Between Silk and Cyanide (62 page)

Someone called out, 'There's an idiot on the roof.'

There was a quick way down from it, but she wouldn't have approved. Looking up at God's pavement for signs of new pedestrians, I transmitted a message to her which I'd failed to deliver when I'd had the chance:

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours.

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause.
For the peace of my years

In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

I went downstairs and wished the girls a Happy Christmas.

'It's impossible to share premises with the country stations. They don't bother to make appointments, hold endless conferences in corridors, and take the lot of us for granted. Well, it's damn well got to stop.'

(Heffer, when he'd been interrupted from his newspaper once too often)

The Signals directorate began the New Year by seeking selfcontainment, and on 1 January 1944 Nick and his department heads left Norgeby House and occupied the whole of Montagu Mansions, a block of flats off Baker Street where we'd be cut off from the rest of SOE yet within easy reach (the Guru thought too easy) of the country sections. The Signals Office, teleprinter rooms and distribution departments remained in situ for practical reasons. Nor did we disturb the WOK-makers as some of them could no longer see straight, and mightn't have found the new premises.

Our departure enabled Gubbins to reshuffle Norgeby House. He'd long wanted all the country sections under one roof, and he at once ordered Tommy and Co. to leave Dorset Square and occupy the space we'd vacated, a decision which gave the Free French the illusion of parity with Buckmaster.

I learned from Tommy (who disliked sharing premises with 'Maurice's lot') that my old office was to be used by the head of RF section, 'once it had been fumigated'.

My new one was soon in need of similar treatment. It was twice the size of my previous office, and I had it entirely to myself. The windows were heavily barred, in keeping with my chest, and I kept the curtains drawn as the room was at street level and there was no longer anything I wanted to look out on.

Muriel had covered the walls with silks, which were concealed behind drapes. Fluorescent lights shone on to them whenever I could find the switch, and although it was against the rules for low-levels like me to have carpets in their offices, she'd found one which matched the drapes. But my most unexpected acquisition was a FANY sergeant named Penelope Wyvol-Thompson. Formerly a coder, then a WOKmaker, she'd become Muriel's assistant and now spent most of her time ensuring that 'no-one interfered with the little man's privacy'.

As a bodyguard she was worth her weight in WOKs.

Unable to settle down, I spent the first day inspecting the premises, and spotted a slender young secretary named Anne Turner struggling to carry a large typewriter down the corridor.

To her astonishment and mine I took the machine from her and carried it to the typing pool's office, where she thanked me profusely in front of her awestruck colleagues. Although to my regret she never worked for the code department, she was destined to make a contribution to it of which at the time she was mercifully unaware.
[32]

I returned to my office and tried to make a home of it.

By mid-January the demands for silks had become impossible to meet. The Free French wanted 1,000 more copies of the FFI codebook, country sections had doubled their D-Day estimates (if only half of their operations were mounted, the invasion would be superfluous), and Italy, Cairo and India had increased their orders by 50 per cent.

But our greatest problems were caused not by SOE's expansion but by Pat Hornsby-Smith.

The sledgehammer had phoned three times to demand more 'toys for the minister, and on Nick's instructions I'd supplied them immediately. But it wasn't the handfuls of silks she required which put us under pressure; it was the use Selborne made of them.

I'd no idea whom he showed them to, but within hours of the last delivery 'outside organizations' (including C) began bombarding Nick with requests to call at Baker Street to inspect our codes. He agreed to every request, except C's (he was discussing it with The Executive Council), and by the middle of January my office had become London's leading toyshop.

Most of the visitors seemed impressed by the silks, but to my relief none of them tried to place any orders.

Nick had twice warned me (once in writing to stress that he meant it) that if any organizations made direct contact with me I must refer them to him for screening before agreeing to an appointment. It wasn't long before this contingency arose.

On 18 January Muriel informed me that a Captain Astor was in her office. She added that he was a member of the SAS, and that he'd called on the off-chance that I'd see him without an appointment!

Liking the sound of a captain who took off-chances, I told her that I'd give him a quarter of an hour as soon as she'd checked his credentials.

Five minutes later a fair-haired young captain appeared on the threshold, but at once turned to leave when he saw that I was on the phone. Unaccustomed to such consideration, I beckoned him to a chair whilst I finished talking to the Grendon supervisor in shorthand.

He spent the time staring apprehensively at the blackboard, on which I'd written a famous quotation from Frances Croft Cornford for the coders to reconstruct at my next lecture (I'd produced no poems of my own since Xmas Eve):

A fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?

Replacing the receiver, I asked Captain Astor how I could help him.

He replied that the SAS needed an expert to advise them on codes, and if possible to supply them, and he'd reason to believe he'd come to the right person.

I knew nothing about the SAS except that they operated behind enemy lines and had been founded by a maverick young officer named David Stirling, who sounded as if he were SOE-minded.

So did Captain Astor, but before I could allow him to proceed there was one formality which had to be disposed of.

'Sorry to have to ask you this, Captain, but who gave you the authority to approach SOE?'

'Sorry to have to tell you this, Mr Marks, but I forgot to ask for it! Here's my CO's number if you want it.'

'I don't think it'll be necessary.' His reply had ensured that he'd get all the help I could give him.

'What sort of traffic are you likely to pass?'

He produced a bundle of specimen messages (the first visitor who'd done so) but they were so carefully phrased I suspected they'd been composed especially for the occasion. Pressed for detail, he estimated that the average message would be fifty letters long and that most of the D-Day traffic would be between France and London, though in certain areas two-way communication between SAS units would save 'a lot of to-ing and fro-ing.'

