estoril. Here, at last, Dicketts shook hands with the infamous Doctor Rantzau – portrayed by McCarthy as a loutish drunk with a fondness for dirty jokes, but putting Dick more in mind of a ‘shrewd Midwestern American businessman’, with sober tortoiseshell spectacles and perfect colloquial English. ‘He was very friendly and hearty, but scarcely drank at all, and plainly commanded respect from his colleagues.’

  Ritter’s appraisal of Dicketts was rather less favourable. ‘My first impression coincided exactly with what Owens had told me. Dicketts had all the appearance of a crook and of a man who would do anything for money. He spoke often and convincingly of being in low water financially, and of being compelled to accept work below his real capabilities.’

  For the moment, no mention was made of the fact that Dicketts was working for the British secret service. Instead, under Owens’ tipsy, duplicitous gaze, he carefully delivered the lines rehearsed time and again as Captain Jack Brown,
talking in the broadest possible terms about Stirlings, Beaufighters, infrared and the new high-altitude Flying Fortress, twenty of which were on order from Boeing in America.

  ‘I wanted to interview Dicketts for the first time without prejudicing any subsequent decision,’ said Ritter. ‘Had I revealed immediately that I knew him to be a British agent, then discovered that he was incorruptible, or a more important man than Owens supposed, it would have been impossible to allow them to return to England. On the other hand, as long as Dicketts knew nothing, I was free to act in whatever way seemed best. Clearly this could only be confirmed by careful interrogation and observation over a period of time. If it were confirmed that Dicketts could be bought, we would have to exert ourselves to the full to flatter, frighten and impress him. If not, it might be necessary to dispose of him. For either purpose Germany was the right place.’

  Unaware that his cover had been blown by Snow, the former confidence man judged his own performance impressive. ‘Rantzau asked me my opinions of England, the war, and my own attitude. I did not pretend any fascist leanings, but said I had a great admiration for the German system of government, and intense disagreement with my own.’ Dicketts also disclosed that his mother was Irish, and that he was prepared to go to any length to stop the war. ‘I told Ritter the agreed story and he apparently accepted it. It was obviously a foregone conclusion that I should go to Germany.’

  Ritter, too, stayed in character, expressing interest in Dick’s famous photographic memory and promising that he could be of great value to the Reich so long as he was honest and sincere. ‘The Doctor wanted me to come to Berlin within forty-eight hours and see for myself how differently the people were governed, and what great satisfaction there was there.’

  Whereas Dick, a practised con artist, remained calm, the highly strung Owens began to buckle under pressure, and perhaps even felt pangs of guilt. ‘The Little Man stayed all through the first interview, but his hair was disarrayed and he was in a state of collapse with excitement and alcohol. He did not take part in the actual conversation, except to intersperse with remarks like, “Dear old Dick – let’s have another drink. We will look after you. The Doctor is a good friend of ours.”’

  There were more good friends at the Arcadia, a lively cabaret club run by the Abwehr, where two hospitable dancers named Sophie and Lotti took to Dick immediately. Owens sweetened the honeytrap still further, promising Dicketts unlimited pleasures in Hamburg, the Valhalla included, and even told him to look up Fräulein Helen, his former mistress at the Café Indra.

  From double-cross to XXX.

  Mata Hari methods.

  Things WERE going well.

  12

  Working For Peace

  After two days of high living in Lisbon, Walter Dicketts embarked on his daring double-cross mission into the dark heart of Nazi Germany, a feat almost without precedent in wartime. The date was Tuesday, 25 February 1941. As Hitler’s armies moved on the Balkans, and Allied forces deployed to defend Greece, Agent Celery kept a discreet early-morning rendezvous behind Estoril station. There he was met by Hans Ruser, a swarthy diplomatic courier, who handed him a passport in the name of Walther Anton Denker, then loaded his suitcase into the boot of a powerful Ford V8.

  Lotti Schade, the youngest and prettiest of the dancing girls at the Arcadia night club, was there to bid Dick a fond farewell. So too was Colonel Johnny, temporarily sober and once more rehearsing the role of master spy.

  ‘You’re sure you want to go?’ the Little Man asked Dicketts.

  ‘So long as there’s no double-crossing.’

  Owens nodded vigorously. ‘Captain Robbie sent you over here blindfold. If I hadn’t got here first, you’d be going to your death.’

  ‘I’m trusting you on this one, Arthur. One hundred per cent.’

  The two men exchanged solemn, dissembling handshakes, followed by a theatrical embrace from lissom Lotti.

  ‘You’re a brave man, Dick,’ pronounced Owens. ‘Don’t let me down – and don’t give me away.’

  Never mind gullible jewellers on Bond Street, or gramophone records and plum-coloured suits. Walter Dicketts was about to attempt his most ambitious fraud yet, with Adolf Hitler as his mark.

  Ruser made for the Spanish border at Badajoz, crossing without incident and reaching Madrid after twelve hours on the road. ‘At first he was very cool and informed me quite bluntly that he did not like travelling with a traitor.’ Captain Jack Brown pushed back with some well-rehearsed lines about desiring peace. ‘Ruser then changed his mind and agreed with me entirely. He said that he was sure Hitler was sincere in his desire for peace with England, and had no territorial ambition in Europe other than Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.’

