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a top Nazi official. If he was in the right place at the right time, and given sufficient warning of such a visit to central Copenhagen, it certainly seemed feasible. He said later:
    I wanted to kill Heinrich Himmler more than any of the others because I knew I was never going to get to Adolf Hitler. Not many people knew who Himmler was at the time, but I did. He was Reichsfuhrer of the SS, and even a lot of Germanofficers didn’t like him. But I was prepared to kill any of the top Nazis if I got the chance, even the Luftwaffe chief, Hermann Goering, a man I had met personally and found to be very charming. Now it was different: they had invaded Denmark and I wanted revenge.
     
    The challenge was to think of a way to avoid capture after making the attempt, since such a fate would mean a terrible death for Sneum and any associates who could be linked to the hit. ‘The problem was that if you used a pistol or rifle, the Germans would soon see where the shot had come from, and I wasn’t prepared to risk getting Oda into such serious trouble. She would have been tortured, and I couldn’t have that. Oda was one of the very few girls that I ever really loved. I probably loved her more than she ever realized.’
    It seems that Tommy’s desperation to impress Oda may have gone hand in hand with his desire to play a more active part in the war, a potentially explosive combination in a man who hated rejection or defeat of any kind. He revealed later:
    We had known each other since long before I married Else, and Oda was much classier. We met on a boat while sailing back from Harwich in England to Esbjerg, a journey which took about thirty hours in those days. It was the mid-1930s; I was seventeen or eighteen and she was a couple of years older. She was beautiful, tall, blonde, charming and intelligent. I saw her and thought, This is the woman I’m going to make my wife one day.
    What was so special about her? Just to be near her made you happy. I felt so relaxed on that boat that I could talk about anything with her. We went out on deck and it was cold, and we held each other tight. We kissed and it was the most extraordinary, lovely experience. We didn’t do much more than that on the voyage, but we both knew we were already very much in love. She went on to Copenhagen at the end of the voyage, and I went to Fanoe. A couple of days later I went to Copenhagen to see her again, and took a room at the Grand Hotel. She was shocked and afraid when I called to tell her where I was, because a friend of her father owned that hotel. So I had to move to another hotel before she would come and see me. But when she did it was worth it, because every moment together was a pleasure.
    She was snooty in an awfully nice way, from a good but stupid family. Stupid because in her father’s eyes I wasn’t good enough for her. In those days fathers thought about prospective sons-in-law in terms of career and breeding. Although he couldn’t complain about my family, I was still at polytechnic and had a reputation for being a wild child, so he did everything he could to keep us apart. In those days it was difficult for young people to meet away from their parents, and fathers believed that boys should be properly introduced to their daughters through the family or not at all.
    We still found ways to see each other and we stayed together for a couple of years, but in the end Oda couldn’t stand the strain because of her family’s disapproval, and we agreed it was better to part. That was probably in 1936, but we stayed good friends. The situation was painful, and we did no more than kiss each other warmly on the cheek whenever we met. That’s how it was when the war came, but secretly I still loved her. And I think my original decision to marry Else was also partly motivated by my desire to send a message to Oda, saying: ‘Look what happens if you don’t marry me.’
    I still wanted Oda, you see, and whatever was left between us lasted for