Between Silk and Cyanide (50 page)

But none of these would give him the insights he needed and I'd have no peace (if the luxury existed where I was likely to be going) unless I disclosed certain malpractices I'd committed which were nowhere on record.

I confessed to intercepting all messages from the field in secret French code, breaking the indecipherables and re-encoding them accurately so that the agents wouldn't be instructed to repeat them, and hoped he'd continue the malpractice with the utmost caution. I also admitted to launching Plan Giskes without authority, and referred him to my Dutch and Belgian reports to help him evaluate the results.

The crime sheet was so long that I decided to leave it to the last as it was more important to brief him about two recent events which were likely to need immediate attention and which had complicated backgrounds.

On 2 August Bodington returned from France.

His request to be picked up by Lysander had been transmitted by Noor Inayat Khan, who'd been wandering around Paris with her set in a suitcase. Although he'd been reluctant to entrust his message to her, he'd found he had no option as the Prosper, Chestnut and Bricklayer circuits had completely collapsed, and 'Madeleine' was the only one of Buckmaster's WT operators still at liberty in Paris.

I learned from Maurice that she'd committed many indiscretions including leaving her signal-plan and poem in the hallway of a flat where they'd remained open for inspection for several hours. Bodington had urged her to 'lie low' till London instructed her otherwise, and she'd agreed to do so. But Maurice doubted if she would. I warned my successor that 'lying low' was as close to lying as Noor could ever get, and that because of her attitude I'd given her a special security check which would be new to the Germans, and which she was to use only if she were caught. (Her transposition-key must be eighteen letters long.) I also warned him that there was no guarantee that she'd remember it (though I was convinced that she would), and I urged him to take special care with every message she encoded.

The other event concerned Hitler's intention of razing London to the ground. According to Duus Hansen, as reliable a source as any in the field, the rocket sites at Peenemünde had become a tug-of-war between C and SOE.

On 12 August he sent a message to Sweden asking which organization he was supposed to be working for. He was especially keen to know whether he should send information about the rocket sites to the Danish section of SOE or to Hannibal (a department in C he'd previously worked for and was still in touch with). He complained that both organizations were asking him to obtain the same information!

Turnbull sent him a long message (repeated to London in mainline code) stressing that operational matters were SOE's responsibility and that he should send his information to SOE's Stockholm office. It would then be forwarded to SOE's London HQ, which would be responsible for distributing it!

I reminded my successor that Hansen's silks and security checks were being delivered to him by courier, and that although the Stockholm office had so far proved reliable, no chances should be taken and Hansen must be asked a number of test questions when he began sing his WOK.

I was in the middle of dealing with our techniques for breaking indecipherables when Tommy walked in wearing his Croix de Guerre uninform. He was standing by to mount a two-man mission with Brossolette, code-named Marie-Claire. Its function was to restore morale in the field following the capture of Moulin, and to establish a new chain of command. Tommy had been selected for the mission by de Gaulle and Passy—yet another sign of their confidence in him.

He looked at me sharply and asked what was wrong.

I told him that SOE was sending me to Cairo to convert the natives to Judaism.

He knew my domestic situation and it invariably amused him, but there was no humour in his face as he studied me thoughtfully. He asked me whether I'd like him to keep in touch with my parents while I was away. If so, he'd introduce himself as my Ministry of Labour supervisor.

I couldn't let him see how much his offer had affected me, and for first time since I'd known him I averted my face from my favourite supervisor.

One half of Marie-Claire closed the door behind him.

I realized that I hadn't even asked him what he'd wanted.

I tried to define 'SOE-mindedness', but soon gave up in despair (perhaps I'd understand it from the other side), and gave the document to Muriel for typing, warning her to take no copies.

Aware that she was my executor, she began work at once.

