Between Silk and Cyanide

by Leo Marks

  Eagerly, gratefully, I asked what it meant. Each waited for the other to define it.

  ‘It’s a state of disgrace which you must discover for yourself.’ Heffer.

  ‘If he’s here long enough.’ Dansey.

  ‘Which I doubt.’ Owen.

  I realised that it meant something different to each of them, a sign of its reality. I asked whom they considered to be ‘SOE-minded’, present company excepted, of course.

  Each waited for the other to commit himself. Nobody would.

  I suggested some candidates.

  ‘Hambro?’

  ‘If he can forget he’s a gentleman.’ Heffer.

  ‘Gubbins?’

  ‘If he can forget he’s a soldier.’ Dansey.

  ‘Tommy?’

  ‘If he can forget the Free French.’ Owen.

  ‘Colonel Ozanne?’

  ‘I prefer to forget him altogether.’ Heffer.

  He then rose by inches from his chair. ‘It wasn’t very SOE-minded of you to leave that word on the blackboard,’ he said.

  He waited for my mouth to reach half-mast. ‘Before you took for granted Ozanne wouldn’t know what it meant you should have found out where he played golf on Sundays.’

  He told me the name of the club – and all was clear. I’d walked the course with Father and knew that the eighteenth hole was circumcision.

  ‘Heff … you mean he went to the trouble of anagramming it out?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I did.’

  He enjoyed his exit lines almost as much as he did his exits.

  *

  ‘SM’ (‘SOE-mindedness’, not sado-masochism, though they might be synonymous) was a cruel dish to set before a starving man. It might explain why SOE was sending missions to Mihailovic and Tito in Yugoslavia when the two leaders were virtually at civil war, why we were backing Communists and anti-Communists in Greece, why there was so little co-operation between the rival French sections that their agents had shot each other up in the dark after mistaking each other for Germans, and why the Dutch weren’t concerned about incorrect security checks. It might even explain what a man like Ozanne was doing in SOE.

  I wondered how to apply ‘SM’ to the Signals Gauleiter, and decided to make a start by taking his orders literally. Since Ozanne insisted that agents should have poem-codes, I would give them poem-codes – not one but dozens! Clusters of poems printed on soluble paper could be issued to each agent. They would be instructed by London to switch from one poem to another at the first sign of their traffic becoming overloaded. Nor must they attempt to memorise the poems. They must be destroyed as soon as they were finished with. I checked with the stationery department that the printing was within their competence and they foresaw no problems. I would make a start with the Grouse. The principle could then be applied to other agents and since it conformed strictly with Ozanne’s coding convictions, I would not waste his time by mentioning it to him.

  The concept was in every way the WOK’s poor relation but it was a start. If this were a form of ‘SM’, it didn’t hurt at all.

  Expecting my successor at any moment, I settled down to what might be my last indecipherable from Bodington, which was based (of course) on a piece by Poe.

  He’d returned from the field since using ‘The Raven’, had gone back to France with Peter Churchill – and his latest Poe choice was ‘Annabel Lee’:

  I was a child and she was a child,

  In this kingdom by the sea;

  But we loved with a love that was more than love

  I and my Annabel Lee

  With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

  Coveted her and me.

  And neither the angels in heaven above

  Nor the demons down under the sea

  Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

  I was determined to dissever Bodington’s soul next time we met if this indecipherable was as tough as his last.

  The five words he’d chosen were: ‘child’, ‘under’, ‘I’, ‘can’, ‘heaven’. I knew that spelling was Bodington’s weakness, possibly due to his peacetime stint as Paris correspondent of the Daily Express – and rapidly discovered that his version of heaven was ‘heavan’, and hoped he’d get to both one day.

  I phoned Buckmaster to tell him the message was out. To my astonishment he appeared in person a few minutes later. First Hutchison, now Buckmaster – it was like meeting the stars of a play which was still being written.

