The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [58]
But soon his new superiors grew uneasy about the number of women their agent was meeting. In vain, Rabagliati took steps to try to limit Sneum’s social life. Tommy was transferred to the Ebury Court Hotel at 24 East Street. There Flight Officer Scrivener, a junior intelligence officer at the Air Ministry, who was also attached to SIS, was a long-term resident. His lifestyle was financed by a possessive mother, who would visit the hotel to check on her boy and then sit in the foyer all day writing letters. Sneum recalled: ‘She was a jealous mother who wouldn’t allow her son to have a lot of pleasure with other women.’ Rabagliati considered the environment ideal, hoping Tommy’s passions would be tempered by Mrs Scrivener’s austere regime.
Sneum, though, had hopes of his own, and they didn’t all revolve around women. He wanted the British to start showing the Danes some proper respect by incorporating them into the existing military structure. In his military report, he wrote:
For a period of 14 days I moved to the Ebury Court Hotel ... where a Flight Officer Scrivener from the Air Ministry lived anyway. Having agreed to go back to Denmark again, I had some conferences with Rabagliati, and worked out some plans with him. At the same time, I had to learn some of the British codes, and in return I told him some things from the Danish perspective. I told him what a boost to morale and how much satisfaction it would give us to have an acknowledged Danish Section in each British fighting service. I also told him about the Danish aviators who were waiting to come over, and how the RAF were very interested to get them over.
But he rejected my statements as no more than a question of prestige, motivated by pride alone, and one had the feeling that the English didn’t wish to appreciate the Danish in this way ... even though I proved to them that we had more people in action than De Gaulle’s people [the French], in relation to the population and size of forces, and De Gaulle was fully acknowledged. I’m convinced it would have been possible for me to succeed in persuading the British to appreciate the Danish, but I had to stay in the shadows because I wasn’t officially there.
For a man who was supposed to be staying in the shadows, however, Tommy was rather busy in the social swirl of England’s capital. During his fortnight at the Ebury Court, he did enough drinking and womanizing to last most men several summers. In his mind Else and Marianne were now part of another world, far across the North Sea. And when the time came to return to Denmark on his mission, they would have to remain in that other world; for Tommy knew that he wouldn’t be able to contact his wife because of the security risks involved. This didn’t seem to bother him. In truth, he didn’t miss her and he knew for sure now that he didn’t love her either. The marriage had been a terrible mistake, a decision taken under extreme pressure. Besides, this was war; he could be dead in a month, like so many other young men. As far as he was concerned, he was single again—and time was short.
Tommy’s attitude had a life-changing impact on Flight Officer Scrivener, his previously oppressed fellow guest at the hotel. Since young Scrivener had been designated to keep an eye on Sneum, he had no option but to go out with the Dane on his nights of debauchery. ‘His mother thought I would lead him astray ... and she was right,’ recalled Tommy.
Some mornings they would stagger back into the hotel nursing headaches or trying to hide the smiles on their faces. The vigilant Mrs Scrivener was not pleased by this dramatic change in her offspring’s behavior; and it wasn’t hard for