Between Silk and Cyanide Page 15

  On 19 May London informed Pijl that the operation was to be repeated in two nights’ time.

  On 22 May Pijl reported that shortly after midnight there had been gunfire at sea and that he had again waited several hours but had still not made contact with the ship.

  On 25 May the Dutch section informed Pijl that the operation had been abandoned for the time being. Pijl was now to concentrate on helping Ebenezer’s group. He was also to investigate the possibilities of sabotaging German ships in Dutch harbours.

  All this traffic was passed on Ebenezer’s set.

  On 28 May Ebenezer was warned by London to prepare for the arrival of Beetroot and Swede.

  On 29 May Beetroot (Parlevliet) and Swede (van Steen) were dropped to a reception committee on the Steenwijk moors. They were equipped with Eurekas and S-phones. The latter enabled agents to have ground-to-aircraft conversations. Beetroot and Swede were to mount an attack on the Juliana Canal locks.

  On 12 June Trumpet was instructed by London to prepare dropping grounds for the arrival of Parsnip and Spinach.

  On 22 June Parsnip and Spinach parachuted to the Assen dropping grounds suggested by Trumpet. Parsnip was to link up with Potato, who was well known to Ebenezer. Parsnip and Spinach were to organise a sabotage group in Overijssel.

  On 23 June Ebenezer and Trumpet were alerted to the imminent arrival of Marrow, the most important mission of all. Marrow was Professor Louis Jambroes. He was to be accompanied by a WT operator, Joseph Bukkens.

  On 26 June Jambroes and Bukkens were dropped to Ebenezer’s reception committee at Apeldoors with the help of a Eureka. Bukkens was equipped with the prototype of a small, highly selective WT transmitter, the first of its kind to be issued.

  The Dutch section was so concerned for Marrow’s safety that it had suggested five different dropping grounds to Ebenezer before finally agreeing to Apeldoors.

  Ebenezer and Trumpet were amongst the many agents who knew why this mission was so important to the liberation of Holland. Jambroes was the official representative of the Dutch government-in-exile and a member of the National Resistance Council in London. He was to take command of the Dutch secret army and prepare it for ‘Plan Holland’ – the code name for the Chiefs of Staff’s invasion plan to liberate the Low Countries. Jambroes was also to meet the leaders of the various Dutch resistance groups and co-ordinate them under a National Committee of Resistance. His mission had the full support of the Allied High Command.

  Shortly after he arrived Jambroes began sending London a spate of messages describing the poor morale amongst the various groups he had contacted and stressing the dangers of infiltration by German informers. He emphasised to the Dutch section that it was essential for his security that he travelled from place to place and that he would no longer be contactable on a day-to-day basis. He would also be unable to keep in regular touch with his WT operators but would send messages whenever he could. The Dutch section agreed to his proposals and warned him to take extreme care.

  It was now Ebenezer’s turn to send a request asking permission to recruit a local WT operator to help with his traffic. The Dutch section agreed to it.

  On 5 July Ebenezer was instructed to investigate the possibilities of blowing up the Kootwijk wireless transmitter. The attack was to be led by Taconis, assisted by a team of demolition experts.

  Between 8 and 20 July Ebenezer sent a number of messages giving full details of the layout of the Kootwijk transmitter and saying that it was lightly guarded. He suggested that it could be destroyed by small charges placed amongst the mast anchors.

  On 28 July Ebenezer reported to London that the attack had been a disaster as some of Taconis’s men had run into a minefield. The explosions had alerted the guards and the operation had been abandoned. Three of the attacking party had been killed; five men were still missing. Taconis himself was safe and unwounded. Ebenezer stressed that the Kootwijk wireless transmitter and all similar installations were now heavily guarded.

  The Dutch section sent a message to Ebenezer regretting the loss of life and warning him to suspend all operational activities for the time being.

  Two weeks later a further message was sent to Ebenezer congratulating all members of the raiding party on their heroic attempt and stating that Taconis would receive a British military decoration for his leadership.

