The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [142]
At the time, though, it appeared that Mogens Hammer was in most immediate danger of capture by the Germans, so he was ordered out of the country. When he initially refused to go, his spymaster in London, Ralph Hollingworth, expressed the hope that he would soon see sense. Then he added ruthlessly: ‘but if a man becomes a real danger . . . he should be liquidated.’ Fortunately for Hammer, he saw the light just in time, and escaped to Sweden by kayak.
Whether Hollingworth’s ruthlessness would prove terminal for his least favorite agent, Thomas Sneum of the rival SIS, remained uncertain. That seemed to depend on how effectively Hollingworth could persuade others to share his view that Tommy was a traitor. While he attempted to do so, he seems to have kept everyone else in SOE’s Danish Section, even his second-in-command Reginald Spink, in the dark over Sneum’s imprisonment. Spink gave his version of events years later: ‘For some strange reason, which never became evident to us in SOE, Sneum was put straight into jail on his return to England. We were told about Sneum’s arrest by Christmas Moeller, who had come to England on SOE’s request, and to whom Sneum had demanded to talk.’
It was early September when Spink reported Christmas Moeller’s revelations to Hollingworth, who appears to have feigned ignorance before telling his sidekick to contact Commander Senter if he was concerned. So it was that a bout of sanity at last broke out in the interdepartmental war between SIS and SOE. Spink simply wanted to ensure that justice had been done, even if the endangered agent had belonged to the rival SIS, so he did indeed go and see John Senter, the head of SOE’s Security Section. Senter had been a barrister during peacetime, and soon agreed that a qualified lawyer should visit Sneum to assess his case. Since this might turn into a trial of sorts, he put forward a man who was well equipped for the task.
Flight Lieutenant Hugh Park had also been a peacetime barrister, and a good one at that. Much later in the century, he would become a judge, and then a knight of the realm. In the early 1980s, following the occupation of the Iranian Embassy in London, which was famously broken by an SAS raid captured live on television, Park sat in judgement upon the few terrorist survivors. Back in 1942, however, he was only thirty-two, and a new recruit to the General Section of SOE, which came under the umbrella of Senter’s Security Section. Park, like Senter, used his natural talent for cross-examination to help Special Section, which dealt with counter-espionage. Their job was to detect any ‘turned’ SOE agents as they arrived back in Britain. Now Senter ordered Park to concern himself with the complex case of Thomas Sneum, and dispatched him to Brixton along with Spink, so that they could make a joint assessment of the spy. Park and Spink made a good double act. The former was a highly qualified interrogator; the latter an expert on Denmark. Together they would form a small but formidable jury.
It was Spink’s first and last experience of prison. He felt nervous as he was driven through the huge gate and found himself inside Brixton’s high and threatening walls. Instead of being taken to Sneum’s cell, Reggie and Park were invited to wait in a reception room near Governor Benke’s office. The prisoner was brought into these more spacious surroundings and, after brief and formal introductions, the process began. Tommy was disappointed that his visitors were neither friends nor the SIS spymasters who might have been able to order his release that very day. Nevertheless, he sensed that the meeting must be important, and initial signs were encouraging. These men didn’t display the arrogance, ignorance and mental cruelty of his former interrogators. They were patient and interested in what he had