The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [109]
The sight of her brother’s frozen body laid out on a slab in such cold and impersonal surroundings was too much for Gerda. She broke down completely, and for some time she was unable to utter a comprehensible word. But to the policemen present, it was obvious that the body did indeed belong to Kaj Egon Emil Oxlund. Nor did it come as any great surprise when it emerged that no Erik Moeller had ever lived at the Copenhagen address specified by the survivor across the Oeresund. The mystery man in the Malmo hospital clearly had some explaining to do. As soon as he was well enough, they would transfer him to a police cell, so that he could be subjected to a more thorough interrogation.
Over the next few days, the Danish police focused on Oxlund’s neighbors, in the hope that they might be able to shed some light upon this strange and tragic story. It was during these house-tohouse enquiries that Hans Soetje first revealed the strange goings-on at 1 Noekkerosevej.
The Copenhagen force, led by Politikommissaer Odmar, now realized they might be on to something big. If they handled the investigations carefully, they would be able to distinguish themselves before their German masters. Eivind Larsen, head of the Ministry of Justice, would be kept informed of all developments from this point onwards, and Odmar would have known that his superior was in direct contact with Fregatten-Kapitan Albert Howoldt, the head of the Abwehr in Denmark. Most worryingly for Tommy Sneum, Odmar now ordered one of his best detectives, Overbejtent Thomas Noerreheden, to liaise closely with the Germans.
If the elimination of Sneum was soon to become a priority for the Germans in Denmark, it had long been high on the agenda for the selfstyled Princes of Danish Intelligence. They had recently made fresh contact with Ronnie Turnbull, as usual through the Danish journalist Ebbe Munck, who offered to act as middleman for any proposed meeting. Turnbull continued to operate from the safety of Stockholm, where he lived comfortably with his wife and young son. So, if the Princes wanted a face-to-face meeting with him, one of their number would have to make the journey across the Oeresund. However, Hans Lunding didn’t need to cross the perilous ice sheets on foot. Even as Kaj Oxlund and Thorbjoern Christophersen perished on the route he had mapped out for them, Lunding was using his lofty position to arrange his passage by ice-cutter from Copenhagen to Malmo. On the afternoon of 6 March, just hours after Kaj and Thorbjoern had lost their fight for life, he carved his way across the Oeresund and reached the British Legation in Stockholm without incident.
For Turnbull, this visit represented the culmination of a year’s careful diplomacy. Ever since his arrival in Stockholm, he had been in awe of the Princes. Later he admitted: ‘I’ve always been a bit of a hero-worshipper in all my activities with people who know what they’re doing.’ Now the Scot knew that his stock would be rising as he provided the link between Danish Intelligence and SOE Headquarters in London. And this was a relationship which had the potential to give SOE the upper hand over SIS, especially now that the latter organization’s agents were in such trouble—with one of them in Swedish custody and the other likely to be uncovered before long by the Danish police. Looking back, Turnbull acknowledged as much: ‘I was to one extent lucky in that when I arrived in the middle of that terrible crisis, SIS themselves were in some kind of a mess with their man in Denmark.