Between Silk and Cyanide (67 page)

She complied at once (everything about her was immediate, especially her impact) and I watched her covertly, though I suspected she knew it.

She was the first agent whose exact age I wanted to know (she was clearly in her early twenties), and I wondered what this had to do with the job in hand, and what my inner ear was up to.

She finished encoding her message in under twenty minutes (which put her in Knut Haugland's class if she'd enciphered it correctly), and I picked it up to check it.

'Oops sorry,' she said. She then snatched it back and inserted her security checks (she had to change her printed indicator-groups by adding one to every first letter and four to every third).

Our hands touched as she returned the message, and I was tempted to say, 'Oops sorry' for what I was thinking. I tried to concentrate on her message.

It was flawlessly encoded, and contained 200 letters instead of the minimum of 100 I'd stipulated (the only other agent to have enciphered more letters than strictly necessary was Knut Haugland). It was also in a mixture of English and French, a security precaution most trainees forgot, and she'd signed off 'that's all for now' (even experienced agents still clung to 'message ends'). Her dummy letters didn't contain a single 'x' or 'z', and seemed on the verge of spelling a swear-word. I realized that she was intelligent as well as quick-witted and said a silent prayer that she wasn't also telepathic.

I warned her that she must cut away the keys from her silk as soon as she'd used them.

'I don't think I could—silk is so expensive.'

'So is a captured agent if her back traffic can be read.'

She promised that she'd will herself to do it.

I then asked her to encode a message in her poem, and to make sure it contained at least 200 letters.

She took a deep breath, then wrote out five words from her poem as if each one soiled the paper, and proceeded to number them.

I glanced at her code-card. Her poem was in French, and seemed to be a nursery rhyme based on 'Three Blind Mice'.

She certainly behaved like one as she scurried from letter to letter trying to number her key-phrase. She finally succeeded, and thirty minutes later handed me her message for checking. It was exactly 200 letters long.

I handed it back without making contact, and asked her to decode it herself. I knew it was indecipherable long before I heard her muttering something in French which was considerably more substantial than 'Oops sorry'.

'It won't come out.' She looked at me in despair. 'Why do I keep making mistakes?'

She thumped her forehead: 'Pourquoi, pourquoi, pourquoi?'

I asked her to encode a second message while I tried to find out pourquoi.

'But I'm taking up so much of your time.'

'I've got all day,' I said. And hoped that I'd need it.

'If I get it wrong this time I'll…' She finished the sentence in French, then snatched up her pencil and began her new assault while I examined the indecipherable.

She'd misspelt one of the five words she'd chosen from her poem, which threw out the whole of her transposition-key. I waited until Little Miss Skinnarland had finished her new message, and pointed out what she'd done.

'But the code's so easy. Why can't I get it right?' She thrust her new effort at me without waiting for an answer, but I again insisted that she decoded it herself.

A pounding on the desk announced the result. 'I've done it again. It won't come out.'

Her pencil snapped in two, and her face snapped with it from the weight of self-disgust.

I took the message from her before she could tear it up, and rapidly checked it. 'You've misspelt your poem again. Trois' should have an 's' on it.'

She muttered something like 'C'est pas possible', and looked at me despairingly. 'If Colonel Buckmaster hears about this he may not let I me go in.'

'He won't hear about it because we're going to get it right.'

'But how?'

A sensible question. Her only mistakes had been to misspell the |words of her poem, and she'd done this consistently. Since Freud believed that all mistakes were unconsciously motivated and I believed Freud, I wondered if she were reacting against the poem because it had unconscious associations for her.

Professor Dr Sigmund Marks asked whether she'd chosen it herself or whether the training school had issued it to her.

'I chose it. It's a nursery rhyme I learned at school and I know it backwards. Why?'

I explained that some agents who were otherwise good coders often made spelling mistakes in their key-phrases, and we'd found that they weren't really happy with their poems, though they didn't always know why.

