Snow (32 page)

Graham White’s recollection of his father’s behaviour when he was drunk do not match many of the stories that circulated about his life as a spy. Graham does not remember Arthur singing the Welsh folk songs that Dr Rantzau described. Neither is there any evidence that Arthur Owens, the arch Welsh Nationalist, could speak Welsh.

Despite the apparent normality of Arthur’s home life, there was evidence of the past that Arthur Owens could not help but carry with him wherever he tried to hide. On one occasion, when his son was playing soldiers with a friend, the two boys made flags and one had a swastika on it. When Arthur saw it he flew into a panic and said ‘are you trying to get me arrested?’

MI5 believed that Arthur Owens’ pretended to have a stomach ulcer but his son Graham remembers him being crippled by stomach pains, for which he took bread soda. In November 1957 Arthur Owens was taken ill with breathing difficulties and on Christmas Eve he was taken to hospital but died before he got there from myocarditis or cardiac asthma. He was buried a few days later in an unmarked grave, plot 57 section O of St Ibar’s cemetery, Crosstown, just outside Wexford.

After Arthur’s death Hilda was visited unexpectedly by a man from Dublin claiming to repesent the Royal British Legion. The man gave his name as Considine and claimed to be checking whether Hilda qualified for a war pension. Apparently, having discussed her husband’s war record, he decided she was not entitled to a pension and left. What he didn’t explain was how he knew that the late Arthur White had been Arthur Owens the spy. Owens died only two months after the first release of his wartime exploits into the public arena in
John Bull
magazine. Given his penchant for taking advantage of coincidences, the Security Services could not be blamed for making sure that the reports of his death were accurate.

After over fifty years lying in an unmarked grave Arthur Owens’ family have finally decided what to put on his headstone:

B
Y THE END
of hostilities MI5 had acquired great skill in the handling of temperamental double agents, the manipulation of their enemy handlers and the development of imaginative ploys designed to mislead the Axis, but in the early days inexperienced case officers made fundamental mistakes and consistently over-estimated their adversary’s competence and resources. Slips were all too frequent as S
NOW
was allowed considerable latitude to strengthen his links with his mysterious, American-accented
spymaster
, Dr Rantzau, his beautiful secretary, and the members of his largely imaginary network of spies and saboteurs. Without the benefit of reading Rantzau’s mind, or at least his daily reports to Berlin, MI5 sought to build a double-cross system on a foundation based on the dubious, shifting
loyalties
of a single duplicitous, philandering Welshman who was boastful and brave, reckless and calculating, ruthless and occasionally weak, mercenary but patriotic. A mass of contradictions, Owens was sometimes nervous and highly-strung, while at other times he operated with supreme coolness in an environment where any slip-up could lead to him being executed for treason by either side. Far from being shy about his clandestine activities, he was often loquacious and appeared never to hesitate in compromising others, including his fellow agents and on occasions even his own family.

Although Owens was the key player in the S
NOW
drama, he had an impact on the successful prosecution of the war that he himself could never have imagined. For it was Owens’ communications with his German controllers that would be responsible for the first British breakthrough in the German Enigma cipher.

ISK and ISOS, as components of the signals intelligence source later known generically as ULTRA, would provide MI5 with the most detailed order-of-battle for its adversary, and by the end of the war there was scarcely an Abwehr officer or agent unknown to Allied counter-intelligence
analysts
, who compiled huge card indices of their internal communications,
handbooks detailing the structure of each
Abstelle
, and a series of constantly updated
Who’s Who
of those on the enemy’s payroll. However, before this invaluable source came on stream, MI5 had just three methods of learning about the professionals just the other side of the Channel who were
masterminding
espionage operations in Britain. That knowledge consisted of the very meagre information gleaned before the war, admissions and confessions made by captured spies who might not be wholly reliable, and S
NOW
himself, the only agent who had maintained consistent contact with the Abwehr, and could shuttle back and forth between neutral Antwerp, Brussels and Lisbon to attend
trefs
with his German controllers.

S
NOW
’s case is unique and significant. It was not just the first of its kind, it also led to the development of a sophisticated, coordinated structure for controlling the enemy’s intelligence service. And it contained a constantly changing, variable dynamic: the determination of a born deceiver to survive, and thrive, in a world of espionage in a war that was claiming lives by the million. Who was S
NOW
really working for? How did he dupe his German controllers? To what extent did he implicate his wife, mistress and children? Was he a mere mercenary and opportunist? Did he ever win the trust of his sceptical British case officers?

