Between Silk and Cyanide

by Leo Marks

  On 15 August Japan surrendered and SOE’s closure was now a certainty.

  I was more determined than ever not to surrender to C but was still only on page one of my report.

  I was struggling to abort yet another use for the code when Nick summoned me to his office. He’d recovered from his depression and asked how the report was progressing.

  ‘I’m halfway through it, sir.’

  ‘Good man – the general’s anxious to read it.’

  He then reminded me that Gubbins wanted me to write a separate report on Holland, which I was to deliver to him personally; no copies must be taken.

  ‘I’ve already warned Muriel, sir.’

  I noticed that Eisenhower’s letter was still on his desk and looked up to find him watching me. ‘You’ve invented a new code, haven’t you?’

  I was too astonished to answer.

  ‘If I don’t know the symptoms by now, I’m in the wrong job. What sort of code? Who’s it intended for?’

  ‘Whoever empties our waste-paper baskets.’ I added that it was just a vague idea which would be of no practical use to anyone but had helped with the tedium of the report.

  He glared at me in disbelief and immediately asked if I’d considered C’s offer.

  So he knows Heffer’s already discussed it with me.

  I gave him much the same answer as I had the Guru and he looked at me just as impatiently. ‘We’ll come back to that later. Heffer’s told you that we’re closing down at the end of December?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, there’s been a development you should know about.’ Obviously hating every word of it, he said that all SOE’s records were to be taken over by C.

  ‘But that’s like burying Hitler in Westminster Abbey.’

  ‘There’s not a damn thing we can do about it.’ He then said that both parties had agreed that the handover could only succeed if various members of the country sections and the Signals directorate stayed behind to take part in it. ‘The Signal records are essential to the handover. I don’t need to tell you that the code department’s are the largest of all and by far the most important.’

  Nor did he need to tell me what was coming next.

  ‘In other words, Leo, General Gubbins and I want you to supervise the handing over of all the coding records and all cipher traffic. It might take you three months. How about it?’

  ‘I don’t have three months, Nick.’ I wanted to add that I sometimes felt that I didn’t have three minutes.

  ‘I suppose you realise that most of us in SOE will be muzzled for the rest of our lives and that those records will be all that remains of us? Doesn’t that matter a damn to you?’

  A frothing brigadier is a terrifying sight.

  ‘As for not wanting to see another code when SOE packs up, don’t you realise that Britain will soon be on its own again? … that Russia’s the new menace, and will be for years? … that the Americans are behaving appallingly in Siam and are no longer the allies they were?’

  Neither was Nick.

  ‘We’ll need a first-class intelligence service to keep us in the running, and the whole of our traffic will have to be rethought … Who’s going to help us with it – the Russians? – the Americans? – General de Gaulle’s lot? Hasn’t it occurred to you that peacetime agents will need new codes and security checks and as much training as ours? Don’t you realise that many of Bletchley’s best cryptographers will go back to their old occupations? You’re too young to have had one so you’ve no excuses unless you’re too tired to think straight. Just tell me this: doesn’t any part of the code war interest you any more?’

  I owed him the truth. ‘Yes, sir. How to put it behind me.’

  His voice took on a new edge. ‘Then finish this report, and get on with whatever’s more important to you than helping your country.’

  Our double act was now over and I felt more alone than the British.

  EIGHTY

  Exemplary Conduct

  The main problem with finishing the report was knowing what to exclude, and I had to make a major decision. Gubbins had stressed that nothing must be glossed over, and I had to choose whether or not to make a disclosure which I hadn’t dared to make previously for fear of instant dismissal. I now decided that I would because it might hasten my departure.

  It concerned the ‘War Diary’, and the way that certain people in SOE (myself in particular) had wilfully misled it.

  It was known throughout Baker Street as the ‘War Diarrhoea’, and its far from natural function was to provide Gubbins and the Executive Council with a synopsis of every message to and from the field so that they could absorb our daily traffic at a glance and historians would have a reliable record of our main activities – a laudable enough concept were it not for one thing.

  Much of the traffic which passed between the agents and the country sections (and between the agents and Signals) was in shorthand, and when our Pepyses tried to paraphrase it for Gubbins and posterity they often missed the all-important subtexts.

  One of the busiest members of the War Diary was Lionel Hale, a drama critic on the News Chronicle, who’d bought most of his theatrical books from 84 but was otherwise intelligent. Hale had represented SOE on a Top Secret committee which specialised in disseminating propaganda in neutral territories and was considered one of SOE’s star performers. But someone in Baker Street must have decided that his ability to sum up complicated plot points for the News Chronicle would be a help to the War Diary, and for a brief period in ’43 he was seconded to it.

  For most of us it wasn’t brief enough.

  Used to double entendres, he quickly realised that much of the traffic contained messages within messages, but instead of telephoning his queries to people like Buckmaster and me (as his more considerate colleagues did), he insisted on bringing them to us personally and soon became the most lied-to officer in Baker Street, with the possible exception of the head of Finance. Although we told him the truth if it didn’t lead to further questions, our preparations for D-Day had to be given slightly greater priority, and we often fobbed him off with whatever explanations would get rid of him most quickly.

