Between Silk and Cyanide (79 page)

'I want you to show the brigadier how the new code works,' said Nick.

Ten minutes later Gambier-Parry stared incredulously at Nick, then glanced at Captain Johnson, who'd been listening intently.

Johnson asked a number of perceptive questions, and I pretended that I didn't yet know the answers.

Gambier-Parry looked at me sharply. 'How long will it take you to find 'em?'

'Three months at least, sir… and then I mightn't succeed.'

'Let's find out, shall we? Come to C for as long as it takes, and you can help us sort out your coding records. Then we'll talk about other things. I'll fix up the details with Nick.'

He took for granted that his offer was accepted, and five minutes later they left.

Two days after their visit Heffer walked in and showed me a report from Bletchley which Nick wanted me to see. The report stated that it was a 'novel, ingenious and highly secure code', which apart from its obvious uses would allow agents to use radio telephony in complete safety, and had similar potential for amateur wireless operators. It would also provide a valuable means of communicating with agents via the BBC, and would replace the extremely weak system of using secret inks for letter communications.

'That shows how wrong even Bletchley can be…'

'What have you decided to do about it?'

I told him that before I retired at Xmas I'd hand over a blueprint of the code to Gambier-Parry and leave it to some other cryptographer to finish.

My response didn't seem to surprise him but the length of his puff warned me that something else was worrying him.

'Something's wrong, Heff. What is it?'

Several puffs later he admitted that it was personal. He said that his job in SOE was virtually over, and that he hadn't much to do for the next few months. Trying to make light of it, he told me that he'd been 'quite interested in doing a stint for C', though he hadn't yet been asked.

I realized that the Guru was trying to tell me that he was facing unemployment.

Twenty minutes later I was alone with Nick. I told him that I'd decided to accept Gambier-Parry's offer on two conditions: one was the length of my engagement, which must be limited to three months; the other concerned Heffer.

I explained that I'd be too busy with the new code to spend much time sorting out the records and that Heffer would be the ideal person to help me. He could supervise the rest of the Signals handover, and we might even be able to write a joint report on it.

'That's an excellent idea if you think he'd do it.'

'I feel sure he would.'

'I'll talk to Gambier-Parry at once.' He snatched up the telephone. It occurred to me after I'd left that he wasn't as surprised as he might have been, and I wondered if there'd been a spot of collusion between him and the Guru.

Two days later he was 'delighted to be able to tell me' that Heff's appointment had been confirmed.

I subsequently learned that it had been settled weeks ago. For reasons which eluded me I loved them all the more for it.

SOE's records had taken far longer to collect than expected, and by Xmas the vans were still drawing up, which gave me time to fill my own mental vans with every important conversation I'd had since joining SOE.

My reports had been finished weeks ago (or as finished as they ever could be). The main one was 300 pages long; the separate report on Holland fifteen (Plan Giskes had been fully documented, and was added as an appendix). I'd delivered my Dutch report to Gubbins personally, but hadn't heard from him since. Perhaps it was because I'd also written an unsolicited paper called 'Ciphers, Signals and Sex'. This was Dr Sigmund Marks's attempt to borrow Freud's theories on the unconscious 'will to self-destruct' to explain why agents failed to bury their parachutes (a foetal symbol), destroy their silk codes, or take elementary precautions to avoid capture. I also borrowed his more salacious theories to explain certain aspects of the girls' conduct but needed no help from him to explain their periods.

I then learned that Gubbins had a great deal more on his mind than starting reading reports. According to the grapevine, he'd been officially informed that when his present job ended the War Office would have no further use for him.

I asked Heffer why SOE's brilliant, brave, bloody-minded CD had been dismissed like a redundant doorman.

According to the Guru, Gubbins had put a strongly worded case to the Chiefs of Staff and others for the nucleus of an SOE-type organization to continue in peacetime under the auspices of C, but C had responded by convincing all concerned that Gubbins should have no part in it.

I slid morosely into 1946, knowing that I was about to start working for an organization which had no respect for the Mighty Atom.

