Between Silk and Cyanide (41 page)

I congratulated the Guru on his part in our liberation, and asked the key question: Was Nick now in a position to insist on showing the Dutch traffic to Tiltman?

Edging towards the door, he reminded me that Nick had been MS (director of Signals) for less than half an hour and that I mustn't expect miracles. He then quietly informed me that Nick was now in the running to become a member of the Executive Council and that it would be a great help to all of us if he were elected.

He escaped without answering my question about Tiltman.

En route to the Signals Office for a punitive purpose, I spotted the deposed Ozanne waddling down the corridor. He stopped outside his office as if he wondered whether to knock, then disappeared inside, perhaps for the last time.

A few seconds later I found myself knocking on his door.

His Gubbins-like 'Come' was now a fledgling FANY's quaver. He was as astonished to see me as I was to be there.

I knew I daren't smile in case he thought I'd come to gloat.

'What the devil do you want?'

As I tried to work it out, the drowning man's life flashed before me.

He'd been appointed MS in February '42 and immediately imposed C's concept of clandestine communications on SOE. Despite the protests of his subordinates his confidence in C's judgement remained purblind, and by the time Nick arrived to take control of agents' traffic he'd successfully crushed all efforts to scrap the poem-code and replace it with WOKs. He'd also supported all the other Signals deathtraps recommended by C. A professional Signals officer, he'd suffered the ultimate ignominy of being found inadequate by amateurs but at least his convictions were genuine, unlike those of some senior figures in SOE. 'I need a bit of advice, sir.'

He clearly thought he'd misheard me. 'You need a bit of what?'

I was tempted to say 'nookie' but, true though this was, it was hardly likely to concern him. 'A bit of advice, sir.'

He examined me from head to toe (a regrettably short distance) as silent reminder that I'd thwarted his efforts to make a second lieutenant in the Royal Corps of Signals. 'If you've got a problem, take it to Colonel Nicholls or Captain Heffer—it's what they're here I explained that they were on their way to Station 53b and that I didn't think it could wait.

He eyed me suspiciously as I struggled to think of a problem to present to him. 'What is it then?' he finally asked. 'I haven't much time'

I remembered that I was clutching a telegram which I'd been on the way to dispatch when I'd spotted him in the corridor. It was addressed to the coders of Massingham, who'd received an indecipherable from an agent in Italy which they'd made no attempt to break though it had been in the code room for almost a week. My reprimand included the motto, 'There shall be no such thing as an indecipherable message', and contained a number of other pertinent comments. 'It's about this message I want to send Massingham, sir.'

I informed him of the girls' dereliction, and that I wanted to send a suitably worded reprimand.

'What the devil's that to do with me?'

I explained that the first thing I wanted him to do was initial the telegram so that it could be sent out at once.

He reminded me sharply that ever since I'd been appointed head of agents' codes I'd been allowed to originate main-line telegrams and he wasn't aware that my authority had been rescinded, though he suspected that it should have been.

'I have the authority, sir, but I was hoping for your comments on the message itself. I'm not sure if it's strong enough.'

He examined the telegram as if it too were wearing civilian clothing which had been manufactured by a Jewish tailor who was far from bespoke. A sound escaped him which might have been a belch, or an even less sociable intestinal call-sign. 'I don't know what you're up to, Marks! But if you really want my opinion of this…'

I assured him that I did, and found that I meant it.

He gave me a brief lecture on the art of reprimanding subordinates, his chins waddling as he warmed to his particular sphere of expertise. He then said that in his opinion the motto was the only reminder the girls needed, that the phrase 'get off your arses' was not in SOE's code-book, though he often felt it should be, and that the best of us can make mistakes.

He ended by running his pencil through everything which he considered redundant, and contemplated the result with an editor's satisfaction. It had lost twenty words and was all the better for it.

I thanked him for improving the message and repeated my request for him to initial it.

'Why do you need me to if you've got the authority?'

'So that I can blame it on you if it backfires, sir.'

He chuckled as he initialled his last telegram, and his next question took me completely by surprise.

'What's happened to your new codes which I didn't think much of?'

