by Leo Marks
On 10 July N section agreed that he could travel by sea, but urged him to take every possible precaution and to send London full details of his departure.
Two days later he sent a message via Netball that he was leaving the mouth of the Schelde on the midnight high tide and would head for Broadstairs. His lifeboat was capable of doing 7 knots in calm water, was painted grey and would show three flags. He estimated that it would reach Broadstairs the following afternoon.
At Gubbins’s instigation planes of Fighter Command patrolled the mouth of the Schelde at high tide, and their controller reported that although visibility was excellent no craft of any kind had been spotted. Reconnaissance continued throughout the day and naval patrols were called in, but there was still no sign of a seagoing lifeboat.
On 15 July Mangold sent a message via Netball that Kale had left the mouth of the river at high tide on the night of the 14th–15th.
Fighter Command again sent out patrols but were unable to find any trace of the lifeboat.
On the 17th all searches for Kale were abandoned.
On 18 July Netball sent a message which was the first of its kind to pass through the code room. I was convinced it was personal from him to me.
The message stated that Mangold had heard nothing from London and was anxious to know if Kale had arrived safely, a persuasive enough text.
But Giskes had made one of his rare mistakes: the message was only eighty letters long.
I’d spent two and a half hours briefing Netball and knew the eyes, nose and broken teeth of his coding. He would never send a message with less than 150 letters in it unless he were trying to tell London he was caught.
I’d taken particular care with him because he was to carry a sixmonths’ supply of poems to distribute to other agents, and because he was dropping to a highly suspect reception committee organised by Cucumber.
Convinced that he was going to be caught, I’d used him as a messenger boy to persuade Giskes that London had no immediate intentions of changing the poem-code.
I regarded his eighty letters as an SOS which he knew I’d pick up. He’d also expect me to realise that Mangold had also been caught. I took out my report on Netball’s briefing and hurried in to Nick with it.
Heffer was present, and they stopped their conversation as soon as I entered, which I tried to interpret as a compliment. I showed them Netball’s message, but they’d already seen it and found nothing wrong with it.
I then handed them my report.
They studied it at length, and each other for even longer, and something passed between them which was a generation away from me. They agreed that it was an extraordinary lapse on Netball’s part and might well have the significance I attached to it, but it would need careful consideration.
I suggested that we should respond to Kale’s message normally and ask N section to point out his mistake to him.
They again exchanged looks.
After a long pause Nick telephoned Bingham and asked him to remind Netball at his next sked never to send less than 150 letters.
I made a final effort to stress that this wasn’t a lapse on Netball’s part but a brilliant way of warning us that he was caught and suggested that Harvey should be informed of it.
Reddening, Nick put my report in his briefcase and repeated that he’d discuss it with Gubbins.
Just before Heffer and I went our occasionally separate ways, I asked him what he thought the outcome of their discussion would be.
‘I suspect you’ll have a meeting with Gubbins.’ As usual, he was right.
In many ways mortal, Gubbins was unable to conceal his intense fatigue, but a single glance from him was still the equivalent of a brain scan, and he subjected me to an exceptionally long one.
I sensed that I was going to be addressed as Marks and not Leo and glanced at Nick to guess how much support I could expect. He was sitting motionless, as if breathing through his ears.
‘Now then, Marks …’ Speaking at a rate of nots (thinking in puns helped to lessen his impact), he said that Netball’s eighty-letter message was disturbing but couldn’t be regarded as conclusive proof that he was caught as there was another factor that could account for it – ‘… and it’s one that you constantly overlook …’
He then pointed out that no matter how carefully I briefed agents, and he had no doubt that I did, they were under so much pressure in the field that they were likely to forget every word that I’d said to them, especially when they had to transmit urgent messages, and that Netball’s unusual mistake had probably been caused by exceptional tension.
‘Sir, that’s about as likely as Giskes offering to return Kale to England on the back of a whale.’
Gubbins brusquely informed me that my understanding of agents was strictly limited to teaching them codes, and Netball was a case in point. I expected him to behave in the field as he did in the briefing room, a mistake which had caused me to overlook a vital question: If Netball were blown, why had he been allowed to send only eighty letters? If my theories about Giskes were right, the Germans knew our security rules even better than we did. That being said, I was right to have brought the message to Nick’s attention but on no account must I bring it to Harvey’s. It was his job to establish facts, and he mustn’t be sidetracked by persuasive conjectures – ‘… is that clear?’
‘Absolutely, sir.’
It was even clearer that there was something behind all this and that I was the one being sidetracked.
He then asked how many silk codes would be available by the beginning of August.
‘Four hundred WOKs and three hundred LOPs, sir.’ He disliked the word LOPs, and I hastily amended it to letter one-time pads.
‘That may not be enough.’ Glancing at Nick, he warned me to expect demands for the new codes from ‘unexpected quarters’, and urged me to concentrate on increasing production.
With a sudden twinkle, for which I’d have forgiven him anything except living, he asked if I were still having problems finding suitable women.
