Between Silk and Cyanide

by Leo Marks

  They were slow at first, but as soon as Sporborg discovered the word ‘chanson’, a miscreant at the back called out the poem in full.

  George Courtauld whispered, ‘Well, I’ll be buggered.’ Tommy Davies spoke very quietly to him, and a few seconds later Courtauld looked at me and nodded.

  I’d taken even longer than Nick and still hadn’t discussed the threeway traffic. I turned to the door without waiting for questions.

  Tommy moved very quickly considering that he was a member of the Executive Council. Taking my arm, he asked if I’d accompany him to his office, as there was something important he wished to discuss with me in private.

  I couldn’t imagine what.

  Looking hard at me, he confided that Courtauld’s (of which he was a director) spent substantial sums of money in peacetime sending cables around the world. They used a code book of some kind which he was sure I could improve on and thus reduce their costs. He didn’t know my long-term plans, but would I be interested in running Courtauld’s code department when the war was over?

  My short-term plan was to kick him in the balls, but I abandoned it for three reasons:

  1 He’d been invaluable to us

  2 We still needed him

  3 It was the best offer I’d had.

  I replied that from the moment I’d been conceived my father had been waiting for me to run his rare bookshop and I couldn’t disappoint him, but I’d gladly assist Courtauld’s in any way I could in my spare time. Meanwhile I’d be grateful if he’d help us with a list of urgent requirements which I happened to have with me.

  He made a note of the estimated quantities, reduced them by half and agreed to do his best. He then announced that there was something else he wanted me to do for him, but I must bear with him while he fully explained his reasons. He was seriously concerned about the number of people who’d stopped concentrating on the war effort.

  He quickly made clear that it wasn’t the Signals directorate he was targeting, especially after this morning. He was worried about the factory workers who assembled WT sets and spare parts for SOE. ‘Far too many of ’em are taking victory for granted,’ he thundered, ‘and their loss of urgency is reflected in their output.’

  He blamed the falling-off in production on the ‘bloody stupid’ campaigns being run by the Ministry of Information to buoy up morale, and on the BBC and the press for giving the public the impression that the war was almost won, instead of stressing how far we had to go and that Hitler wasn’t finished yet.

  I was wondering what this had to do with me when he suddenly said that a remedy had occurred to him and that George Courtauld agreed with it.

  I remembered their whispered conversation and the way Courtauld had nodded.

  When I understood what their remedy entailed, even the Ministry of Information couldn’t restore my morale. The ‘hard men’ were convinced that Nick and I made an excellent double act, and wanted us to address the workers at four of their factories.

  ‘We’ve no doubt that you’ll increase their output,’ Tommy said, ‘no doubt at all.’ He added that the four factories were within easy reach of London, that the workers were under the Official Secrets Act so there’d be no security problems and that we needn’t overburden them with details. It was the feelings we conveyed that would restore their sense of urgency. ‘But the pep talks must start at once before the rot sets in completely.’ He anticipated no other problems.

  I foresaw plenty. My own spare parts were beginning to feel worn, and I had to reassemble them every time I played the parlour game. Sustaining the code department’s war effort was difficult enough without trying to pep up other people’s, a sign of staleness I’d no intention of remedying.

  The whole concept appalled me, and my expression must have said so because he snatched up the phone to Nick and explained what he and Courtauld wanted. He added that I’d seemed reluctant to take part.

  He listened inscrutably for almost a minute, then said, ‘Thanks, Nick,’ and replaced the receiver.

  Drumming his fingers on my list of requirements, he announced that Nick was prepared to start the talks immediately, if necessary without me. However, he and Courtauld believed it was our contrasting styles which made our act effective.

  I was left with a choice: either I could cancel three production meetings, four final briefings and six interviews with coders, or I could risk offending the ‘hard men’.

  I decided to go on the road with Nick.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  Pockets of Resistance

  Our two-man crusade was launched at a factory near Barnet. Fifty or so girls in overalls were waiting for us in a large canteen and looked up without much interest as we arrived, escorted by the factory manager.

  Nick addressed them first, and thirty minutes later I told them what else they needed to know.

  In return they taught me the nuts and bolts of communication: to stop making phrases, to leave the jokes to Jack Benny and to allow the facts to speak for themselves. It was entirely due to them that when I returned to the office I was able to simplify mental one-time pads, Jedburgh code books and the growing concept of Peeping Tom.

  At the end of the third lecture we heard from Tommy Davies that production had risen by 60 per cent.

  But on the morning of our final sortie I learned from Valois that ‘our friend Tommee’ had been put on a train to Germany and sent to an extermination camp. Valois believed it was Buchenwald. I found it a little difficult to see the blackboard that morning, and the deep brown melter had developed a croak, but the girls didn’t seem to notice.

  Since I couldn’t share Tommy’s suffering I did the next best thing by producing a series of abscesses in the axilla, which had to be lanced each morning by a doctor, who warned me that if I didn’t ease off from whatever I was doing he really wouldn’t be responsible.

