Between Silk and Cyanide (23 page)

Halfway through it I felt the beginnings of a Dutch buzz. Where was it coming from?—Gutenberg and Freud? What did the man who gave us movable type and the man who gave us immovable type-casting have to do with Herr Giskes?

The buzz was in the stomach now, and it was similar to the one I'd had when I'd finished breaking Peter Churchill's message. Freud, Gutenberg and Peter Churchill.—What nonsense was this?… but for God's sake and the Golf team's cling on to whatever it is that's trying to break through to you in your old man's shop…

The solution when it finally emerged was so obvious that the small boy who'd broken his first code on these premises would have spotted it at once and gone home for some pancakes.

I knew now how to give the Germans a chance to go wrong.

The idea was dangerous and could easily backfire. I would have to wait for exactly the right moment before launching it.

But at last I knew what the right moment was.

The benign bulldog was peeing on the pavement with stylish intensity. Doris was looking around as if to charge someone for the exhibition. I was tempted to have a short talk with her about Rudyard Kipling and one or two more pressing matters but Father was watching from the window.

She examined me briefly then turned her attention to a better prospect.

I said a silent thank-you to the shop which hadn't yet failed me and hoped that Plan Giskes wouldn't fail it.

The February moon was due on the 14th of the month, and not even C could postpone it.

Aware that the minister needed demonstrable results to put before Cabinet, the whole of SOE was moonstruck—every country section, every service department setting out to prove that it could meet its stated targets. But there was one forlorn non-contributor to frenetic countdown. As late as the morning of the 7th, I was still waiting to be told when the Arquebus, Gunnerside and Golf missions would spare time for their final code briefings; still waiting for Tiltman or some other expert to give his verdict on WOKs; and above all, still waiting over Plan Giskes—a brainchild with a missing chromosome.

I'd discovered a stunt in its growth for which there was only one remedy, and it wasn't likely to arrive in time to stop the Golf team being dispatched to Herr Giskes. No matter how costly the delay, I had to wait for the Dutch section to cancel a message to one its agents. Then, and only then, could a trap be set for the Germans which even SOE might regard as conclusive.

As the latest news arrived from the field, most of it bad, country sections often had to cancel messages which were already at the wireless station waiting to be transmitted. They then issued new ones, which were themselves subject to cancellation. But for a variety of reasons, some of them valid, they usually left it until the last possible moment to arrange these cancellations and twice in the past month overwraght country section officers had contacted overworked signalmasters and cancelled the wrong ones.

Determined to put a stop to this, Nicholls issued a memo to the country sections which was to have far wider repercussions than even he could foresee:

TO ALL COUNTRY SECTIONS FROM MS/A

Despite repeated requests to the contrary, when Country sections need to cancel messages which have been sent to the wireless station for transmission to the field they are continuing to contact Grendon directly, often when an agent's schedule has already begun. This practice must cease forthwith.

In future Country sections must notify all cancellations to the Headquarters Signals Office, and refer all requests for information to the Signals Office Supervisor or to a member of the Headquarters staff. I repeat there must be no further direct contact between Country sections and the wireless station. A.R, [Acknowledgement required]

This proclamation gave the station the seclusion it needed, ensured a better service for the country sections, and allowed the head of the code department to put it to uses for which it hadn't been designed. I instructed the Signals Office supervisors that I was to be notified as soon as any country section cancelled a message to the field. I stressed any because I didn't want them to realize that I was concerned only with the Dutch. The sooner that cancelled message was in my hands the more quickly I could prove that the Dutch Resistance was in Giskes's.

At the start of a week which I'd built round the briefing of the vital thirteen, Mr Einar Skinnarland put me to the test for the first time on the present premises.

The great miscoder was still working in the Norsk Hydro at Vermok, still waiting for the Gunnerside and Grouse teams to mount their attack on it, still sending most of his messages (this was one of them) via the British legation in Stockholm. His latest indecipherable had travelled well and its bouquet filled the office for most of the morning. It was vintage Skinnarland and its text was as heady as its coding. Skinnarland warned London that unless the attack on the plant took place during the next moon period the Germans would ready to start shipping large quantities of heavy water to Berlin.

