Between Silk and Cyanide (42 page)

He'd be a major asset to the Signals directorate as a briefing officer. But at this moment he could also be an insuperable obstacle. I explained the advantages of silk codes to him but didn't mention their security checks. I wanted to see if he'd refer to them himself, and with a cynical little smile he eventually did.

Although he grasped the principle at once, I gave him a detailed exposition in case Maurice was tuning in. Noble waited impatiently till I'd finished, then copied out a pair of WOK-keys, rapidly encoded a message, and changed the indicator by secret numbers known only to him. As if to prove Nick's maxim, 'once an agent always an agent', he checked his handiwork carefully while his fingers drummed out the code-groups in Morse. Satisfied that he hadn't forgotten how to doubly-transpose, he produced a razor blade and without asking permission (which I'd gladly have given) cut the keys off the silk and watched them smoulder. I knew just how they felt.

He then turned to Buckmaster, who was somewhere in France. 'If I'd been given such a silk to take in,' he said, 'I'd have troubled to use my security checks.'

Maurice reluctantly conceded that WOKs might be suitable for WT operators because they could hide them with their sets, but he was damned if he'd force organizers to carry codes as they moved around France, no matter how well the bloody things were camouflaged.

He glared at me with his 'My decision is final' expression.

Noble was silent when I needed him most.

I confided to Maurice that WOKs were in very short supply and that it was most unlikely that we'd be able to spare them for all organizers as the Free French demands were likely to be heavy.

At this point I had my first order.

An outraged Maurice accused me of not realizing how important organizers were, and he absolutely insisted that all F section agents be given silk codes or I'd damn soon hear from him. And so would Nicholls. He said if the WOKs weren't forthcoming he'd go straight to Gubbins.

Noble winked at me as I left.

The next potential client was Colonel Hutchison.

I could hardly tell the head of RF section that I was ten minutes late for our appointment because I'd stopped off en route to break an indecipherable in de Gaulle's secret code and sent it round to Duke properly enciphered.

The autocratic colonel glanced at his watch as soon as I entered rffice, and I apologized for the unavoidable delay. His signals officer (tiny Kay Moore) was perched beside him, notebook at the ready.

I noticed that he had Nick's memo in front of him with several words underlined.

He announced that although French was the only language permitted on the premises, he'd make an exception in my case. I made one in his by giving him a simplistic WOK-briefing, and he commented on the quality of the soie.

He said that although he was expecting 'radical changes' he hadn't anticipated such a complete volte-face, and was by no means sure it was for the better. He then insisted on encoding a message.

It took him five minutes to decide on a suitable text, another five to copy out his transposition-keys, and five more to remember what to do with them.

Kay and I studied each other in silence. I was surprised that she could bear to look at me. It was largely my fault that she had the least rewarding job in the whole of SOE.

It was her responsibility to liaise between me and an enemy I'd made at Duke Street named Lieutenant Valois, who was in charge of all Free French radio and Signals planning. She also had to act as our interpreter (his English was on a par with my French) and we both knew that she edited our exchanges.

The main cause of our dissension was the prefixes he needed for de Gaulle's secret code. In order to show each other when they were using this abomination, Duke Street and its agents added special prefixes to their messages, and it was up to me to provide them. At present I owed Valois twenty, every one of them a potential L-tablet.

I'd repeatedly told him that these prefixes made it easy for the Germans to identify the secret French code and, though I had no idea what sort of code it was, it would be safer if the agents stopped using it as it was overloading their traffic.

He angrily reminded me that SOE had agreed to the use of this code, that the Free French had no intention of abandoning it, and that he was in no position to meddle with high-level policy He suggested that I might care to raise the matter with General de Gaulle.

'Who?' I'd said.

At which point Kay had remembered another appointment.

I returned sharply to 3 June when Hutchison announced that he'd finished his message, and allowed me the privilege of inspecting it. He'd 'hatted' three columns and omitted five code-groups, but I congratulated him on his excellent coding.

'It's simple enough,' he said, 'and has a number of advantages, but the problem is Duke Street…' He explained that the Free French were being more than usually obstructive over a number of issues and might not agree to the poem-code being scrapped.'

I pointed out that it was our responsibility to provide them with safe codes, and that Duke Street's autonomy applied only to de Gaulle's secret code, whatever that might be.

'That's all very well,' he said, 'but they mightn't see it that way. I'll have to think the whole thing over.'

I urged him not to take too long as I'd just come from a meeting with F section, whose requirements could exhaust our limited supplies.

However, he was too experienced an in-fighter to respond with order number two, and said he'd deal with the question of priority if and when it arose. He then asked for Kay's opinion of silks.

The canny little lady made the most of her opportunity. Smiling sweetly, she said she thought they were an enormous improvement that Duke Street was far likelier to agree to them if Leo would send Valois the list of prefixes he was waiting for.

He looked at her in astonishment. 'What list? What prefixes? First I've heard of this.'

They then had a rapid exchange in French, and the only word I recognized was Leo.

The look which the colonel shot at me needed no translation. 'It's your job to provide prefixes as soon as Valois asks for them. Why haven't you?'

I explained that it was due to an oversight for which I accepted full responsibility.

'Then remedy it at once.'

I agreed that I would. 'When? Be precise.'

I told him that I was on my way to some appointments which were as important as this one, and would attend to the list by the end of the day.

'I want them on my desk first thing tomorrow and I'll send them to Duke Street with a covering note.'

I realized that he wanted the kudos of breaking the deadlock.

'I have your word that they'll be here?'

Realising that a deal was in the offing, I promised that my secretary would deliver them to him personally.

'In that case you can count on my full support. Do I make myself clear?'