  Buckmaster and I knew each other by sight and had shaken hands on the telephone. I’d met him once at Chiltern Court under unfortunate circumstances.

  I’d been briefing a wireless operator named Alec Rabinovitch, a vast young man of Russian-Egyptian origin who could (and did) swear in four languages. We both knew at a glance that we shared the Esperanto of being Jewish. From the way he clenched his huge fists with the thumbs protecting his fingers, and from his ethnic background, I suspected that he’d done some boxing and, between exercises (he was a good coder), taxed him with it. It was the end of the coding session. I’d boxed for St Paul’s in the days when self was the only thing worth protecting and we discovered a mutual admiration for the greatest boxer (and gentleman) our sport had yet produced, Joe Louis. I was very disappointed that Rabinovitch knew that Louis’s real name was Barrow. I thought only Joe and I did. My pupil and I then had a serious disagreement. He was convinced that the Brown Bomber’s best punch was a short right to the head whereas I knew for positive fact that it was a left jab to the chin. To put it beyond doubt, Rabinovitch swung his giant fist at my jaw and pulled it up a microdot away just as Buckmaster walked in. Buckmaster expressed the hope that Rabinovitch was here for coding practice and not unarmed combat and asked to see him as soon as we’d finished.

  Rabinovitch was now shadow-boxing in France with great success (and at great risk) as the wireless operator for Peter Churchill’s Spindle group. And here was Buckmaster, himself no stranger to fifteen-rounders with the RF section, looking at me thoughtfully. I was used to being thoroughly towelled down in the ring between rounds but not by blue eyes of such extraordinary penetration.

  I didn’t begin to understand the politics he was obliged to play to compete with de Gaulle and had no desire to. But I’d noticed that no matter how late I phoned to tell him that an indecipherable was broken, he was always waiting in his office, and his first concern was for the safety of the agent. Not all country-section directors shared that attitude. To some of them, agents in the field were heads to be counted, a tally they could show CD. But Maurice Buckmaster was a family man.

  He thanked me for breaking Bodington’s indecipherable but he’d already done that on the telephone and Buckmaster never said anything twice. RF complained that he never said anything once. I suspected he’d come for some other reason.

  ‘How reliable are our security checks?’ he asked sharply.

  He was the first country-section head to ask that question. It deserved to be answered with the same directness.

  ‘They’re no more than a gesture to give the agents confidence.’ I told him why in some detail.

  ‘Can they ever be relied upon?’

  I told him that if an agent was caught before he was sent any messages he could get away with giving them the wrong security check because they’d have no back traffic to compare it with. But not otherwise.

  ‘What’s being done about it?’

  ‘We’re working on a wholly new concept of agents’ codes.’

  He nodded. He understood the battles to get anything changed in SOE. ‘Can’t anything be done in the meantime?’

  I told him that as long as the poem-code was in use there were only two things the country sections could do: a) they should ask their agents personal questions to which they alone would know the answers, and b) they should use prearranged phrases in their messages to which the agents must reply in a prearranged way. I warned him that these phrases must be used only once in
case the agent’s traffic was being read.

  ‘We already do something of the sort. I’ll make sure it’s done on a regular basis.’

  ‘Colonel Buckmaster’ – he’d just been promoted – ‘is there anyone in particular you’re worried about?’

  A microdot of hesitation. ‘It was a general question. I’ll consult you if I am.’

  I knew that part of Peter Churchill’s and Bodington’s mission was to check up on the security of a circuit run by Carte (André Girard), which was causing F-section great concern. That night I went through the back traffic of all the F section agents. It contained the usual mixture of Morse mutilation, wrong checks, right checks, no checks. If I were Buckmaster, I’d be worried about all of them and I was convinced that he was.

  I wondered why he and the Free French refused to pool their anxieties.

  It was time to say goodbye to the Grouse. They were on their final standby and were to parachute into Norway no matter what the weather.