We to-ed and fro-ed between ourselves for several minutes, and I decided that they could most safely pass their paramilitary-type messages in code-books and letter one-time pads. We'd also have to supply them with WOKs for emergencies, of which I imagined there'd be plenty. Providing them with two-way communication as well meant that we'd have to dig into the last of our reserves. But so would the SAS when they reached the field. It was time to demonstrate the merchandise.

Pulling back the curtains (I knew by now where the light switch was), I explained the various systems and added that if the SAS proved to be temperamentally unsuited to code-books they could encode their messages directly on to pads.

Captain Astor had only one question for me: 'How soon can we have some for training purposes?'

"Would tomorrow be soon enough?'

The smile which parachuted from his eyes to his lips reminded me of Tommy's when he was still able to smile.

I then explained that I'd need an informed estimate of the quantities they'd require, and that he'd better leave the formalities to me as his approach had been somewhat irregular.

He shook my hand in silence.

Five minutes later he took a final glance at the 'fat white woman whom nobody loves' and hurried away, probably to drop in on the Chiefs of Staff without an appointment.

The following morning I was assembling Astor's training codes when Heffer strolled in.

'Prepare yourself for a shock.' he said, an innovation which was a shock in itself.

He waited till his cigarette was aglow with excitement before making his announcement. 'We've been asked by the War Office to supply codes for all Special Forces.'

I had just enough strength to enquire what quantities this would involve.

'It'll make no difference! Nick's agreed that we'll do it.'

He watched my face slither (it hadn't the vitality to fall), and smiled. 'There's a bright side to it—you'll have the authority to supply Captain Astor with the codes you'd agreed to send him anyway.

His CO took the trouble to phone Nick to tell him in detail how helpful you'd been. But you needn't worry about the consequences…' He assured me that I was reasonably popular with SOE at the moment because the request couldn't have come at a better moment for Gubbins and Selborne, and was a kick in the balls for C.

'But Heff, we can't even cope with our own requirements, let alone the whole of Special Forces.'

'Try telling that to Nick—he's waiting to see you.'

I reached his office in twenty-five seconds, an in-house record.

Nick was far too elated by his directorate's popularity (WT sets, signal-plans and variable call-signs were also in demand) to be disturbed by trivia such as shortage of silk. He pointed out that I'd solved previous production problems without much difficulty by talking to George Courtauld and Tommy Davies (the 'hard men'.), and instructed me to approach them immediately. He added that they already knew of the War Office's request as Davies was on the Executive Council, which had endorsed his decision to supply Special Forces with everything they needed.

The 'hard men' weren't at all pleased to see me. They listened with growing impatience as I explained that we'd get no help with the new commitment from our present printers and photographers as they were already pushed to their outer limits.

'So are we,' snapped Tommy Davies.

'Indeed we are,' echoed George Courtauld.

I assured them that I didn't take their help for granted, and knew how difficult it would be for them to find new firms for us. I added that it wasn't just the codes themselves which had caused them to catch on but the quality of the printing and photography for which they alone were responsible. I then admitted that I'd recommended to my colleagues that signal-plans and variable call-signs should also be printed on silk, which would increase the work-load still further. Davies stared out of the window as if wondering if it would be a suitable exit for me. 'We'll do what we can, but I don't hold out much hope.'

'Very little indeed.' echoed Courtauld.

Three days later four new firms of printers and photographers were put at SOE's disposal. They began work at once with silk supplied by the 'hard men', and made far fewer than the usual quota of beginners' mistakes.

The "War Office's first demands arrived a day later. They wanted 500 LOPs on silk or waterproof paper, and 300 WOKs.

We promised to supply them within a fortnight at the latest, and delivered them in less than a week.

Only one thing marred our new role in the code war.

No one was able to press a magic button for Tommy—not even Gubbins, Selborne or the 'hard men'.

Tommy's friends Brossolette and Bollaert had never been in greater jeopardy. They'd been waiting since December to be picked up from France, but the first Lysander which had been sent to collect them had been forced to turn back due to bad weather, and the replacement had been shot down. Since then no further aircraft had been available to SOE, and the two agents were still hiding in a Breton seaport.

Tommy had urged them to wait for the January moon, when another attempt would be made to pick them up by Lysander. But the RAF had been unable (or unwilling) to mount a third operation, and Tommy was convinced that his friends wouldn't wait any longer and would risk boarding a ship.

The latest news from the field caused him even greater anxiety.

Dozens of Free French agents were being arrested daily, and he was convinced that the Secret Army and the Maquis would be wiped out: they didn't receive the arms and supplies he'd promised them (the Maquisards had one rifle to every eighteen men, and were equally short of food and clothing). He'd besieged the Whitehall ministries, but had emerged with nothing but promises or outright rejection, and his failure to keep his word to those who trusted him had made him unapproachable; I had to telephone Kay Moore to ask how he was.

She was concerned about his state of mind and puzzled by his recent behaviour.

He'd begun spending whole days away from the office without lying where he'd gone and had warned her that at the beginning of February he was likely to be completely unavailable but hadn't explained why.

She was convinced that he was up to something but had no idea that. She wondered how the strain was affecting Barbara.

From 20 January onwards the Rabbit (now more grey than white) began calling at my new office as he had at my old, and I knew then that it was officially open.

On 25 January he came in at midnight as he 'just happened to be passing' and sat in silence, clutching an unlit cigar. More out of habit than inclination, he picked up one of Mother's sandwiches and allowed it to nibble away at him.

We spent a few minutes discussing the Free French code-book but for once his mind was elsewhere, and I knew that there was nothing i could say to him which would ease his sense of failure.