The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [116]
Tulle tried her best to apologize to the manager. ‘The problem is,’ she said tearfully, ‘I’m afraid I can’t pay. I didn’t bring any money.’
‘That’s quite all right, madam,’ replied the manager, who had witnessed the whole spectacle and was clearly on the same side as the late Kaj Oxlund had been. ‘It’s on the house.’
Detective-Sergeant Roland Olsen was a resistance sympathizer. But on 24 March 1942 he was put in a difficult position. Olsen was aware that the Danish police department was now liaising directly with the Germans, and that a middle-ranking Abwehr officer, Oberleutnant von Grene, was their point of contact on the delicate matter of the recently uncovered spy ring. He therefore fully understood that his superiors were under strong pressure to deliver firm results for their German masters. Given his own anti-Nazi leanings, however, Olsen didn’t want to deliver anything to von Grene, especially not one of the spies in question. So he was less than thrilled to receive a call at the police station that day from a Copenhagen restaurant, Café Bunis, informing him that a man they believed to be the hunted resistance figure Thomas Sneum had just reserved a table and was due to arrive in a few hours’ time.
Later Olsen wrote down his own account of these tricky moments. ‘I sat in my office and thought about it. The Germans would think of Sneum as an enemy spy. And now we, the Danish police, were supposed to arrest him because the Germans would want him delivered to them. But for spies in wartime there is only one sentence in court—death. Then it is back-against-the-wall time, and one salvo of gunfire ends it.’ While these thoughts were going through Olsen’s head, he came clean about the phone call from the restaurant in a frank conversation with his boss, Politikommissaer Odmar. Olsen explained later: ‘I told Odmar what I knew, that I would go to the restaurant but that I would not bring Sneum back under arrest. We could invent some story or other for the Herrenvolk [Germans] instead. We talked about it a little, and Odmar said he understood my point of view.’ But Odmar, who wasn’t an outright Nazi, still wanted Olsen to find a quick solution to the Sneum affair before the Germans had time to react. Everyone feared the backlash if the agent continued to operate in Copenhagen for a second longer.
However, a message soon came through from the restaurant to say that the reservation made by the suspect had been cancelled. Olsen suddenly had a few more hours in which to come up with an answer. He felt that Werner Gyberg might help him find a way through this minefield, but Gyberg was behind bars and being questioned after the death of his employee, Thorbjoern Christophersen. With no other options, though, Olsen released an astonished Gyberg on 25 March and left him in Copenhagen’s Town Hall Square. Under the terms of the deal, Gyberg had to return within twenty minutes, having used his temporary freedom to arrange a meeting with Sneum for that very night. Worryingly for Olsen, however, there was still no sign of the businessman after half an hour. The detective recalled:
To think about something else, I bought some pigeon feed. This was the police department’s biggest case, about spies and parachutists, and there I was, acting like I didn’t care. German soldiers passed by, the sun shone on the Town Hall, but still no Gyberg. Finally he arrived and took me to his house. Duus Hansen turned up, took my pistol, and disappeared again. Eventually Sneum arrived through the back door of the cellar, and we greeted each other.
Tommy recalled later: ‘We arranged a meeting for that night with Duus Hansen, at his office just off the Town Hall Square. Olsen was going to be present with Gyberg and I agreed to attend with my brother-in-law, Bertelsen.