I read the clear-text to Wilson over the scrambler and he shipped large quantities of appreciation. He then added something which mattered: the Gunnersides would be available for briefing in two hours' time.

A few seconds later Duke Street telephoned: the Arquebus mission would be available for briefing in two days' time. Quick was the next to telephone: the Dutch agents would be available for briefing in two days' time. The verdict on WOKs was also expected in two ds' t…

I decided to spend the next forty-eight hours thinking only about Holland.

Setting a trap for Giskes was in itself a trap; so much could go wrong. Convinced that while I was having buzzes in my head the Dutch agents were having buzz-saws put between their teeth. I found it hard think dispassionately. Yet it was never more necessary. The greatest problem of all was my superiors' responses to Plan Giskes.

Although I still didn't understand SOE-mindedness, I would stake future of WOKs that if I disclosed my intentions the plan would aborted. This was more than a buzz; it was a total conviction. I had to decide whether to launch the plan without authority and risk the consequences or abandon it and try to think of another, and until I solved the dilemma it would be unfair to brief a single agent, let alone thirteen.

And there was a moral issue. Did I have the right to risk the lives of captured agents who'd be no further use to Giskes if he saw through the plan and realized that we suspected they were blown?

In the absence of a coin I tossed my conscience, which weighed far less than the sixpence I lacked, and it produced a generalization - the mostt that could be expected from such a rarely used source: I must do whatever gave the greatest possible number of agents the best possible chances of survival.

It meant going it alone, which had one insuperable drawback. My inexperience.

I needed technical guidance from Nicholls and Heffer but daren't ask them for it because once they knew what the plan entailed they'd be duty bound to ask CD and Gubbins (and possibly the Dutch) for 'permission to proceed', and it would be safer to seek it from Giskes.

Yet there was certain information which I had to have, and if I couldn't get it by picking brains I might have to pick locks. There was a document in Nick's desk which I was determined to see. During my critical debate with him about the perfection of the Dutch agents' coding he'd frequently glanced at a distinctive grey folder unlike any that I'd seen in SOE. By consulting this folder he'd been able to state quite categorically that the Dutch WT operators who'd previously been transmitting from The Hague, Rotterdam and Amsterdam were now sending their traffic from Eindhoven, Utrecht and Arnhem (as their messages proclaimed). He'd also been able to pinpoint the districts in these towns from which the traffic was being sent as well as the dates, times and frequencies of every transmission. I'd wondered ever since where that folder had come from but now had to do much more than wonder. It was essential to find out not only the folder's origins but what other information it contained, and my one slender hope (apart from petty larceny) was the menaces whose office I was obliged to share.

I glanced across at them as they huddled together in menace territory preparing for a session with Nick. It would be useless to ask them outright as they'd never volunteer anything he didn't want me to know; I'd have to devise a 'Plan Menace'.

I escaped to the privacy of the loo with a message in secret French code, and a few minutes later was able to thank le bon Dieu that it had been properly encoded. Returning to the comparative civilization of the office, I saw not only one distinctive grey folder but a whole pile of them being carried towards me in the menaces' arms, the safest strong-boxes in Baker Street. I held open the door for them and took advantage of their astonishment to make my bid. Targeting Mrs Brewis, the more maternal of the two, I asked if the folders had come from the stationery department as they had pockets inside, and would be useful for carrying WOKs if the occasion should ever arise.

She said she hoped that it would, but no, they didn't come from the stationery department but they very soon might as Nick had got so used to them when he was working at Y. After a sharp glance her sister menace she left the room in disgrace. She had given he largest tip ever received by a doorman, but I'd have some difficulty in spending it as I hadn't even heard of Y, let alone the fact Nick used to work there.

