Between Silk and Cyanide Read online

  Someone (I presumed it was she who had sighed) was going to ask her father to put down a question in the House of Commons. There were some interesting suggestions as to how he should phrase it. I switched off and prepared to address a hostile house.

  I could see from their bemused expressions that the shock of being recorded, a process still new to most of us, had done much of my work for me and I had to be careful to avoid an anticlimax.

  I moved cautiously towards them to give myself time to think of what to say. I was suddenly aware that the room smelled of talcum powder and dry rot, the basic ingredients of my average address.

  I spoke to them for twenty minutes, which seemed twice as long as the forty I usually allowed, and then asked if they had any questions. They stared at me in silence, far too bright to give me a chance to identify their voices. I left the Barren Mountain with no external injuries.

  The girls were then taken upstairs to a small anteroom and were recorded again while they waited for their transport. Their tones were muted, their dialogue vivid. ‘What a little bastard!’ was the mildest comment.

  I intended to play this second recording to them, until I suddenly found myself listening to the sound of what, until this moment, had been my favourite voice. The girls hadn’t been the only victims of the Signals directorate’s toy. I had also been recorded. The biter was not only bitten, he was savaged by his own words. I was convinced that what I’d said had been a model of disciplined persuasiveness. I couldn’t believe what I now heard, courtesy of Sergeant Blossom:

  ‘You’ve been kept waiting in a cold room to make you tired and irritable because when you’re tired and irritable you grow careless, and when you’re careless you’re talkative. I promise you that, before you’ve been with us long, you’ll be limp – but next time you feel like talking, remember that the Germans have recorders too – where even you wouldn’t think of putting them.

  ‘Each of you has a crowd of admirers you’ve never met. Don’t get excited – they’re Gestapo admirers and they welcome you today just as much as I do. They hope you’re green enough to want to boast. You’ll have plenty to boast about. You’re important people. You’re going to be told about things you shouldn’t know – but we can’t help ourselves, we have to trust you.

  ‘Every department has its secrets – you in Codes will read all the secrets of all the departments. If you talk about any of them, a man will die. It’s as simple as that. Now, I’m never going to mention security to you again.

  ‘You think you’re tired, don’t you? Then imagine how tired an agent feels who’s had no sleep for three nights and has to encode a message. The Germans are all around her so-called safe house. She has no supervisor to check her coding. All she has is a vital message which she must transmit. Now, I’m going to put a question to this house. Hasn’t that agent a right to make a mistake in her coding? And, if she does, must she pay for it with her life? Must she come on the air again to repeat her message, whilst German direction-finding cars get her bearings?

  ‘You look puzzled. Is there something you want to ask? No? Perhaps no one’s told you that many of our agents are women? Members of your corps and about your age. I’m thinking of one in particular. Last week the FANYs at Grendon tried four thousand keys to break one of her messages and succeeded on the four thousandth and second. You’ll find that double-transposition is easier to joke about than to crack.

  ‘There’s an indecipherable down there with your names on it. It’s from a Belgian agent who’s completely blown. He’s sent us a message telling us his co-ordinates – that is, where he can be picked up. A Lysander is standing by to get him out. The message won’t budge. At ten o’clock this evening he’s due to come on the air and repeat it. If he does, those cars will close in. We will lose that man – just as a few weeks ago we lost a young Norwegian named Arne Vaerum, code name Penguin. The SS shot him while he was retransmitting an indecipherable message.

  ‘Must that happen tonight if there’s any chance that you can help us to prevent it? Well you’re going to have that chance! You will be told what to do by your colleagues. You will find that they are tired, tense, sulky – and the salt of the earth. None of them is quite sane – but don’t worry, you’ll soon be like them. Sleep in the train going down – sleep in the coach that waits at the station – sleep when you shake hands with your commanding officer – but don’t sleep in the code room.

  ‘If any of you finds the key that breaks this message, you all will have broken it. You’re part of a team now, an indispensable part. Sorry about the recording – if you can think of a better way of reminding you never to talk about your work please tell me now.

  ‘I’d like to end with a word of advice. Don’t grow old too quickly and don’t stay young too long! Good luck – good coding, and remember … you’re the only hope that agent’s got!’

  I erased my speech from the tape – or believed that I had but should have known my Signals colleagues better. Much talcum powder and dry rot later I discovered that the boys in Signals had not only made a sep-arate recording of it; one of them had kept a copy.*

  The Grendon supervisor phoned to say that the Belgian indecipherable had been broken after four thousand attempts. The new coders had not yet arrived.

  There would be some compensation awaiting them. They would cut their baby teeth, if they had any left, on an indecipherable from Mr Einar Skinnarland. He was the greatest ager of coders in the business.

  The Signals directorate had more departments than most directorates had members, and was by far the largest group in SOE. The ‘important meeting’ convened by Nicholls was attended by representatives of its principal branches. The only person missing from it was the night light himself. He was in conference with the Executive Council. I hoped he wouldn’t burn himself out.

