Testament

by David Gibbins

  5

  Fan followed Commander Bermonsey into the office and closed the door behind them. Through the window she could see others huddled in their coats hurrying up the path toward the mansion and the bombe huts, the result of the second early-morning train having arrived at Bletchley. She shut the blind and turned to the table in the center of the room. She was carrying the file for the mid-Atlantic convoy, ONS-5, and Bermonsey had the one for convoy TS-37 that had been the subject of the altercation with Johnson. She put hers on the table beside his, and opened them both up. Two files: one meant life for the crews, the one that would be left open; the other might mean death. The conference in the operations room had already decided which file would be shut and which left open, but allowing a final reflection in this room as the clock ticked down to the phone call had become part of Bermonsey’s routine. He stayed standing, leaning on the table and inspecting the files as he always did, staring at the top pages with the convoy orders of sailing. To Fan it seemed as if he were at sea again, a captain addressing the ships’ companies, telling the crews in both convoys that he was not judging their qualities as men but was making a decision based solely on the calculus of war.

  She glanced at the clock. Ten minutes to seven. At 7:15 on the dot, Bermonsey would pick up the phone and call the rear admiral commanding the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty’s Operational Intelligence Center in London; minutes later the order would be issued to reroute one of the convoys. What those at sea did not know, could never know, was the existence of Ultra intercepts that were not acted on, the files that were closed in this room and sent to storage stamped Top Secret, the result of decisions known only to those in the special operations hut, who were under strict instructions not to put down any of their analysis on paper and were sworn to secrecy for life. Fan had been present when Churchill himself had visited the hut and told them that nothing was more important than securing the Atlantic supply line, that the decisions made here could win or lose the war. Nothing could leak out; nothing could be left to chance.

  She watched Bermonsey leaf methodically through the contents of the files—the convoy route plans, the cargo manifests, the secret Admiralty orders to the convoy commodores and escort captains—as if he were registering but not reading them, doing little more than glancing at the headings to make sure that everything was in order. She waited while he stood back, and then she plucked up courage and asked him the question that had been burning in her mind. “What did Johnson mean, sir? Not the enemy?”

  He stared at her, and for a moment she thought he would snap at her, too. Then he took out a cigarette, tapped it on the table, lit it and drew in deeply, holding the smoke in and then exhaling upward so that it wreathed the single bare bulb that hung above them. He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked down at her again. “You shouldn’t ask questions, Fan, even in this holy of holies. You know that.”

  “Johnson knew that too, sir. He’s wanted out ever since being posted here. He’s been badgering Pullen about it for weeks.”

  “I know. Not calculated to raise my sympathy.”

  “Sir.”

  He took another deep drag, and exhaled forcibly. “Even so, I should have thanked him for his opinion. I shouldn’t have snapped at him. We owe those men everything.”

  “They’re the genius code breakers, but we girls do this job in operational intelligence at least as well as the men. We’re as clever at math as they are, but because academia is a man’s world and nobody gave us the professorships and fellowships, we’re not used to having elevated opinions of ourselves. It means we’re tougher than they are, more used to taking knocks. Put a man like Johnson in this room where the life-and-death decisions are made, and he’d probably go to pieces.”

  Fan felt her face flush. She had never spoken to him like this before. He gave her a wry smile, took another deep drag and then carefully pressed the half-finished cigarette into the ashtray, putting it out. His look hardened. “You asked a question, and I owe you an answer because of what you’re about to be drawn into. What I’m going to tell you now is beyond top secret. I mean, beyond ultra top secret.”

  “Sir.”

  He glanced at the clock, and then pointed at the mauve-and-red ribbon on the left breast of his uniform jacket. “You know what this is?”

  “The Distinguished Service Order.”

  “I got that after my third patrol out of Malta, in August 1941. We’d shadowed a small Axis convoy out of Benghazi heading north, and we finally got into position in rough seas off eastern Sicily. I put three torpedoes into the largest ship, a converted liner. I knew it was a troopship, but it turned out to be carrying walking wounded back to Italy for convalescence. Two thousand men went into the water, and maybe two hundred were picked up by the escorts.”