C had been kind enough to tell me my new workshop's address. It was at the top end of Curzon Street, an area frequented by London's more professional tarts. The terms of my engagement with C had also been settled. They'd agreed to continue paying me my present salary of £45.15s.Sd. (gross) per month. They'd also agreed that one member of my present staff could accompany me to Curzon Street, presumably to ward off the tarts.

Much as I wanted Muriel to come, the closure of SOE seemed the least painful break-point for both of us. I chose instead a FANY named Elizabeth Vaughan, a highly intelligent coder with a sense of humour she was likely to need.

Just as we were ready to leave Baker Street, SOE produced its last surprise.

Mindful, perhaps, of Churchill's injunction to 'Set Europe Ablaze', on 17 January parts of Michael House went up in flames, and though 'immediate action was taken' to put them out, many important records were destroyed. A FANY corporal named Barbara Hare was injured in the fire and had to be taken to St Mary's Hospital. I'd worked too long for SOE to believe it was accidental, and wished the arsonist had chosen Montagu Mansions. Signals officers were used to getting their fingers burnt.

It was time to say goodbye to Nick.

His appointment had ended and the use of his office was a courtesy, but he was unlikely to need another as the army had finished with him just as it had with Gubbins.

I handed him a small parcel which Father had insisted on wrapping himself when he understood its purpose.

Nick unwrapped it just as carefully.

It contained a book with no indication of its contents (I'd left its catalogued description inside the cover with its price deleted). The first page contained two signatures: George V's and Queen Mary's. It was an autograph-book which had belonged to Kitty Bonar Law, the eight-year-old daughter of the then Prime Minister. Kitty had refused to go to bed until she'd trotted downstairs in her nightdress to collect the autographs of her father's distinguished visitors (they had to be in those days to gain admission to Number 10). Her collection included an original line of music from Paderewski, a self-portrait from H. G. Wells, and a goodwill message from Winston and Clementine Churchill. She'd also obtained messages from dozens of leading statesmen, as well as the signatures of British MPs who could write.

On the last page I'd affixed a letter from Nick to me ('From D/ SIGS to D/YCM'), which he'd signed in green ink. It was dated February '43, and authorized me to proceed at once with the production of silk codes.

I'd pinned a note to it which I'd written with Templer's pen. It was 'From D/YCM to D/SIGS', and thanked him on SOE's behalf for 'the most valuable signature of all which is yours'.

He returned to page one, and went through the whole book again as if unable to believe that it belonged to him.

He was still looking at it when I quietly left the room.

The next morning I dipped into my £45.16s.8d. (gross) per month and took a taxi to Curzon Street. But it wasn't my lucky day. The driver knew a quick cut.

I spent several minutes watching the tarts arriving for early morning duty and thought I recognized Doris, but searched in vain for her dog.

It was time to go in.

'Vengeance is mine' saith the Lord, and it soon became apparent to SOE's expatriates that someone in C had read the Bible.

None of us expected a civic reception but we were quite unprepared for the torture which was about to be inflicted on us in the name of security.

The moment we arrived at Curzon Street House we were incarcerated in the noxious bowels of a sub-basement where it was as difficult to breathe as to think, and where we were visited once a day by a doctor, though he was himself asphyxiated by the end of his rounds.

My assistant Liza Vaughan had a turkish bath next to mine, and Ann Turner (who had sole charge of SOE's WT records) had an office within choking distance. Heffer didn't need one as he only looked in twice a week 'to see how things were going', and promptly went with them. We rarely saw our country section colleagues but could hear them coughing in the corridor, a reasonable indication that they were still alive.

We were forced to accept that we'd walked out of the fire and into the frying pan, yet there was one compensation.

The sub-basement we occupied had been used by the War Cabinet to protect them from the worst bombing, and at least twice a day I had the privilege of peeing into a toilet once used by Churchill. I put out my cigar on these occasions as its fumes would have spread throughout the building. Heffer, an expert in such matters, said that an early-morning fart in Curzon Street House would be wafted back to its owner by the end of the day.

