Hitler's Spy

by James Hayward

  Only by capturing Rantzau could MI5 hope to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. With the two spies due to sail at dawn, Robertson decided to roll the dice. ‘Biscuit was instructed to go on with the scheme and to act as though nothing had happened.’

  Arriving back at the Dolphin, McCarthy learned from the porter that Owens had fallen into a blue funk and was hunting high and low for his missing companion. Happy to prolong his agony, Mac repaired to a pub on the seafront, where Owens located him ten minutes later. ‘He thought I had taken a run-out powder at the last minute and was plainly relieved,’ Mac noted coolly. The pair then set about imbibing a week’s worth of drink. ‘It was nearly midnight before we retired. In the hotel lobby was a coat rack, two naval coats hung there. Owens searched through the pockets – though I didn’t see him get anything.’

  The whiff of farce grew more pungent upstairs. Bidding McCarthy goodnight on the landing, Owens threw up a pantomime Nazi salute, topped off with a whispered ‘Heil Hitler’.

  With these unsober gestures Colonel Johnny’s fate was sealed.

  7

  Operation Lamp

  On the evening of 20 May 1940 a reconnaissance unit from the 2nd Panzer Division reached the French coast at Noyelles-sur-Mer, little more than a stone’s throw from the historic battlefield at Crécy, where Englishmen with longbows had routed an entire French army during the Hundred Years’ War. Having advanced almost sixty miles in a single day, the black-clad tank men were justly proud of their achievement. Standing on top of their turrets to gaze out across the English Channel, lungs filled with tangy salt air, the exhaustion of ten consecutive days of Blitzkrieg was momentarily displaced by the ecstatic realisation that the Allied armies were now divided in two.

  That same Monday morning at 06.35 Agents Snow and Biscuit left dry land behind them, slipping out quietly from Grimsby on board the Barbados. Owens was wired with nervous energy, pumping the crew for information about convoys and flash lamps, and keen to establish whether the trawler still carried its single antiquated Lewis machine gun. With the coast still in sight the boat lay up for several hours off the Humber Lightship, then cautiously proceeded through the East Coast mine barrier. Owens remained in the wheelhouse with Captain Walker throughout the long day, occasionally descending below decks to gulp down cups of strong tea in the galley but never staying long enough to remove his overcoat, thus thwarting McCarthy’s desire to run through his pockets.

  ‘His entire behaviour all day was consistent with him expecting an early contact to be made,’ Mac reported afterwards, the previous night’s Sieg Heiling still fixed in his memory. ‘I told the skipper that if it became necessary we would tie him up on Thursday night.’

  The tension on board the Barbados increased tenfold at a quarter past five, when the trawler was buzzed by an inquisitive aircraft. ‘A plane with English markings on the tail circled around us,’ wrote Captain Walker. ‘It then proceeded west, from which direction he had come.’ The skipper was alone on the bridge at the time, and soon after was alarmed by the sound of distant explosions. Creeping paranoia began to envelop the trawler, permeating a message sent below decks to McCarthy. ‘Walker said that the monoplane had RAF markings but in the wrong place – on his tail, not under his wings. The skipper was sure it was a Jerry.’

  Peeved at having missed the mystery fly-past, Owens stayed on watch in the wheelhouse until midnight, flagging only when Barbados shot her nets on the western edge of the Dogger Bank, still forty miles and three days from the specified rendezvous. As the noisy winding gear dropped the net on the shallow fisheries Owens surrendered to fatigue and joined Mac in the galley, lying down on a bench and attempting to sleep, his overcoat still buttoned up tight.

  For Walker and McCarthy, Snow’s decision to retire for the night came not a moment too soon. Ten minutes later the trawler was buzzed by a twin-engined German seaplane, which appeared ‘as if by magic’ and fired off a sequence of red and green recognition flares. Risking a low pass above the dark waves, the enemy aircraft then flashed a call sign in Morse.

  Doctor Rantzau had arrived.

  Roused in a hurry by the first mate, McCarthy kept his wits about him and ordered Walker to extinguish all lights on board. ‘We managed to keep Owens below until Jerry flew away. After careful consideration I advised the skipper to pull back the net and make for home. This we did. Owens, when he heard the net gear working, asked what was the matter. The skipper told him the net had fouled and they had to pull it back to shoot.’