  I’d already phoned Wilson to discuss the clusters of poems on soluble paper which I wanted to give them. His reply was explosive, even by his standards: ‘I’ve told you they’ll be passing hardly any traffic. They’re to use the poems they’ve learned and nothing else. Is that clear? Or do you want me to confirm it to Ozanne?’

  I told him that would not be necessary.

  ‘Very well then. Just make certain they send no indecipherables. Thank you.’

  This time he wasn’t waiting at Chiltern Court to greet me. Halfway down the corridor I could hear the Grouse laughing. They stopped as soon as I entered the room. An only child worries more than most about laughter stopping and I asked if I could share the joke. They showed me a poem in Norwegian and English contributed by Wilson. It was untranslatable in both languages.

  I took each of them to one side to discuss their security checks and run through their poems with them. The one thing the Grouse couldn’t share was their coding conventions.

  The session was only a formality, but towards the end they produced another example of their silent Morse. A feeling more than a look seemed to pass between Poulson, Helberg and Kjelstrup. Poulson then said they had to leave to have some special skis fitted, but Haugland asked if he could stay behind to talk to me – his skis had already been fitted.

  Since it was time to say goodbye to his companions and I didn’t know the Norwegian for merde alors, I had to rely on my handshake to say it for me. From their slight looks of surprise the message was received and understood.

  I wondered what Haugland wanted to talk about. This extraordinary man, as slender as the steel skis which he said had been fitted, foresaw the time when he’d have to brief agents in the field on their coding – Norwegian patriots who hadn’t his good fortune to be brought to London for training. He wanted to make absolutely certain that he’d absorbed everything I’d tried to teach him. I was to be allowed my one-to-one briefing after all.

  I was sure that, if Haugland encoded a message as he jumped from his aeroplane, he’d have double-checked it by the time he reached ground, but I took him through the entire process from beginning to end.

  I was also sure that his need to see something new was almost as great as mine to provide it so I opened my briefcase, which I’d had the foresight not to lock, and produced a mocked-up version of a WOK. He was only the second agent to have seen one (Tommy was the first) and, with a great deal of practice, spread over a great many years, I might conceivably handle a WOK half as well as Haugland did.

  He asked a little shyly when these ‘worked-out codes keys’ would be ready, and I promised that it would be soon, and that they’d be printed on silk. I knew then that somehow I was going to make it happen. ‘This would be very good code for us,’ he said quietly, and listened patiently while I stressed the importance of destroying the keys as soon as they’d been used.

  He then spent another half an hour making sure he understood the security checks.

  We shook hands until we nearly exchanged them and I walked to the door.

  ‘Mr Marks …’

  I turned back.

  He made scissors of his fingers – and carefully went through the motions of cutting his silk.

  EIGHT

  The Plumber and His Mate

  Many of Baker Street’s major crises occurred long after those equipped to deal with them had gone home and it was a strictly enforced rule that everyone of officer status (including civilians) had to be available at short notice to act as night duty officers. The only exceptions to this rule were members of the Executive Council, which I had not yet been invited to join.

  If an NDO were unfortunate enough to be given an entire building to look after, he had to sit in a minute office from six in the evening till eight the next morning with a Top Secret list of private telephone numbers in front of him, a camp bed behind him and potential chaos all round him. In emergencies he had authority to contact anyone from CD downwards, but it was tacitly agreed that anything short of calamity could wait until morning. The definition of calamity was a matter for the NDO. But his duties were not wholly sedentary.

  Escorted by an armed escort, he had to inspect every office in the building to ensure that the desks and safes were securely locked and that all documents had been put away. He had also to retrieve any scraps of paper left lying around which should have been disposed of in the confidential waste. He had strict orders to put these unburied treasures in a special satchel and deliver them to the security department when he handed in his report. All breaches of security, however small, had to be specified in this report with the names of the culprits, irrespective of rank.

