Between Silk and Cyanide (68 page)

No matter what differences arose between us, they were promptly settled by Commander Graveson (their head of Signals), usually in our favour.

'Gravy' held frequent meetings with Nick, and I had to attend several of them. They were arduous affairs: Gravy found it hard to believe that when Nick closed his eyes it wasn't because he'd dozed off out of boredom, or had given up in despair at the Americans' stupidity, but because he was communing with his private WT stations.

It was at Gravy's instigation that I was invited to give a lecture at his sacrosanct Grosvenor Square headquarters for the benefit (he hoped) of the main-line coders who knew 'damn-all' about agents' traffic. It would also be attended by some OSS staff officers, who knew even less.

I was admitted the following day to a building so innocuous that only the enemy would suspect what it contained, and escorted to a large lecture room, where fifty or so of our unfortunate saviours awaited whatever was about to be inflicted on them in the name of Anglo-American relations. Gravy explained my credentials, which didn't take long, and seated himself in the front row next to an officer whom I subsequently identified as William Casey.
[37]

Nick, who'd recently lectured the OSS on signals and had been strangely subdued for the rest of the week, had warned me that they were a 'hard lot to talk to', and I decided to be strictly factual and make no attempt to sell myself, an altogether new departure. I wrote out two messages of equal length on the blackboard, and invited them to help me break them.

Their responses to the parlour-game were so immediate, and their guesses (even when wrong) so imaginative, that half an hour later I wanted to head-hunt the lot of them, Gravy included. They were the sharpest bunch I'd yet encountered, and had no difficulty in reconstructing the key-phrase 'Yankee Doodle Dandy'. They gazed respectfully at the silk panaceas (including the Jedburgh code-book) which I brandished aloft, but I sensed that the code war's artifacts didn't interest them as much as its humanities, and I described the FANYs' round-the-clock dedication to breaking indecipherables. There was a gasp or two when I announced that their success rate was over 90 per cent. Our briefing techniques and selection procedure were also box-office.

They kept their real perceptiveness for question-time. They were particularly interested to know what instructions I gave the girls when they aroused agents late at night to help them practise their coding. I replied that they weren't expected to give them the wrong kind of arousal, though I suspected that there would be no finer mnemonic than pussy.

A giant sergeant with a striking resemblance to Joe Louis then raised his hand and asked who was the most difficult agent I'd ever briefed personally, and to my surprise his question met with widespread approval.

'If you really want the answer, it's the hell of a long one.'

They insisted that they did.

I told them that his code-name was Lemur (his real name was Raoul Latimer), and that besides being highly intelligent and exceptionally resourceful he had the added distinction of being one of the few agents in the SOE who was both an organizer and a WT operator, which required attributes rarely found in the same individual.

He'd been taught to use a poem-code (the only system in use at the time) and dropped into Belgium in November '42 to report on the progress of the Belgian Secret Army which he was helping its zone commanders to form.

He was recalled to London in late '43 after transmitting a series of flawlessly encoded messages, and was scheduled to return to Belgium a month ago with the code-name Pandarus. His new mission was to teach untrained partisans to use codes and WT sets, start a radio network with London, and communicate with each other on D-Day. It would be a difficult enough task for an entire training school, let alone for an agent in the field.

Our problems with him began when he returned to his training school for a refresher course. His despairing instructor couldn't understand why anyone of his intelligence was unable to use a onetime pad without making mistakes which 'even the biggest idiots managed to avoid'. (I broke off to explain that even Commander Graveson had mastered a LOP in under ten minutes. I also explained that Pandarus had made an equally spectacular balls-up when he tried to use a WOK.)

I'd spent a whole morning with him making him practise both systems, but for every mistake I pointed out he made two new ones. It was a magnificent performance of sustained imbecility.
[38]
I finally gave up explaining the advances of WOK s and LOPs and asked why he was determined not to use them.

'They're too fucking dangerous to carry. Besides, they're too difficult… I've come this far with the poem-code, and I'm bloody well going to stick with it.' He then recited three new poems, all of them in French (he was bilingual), which he already knew by heart and intended to use for his future traffic.

I reminded him that his mission was to teach codes to the partisans, and asked if he proposed to memorize all their poems.

'If I have to.'

He finally conceded that he might take a batch of microfilmed poems with him but under no circumstances would he carry silk codes, even if they were camouflaged. The Germans weren't the cunts London seemed to think they were, and he had enough trouble hiding his radio sets without walking about with half a ton of silk stuck up his arse.

I assured him that I didn't want to damage his Low Countries, and undertook to provide him with microfilmed poems on waterproof paper and leave it at that.

The suspicious bastard then wanted to know why I'd changed my mind so quickly.

Praying that my timing was right, because nothing else was, I admitted to him that although I'd reserved a batch of WOKs and LOPs for his partisans, I was relieved that they wouldn't be needed because they were in very short supply, and the Belgian section's priority wasn't as high as some other country sections…

'If you gentlemen were in your offices that morning and heard an explosion from the direction of Baker Street, it was Pandarus fighting for the rights of the Belgian partisans.'

As soon as he'd quietened down to a frenzy, he announced that I wasn't the only one who could change his mind, and that on thinking things over he'd decided that silk codes did keep messages shorter and were more secure, and he intended to take some with him just as an experiment.

I reminded him that he'd found them difficult to use.

'Who, me?'

He then encoded two WOK/LOP messages in close to record time without a single mistake, and half an hour later we finalized his security checks.

On 3 March he parachuted into Belgium to start a Signals course for the Secret Army. He took camouflaged silk codes with him as well as microfilmed poems, WT sets, signal-plans and crystals.

'And that, gentlemen, is the most difficult individual I've ever had to brief with the exception of a certain naval commander whose name I needn't mention.' I was convinced that they'd heard enough about Pandarus but I'd forgotten whom I was dealing with.

