Between Silk and Cyanide Read online

  S

  E

  D/

  W

  O

  R

  K

  E

  D/

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  50.

  51.

  Top message (cont.):

  N

  T

  R

  E

  S/

  O

  F/

  S

  O

  E/

  E

  N

  D/

  M

  E

  S

  Bottom message (cont.):

  O

  U

  T/

  K

  E

  Y

  S/

  M

  E

  S

  S

  A

  G

  E/

  B

  E

  52.

  53.

  54.

  55.

  Top message (cont.):

  S

  A

  G

  E/

  Bottom message (cont.):

  G

  I

  N

  S/

  Ozanne smiled, clearly believing that the demonstration was over. I had some bad news for him.

  A code isn’t broken merely because an individual message is. We had now to establish the words of the poem. Only then would we have broken the code itself. That was why every pair of letters had been given a number, though Ozanne hadn’t once asked me their purpose. It was time to enlighten him.

  To keep the mathematics of anagramming down to the level of my mother’s housekeeping, I wrote up the first fifteen pairs of letters of each message and drew the last shards of his attention to them:

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  Top message:

  C

  O

  L

  O

  N

  E

  L

  O

  Z

  E

  A

  N

  N

  E

  S

  Bottom message:

  T

  H

  I

  S

  C

  O

  U

  L

  D

  N

  T

  H

  A

  P

  P

  I now invited him to join me in a game of cryptographic hide-and-seek. Each of these pairs of letters would be found lurking amongst the code-groups:

  The remaining pairs of letters, numbers 16 to 55, had also changed their positions. If we could discover the process which had caused these changes, the game of hide-and-seek would be finished and the life of the code over, because we would be in possession of the transposition key on which both messages had been encoded.

  The mathematics involved would be basic but fiddling and I asked Ozanne which he would prefer: to see the process for himself or accept my word that within a very short time we could mathematically reconstruct the entire transposition key on which both messages had been encoded.

  My word was instantly accepted.

  I wrote the transposition key on the blackboard:

  1.16.17.23.11.13.19.9.22.4.21.14.10.12.24.2.20.6.5.7.3.26.25.15.8.27.18.

  I told Ozanne that it would take the coders of Grendon twenty minutes or so to convert those figures into the original words from which they came. Did he wish to see the process for himself? Or would he accept my assurance?

  He accepted it.

  George Washington Marks wrote the code phrase ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL on the blackboard:

  A

  L

  L

  T

  H

  I

  N

  G

  S

  B

  R

  I

  G

  H

  T

  A

  N

  D

  B

  E

  A

  U

  T

  I

  F

  U

  L

  1.

  16.

  17.

  23.

  11.

  13.

  19.

  9.

  22.

  4.

  21.

  14.

  10.

  12.

  24.

  2.

  20.

  7.

  5.

  6.

  3.

  26.

  25.

  15.

  8.

  27.

  18.

  I suggested that German cryptographers might know the words too and that they would now be able to read the rest of the agent’s traffic at will.

  ‘You have five more minutes,’ he said, ‘in which to come to the point.’

  It was there on the blackboard, glaring at him. He hadn’t bothered to ask what ‘worked-out keys’ were. He probably thought they were iron-based laxatives. He wouldn’t need one by the time I’d finished.

  I pointed out the overwhelming advantages of a code which could be destroyed message by message, which could not be remembered, which could not be tortured out of an agent, which would allow him to get off the air in half the time it took him at present, which could easily be camouflaged because it would be printed on silk, which would put a stop to the blackboard follies we had just indulged in, and which would be the start of a programme to change the entire face of agents’ coding. I then shoved a sample of a WOK at him like a door-to-door salesman and showed him how to use it.

  His expression conveyed what he was considering using it for. Even his blackheads seemed to underline in porous italics his silent rejection of everything I’d said. I shaped my wares to suit Ozanne the expansionist and I told him that the Signals directorate would need fifty girls to produce WOKs by hand and another dozen to check their work. The keys would then have to be printed on silk and subsequently camouflaged. Perhaps the colonel would consider starting his own printing and camouflage sections? We would also need teams of girls at the briefing end of the assembly line to keep every agent practising his WOK (‘use it and destroy it, use it and destroy it’) right up to the moment that he left for the field. We must also make provision for some mistakes of our own and would need a small team of girls to monitor them.

  ‘Very interesting,’ he said, ‘for a number of reasons.’ He told me that any idiot could stand in front of a blackboard and break a message he’d composed himself. As far as he was aware, the Germans were not in that happy position. Nor was there any evidence that SOE’s traffic was being intercepted, let alone broken. Furthermore, I had grossly exaggerated the poem-code’s insecurity. Properly used, it was perfectly suitable for SOE’s purposes. Moreover, after considerable discussion with experts in such matters he was firmly convinced that an agent’s code should be carried in his head and any suggestion to the contrary was dangerous nonsense.

