The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [90]
Again, he begged her to abandon the entire hare-brained scheme. She promised to give it more thought.
Emmy returned on schedule, and pretty soon Tommy was entertaining both mother and daughter, though never at the same time. With a smirk, he recalled later: ‘I have never disclosed before that I fucked Birgit and Emmy. Birgit may have been younger, but Emmy was the better lover.’ When the daughter went to work during the day, Tommy would steal downstairs to Emmy. Then, at night, as the mother slept, Tommy would sometimes creep downstairs again, this time to see Birgit.
One morning, however, the young lovers were woken by the sound of Birgit’s door being opened. There was no time to move. Emmy Valentin was confronted by the rather confusing sight of her daughter lying in bed with her lover.
‘There’s nothing going on, I’m just sleeping here,’ said Tommy. ‘I was just tired. We were talking and I must have nodded off.’
Emmy digested this absurd excuse and said: ‘Birgit, I want you out here in one minute.’
When she slammed the door on her way out, Tommy knew he would have to eat a lot of humble pie to extricate himself from this awkward predicament. Later, he reflected with a smile: ‘When Emmy found me in bed with Birgit, that was not good.’
Unfortunately for Sneum, much worse was to come.
Hans Lunding banged on the fifth-floor apartment’s door with such ferocity that Tommy thought the Gestapo had arrived. Pistol in hand, he peered through the spyhole to see his least favorite Prince red-faced with rage. Sneum opened the door, though he knew that this meeting would be no more pleasant than their first.
Lunding insisted that they go out before he was prepared to tell Tommy what was on his mind, so the two men strolled down to the canal in Christianshavn. There, Lunding erupted: ‘What the hell have you been saying to Birgit Valentin? She has just told me she no longer wishes to accept the offer of employment in Berlin. Do you know how long we have been waiting to get someone into Germany?’
‘No,’ replied Sneum. ‘But everyone in the area will know if you keep shouting.’
Lunding lowered his voice to a hiss. ‘Finally, we had the opportunity to plant a flower in Berlin. It is so difficult to do this, and at last we had a chance. You have just ruined everything.’
Sneum repeated what he had said to Birgit—that it was a crazy idea which would have resulted in them all being compromised after her swift capture. ‘I’m living in the same house as her. I don’t want all this nonsense coming back on me. Besides, she was only going to work at a radio station. She wouldn’t have been able to gather much intelligence from there.’ Then he suggested something which could have signalled the end of his mission in Denmark: ‘If you want someone in Germany, send me. I have a cousin, Knud Nielsen. He worked in Berlin three years ago. I resemble him so closely that people in our own families sometimes mistake one of us for the other. He still has contacts in Berlin and he could brief me on what he did there before the war.’
Lunding looked at the young man disdainfully, as though the idea were insane. ‘Birgit was above suspicion. That was the beauty of it. Sabotage any more of our projects and I’ll kill you.’
Sneum was at breaking point. ‘Why don’t you try? Because make no mistake, Lunding, if you don’t kill me, then one day I will kill you.’
Some of the citizens of Christianshavn had heard the heated exchange and began to look out of their windows. Reluctantly, both men realized they would have to conclude their argument some other time. As they stormed off in opposite directions, each believed the other to be nothing more than a liability to the Allied war effort.
Later, Tommy reflected that there