Between Silk and Cyanide (14 page)

He finally said that a lady whose judgement he respected had spoken quite highly of me, and that if I had any problems I could do a lot worse than talk them over with her.

I casually asked for the lady's name as I'd like us to become better aquainted but it was the wrong question to have asked him.

'I'll tickle your zonker for you, you cheeky little bugger,' he roared.

He then threw my report at me, and pointed to the door.

On l8 October the Grouse boarded a Halifax, took off for Hardanger—and plummeted towards their icy plateau.

SOE didn't know if they had landed safely and didn't expect to hear from them until they reached the Barren Mountain. From now rund-the-clock listening posts would be maintained. One of them in my head.

The Head of SOE's stationery department sat opposite me and waited forme to say something, though I hadn't asked her to call. Least of all at eleven o'clock at night.

Her name was Joan Dodd, and I was convinced that she was the lady who'd praised me to Major Jack. Unless Mother was working under cover in Baker Street.

Yet it seemed unlikely that she was my benefactress. At our only previous meeting she'd come storming into my office demanding to know why the code department had quadrupled its demands for squared paper, which was in very short supply and was needed by other departments just as important as ours.

I was then in the middle of trying to break one of Skinnarland's nastiest. I'd shown her why we wanted squared paper, but not content with that I'd kept her there till she knew enough about indecipherables to help me with Skinnarland's. The first key she tried was the one which broke it. Then I put her to work on another. This time she wasn't so lucky. By the time I let her go she could hardly find the door.

The next day squared paper arrived by the ream and I'd had no trouble from her since.

But why would the head of the stationery department have Jack O'Reilly's ear? And what would he respect her judgement about? Paper clips?

I asked her if she knew the Major.

'Slightly,' she said. 'He's my godfather.'

I enquired how this extreme good fortune had come about.

'My father was assistant commissioner of police,' she said.

Of course! Sir John Dodd. O'Reilly's peacetime boss.

'Well now. Miss Dodd,' I said, wondering if I had any illicit provisions left. 'What exactly have you come to see me about?'

'You phoned my department to ask if we could do some printing for you on soluble paper. You were told that we could. And we haven't heard from you since.'

This was very efficient of her. I hadn't followed up the enquiry. Nor had I referred it to her personally. I preferred dealing with one of her assistants with a view to long-term research into position number sixty-nine (and others) in my favourite code-groups.

I told her that my enquiry was only part of a much larger printing problem we had. She asked if I would care to discuss it with her. I didn't see the point but for the sake of good relations showed her a mocked-up version of a WOK. I told her that we would need large numbers of them, that no two would be alike, and that they'd all have to be printed on silk.

I showed her the purpose of the WOK.

She was very thoughtful. 'When do you want them?' she asked.

'Miss Dodd… do you mean you could help?'

'With the printing? I believe so. I know whom to ask.'

'And the silk?'

'I don't think that's a problem. I know whom to ask.'

She held up the mocked-up WOK to the light. 'Will they all be as ledgible as this?'

'Why, Miss Dodd?'

She looked at me with an expert's contempt for a stupid question.

'Because if the copy were better they could be photographed straight on to silk. It would be quicker than printing.'

You know a photographer?'

'Yes,' she said. 'The head of my directorate.'

'Miss Dodd,' I said, 'there's another problem.'

'I rather thought there was.' She said it like a mother who knew where the pain was. I was sure she'd realized that I had no authority proceed with WOKs.

I told her that we hadn't got enough staff to make them—and that we'd need a team of girls who'd shuffle numbered counters at random. I wasn't sure how to go about getting them.

'Don't you know anyone in the personnel department?'

'Do you. Miss Dodd?'

'Yes,' she said. 'The head of it used to work for me!'

'Space might be a problem.'

'That's for the admin department.'

I asked if she knew anyone in the admin department.

'Yes,' she said. 'The head of it's a friend of mine.'

'Miss Dodd… this whole subject of WOKs is still a matter of internal discussion.'

'Isn't that what we're having, Mr Marks? An internal discussion?'

'May I ask you a personal question then?'

It was clear that I did so at my peril.

'Miss Dodd… is there anyone in SOE you don't know?'

'Yes,' she said. 'You.'

She produced a slip of paper from her handbag and handed it to me. There were seven numbers on it. The combination of the briefcase I stolen from her office.

I returned it to her in silence.

'Thank you,' she said. 'Perhaps you'll let me know when you're ready to talk detail. Good night, Mr Marks.'

'Good night, Miss Dodd.'

I sat in a silence so deep that I could feel it inside me. WOKS could happen. Whether in my time or my successor's didn't matter. They could happen.

I put the slip of paper she'd given me in the only place I wouldn't lose it—inside a drawer next to the photograph of Louis and Schmeling.

There was still no news of the Grouse.

A message arrived from Einar Skinnarland. He had encoded it perfectly, a phenomenon which allowed us no respite from its contents:

The Germans had ordered the entire stock of heavy water to be shipped to Berlin. The present quantity was believed to be sufficient for their High Command's purposes. The shipments were to take place at the earliest possible moment.

Skinnarland's message was passed to the British High Command, who at once sent it to Churchill. It was decided in Cabinet, with the Chiefs of Staff, Lindemann and Mountbatten present, that the RAF was to help SOE to mount a major new operation into Norway. In Churchill's opinion the situation was now far too serious to rely only on the Grouse.
[5]

Wilson at once began planning for a commando of thirty men to be landed from gliders to attack the plant and link up with the Grouse if they arrived at Rjukan in time.

I pretended to myself that the FANY lieutenant I was briefing was not one of Buckmaster's agents but a candidate for Grendon's code room, that her supervisor would look after her if she had any troubles, and that I was simply there to provide her with basic essentials.

