Between Silk and Cyanide (78 page)

I'd sooner go to Hiroshima and my expression must have shown it.

'I'm telling you this now to give you a chance to think it over before Nick puts it to you officially.' He added that at least a dozen senior SOE officers had been invited to join C, and that most of them had agreed.

'Merde alors to the lot of them. I never want to see another code when SOE packs up, but thanks for the warning.' I hurried from his office.

I knew the pressure the bastards were capable of exerting; I had to leave SOE as quickly as I could.

But I had one major job to do before SOE would release me: Gubbins required all department heads to write comprehensive reports of their department's activities. The code department's would be a massive task which would take me several weeks to complete, and I hadn't even begun. I told Muriel I wanted no calls or interruptions and tried to settle down to it.

An hour later a catastrophe occurred. I thought of a code which would be suitable for agents in peacetime.

The idea was so novel that I wanted to rush in to Nick with it, but I realized just in time that it might interest C. I also realized that it might be useful to our enemies in peacetime, if we had any apart from ourselves. The purpose of the code was to enable agents to communicate freely with each other in any language they chose, even though they didn't speak a single word of it. Suppose two German agents were working in England, and their sole means of communicating with each other was by post. They could write to each other in English, though neither understood a word of it, and every letter they exchanged would contain a secret message of one-time pad security. They would first write out their secret messages in German, using figure one-time pads and code-books. They then had to turn these figures into colloquial English, of which they understood 'Nichts'. To achieve this they would refer to a sheet of silk which had English phrases printed opposite every number.

Suppose the first number to be concealed were 9: he'd copy out the phrase opposite 9.

0 You'll be glad to know
1 I hope you'll be glad to know
2 You'll be happy to know
3 You'll be very happy to know
4 You'll be pleased to hear
5 You'll be very pleased to hear
6 I'm glad to tell you
7 I'm very glad to tell you
8 I'm delighted to tell you
9 I can't wait to tell you

His letter would therefore begin: 'I can't wait to tell you'. Suppose the second figure to be encoded were 0. He'd refer to the next column of his silk, and copy out the phrase opposite 0.

0 that after all this time
1 that after such a long time
2 that after all this while
3 that after all this delay
4 that at last
5 that at long last
6 that finally
7 that in God's good time
8 that eventually
9 that despite the difficulties

His letter would therefore begin: 'I can't wait to tell you that after all this time', and he'd continue to chat away about what had happened for as long as the code-groups demanded.

His correspondent's reply must appear to answer this letter. Suppose the first number to be concealed were 5: he'd copy out the phrase opposite 5.

0 Of course I'm glad
1 Of course I'm pleased
2 Naturally I'm glad
3 Naturally I'm pleased
4 I'm glad to hear
5 I'm damn glad to hear
6 I'm delighted to hear
7 I'm relieved to hear
8 I'm thrilled to hear
9 I'm happy to hear

His letter would therefore begin: 'I'm damn glad to hear'. Suppose the next figure to be concealed were 1:

0 that after trying so hard
1 that after all your efforts
2 that after trying for so long
3 that after trying so hard for so long
4 that you've finally managed to
5 that you've at last managed to
6 that you're now able to
7 that you're finally able to
8 that you've at last managed to
9 that you've finally be able to

His letter would therefore begin: 'I'm damn glad to hear that after all your efforts', and would continue to use as many phrases as he needed (they'd all make sense).

The basic idea could be put to other uses, but I did my best to abort them and tried to start my report. But I was stuck for an opening (a good phrase for a letter?) because 'other uses' kept cropping up, and I made no progress whatever.

On 15 August Japan surrendered and SOE's closure was now a certainty.

I was more determined than ever not to surrender to C but was still only on page one of my report.

I was struggling to abort yet another use for the code when Nick summoned me to his office. He'd recovered from his depression, and asked how the report was progressing.

'I'm halfway through it, sir.'

'Good man—the general's anxious to read it.'

He then reminded me that Gubbins wanted me to write a separate report on Holland, which I was to deliver to him personally; no copies must be taken.

'I've already warned Muriel, sir.'

I noticed that Elsenhower's letter was still on his desk, and looked up to find him watching me. 'You've invented a new code, haven't you?'

I was too astonished to answer.

'If I don't know the symptoms by now, I'm in the wrong job. What sort of code? Who's it intended for?'

'Whoever empties our waste-paper baskets.' I added that it was just a vague idea which would be of no practical use to anyone but had helped with the tedium of the report.

He glared at me in disbelief and immediately asked if I'd considered C's offer.

So he knows Heffer's already discussed it with me.

I gave him much the same answer as I had the Guru and he looked at me just as impatiently. 'We'll come back to that later. Heffer's told you that we're closing down at the end of December?'

'Yes, sir.

Well, there's been a development you should know about.' Obviously hating every word of it, he said that all SOE's records were to be taken over by C.

'But that's like burying Hitler in Westminster Abbey.'

'There's not a damn thing we can do about it.' He then said that both parties had agreed that the hand-over could only succeed if various members of the country sections and the Signals directorate stayed behind to take part in it. 'The Signal records are essential to the hand-over. I don't need to tell you that the code department's are the largest of all, and by far the most important.'

Nor did he need to tell me what was coming next.

'… in other words, Leo, General Gubbins and I want you to supervise the handing over of all the coding records, and all cipher traffic. It might take you three months. How about it?'

'I don't have three months, Nick.' I wanted to add that I sometimes felt that I didn't have three minutes.

T suppose you realize that most of us in SOE will be muzzled for the rest of our lives, and that those records will be all that remain of us? Doesn't that matter a damn to you?'

A frothing brigadier is a terrifying sight.