Alone in a way that was new, I made a contribution to the ditty box, wondering if it would be my last:

We have a little time left
The wise doctor said
Unless there's a miracle
Which is another man's trade
Selfish as always
I've started missing you now
Want to say so
Don't know how
Want to hug you
Don't know if I should
Hope you understand
I'd take your place if could.
[27]

I was in the middle of adding a codicil about Nick and Heffer when Muriel put her head round the door and, without a trace of regret, reminded me that I had a plane to catch.

'You must forget all about Baker Street for the next seven days, and that includes Monkey. Keep everything for Cairo. God knows it needs it.'

(Nick's parting instructions)

On 24 August one of the war's lesser events took place outside the main entrance of Shephard's Hotel, Cairo, where a room had been reserved for me—probably by mistake.

My braces broke, and my trousers slid gracefully to the ground. The next to descend were the shimmering underpants which only yesterday my tearful mother had lovingly pressed.

She would have been proud of the interest they aroused in the open-mouthed natives. At the time of the involuntary exposure I was cluching a briefcase full of silks in one hand and my solar topi in the other. Reluctant to relinquish the former for security reasons, I placed the latter between my knees to protect an indispensable appendage from sunstroke. I then bent down to retrieve my dignity, affording fascinated drivers and pedestrians a view of kosher rump, which Nick may not have had in mind when he instructed me to keep everything for Cairo.

The honking of car-horns was followed by a round of applause from the direction of the hotel.

Looking up, I saw a world-famous American watching me from the Veranda. He continued to watch me as I hobbled towards the entrance, clutching my trousers, then leaned across the veranda for a closer inspection. His voice was marginally less carrying than Churchill's and almost as famous. 'Excuse me, sir. What are you going to do for an encore?'

Wishing he knew, Sir hobbled inside.

Next time we met, my fingers would be free to give him an appropriate answer.

SOE's HQ was in Rustom Buildings, a large grey-pillared block in the centre of an otherwise respectable residential area. Every taxi-driver in Cairo knew the address and charged double for reaching it.

Dansey, one of the few people whom khaki shorts aged, was waiting at the reception desk. Handing me my pass, he warned me not to lose it or I'd have to buy a new one from the head porter at Shephard's. He then led me into an ante-room and briefed me in undertones.

The situation as he saw it was 'pretty damn serious'. The mainline traffic had been allowed to pile up and more coders would have to be sent from London to deal with the backlog. I must make up my own mind about agents' traffic, but he thought he should warn me that the silks I'd sent from London 'hadn't caught on' and my visit was considered completely unnecessary.

He then outlined what he referred to as 'the drill'.

Cairo's Chief of Staff, Brigadier Keble, would send for me sometime this evening as he was far too busy to see me before, but I probably wouldn't meet the head of Signals (Ridley-Martin) at all as he was away for a week. Nor was I likely to meet his deputy (Jerry Parker), who was also away, but the third in command (Bill Chalk) would look in sometime this afternoon to say hello. He suggested that I should spend the whole day 'getting the feel of the code room' until Keble was ready to send for me.

He then looked at me appealingly. 'Don't rub him up the wrong way, old chap. He's a short-tempered little sod at the best of times!'

Picking up my solar topi (I'd sworn 'on Mother's life' never to be without it), I assured him I'd be careful and followed him upstairs.

To the untrained eye (as great a liability in wartime as the untrained heart) all code rooms looked alike. But to those afflicted with cipher awareness, every one had an aura of its own, and Cairo's was as bowed as the heads of its coders.

It was a multi-purpose code room, and the girls were required to switch from main-line traffic to agents' and back again, a malpractice which London had long since abandoned. (Dansey had been the first to agree that the systems needed different skills and temperaments, and that agents' traffic should be a separate entity.) Many of the girls on the present shift (including the supervisor) were veterans from Grendon, where they'd been trained to behave like mini-cryptographers rather than cipher clerks. They watched with growing apprehension as Dansey led me to an empty desk in the corner. He then explained the mechanics of the office, told me where to find him if I needed his help, and left me to get on with it.