  Despite my imminent dismissal, or perhaps because of it, I was given two days’ notice to act as night duty officer for Michael House. It was an ominous prospect for the building and me.

  *

  My parents did not need an NDO for the subversive activities they were in the habit of conducting from their Park West base. Every night, including Sundays, they engaged in a series of clandestine operations which were half black comedy and wholly black market, and they conducted their drops and pick-ups with a security-mindedness which outdid C’s and SOE’s combined.

  Since my impossible pair were in the habit of boasting of their only child’s slightest achievement, I’d convinced them that I worked at the Marylebone branch of the Ministry of Labour and National Service. Anxious that I should stay there, they loaded me up every day with enough illicit provisions to start a four-star hotel, which I was ordered to distribute to colleagues in need. Amongst those qualifying for relief – and getting it – were the main-line coders, the coders of Grendon, Dansey, Heffer and Owen, and a growing number of country-section officers who’d heard that the code department at teatime had a direct line to the Almighty. I gave credit for the largesse to my revered Uncle Simon, whose premises I was shortly going to safeguard.

  I reported to the security department at precisely six o’clock for a briefing on an NDO’s duties. It proved to be an object lesson in non-communication. The captain who instructed me was so full of himself that I spent the entire session trying to determine the reason for his self-esteem and failed to take in a single word of his instructions, except for ‘Any questions? Right. Get on with it.’

  I’d been assured by Owen that my armed escort would ‘know the drill backwards’ and would give me whatever guidance I needed. A young corporal, fully equipped for a march on Berlin, was waiting for me outside the NDO’s office. An instruction seemed to be called for. ‘At ease?’ I suggested.

  He substituted one hostile stance for another and mounted guard while I went into the NDO’s office to assume control of my building.

  The NDO’s desk was so small, it was like keeping vigil on a splinter. The camp bed creaked with the disturbed nights of my countless predecessors. I put my lovingly wrapped dinner on it. The only redeeming feature anywhere was a poster on the wall of Churchill, the nation’s NDO.

  I phoned Grendon to see if there were
any indecipherables. They’d just broken one from Julien (Isidore Newman, one of Buckmaster’s best operators) after eleven hundred attempts. I congratulated them, then identified myself to the Michael House switchboard and announced that the NDO’s patrol was about to begin.

  ‘Have the rules changed, sir?’ she asked. ‘They don’t usually start till twenty hundred hours.’

  ‘My watch must be fast. Thank you.’

  I wondered if I should ask the corporal to come in and sit down but was uncomfortable in the presence of his artillery.

  The phone rang. It was someone anxious to warn me that Hitler had just been seen parachuting in the direction of Baker Street. I thanked Tommy for the information and invited him to call in later for a cigar. He said he was going home early.

  I believed that home to Tommy was a fair-haired WAAF called Barbara. I’d twice glimpsed them walking down Baker Street, which they brightened considerably. He was trying to get her a job in Duke Street and undoubtedly would. His own job prospects (the only one he wanted was in the field) were in the balance. His mission to France with Passy was still in the planning stage so Tommy had improvised one of his own. Captain Molyneux (his former employer) kept a powerful motor yacht in Monte Carlo and Tommy proposed to hijack it, take it to Gibraltar and hand it over to the navy, who badly needed small craft of this class. Tommy was to be infiltrated by felucca or dropped in by Lysander. The mission had been officially sanctioned by SOE and welcomed by the navy. Tommy had been given the code name Sea-Horse. I hoped he’d have better stables for the night than I had.

  The phone rang again. I answered it with relish: ‘This is an official announcement. If Hitler’s been sighted in the Norgeby House bog he can bloody well stay there.’

  Unfortunately it wasn’t Tommy this time. It was Hutchison with an enquiry about one of his messages. I told him what he needed to know.

  ‘That’s Marks, isn’t it?’

  I was obliged to confirm that it was.

  ‘I might look in and see you.’