by Walter Ellis
It was unbearable. Ortega could feel the hairs on the backs of his hands stand on end. “Everybody who has ever met them or spoken with them?” he repeated.
Serrano glanced up over his shoulder, like Nosferatu breaking off from a feed. “And their families.”
Lisbon: British Embassy, July 17
Croft could hardly believe what he was hearing. Bramall’s description of the operation he had mounted at the German Legation had filled him with admiration – and envy. He held the tape up to the light as if it were a strip of cine film; he took note of the Leica and the pictures of the Magnetophon he was told it contained. Most of all, he read through Hasselfeldt’s notebook, containing its comprehensive revelation of Germany’s plans for Gibraltar and North Africa.
At length, he sat back, with the notebook still opened on his knee, and slowly shook his head. “It’s brilliant,” he said. “First class. Congratulations. I never thought you’d do it. What matters now is that we should get this stuff back to Braithwaite first thing.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“Well, shouldn’t I go with it?”
A look of sympathy mixed with triumph crept across the Londoner’s features. “Listen, Sunshine,” he began, “you might think you’re off the hook far as the Duke’s concerned, but you’re not. He doesn’t leave for the Bahamas until August 1. That leaves us the best part of two weeks to get through. My guess is that if the Abwehr, or the SD, really do decide to make a play, they’ll wait till the last few days, when the opportunity’s greatest. Then, God help me, I’m going to need you here.”
“I see.”
“Far as the tape’s concerned, there’s a plane in the harbour. I’ll speak to the Ambassador, see what’s what. I suggest you write a memo to Braithwaite setting out everything that isn’t immediately obvious. The Ortega girl can go with it, help fill in some of the blanks.” He paused. “Of course, you probably think you should go to France and deliver the material personally.”
“It did occur to me.”
“Ordinarily, I’d say that made sense …”
“But on this occasion …?”
“On this occasion, I think the SOE will demand the right to carry things forward. We have to face it, France is their patch.”
Croft was referring to the Special Operations Executive, newly set up by Churchill to operate within the occupied territories. France was the SOE’s principal focus and it was unlikely its chiefs would willingly consent to an act of piracy by “Six.”
“And in the meantime,” the Yorkshireman continued, “we still have the small problem of your friend Hasselfeldt. What if he manages to put two and two together?”
“Romero will take care of him.”
Braithwaite frowned. “Let’s hope so,” he said.
London: SIS, Baker Street, July 18
Braithwaite looked up in mild surprise as Isabella knocked and walked into his London office. He wasn’t wearing the jacket of his brown suit; in its place was a bright yellow waistcoat. “Good God,” he said, struggling to his feet. “Miss Ortega, isn’t it? That were fast. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”
Isabella looked nervous. She had heard a lot about Braithwaite from Bramall but had no idea what he would be like in the flesh.
“The RAF brought me. Mr Croft told them that what I have is important for the war effort.”
“Ah! Well, we’ll see about that.” Braithwaite had been wary at first about inviting the young Spanish woman into his office. He had fancied a pub round the corner might be more appropriate. He smiled at her, slightly embarrassed, as he usually was with women under 40. “Sit down. How are you, anyway? Recovered from your ordeal?”
“I am sorry?”
“Your ordeal. I am aware that since meeting Mr Bramall your life has change markedly, and not necessarily for the better.”
“Oh, I see. But I’m fine – really. And I think my life now is not worse than before, it is better … much better.”
Braithwaite pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “Even so, I’m very grateful to you for the work you’ve done and the, er, sacrifice you’ve made. It can’t have been easy.”
Isabella thought of the pain and anger she had caused both her parents and the shock of seeing the two SS guards die in front of her. “No,” she said. “It was not easy.”
“Aye. Well you’re safe now. So what have you got for me? Let’s have a look.”
Isabella handed over the metal box in which the embassy in Lisbon had placed the tapes, Hasselfeldt’s transcript and the Leica camera.
Braithwaite undid the clasps on the front of the container. Then he adjusted his glasses again and opened the shallow box inside that contained the principal tape, marked “Felix.” He held it up to the light, examining it in gingerly fashion. “So this is it, then. Doesn’t look like much, I have to say.”
“You must be careful!” Isabella warned. “Charles says if it unravels, it is very hard to get it back on to the reel.”
“Why didn’t they just put a top on it?”
Isabella looked puzzled.
“It’s got a bottom, but no top. Daft that. But you’re saying that if we can only work out how to play this, we can hear Serrano and Co. negotiating with Stohrer to enter the war, is that it?”
“Yes. But there is also information concerning Morocco and Oran and how they are to be given to Spain. Charles says it will drive the French … what did he say? … barmy.”
Braithwaite smiled. “Bit late for that, if you ask me. But okay, let’s get the boffins in.” He pressed a switch on the telephone console on his desk. “Braithwaite here. Could you send Mr Caxton up, quick as you like, please? We’ve got something for him.”
He took out the transcript while they waited.
“Charles has the original,” Isabella said, in case you want him to go with it to France. He copied out the German and added a translation.”
