Between Silk and Cyanide Read online

  The snarl-up had caused the following casualties:

  Nine indecipherables from Holland to London

  Four indecipherables from London to Holland

  Nine repeated messages from Holland to London

  Four repeated messages from London to Holland.

  These repeated messages had totally compromised the security of Boni’s and Parsnip’s codes, such as it was in the first place.

  The Dutch section attributed the entire snarl-up to the natural hazards of clandestine communication. The unnatural hazards were themselves and Ozanne.

  The Dutch Section

  I found the Dutch more difficult to approach than any other country section. The head of the directorate was Major Blizzard; his deputy was Captain Bingham, and they were assisted by Captain Killick, whose real name was Kypers. They had a stock answer to every enquiry I made about the security of their agents: ‘They’re perfectly all right; we have our own ways of checking on them,’ and I wasn’t in a position to ask what they were.

  Killick was the most open-minded and co-operative, though he was Foreign Office trained, but I discovered from reading the back traffic that he’d committed the worst breach of security I’d come across since joining SOE.

  I taxed him with it on the telephone. ‘Captain Killick, is it true that in April this year you authorised Trumpet to recruit and train a local wireless operator?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is it also true that you instructed him to make this operator transmit a test message?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when that message arrived, the operator hadn’t used any secur-ity checks?’

  ‘No, he hadn’t.’

  ‘Did you then instruct Trumpet to teach the operator how to use security checks? – and in the same message, did you tell him exactly what those checks were to be?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Do you consider that was good security, Captain Killick?’

  ‘You weren’t here in April,’ he said, buying a little time.

  ‘I’ve been reading your back traffic. Was it good security, Captain Killick?’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t. And I’ll see nothing like it happens again.’

  At least I’d achieved something, but I still couldn’t pinpoint that elusive worry. All I could say to anyone – with my hand on a WOK or any other bible – was that there was something wrong with the Dutch traffic.

  It was a relief to turn from the mysteries of Holland to the wonders of Denmark.

  The Danish directorate was the least troublesome (though often the most troubled) in the whole of Baker Street. Ever since 1940, when King Christian had ordered his people to accept the German occupation with dignified demeanour – ‘And God help you all, and God help Denmark!’ – Churchill and the Chiefs of Staff had discounted the Danes as a fighting force. But this hadn’t deterred the head of the Danish section (Commander Hollingsworth) and his deputy (Reginald Spink) from proceeding with dignified demeanour to prove that the tiny country had a contribution to make which was out of all proportion to its size.

  The first Danish agents were dropped blind in December ’41 – Dr Carl Bruhn to recruit partisans and Mogens Hammer to set up wireless links with London. Bruhn’s parachute didn’t open and Hammer, who’d landed safely, couldn’t find his body. Nor could he find the transmitter which Bruhn was carrying. The Germans found both. They also found Hammer’s parachute and issued a warning that the first British agents had arrived in Denmark and that one of them was still at large. It was extremely dangerous for Hammer to move around Copenhagen, but he dressed himself as a Protestant parson and became so at home in the part that he frequently preached at German military services.

  His greatest problem was not divine communication but how to find a new transmitter and to solve it he contacted Ebbe Muncke, head of the Danish patriotic group in Sweden, who ran a weekly courier service to London. Muncke provided Hammer with the equipment he needed and in April ’42 Hammer transmitted his first message to London. The signal was so weak that it was barely decipherable and Hammer persuaded a brilliant Danish engineer, Duus Hansen, to build a new one for him in his Copenhagen laboratory. Duus Hansen’s set worked even better than SOE’s own and Hammer made one of the most far-sighted decisions ever taken on SOE’s behalf. He recruited Duus Hansen into SOE.

  Something equally significant had taken place in neglected little Denmark in June ’41 which neither Hammer nor SOE knew about at the time. Three young men, anxious to join what they believed to be an active Danish Resistance in London, had acquired the frame of a two-seater sports plane and, using the best of Danish inspiration and a motor-car engine, had built an aeroplane, which they assembled in a barn outside Copenhagen. The three would-be aviators were Sneum, Petersen and Rottbøll. Since their plane would hold only two (if as many), Rottbøll decided to go by sea. In June ’41 Sneum and Petersen flew to Britain in their contraption, bringing with them films of the latest German radar systems.

  Astonished British scientists confirmed that the films contained the most valuable information yet received from any source about German radar – and C asked the two young men to return home and set up a wireless link with England. In September ’41 Sneum and a wireless operator were dropped back into Denmark. They were friendly with a Danish police officer and with his help sent C a series of messages about the daily activities of the German security police. C did not inform SOE of this vital wireless link. Nor did C disclose to SOE the information about the movements of the German police. Even in a country the size of Denmark the sister organisations would not collaborate.

  The third young man, Rottbøll, reached London with the help of Ebbe Muncke and so impressed Commander Hollingsworth that he was invited to take command of all SOE agents in Denmark. The young man accepted and in April parachuted with two wireless operators on to a dropping ground in Denmark prepared by Mogens Hammer.

