by Leo Marks
Hogg couldn’t quite hide a smile at these nautical disclosures and assured me that he’d taken my point that agents must get off the air in the shortest possible time. But he was afraid that letter pads were unlikely to be the answer.
‘Why not, Commander?’
I was disconcerted by his softly spoken reply. ‘I think you’d better see one.’
He lifted the receiver, issued a quiet instruction and asked if I’d like some tea. Scarcely able to breathe, let alone swallow, I declined with thanks.
A door which I hadn’t noticed because it was right in front of me opened almost immediately and his Muriel (if there were another such) brought in the first letter one-time pad I’d seen. It was accompanied by a large substitution square.
She put them in front of him, gave me the kind of encouraging smile Muriel bestowed on my long-suffering visitors and left us alone.
The letter pad was the most important person in the room. The commander watched me while I paid my respects to it. ‘It won’t bite you if you pick it up,’ he said encouragingly.
But it did.
Home Station to Out was a Caxton first edition, and Outstation to Home was the Gutenberg Bible.
‘My God, Commander, they’re beautifully produced.’
That was as close to an understatement as I had ever come. The letters were clear and would be easy to read at half their present size.
I was already back in Baker Street giving my first LOP briefing and wished the commander would stop asking questions.
‘I take it you wouldn’t issue them to agents just as they are?’
I shook my head firmly.
‘You’d photograph them down and have them reproduced on silk?’
On silk myself, I hardly bothered to nod.
‘Then tell me, Marks … where do you propose to get all the silk? And who’s going to undertake all that photography? – you must have better sources than I have …’
Oxford’s first bomb had just been exploded.
The shock waves forced me to realise that I hadn’t done my homework. He’d been expecting me to provide him with details of SOE’s production facilities and not my opinion of the merits of his codes. But what could I say to him?
Joan Dodd’s enthusiasm and Elder Wills’s inventiveness hardly constituted a production programme, and I’d made no attempt to approach anyone else.
Like an amateur entrepreneur, I’d proceeded on the precarious premise that what an agent needs an agent must have, and that ways would be found to provide it.
The commander knew that he’d landed on target and that this was the moment to demolish it completely. ‘Don’t you realise how many other organisations with greater priority than SOE also need silk? Have you people never heard of parachutes? Has no one told you that there’s an acute shortage of silk – and of printing facilities – and of skilled photographers?’
I mumbled something about being able to manage with sensitised paper.
‘I suppose you’re not aware that there’s an acute shortage of paper as well?’
And of goodwill to SOE, you supercilious bastard.
‘It seems to me you’ve done no homework whatever and wasted a lot of people’s time.’
I looked him in the eye and grudgingly recognised the tiny tic of extreme tiredness. ‘Commander, I think there’s something you should see.’
I twiddled the knobs on my briefcase (I still didn’t know how to open it) and finally produced SOE’s version of a letter one-time pad. But in my eagerness to show him what our technicians could produce, I allowed my briefcase to spill out the remainder of its Top Secret contents. They consisted of six bananas, a selection of Mother’s sandwiches and a contraceptive in a plastic container.
Although a bunch of bananas was one of England’s rarest sights, the commander’s expression as he gazed at the contraceptive was rarer still, and I hastily explained that it had arrived on my desk earlier that morning with a note from the head of special devices suggesting that ‘a contraceptive made of local rubber would be excellent camouflage for a microfilmed code’.
The now rigid commander murmured ‘Dear God’ and once again received no noticeable response. He then gave his considered opinion of Elder Wills’s special device. It was an example of inventiveness for the sake of it, had no practical application to clandestine communications as he understood them and was a waste of manpower and material – amateurishness at its worst.
Quite wrong. Out of all this amateurishness came Elder Wills’s magic.
The commander’s hand strayed towards the buzzer.
I pushed the home-made pad towards him.
He glanced at it perfunctorily, realised what it was and started examining it with growing interest.
I slid the contraceptive back into my briefcase, as I had no immediate use for it.
The commander looked at me sharply. ‘Where did you get this pad?’
I owned up to my fantasy that I’d invented the system and told him that this mocked-up pad was the product of our service departments.
‘How long did it take them?’
I admitted that it had taken a fortnight, including Sundays.
‘But it’s only three pages long. Still, it’s a good effort considering it’s not machine-made – but I doubt if these letters are truly random.’
They were as random as three bored FANY counter-shufflers could make them.
‘Now then, Marks …’ His next volley of questions, his deadliest yet, concerned the statistics I should have prepared.
How many letter pads would be needed over the next few months …? What were their dimensions …? How much silk would be required …? How much paper …? Had I told the service departments the size of the commitment they would be faced with …? Did I know it myself …? Had I worked out my timescale …? Had I made allowances for the service departments’ mistakes – they didn’t always get things right the first time … ! And had I …? And had I …? And had I …?
The answer to everything was that I hadn’t.