  He added that my idea of a WOK-thing or whatever I called it was impractical, preposterous and he hadn’t heard the like of it. Nor was he prepared to hear the like of it again, least of all from me. ‘What you need is a dose of the army.’

  He didn’t actually call me a shirker but asked why the chosen people were so reluctant to get into uniform. I replied th
at being a member of the chosen people was a uniform but we did not depend for our promotion on the Army Council.

  I knew by now that I’d wrecked the WOK campaign and ruined Heffer’s chances of reviving it. I’d also blown my cover with Ozanne, and with nothing to lose I attacked that shuttered mind with the only key left to me.

  I told him that I would write to CD stating in full my reasons for resigning. With this letter I would enclose a detailed report on agents’ codes. Since much of the report would be technical, I summarised its punchier contents. Part One would demonstrate the effect of a cryptographic attack on a cross-section of SOE’s traffic. The attack would be based on the assumption that agents’ messages had not yet become important enough to the enemy to warrant a full-scale attack by their top cryptog-raphers. Part Two would show the same cross-section of messages being attacked ‘with absolute priority’. Part Three would set out the reasons why such a blanket attack was inevitable, if it hadn’t already begun. Traffic such as Torch (I refrained from mentioning Grouse) could provide the enemy with a microcosm of the whole war effort and a breakthrough would have repercussions far beyond the confines of SOE. Part Four would be devoted entirely to security checks and the total inadequacy of the present system. The fifth and final part would deal with the archaic misthinking behind the poem-code and the new concepts which should immediately replace it. I undertook to send one copy of the report to CD and another to the War Office in case there was someone in their Signals directorate technically capable of understanding it.

  Ozanne had a smile like a wartime hors d’oeuvre: small, confected and promising far worse to come. He produced a trayful of it. He informed me very quietly indeed that people did not resign from SOE; they were dismissed. He then telephoned his secretary and dictated a memo addressed to DYC/M (my symbol) from MS (his). The memo instructed me to prepare a detailed report on agents’ codes which I was to deliver to MS personally within seven days. Under no circumstances was I to show this report to anyone at all or discuss its contents without his written consent. He ordered me to wait while the memo was typed and to sign an acknowledgement of it on my way out.

  That memo was Ozanne at his tactical best. He had commanded the report, made it his own and could consider it in his own time. Above all, he had pre-empted its distribution.

  It was good thinking because on the barren mountain of SOE’s ethics there was one unforgivable sin. It was probably the oldest on record. The sin of being caught disobeying a superior’s orders. The penalty was instant dismissal or permanent retention, whichever was the heavier.

  I had tried a fool’s mate on a grandmaster. But at least I could replace the pieces in the box with a hint of dignity.

  Ozanne had flicked seven days’ grace at me to complete my report. I didn’t need seven days. Or even seven seconds. I’d written it the night before and had it with me in my pocket.

  I pulled it out and served it on him personally, as instructed. He put it beneath the pile of unread signals. He then told me to find a duster and clear all the rubbish off the blackboard.

  I was looking for an excuse to return to the blackboard. I rubbed out all the letters except for twelve. I dusted these precious letters lightly so that they stayed on the blackboard as a memento of my visit. They spelled a most unusual word. Ozanne wouldn’t understand its meaning unless his real name was Ozeannavitch. But ‘the chosen’, if there were any others in SOE, would recognise it at once.

  Just as merde alors was the ultimate SOE benediction, this twelve-letter word was the ultimate Hebrew curse: Mother wished it to Hitler on his birthday; Disraeli may have wished it to Gladstone; my father wished it to tax-inspectors, provided they weren’t in the craft.

  Its twelve deadly letters were positioned at numbers 55.4.6.10.15.22.3.7.45.21.2.24. in the code groups.*

  I turned round to find Ozanne watching me. He told me I was to continue my normal duties until I heard from him again.

  Part of those duties would be to continue spelling his name with an ‘e’ too many.

  Hurrying to the door, I couldn’t resist taking what was likely to be my last look at him. He was staring at the blackboard with mounting interest.

  Perhaps his name was Ozeanneavitch after all …

  Note

  * Warning from the author. The curse should be used only in emergencies, and in the hands of the inexperienced has been known to backfire.