  Mac acted properly in aborting the mission. Rantzau had arrived way ahead of schedule, a move apparently anticipated by Owens, and further evidence that he was deceiving MI5. Responding in kind, Biscuit continued to hoodwink Snow. ‘After a couple of hours the ship was well on the way back to Grimsby. Owens enquired again where we were, and why no fishing. He was told we were proceeding to a place near the rendezvous.’

  Owens swallowed the lie but remained nervy and restless, and as dawn drew closer McCarthy sensed new danger. ‘It was obvious Owens expected something to happen. I was afraid he might go on deck, and signal if he saw anyone.’ If Snow read the magnetic compass, moreover, he might deduce that the trawler was heading in the wrong direction. Therefore, at five o’clock on Tuesday morning, Mac settled on decisive action. ‘I went to the wheelhouse and told Captain Walker my plan to tie Snow up and search him. It was necessary for the skipper to take the first mate into his confidence. They both gave me all the assistance I wanted, which was much appreciated.’

  While the mate fetched a suitable length of rope, McCarthy ordered Owens to his feet and frogmarched him into Walker’s cabin. Outnumbered, with nowhere to run, the Little Man offered no resistance as his wrists and ankles were tightly bound. A thorough search of his pockets failed to produce the note scrawled at Peterborough station, but did turn up the highly incriminating IP menu card.

  ‘Can we talk?’ Owens tried to bargain, his tone imploring.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Are you a real German agent?’

  ‘Heil Hitler, you bastard.’

  Owens nodded, deaf to the sarcasm in McCarthy’s voice. ‘I thought so. My man in London tried to warn me about you.’

  Rolph? Gagen? God only knew.

  ‘Look, it’s not me you want – it’s the other fellow, at Sackville Street. Absolute gospel. I’m spying on him!’

  Mac hesitated, torn between conflicting roles. Should he admit that he had been working for Robertson all along, or maintain the charade that he was a traitor, willing to spy for the other side?

  ‘Play fair and I’ll help you,’ he said quietly, rounding on Snow, his posture menacing. ‘If Rolph is the one double-crossing, just come through with it. Don’t try to mug me.’

  ‘Some line, that is. You must think I’m the bloody mug!’

  Each man was walking a different tightrope – both of which threatened to snap. Unaware of Snow’s detailed history, and unable to phone Robertson for further instructions, McCarthy had no choice but to leave Hitler’s chief spy in England hogtied.

  As morning turned into afternoon, the last leg of the ill-starred voyage was completed beneath a cloud of fear, confusion and paranoia. With an ocean of bad blood between them, Owens still failed to grasp that Mac was an MI5 asset. ‘About an hour afterwards, Snow called for me and asked to have the rope around his wrists loosened. I asked the mate to loosen it, and while he was doing so Owens even asked him if he was a German agent.’

  After thirty-six hours spent – quite literally – at sea, the Barbados reached Grimsby on Tuesday evening. Guards stood waiting on the fish dock, permitting no one to disembark until Owens had been placed under close arrest and removed to a cell on a nearby naval vessel, HMS Corunia. The silence of the trawlermen was bought off with cash payments of £5 each; Captain Walker received £25. None of the crew showed the slightest enthusiasm for returning to sea with any more ‘government observers’.

  Robertson was sanguine, and discounted suggestions t
hat those on board the Barbados had lost their nerve. ‘Mac was of the opinion that they had been tailed all the way from Grimsby. This, to my mind, is not very likely, but it is quite possible that the Germans sent a machine out to see whether the trawler was anywhere near the rendezvous. The crew were not expecting to meet anyone that night, and would naturally be rather scared at seeing a strange plane signalling to them.’

  Be that as it may, the premature return of the trawler at least served to expedite Robertson’s ambitious Venlo reversal. Now known as Operation Lamp, the revised plan called for the Barbados to return to sea with a regular navy crew, along with a protective shadow from HMS Salmon, an S-class submarine based at Harwich. Hopeful of rustling up air support, Tar had also visited Adastral House on Kingsway, where he spoke to Air Commodore Archie Boyle, the genial Director of Air Intelligence. Boyle listened politely, but declined to play ball.

  Crucially, would rogue Agent Snow?