She considered the matter carefully. 'I hadn't thought of it that way.' Her expression was troubled, and she seemed to have left Orchard Court for some childhood briefing room.

She returned a few moments later to the poem-bound present. 'I shouldn't have chosen it. I couldn't spell it as a child, and I still can't… I'd like to change it but I suppose it's too late.'

'Do you know any others?'

'They're all nursery rhymes, and I'd feel so stupid if I used one I know I would… Look, let me try another message…'

'How about trying another poem?'

'Could I?'

'Are you a quick learner?'

'I am at some things, but they're nothing to do with codes.'

The imp was back, and looked at me appealingly. 'Do you know a poem you'd like me to try?'

For the first time since Xmas Eve I thought of the words which had occurred to me on the roof of Norgeby House. I wrote them in block capitals on a sheet of squared paper, and checked the spelling before handing them over.

I then did what I could to descend from the roof.

An aircrash or two later I heard a tiny intake of breath, and turned to look at her. She was speaking the words to herself, and I felt I was intruding on her privacy.

She finally looked up at me. 'I could learn this in a few minutes. I promise you I could.'

'You're sure you want to?'

'Oh yes. Oh yes. I almost know it now.'

'Well then… take those few minutes, then encode two messages in it. I'll come back this time tomorrow and go through them with you.'

She promised she'd be ready.

At least I had a good reason for seeing her again.

She stood up when I entered the briefing room, waiting until I was seated opposite her, then made a simple statement of fact:

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.

It was she who broke the silence. 'Who wrote this?'

'I'll check up, and let you know when you come back.'

I had a gut feeling that she wasn't going to, and busied myself checking the two messages she'd encoded. Each was 300 letters long, and there wasn't a single mistake in either.

Not knowing if she'd been up all night encoding them, I asked her to encode another message in front of me. '200 letters will be enough.' She set to work at once, and produced a 200-letter message in under fifteen minutes. It was perfectly encoded.

I congratulated her, finalized her security checks, and reminded her to cut away the keys of her silk. I wasn't sure how to say 'that's all for now' because for me it certainly wasn't, but she solved the problem.

'I've got a present for you.' She fumbled in her handbag and produced a miniature chess-set which she said she'd won at a shooting-gallery.
[35]

Holding it out shyly, she said she thought that people who invented codes were sure to play chess and she'd like me to have it for all the help I'd given her.

I tried to thank her for giving me a first edition of Caxton's
Game and Playe of Chesse
(which was how it felt), but she gently interrupted to say that she was late for an appointment with Vera Atkins, who wanted to check everything she was taking in with her.

I told her I looked forward to playing chess with her when she returned from France, and she said she'd like that too as it would give her time to learn it.

I unlocked the special drawer in my desk and put her chess-set between my other prize possessions: Rabinovitch's photograph of Joe Louis's left hook and Tommy's cigar.

I then surrendered the words of the poem to Muriel as they'd formally become a code.

I didn't think Ruth would mind.

Like all organizations riddled with the stress which they were trying to inflict on others, SOE was full of practical jokers (some of them aware of it) and on 1 April I was relieved to discover that I was sufficiently well regarded to be targeted as an April fool.

That was my first impression when I received an urgent call on the scrambler from Ken Howell (chief signalmaster at 53b), who was anxious to read a message to me which had just been received from Holland in plain language over the Heck/Blue set.

By the end of the first sentence I realized that the catch in his voice was unlikely to be confected as he was neither an actor nor a politician, and I listened in silence till he'd finished.

I then asked him to read it again and teleprint the message to London.

MESSRS BLUNT,
[36]
BINGHAM AND SUCCS LTD.