  SIX

  The Fifth Grouse

  Every agent was given the opportunity of carrying a cyanide pill as an optional extra. Some refused the facility on moral or religious grounds, but the majority regarded it as forward planning and a lethal tablet was as much a part of an agent’s survival kit as the poem-code, which so often contributed to its use. I didn’t envy the country-section officers who had to issue the poison:

  ‘By the way, old man, here’s your L-tablet. Not that you’ll need it, of course, but you might just as well keep it handy. In your tie perhaps? Oh, I’ve a little tip for you. Don’t go confusing it with your booster tablets, there’s a good lad.’

  It took the good lads (and lassies) a good minute to die, though SOE’s technicians were doing their best to improve the facility.

  I was about to meet four exceptionally good lads who’d be lucky if they had the chance to use L-tablets. Blowing up a heavy-water plant was a full-time job. They were now waiting in Chiltern Court for what was likely to be our only session.

  I wanted to give these Grouse agents one-to-one briefings, but Wilson had warned me that they always turned up together no matter what the arrangements. ‘What difference does it make, anyway?’ he asked. ‘There are only four of them.’

  And they were only going to carry one corner of the free world in each of their knapsacks, but Wilson didn’t know that I’d found out what their mission was, and I had to be careful not to think about it at the briefing. An agent’s inner ear could pick up anxieties more quickly than instructions. Agents also had a flair for infecting one another. I’d twice known sadness to be wafted round a briefing room as if someone were smoking it.

  A good briefing officer knew how to insulate himself against his pupils, if only with ignorance – and he’d arrive at Chiltern Court untroubled by the cost to the Allies if Operation Grouse failed and the cost to the inseparables if it succeeded. A good briefing officer would confront the Grouse with his own togetherness, service their needs with the detachment of a maintenance man and be in awe of nothing but his own limitations. And at three minutes to coding countdown, even the shell of a briefing officer would make himself believe that the poem-code was the best damn code there is.

  I said it aloud: ‘The poem-code is the best damn …’

  Chiltern Court was only a sandbag away. A maintenance man mustn’t keep his customers waiting.

  The Norwegian section’s flat was less impersonal than most, and it was just possible to believe that it had once been lived in.

  Colonel Wilson was not only waiting in the hall, he actually said hello to me instead of his customary, ‘You again.’ When he escorted me to the briefing room his comments were even less in character: ‘My lads are completely at your disposal. See them as often as you consider neces-sary. Once a day if you like. Arrange it through me.’

  Such generosity could only mean that Operation Grouse had again been postponed because of weather and that, as his lads had nothing better to do, they might as well practise their coding.

  ‘I don’t expect them to send much traffic,’ he said casually, ‘but what they do send may be pretty important. I don’t want one indecipherable! Not one. Even if I have to send you in with ’em.’ He pushed me into the briefing room and walked off chuckling.

  Messrs Poulson, Helberg, Kjelstrup and Haugland sprang to attention as one Grouse and remained sprung until I’d carried my impedimenta to the briefing officer’s desk. I’d brought a special prop with me to give me some confidence. It was a self-important briefcase which I’d purloined from the stationery department and
nicknamed Ozanne. The tools of my trade were inside its gullet: some practice poems for the Grouse, some squared paper and a copy of Marks & Co.’s latest catalogue.

  If a briefing officer had any special talent, he should demonstrate it in the first five minutes. Afterwards he might have lost his audience. My special talent was distributing squared paper. The one obstacle in the way of my proving it was a briefcase named Ozanne. I’d forgotten the combination of the secret lock and was in no position to consult the stationery department. Growing sallower by the moment, I twiddled, reasoned and wrestled with it but my repository was closed for the duration.

  ‘We could perhaps be of some helping?’ enquired Poulson, the leader of the quartet.

  I ceded the problem to them, hoping they’d think it was an aptitude test. They solved it inside a minute, then sat back to await the next conundrum.

  They’d done no coding for six weeks and it was essential to establish how much they remembered and whether they were as accident-prone as their briefing officer. I’d devised a hard time for them which fell into three parts: exercise, checking and briefing officer’s summary.

  I handed them some squared paper and a poem apiece and asked each of them to encode an improvised message in Norwegian and English at least 250 letters long as quickly as they could. They started work as if they expected nothing less.

  The agents were now in an exam situation and for the next thirty to fifty minutes I was redundant.

  All briefing officers shared the problem of how best to pass the time while surreptitiously monitoring the progress of their pupils. Some prepared for their next briefings, others began reports on their last. I wrote poems for the agents, and since I did so strictly from Signals necessity, and my readership consisted of agents, coders and enemy cryptographers, I had no writer’s block. I had not foreseen that in the presence of a courteous quartet dedicated to saving us from an atomic New Year I would be rendered wordless, wingless and grounded.