The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [93]
But Emmy hadn’t finished. She explained how she had asked her escort if he was depressed that there appeared to be no end in sight to the war, now that the German advance to Moscow had stalled in the Russian snow.
‘Don’t worry about the war; it’ll soon be over,’ he repeated. When asked how he could be so sure, he replied, ‘We’ll soon have a little bomb powerful enough to blow the whole of south-eastern England to atoms.’
Sneum made her repeat the phrase. It still seemed too terrible to contemplate. Perhaps a drunken officer’s bravado had got the better of him, but Tommy knew the remark had to be taken seriously. Was such a bomb feasible? He had always been fascinated by physics, and possessed the intellect and imagination to grasp ideas that others might dismiss as too fantastic for serious consideration. His identification of a radar installation on Fanoe had demonstrated just such a flexible mind, though talk of a super-bomb was another matter entirely. Sneum knew he would have to call upon his contacts in the scientific community in order to check the Abwehr officer’s boastful claim.
In his youth, Tommy had been taught physics by Harald Bohr at a college in Copenhagen. Harald was the brother of Niels Bohr, the leading authority on nuclear physics, and Sneum realized that Niels might now be able to provide the key to understanding what the German had said. The problem was that Harald probably wouldn’t remember Tommy well enough to want to help him; and anyway, Niels was renowned as a very private individual who liked to spend his leisure time in the company of a select group of close friends. Fortunately for the British, though, Niels Bohr and Thomas Sneum had some mutual friends: two brilliant scientists who also happened to be resistance sympathizers. Bohr trusted both men implicitly. These were Professors Chiewitz and Hagedorn, the doctors who had helped Tommy after his painful landing back in September. Now Chiewitz was asked to contact Bohr on a matter of the utmost scientific urgency.
Tommy explained the relationship between the two men:
Chiewitz and Bohr had been friends since school and rode together. But Chiewitz was like a volcano, he just went all over the place with his views, telling you what he did and didn’t like. Bohr couldn’t have been more different—he was very reserved. But the friendship worked and they always maintained a great respect for each other. I was confident Chiewitz would be able to broach this very sensitive subject with the one man who would have sufficient knowledge and understanding to interpret what we were hearing. So I told Chiewitz what Emmy had been told about a new bomb, and what we wanted him to ask Bohr. Then we just had to wait.
As Tommy was attempting to uncover what were potentially some of the war’s biggest secrets, he was being seriously undermined by his own side. The bust-up with Lunding, coupled with the way he had dissuaded Birgit Valentin from accepting her German assignment, had left the haughty Princes with a lasting grudge. They therefore decided to complain again about Sneum and Christophersen to Ronnie Turnbull. For his part, Turnbull believed that the Princes alone could supply intelligence of a sufficiently high grade to have significant bearing on the course of the war. Nordentoft, Gyth and Lunding, then, had effectively brainwashed Britain’s man in Stockholm. He still didn’t want any British agents—SOE or SIS—in his theatre of operations. And as for any plans for a coordinated Danish uprising—now termed ‘The Booklet’—he was quite happy to entrust the timing of all British involvement to the Princes, who could communicate as usual through their dependable Danish messenger, Ebbe Munck.
At this point, Turnbull was eagerly anticipating a personal