IN THE LAST TIME YOU ARE TRYING TO MAKE BUSINESS IN THE NETHERLANDS WITHOUT OUR ASSISTANCE STOP WE THINK THIS RATHER UNFAIR IN VIEW OUR LONG AND SUCCESSFUL COOPERATION AS YOUR SOLE AGENTS STOP BUT NEVER MIND WHENEVER YOU WILL COME TO PAY A VISIT TO THE CONTINENT YOU MAY BE ASSURED THAT YOU WILL BE RECEIVED WITH SAME CARE AND RESULT AS ALL THOSE YOU SENT US BEFORE STOP SO LONG

1 April 1944, sent on HECK/BLUE set.

The identical message had been transmitted by ten other agents, including Ebenezer, Parsnip, Turnip and Beetroot. 53b had acknowledged four of them but on Heffer's instructions had ignored the rest.

I learned from Muriel (queen of the grapevine) that Nick had walked into his office and that a copy of Giskes's message (he had no need to sign it) was waiting on his desk.

I realized what a bastard I was for feeling even a moment's elation at being proved right, but this wasn't the moment to dwell on my more endearing characteristics. It was time to concentrate on Giskes's, and I compiled a list of questions, knowing that only he could answer most of them.

What did he gain by confirming over ten channels that we were kaput in Holland when he must know that even we would realize that our Belgian escape routes must also be blown, and that many Belgian agents were under arrest?

Had he decided that London was so suspicious of him that there was no longer any point in trying to deceive us? If so, what had caused him to make this decision?

Was it the cessation of dropping operations? Or the arrival in London of Ubbrinck and Dourlein? Or the impossibility of answering N section's questions?

Was his message designed to discredit SOE with the Chiefs of Staff? Or had he sent it for career considerations? Was it better for him in the eyes of his superiors to cease contact with us before we broke it off with him?

As for Signals, had he learned of the existence of WOKs and LOPs and realized that London's indecipherable to Boni (Plan Giskes) was a trap he'd walked into?

Had he learned of the exchange of 'Heil Hitler' call-signs?

I looked up to find Nick watching me from the doorway. He said that he wanted to talk to me as soon as he'd finished a council meeting. Although his eyes watered so frequently that we referred to him as Niagara Nick, I was certain that the liquid trickling down his nose was caused by defective vision concerning Holland.

I realized that the more time I wasted, the greater Giskes's triumph would be, and resumed my efforts to prepare for D-Day.

•       •       •

On the night of 5 April, Violette and Philippe Leiwer (Southgate) boarded an aircraft and were dropped near Chateau Dun.

It would be Ruth's first trip to France.

By mid-April the Americans were communicating so freely with us, and we with them, that it was hard to believe we were allies. Until exposed to them in bulk, all I really knew about their mother-country was that it contained many of 84's best customers, and that Spencer Tracy (the finest actor I'd seen apart from Heffer in a hurry) was born there.

But the OSS were a nostalgic lot, and after a series of late-night sessions with them I could have gone shopping in New York, or brothel-hunting in LA, and knew where to find an honest game of bridge in Washington.

On less serious matters, they were appalled to learn of our acute shortage of silk, and had promised to deliver large quantities from the States, 'even if it meant stripping Mae West's tits'. The first consignment had already arrived.

An even more welcome surprise was their ability to run their own wireless station (53c), with Americans manning the radio sets and a FANY-staffed room from which was controlled by an assiduous young captain named Phoenix.

None of us believed that the new boys would be capable of taking over the Scandinavian traffic from 53b without serious consequences, but throughout the two months in which they'd been handling it not a single SOE agent had suffered from their inexperience. Nor had any of the FANYs who'd queued up to be exposed to it.

Our joint Jedburgh operations would be their ultimate test as the traffic would be handled entirely by them, and they'd have only their own mistakes to learn from.

One of our few remaining reservations was their concept of security. They may have been teasing us (one of their favourite relaxations) but a rumour had reached Nick that they'd invited Time Magazine to visit 53c and photograph its interior. Believing them capable of any indiscretion provided it was great enough, he'd gently informed them that although he had nothing against the magazine he was a little concerned about its circulation and its effect on General Gubbins's.