He said that he often reminded his own young people that enthusiasm was no substitute for homework – and this was particularly true in my case if I wanted letter pads for agents.
He glanced at his watch, and I stood up at once. ‘Thanks for your advice, Commander, I promise it won’t be wasted. And I apologise for coming to you prematurely. Do I need that pass to get out?’
He was examining our letter pad again and didn’t seem to hear me. He looked up and saw me standing there with my hand out. ‘Sit down and listen to me.’
I was back in place before he could blink.
‘We simply can’t afford to waste a single letter pad. Nor can we afford to change their format to suit SOE. But I’ll tell you what I am prepared to do … Tomorrow I’m sending figure pads to Dansey and I’ll include some letter pads with ’em – use them sensibly. Show them only to those people who might be able to reproduce them – never rely on their imagination; they must see what you’re talking about – and make sure they’re security-vetted. Contact me at once if you have any success – and I’ll see what I can do. Will that be a help to you?’
‘More than that, Commander.’
‘Very well then, we’ll leave it at that.’ He stood up and returned the pass to me. ‘I doubt if you’ve got a hope in hell’s chance of getting sufficient silk – but good luck to you.’
He shook my hand, signed my pass, and a few lifetimes later Marks with a ‘k’ and his briefcase with a condom landed in Baker Street to start a crusade.
THIRTY-TWO
Pilgrim’s Progress
The difficulties of supplying silk codes to all our Signals dependencies were greater than even Hogg had foreseen.
The poem-code had become a worldwide malignancy, and to send WOKs and LOPs to Cairo, India and Burma – whose agents needed them just as badly as their European counterparts – enough silk would be needed for at least forty million code groups.
It was my job to find it,
and not for the first time since joining SOE I wished that there were some substance in the most enduring of all myths: that the chosen people have direct access to everything in short supply with the possible exception of tolerance. As it was I had no ideas, no contacts and no option but to join the long queue of mendicants waiting for SOE’s Supply directorate to live up to its job description.
I was luckier than most because my rejection was immediate. None of the supply departments (there were four main ones) could undertake a commitment of this size, even if its priority was as high as I maintained. Nor did they know of anyone who could.
Once again I turned to Joan Dodd, whose official position as head of the stationery department was the biggest misnomer in Baker Street. But this time she called in the head of her directorate, Major Ince, to help me get my thinking right. As they saw it, the solution to massproducing silk codes, each of which had to be different, lay in a combination of printing and photography, and much would depend on the inventiveness of the technicians involved.
They then produced a list of six printing firms and as many photographers, but warned me that they were already ‘working their balls off’. Ince, an expert photographer himself, offered to help out to a limited extent but couldn’t possibly accept the entire commitment. Nor must I count on Elder Wills, who turned down nothing that interested him but couldn’t always deliver.
But these were minor problems compared to the shortage of silk. He knew of only two people in Baker Street with sufficient clout to obtain it in large quantities, and my forebodings escalated like SOE’s traffic when he disclosed their names: George Courtauld and Tommy Davies, otherwise known as the ‘hard men’.
He warned me that if I were to have the slightest chance of success with them, there was one obstacle I must first overcome. It would be useless to approach them for even a yard of silk unless I could satisfy them that the printing and photographic problems had already been solved. But the printers and photographers wouldn’t even consider the commitment unless they were assured that the silk was available.
He described it as a ‘chicken and egg situation’, and it was clear that I was the one about to get laid.
My campaign-managers agreed to arrange all my appointments and ‘put in a word or two’ before I arrived, but warned me that I mustn’t blow SOE’s cover by referring to agents. They also warned me that most commercial firms didn’t consider the Inter Services Research Bureau (one of SOE’s cover names) to be much of a calling card – ‘so don’t be disappointed if they turn you down flat’.
They picked up their telephones and began mass-producing my appointments before I’d even reached the door.
Before taking off to meet my first printers I authorised a Belgian agent in training to use the Twenty-Third Psalm as his poem-code – he was convinced it would bring him good luck.*
I then picked up my rod and my staff (a WOK and a LOP) to comfort me, and trusting that the Lord would be my shepherd and that the agents I must not mention would not want, set out on my pilgrimage.
No one in the first five firms I visited actually said, ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ – a non-combatant’s favourite question – but they were clearly indignant that anyone should consider that they weren’t fully employed. None of them could undertake any further printing for at least three months, and the most I could extract from them was an invitation to try again later. I thanked them on behalf of Caxton and Gutenberg, whom they seemed to think were directors of ISRB.
The last firm on my list was in the heart of the City of London, assuming that it had one.
I was warmly received by two elderly brothers (the joint proprietors) who thought that ISRB was a liaison department with the War Office. They examined a WOK with great interest and asked several technical questions which Ince had primed me to answer. But when I told them of the quantities we’d require they turned me down flat as they’d just taken on ‘a major job for another branch of the war effort’.