The person who could enlighten me about Y never appeared until after the menaces had left, and his timing didn't fail him today. Heffer entered the room in his customary slow motion, I at once asked him what Y did. Like all gurus he could only be startled by other gurus but he did have to shelter for a moment behind his 'what have we here?' expression.

'Well, well,' he said. There was a long pause while he lit a cigarette and gazed out of the window at the nether regions of Norgeby House. It was impossible to tell whether he intended to answer. 'Well, well,' he repeated, and kept me in suspense for a puff or two longer.

Twenty minutes and as many surprises later I knew that I'd asked the most sensible question of 1943.

In the early thirties, when Top Secret meant what it said, Y was the pinnacle of the Top Secret list and, officially, didn't exist. Y specialized logging diplomatic, military and other sensitive wireless traffic through its worldwide chain of listening posts, and in monitoring cable and wireless traffic from embassies. Because of the nature of its work, Y was staffed by technicians of exceptionally high calibre, many of whom were recruited from the Post Office engineers. Y worked closely with C but was an independent arm under the control of the chief signalmaster of the Royal Corps of Signals. Heffer said with noticeable pride. Nick had been a member of Y since the thirties and had been responsible for setting up Outstations in Palestine and India. In 1938 Y had been able to intercept high-speed Russian wireless traffic using special equipment which was still on secret list. Heffer pointed out that because of Russia's vast size and poor communications, Moscow had to depend almost entirely on wireless for maintaining contact with its outlying territories. In the same year (1938) Y had monitored the wireless traffic of the German armed forces while Hitler was still declaring his peaceful intentions. Y's then head had privately briefed Churchill about the military build-up, but the great man wasn't yet in office and no one took him seriously but Hitler. Soon after the briefing Churchill thundered a warning to Parliament without disclosing his sources. Y's impact on the war was immediate, massive and ongoing. Warning me that he knew only the fringes of its activities, Heffer said that Y was monitoring vast quantities of enemy and Allied traffic with equal dispassion, forecasting the battle-plans of Panzer divisions from the volume of traffic passing between units, and logging the wireless messages of German agents while they were still practising at their training schools in the fatherland.

Glancing at my littered desk, Heffer added that Y was also expert at detecting 'dummy traffic' used for deception purposes. Glancing at my waste-paper basket, he commented that Y logged all WT traffic and retained it for future reference, no matter how insignificant it might have appeared at the time.

Exhausted by his exposition, he sat down and studied my face too closely for comfort—his as well as mine.

Blowing a smoke ring, a warning that something especially important was about to emerge, he told me that Y sent most of its intercepted material to Bletchley for breaking or to C for information.

Access to Y's archive was strictly limited to British organizations as it was logging Allied as well as enemy traffic. One smoke ring suppurated into another and there was a pause.

He was on the point of adding something when I made the mistake of saying, 'What, Heff?' He shook his head, retreated inside it, and could no longer be monitored even by Y.

I knew that the next few minutes could determine the outcome of Plan Giskes and that there must be no more involuntary 'What, Heff's. If it were Y's policy to log all WT traffic 'no matter how insignificant it might have appeared at the time', then somewhere in its massive archive there might be copies of the early Dutch codegroups which C claimed to have sent us.

There was no point in fencing with Heffer; he enjoyed it too much, knew me too well. I asked him outright how long it would take to set up a meeting with Y.

He looked at me with an expression which reminded me of Father's when a valued client once burned a hole in a sheet of Caxton, and rose from his chair as if it were scorching him. He told me that such a meeting was out of the question, that Y never dealt with polyglot organizations like SOE, and that for both our sakes I must immediately forget this entire conversation.

'Well, well,' I said. 'What have we here?' I certainly didn't have to be quiet because he'd closed the door behind him. But what did we have here? Why had he told me about Y in such detail if I couldn't make the slightest use of it? Was there something he especially wanted me to do which he'd tucked away in guru fashion amongst his throw-away comments? If so, what was it?