  Everyone at this Signals convention was an expert in some branch of communication, a fact which the small talk brilliantly concealed. The most senior officers were in the front row. They were the commanding officers of Station 52 (the training school for agents), Station 53 (Grendon) and Station 54 (the training school for Signals personnel). They were all majors.

  The next row was full of captains, representing the Research and Supply stations. I sat behind Dansey and Owen on the government back benches.

  Nick strode in five minutes later and addressed us with the sureness of touch which he displayed to everything but codes. He made clear that the meeting had two objectives. The first was to weld us together into one unit, which the size of the room had almost achieved. The second was to ensure that all of us understood the reasons behind the major changes which were about to take place. He then outlined what these changes were to be.

  I noticed that several of the military acquired a special kind of pallor, a shade of promotion-grey. I just about survived the first announcement.

  As of February, agents’ messages were no longer to be received and circulated by Dansey’s distribution department. They were to be distributed by a newly formed HQ Signals Office in room 52 at Norgeby House.

  Dansey seemed relieved that his distribution room could concentrate on main-line traffic. But I was rigid with anxiety. A new distribution department might make it impossible for me to intercept incoming messages in secret French code.

  Nicholls went on to describe in detail the workings and function of this new Signals Office. It would be staffed day and night by signalmasters and FANYs, and would act as a clearing house for all agents’ traffic. It would be open at all times to the country sections, who would be encouraged to visit it. The senior supervisor would deal with their queries and liaise on their behalf with the appropriate Signals departments.

  The front row of the stalls nodded its approval. The next major change affected Grendon. It was to hand over the Dutch traffic to Station 53b when it opened in March.

  This should not cause Herr Giskes any inconvenience.

  As if he’d picked up the thought, Nicholls announced that new direction-fin
ding equipment was to be installed which would enable Grendon and Poundon to take precise readings of WT operators’ transmitting sites. As a further precaution all new WT operators were to be ‘fingerprinted’, which would provide us with an accurate record of their operating styles.*

  What had started as a talk had become a proclamation. He now introduced a series of non sequiturs which he expected to be followed.

  A new kind of WT set was to be produced by Station 9. It had a powerful generator which would allow an operator to transmit without having to use current from the mains, which the enemy could detect.

  The signal-planning department had been instructed to produce new signal plans which would allow operators to stagger their frequencies and transmission times. The BBC’s en clair broadcasts could in future be monitored by Major Buxton, who was to be appointed SOE’s liaison officer with the BBC. He then made an announcement which got less audience response than any so far.

  The OSS was planning to start its own WT station under the auspices of SOE and we would have to give the Americans every possible co-operation.

  A gadget called a ‘squirt-transmitter’ was now in production. It would enable agents to transmit messages at very high speed. The enemy would find it difficult to intercept ‘squirt traffic’ unless they had similar equipment.

  I glanced at Heffer, who had engineered the arrival of this Signals Messiah. He had the proprietorial look of a satisfied sponsor.

  Nicholls now dealt lovingly and at length with the technical changes which were to be introduced to improve the quality of the Home Station’s transmissions. The congregation started taking notes, anxious not to miss a single miracle.

  I made one too: ‘How long, O Lord, before he talks about codes?’ Perhaps the new equipment was so efficient we could dispense with them.

  I tried to project the thought of WOKs to the man on the mountain, but he was imparting his vision of a new kind of wireless mast.

  Insular as ever, I drifted off – and landed in Holland. None of these innovations, excellent though they were, would help me to prove that a single Dutch agent had been caught. Even the early Dutch code groups, if Bletchley ever produced them, were unlikely to prove that Herr Giskes was SOE’s most regular penfriend. I wished I could put a face to him. I imagined him as an Ozanne with brains. The thought of Ozanne brought me sharply out of the Dutch clouds.

  Nicholls had changed the subject and the audience was fidgeting slightly, so it might be important.

  A Security and Planning Office was to be started in Norgeby House. Its principal function would be to monitor the security of agents’ traffic.

  I hoped that whoever did the monitoring would be able to spare a moment for the Dutch because I was about as much use to them as a squirt-transmitter which had run out of squirt. The answer did not lie in further research, it lay in making something happen. But what? Could we set a trap for the Germans? Could we give them a chance to make a mistake without alerting them to our suspicions? Could we take the code war to them?

  I fell into the trap of trying to devise a ‘Plan Giskes’ while Nicholls droned on, and suddenly realised that there was something different about the room.

  It was completely silent.

  The proclamation was over and everyone was looking at me! Had I been thinking aloud?

  I risked a glance at the Messiah. He wasn’t exactly angry but his sigh was a gust of wind which I felt in my marrowbone. ‘For the benefit of those at the back who may not have heard me,’ he said, ‘I will repeat what I have just announced.’

  As of February agents’ codes were to be split entirely from main-line codes. The two departments would function as separate entities. Main-line codes would remain under the control of Captain Dansey, assisted by Lieutenant Owen. Agents’ codes would be under the control of DYC/M, who would be answerable directly to the head of Signals. DYC/M would move to Norgeby House in February. One of his functions would be to act as field-cipher representative in the Security and Planning Office. DYC/M’s symbol would remain unchanged when he took up his appointment as head of agents’ codes.