Braithwaite grunted. “Cheeky bugger,” he said, leafing through the document. After a couple of minutes, he put it down. “Bloody hell!” he said, “Croft was right.”
“Actually,” said Isabella, “ Charles was right. He went into the embassy, he obtained the tapes and the transcript. And, if I may say so, I was of some help as well.”
Braithwaite pursed his lips. “You’ve made your point, Miss Ortega. Don’t push it.” He reached back into the metal box and brought out Hasselfeldt’s SD notebooks. “ So what are these?”
“I do not read German, but Charles says they are appointments for Hasselfeldt in recent weeks. He gives his opinion on the reliability of the Ambassador; his assessment of Charles and – oh yes – there is a list of SD agents in Madrid.”
“I see. Not bad, not bad at all A good week’s work.”
It was clear that the older man had offered as much praise as he was likely to dispense this side of Christmas, so Isabella sat back and waited for him to take the conversation forward.
“Always assuming,” Braithwaite began, “that the tape is up to snuff … kosher, that is … ” He could see the puzzlement on her face. “Sorry. I mean, if it’s the real thing. Then how do you think we should proceed? What does Bramall think?”
Isabella reached into a cheap handbag she had been given by one of the secretaries at the Lisbon embassy. “He gave me this letter for you.”
”Aah, right.”
“But I know that he thinks he and I should go to France.”
“Does he now?”
“Yes. It is obvious why he should go. But I speak French, my father works for Serrano and I have met many of the existing Government, including the Caudillo. If the French in Vichy don’t believe what Charles is telling them, maybe they are believing me.”
The Yorkshireman sniffed. “Ay
e,” he said, “an interesting idea. But I’ll need time to think.” He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing to slits. He looked as if he was about to say something particularly caustic when he was interrupted by a knock at the door.
“Enter!”
A man of about 50, no more than five-feet-eight, with wire-rimmed glasses and a fringe of black hair surrounding a domed head, walked into the office. He wore a white lab coat over a wrinkled grey suit, like a doctor.
“So, Mr Braithwaite, what have you got for us this time?” he said. His accent was soft, but his eyes were hard, and he didn’t look the sort of man who would be easily impressed.
“This,” said Braithwaite, pushing the tape towards him.
The boffin’s eyes lit up. “Oh, well now, that is interesting.”
“Recognise it, do you?”
“I haven’t seen one of those since, when would it have been? … 1935, Berlin Radio Fair, if I’m not mistaken. AEG made the recorder; I.G. Farben and BASF came up with the tape to go with it. An amazing breakthrough. Quite extraordinary. Plastic tape, light as a feather and easy to use – reproduction like nothing you’d find this side of the Channel. Wait a minute … don’t tell me. The Magnetophon – that was the name of the machine. Am I right?”
Isabella nodded. She had taken an instant dislike to Caxton.
“Oh yes, I remember it now. We were keen to get hold of one. I mean, you can imagine. But then bloody Himmler stepped in and halted exports. No more than two or three ever got out. And, if you’re wondering – no, I don’t have one. I doubt there’s one anywhere in the UK.”
Shifting his glasses up to the top of his head, he picked up the reel and unspooled a length of the tape. He was like a wine buff with a rare and ancient vintage. “Oh Lord, yes,” he said, running his finger and thumb lovingly along the sides, “this is the genuine article. I read somewhere – Rundfunk Magazine, it must’ve been – they’d got high frequency biasing now. But of course you couldn’t tell just by looking.” He sniffed at it. “Ferric oxide coating. That’d give you a better dynamic width. Tape no more than – what? – 3 millimetres? I have to tell you, Mr B, I never thought I’d see the like of this again – not until Jerry came marching down Whitehall.”
“Yes,” said Braithwaite, doing his best to be patient. Boffins tended to get his goat. “No doubt. The thing is, can you play it?”
Caxton shot him a puzzled look. “Play it?”
“Yes.”
“On what?”
The Yorkshireman sighed. “You seem to know all about it. You’re our top man in the field. Is it really beyond your wit to come up with something that will enable us to hear what’s on this tape and maybe go on to win the bloody war?”
Caxton grimaced, revealing several blackened teeth. “Mr B,” he said. “I think maybe you should come downstairs with me. Your friend, too, if she’d like. You never know, you might learn something – and that’d be a first.”
Once again, Braithwaite ignored the barb.
As they made their way down the lino-covered back steps, smelling of disinfectant and tobacco, Isabella thought about Bramall, still up against the Germans, only this time in Lisbon, and wondered what was going to happen to him. He had been relieved when Croft said she should go to London on the next flying boat, leaving just hours after her arrival. It got her out of danger, he said, which was the most important thing. Then he had hugged her and kissed her on the forehead before turning away, embarrassed. When she got to London she should go to the pub, he called out to her, and try a glass of English beer.
The steps took them all the way down to the basement. A warehouse and research lab, on two floors, had been built out the back. Caxton pressed a buzzer on a large metal door and a military policeman peered out through the thick glass. He nodded and turned a key. “Your ID, please, gentlemen … and lady”
Braithwaite showed his top-level pass. “And I can vouch for Miss Ortega here,” he said.
“Very good, sir. If you’d care to step through.”