I tried not to think about what she was going to do or what might be done to her, and if she sensed that she was the first woman agent I'd briefed she showed no signs of it.

She was a steady coder, managing somehow to control the vitality was the essence of her as she slowly and methodically checked work before passing it to me. was perfectly encoded but I noticed that she'd spelled Vienna one 'n' and had corrected it herself. She would have less time in the field and I made a note of the mistake.

She went through the shell of her security checks and I tried to forget the circumstances under which they'd be demanded of her. She had a most beguiling accent, especially when she laughed. She smiled in French.

I asked her to come through the coding process once more and she responded immediately.

There was no more I could teach her. I was too shy to wish her 'merde alors' and shook hands. She had a very firm grip, especially her eyes.

I glanced at her code-card. She hadn't yet been given a code-name or if she had, I hadn't been told of it.

I wrote on her code conventions the name by which everyone else seemed to call her.

Odette.

On 9 November a message arrived from the Barren Mountain from Grouse.

It was a great day for SOE, our greatest so far.

Only one thing spoiled it.

The message was indecipherable.

I could not, would not, believe that Haugland had made a mistake in his coding. Not in his first message. Nor did I believe that he would in any. It now had to be broken with
absolute priority.
It was all indecipherables in one.

I alotted 5,000 keys to the coders of Grendon and sat back to think before I started work myself.

There were two likely possibilities. The indicator-group might be mutilated due to poor reception, but the signalmaster assured me that they'd had a clear strong signal and that the message had been monitored by three different operators. He thought Morse mutilation most unlikely.

The other possibility was that the Grouse had been captured and that Haugland had given the Germans the wrong poem. This didn't seem likely either. He knew that with his very first message his security check could safely be used. It was in any subsequent messages that it couldn't be trusted.

I decided that while the girls were making their blanket attack I would try to break it cryptographically.

Wilson had told me (though hardly able to speak with tension and frustration) that the Grouse's first message would contain the phrase 'three pink elephants' to indicate that they had arrived at Rjukan.

There was a 'k' in the code-groups, two 'p's and several 'i's. I had asked the Grouse to 'free' their language and this would now work against me, but 'three pink elephants' would be an enormous help. Its eighteen letters would straddle eighteen adjacent columns and words would start forming if I aligned them properly.

I stopped after five minutes.

I owed it to Haugland.

If he hadn't made a mistake—and I knew he couldn't, he simply couldn't—then there must be some other explanation, however improbable.

Ten minutes later I telephoned Wilson to tell him that the message was decoded. 'Three pink elephants. Colonel. And it's on its way over to you.'

'God bless you,' he said—which made it even worse.

It was an hour before I had the courage to phone him again. He was in a teasing mood. 'Do you still think Haugland's the best coder you've ever met?'

'I know he is.'

'So why did he make a mistake? Nerves?'

'Haugland didn't make a mistake, sir. We did. I'm very, very sorry.'

A long pause.

'What mistake. Marks?'

'We copied a word of his poem wrongly. It was a typing error—I didn't spot it. I'm very, very sorry.'

There was a small sound the other end of the line which I couldn't cipher. 'Would it help to prevent this if a member of my staff checked the Norwegian words for you?' he asked.

'Enormously.'

'I'll lay it on at once. You can count on it from tomorrow.'

'Thank you. Colonel Wilson. I'm very, very sorry.'

I couldn't believe that the sound I was hearing was laughter. 'So was all your fault, was it? You can't decode a perfect message? I can't wait to tell old Einar. He'll laugh his bloody head off after all you've said about him. And by the way, thank you for letting me know.' He strode off the phone chuckling.

I didn't mind if he told 'old Einar'. He'd have to be alive to be able to laugh his bloody head off.

But I rather hoped he wouldn't tell my pupil on the Barren Mountain.

I valued his respect.

I had a gut feeling about the Dutch but it was a bride unwilling to be carried over the threshold of consciousness, and I couldn't pinpoint it.

'Why are you so concerned about them?' asked Heffer.

'I don't know.'

'In that case,' he said, 'it is serious,' and left me to pursue my missing Dutch something.

There was a cataract over my mind's eye and I didn't know how to remove it. There were so many conscious reasons for worrying about the Dutch traffic that this elusive anxiety could have been triggered by any or all of them. The obvious worries fell into three main areas:

1. Abor's and Ebenezer's security checks
   
2. A traffic snarl-up between Boni, Parsnip and London
   
3. The Dutch section itself.
   

The elementary system in which Ozanne had such confidence required Abor to make a deliberate spelling mistake
every
eighteenth letter of his
every
message. He was also required to insert three dummy letters at the end of his messages. Since he'd been dropped into Holland in March of this year he hadn't used either check once.

Ebenezer (who'd been dropped in November '41) was required to make a spelling mistake every sixteenth letter. He was also required to insert three dummy letters at the end of each message. He'd done so correctly until April of this year but suddenly began introducing variations of his own, such as spelling 'stop' as 'stip', 'stap' and 'step' in places which were not multiples of sixteen. He'd also stopped using his second check altogether.

In the considered opinion of N section, these (and other anomalies) were entirely due to Morse mutilation and bad training.

Boni (formerly known as Spinach) was a WT operator who transmitted and received all the traffic of Parsnip, his organizer. He was also responsible for the traffic of other key agents. The snarl-up, into which I could as easily read too much as the Dutch section too little, lasted from 3 August until 12 November. Throughout this period the Dutch section was planning to carry out several important operations, and relied on Boni, Parsnip and Potato for information about safe dropping grounds, changes in sentry patrols, and all the other bread-and-butter ingredients of sabotage and infiltration.