I told him that the first WOKs and LOPs would be delivered in a fortnight but would have to be checked and camouflaged and couldn't be issued until the June moon.

A small smile checked and camouflaged whatever he was thinking.

'Don't be impatient. June will be here all too soon, take it from me. His outposting was due on 1 June.

He stared down at an in-tray which was as empty as his future and I couldn't believe what I said to him next.

'I'm not sure they're going to work, sir.' It was the first time I'd admitted this to anyone, myself included.

'Why not?'

'I don't know, sir—I've a feeling I've missed something.'

'Nonsense. They'll do the job, that's one thing I am sure of… that's more…' His voice trailed away like Boni's touch on the keyboard, and a moment later he reached for the drawer where his bottles were kept.

But he wasn't quite ready to relinquish command, and pointed a shaky finger at our joint telegram. 'You've marked that message "Top Priority" and it's high time you gave it some! Dispatch it at once.'

'Right, sir.'

I wanted to thank him and wish him good luck but he gave me a dismissive nod which might have been meant for both of us. It was only when I'd closed the door that I realized why I'd opened it. I needed the company of another failure to make my own bearable.

SOE would never know how much it owed to a tube of French toothpaste and a Belgian labourer's cap.

They'd arrived last night from the Thatched Barn. The toothpaste was intended to camouflage a WOK, the cap a LOP, and I was happily examining the false bottom of one and the lining of the other when I heard what was usually my favourite sound (my own voice) telling Ozanne that I was afraid the new codes weren't going to work as I had a feeling that I'd missed something.

The feeling was now a conviction.

It had something to do with the camouflage, though I'd no idea what.

To ease the growing tension and allow the cause of it to surface, I wore the Belgian cap LOPsided and gave the French toothpaste a hearty squeeze. A white blob emerged but gave no warning of the dark truth which accompanied it.

I'd paid endless attention to the camouflaging of codes but none ret to the camouflaging of code-groups. If any of our code-groups stood out in isolation, wireless interception units could pin-point them and track the movements of the operators who'd transmitted them. They could also detect the arrival of new agents, build up a picture of impending operations.

WOK code-groups were exempt from this worry as they were the product of double-transposition and couldn't be distinguished from poem-code traffic. But LOP code-groups were the product of substitutions and would stand out from all our other messages because of the proportion of vowels to consonants, and the shortness of the messages (as few as ten letters).

Unless we found a way to remedy this deficiency, interception units would have a field day.

I hurried into Nick and showed him the same message encoded in both a WOK and a LOP:

He took one glance at the code-groups, and at once sent for Heffer.

The Guru was now MS/A (deputy director of Signals), but still saw no reason to hurry, and examined the messages like a tortoise reconnoitring a leaf. 'Right,' he finally said. 'What can we do about it?'

We agreed that there was no way of making substitution codegroups resemble transposition-keys without a major re-encipherment process which agents couldn't undertake. Nor could we conceal the shortness of the messages. We also agreed that LOPs were far too valuable to be abandoned.

Nick said that he'd encountered similar problems with peacetime traffic, though they had little relevance to our present dilemma. After exchanging reminiscences with Heffer, he decided that the only way to prevent the enemy from pinpointing individual messages would be to wait until large numbers of agents had been issued with LOPs so that they opened up simultaneously right across Europe.

Heffer suggested that the best time would be August, when dropping operations were likely to expand. Nick favoured November, and they compromised on September, subject to what might happen in the meantime.

Nick then congratulated me on spotting the problem in time, and I hurried from the office before I exploded.

I should have spotted it from the outset. But so should Nick and Heffer! And what about Tiltman and Dudley-Smith, the experts from Bletchley? Did they neglect to mention it because it was so elementary they felt they didn't need to?

What else was so obvious that the head of agents' codes had completely overlooked it?

After wasting an hour brooding about Holland, and the dangers of Dutch agents using Belgian escape lines, I heard the sound of my favorite footsteps.

I hadn't seen Tommy since he'd called in to claim the cigar which made his return from France official. That was over a fortnight ago and I'd missed being part of his dawn patrol.

