The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [126]
Tommy did admit that the British had dropped him, along with Christophersen, near Brorfelde in September 1941. He was also happy to reiterate that his relationship with Christophersen had broken down due to the latter’s incompetence and lack of nerve. Since Kaj Oxlund was dead, Tommy then implicated his late friend in most of his activities. He admitted that he had known about Oxlund’s attempted escape across the ice with the Christophersen brothers before it had happened. As the police seemed to have independent verification from Helvard’s neighbors that Tommy had stayed with Arne during their final days in Denmark, there seemed no point in denying that, either. However, Sneum continued to insist that Helvard had no knowledge of his spying activities on behalf of Britain, claiming that his friend had wanted to escape to England for his own reasons.
Unbeknown to Tommy, though, Arne had already confessed that he was a spy. The police report stated: ‘Under questioning, Helvard admitted that he had spied against the Germans after being employed at Kastrup Airport. He was collating all sorts of information about the airport with regard to manpower, hangars, airplanes, numbers and types, anti-aircraft artillery, and so on. All this information he says he gave to Oxlund, and didn’t know what he did with it.’
The logic of both men exaggerating poor Kaj’s role was flawless. But why Helvard admitted to being a spy is a mystery. One can only assume that he thought he would take some of the heat off Sneum. Perhaps he was assured that their chances of avoiding the Gestapo would improve if their confessions could be extracted in a more civilized manner in Sweden. Whatever his reasoning might have been, the Danish police didn’t need much brainpower to realize that Kaj, Arne and Tommy were all part of the same spy ring, even if the latter two never confirmed their own relationship within the set-up.
Their partial cooperation gave them a fighting chance of survival, but in itself it wasn’t enough. Odmar demanded to know the whereabouts of the radio that the British-run spies had brought with them. He explained that he had to be able to give the Germans something tangible, or else he would be obliged to escort the culprits back to Denmark for some brutal interrogation. Fortunately, of course, Tommy had prepared for just such an eventuality. He told Odmar that if he looked among his personal effects he would find a receipt for locker number thirteen at Copenhagan railway station.
Effectively, he had just handed the Nazis a British radio. On the face of it, this seems a terrible betrayal. As far as Tommy could see, however, the discovery would only lull the Germans into a false sense of security. If they thought British spies had to rely on such cumbersome and old-fashioned equipment, the enemy would probably feel confident that they were well ahead in all aspects of radio communication. Whereas in reality, partly thanks to Duus Hansen, the Allies now held the advantage.
‘When your life is in danger, you do what you can to save yourself,’ admitted Tommy later. ‘But there were still things I wouldn’t have done.’
For example, Odmar’s report noted: ‘Sneum declines to give any information about whether the radio transmitter which they brought with them has been used. And he declines to give any information about codes, signals or transmission times. He doesn’t say if he was able to transmit himself, but says it was necessary for Christophersen to leave Denmark because he had lost his nerve.’
Sneum wasn’t going to betray his friends. He admitted that he had met Werner Gyberg, but claimed he had posed as an innocent radio ham, using a false name—‘Lieutenant Wolff.’ That, he hoped, would clear the still-imprisoned Gyberg of all charges that he had been involved in any attempt to get hold of a radio receiver. And it worked: Gyberg was subsequently released. Even more significantly, Tommy