  In the middle of August the Dutch section’s messages began to show increasing unease about Jambroes’s long silences and his apparent lack of progress and he was sent repeated messages urging him to return to London for consultations.

  Jambroes replied to these invitations explaining that he was too busy to come, that a pick-up by sea or air would be far too dangerous and that it wasn’t the right moment for him to leave Holland.

  On 25 August the Dutch section suggested to him that he should use SOE’s Spanish escape route and offered to put him in touch with a group of agents in Paris who operated the escape line. Jambroes accepted the Spanish escape route as the safest plan yet and promised to use it at the earliest moment.

  By mid-September that moment had still not arrived. Jambroes began reporting the excellent progress he was making with the sixteen new groups he was forming.

  On 15 September the Dutch section warned Ebenezer to expect the arrival of an important new mission, code-named Erica.

  Erica was dropped into Holland on 25 September to a reception committee arranged by Ebenezer. The mission was under the command of Christian Jongelie, whose field name was Arie. He was the personal emissary of the Dutch prime minister and carried a message from him to the leaders of the political parties urging them to form a coalition under a National Council of Resistance. Arie was accompanied by Captain Beukema-toe-Water, who was to become his deputy in the field. The other members of the party were Cornelius Fortuyn and Adrian Mooy.

  On 27 September Ebenezer reported that an accident had occurred during the drop and that Arie was suffering from severe concussion and was still unconscious. His three companions were uninjured. The Dutch section made repeated enquiries about Arie’s recovery. Each time Ebenezer assured London that he was making good progress.

  On 4 October Ebenezer reported that Arie had died suddenly and would be buried on the Steenwijk moors. He added that Arie would be given a worthy memorial after victory was won.

  Between October and November the Dutch section received a number of messages from Captain Beukema, who had taken over the Erica mission. Beukema extolled the progress which Jambroes was making.

  On 16 October the Dutch section instructed Beukema to return to London for consultations and arranged with Ebenezer that he should be picked up by motor torpedo boat.

  On 30 October Ebenezer reported that Beukema had been drowned while waiting for a pick-up on the coast.

  On 1 November the Dutch section sent a message appointing Cornelius Fortuyn, one of the two remaining survivors of the Erica mission, as Beukema’s replacement. He was to act as political coordinator in the field.

  A tally at this point showed that between September and November seventeen agents had been sent into Holland, most of them to help the build-up of the secret army. These included three agents (one of them a WT operator, Tomato) sent in on 22 October, followed two nights later by four more (including WT operators Chive, Celery and Broccoli). They were reinforced on 28 October by two more agents (including WT operator Cucumber). Containers full of arms and explosives were dropped with each of these missions.

  Jambroes now had more than six WT operators at his disposal, including Chive, Broccoli, Tomato, Celery and Cucumber.

  Towards the end of November the Dutch section decided to give an important new mission to Akkie. (At this point the messages became so convoluted that I had to make a precis of the precis.)

  On 29 November the Dutch section instructed Trumpet to tell Akkie that he must contact Vinus (Levinus van Looe) at an address in Amsterdam. Akkie was to ask Vinus to introduce him to members of the Dutch Resistance Committee so that they could establ
ish a wireless link with London. The message also referred to a small photograph which Akkie must produce to Vinus as evidence of his credentials. Trumpet confirmed to London that he had passed these instructions to Akkie.

  On 6 December Trumpet sent a message stating that Akkie had shown the photograph to Vinus but that Vinus had refused to introduce him to the Resistance Committee until he was given further proof of Akkie’s credentials. The proof he required was for the BBC to broadcast over its Radio Oranje programme the name with which Vinus had signed his last but one letter to London. The broadcast must take place within the next forty-eight hours. The Dutch replied that the broadcast would take place as Vinus had requested.

  I made a note in the precis asking Nicholls whether the Signals direct-orate had any jurisdiction over the messages broadcast en clair over Radio Oranje.