The facts emerged slowly, like soldiers from a brothel.

The agents were given novels from which to obtain their transposition-keys, though several had been issued with magazines, and one appeared to be using a military manual. The volume of traffic was heavy, and at peak periods several hundred messages a day were exchanged with agents in Greece, Yugoslavia, Tehran, Istanbul, Crete and a number of Balkan towns and villages. There were also two-way exchanges with long-range desert groups.

Even the most rudimentary precautions were ignored, and I found (ght examples of the same transposition-keys being used for messages (identical length (cryptographically fatal), and six examples of messages which contained fewer than fifty letters. (One was from the home Station.) A file marked 'Indecipherables' disclosed that fifteen been received in the past week, and that in each case the miscreants had been instructed to re-encode them.

I casually enquired if any attempts were made to break agents' indecipherables, and there was a bewildered shaking of heads. As one renegade put it, 'They have a lot more time than we have.' I barely recognized the Grendon coders as they plodded away at their desks.

But the biggest shock was reserved for midday, when I barely recognized the code room.

I was suddenly invaded by a succession of captains and lieutenants who weren't members of the Royal Corps of Signals (their only discernable asset). They were allowed to saunter into the code room, examine the novels and magazines which were being used as codes then saunter out again carrying whichever took their fancy. A casual enquiry elicited that they read them on the roof during the lunch hour but always returned them.

Determined to repel the invaders, and equally anxious to pee I followed a young lieutenant and his novel out of the code room, but instead of going upstairs, where I presumed the roof to be, he went in the opposite direction and headed for the exit.

Tapping him on the shoulder, which I was barely able to reach, I introduced myself as the head of Codes from London. I then informed him that on the instructions of General Gubbins the lending library was closed for the duration, and suggested that if he were short of reading matter he should write to an excellent bookshop in London whose address was 84 Charing Cross Road.

The bemused lieutenant surrendered the book without the slightest opposition. It turned out to be The Four Just Men, and I felt like the fifth.

I then asked if he'd be kind enough to show me the way to the gents.

Five minutes later I returned to a code room which was even more badly in need of a flush.

By mid-afternoon I'd broken my first Cairo indecipherable, and was embarking on my second when Major Chalk (number three in the Signals hierarchy) walked in 'just to say hello', as Dansey had predicted.

He was a professional signals officer and it soon became apparent that he knew more about wireless than he did about codes. He expressed the hope that I'd find nothing wrong with Cairo's. I didn't tell him that so far I'd found nothing right.

I was summoned to Keble's office at 7.30 p.m. Dansey and Chalk were already there.

The 'short-tempered little sod at the best of times' didn't look up for almost a minute while I stood in front of his desk clutching my briefcase and solar topi. He then shook hands perfunctorily and pointed to a chair.

He had a ginger moustache and eyes which complemented it. They informed me within seconds that he wasn't going to be taught his business by a young pup of a Jew-boy who, like most of his kind, had managed to avoid military service. He eyed my solar topi as if it were a Hasidic skullcap.

I took my WOKs and LOPs from my briefcase, where they'd been refrigerating, and began explaining their function. He interrupted me to say that it was time 'you people in London' realized that Cairo's clandestine communications had damn-all in common with Europe's. As for 'those silk knickers' I was trying to peddle, he'd been advised on good authority, including that of a naval cipher expert from Alexandria, that the codes issued to agents were secure enough for all practical purposes, and he saw no reason to interfere with them.

I agreed that Cairo's agents operated in different circumstances from ours but suggested that cryptographers were the same the world over. His eyes said 'so are Yids', and he ordered me to come to the point.

Desperate to rescue a joke which now couldn't possibly come off, l said that cryptographers would have far more to show for their efforts if they examined silk knickers for what they normally concealed than if they probed them for agents' traffic. I then hastily pointed out that silk codes would put an end to indecipherables, provide reliable security checks, and cut agents' air-time in half.