  Fan looked at him. “Walking wounded return to fight another day. You were saving Allied lives.”

  He pursed his lips, staring at the files on the desk. “War is never black and white, even this one. The virtue of destroying an enemy like Hitler or Mussolini is not in question, but it’s what we have to do to get there.”

  “I can see why Johnson’s question hit a raw nerve.”

  “It wasn’t so much that. I was thinking of the decision I’m about to make now.”

  “My assessment remains the same. We save TS-37.”

  He reached over and closed both files. “I’m not asking for your opinion any more.”

  She stared at the closed covers, dumbfounded. “Sir?”

  “We’re not saving any convoys today.”

  She felt an icy grip in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m afraid our convoy conference was something of a sham. I had to make it seem as if it were normal procedure, right down to entering this room with you as usual. We decided to bring you on board some time ago. Do you remember Churchill’s visit last month?”

  “Of course. You and Captain Pullen were holed up in this room with him for hours. We could smell the cigar smoke for days afterward.”

  “Pullen is one of very few others at Bletchley who are party to what I’m about to tell you. Very few. Do you remember Churchill speaking to you in the hut afterward?”

  “I was flattered. He only talked to a few of us, and he chose me.”

  “It wasn’t random. After Pullen and I recommended you, he wanted to check you out himself.”

  “You recommended me? For what?”

  He picked up the half-finished cigarette from the ashtray, pinched off the burned end and relit it. He took a deep drag, holding it in for a few moments, then stubbed out the remainder. “One useful aspect of the conference is that it gave you an up-to-the-minute picture of the air and sea assets off West Africa. Well, there’s another asset, and it’s top secret. One of our own submarines is in position off Sierra Leone.”

  “In position, sir? Is she a U-boat hunter?”

  “She’s one of four specialized long-range boats Churchill ordered constructed early last year, soon after the Japanese war began. With the sea war in the Mediterranean swinging firmly in our favor, we took four of the best surviving captains and crews from the Malta and Gibraltar flotillas to man the new submarines. Officially they were men who had stacked up the requisite number of patrols for shore deployment or were being stood down through stress or illness, but in reality they were all reassigned to a top-secret operation. Two months ago we added four American boats to the flotilla, crewed by men with extensive operational experience in the Pacific. It’s no coincidence that I’m a submariner too. My assignment to Bletchley late last year was part of this operation. Churchill also vetted me personally.”

  Fan was struggling to understand. “Why after the Japanese war began? Why is that significant? What have the Japanese got to do with this?”

  Bermonsey pulled out another cigarette and tapped it on the table, but left it unlit. He glanced at the door and spoke urgently, his voice lowered. “Four days ago in the Indian Ocean off Mozambiqu
e, U-180 rendezvoused with the Japanese submarine I-29. We know about it because a sharp-eyed girl in the bombe cribbing hut spotted an Ultra decrypt about to go on the slush pile with an apparently unintelligible word that she realized was Japanese. The word was Yanagi, meaning Willow. It’s the Japanese code name for submarine missions to exchange technology with Nazi Germany.”

  “I remember another Japanese sub, I-30,” Fan said. “Last August, wasn’t it? Lord Haw Haw in the Nazi radio broadcast made a big splash about the arrival of the submarine at the U-boat base at Lorient, having avoided Allied detection.”

  Bermonsey nodded. “That was during our dark period, while we were unable to penetrate the new naval Enigma. A really bad time for us; worse for the men at sea. Ever since the Axis Powers’ Tripartite Pact in September 1940, Bletchley has been tasked to look out for anything indicating missions like that of I-30. We had no way of detecting that one, but since cracking the naval code again early this year, we’ve been keeping an eagle eye out. The decrypt on the twenty-sixth was the first indication we’ve had of another exchange, though by then of course it was too late to do anything about it.”