  To ensure that he left my office with something worth having, I arranged for him to be given a discount at 84. But the idea of making special use of him didn’t occur to me until he was rash enough to confide that he often wrote reports on his various visits which he passed on to Gubbins and the Executive Council if he thought they’d be of interest.

  I fabricated a series of ‘Highly Confidential’ reports, ostensibly from me to Heffer, and pretended to be immersed in them whenever he arrived. When he finally enquired what they were, I informed him that they were part of my own ‘War Diary’, and he immediately asked if he could look at them.

  Each report falsified our reserves of silk codes, understating the stocks in hand, overstating the demands for them, and presented him with a picture of a cipher Dunkirk. One of them regretted to inform Heffer that unless our production facilities were increased, no more silks could be sent to the Middle East, and their agents would have to revert to using novels.

  Once a reporter, always a reporter … within a week of showing him these reports, the code department received unsolicited offers of help from the head of Personnel and the director of Finance, and we won twenty more coders, a dozen more briefing officers and a new firm of printers. It was a great loss to the code department when he left SOE to resume his old duties.

  Our misrepresentations to the War Diary (which certain professional historians would one day take literally in their erudite treatises) were then scaled down.

  By the end of November my report was almost finished except for ‘the coding habits of agents which never would be’ (every one of them deserved a mention). I’d limited my selection to twenty, and it included Patrick Leigh Fermor (who’d kidnapped a German general but couldn’t transpose), Nancy Wake (who’d used a pornographic poem, which she’d made even more pornographic by her habi
t of misspelling it), Brian Stonehouse (a painter who’d brilliantly depicted his fellow prisoners at three concentration camps, but whose previous indecipherables were even greater works of art) and Yvonne Cormeau code-named Annette (who’d sent over four hundred messages without a single mistake, possibly because I hadn’t briefed her). Nor could I resist recording that at Major O’Reilly’s instigation 84 Charing Cross Road had been used to give agents practice in picking up messages concealed in books, when I was sent for by Nick, who warned me that within the next two weeks military vans would call at night to start collecting whatever records were ready to be handed over, and he hoped that some of mine were.

  I assured him that large numbers of files I no longer needed had already been crated up, and he looked at me as if he were about to be crated up himself. ‘I’d like to understand your new code before I leave.’

  I couldn’t resist this and blurted out the whole concept.

  A whispered ‘Good God’ was followed by the longest silence which had ever passed between us. ‘You do realise its value in peacetime?’

  ‘It needs a lot of work, Nick.’

  ‘And it bloody well deserves it. I’m going to talk to C.’

  ‘I’m not going to be pressured into working for them.’

  ‘That won’t stop me from trying.’ He snatched up the receiver and asked to be put through to Gambier-Parry (C’s head of Signals).

  I hurried away to finish my report.

  The following morning Nick walked in followed by Gambier-Parry and a captain whose name turned out to be Johnson.

  I’d met Gambier-Parry nine months ago when he’d asked to examine the codes we were using, and I’d greeted him with a particularly hard handshake for wishing the poem-code on us.

  This time he was prepared for it and, after rapidly disengaging, took a quick look round the office. ‘I see your desk hasn’t got any tidier.’ He inspected its contents as if they already belonged to him.

  ‘I want you to show the brigadier how the new code works,’ said Nick.

  Ten minutes later Gambier-Parry stared incredulously at Nick, then glanced at Captain Johnson, who’d been listening intently.

  Johnson asked a number of perceptive questions, and I pretended that I didn’t yet know the answers.

  Gambier-Parry looked at me sharply. ‘How long will it take you to find ’em?’

  ‘Three months at least, sir … and then I mightn’t succeed.’

  ‘Let’s find out, shall we? Come to C for as long as it takes, and you can help us sort out your coding records. Then we’ll talk about other things. I’ll fix up the details with Nick.’

  He took for granted that his offer was accepted, and five minutes later they left.

  Two days after their visit Heffer walked in and showed me a report from Bletchley which Nick wanted me to see. The report stated that it was a ‘novel, ingenious and highly secure code’, which apart from its obvious uses would allow agents to use radio telephony in complete safety and had similar potential for amateur wireless operators. It would also provide a valuable means of communicating with agents via the BBC and would replace the extremely weak system of using secret inks for letter communications.

  ‘That shows how wrong even Bletchley can be …’

  ‘What have you decided to do about it?’

  I told him that before I retired at Xmas I’d hand over a blueprint of the code to Gambier-Parry and leave it to some other cryptographer to finish.

  My response didn’t seem to surprise him, but the length of his puff warned me that something else was worrying him.

  ‘Something’s wrong, Heff. What is it?’

  Several puffs later he admitted that it was personal. He said that his job in SOE was virtually over and that he hadn’t much to do for the next few months. Trying to make light of it, he told me that he’d been ‘quite interested in doing a stint for C’, though he hadn’t yet been asked.

  I realised that the Guru was trying to tell me that he was facing unemployment.

  Twenty minutes later I was alone with Nick. I told him that I’d decided to accept Gambier-Parry’s offer on two conditions: one was the length of my engagement, which must be limited to three months; the other concerned Heffer.