However, I'd kept track of his progress, and knew that he'd been sent for by his idol de Gaulle, who'd thanked him for all that he was doing for France, and asked for his impressions of the French will to resist.

I hoped that he hadn't come to evaluate mine.

He sat opposite me, which made the office complete, studied my face instead of the contents of my desk, and asked if he were interrupting.

'No more than usual.'

He accepted a new cigar and continued to watch me in silence as he lit it. 'Now then,' he said. 'Bring me up to date.'

I produced a silk for his inspection, and he examined it as if he wearing gloves. Pronouncing it excellent, he reminded me that the last time he'd seen a WOK it was still an idea on paper.

I was about to say that without his encouragement it probably would still be when he caught sight of a LOP. 'That looks interesting.

'Are you allowed to tell me what it is?'

'No,' I said, and proceeded to show him how it worked.

He listened in silence, then asked if he could try it for himself. He wrote message in French fifty letters long 'to give it a proper test', and I watched him become the first agent to encode a message in a LOP. It was a ponderous performance as he double-checked each letter he enciphered. 'This is bloody slow going,' he complained. But halfway through the message he began to find his rhythm, and he finished the last twenty-five letters more quickly than I could.

'What do you call this code?'

'A LOP!'

'Short for "Leo's an old pisspot"?'

'Letter one-time pad.'

'Available to Duke Street?'

'If they'll accept it.'

'Why the hell shouldn't they?—I'll help you all I can… remind me about the checks.'

I took him through them again, though I knew he understood them and was simply making sure that he'd done his correctly.

'Do we have to make a choice between WOKs and LOPs?'

I said that I hoped that LOPs would become the main code, with WOKs in reserve, and poems in emergencies.

'There'll be plenty of those… but I can promise you this. These codes are going to make a lot of difference to a hell of a lot of agents and I hope to be one of them. I'll use both of them next time I go in. Agreed?'

'Yes, Tommy.'

I hoped that if he had to go in again, it wouldn't be before September.

He glanced at his watch as if it were September already, then rose abruptly, and I wished him goodnight.

He didn't reply till he reached the door. He then turned back, and spoke very quietly. 'Next time, perhaps you'd care to tell me what's worrying you—something bloody well is, and it's about time it stopped.'

'Old pisspot' spent the rest of the night wondering how he knew.

Country sections approved of poem-codes because they couldn't be detected if agents were searched. The fact that they could be tortured out of them and were easy to break were secondary considerations. If they opposed the introduction of silks and we had to ask Gubbins to over-rule them (as he'd assured Nick he would), we'd get their reluctant co-operation but forfeit their goodwill.

Knowing this, on 2 June Nick took the unprecedented step of sending a memo to all country section heads requesting them to see me in the presence of their respective signals officers, so that I could explain on MS/A's behalf why a radically new system of agents' codes would shortly be introduced. We agreed that there was no point in mentioning LOPs: if WOKs didn't convince them of the valueof tangible codes, nothing would.

On 3 June I embarked on the sales campaign, knowing that Frank Doel would make a far better job of it.

Maurice Buckmaster was the first country section head to be shown a WOK. Normally responsive to everything which would enhance the welfare of his agents, he was facing the collapse of his two principal circuits, and suggesting new codes to him was like taking a drowning man's hand and offering to manicure it.

He gave a cursory glance at the WOK which I put in front of him, and muttered that he didn't want his agents to carry another damn thing, and left the rest to Captain Noble, his signals officer. He couldn't have submitted the code to a better qualified judge. Noble (real name George Bégué) was a self-effacing Frenchman with the added distinction of being the first SOE agent to parachute into the field. He'd been dropped blind into France in May '41, taking with him a rudimentary wireless set and a poem-code. He transmitted more than forty vital messages but had such contempt for his security checks that he'd ignored them altogether, and relied on prearranged questions and answers. He'd been arrested by the Vichy police in October '41, and F section didn't expect to hear from him again. But in July '42 he'd escaped from a Vichy-run prison in the heart of the Dordogne, taking nine of his fellow-agents with him. He made his way to Lyons, crossed the frontier into Spain, and was taken on to Buckmaster's HQ staff as soon as he returned to London.