In deference to his judgement I christened the new code 'Windswept'. An astute colonel named Maltby (who was Gambier-Parry's Heffer) often looked in to examine its progress, and professed himself 'delighted with it'. Which was more than I was.

Although I was convinced by now that there would never be lasting peace as long as governments used codes, I'd devised one which would allow ambassadors to communicate their good intentions
en clair
whilst concealing their real ones with a little help from Windswept.

Perhaps I'd finally learned the meaning of SOE-mindedness.

On 12 February Heffer called in, though he'd already done his two days' stint. 'You might like to see this,' he said.

He held out a copy of the London Gazette and pointed to a brief announcement: 'The King has been graciously pleased to award the George Cross to Acting Wing Commander Forest Frederick YeoThomas, ME (89215), Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.' (The French had their own way of saying 'Merci, Tommee'. They subsequently named a street in Paris 'La rue Yeo-Thomas'.)

I pinned the announcement to the wall to give the room its only natural light, and six weeks later Windswept was finished. Although I'd refused Gambier-Parry's and Maltby's offers to continue in C in whatever capacity suited me best, they'd allowed me the privilege of signing off in their Broadway HQ instead of the building at the top of St James's Street where the ritual normally took place.

I noticed that the door of the code room was kept tightly closed throughout but Gambler-Parry and Maltby were there to shake hands, and Maltby saw me off the premises.

My code war was over, and I stood in the fresh air with nowhere to go.

Twenty minutes later I found myself in Baker Street.

Montagu Mansions was in the hands of the agents, and had a to let sign outside it. There was no one in sight, and the front door was open.

I entered my old office. It was even barer than I felt. The walls had been covered in off-white paint which matched my complexion, and the room had been stripped by a demolition expert.

It was impossible to believe that 40 million code-groups had passed through this nothing of a room, or that Tommy and Nick, Gubbins and Templer had once paced up and down it. Or that this was where I'd learned of the capture of Noor and Violette.

Wondering whether the new agents would suffer as much as ours had, and how we'd managed to learn so little from so much, I felt the sudden onset of a poem. Although I'd resolved not to write one in peacetime (poems had killed too many agents), it demanded the same rights of way as 'The Life That I Have'.

I had no paper but found a piece of chalk and wrote it on the wall where the silks had once stood:

We listen round the clock
For a code called peacetime
But will it ever come
And shall we know it when it does
And break it once it's here
This code called peacetime.

Or is its message such
That it cannot be absorbed
Unless its text is daubed
In letters made of lives
From an alphabet of death
Each consonant a breath
Expired before its time

Signalmaster, Signalmaster
Whose Commandments were in clear
Must you speak to us in code
Once peacetime is here?

I suddenly felt that someone was watching me, and turned round slowly hoping it was Ruth.

A charlady was standing in a doorway with a mop in one hand, a bucket in the other, and a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She looked at me suspiciously. 'You from the agents?' she asked.

'Yes,' I said, 'I suppose I am…'

She glared at the defacement on the wall.

I tried to erase it but had no rubber, and asked if I could borrow her mop, which she reluctantly surrendered.

I took a last look round the room, and closed my eyes while I said goodbye to it.

'Lost something?' she enquired.

'Yes,' I said, 'I suppose I have…'

And walked out of her office to make what I could of a code called peacetime.

Tommy died in 1964 without knowing that I was going to write this book, which doesn't necessarily mean that he hasn't read it, and there are certain facts he would expect me to disclose.

Ninety per cent of the WT records handed over to C in 1946 have been destroyed, and the code department's records scarcely exist. According to successive archivists (whose assurances I accept), 'intensive efforts' have been made to find my 300-page cipher report, my Dutch report and a long report on Belgium, but 'no trace can be found of them'. Even the ditty-box has been 'mislaid', and there are only two documents in the archive which are directly attributable to me. The first is a lecture I'd given entitled 'Be Near Me When My Light Is Low', and the other is my paper on 'Ciphers, Signals, and Sex'.