The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [120]
When Else left the station that afternoon, she was followed by Detectives Normander and Jensen, who had orders to shadow her indefinitely, in case she should lead them to her husband.
Olsen revealed: ‘She understood the content of my note and followed the instructions. And as she had a sense of humour, in the following days she had quite a lot of fun leading her police shadows a merry dance.’ Else Sneum hadn’t been given the opportunity to enjoy herself so much in ages, and she wasn’t going to pass up the chance to make her own amusing contribution to the Allied war effort by wasting police time.
Meanwhile, other Danish police officers checked all mail to and from the Jensen family home for the slightest clue as to Sneum’s whereabouts. They grew similarly frustrated. The correspondence revealed nothing, though it seemed increasingly likely that the elusive Tommy would turn up soon enough, dead or alive. Even Britain’s best spy couldn’t remain at large for ever in the midst of such a manhunt.
Chapter 36
WALKING WITH GHOSTS
TOMMY AVOIDED HIS ESTRANGED WIFE and daughter throughout this dangerous time, focusing instead on escape. Emotional complications could be fatal for a spy in occupied territory. He and Arne Helvard would head for Sweden and then Britain. Nothing else mattered.
Sneum and Helvard met late on the afternoon of 26 March at Copenhagen’s central railway station, where they both deposited some of their personal effects in lockers. They avoided locker number thirteen, where the original British radio, now not only cumbersome but entirely useless without its crystals, still lay neatly packed away in its case. However, Tommy fully intended to take the receipt for that locker to Sweden, where he thought it could be used to his advantage.
He joined Arne on a northbound train to Skodsborg. Originally, Tommy had seen Skodsborg only as an ideal location from which to improve radio communications with Sweden and Britain. Now, though, he believed the northern end of the village would provide the perfect stepping-off point for their escape across the ice. Though this part of the coast was patrolled by the Danish police, who had observation boxes at strategic points along the sea front, the local lookouts were known to be less than dedicated to their tedious task. Tommy and Arne would also wear white for camouflage against the snow and ice, so that if searchlights were shone in their direction, they might still blend into their surroundings unnoticed. On the Swedish side the following morning, they could pose as fishermen, mingle with those already on the ice, and slip away unnoticed.
Their ultimate target was the Swedish town of Landskrona, seventeen kilometers across the frozen sea. But Tommy believed they might not even have to reach the mainland to achieve their objective of escaping Denmark’s Nazi occupation. In the middle of the channel, the island of Hven lay just inside Swedish waters, and only eleven kilometers from Skodsborg. The small number of Swedish police who were based there might feel obliged to take any unauthorized visitors across to their own mainland for processing. However, they might equally call in their Danish counterparts to repatriate two of their citizens. So Landskrona remained the favored destination, because it appeared to guarantee Tommy and Arne’s long-term freedom.
They were joined at the Skodsborg flat by Sneum’s cousin Knud Nielsen, who would help with the first phase of the escape attempt. In the meantime, they cooked themselves a meal and enjoyed a few beers, teasing each other to shake off the fear that this might be their last supper. Little more than a fortnight earlier, two out of three men had died on the ice. Since then, the daytime temperatures had risen slightly, a potentially