I assured him that the new intake had doubled, but we were always on the lookout for promising talent. I didn’t add that his secretary, Margaret Jackson, had everything we sought for in a woman except availability.
After repeating his warning not to sidetrack Harvey, he gave me his customary nod of dismissal, but added a rider as I stood up to go. ‘You’re doing a good job, Leo. But you’d do a damn sight better one if you’d leave some things to other people …’
‘Thank you, sir.’
I stormed into Heffer’s office unannounced. ‘Heff,’ I said at my most deferential, ‘what the fuck’s going on in this abattoir?’
The Guru enjoyed dealing with technical questions. ‘Do I take it you’ve been slaughtered?’
I blurted out what I hadn’t fully thought through, a mark of my respect for him. ‘Something’s going on in Holland that Gub and Nick don’t want me to know about. If they can’t trust me, they must bloody well start looking for a new head of Codes, and the sooner the better. I mean it, Heff.’
He pointed to a chair, and a few smoke rings later he said that if I promised under the Official Secrets Act called friendship not to let him down, he’d tell me the ‘sorry tale’ they didn’t want me to know about.
‘Thanks. But I don’t care any more.’
Having children of his own, he appeared not to hear this. ‘C is trying to put us out of business.’
‘Good luck to them,’ I said, still smarting from not being trusted.
‘But it’s all to do with Holland.’
I shook his hand for the first time since I’d known him.
The ‘sorry tale’ emerged …
Towards the end of June C had informed Gubbins that they’d discovered from their own sources in Holland that eight of SOE’s agents had been arrested. But being expert mixers, they hadn’t left it at that! They’d sent the information to the Dutch authorities in London in the hope of shaking their already waning confidence in
us – ‘… but that’s nothing compared to what else the bastards have done.’
They were using the information to convince the Chiefs of Staff that SOE was incapable of organising an uprising in Holland or anywhere else.
He then explained why Kale’s disappearance was the biggest bonus C could have had.
The Chiefs had been promised a chance to question Jambroes when he returned to London, but Gubbins had had to tell them that he’d been killed in a street fight just as he was leaving. They’d been waiting since November to question his successor, and Gubbins had now had to tell them that Kale had also met with a ‘fatal accident’ at the last moment. Coming on top of C’s news about the eight arrested agents, if the Chiefs had the slightest reason to suspect that the whole Dutch Resistance was in enemy hands, SOE could lose its mandate – ‘… and that would be the end of our role on D-Day.’
He paused to see what effect this was having.
I asked who the captured agents were.
Looking at me blandly, he professed not to know. As he was under no obligation to tell me anything, I pretended to believe him and waited equally blandly for him to finish.
He added that no one had done more than Gubbins to secure our mandate, and that the only reason he didn’t want me to disclose my anxieties to Harvey was that his report might be leaked to C, who’d pass it on to the Chiefs of Staff.
And the sooner the better.
The Guru then pointed out that Gubbins and Nick had been assessing security-mindedness for longer than I’d been born, and the question of them not trusting me didn’t arise. They had great confidence in the way I ran the code department but somewhat less in the way I ran myself! They knew bloody well that I was prone to unpredictable responses, such as writing to the Ministry of Labour, and felt that the less I knew about C’s skulduggery, the less likely I was to send a protest to Winston Churchill. But as soon as the present crisis was over, they’d brief me fully, and until that happy day I couldn’t really blame them for proceeding on a ‘need to know’ basis.
At this point the telephone rang. He lifted the receiver reluctantly, and a few seconds later switched over to the scrambler.
His face growing greyer by the moment – a substantial achievement – he listened for several seconds, then finally said ‘Christ!’ and replaced the receiver. He lifted it again immediately, and asked to be put through to Gubbins’s office because he had an urgent message for Nick.
I stood up to leave but he shook his head emphatically. I was all ears – a considerable improvement – as he informed Nick that there’d been a development concerning Netball which he must know about at once.
Major Adams (the CO of 53b) had told him that Ken Howell (the chief signalmaster) had been suspicious of Netball’s operating since he’d begun transmitting two weeks ago, and at the end of today’s sked he’d set a trap for him.
Knowing that German wireless operators often signalled ‘HH’ (Heil Hitler) when they were about to sign off, he’d signalled ‘HH’ to Netball at the end of his sked, and Netball had replied ‘HH’ without a moment’s hesitation. The speed of Netball’s response had convinced Ken that Netball’s set was being operated by a German.
Adams was anxious to apologise to Nick for Howell’s unauthorised action, for which he accepted responsibility.
I could hear Nick barking questions at him but couldn’t tell from Heffer’s answers what he was asking, one of the Guru’s outstanding accomplishments. But it was his final response which interested me most.
‘Right!’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure Marks knows, if he doesn’t already,’ and replaced the receiver. ‘So now you know,’ he said. ‘And you can get back to work.’
‘Heil Howell,’ I replied. And continued heiling him for the rest of the day.
But that wasn’t the end of SOE’s indebtedness to the single-minded signalmaster.