Ever since Sir John Masterman released his
Double Cross System of the War of 1939–45
in 1972 there has been much speculation, especially among historians, about the scale of the coup pulled off by the Allied intelligence agencies. Did the Abwehr not suspect that so many of its agents were
operating
under enemy control? Was Ritter anxious to save his own neck and so kept silent about any doubts he harboured concerning J
OHNNY
? Was the Abwehr in the hands of anti-Nazis who cared little for the Reich’s ultimate victory? Certainly it is true that any German case officer admitting to hostile penetration would have been rewarded for his candour by a transfer from an attractive billet in a sunny neutral country to a combat role on the Eastern front. In those circumstances it might be thought that there was little
incentive
to test the integrity of individual agents or challenge their performance or motives.

On the other hand, the Allied counter-intelligence specialists found
themselves
with a great advantage once they had gained access to their adversary’s most secret communications, and they exploited that edge with consummate skill, always ensuring that their messages were devoid of internal
contradictions
, and arranging external corroboration where practical. A report of a concentration of armour in a particular location would be supported by
dummy tanks and tell-tale tracks, all available to be photographed by a Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance flight, and this imagery would be validated by the appropriate, conveniently intercepted wireless traffic. This was a brilliantly coordinated campaign, usually providing the evidence that the Wehrmacht’s analysts were predisposed to believe. The deception schemers went to considerable lengths to ensure that the overall impression conveyed was both practical and likely, and invariably conformed with conventional military doctrine. In other words, the genius of the planners was to offer an entirely plausible solution to a logical problem. The Abwehr knew what to look for, and were not surprised when their analysts found it.

From the Allied perspective, the ability to tap into the Abwehr’s private thoughts, by monitoring its Enigma channels, enabled British and American counter-intelligence experts to anticipate awkward questions and stay one step ahead of their opponents. As the original agent of this system, Arthur Owens’ story exposes the first stumbling steps along the way to this highly tuned organisation.

Towards the end of S
NOW
’s personal file an anonymous MI5 officer entered this opinion:

This summary was written at a point when the double-cross system had been established and Arthur Owens was no longer needed. Arthur Owens’ role in the birth of the double-cross system has often been overlooked; this
is partly because he changed his name and disappeared after the war. The vacuum created by his absence was quickly filled by myths and speculations. However, despite the opinion of the anonymous MI5 officer, the one thing that is clear from an examination of Arthur Owens’ career as a double agent is that people on both sides of the Security Services seem to have liked him and this was obviously one of his main assets. He was an enigma, an immoral adventurer, someone who wasn’t scared to try new things and someone who wasn’t overly concerned about the risks involved in being a spy until things started to go wrong. However even when it became clear that he had been behaving in an apparently duplicitous manner, facts would almost inevitably emerge that created doubt in the minds of his accusers. No matter how serious the situation was with regard to the fate of the nation, be it Britain or Germany, Arthur Owens always seemed to have been primarily concerned with whatever advantage he might accrue personally. So if we are tempted to try to answer the question ‘which side was Arthur Owens really on?’, the only answer that can be given, when we take all the available evidence into consideration, is that Arthur Owens appears to have been a very keen supporter of his own side.

T
RACING THE HISTORY
of any family is difficult enough but when a master spy uses all his experience to go missing the difficulties increase greatly. Finding Arthur Owens was then made more difficult by the inaccuracies and myths that grew up around him and the secrecy that surrounded the records of his career as a double agent.

The files of MI5 refer only to agent S
NOW
. They tell us that he was Welsh, ‘an underfed Cardiff type’ and that he was 42 years old. The search for S
NOW
narrowed to an ‘Arthur George Owens’ from South Wales, possibly Cardiff. (The ‘George’ eventually turned out to be a clerical error dating from his internment.)

The MI5 archive revealed that Owens had a wife, a son and a daughter. The son is referred to as S
NOW
J
UNIOR
in the later files and some of his early letters mention S
NOW
’s children Bob and Pat.

There were several Arthur George Owens born in 1899 and several born in the year before and the year after, but further research revealed that none of them fitted the rest of the information in the files. The only other Arthur Owens who looked promising was born in Graig Road, Alltwen,
Cilybe-byill
, near Pontardawe in Glamorgan, but his middle name was Graham not George. The Registrar of Marriages revealed that he had met and married a Jessie Irene Ferrett from Bristol in 1919 and the certificate gave Owens’ occupation as a manufacturing chemist. An examination of the births in the years following showed that Jessie gave birth to a son, Graham Robert Owens, on 25 September 1921. However nothing could be discovered about him from the record of births, deaths and marriages that took this line of enquiry any further. There was no mention of a daughter called Pat and Robert’s birth certificate gave the information that by now Arthur Graham Owens was running a confectionery company in Lime Kiln Road, the Mumbles,
Swansea. However the fact that this man had a son with the middle name Robert made him worthy of a little more investigation.

