Between Silk and Cyanide (20 page)

And perhaps he had to become controller of Signals before he could stop worrying about his directorate's jurisdiction. Tommy ignored the proprieties when the safety of agents was at stake and I wished that he were in the Dutch section. But then I wished that the Chairman of the Awkward Squad were in every section, especially Signals.

Nick exchanged a long glance with Heffer and told me that he had one more thing to say. I was to report back to him at four o'clock is afternoon for a very important meeting.

I tried to explain that this afternoon was my last chance to talk to the new coders before they were sent to Grendon.

'Then it's their lucky day because you'll have to cut it short. Four clock sharp, please.'

He then ordered me to say nothing to the Dutch about my suspions until the grounds for them were firmer. The burden of proof was once again on me. I carried it to the door.

I couldn't conjecture what SOE wouldn't consider conjectural. A rceipt from Giskes for the Dutch agents perhaps?

I left just in time to avoid the tea.

The fledgling FANYs who were waiting for me in Norgeby House had arrived when SOE was at its busiest.

Although the country sections had only two squadrons of aircraft to share between the lot of them, they were determined to make next month's moon their fullest yet. According to Tommy, even the mice in Duke Street's basement were increasing their dropping operations.

He was going to descend on France in February, no matter what. He was to accompany his Free French friends Commandant Passy (the head of de Gaulle's secret service) and Pierre Brossolette on an important mission into the Northern zone which was code-named Arquebus.

SOE's other main event (it was wrong to think in these terms; there was no such thing as a supporting bout) was Operation Gunnerside.

This was the code-name for the Norwegian section's second attempt to blow up the heavy-water plant at Vermok. Six agents were to be dropped into Hardangar Vidda to reinforce the Grouse. They were to be led by Joachim Ronneberg. The Grouse meanwhile were sheltering in an eyrie in the Barren Mountain.

The Dutch were contributing Operation Golf, and Major Hardy Amies was doing his dapper best on behalf of the Belgian section. Buckmaster was sending in four more missions and even neglected little Denmark wasn't completely out of it. Hollingsworth was trying to mount a new team to help Hammer ('the preacher') to explain to Danish patriots aching for action why neither London nor Stockholm was yet in a position to send them arms and equipment.

The country sections had every right to take for granted that the code department would be ready to cope with the sharp increase in agents' traffic. None of them knew that in mid-February many of Grendon's most reliable coders were being posted abroad. This would place an even greater strain on the new recruits who'd be expected to lighten Grendon's work-load as soon as they entered the coderoom. They'd also be expected to provide the nucleus of a coding staff for Station 53b, which was now being built at Poundon. We could rapidly assess their coding potential but would have no time to discover whether they were good at keeping secrets, and I was determined to try out the noxious idea which had occurred to me whilst swinging upon the rings.

The experiment was too difficult to carry out alone, and I'd asked bright young signals sergeant named Tom Blossom to help me conduct it.

To give it the best chance of working, the girls had been kept waiting for over an hour in a freezing basement without a chair between them, a window to jump out of, or any other creature comforts.

The room was Norgeby House's equivalent of the Barren Mountain.

The conversation ceased as I opened the door. I walked unmolested to the far end of the room and pressed a switch. The immediate result was an electric thunderstorm which startled the lot of us. It was followed by a replay of the last hour's dialogue which bright Sergeant Blossom had recorded.

The girls took a little while to realize that it was their own voices they were listening to, and I put this down to the quality of the recording rather than poor reaction-time. The ill-lit room was rapidly illuminated by a corporate blush.

As the recording progressed, it became clear that we had a most promising intake. Their free-flowing language, scatological humour picturesque imagery promised well for the agents' ditty-box.

They looked everywhere but at me, which was in every way understandable—and suddenly seemed reluctant to look at each other.

Thinking that their embarrassment was about to peak I turned the volume up.

I then listened to a lengthy debate concerning the nature of the commitments which had made me late. The consensus was that I'd 'having it off with the FANY supremo' in a variety of positions (specified) though they were by no means unanimous as to whether she had kept her brigadier's hat on. They would decide when they saw me whether the transpositions had been single or double.

They next dealt with the state of the 'piss-house' in which they found themselves waiting. They blamed the lack of chairs on my failure to realize that FANYs had fannies—which one of them proposed to remedy in a time-honoured way. If it were the beefy one against the wall it could prove a terminal experience.

I switched off halfway through because we had limited facilities for coping with seizures, but I noticed as I did so that one young blusher sighed with relief. I switched it on again briefly.

Someone (I presumed it was she who had sighed) was going to ask her father to put down a question in the House of Commons. There were some interesting suggestions as to how he should phrase it. I switched off and prepared to address a hostile house.

I could see from their bemused expressions that the shock of being recorded, a process still new to most of us, had done much of my work for me and I had to be careful to avoid an anticlimax.

I moved cautiously towards them to give myself time to think of what to say. I was suddenly aware that the room smelled of talcum powder and dry rot, the basic ingredients of my average address. I spoke to them for twenty minutes, which seemed twice as long as the forty I usually allowed, and then asked if they had any questions.

They stared at me in silence, far too bright to give me a chance to identify their voices. I left the Barren Mountain with no external injuries.

The girls were then taken upstairs to a small ante-room and were recorded again while they waited for their transport. Their tones were muted, their dialogue vivid. 'What a little bastard.' was the mildest comment.