Three of them (including Bill Casey) wanted to know what he'd achieved in the field, and I was delighted to tell them that he'd taught over 100 freedom fighters to use WOKs and LOPs, and given them their security checks. He'd also taught them to use microfilmed poems in case of emergencies. Their first LOP messages had already reached London, and were perfectly encoded. The one-man Signals directorate had also recruited some WT operators, and was training them in a flat in Brussels. Satisfied with their progress, he'd begun issuing them with WT sets (which he'd hidden in a safe-house in Verlaine until they were needed, though I didn't say so for security reasons). He'd also given them signal-plans, crystals and codes.

There was a chorus of approval. Although I'd exceeded my scheduled time by twenty minutes (which they probably expected from an Englishman), they hadn't finished with me yet and asked a score of other questions about SOE generally. The final one came from a bemedalled major, who I ultimately discovered was head of a psychiatric unit. He wanted to know what the agents were most frightened of.

I replied that above all else they were scared of a lady dentist who had to make sure that none of their fillings were of English origin. She had also to change the impressions of their teeth before they left for the field in case the Germans had records of them. And she used continental-style Platarcke to hollow out their teeth and make cavities for L-tablets.
[39]
We had learned never to brief agents within a week either side of their appointments with her. There were a number of open mouths as I described how she did it, but I wasn't asked for her address.

I left Grosvenor Square with only one disappointment. I'd counted on somebody spotting a serious flaw in what I'd said and questioning me about it, but no one had.

It concerned Pandarus. I'd carefully planted that he had to give security checks to other agents. But how safely could they use these checks if Pandarus was aware of them and might himself be caught? Was this SOE's idea of good security?

The day after my visit I was sent for by Nick. He held out a piece of paper in silence (never a good sign) and waited impatiently while I read it.

It was a memo from Hardy Amies (head of the Belgian section) to a senior member of the government-in-exile, whose confidence in SOE was waning:

M.0.1. (S.P.)
21st April 1944
EHA/1274
Major Hardy Amies
Colonel J. Marissal,
40 Eaton Square,
S.W.I.

My dear Colonel,

pandarus

I thought you would be interested in the following information volunteered by our coding and signal department.

'Pandarus has done extremely well from the signals point of view. Before he left he was briefed by signals to give Manelaus an identity check. This was in such a form that Pandarus himself, if caught later by the enemy, would be unable to remember it. The position now is that Manelaus is using the check.

'This is the first time in SOE history that an agent recruited in the field has been given an identity check without anything passing in writing!'

The same system of identity check will, in due course, be used by the Zone Commanders when they use their own codes.

Yours sincerely,

Nick reminded me as head of Signals that he was my zone commander, and asked if I'd kindly tell him the secret of Pandarus's ability to forget the security checks which he had to pass on.

Astonished by its simplicity, he stared at the ceiling and muttered, 'Jesus.' (Pandarus, who'd blasphemed so frequently I was convinced he was devout, said he'd try the system out. He was the first agent to use it but unless I could find a way to vary it, was likely to be the last.
[40]
)

I hurried back to my office and wrote a UFA (unsuitable for agents) for the girls to reconstruct:

She liked smiling
At strangers
And the last one
Who smiled back at her
Took her to some woods
And she was still smiling
When they found her.
She liked black horses
And would have fondled them
If she could
When they drove her to her rest
Aged eight
Will one of your staff
Please explain to her
Why you were out of your office
That day
She calls you Mister Goddy
And will smile at you too
If given the chance.

I realized that April was almost over but I might still have time to contribute something useful.

If given the chance.

On 30 April five Dutch agents (including Cricket and Swale) were dropped blind into Holland, each taking with him a LOP and a WOK with a poem in reserve.

On the same night Violette Szabo was picked up by Lysander and returned to England.

Also on the same night I realized how unlucky agents were to depend on me for their safety. I'd made a mistake which could have cost many of them their lives, and while the rest of SOE welcomed May as their last chance to prepare for D-Day (it was expected in June) I relived that mistake in case I could learn from it.

It concerned a Buckmaster agent code-named Bricklayer, whose real name was France Anteime, field-name Renault, and who, according to Charlotte, was an 'agent extraordinaire'. It was easier (and still is) to dwell on what made him extraordinary than on what I'd done to make him extinct.

In his early forties and exceedingly rich (he'd inherited sugar, tobacco and coconut plantations in Mauritius), he was an astute businessman with a large number of high-level financial, industrial and political contacts, especially in Paris. He'd been dropped into France in November '42, and returned to London in March '43. He was dropped again in May '43 and returned in July '43. In the course of these missions he'd persuaded bankers and industrialists to make substantial contributions to Resistance activities (and to set aside vast sums of currency for the invading forces), reported the collapse of Prosper to London, and been a great help to Bodington. He'd also found a safe-house for Noor Inayat Khan (Madeleine). But to Buckmaster the most important part of Antelme's activities was his efforts to persuade Edouard Herriot (the former Prime Minister, and France's 'Grand Old Man') to return to England with him. If he could achieve this, it would be a major coup for F section, especially as Herriot was in close touch with the new Premier, Paul Reynaud. But Herriot had so far resisted on grounds of old age.

Determined to try again, Antheime was due to return to France in February '44. And this was the start of the code department's nightmare.

A hard man to dissuade once his mind was made up (and an awkward customer at the best of times), Antheime had decided that he would return to a dropping ground and reception committee organized by the highly suspect Phono circuit, of which Noor was an active member. Although Buckmaster and George Noble tried to convince him that Noor was caught, and showed him the two-way traffic they'd exchanged with her in an effort to prolong her life, he refused to believe them. Nor would he accept that Phono was blown.