Seeing my disappointment, and apparently disturbed by it, they suggested I should try two other printers – ‘rivals of ours but excellent just the same’ – and took the trouble to give me their addresses and phone numbers. They then insisted that I had some tea.
There was something about this gentle and courteous couple which was strangely evocative, but I couldn’t pinpoint it until I went through the familiar motions of replacing the WOK in my briefcase.
They’d printed several of Marks & Co.’s catalogues.
I said that my father sent his best wishes to them, told them who he was, and the premises were suddenly floodlit.
They took it in turns to ask to be remembered to him, and to Mr Cohen, and to Mr Doel, and to Mr Plummer – ‘such nice people to deal with and such a beautiful shop’.
After a brief conference, which they conducted in undertones, they asked if they could borrow the samples to show to their foreman.
‘You needn’t tell us what it’s for, it’s better we don’t know,’ said the saint with slightly more hair.
‘Much better,’ agreed his brother. ‘You can meet our foreman if you like; he’s only next door.’
I was certain that they’d prefer to talk to him alone, and handed over the WOK, which was a difficult operation as my fingers were crossed.
Alone in their office, I wished I’d told them that the printer’s ink in their veins could be turned into life’s blood for SOE’s agents. I recited the Twenty-Third Psalm, and a few other biblical quotations agents had selected, until the brothers strode back.
One look at their smiling faces and I knew we’d found a home. They gleefully informed me that six more printers would be joining them in two weeks’ time, and they’d be able to do all our printing if we still wanted them to.
I didn’t know which to thank first – the brothers, the Bible or 84.
But there was a snag. They’d have enough silk to start the job, but when their reserves ran out, they’d have to ask ISRB to help them.
I assured them that there’d be no problem, that Ince would immediately confirm the commitment and their work would be put to good use.
But they were far more concerned with the damage Hitler might do to ‘those beautiful books in 84’.
The next stage in the code safari was finding photographers to reproduce LOPs, but the six firms I visited proved to have one thing in common: an anxiety to get rid of me as quickly as possible. Their responses were wholly negative, and between the lot of them they couldn’t have produced a passport photograph till the end of ’43.
I asked Ince to suggest another source.
He avoided looking at me, a luxury which he hadn’t yet allowed himself, and for the first time seemed to be holding something back. Goaded by Joan Dodd, he finally admitted that he had a ‘special relationship’ with an RAF photographic unit, which had helped him out from time to time and which he knew had some silk in reserve. But if they were asked to take on a commitment of this size it would have to go through official channels, and he wanted his name to be kept right out of it.
I promised to think up a cover story which wouldn’t involve him if he’d give me the details.
It took all Joan Dodd’s skill to persuade him to part with them, and I wondered what she’d have to do in return.
The photographic unit was only a few spools away from the Houses of Parliament but had a view of St James’s Park as compensation. A young squadron leader rose from his cockpit in a small office, taxied towards me with outstretched hand and said that Air Commodore Boyle’s secretary ‘made it sound very urgent’.
It hadn’t been easy persuading Muriel to make the call.
He waited until I was seated, then asked in a confidential whisper if I knew anyone in ISRB called Ince.
After due consideration I replied that I had met a major of that name but wasn’t quite sure what department he was in, which appeared to satisfy him.
His desk was bare except for a notebook and a telephone, and there was no indica
tion that any work was done in this office – a sure sign that a great deal was.
I realised that it was time I added to it.
Dumping six LOPs on to his desk, I asked if he could photograph the whole lot on to silk within the next three days. Before he could react, I informed him that we were hoping he’d photograph far larger quantities for us on a regular basis if this first batch turned out satisfactorily.
For a moment I thought he was going to air-lift me out of the window, and St James’s wasn’t my favourite park. It was too full of itself to need people.
There was a precarious pause.
Is it wishful thinking on my part or is he trying to conceal a hint of amusement?
‘Let’s have a look-see,’ he finally said.
He examined the LOPs through the private lens every skilled photographer carries in his head. He then casually asked what size we’d require them to be (a hopeful sign?) and I gave him the dimensions Ince had worked out for me.
He then stared out of the window, but his look-see was now directed within, and I knew that his decision was still in the balance. I was certain that he realised it was codes he’d been examining and decided to go as far as I could. ‘They have to be used in rather trying circumstances, Squadron Leader.’
He turned round, and though I didn’t mean to insult him I thought I detected a kindred spirit. ‘I imagined they served a special purpose. And I don’t suppose there are many photographers who can take the job on?’
‘There aren’t any.’
He looked at me as if I were an aircraft trying to limp home, then glanced at the notepad on his desk. ‘We can cope with this first batch, but not in three days. We’d need a week from tomorrow to do the job properly.’
The limping aircraft tried to stutter its thanks.
‘Now, about the rest,’ he said, cutting me short. ‘What quantities?’
‘Two hundred a month.’
‘That’s a hell of a lot.’ He made some rapid calculations on his notepad and frowned at the result, unaware that he’d been using a heart as his pencil.