The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [100]
Ultimately, the need to take drastic action for the sake of security was more urgent than either Tommy or Kaj had imagined. And all three occupants of the flat would have left in a hurry had they realized the extent to which they were being observed. For the caretakers at 1 Noekkerosevej had noticed events in their normally mundane world take a strange new twist in early 1942; and, as before, they had an uncanny eye for detail.
Later, Hans Soetje helped the Danish police make out a full report on the developments in his building, documenting the return of Christophersen, closely followed by Sneum’s arrival. Fortunately for the spies, he only ever referred to them by the nicknames he had given them:
Soetje thinks it must have been the middle of January 1942 when ‘The Russian’ came back to live regularly with Oxlund again. Besides ‘The Russian’ there was also soon a person at Oxlund’s whom Soetje called ‘The Aviator.’ Soetje thinks that this man had shown up before, while Oxlund was still living with his wife, but he can’t remember exactly when that was, and ‘The Aviator’ had been away for a long time.
At this point the nosy caretaker made an erroneous link between the sudden reappearance in his building of SIS agent Thomas Sneum and the SOE agents dropped into Denmark just after Christmas. The police report continued:
Soetje had been reading in his newspaper that two aviators had jumped out of an aircraft, and one was killed while the other disappeared. Now ‘The Aviator’ started to visit Oxlund. Therefore Soetje thought about the possibility that ‘The Aviator’ could be this person who had dropped from the sky after jumping out of the aircraft and survived.
Luckily for Sneum, Soetje didn’t seem to have enough confidence in his theory to act upon it immediately and go to the authorities, preferring instead to exercise his love of other people’s business in more trivial ways. The report added: ‘It soon became clear that “The Aviator” had taken up residence with Oxlund. He probably slept on the sofa in the living room, while “The Russian” who also lived there slept in the bedroom, on one side of the double bed, while Oxlund slept on the other side of the bed.’
The caretaker’s suspicions had been aroused by the routines of the strangers, their appearance and above all by a box they sometimes carried. The police report explained:
Oxlund, ‘The Russian’ and ‘The Aviator’ left the building between ten and eleven each morning. Sometimes ‘The Russian’ left first, sometimes ‘The Aviator’, and the remaining occupant(s) followed a short time after. They never went out as a trio together in daylight. ‘The Aviator’ was dressed in Danish officer’s uniform with long brown riding boots, but his cap looked too big for him. When evening came all three returned, but either ‘The Aviator’ or ‘The Russian’ came first with the remaining pair arriving later.
They purchased large amounts of food and drink and it was clear they cooked for themselves, including big joints of meat. But during blackouts in the city Oxlund came out, either with ‘The Russian’ or alone, carrying a box with a handle on top, which looked like a big sewing machine. Soetje didn’t think anything about it at the time, but looking back he thinks the box must have contained a radio transmitter. He never heard any noise in Oxlund’s apartment of the type which might have been caused by a radio transmitter; and if they did transmit, it must have been after the time normal radio transmissions had stopped for the evening.
Soetje did have some radio disturbance on his own radio, and it is possible it could have come from Oxlund’s radio, but he never received any complaints from neighbors, as he would have done