Early next morning, Chapman entered the smart lobby of the German Legation on Rua do Pau de Bandeira, and told the sleepy man at the front desk that his name was Fritz, he was a German agent, and he would like to see the senior Abwehr officer. Chapman soon found himself in the presence of an elegant young man in horn-rimmed spectacles, who introduced himself as “Baumann”, and offered Chapman a cigar and a brandy. Baumann was probably Major Kremer Von Auenrode, alias Ludovico Von Kartsthoff, the head of the Lisbon Abwehr station. Whoever he was, Baumann seemed to know a great deal about Chapman’s time in France, his mission and its results.
Chapman recited his cover story, handed over the sheets of paper with secret writing, and then made Baumann an offer he had been mulling ever since setting sail for Lisbon. During his sabotage training, Chapman explained, he had learnt how to construct a coal bomb by drilling a cavity into a large lump of coal, and then packing it with high explosive. Placed in the bunkers of a ship, the device would remain unnoticed until shovelled into the furnace, whereupon it would explode, sinking the vessel.
If Baumann would provide him with such a bomb, said Chapman, he would hide it among the coal on the City of Lancaster, then jump ship as planned, and send the boat, her captain and crew to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
Back in Britain, the codebreakers at Bletchley Park intercepted a message between Lisbon and Berlin describing how “Agent Fritz”, the German codename for Chapman, had volunteered to blow up a British merchant ship. Horrified and suspecting treachery, MI5 dispatched Reed, Chapman’s case officer, to Lisbon. Unless Chapman volunteered information about the sabotage plot, freely and without prompting, he should be arrested at gunpoint and “brought back in irons”.
Meanwhile, German engineers constructed and handed over two coal bombs to the would-be saboteur. Chapman was impressed: the bombs, he declared, “could not possibly be detected”. He told Baumann he would plant them in the bunkers that night, and jump ship the following morning. Baumann confirmed that all the necessary paperwork was ready to get him out of the country. That evening, Chapman walked up the gangplank of the City of Lancaster, somewhat gingerly, with two large coal bombs in a rucksack strapped to his back. He did not know that Ronnie Reed was hurtling towards Portugal as fast as wartime air travel could carry him; nor did he know that MI6 had posted an agent to watch the ship, and was standing by for orders to seize and, if necessary, kill him.
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But Chapman was not going anywhere near the furnace, and he had no intention of blowing up the ship. He was simply using his initiative, as instructed. Part of his mission from MI5 was to obtain some German sabotage “toys”, and that was precisely what he intended to do. MI5’s explosive experts, he reflected, would be thrilled to get their hands on the two beauties in his backpack. Once on board, Chapman stashed the rucksack in his locker. He then approached a gunner by the name of O’Connor, who was dozing on his bunk, and punched him hard on the nose. The brawny Irishman had been identified by Chapman as the crew member most likely to be goaded into a brawl. This conjecture was proven accurate.
O’Connor erupted from his berth like a surfacing killer whale, and the two men set about thumping one another with enthusiasm, noise and any weaponry that came to hand. There are two versions of how the fight ended: according to Chapman’s self-flattering account, he finished off O’Connor by whacking him on the head with a half-empty bottle of whisky; according to the ship’s captain (and every other witness), O’Connor neatly felled Chapman by head-butting him in the eye. Chapman was carried off to the sick bay, bleeding profusely and shouting that the Irishman had violated “the Queensberry rules”.
At dawn the next day, Assistant Steward Anson, the left side of his face cut and badly bruised, was detailed to take early morning tea to Captain Kearon, master of the City of Lancaster. Chapman knocked on the door of the captain’s cabin and slipped inside, carrying a tea tray in one hand, and a rucksack with two large bombs in the other. Kearon had been told of Chapman’s real identity and mission before the ship set sail from England, and Chapman had warned him that he was “trying to get a special bomb on board for transport to home”. He now thrust the coal bombs into the Captain’s hands, explaining that “he had put to them the proposition that he should sabotage the City of Lancaster and the enemy had agreed”. Kearon was no shrinking violet, but even he quailed at being handed 10lb of high explosive in his bed by a man with a face that seemed to have gone through a meat grinder. Kearon pushed the two evil-looking bombs into the ship’s safe, and shut the door. They shook hands, and Chapman slipped away into the dawn.
When Reed arrived in Lisbon the next day, Kearon explained that Chapman had “behaved magnificently”, that the “plot” to sabotage the ship had been a ruse to obtain the bombs. The lumps of exploding coal were now sitting in the safe of his ship, which he would be only too happy to pass on as soon as possible.
Reed sent a jubilant telegram to MI5: “Convinced Z playing straight with us.”
The relief was shared in London. Not only had Chapman demonstrated his loyalty, but British Intelligence now had two intact bombs of a type they had never seen before. “This is typical of the risks that Chapman has been prepared to undertake on our behalf,” wrote Robin “Tin Eye” Stephens, MI5’s senior interrogator. “He thought that the value to the British of getting examples of the devices used by the Germans justified the risk to himself.”