  I explained that I’d be too busy with the new code to spend much time sorting out the records and that Heffer would be the ideal person to help me. He could supervise the rest of the Signals handover, and we might even be able to write a joint report on it.

  ‘That’s an excellent idea if you think he’d do it.’

  ‘I feel sure he would.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Gambier-Parry at once.’ He snatched up the telephone.

  It occurred to me after I’d left that he wasn’t as surprised as he might have been, and I wondered if there’d been a spot of collusion between him and the Guru.

  Two days later he was ‘delighted to be able to tell me’ that Heff’s appointment had been confirmed.

  I subsequently learned that it had been settled weeks ago. For reasons which eluded me I loved them all the more for it.

  SOE’s records had taken far longer to collect than expected, and by Xmas the vans were still drawing up, which gave me time to fill my own mental vans with every important conversation I’d had since joining SOE.

  My reports had been finished weeks ago (or as finished as they ever could be). The main one was three hundred pages long; the separate report on Holland fifteen (Plan Giskes had been fully documented and was added as an appendix). I’d delivered my Dutch report to Gubbins personally, but hadn’t heard from him since. Perhaps it was because I’d also written an unsolicited paper called ‘Ciphers, Signals and Sex’.

  This was Dr Sigmund Marks’s attempt to borrow Freud’s theories on the unconscious ‘will to self-destruct’ to explain why agents failed to bury their parachutes (a foetal symbol), destroy their silk codes or take elementary precautions to avoid capture. I also borrowed his more salacious theories to explain certain aspects of the girls’ conduct but needed no help from him to explain their periods.

  I then learned that Gubbins had a great deal more on his mind than starting reading reports. According to the grapevine, he’d been officially informed that when his present job ended the War Office would have no further use for him.

  I asked Heffer why SOE’s brilliant, brave, bloody-minded CD had been dismissed like a redundant doorman.

  According to the Guru, Gubbins had put a strongly worded case to the Chiefs of Staff and others for the nucleus of an SOE-type organisation to continue in peacetime under the auspices of C, but C had responded by convincing all concerned that Gubbins should have no part in it.

  I slid morosely into 1946, knowing that I was about to start working for an organisation which had no respect for the Mighty Atom.

  C had been kind enough to tell me my new workshop’s address. It was at the top end of Curzon Street, an area frequented by London’s more professional tarts. The terms of my engagement with C had also been settled. They’d agreed to continue paying me my present salary of £45 15s 8d (gross) per month. They’d also agreed that one member of my present staff could accompany me to Curzon Street, presumably to ward off the tarts.

  Much as I wanted Muriel to come, the closure of SOE seemed the least painful break-point for both of us. I chose instead a FANY named Elizabeth Vaughan, a highly intelligent coder with a sense of humour she was likely to need.

  Just as we were ready to leave Baker Street, SOE produced its last surprise.

  Mindful, perhaps, of Churchill’s injunction to ‘Set Europe Ablaze’, on 17 January parts of Michael House went up in flames, and though ‘immediate action was taken’ to put them out, many important records were destroyed. A FANY corporal named Barbara Hare was injured in the fire and had to be taken to St Mary’s Hospital.

  I’d worked too long for SOE to believe it was accidental and wished the arsonist had chosen Montagu Mansions. Signals officers were used to getting their fingers burnt.


  It was time to say goodbye to Nick.

  His appointment had ended and the use of his office was a courtesy, but he was unlikely to need another, as the army had finished with him just as it had with Gubbins.

  I handed him a small parcel which Father had insisted on wrapping himself when he understood its purpose.

  Nick unwrapped it just as carefully.

  It contained a book with no indication of its contents (I’d left its catalogued description inside the cover with its price deleted). The first page contained two signatures: George V’s and Queen Mary’s.

  It was an autograph book which had belonged to Kitty Bonar Law, the eight-year-old daughter of the then prime minister. Kitty had refused to go to bed until she’d trotted downstairs in her nightdress to collect the autographs of her father’s distinguished visitors (they had to be in those days to gain admission to Number 10). Her collection included an original line of music from Paderewski, a self-portrait from H. G. Wells and a goodwill message from Winston and Clementine Churchill. She’d also obtained messages from dozens of leading statesmen, as well as the signatures of British MPs who could write.

  On the last page I’d affixed a letter from Nick to me (‘From D/SIGS to D/YCM’), which he’d signed in green ink. It was dated February ’43 and authorised me to proceed at once with the production of silk codes.

  I’d pinned a note to it which I’d written with Templar’s pen. It was ‘From D/YCM to D/SIGS’, and thanked him on SOE’s behalf for ‘the most valuable signature of all, which is yours’.

  He returned to page one and went through the whole book again as if unable to believe that it belonged to him.

  He was still looking at it when I quietly left the room.

  The next morning I dipped into my £45 15s 8d (gross) per month and took a taxi to Curzon Street. But it wasn’t my lucky day. The driver knew a quick cut.

  I spent several minutes watching the tarts arriving for early morning duty and thought I recognised Doris, but searched in vain for her dog.