  On Monday morning, as the Barbados put out from Grimsby, Robertson travelled by car to Harwich. There he met with Commander Edward Bickford, the skipper of HMS Salmon, matelot and sub wreathed in Phoney War glory after sinking U-36 on a North Sea patrol. Following interim orders from Robertson, Bickford instructed an officer from the 7th Destroyer Flotilla to pick seventeen reliable ratings to man the Barbados on its second voyage. Lieutenant Lionel Argles, a torpedo officer, had served under Bickford before and was considered a ‘suitable type’, as was his second in command, a fellow lieutenant named Paterson. Their scratch crew would be armed with rifles, pistols and hand grenades, augmented by an Oerlikon cannon manned by a team from the gunnery training school at Portsmouth. A powerful anti-aircraft autocannon of Swiss origin, the Oerlikon was capable of firing several hundred 20 mm shells a minute, and was likely to make short work of Rantzau’s transport if he chose to return by seaplane or trawler.

  If the Doctor surfaced in a U-boat, HMS Salmon would intervene and add to her tally. With Owens and McCarthy at sea, however, Robertson was still unsure how his German counterpart would make his way to the rendezvous point on Thursday evening.

  While Argles set to work up-gunning the Barbados, Robertson confronted Owens in the brig on board HMS Corunia. Now, for the first time, Colonel Johnny learned that his sidekick McCarthy had been working for British intelligence all along. ‘I took McCarthy with me but kept him outside,’ Tar recorded. ‘I asked Owens a few questions relating to his recent voyage and to the various remarks he had made to Mac. I told him quite straight that I considered he was double-crossing me, which he flatly denied. Owens said that he was never going to allow the meeting to take place, and that he thought that Mac was a German agent and leading him into a trap.’

  Rightly sceptical, Robertson called in McCarthy and again quizzed Snow about the IP card, as well as the so-called blueprints. With nowhere to run, Owens freely betrayed his source: William Rolph. ‘He was extremely hard up for money,’ Tar learned, ‘and very anxious to go over to Germany as an agent. He gave Owens the IP Club list and told him that he was, at all costs, to get £2,000 from the German organisation, which Owens was to hand over to him. Rolph told Owens that he regarded Colonel Hinchley-Cooke and I as scoundrels.’

  All this because MI5 had apparently welched on a paltry payment of ten pounds. The only positive to emerge from the entire fiasco was that Biscuit was plainly incorruptible. So far as McCarthy was concerned, Owens’ antics during the train journey from King’s Cross to Cleethorpes, and his Nazi saluting at the Dolphin Hotel, were evidence of genuine treason. Robertson was inclined to agree. The early arrival of Doctor Rantzau on Monday also raised the possibility of some secret means of communication between Owens and the Abwehr, as yet undiscovered by MI5. The visiting Lascar seamen? Perhaps Rolph had queered these inquiries too. Whatever the truth, had Snow not retired below decks mere minutes before the seaplane arrived, matters might have ended very differently, with Mac behind bars beside Stevens and Best in Berlin.

  Alone with Owens once more, Tar delivered Colonel Johnny a chilling ultimatum. Rather than £2,000 for a menu card, or £50,000 for a Spitfire, the numbers now under discussion were Regulation 18B, and Section 1 of the Treachery Act 1940. Though not yet in force, this draconian emergency Bill was due before Parliament in two days’ time and sought to impose a mandatory death penalty on any person convicted at trial of acts likely to assist the enemy or impede operations by His Majesty’s forces. Though MI5 begged to differ, Churchill had declared himself particularly keen to execute Nazi spies, with maximum publicity pour encourager les autres. Indeed, his office took steps to force the Bill through in just two short weeks.

  Quite deliberately, the new legislation bypassed ancient rules that required two witnesses to prove an act of treason. Thus McCarthy alone held his hand on the lever of the gallows trapdoor beneath Owens’ cold feet.

  ‘I told Snow that he was going back to sea in the trawler and would be accompanied by a crew of armed naval ratings,’ Tar continued, appalled that Owens had been willing to sacrifice McCarthy. ‘If there was any sign that he was double-crossing us when the rendezvous took place he would probably never come back to this country.’ Owens could atone for his sins only by luring Ritter on board the Barbados. ‘If he was instrumental in inveigling Rantzau onto the ship, and enabling us to capture him, I might consider his case again. But in the meantime I was perfectly convinced that he was double-crossing me, and that he had given my name already to the Germans.’