Nick went to the station on the 19th to listen to Netball’s next sked. He was accompanied by a civilian whom no one could identify (Heffer conjectured that ‘he was a trusted colleage from Y’). Each of them carried ‘split-cans’ (radio sets which enabled them to listen to both ends of the transmission simultaneously).
Netball was several minutes late for his sked (not significant) and signalled ‘QRU’ (I have no traffic for London). Howell replied ‘QTC’ (We have a message for you), and proceeded to transmit it (the message warned Netball never to send less than 150 letters). Howell then signalled ‘HH’ and Netball immediately replied ‘HH’.
‘Right,’ Nick was heard to say to his companion, ‘that’s it then.’
I asked Heffer what he thought ‘that’s it’ meant.
‘You’re the cryptographer,’ he said. ‘You decipher it.’
But understanding my peers was yesterday’s dream. The only reality I could be sure of was that Heffer had put himself at risk for me.
I visited 84 when the shop was deserted, and the next day he was able to present his wife with her book on thimbles.
FORTY-FIVE
Parallel Action
Throughout July the traffic made clear (if confirmation were necessary) that Holland wasn’t our only nightmare. Every country section had become a seagoing lifeboat which might not arrive.
The Prosper circuit had collapsed, and there’d been no further news of Peter and Odette. And Buckmaster had developed an attitude problem.
He accepted that Prosper had been caught but was trying to persuade himself, his colleagues and me that Archambault was free. Keeping his options open, he continued to exchange messages with Archambault in the hope that he wouldn’t be executed. But there were limits to what he could say, and an idea for helping him had occurred to me.
It would lend conviction to Maurice’s messages if we dropped a WOK to Archambault. The Germans were unlikely to suspect that we thought he was blown if we sent him a silk with instructions in its use, and urged him to cut it away and destroy it key by key, and limit his messages to one hundred letters.
We’d also give him new security checks and explain that if he changed his indicator groups by his secret numbers the Germans could never work them out if he’d destroyed his previous keys.
Unable to find any flaws in the concept (always disturbing) I consulted Nick and Heffer.
They sympathised with my intention (always a bad sign) and agreed that the Germans were unlikely to kill Archambault if they thought we still trusted him. They also agreed that some silks were bound to be captured and that making the Germans a present of one wouldn’t affect their security. But both gurus felt that the timing was wrong and that it would be in the interests of agents as a whole if we delayed the discovery of silks for as long as we could.
Heffer conceded that the idea would probably achieve its objective, but that in the hands of F section ‘it would end by doing more harm than good’.
I didn’t argue; out of deference to their experience, and because I was worried by Heffer’s comment. It didn’t occur to me until I’d left them that the idea could be helpful to other country sections and might prolong the lives of captured Dutch agents.
I was about to turn back when I realised that like most amateur welfare officers I was in danger of becoming addled.
I’d given Netball a six months’ supply of poems to persuade Giskes that we had no reason to doubt their security, but he might ask himself why we hadn’t given him silks instead. And even if the bastard concluded that they weren’t available at the time (22 April) he was bound to ask himself two vital questions: What had prompted London to make such drastic changes? And was there any further point in keeping the agents alive?
It was time to think again.
Everything was eclipsed (including Giskes) by a telegram from Sweden in main-line cipher which arrived on the 15th. It was originated by Ronald Turnbull (‘our man’ in the Stockholm legation).
The telegram stated that German scientists at the research station at Peenemünde were under orders from Hitler to devise ways of massproducing lon
g-range rockets so that he could carry out his threat to ‘plaster London with thousands of missiles a day till it was razed to the ground’.
Turnbull added that new radio apparatus for the rockets was being researched at Bornholm (a Danish island which the Germans had sealed off), and that the scientists were under great pressure from Hitler to complete their experiments.
Unsealing the secrets of Bornholm would be the Danish directorate’s responsibility, and Hollingsworth’s response was immediate. On 16 July he asked me to call on him as soon as I could and showed me a message which was to be transmitted to Duus Hansen in a few hours’ time:
Can you report on activity at Peenemünde where enemy are producing and experimenting with long-range rockets. It is believed that radio apparatus on Bornholm is connected with these experiments. We urgently need a description of the rockets and their emplacements, and as much information as possible about the scale of rocket and projector production at the research station.
Hollingsworth then disclosed his anxieties about the Peenemunde traffic.
Most of it would be passed by Duus Hansen, and he was anxious for him to stop using his poem-code and switch to a silk, which could either be dropped to him during the August moon or sent to Sweden and infiltrated. The difficulty was that the system would be new to him. Did I think he could learn to use it from written instructions? And did I foresee any other problems?
I replied that Hansen knew as much about WT as anyone in Signals, and I was certain he’d have no difficulty understanding how to use a WOK from written instructions and, at a later stage, a one-time pad. The only problems I foresaw were his security checks, which mustn’t be included with his silks and would have to be delivered to him separately.
Hollingsworth assured me that a trusted courier would hand the checks to him in a coded message, and that on reflection the safest course would be to send all his codes via Sweden. Would it take long to produce them?