  In Madrid the pair stopped in at the German Embassy. Here Ruser collected diplomatic seals for Dick’s luggage and paraded the prize defector before various military attachés. On Thursday Dick boarded a Junkers-52 trimotor and flew east to Barcelona, transferring there to a sleek modern Focke-Wulf Condor airliner, then sweeping gracefully across the high snow-capped Pyrenees into France, accompanied now by a doctor named Fischer. ‘During the journey we became very friendly. He spoke fluent English and, while extremely pro-Hitler, was anxious to see the war over.’

  Everyone, it seemed, was working for peace.

  At Lyon the Condor touched down to refuel. Even though the city was situated in the unoccupied Vichy zone, Dicketts counted ten Messerschmitt 109 fighters lined up on the tarmac. There were also a hundred French fighter planes, left to rot in a corner of the airfield following the Armistice in June 1940. Few if any of the Dewoitines and Morane-Saulniers looked to have seen combat. More than any Fifth Column fairy tales of nuns in jackboots and midget assassins disguised as orphans, this sorriest of sights revealed something of why France had collapsed in just six short weeks.

  On Friday the Condor flew onwards to Stuttgart and Berlin, eventually landing at Tempelhof in the late afternoon. There Dicketts was met by an athletic Abwehr officer named George Sessler, who jumped the queue at a taxi rank by waving a red Gestapo card and whisked Dicketts across the capital to the Hauptbahnhof. An express train carried them north to Hamburg. ‘We had a private coupe,’ recalled Dicketts, ‘and over a bottle of wine became rather friendly. He had toured America and South Africa, and the whole of Europe with a Hitler Youth football team.’

  By the time Dicketts checked into a plush suite at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten it was almost midnight. Fatigued by four days of luxury travel, Dicketts went in search of a nightcap to steady his nerves. Two watchers tracked his progress from Room 344 to the American Bar off the lobby downstairs, and stuck out like sore thumbs.

  Back at the Metropole in Lisbon Owens returned to his sickbed. With £5,000 burning a hole in his wallet he could now afford the services of a nurse, who provided cold towels and Veronal in exchange for a thousand escudos a day, and the promise of some furniture. ‘Nobody speaks English in Lisbon,’ Owens fretted, seeking to excuse his maudlin condition. ‘Eventually I got a young lady to look after me. But I still felt like hell, all the same.’

  In fact the Little Man was on the up and up. ‘Madame Elizabeth Fernanda stayed with Arthur in his room at the hotel,’ Dicketts vouched later, ‘and I believe looked after him extremely well.’

  ‘Friend Snow is, I think, enjoying himself,’ Richman Stopford confirmed, flashing an update to B1A. ‘His present position has rather gone to his head, but you will no doubt bring him to his senses on his return.’

  In Hamburg too there were rude awakenings. At eight-thirty on Saturday morning Dicketts was roused by Sessler, who rapped loudly on his door, then ushered in a pair of Abwehr doktors named Schwartz and Powell. Their interrogative style was both subtle and persuasive, and required none of the severe methods intermittently employed at Camp 020. ‘Dicketts admitted his status as a British agent whose mission was to penetrate Owens’ network,’ Ritter recorded succinctly. ‘He offered his services to Germany and these were accepted
. I then made certain financial arrangements with a view to confirming his loyalty to us, and ensuring that he kept his mouth shut about Owens. Dicketts would receive a few hundred pounds as a gesture of our goodwill, but remain dependent on Owens for a much larger sum to be paid in instalments.’

  Undoubtedly Celery arrived at the same conclusion as had Wulf Schmidt in his cell at Latchmere House. ‘It was simply a matter of survival. Self-preservation must be the strongest instinct in man.’

  Mucky business. A right dirty deal.

  Things were not going well.

  Naturally enough, Dicketts admitted none of this to MI5 and swore that all had gone swimmingly for Captain Jack Brown. ‘It was a very ruthless interrogation and there is no doubt that they were suspicious. They showed extreme disbelief at my apparent ignorance on air force matters. But on the fourth evening Doctor Powell and Doctor Schwartz took me out for dinner at Schumann’s, as they understood I liked lobster, and thought I was a little tired.’

  Ritter appeared only on Tuesday, keen to cover his own backside before leaving for North Africa. ‘I was anxious to leave something behind,’ he conceded. ‘Owens had been operating his transmitter since before the outbreak of war, and could not reasonably expect to last much longer. Now the case was effectively over. On the other hand, I saw that total collapse might be staved off with the assistance of Dicketts – not so much from any confidence in him, but in the hope that the case might after all be rescued from disaster.’

  Not just the case, but the Fatherland itself. Codenamed Barbarossa, Hitler’s colossal military assault on the Soviet Union was named in honour of a crusading emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and provisionally scheduled for May 1941. In order to divert attention from the east, preparations for a seaborne invasion of the British Isles were to be maintained as a feint, including deception schemes known as Haifisch (Shark) and Harpune (Harpoon). Both involved bogus radio traffic, reconnaissance flights and landing exercises – and now Walter Dicketts, the corrupt double-cross agent named after a vegetable and recruited by Snow in a public bar.