The next step was to look at the ships’ lists from the period because it was known from the MI5 files that Arthur Owens had lived in Canada and in those days the only way to get there was by ship. The lists were examined from the time of his birth up until the early 1930s when it was known that Owens was back in Britain. From this enquiry it was discovered that on 21 October 1921 an Arthur Owens along with his wife and son had travelled to Canada. The wife’s name was Jessie and their one-year-old son was called Robert. They sailed on board the
Sythia
from Liverpool bound for Halifax. Tracing people in Canada is very difficult. Unless you are a close relative then it is impossible to get hold of any certificates that might reveal the
information
needed to confirm the identity of an individual. This meant that it was not possible to find any birth of a Pat Owens and the only Pat Owens with a Canadian background who came to light was a famous Hollywood film actress so this was dismissed as being nothing more than a coincidence.

The only Canadian records that could be of use and that are available to the public are the patent records. The hope was that a patent for dry cell battery accumulators could be found in the name of Arthur Owens. A search was
carried
out and patents numbers 293862, 294047 and 303677 were discovered to be concerned with improvements to the accumulators used in dry cell batteries and the use of those batteries in torches. Each of these patents was taken out by the same man, and his name was Arthur Graham Owens.

Arthur Graham Owens seemed to fit the description. He was born in Wales in 1899, he had a wife and a son who was known as Robert despite his first name being Graham. This Arthur Graham Owens had travelled to Canada and had patented inventions for battery accumulators. It seemed likely that this was the man who went on to make contact with the German Secret Services and then act as double agent S
NOW
for MI5.

Further evidence in his favour came to light when a return to the ships’ lists showed that in 1934 Arthur Owens, aged thirty-four, and his son Robert, now thirteen, were on board the
Pennland
heading for Southampton. Arthur Owens’ profession was recorded as research engineer. However there was no mention of Jessie or a daughter called Pat on this ship. The proposed address of Arthur and Robert was Grosvenor House, Park Lane, London. From the MI5 files it was evident that on his return to the UK Arthur Owens the spy was living with his wife Jessie and son Robert, but that he also had a daughter named Pat.

A further search of the ships lists showed that on 21 February 1934 Jessie Owens, aged thirty-four, and her daughter Patricia, aged eight, were on board the Cunard liner
Berengaria
sailing for Southampton with a proposed address of 112 Stratford Road, Plaistow, London.

An examination of the ship’s lists tied in with the names, ages and addresses of the redacted MI5 files. There was even one letter in the files which slipped through the process of removing agent S
NOW
’s identity and confirmed that his real name was Arthur Owens.

During the course of this research many other people looking for Arthur Owens had come to light. Most of them were looking for Arthur George Owens but there was one who made the claim that a lot of the material about Arthur Owens was wrong and that he could correct it himself. This sort of claim is not unusual to anyone familiar with some of the wilder corners of the internet but what made this stand out was that the claimant stated that his Arthur Owens had the middle name Graham. An exchange of emails led to Graham Lee White, who confirmed that he had been told by his mother Hilda that his father, whom he knew as Arthur White, was in fact the double agent Arthur Graham Owens. The internet claimant turned out to be Paul White, the son of Graham and Norma White who now lived in County Wexford, Ireland.

Graham filled in many of the blanks in S
NOW
’s post-war life, including how Arthur had changed his name to White; how he had taken out patents in Canada; that his first wife was called Jessie and that they had a son named Robert. Most surprising was the news that his daughter from his first
marriage
, Patricia Owens, was the Canadian actress who went on to have a
successful
Hollywood career. Graham also provided the details of Arthur’s life after he moved to Ireland and revealed his letter from a wartime acquaintance that mentioned spying; the
John Bull
article which first mentioned S
NOW
as a German spy and the fact that Arthur Owens had died in 1957.

The main written source of information about Patricia Owens was an interview she did with a journalist called Tom Weaver, which he included in his book
Monsters, Mutants and Heavenly Creatures
. Her son Adam
Nathanson
supplied the details of Patricia’s life and how she had struggled with her father’s past. Adam knew nothing about the existence of Arthur’s post-war son Graham, now living in Ireland, but he did have contact details for his aunt, Jenny Owens. Jenny Owens was the wife of Arthur’s eldest son Robert. Jenny was able to uncover some of the story surrounding Arthur’s mistress, the mysterious Lily, and the child they had together. Jenny found a locked
black box which Robert had left after his death which contained pictures of Lily. On the back of one of these photographs was the name Lily Bade. The register of births revealed that the child of Lily Sophia Bade and Arthur Graham Owens born in 1940 was called Jean Louise. Further information about Lily Bade came from her daughter Jean Louise Pascoe (née Deadman, née Owens).

Jenny also still had the copy of Ladislas Farago’s
The Game of Foxes
that Patricia had sent to Robert from America.