  “What were they exchanging?”

  “In the case of I-30 last year, it was high-value raw materials and design technology. The Japanese sent mica and shellac, and the blueprints for an aerial torpedo; in return, the Germans sent industrial diamonds, an example of the Würzburg air defense radar, a Zeiss artillery fire director, sonar countermeasure rounds, that kind of thing. Fortunately, most of the return cargo, including the blueprints, were destroyed when the sub struck one of our mines off Singapore. In the case of U-180 and I-29, it’s different, even more worrying. After we identified the Ultra decrypt, our intelligence networks have been working overtime to establish what might have been exchanged. It now seems certain that a passenger on board U-180 was the Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose, who has been in Berlin being sweet-talked about how the Nazis would support him should the movement rise against the British in India. His transfer to Japan is a concern, because once there he might be sent to Burma and coerce more Indian Army sepoys to go over to the Japanese and the so-called Indian National Army. But of even greater concern, particularly to Churchill, was what I-29 was bringing in exchange. Our agents in Penang report that her main cargo was more than two tons of gold.”

  “Two tons of gold,” Fan breathed. “To buy what?”

  “That’s exactly what worried us. What worried Churchill. We always knew that the German High Command might use the naval Enigma for purposes other than basic U-boat movement orders. Ever since the Japanese entered the war sixteen months ago, we’ve been keeping an eagle eye out for intercepts that might suggest covert supply arrangements between them and the Germans. The Germans are running out of basic raw materials, especially low-volume, high-grade metals and compounds that might be carried in useful quantities even in a submarine, and the Japanese want materials of their own. With surface shipment being impossible because of our control of the sea lanes, long-range U-boats are the only option. About two months ago, a US naval analyst in Washington linked an Ultra intercept to reports from agents in Tokyo that a special shipment had been requested. The material was radioactive uranium. That’s the real reason why those two American officers joined us six weeks ago. They want to be here in case we catch any similar intercepts. The Americans have been involved in a top-secret project to use uranium to make some kind of catastrophic bomb, and the idea that the Germans and the Japanese might be embarked on the same kind of project has put the fear of God into everyone involved.”

  “Including Churchill,” Fan said.

  “Especially Churchill. When he said the war will be won or lost in the Atlantic, he wasn’t just thinking of our merchant ships. He was also thinking of what might break through our defensive screen and reach the U-boat bases at Brest and Lorient. Despite the best efforts of our ships and aircraft, it’s still feasible for a U-boat on a long-distance voyage from Japan to reach Nazi-controlled territory undetected, recharging its batteries at night and refuelling from tanker U-boats on the way. The same goes in the other direction.”

  Fan stared at the files, speaking slowly. “You need me because any operation to take out these U-boats or Japanese subs would be based on Ultra intercepts, and would therefore have to be factored into the calculus that’s my speciality. Act on too many intercepts and the Germans will become suspicious. And on the day when one of these special intercepts is acted on, Ultra intelligence related to other U-boat movements would have to be ignored and no convoys saved. Days like today?”

  “Correct. We knew you were the right person for the job. Quick assessments will need to be made. You’ll continue to do your routine job as part of the operational intelligence team within the hut, the job you have been doing today, but any time one of these special intercepts is detected you will also be wearing this other hat, unknown to most of the others.”

  “When you said our sub was in position, you meant to intercept U-515.”

  “No. I meant to intercept convoy TS-37.”

  “To intercept the convoy. Now I really don’t understand.”

  “A long-range U-boat is due along that coast in a few days’ time. We know this because an Ultra decrypt a week ago showed that a tanker U-boat was heading to a refuelling rendezvous far to the south of the known operational schedules of any other U-boats currently in the Atlantic, including U-515. Our sub off Sierra Leone is one of two off the West African coast hoping to intercept the long-range U-boat when further decrypts pinpoint her position. But meanwhile, something else has cropped up. One of the ships in convoy TS-37 is carrying something we do not want to fall into enemy hands. Open up the cargo manifest for Clan Macpherson.”

