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a threat to Sneum for as long as he was left in Brixton, but Rottboell’s situation suddenly became even more critical on the night of 25 September 1942 in Copenhagen. Unbeknown to Christian Michael, seven Danish policemen, acting on German orders, had surrounded his headquarters at 29 Oeresundgade. As they stormed the hideout, it might have crossed Rottboell’s mind to surrender quietly. After all, the Princes had recently brokered an agreement with the Danish police to guarantee that any captured resistance men would be imprisoned in Denmark and not sent to the Gestapo in Germany. Several key Danish policemen had even claimed they were willing to stand up to the Germans in order to ensure that the agreement was honored.

Unfortunately, in the panic at Oeresundgade, Rottboell didn’t stop to weigh up his chances of remaining free from the clutches of German torturers. Instinctively, he grabbed a pistol as the Danish police stormed through his door. Seemingly caught in two minds as his hands were quickly thrust behind his back, Rottboell neither opened fire nor released his grip on the weapon. Somehow, the gun went off accidentally in the struggle and then fell to the floor. As with the Johannesen raid earlier that month, a Danish policeman was hit in the commotion. This time the officer, Inspector A. F. Ost, miraculously escaped injury, because the bullet bounced off his belt buckle. Christian Michael wasn’t so lucky. Seeing a shell hit their colleague’s midriff, other policemen opened fire with machinepistols, some before they had time to realize that Rottboell had now been disarmed. For one accidental bullet, Rottboell’s own body was riddled with twelve. He died instantly.

Duus Hansen knew that Rottboell had been working around the clock since Johannesen’s death just to keep the resistance alive. He wrote later: ‘The whole organization had to be changed because we thought that old contacts might now have been known to the Germans. This work took so much out of Rottboell, who saw it as his duty to ensure the safety of others, that he didn’t have time to address the question of his own protection and security.’

Thomas Sneum had been unable to keep the promise he had made to Rottboell’s father at Boerglum Cloisters two years earlier, to ‘look after’ his boy. It was something he regretted later in life, showing more remorse over this particular piece of misfortune than any other: ‘I made that promise but I wasn’t there to honor it, and I’ll always feel bad about that,’ he said.

Chapter 44

A NEW BETRAYAL

OVER IN BRIXTON, the caged agent already sensed that events were moving quickly behind the scenes. For some time, rumours had been sweeping the prison that Governer Benke was in deep trouble over some infringement of security. Then Tommy was called to the interrogation room.

Waiting in the room, situated next to Benke’s office, was an intelligent-looking man of about thirty, whose thin frame scarcely filled out the army officer’s uniform he was wearing. The man leaned forward as Sneum entered, as though compensating for short-sightedness. But beneath his rather intellectual exterior, Major Leslie Mitchell of SIS possessed great courage, a sharp knack for practical diplomacy and a sense of humour which had served him well since the start of the war. Already, however, Sneum’s case had tested his diplomacy and humour to the limit—and the pair hadn’t even been introduced yet.

Like Sneum, Mitchell had distinguished himself with a daring contribution to the secret war in Scandinavia. He had set up a ferry system between Nazi-occupied Norway and a remote cove in the Shetland Islands. Special agents, radio transmitters, ammunitions and explosives were ferried into the fjords for the waiting Norwegian resistance. The transport route was so dependable that it soon became known as the Shetland Bus.

Then, in the late summer of 1942, Mitchell was promoted and brought south to London, in order to oversee SIS dealings with Scandinavia. Charles Seymour, new head of the joint Danish/Dutch A2 Section, had his hands full with Holland.