I intended to play this second recording to them until I suddenly found myself listening to the sound of what, until this moment, had been my favourite voice. The girls hadn't been the only victims of the Signals directorate's toy. I had also been recorded. The biter was not only bitten, he was savaged by his own words. I was convinced that what I'd said had been a model of disciplined persuasiveness. I couldn't believe what I now heard, courtesy of Sergeant Blossom:

'You've been kept waiting in a cold room to make you tired and irritable because when you're tired and irritable you grow careless, and when you're careless you're talkative. I promise you that, before you've been with us long, you'll be limp—but next time you feel like talking, remember that the Germans have recorders too—where even you wouldn't think of putting them.

'Each of you has a crowd of admirers you've never met. Don't get excited—they're Gestapo admirers and they welcome you today just as much as I do. They hope you're green enough to want to boast. You'll have plenty to boast about. You're important people. You're going to be told about things you shouldn't know—but we can't help ourselves, we have to trust you.

'Every department has its secrets—you in Codes will read all the secrets of all the departments. If you talk about any of them, a man will die. It's as simple as that. Now, I'm never going to mention security to you again.

'You think you're tired, don't you? Then imagine how tired an agent feels who's had no sleep for three nights and has to encode a message. The Germans are all around her so-called safe-house. She has no supervisor to check her coding. All she has is a vital message which she must transmit. Now, I'm going to put a question to this time. Hasn't that agent a right to make a mistake in her coding? If she does, must she pay for it with her life? Must she come on the air again to repeat her message, whilst German direction-finding cars get her bearings?

You look puzzled. Is there something you want to ask? No? Perhaps no one's told you that many of our agents are women? Members your corps and about your age. I'm thinking of one in particular. Last week the FANYs at Grendon tried four thousand keys to break her messages and succeeded on the four thousandth and first. You'll find that double-transposition is easier to joke about than crack.

There's an indecipherable down there with your names on it. It's from a Belgian agent who's completely blown. He's sent us a message giving his co-ordinates—that is, where he can be picked up. A aircraft is standing by to get him out. The message won't budge. Ten o'clock this evening he's due to come on the air and repeat it.

If he does those cars will close in. We will lose that man—just as a few weeks ago we lost a young Norwegian named Arne Vaerum, code-name Penguin. The SS shot him while he was retransmitting an indecipherable message.

'Must that happen tonight if there's any chance that you can help us to prevent it? Well you're going to have that chance! You will be told what to do by your colleagues. You will find that they are tired, tense, sulky—and the salt of the earth. None of them is quite sane—but don't worry, you'll soon be like them. Sleep in the train going down—sleep in the coach that waits at the station—sleep when you shake hands with your commanding officer—but don't sleep in the code room.

'If any of you finds the key that breaks this message, you all will have broken it. You're part of a team now, an indispensable part. Sorry about the recording—if you can think of a better way of reminding you never to talk about your work please tell me how.

'I'd like to end with a word of advice. Don't grow old too quickly and don't stay young too long! Good luck—good coding, and remember… you're the only hope that agent's got!'

I erased my speech from the tape—or believed that I had but should have known my Signals colleagues better. Much talcum powder and dry rot later I discovered that the boys in Signals had not only made a separate recording of it; one of them had kept a copy.
[8]

The Grendon supervisor phoned to say that the Belgian indecipherable had been broken after 4,000 attempts. The new coders had not yet arrived.

There would be some compensation awaiting them. They would cut their baby teeth, if they had any left, on an indecipherable from Mr Einar Skinnarland. He was the greatest ager of coders in the business.

The Signals directorate had more departments than most directorates had members, and was by far the largest group in SOE. The 'important meeting' convened by Nicholls was attended by representatives of its principal branches. The only person missing from it was the night-light himself. He was in conference with the Executive Council.

I hoped he wouldn't burn himself out.

Everyone at this Signals convention was an expert in some branch of communication, a fact which the small-talk brilliantly concealed. The most senior officers were in the front row. They were the commanding officers of Station 52 (the training school for agents). Station 53 (Grendon) and Station 54 (the training school for Signals personel). They were all majors.

In the next row was full of captains, representing the Research and Supply stations. I sat behind Dansey and Owen on the government back benches.

Nick strode in five minutes later, and addressed us with the sureness of touch which he displayed to everything but codes. He made clear that the meeting had two objectives. The first was to weld us together into one unit, which the size of the room had almost achieved. The second was to ensure that all of us understood the reasons behind all major changes which were about to take place. He then outlined what these changes were to be.

I noticed that several of the military acquired a special kind of pallor, a shade of promotion-grey. I just about survived the first announcement.

As of February, agents' messages were no longer to be received and circulated by Dansey's distribution department. They were to be distributed by a newly formed HQ Signals Office in room 52 at Norgeby House.

Dansey seemed relieved that his distribution room could concentrate on main-line traffic. But I was rigid with anxiety. A new distribution department might make it impossible for me to intercept messages in secret French code.

Nicholls went on to describe in detail the workings and function of this new Signals Office. It would be staffed day and night by signal masters and FANYs, and would act as a clearing-house for all agents' traffic. It would be open at all times to the country sections, who would be encouraged to visit it. The senior supervisor would deal with their queries and liaise on their behalf with the appropriate Signals departments.

The front row of the stalls nodded its approval. The next major change affected Grendon. It was to hand over the Dutch traffic to Station 53b when it opened in March.

This should not cause Herr Giskes any inconvenience.

As if he'd picked up the thought, Nicholls announced that new direction-finding equipment was to be installed which would enable Grendon and Poundon to take precise readings of WT operators' transmitting sites. As a further precaution all new WT operators were to be 'fingerprinted', which would provide us with an accurate record of their operating styles.
[9]

What had started as a talk had become a proclamation. He now introduced a series of
non sequiturs
which he expected to be followed.

A new kind of WT set was to be produced by Station 9. It had a powerful generator which would allow an operator to transmit without having to use current from the mains, which the enemy could detect.