  In May 1942 there were only seven SOE agents in Denmark and Rottbøll’s first priority was to recruit new ones and to find a distinguished Danish citizen to come to London to head up a Free Danish Council. He contacted Christmas Moller, a prominent politician, who arrived in London in May to form the Danish government-in-exile.

  With little help from SOE (though Hollingsworth provided all he could) Rottbøll co-ordinated the various resistance groups in Denmark and persuaded them to pool their resources under SOE. His chief wireless operator, Johannesen, was in regular contact with London, Stockholm and Gothenburg. Early in September German direction-finding units located the house from which he was operating and burst into it. Johannesen held them off with a pistol just long enough to swallow his L-tablet.

  On 25 September the German police located the house where Rottbøll was living and surrounded it. They called on the young man to surrender. He died with twelve bullets in him.

  On both these raids the Germans had insisted that Danish police should accompany them.

  The raids continued, and by the end of September London was completely out of wireless contact with the Danish Resistance, though many messages were smuggled into our embassy in Sweden and relayed to London.

  In the middle of October Hollingsworth asked to see me ‘as soon as convenient’.

  I was with him ten minutes later. His entire directorate was squeezed into three small offices in Chiltern Court and he shared one with his deputy, Spink, an expert on Denmark’s economy.

  Hollingsworth was the only country-section head I’d met who was prepared to discuss his problems with me as if I were a member of his directorate. He confided that Mogens Hammer had arrived in London and was prepared to return to Denmark within the next ten days despite the dangers. It was essential that he took new codes with him. He must also have a stock in reserve to hand to new agents. He was waiting next door to be briefed.

  I asked if he and Spink would write some original poems in Danish, and they at once agreed. I then suggested that, to make the reserve poems easier for Hammer to conceal an
d if necessary to dispose of, they should be microfilmed on soluble paper. Hollingsworth liked the principle but asked if they could be produced on waterproof paper. It was an unusual request and I asked the reason for it.

  Hammer was to be dropped into the sea.

  It would be the first time this form of parachuting had been attempted by an SOE agent. After a great deal of research a special waterproof suit had been produced for Hammer which fitted over his ordinary clothing. It was still in the experimental stage and there was a great danger that, if the fabric were torn, water would saturate the suit and its sheer weight would cause the wearer to drown.

  Hammer’s reaction had been typical: ‘If it doesn’t work for me you will learn from it and it will work for the next man.’

  I went next door to brief the seagoing parson.

  It was likely to be a difficult session. I knew from his traffic that he was an excellent coder and WT operator, but instructing agents in the use of the poem-code would be a new experience for him, and it was a hard enough task in the safety of training schools, let alone in occupied Denmark.

  He greeted me as if I were a member of his congregation who hadn’t put enough in the plate and was clearly in no mood to be taught how to teach. Like all agents who’d formed coding habits, he had some difficulty absorbing new security rules and showed flashes of temper which were mainly directed against himself. But at the end of an hour he’d made his peace with his coding and smiled from the pulpit when I wished him good luck.

  On 20 October he dropped into the sea and arrived in Copenhagen a day or two later to resume his sermons to his German flock.

  SOE had a massive success in November and an even more massive disaster.

  The success was our contribution to the invasion of North Africa which had helped to secure Algiers for the Allies.

  SOE’s base had been set up at Guyotville and given the code name Massingham. It was to be our communications centre in North Africa for main-line and agents’ traffic. London was to provide most of the coders and Dansey told me to pick some of the best from Station 53. The girls were delighted but it meant breaking up a team. Dispersing them was like tearing out pages from an illuminated manuscript and selling them separately, one of 84’s less desirable habits.

  The disaster was Norway.

  On 19 November thirty-four officers and men in two gliders were towed by two Halifaxes towards something approximating a flat strip of country near Rjukan. They were to be met on landing by the Grouse.

  The clouds that night were so dense that the pilots decided to turn back thirty or so miles away from the dropping ground. One of the tow ropes snapped and the gliders crashed to the ground. The other Halifax crashed into a hill. Of the seventeen men in the first glider, nine survived. Four of them were taken to a hospital in Stavanger. Air bubbles were injected into their veins by a Quisling doctor and they died at once. The other five were taken to a concentration camp and executed, their hands tied behind their backs with barbed wire.

  Only fourteen men survived the other plane crash and many of them were badly injured. They were rounded up by German security police and shot by a firing squad. The wounded were executed first, leaning against a wall.

  Every one of the executed men was wearing a British army uniform. The Grouse were still safe.

  At the beginning of December a new figure had begun prowling the corridors of Baker Street. He was a tall colonel, and Heffer was usually beside him.

  Then the stranger began prowling alone.

  He spent a long time in Dansey’s office.

  He did not come into mine.

  In mid-December two signals officers were dismissed for inefficiency. Three more were posted back to their units. There were rumours that other dismissals were on the way.

  Then the prowler disappeared for a while …

  The gut feeling about Holland was now lodged in the abdomen, where it kept better company.