  I realised that I was DYC/M.

  That February was only a few weeks away.

  That I was scared out of what remained of my wits.

  And that Nicholls, Dansey and Owen were smiling at me.

  Notes

  * A few years after the war ended (I shan’t give away who won it – for those who may not know) the BBC asked Sir Colin Gubbins, as he had then become, and me, to broadcast a tribute to the FANYs on a programme called ‘Now It Can Be Told’. Tom Waldron, the producer of this programme, wanted me to contribute one of the talks I’d given to the FANYs, using as nearly as possible the same words. A signals technician who’d seen an announcement of the broadcast sent me a copy of the original tape. I’m sure he meant it kindly. Not to include it in this book would justify today’s equivalent of a white feather, if there is one, so out of obligation to my former colleagues and as a further tribute to all that the FANYs had to endure, it has been quoted in full.

  * The outcome of ‘fingerprinting’ is dealt with in Appendix One.

  FOURTEEN

  The Last-Chance Month

  The Signals directorate invaded Norgeby House in the first week of February despite sporadic resistance from the sitting tenants. To everyone’s surprise (except Nicholls’s) the new distribution department took over from the old without one message being delayed and only two going to the wrong country sections, and the new Signals Office was a great social success as country-section officers, who rarely had a chance to meet each other, found it an excellent place for a quiet chat. Occasionally they came to it for signals enquiries.

  I’d been allotted a room on the first floor and awarded custody of a secretary with sunset-red hair. Her name was Muriel Eddy and she was the equivalent of a typing pool.

  I learned on my first day that there was a drawback to my new accommodation. I had to share it with two formidable ladies who’d been brought into SOE by Nicholls, presumably as part of his unlisted improvements.

  Mrs Charlotte Denman was a short grey-haired chain-smoker who spoke fluent French and whose job was to liaise with the French, Free French and Belgian sections.

  Mrs Molly Brewis was a large red-faced chain-smoker who spoke fluent Italian and Dutch and whose job was to liaise with the country sections in preparing signal plans.

  This enforced intimacy became a serious risk when I discovered that both ladies had had a long-standing professional and personal relationship with Nicholls and that they were his close confidantes. They spent most of their time filing his secret reports and conferring alone with him in his office. They always took their confidential files with them.

  The ladies and I were rapidly bonded into a unit by SOE’s most common denominator – ignorance. The subject we knew least about was the newly formed Security and Planning Office. None of us understood its function until a memo from Nicholls informed us that we were the Security and Planning Office and would shortly be sent our terms of reference.

  Our security to date consisted of the ladies’ attempts to hide from me what they were filing and mine to hide from them that I was breaking secret French messages. There were few signs of any planning and still less of any progress. But our terms of reference as room-mates were clearly established: they pretended to take no notice at all of what I was doing and I did my best to reciprocate.

  We were not the only ones playing charades.

  A spate of perfectly encoded messages arrived from Ebenezer, Trumpet and Boni, telling the Dutch section what it most wanted to hear.

  The build-up of the secret army was steadily progressing. Akkie was in contact with the Council of Resistance and reception committees were being prepared to receive the Golf team which was to guide Jambroes into Spain via the French and Belgian escape routes.

  These escape routes, particularly the Belgian ones, were lifelines not only for SOE’s agents but for Allied airmen stranded in enemy
territory. If the Dutch agents were blown, it could lead to the escape routes themselves being penetrated and the damage could be incalculable, but I still couldn’t provide what SOE would consider proof that a single Dutch agent had been caught. Nor could I think of a way to entrap Herr Giskes.

  Over a month had elapsed since Nick had dangled the possibility of introducing me to Tiltman of Bletchley to discuss my idea of giving every agent an individual WOK printed on silk, but the miracle still hadn’t happened and I no longer believed that it would.

  Nor had Nick allowed me to recruit more WOK-makers until ‘an all-clear had been given for the system to be adopted’. When I’d asked him how much longer we had to wait for the siren to be sounded, he’d assured me that a decision would be reached within a week.

  I didn’t point out that a week was seven days longer than most agents’ life expectancy if we continued to give them poem-codes.

  I had four more days to wait.

  *

  A new menace emerged in the first week of February which threatened SOE with extinction. Since there had been only eighteen months’ advance notice of it, it took Baker Street as a whole (which occasionally it was) completely by surprise. That menace was C’s determination to expunge SOE from the Intelligence alphabet.

  Although the state of the civil war between our two organisations was supposed to be known only to CD, Gubbins and the Executive Council, I was briefed on it by Heffer, from whom nothing was secret except how to hurry.

  According to the Guru, C’s latest campaign to close SOE down, take us over or restrict our activities until we were operationally neutered had come to Downing Street’s attention, and was soon to be fought out in Cabinet by our respective ministers. Our chief cornerman in this sacrosanct arena was Lord Selborne, the minister of economic warfare. ‘The Bastards of Broadway’ (which was what we called C in rare moments of understatement)* were represented by the foreign secretary, Anthony Eden. The key issue was SOE’s role in the invasion of Europe, and the timing of the Bs of B’s attack was inspired.