  On 4 December a long message was received from Jambroes reporting that more than fifteen hundred men were under training in his various Marrow groups. He asked for supplies to be sent urgently, including underwear, boots, tobacco, tea and bicycle tyres.

  In the middle of December the Dutch section answered this request by dropping in thirty-two containers in a single night.

  Shortly before Christmas the Dutch section informed Ebenezer and Trumpet that a special team was being assembled in London to assist Jambroes to leave Holland. It would be dropped into the field early in the New Year. Ebenezer and Trumpet duly acknowledged the messages.

  That marked the end of the 1942 traffic.

  And of my last vestige of belief in the security of the Dutch.

  I could have confined my report to four words: ‘God help these agents.’

  Instead I wrote twelve pages and then drained them of feeling and reduced them to four.

  Some of my anxieties I could develop orally. A lot would depend on Nicholls’s responses to negative inferences and the content of the Dutch traffic.

  My own were unequivocal. I found the extent to which the Dutch section relied on its anchormen a total negation of field security. Ebenezer, Boni and Trumpet had virtually become a clearing house for the Dutch traffic. They not only knew all the principal operations; in many instances they had helped to arrange them. There didn’t seem to be one wholly independent WT operator in Holland.

  Nor was the potential damage confined to WT operators.

  Groups of agents such as Marrow, Beetroot, Cucumber, Chive, Celery, Turnip and Potato had become so interlocked that, if any one of them were caught, there could be repercussions all the way up to the Committee of Resistance and Plan Holland.

  And if all this were conjectural, one thing was not. The pressure under which the Dutch agents were working was there in black and black for all to see.

  Yet despite deaths by drowning, by exploding minefields, by dropping accidents, despite every kind of difficulty, setback and frustration, not a single Dutch agent had been so overwrought that he’d made a mistake in his coding.

  It seemed to me unarguable that the bulk of the messages had been sent by the Germans and that the main question was no longer which agents were caught, but which were free. I ended my report by saying as much.

  There was nothing more that I could do about Holland until Nicholls returned.

  I renounced my Dutch citizenship.

  During my four days and nights of total immersion, eight indecipherables had come in from the rest of SOE.

  Note

  * Freud completed Moses and Monotheism (1937–9) in London.

  TWELVE

  A Shock Discovery

  The ladies of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, otherwise known as the coders of Grendon, had force-fed their eight indecipherables with a diet of transposition keys, and all but one of the invalids had responded to treatment. The malingerer was waiting on my desk with a curt note from the Grendon supervisor acknowledging defeat.

  It was Peter Churchill who had thwarted them. By now irretrievably set in his coding ways, Peter had become a classic example of an agent in the field repeating mainly the same mistakes which he’d made in training. He’d transposed three columns in the wrong order at our Orchard Court session and had twice repeated the process when he’d reached the field.

  Unscrambling Peter’s ‘hatted’* columns required minor mathematical surgery which Grendon was not yet equipped to administer. I made a few calculations based on Peter’s past performances and plunged the knife in. The clear-text bubbled up like the man himself. He was complaining to Buckmaster about his difficulties with Carte (André Girard), who was promising SOE far more than he could possibly deliver. Peter also reported that he was arranging new safe houses for Odette and Rabinovitch. I telephoned Buckmaster to tell him the message was out.

  It was then that I got a Dutch buzz. Something warned me that I wasn’t finished with Peter’s message; it had a relevance to Holland. The idea was ridiculous and I attributed it to the Dutch incarceration I’d only just left. Yet it niggled away as I tried to catch up with the rest of the traffic.

  A glance at the new symbols list increased my anxieties. It showed that Ozanne (MS) was still director of Signals and that Nicholls (MS/A) was still only his deputy.

  A typical SOE power struggle was now inevitable and I spotted the first signs of it when I visited Norgeby House. The whole building had been invaded by Grendon signals officers. They were wandering round its alien corridors in small bewildered groups – segments of Morse lost in the ether.