  (I didn’t know it at the time, but the RAF bombed Tommy’s train and set part of it alight, and a girl in manacles crawled down the corridor to bring him water. It was Violette Szabo, and it was their first and only meeting.)

  A few medications later I learned from Buckmaster that Noor Inayat Khan had been sent to Dachau but was thought to be alive.

  At this point in the war (late August ’44) time was measured in code groups and a hundred thousand of these later I was twenty-four (an event of which the code department had been given ample notice). But on the same morning (24 September) news broke through from the outside world that thousands of Allied troops in Holland had had their last birthdays.

  According to the Dutch traffic (90 per cent of which was in one-time pads or WOKs), the Germans had massacred the British and American forces who’d been ordered to capture Arnhem, and I remembered that the town had twice been mentioned in the three Playfair messages Nick had given us to break. If the Germans had intercepted them (and others from the same source?) could they have contributed to the disastrous losses? Nick was convinced that they weren’t responsible for the massive counter-attacks, which were only to be expected, Heffer wasn’t sure, and I was unable to establish any connection.*

  The Germans were also counter-attacking at their own frontiers, and the Allies were unable to cross them.

  Yet X section still showed no signs of sending agents into Germany, and I still couldn’t understand why there was no place for SOE inside the Fatherland or why the task of harassing them from within should be left to the Americans.

  The one thing I did understand was the growing list of SOE’s casualties. On 2 November I learned that Rabinovitch had been sent to a concentration camp and was thought to have been hanged.

  By now, time could also be measured in exterminated agents.

  I was looking at the photograph Rabinovitch had given me of Louis knocking out Schmeling (which was next to Violette’s chess set and Tommy’s cigar) when I received a message to report to Gubbins immediately. It was so long since I’d been to his office that I’d forgotten the ferocity of his ‘Come’.

  S
ix crossed swords were pointed at my jugular. Four of them belonged to Gubbins and Nick, but by far the sharpest adorned the shoulders of a general standing by the window.

  He had eyes which could lance an abscess, a court martial of a mouth and an expression which warned me that he’d found his next victim.

  Gubbins came straight to the point (he knew no other way).

  Five minutes later I learned that SOE was to play a major part in a deception scheme code-named Periwig.

  The purpose of Periwig was to convince the Germans that there was a large resistance movement inside Germany which was about to be activated. Gubbins stressed that the Germans would expect London to send instructions to these agents and that dummy traffic would be an essential part of the Periwig op.

  ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir.’

  I took his disappointment as a compliment.

  ‘I know nothing about German traffic …’

  The unknown general took a step towards me. ‘What do you need to know?’

  ‘This is General Templar,’ barked Gubbins.

  A razor nicked my ear, and I realised that Templar was still addressing me.

  ‘Kindly answer my question. What do you need to know?’

  ‘Whether the bulk of the traffic is passed in letters or figures, whether they’re in groups of four or five—’

  ‘Time for that later. Don’t you have any ideas?’

  I suggested that one way of helping Periwig would be to drop code books printed in German to all the areas where the resistance movement was supposed to be operating.

  Gubbins and Templar glanced at each other sharply.

  I added that the code books would contain vocabularies designed for active resistance movements and that they’d be dropped with silk one-time pads. I then began describing how we handled our other dummy traffic, but Templar turned impatiently to Gubbins.

  ‘Colin, I think the best thing would be if Marks brought this dummy traffic and the rest of his bumph to my office at seventeen hundred hours, and I’ll have a good look at it.’

  Gubbins nodded approvingly.

  ‘Right,’ said Templar with a hint of satisfaction, ‘that’s it then.’

  Not quite.

  Mindful of military protocol, I addressed Templar through my superior officer. ‘Brigadier Nicholls, wouldn’t it simplify matters if General Temple were to—’

  ‘Templar,’ barked Templar.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir … Wouldn’t it be better if General Templar came to my office so that I could show him the whole of our bumph?’

  Nick turned to him. ‘I think it would, Gerald.’

  Templar graciously conceded that he’d call on me at 1700 hours.

  I turned again to my superior officer. ‘Could the general please make it seventeen thirty hours, sir? … I’ve a lecture to give which I can’t cancel, and some agents to brief …’

  The silence could have been cut with a sword.

  ‘I suppose you need the extra half-hour to come up with all the answers?’ suggested Templar.

  ‘He’s been known to do it in less,’ said Nick, my protector.

  Gubbins turned to me abruptly. ‘Right, Leo – off you go.’

  It was the first Leo of the meeting, so I must have said something which pleased him.

  I hurried in to Heffer, who seemed to be expecting me, and described my encounter with Templar. ‘Help me, Heff. What can you tell me about him? What’s his background? What’s he like as a man?’

  Never one to refuse an appeal for help even if it meant putting down his newspaper, Heffer said that Templar was an old friend of Gubbins, that he was a senior staff officer with a reputation for unorthodoxy and that Montgomery thought highly of him. But all he knew about him as a man was that he was supposed to have a command of bad language which was second to none. He urged me to set up a working relationship with him immediately or I’d never recover.