The room into which they moved was about 36 feet across and maybe a hundred feet long. There were benches down one side, at which men in white coats – the “backroom boys” – were busy with various complicated bits of machinery. Desks occupied the middle space. A separate group of men, and two women, were bent over adding machines and slide rules, next to a contraption contained in what looked like an oil drum that Caxton identified as a “computation machine.” He waited a second, like a sideshow impresario, then said, “And over here is what we’ve come to see.”
Isabella stared. Near the end of the room where they were standing, fixed to spools set into the wall, were two enormous metal reels, each nearly a metre across. Between them, via a series of wheels and springs, ran a ribbon of shiny metal foil, maybe 5cms wide. A technician, wearing goggles, was welding two lengths of foil together. The sparks were flying.
“What is it?” Isabella asked.
Caxton grinned. “The Marconi-Stille recorder. Britain’s answer to the Magnetophon.”
Isabella blinked in astonishment; Braithwaite stared at it with suspicion.
“See those reels?” said Caxton with relish. “A full one weighs 35 kilograms. It’s got over three kilometres of steel foil wound onto it, enough for half an hour’s recording – and it takes two men just to mount it. The foil moves past the recording and reproduction heads at one and a half metres a second. Bloody dangerous, take it from me. Like having a cutthroat razor blade flashing past your wrist. If it’s not loaded right, or it snaps, it can take your hand off.”
“Bang up to date, then,” said Braithwaite. “Just what we’re looking for.” He inclined his head in the direction of the welder, who looked as if he had just stepped out of a shipyard. “So what’s he up to, then? Broken, is it?”
“Broken? Lord, no. It’s working perfectly. He’s the editor.”
“What? You mean if you want to add something, or take something out, you need protective clothing?”
“Now you’re getting it. If he gets the weld wrong, it’ll bugger the heads. And you want me to play your little bit of plastic tape on this? You might as well ask me to build a radar scanner small enough to fit on an aircraft.”
The seeming impossibility of the task seemed to gratify the little man.
Isabella remembered Charles’s description of the Magnetophon sitting snugly in the corner of Hasselfeldt’s office. It seemed like something from another world. Caxton, at the same time, reminded her of Dr Frankenstein’s assistant in an old Boris Karloff monster movie she had seen in Buenos Aires. She almost expected him to wind back an opening in the ceiling and wait for an electrical storm to breath life into his equipment.
Back upstairs, the boffin accepted a cup of tea, sweetened with a spoonful of sugar from the Yorkshireman’s secret supply, obviously brought with him from Hanslope.
“Now listen to me, Caxton,” Braithwaite said, “what’s on this tape isn’t magic, it’s technical. Bloody Germans were able to invent it; you can at least fathom how it works. If it’s money you need – more space, more people – just say. But whatever happens, a week from now – two at most – I want to know what’s on this tape, and no nonsense about welders neither.”
The little man made a face. “You’re asking a hell of a lot, Mr B,” he said. “I’m going to have to find if there’s anyone else around went to Berlin and what they picked up, if anything.”
“Maybe I can help,” said Isabella.
“You?” said Caxton, his vice dripping contempt. “And what would you know?”
“More than you, I think.” She had had enough of Caxton and reached for the Leica, which she had earlier placed on Braithwaite’s desk. “Charles has already given you the tape. But he has pictures also – detailed photographs All you have to do is develop the film that is here in the camera and make prints.
But he told me that the machine he saw was approximately one metre in length, about 90 centimetres across and maybe 60 centimetres deep. It has valves – big ones – and the tape runs through a central slot with guide wheels the size of a dedal … oh, what is that?”
“A thimble,” Braithwaite volunteered.
“Yes, a thimble. Thank you. These thimbles, they are made of rubber or some kind of plastic. They stretch the tape, but not too tight, Charles says. Not too much tension. I moved a lot slower – spooled was the word he used – than one and a half metres a second. Charles says more like three or four centimetres. So what do you think, Mr Caxton. Is that of use to you, or are you preferring to wait five years and read about it in Rundfunk magazine?”
As she finished speaking, she looked round and caught Braithwaite’s eye. The old man was actually smiling. “There is something else I should tell you,” she said, reaching into the metal box. “There is a spare tape which Charles took also. He does not know what is on it, but he says maybe you can use it to practise with.”
Braithwaite accepted the spare tape and handed it to Caxton still in its casing. It was clear that he had taken note of everything Isabella said, but he refused to acknowledge as much, turning instead to Braithwaite, once again baring his teeth. “I think you’d better leave this with me,” he said. “I’m not promising anything, but I’ll do my best. Thing is, though, I think I’ll have to pay a visit to Bletchley, see it there’s anyone on their team who might possibly help.”
Bletchley was the Government’s top-secret code-breaking, communications and high technology information centre, not far from Hanslope. “Be my guest,” said Braithwaite. He jerked his index finger repeatedly against the scientist’s stomach, tap-tap-tap, like a woodpecker’s beak. “Only don’t, for Christ’s sake, fuck up. Do you hear me? Don’t let me down. What you’ve got there is precious material. Gold dust. Look after it.”