  On the ground floor two rooms were being knocked into one like a schizoid in treatment. No one knew why. Some more Grendon technicians were holding a conference in room 52. Heffer emerged from it. I asked him what was happening. He didn’t seem to hear me.

  Ozanne came down the passage, looking more bemused than anyone, though it wasn’t yet lunchtime. He took about as much notice of me as a tank would of a pebble and disappeared into room 52.

  Clutching a box of Mother’s provisions, I rushed up three flights of stairs to my WOK-makers’ garret in case they’d been dispossessed or had begun to feel neglected. They were happily shuffling counters and had missed Mother’s cream cakes far more than they had me. They said that a ‘nice group captain called Venison’ had called in to see how they were getting on! He’d helped them make two WOK keys and they hoped he’d call again. I left them before my growing unease about Nicholls spoiled their appetite.

  He’d been away from Baker Street for almost a week now and I was missing him badly. It was like being deprived of a night light.

  I decided that if I needed security symbols in order to function I’d better return to the source of them.

  I went home early.

  An envelope addressed to me had been put through the letter box and Mother had opened it, thinking it was personal. It contained a white feather and a typed card with one word on it: ‘Shirker’.

  My distraught parents were convinced that our next-door neighbours had sent it. Only Ozanne deserved what was shortly to be put through their letter box.

  I assured my two inconsolables that a white feather was a marvellous tribute to security and that their friend Jack O’Reilly would thoroughly approve of it. I then disclosed to them what I was really doing at the ‘Ministry of Labour’, that I was trying to prove to SOE that the Dutch agents were caught, and that with Nicholls’s support I was hoping shortly to introduce a code called a WOK.

  (I disclosed all this to them in my mind. But I’d been only a pride’s kick away from saying it aloud.)

  I went to the swimming pool and swung fully clothed across the rings. My near lapse had given me a great deal to think about.

  The need to justify and its sister frailty, the need to boast, were lethal weaknesses in SOE, and the shock discovery that I was prone to both started me worrying about the coders of Grendon.

  The ‘old hands’ were by now as security-minded as they were ever likely to be, but many of them would soon be posted to Massingham and Cairo, and would be replaced by apprentices. I’d done all I could to convince the n
ewcomers that the duty of care which they owed to all agents mustn’t be relaxed on weekend passes or extended leaves, but I knew that fledgling FANYs took a lot of persuading and were unlikely to remember a word of what I’d said beyond the coach ride to Grendon, if as far.

  Heffer had once asked me to define a good security risk and I’d replied, ‘Someone who knows whom it’s safe to be indiscreet to.’ If there was slightly more truth in this than in most pat responses, then a bad security risk was somebody likely to confide in the wrong ‘safe someone’. None of us knew whom the coders talked to in their off-duty hours.

  An idea occurred to me in mid-swing: there was something which might remind them for the rest of their coding lives that they must talk to no one, and the more I considered it, the more promising it seemed.

  I realised that my next-door neighbours were watching me from the balcony and that if they were the feather-donors I owed the idea to them. I waved my gratitude without falling in.

  The Dutch section was more determined than ever to bring Jambroes back to London for consultations.

  Four agents now in the final stages of training were going to parachute into Holland in the February moon period to help him to cross the Spanish escape route into France and Belgium. Their code name was to be Golf, N section having exhausted its supply of vegetables. I was due to brief the Golf team within the next fortnight.

  Messages continued to arrive from Holland reporting the steady progress of Jambroes’s organisation and the build-up of the secret army. The encoding was perfect.

  *

  The Signals directorate’s night light returned to Baker Street and Heffer put me at the head of the long queue waiting to be guided by it.

  Nicholls occupied a small office in Norgeby House, which I hoped was temporary. He took my report from me before I could say good morning and at once began reading it. He was interrupted a few minutes later by a call from CD asking to see him immediately. He promised to finish the report by the end of the day and to send for me as soon as he had considered it.