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But many years later, Sneum had a better insight into the sort of man that more than six months of spying in Nazi-occupied territory threatened to turn him into. The constant fear, the lack of support from Britain, the death of Oxlund, the feeling of being hunted and the suspicion that Danish Intelligence didn’t have his best interests at heart—all those factors led him to look after number one at all costs once his mission in Denmark was over. He reflected: ‘In the spy game you have to tell so many lies that in the end you can hardly distinguish between truth and lies, and you don’t even trust your nearest friends.’

In all the chaos, Tommy might have felt a temptation to visit his wife and baby one last time, and rediscover a sense of the person he had been before the invasion, a man with control over his destiny. Others had been banking on him succumbing to that temptation. It was mid-morning when Odmar ordered Olsen and his two colleagues to raid Carl Jensen’s apartment, where Else and Marianne were staying. The operation took place under the watchful eye of Thomas Noerreheden, who had liaised with the Germans and wanted to make sure everything ran smoothly. Noerreheden knew they would have to move quickly to be effective, and urged his officers to hurry to the third floor before any evasive action could be taken inside the apartment. Carl Jensen opened the door before it was broken down.

‘We’re looking for Thomas Sneum,’ said Noerreheden as his colleagues dashed past the owner and searched one room each.

‘I haven’t seen him since last June,’ replied Else’s father honestly.

Within minutes it became obvious that Sneum was not in the apartment. Noerreheden hoped for a new lead and asked Jensen if his son-in-law had access to a summer house somewhere along the coast. Else’s father replied that, to the best of his knowledge, he did not.

The officers then turned their attention to Jensen’s wife Gerda and their daughter Else, who were in the living room with Marianne. They were both asked when they had last seen Thomas Sneum. They both answered: ‘June last year.’ Else was promptly put in a police car and taken to Copenhagen’s central station.

Politikommissaer Odmar was following events closely. He had already instructed four detectives from the Criminal Investigations Branch—by now closely affiliated to the Abwehr—to observe proceedings at the station. As the interrogation began in earnest, Criminal Detective Normander and his colleagues Harry Jensen, Rasmus Christensen and Emil Petersen watched for signs of weakness in Else’s story. Olsen later said of this interview: ‘In the department they believed Sneum had had some contact with his wife, which in fact turned out to be the case. It was decided that she should be shadowed and her telephone tapped. Then she was brought in for an interrogation by my department.’

Under intense pressure, Else tried to stick to what she could say truthfully without endangering her husband: that Tommy had left home on 18 June 1941, and that she had received a farewell letter from him dated 5 July. She insisted she had no idea where Tommy was now, and maintained a friendly demeanour even under intense pressure. This composure gave Olsen the nerve to try something which might have rebounded on him in spectacular fashion had his audacious move been discovered by his pro-Nazi colleagues. He recalled:

She denied having any contact with her husband, and during the questioning some of our young officers were given a good look at her, because they were going to be shadowing her when she left the police station. Mrs Sneum handled the questioning without any problems, and as she left she said goodbye to all the personnel in the office, offering her hand to each and every one of us. This was exactly what I had been waiting for.

On a piece of paper, I had written some instructions for her on how to behave over the next few days. The piece of paper was neatly folded, and when it was my turn to shake hands, it changed from my hand to hers.

It was a shot