  Closing the cell door behind him, Tar savoured the agreeably terminal clang of cold steel and deadlocks.

  Back on the fish quay, Robertson furnished Lieutenant Argles with final orders that were nasty, brutish and short. Snow would accompany his crew to the treff with Rantzau, with Argles authorised to take ‘any suitable action’ if his charge attempted to sabotage Operation Lamp. One option was a length of rope and more tight nautical knots. Another was a bullet to the head.

  These distasteful chores concluded, Robertson returned to London with Sam McCarthy, still uncertain as regards Snow’s long-term prospects. ‘I find it exceedingly difficult to make up my mind one way or another. Snow’s mind is a very odd affair and it does not work on logical lines. The arguments he put up for the things he said to McCarthy were not exactly convincing, but at the same time held a certain amount of water.’

  But not much. After conferring with Guy Liddell and Jasper Harker, Robertson put in for a new Detention Order under 18B, to be served on Owens should he refuse to return to sea to abduct Rantzau. Truly the Little Man now found himself thrust onto the very tip of the spear.

  Resolving to sweep clean the Augean stable, Robertson also ordered the belated detention of the coconut widow Mathilde Krafft, who was duly escorted from Bournemouth to Holloway gaol. B1A officers were also instructed to interrogate other Snow associates whose loyalties were in doubt, including Lily Bade, her maid Anna Johnson and the dubious shipping broker Samuel Stewart. To this list of ignominious names Tar also added that of William Rolph, whom MI5 and the Branch found suddenly elusive.

  While Owens sweated bullets in his cell, Argles and his crew worked at a feverish pace to ready the Barbados for action. Besides sourcing suitable wireless equipment, the most time-consuming task was the installation of the deadly Oerlikon quick-firing cannon, whose powerful recoil required a robust yet discreet steel mounting, something like that of a Great War Q-ship. Richman Stopford took care of other more mundane details, arranging with the Ministry of Shipping to charter the trawler for a further week and taking steps to ensure that her name and registration number would be changed after she returned to Grimsby. ‘This is to be done in order to save the lives of the crew on their future fishing expeditions in the North Sea,’ Tar minuted. ‘It is quite plain that GY71 will be a marked ship after this trip.’

  Late on the evening of Wednesday, 22 May the Barbados cast off once again and steamed out into the North Sea. HMS Salmon was already in position, submerged at periscope depth five miles from the rendezvous po
int and briefed to intercept enemy hostiles. With the ageing trawler capable of no more than ten knots, the outward journey lasted eight tense, uncomfortable hours, during which weather conditions steadily deteriorated. As the iron-grey sky and sea merged into one, and the Barbados began to pitch heavily, so too did Snow’s stomach.

  Racked by nausea, and haunted by visions of draconian laws and dangling nooses, Owens poured out his heart in an emotional letter, addressed jointly to Lily and his loyal son Bob, Snow Junior. This lachrymose note was entrusted to Lieutenant Argles, who in due course passed it to Robertson. ‘The letter was written under a great strain,’ remarked Tar. ‘Argles considered he was quite genuine, as it had been made quite clear to Snow that if he made a false step he would never see land again. From what they told me, Owens had a pretty rough passage, but at the same time appeared to be most anxious to get hold of Rantzau either alive or dead, and was willing to play the game as far as he possibly could.’

  Some line.

  Three hundred miles east, on the picturesque North Sea island of Sylt, Major Nikolaus Ritter relied once more on the Luftwaffe to convey him to his watershed treff with Colonel Johnny.

  On Thursday afternoon the Doctor again journeyed from Hamburg to List, where a maritime reconnaissance unit designated Kustenfliegergruppe 506 operated Heinkel 115 floatplanes from the sheltered harbour. While these planes were sturdy enough, the North Sea treff required a larger aircraft type with greater range, prompting Ritter to obtain a huge twin-engined Dornier 18 flying boat with an impressive airborne endurance of twelve hours and a range of 2,000 miles. In order to reduce weight, and thus fuel consumption, the handpicked crew from KfG 506 agreed to strip out their protective armour plating. This gambit was a brave one, since the lumbering Dornier 18 boasted the dubious distinction of having been the very first Luftwaffe aircraft type shot down by the RAF.