  On 16 December the Dutch section informed Boni that in the following moon period they were dropping six (it turned out to be seven) containers, and that new poems for Boni, Parsnip and Cabbage would be found in a small wooden box marked with a white cross. (Why did I keep seeing the agents in a large wooden box with no cross to mark it?) The containers were dropped on the night of the 22nd–23rd, and Boni acknowledged their safe arrival. He also acknowledged receipt of the poems.

  I hadn’t asked for them to be original compositions. It might alert the Germans in Holland that we were aware of the dangers of using famous quotations and cause them to revise their opinion of any organisation stupid enough to use the poem-code.

  SOE had somehow heard that Christmas was imminent, and the coders of Grendon were anxious for some leave. I volunteered to stand in on Christmas Day for whichever coder won me in a raffle. I didn’t envy the supervisor who’d have to check the results. My handwriting was as illegible as the gut feeling.

  On 22 December the stranger resumed his prowling.

  I knew by now that his name was Colonel Nicholls. I also knew what he was doing here.

  He was to take over the Signals directorate.

  Heffer had promised Ozanne that he’d look for a suitable replacement for me. Instead he’d found one for Ozanne. If this wasn’t an example of SOE-mindedness, I wondered what was. I also wondered why Nicholls hadn’t come anywhere near me, if only to say, ‘Good riddance.’

  I was convinced that the bad rubbish wouldn’t have long to wait.

  On Christmas Eve Joan Dodd presented me with a trial version of a silk WOK. The printing was too small and the silk would have to be chemically treated to make it easy to cut but it was the most beautiful sight I’d seen. My first impulse was to share it with Dansey and Heff, but with my job in the balance I knew that I daren’t and wore it as a pocket handkerchief instead.

  The Xmas traffic was light and I was preparing to go home when Colonel Nicholls walked in and sat opposite me in silence.

  He was very tall, very thin, with a nose like a snooker ball which had been potted once too often. A red one. ‘Right, Marks,’ he said. ‘Tell me all about it.’

  Obeying him immediately I told him all that was wrong with the codes and right with the coders, and kept only one thing back: the breaking of the secret French code.

  He closed his eyes after twenty minutes or so and seemed to be asleep, but something warned me that it was his way of listening. He looked up the moment I stopped talking.

  I gave him my WOK to examine and thought for a moment that he was going to blow his nose on it. I then explained how it worked.

  He was silent for an agent’s lifetime.

  He spent ten minutes re-examining it and closed his eyes for five of them. He asked me to show him again how the security checks would operate and tried one for himself. ‘Who advised you about this?’ he asked quietly.

  I told him that I’d discussed it with Dansey and Heffer.

  ‘Yes, yes. But which cryptographer advised you?’

  ‘Nobody has, sir.’

  ‘Have you ever felt in need of expert advice?’

  ‘Every minute of every day, sir.’

  He asked whose advice I’d like if I could get it.

  ‘If I could get it, sir, Colonel Tiltman’s. He works at Bletchley Park.’

  ‘Does he indeed? Have you met him?’

  ‘No, sir. But I saw him once in a corridor at the code-breaking school.’

  ‘Why didn’t you meet him?’

  ‘I wasn’t considered promising enough, sir.’

  He blew his snooker ball with his own pocket handkerchief. ‘I’m afraid poor old John’s got himself tied up in admin. It’s a great waste of his cryptographic talent.’

  Poor old John? – Does he actually know him?

  He stood up suddenly, and became a very full colonel indeed. ‘Colonel Ozanne’s shown me your coding report.’

  Goodbye, SOE. It’s been nice not knowing you.

  ‘I completely endorse it, though it would have been bet
ter without your occasional flippancies.’

  He cut me short in mid-apology.

  ‘Colonel Tiltman endorses it too – he read it last week – you’ll be meeting him shortly.’

  He had a smile which could lift the blackout. ‘I suggest you go home now. Happy Christmas, Marks.’

  ‘Happy Christmas, Colonel Nicholls.’

  ELEVEN

  The High-Pitched Bleep

  All of us in SOE were as certain as we could be of anything that 1943 was going to be our make-or-break year. The make was likely to be the country sections’ new operations; the break the poem-code which carried their traffic. I still had no authority to replace it with WOKs.

  Nor did I have authority to install two girls on the top floor of Norgeby House to make WOK keys by hand, but I’d done it with the help of Joan Dodd’s circuit and hoped that it would be condoned.

  Acute shortage of aircraft and equipment were the main obstacles to SOE’s Happy New Year, and the country sections’ rivalry for the wherewithal to take the war to the enemy was a war in itself. The piece of equipment which indicated a country section’s priority was a brilliant device called a Eureka which enabled an agent to guide an aircraft to a dropping ground without the use of lights or flares, no matter how dark the night.

  The Eureka was simple to work. Its built-in transmitter was tuned to the wavelength of the aircraft’s receiver, and by emitting a continuous high-frequency signal it provided a radio beam down which the aircraft could fly. Several of them had been dropped into Holland.

  I badly needed a Eureka of my own to help me resolve the niggling feeling that the Dutch traffic was continuing to emit a high-pitched bleep which I was still failing to pick up.

  I had many reasons, some of which I knew, for being interested in an altogether more complex Eureka – the mind of Sigmund Freud.