'Mais oui, mon colonel—absolument—je vous remercie mille fois' Kay didn't translate it.

Two down, and four to go.

Though the Norwegian, Danish and Belgian sections were having as they time as the French they gave me an easy one. Their questions wer pertinent, their estimates sensible, and they hoped the system e working by August.

This left only the Dutch.

Bingham and his signals officer, Killick, had coffee waiting but were kind enough not to offer me a Dutch cigar. Bingham congratulated me on breaking Kale's indecipherable, and asked if I'd come to any further conclusions about 'Preis'/'Prijs'.

I told him that I hadn't, and plunged into the briefing.

They listened to my recitative as if it were a personal message from Queen Wilhelmina, and Bingham asked his few questions with a hint of apology.

I still didn't trust the man but he'd done a good job since he'd become head of N section, abandoning reception committees and insisting that new Dutch agents should be dropped blind.

I enquired how many WOKs they were likely to need over the next few months.

They exchanged glances. Bingham then explained that the loss of Boni had forced them to rethink their plans and they'd be sending in very few agents during the next two moon periods. He added that he and Killick were confident that fullscale operations would be resumed in August.

Without any warning Killick asked if I thought that the Germans were reading any of their messages.

I was still under instructions not to disclose my suspicions, and Killick's timing warned me to treat him with respect. I replied that the poem-code wasn't secure enough for the level of traffic SOE was passing, but we had no evidence that the Germans had cracked it or were reading Dutch or any other country section's messages.

Refilling my cup, which I'd made the supreme sacrifice of emptying, Bingham asked if I were suspicious of any Dutch agent's security checks.

I admitted that I was suspicious of all security checks in the poem-code except for prearranged questions and answers, and that this applied to all country sections. I then assured them that WOK-checks would enable agents to alert London the moment they were caught and offered to run through the system again.

They declined politely. 'What we really want to know,' said Bingham, 'is whether you suspect any particular agent's security checks'

The atmosphere was as fraught as a gynaecologist's ante-room.

'I've told you what I think of security checks,' I said, sinking to the occasion. 'I distrust the lot of 'em. But can't we pinpoint this? Are there any agents you're especially worried about?'

Bingham transfixed me with a stare, then shook his head.

I was wondering whether history would ever credit our follies, let alone learn from them, and whether Ebenezer would ever stip, step, and stap us in the balls, when I realized that Bingham was holding put his hand.

He thanked me for coming, apologized for taking up so much time, and said that silks would be a great help to Dutch agents. I didn't tell him that one reason they were having them was that Giskes would be suspicious if they didn't.

I gave Nick and Heffer a verbatim account of each meeting, stressing that the Dutch were worried about their traffic, and that they'd tried hard to get me to confirm their suspicions. I didn't mention how close they'd come to succeeding.

Nick patted my shoulder as if conferring a knighthood and said that I'd handled their questions very tactfully.

'But why's tact necessary? Surely it's time we talked to them openly?' Perhaps I'd done one sales-pitch too many and my voice was inaudible because he didn't seem to hear me. I raised it an octave, and asked if we could discuss Boni's capture with them.

It was clear from his expression that a mutiny was about to be punished. Rising like a cathedral in the course of construction, he reminded me that the general's orders hadn't changed, that it wasn't my business to question them, and that having won the battle for WOKs I should concentrate on producing them.

I realized that the internal Dutch game was completely beyond me, thanked him for his clarification, and turned to go.

Looking at me suspiciously, Heffer said he was certain I'd been up to something which I hadn't disclosed, that the experience had shaken me in a way that nothing else had, and he'd like to know what it was.

I told him that I would too, and that I'd let him know if I ever found out, and left it at that.

But he was right.

There'd been reports in the press, which didn't necessarily mean they were without foundation, that a Whitehall department was investigating rumours that Hitler had finally given in to his mystical impulses and was trying to use telepathy as a secret weapon. In which case the Fuhrer and I had something in common.

Lacking his resources, I'd developed a home-made technique for which the patent was pending. It consisted of a switching-off process with a tuning-in appendage, and I'd tried it on the country section heads.

Although I couldn't sustain it for more than a minute at a time, I was convinced that it had enabled me to pick up some vital signals from them. I was then appalled to discover that I couldn't decipher a single one. It was as if their unspoken thoughts had been transmitted in LOPs. The harder I tried to understand what I knew I knew, the more remote it became.

Exhausted by my efforts to dabble in unconscious communication, I went home early, and awoke with such heightened awareness that I heard the sun come out.

It was then that I realized the nature of the special traffic which had passed between us. Without knowing it, the section heads had made a present to me which I'd been slow to unwrap. It was an unsolicited gift of a kind which I had never expected to receive from them, but it couldn't have arrived at a more inopportune moment. They'd given me a wholly new idea for agents' codes.

'The road to hell is paved with good intentions' caused forty-eight hours of purgatory when an F-section agent spelt hell with three 'l's.

But that was a year ago, which meant it was ancient history, and I'd since discovered a quicker road to hell.

It led from my black-market flat to the abattoir which employed me and every inch of it was paved with discarded ideas for winning the code war. But last night's arrival reached Baker Street intact. It was far more than just another coding system. It was a wholly new approach to the job.

The credit for it (an important consideration even in wartime) belonged the country section heads.

The experience of seeing six of them in situ at a time when nothing going right for them had been as great a revelation to me as WOKs had been to them. The bloody-minded resilience with which they responded to disasters, especially those of their own making, their determination to liberate their territories no matter what, had been my first glimpse of what would one day be known as the Spirit of Resistance.

I'd made another discovery about them which came as an even bigger surprise, if only because it was obvious.