  The tone of that relationship was set by Templar the moment he walked in.

  ‘You knew my name was Templar, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you could have seen me at seventeen hundred hours, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Right. Well, from this moment onwards, stop playing games.’

  He then sat opposite me, glared at my overflowing ashtray and asked how I wanted to begin.

  ‘I’d like to ask a question if I may, sir.’

  ‘What d’you think I’ve come for? To smell those stinking cigars?’

  ‘Assuming we get Periwig right, sir, what’s our timescale?’

  ‘Did I hear you say “assuming”? – I bloody well hope not.’ He thumped the desk, and the inkwell pee’d itself. ‘We’re going to get Periwig right – and fast. Starting now … and I mean NOW. Show me what you’ve got.’

  I produced six different code books and spread them in front of him.

  He examined them carefully and addressed me without looking up. ‘Did you have a hand in these vocabularies?’

  ‘I kept a watching brief, sir. My main job was preparing the code groups.’

  ‘I’ll want you in on every discussion. Periwig’s vocabulary has got to be right. I won’t tolerate half-arsed concoctions.’

  At this moment Muriel entered with Mother’s far-from-half-arsed concoctions, and he stared at them in astonishment. ‘What are these – camouflaged code books?’

  ‘Perhaps you’d prefer something stronger, sir?’

  ‘Yes – a good idea for Periwig.’

  Nevertheless he helped himself to coffee, sampled the sandwiches and then asked where they came from.

  For some reason I told him the truth.

  ‘You an only child?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I thought as much.’

  He then sharply reminded me that the main purpose of Periwig was to bog down ‘the Hun’s security forces all over Germany’ and that I mustn’t lose sight of this when preparing the code groups and the dummy traffic.

  ‘No, sir.’

  Glancing at his watch, he asked at what time I usually reported for duty.

  ‘At 0700 hours, unless there’s a crisis.’

  ‘Periwig’s a crisis. I’ll be here at 0600 every morning. Your mother must call you early.’

  He then informed me that he intended to take a Jedburgh code book with him so that he could study it overnight. ‘I enjoy a little light reading,’ he added.

  He slipped one into his briefcase, nodded abruptly and turned to the door.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, but we don’t allow code books to be taken off the premises.’

  He halted in mid-stride, then performed an about-turn which would have done credit to a sergeant major. ‘Are you seriously objecting? Or are you playing games again?’

  ‘Both, sir.’

  Apparently satisfied with my answer, he replaced the code book on the desk and walked out in silence.

  My self-confidence walked out with him. After working alone for so long I knew I couldn’t function under the constant supervision of a military dictator. My only hope was that Templar wouldn’t be with us for long.

  I learned next morning that he’d been appointed head of X section.

  Note

  * Nor have I since.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Operation Periwig

  Nineteen forty-five had a miraculous start. Templar went abroad for a few days to an unknown destination (hopefully Berlin), giving all who worked for him the chance to recuperate.

  However, he was back all too soon and discovered that Periwig had made no progress in his absence due to a policy dispute. He asked me to explain why ‘this bloody outfit took so long to reach a decision’ and was kind enough to supply the answer: ‘It’s because SOE as a whole is the sum total of its farts – and they’d better not start blowing in Periwig’s direction.’

  He was angry with me because although Periwig’s vocabulary was finished it couldn’t be delivered to the pri
nters as I was bogged down with the code groups. Although I’d convinced myself that an active resistance movement existed in Germany because Tommy was in prison there, I was equally convinced that the code groups weren’t ready to stand up to expert scrutiny.

  I was having the utmost difficulty in standing up to Templar’s. He’d begun calling on me on his way home to check the day’s progress and seemed to enjoy watching me flounder while he made up for lost sandwiches.

  One night he caught me pencilling some code groups on my copy of the vocabulary.

  ‘Finished at last?’

  ‘Getting there, sir. I’m convinced the basic concept’s right but I’m trying to improve it …’

  He gave his ‘How long, O Lord’ look, and I decided to ask him a question.

  ‘Sir, how sure are you that any of the code books will be captured?’

  ‘Leave that problem to me, and get on with yours.’

  He was back the next night for a repeat performance, but this time Gubbins came to collect him half an hour later.

  Gubbins watched me in silence for as long as he could bear to (roughly ten seconds), then shot a question at me à la Templar. ‘What’s your problem, Marks?’

  ‘Verisimilitude, sir.’

  ‘Give her my regards,’ he said, and took Templar away with him.

  An hour later I realised what the code groups should be.

  It took Muriel three hours to type them opposite the six thousand phrases, and the RAF unit half a day to photograph the now completed code book on to a single sheet of silk.

  The moment I heard Templar marching down the corridor I buried my head in my hands in mock despair.

  ‘Now what’s the hold-up?’

  ‘You are, sir.’ I pointed to the sheet of silk on my desk. ‘It’s waiting for you.’

  The way he picked it up, and stared at it in astonishment, was a moment to relish.

  ‘Good God! … I’d no idea it would look like this.’