'As for not wanting to see another code when SOE packs up, don't you realize that Britain will soon be on its own again?… that Russia's the new menace, and will be for years?… that the Americans are behaving appallingly in Siam, and are no longer the allies they were?'

Neither was Nick.

'We'll need a first-class Intelligence service to keep us in the running, and the whole of our traffic will have to be rethought… Who's going to help us with it—the Russians?—the Americans?—General de Gaulle's lot? Hasn't it occurred to you that peacetime agents will need new codes and security checks and as much training as ours? Don't you realize that many of Bletchley's best cryptographers will go back to their old occupations? You're too young to have had one so you've no excuses unless you're too tired to think straight. Just tell me this: doesn't any part of the code war interest you any more?'

I owed him the truth. 'Yes, sir. How to put it behind me.'

His voice took on a new edge. 'Then finish this report, and get on with whatever's more important to you than helping your country.' Our double-act was now over and I felt more alone than the British.

The main problem with finishing the report was knowing what to exclude, and I had to make a major decision. Gubbins had stressed that nothing must be glossed over, and I had to choose whether or not to make a disclosure which I hadn't dared to make previously for fear of instant dismissal. I now decided that I would because it might hasten my departure.

It concerned the 'War Diary', and the way that certain people in SOE (myself in particular) had wilfully misled it.

It was known throughout Baker Street as the 'war diarrhoea', and its far from natural function was to provide Gubbins and the Executive Council with a synopsis of every message to and from the field so that they could absorb our daily traffic at a glance and historians would have a reliable record of our main activities—a laudable enough concept were it not for one thing.

Much of the traffic which passed between the agents and the country sections (and between the agents and Signals) was in shorthand, and when our Pepyses tried to paraphrase it for Gubbins and posterity they often missed the all-important subtexts.

One of the busiest members of the War Diary was Lionel Hale, a drama critic on the News Chronicle, who'd bought most of his theatrical books from 84 but was otherwise intelligent. Hale had represented SOE on a Top Secret committee which specialized in disseminating propaganda in neutral territories, and was considered one of SOE's star performers. But someone in Baker Street must have decided that his ability to sum up complicated plot-points for the News Chronicle would be a help to the War Diary, and for a brief period in '43 he was seconded to it.

For most of us it wasn't brief enough.

Used to double-entendres, he quickly realized that much of the traffic contained messages within messages, but instead of telephoning his queries to people like Buckmaster and me (as his more considerate colleagues did), he insisted on bringing them to us personally, and soon became the most lied-to officer in Baker Street, with the possible exception of the head of Finance. Although we told him the truth if it didn't lead to further questions, our preparations for D-Day had to be given slightly greater priority, and we often fobbed him off with whatever explanations would get rid of him most quickly.

To ensure that he left my office with something worth having, I arranged for him to be given a discount at 84. But the idea of making special use of him didn't occur to me until he was rash enough to confide that he often wrote reports on his various visits which he passed on to Gubbins and the Executive Council if he thought they'd be of interest.

I fabricated a series of 'Highly Confidential' reports, ostensibly from me to Heffer, and pretended to be immersed in them whenever he arrived. When he finally enquired what they were, I informed him that they were part of my own 'War Diary', and he immediately asked if he could look at them.

Each report falsified our reserves of silk codes, understating the stocks in hand, overstating the demands for them, and presented him with a picture of a cipher Dunkirk. One of them regretted to inform Heffer that unless our production facilities were increased, no more silks could be sent to the Middle East, and their agents would have to revert to using novels.

Once a reporter, always a reporter… within a week of showing him these reports, the code department received unsolicited offers of help from the head of Personnel and the director of Finance, and we won twenty more coders, a dozen more briefing officers, and a new firm of printers. It was a great loss to the code department when he left SOE to resume his old duties.

Our misrepresentations to the War Diary (which certain professional historians would one day take literally in their erudite treatises) were then scaled down.

By the end of November my report was almost finished except for 'the coding habits of agents which never would be', (every one of them deserved a mention). I'd limited my selection to twenty, and it included Patrick Leigh-Fermor (who'd kidnapped a German general but couldn't transpose). Nancy Wake (who'd used a pornographic poem which she'd made even more pornographic by her habit of misspelling it), Brian Stonehouse (a painter who'd brilliantly depicted his fellow-prisoners at three concentration camps, but whose previous indecipherables were even greater works of art) and Yvonne Cormeau code-named Annette, (who'd sent over 400 messages without a single mistake, possibly because I hadn't briefed her). Nor could I resist recording that at Major O'Reilly's instigation 84 Charing Cross Road had been used to give agents practice in picking up messages concealed in books when I was sent for by Nick, who warned me that within the next two weeks military vans would call at night to start collecting whatever records were ready to be handed over, and he hoped that some of mine were.

I assured him that large numbers of files I no longer needed had already been crated up, and he looked at me as if he were about to be crated up himself. 'I'd like to understand your new code before I leave.' I couldn't resist this and blurted out the whole concept. A whispered 'Good God' was followed by the longest silence which had ever passed between us. 'You do realize its value in peacetime?' 'It needs a lot of work, Nick.'

'And it bloody well deserves it. I'm going to talk to C.'

'I'm not going to be pressured into working for them.'

'That won't stop me from trying.' He snatched up the receiver, and asked to be put through to Gambier-Parry (C's head of Signals).

I hurried away to finish my report.

The following morning Nick walked in followed by Gambier-Parry and a captain whose name turned out to be Johnson.

I'd met Gambier-Parry nine months ago when he'd asked to examine the codes we were using, and I'd greeted him with a particularly hard handshake for wishing the poem-code on us.

This time he was prepared for it and, after rapidly disengaging, took a quick look round the office. 'I see your desk hasn't got any tidier.' He inspected its contents as if they already belonged to him.