  She shuffled through the papers in the TS-37 file and found it. “Pig iron, hemp, general cargo from India. Pig iron is presumably code for manganese. Ah. It’s penciled in at the bottom, to be picked up in Durban. A consignment of gold bullion.”

  “A very big consignment. We’ve secretly shipped as much gold as we can from South Africa since the outbreak of war. We need it to build up our reserves, and to fund the resistance in Europe. A consignment of this size would also be enough for the Germans to pay the Japanese for what the Nazi scientists want above all else at the moment: a cargo of uranium ore. The Japanese have opened up a new mine and apparently have a surfeit.”

  “But how could the gold possibly fall into German hands?”

  “Because the German High Command has ordered U-515 not to sink Clan Macpherson, but to capture it. We know that from an Enigma intercept. Despite our best efforts to keep all gold shipments out of South Africa secret, we believe that the Nazi agents in Durban must have caught wind of this one and passed the information up the line. They’re the ones we’re bluffing by relabeling manganese as pig iron. There is a reason why we haven’t shut them down, but that’s no concern of ours for now. What we also learned after the ship had sailed is that there are Japanese-trained operatives from the Indian National Army planted among the Lascar ratings in the crew of Clan Macpherson who are there to take it over once U-515 begins attacking the convoy, and who will then cause her to fall behind so the U-boat can come alongside. If the U-boat causes enough destruction in the main body of the convoy, then that’s where the escorts will concentrate, leaving stragglers to their fate. We know it’s a weak escort, and so do the Germans. We believe that the plan is then for U-515 to rendezvous with the long-range U-boat at a secret location to transfer the gold aboard. An audacious plan, but ingenious. And we have to do anything we can to stop it. I mean, anything.”

  Fan suddenly felt sick. “My God. Now I understand what Johnson was saying. Our sub is there to sink one of our own ships. To sink Clan Macpherson.”

  “That’s the real reason I snapped at him. He’s one of two cryptographers we brought in on this secret and assigned to spotting the special intercepts. We’d known about the long-distance U-boat program from agents in Japan, but it
was Johnson who took that decrypt spotted by the US analyst and put it alongside a number of anomalous movement orders we’d decrypted over the past few months, ones that don’t mention a U-boat by name and would normally be put in the slush pile of non-actionable intelligence. The decrypt fingered by the US analyst used a German code word for Japan known to our agents in Tokyo, and by cribbing from that Johnson was able to isolate several dozen previous communications that we realized must have been going to the long-distance U-boats. Bingo, we had the code markers to look out for future messages. It was bloody clever, really. Pity he’s turned out to be a loose cannon.”

  “Alan jokingly calls Bletchley ‘the machine,’ but he says it’s really an analog of the human mind, full of untapped potential but riven by human weaknesses.”

  “Turing? Well, at least we can rely on him. He’s the other cryptographer in on this operation. He can take over Johnson’s work as well. He doesn’t seem to be affected by stress.”

  “He runs it off. Hundreds of miles a week. We’re all affected by stress, whether we acknowledge it or not.” She closed the file. “So what do we do about convoy TS-37?”

  Bermonsey tapped the cigarette again. “Officially, you and I came into this office to make the call to order that convoy to be rerouted, and as far as the rest of this hut is concerned, that’s what we’ve done. When they see tomorrow that the convoy has been hit, it won’t be the first time that’s happened. For every redirected convoy that makes it away in time, there are others that are just too sluggish. And there are U-boat captains who go maverick, changing course without sending signals that we might intercept. In normal circumstances, Werner Henke in U-515 is just that sort of captain. I know; I was one myself. In this instance, though, with his special assignment, we can be sure that he will stay on course. With the focus in the hut on the big convoy battle that everyone now expects in the North Atlantic, one that we have helped to set up today, the loss of a few ships off Sierra Leone will soon be history, even with their precious manganese ore. That’s the brutal truth of it.”