I Can't Begin to Tell You (15 page)

‘Good God, I wonder if they know what they’ve taken on?’

His obvious amusement stung and she felt patronized. ‘And I wonder why you’ve taken me out?’

‘Because … we have to continue our discussion.’ He steered her away from the other pedestrians. ‘Keep your voice low.’

They continued towards Leicester Square and while they walked Major Martin kept a wary eye on passers-by and explained that the poem-code method had come about because the intelligence powers that be considered it better security for the agent to carry the code in his head. ‘But you and I,’ he said, ‘and some others know better.’ It was a bad system for two reasons. One, the slightest mistake in the coding – ‘and Ingram, just imagine some of the difficulties and dangers most agents will be operating under’ – resulted in indecipherable messages. Two, the poem could be tortured out of the agent.

During the past few weeks, Ruby had had time to think over the implications. Even so, she was horrified. ‘We can’t let agents go into … into wherever they go with a flimsy set of tools.’

‘That’s my point.’

‘Do we have any idea how many are being captured and giving away their codes?’

‘Classified,’ he said.

But she could tell from his tone that the numbers were significant. ‘Can you tell me anything about what’s happening?’

‘No.’

She felt that omnipresent anger tie up her voice. ‘Why would you bother with me, then? Why are you telling me this?’

Abruptly,
he stopped and she almost collided with him. ‘Because I’m offering you something to consider other than your anger, which is, I grant you, justifiable.’ The moonlight brought the lines of his face into relief. ‘But this is a war and you are a clever and gifted woman. Anything I manage to do will take persuasion and it will be inch-by-inch progression. We need unorthodox minds to get round these problems and I want to use you to help me get there. I can’t reach the end of this war – I can’t die – knowing I didn’t try to help these agents. So, you see, it’s your cleverness which I’m interested in, not your anger, or anything else. And the same should go for you.’

For a revelatory second, Ruby felt an acute … well, disappointment. About what, exactly? That he thought her clever? Wasn’t that what she was always wanting? Needing? Demanding? He was giving her what she wanted. ‘I apologize,’ she said. Apologies never came easily to her and she repeated it.

He was amused. ‘Did that hurt?’

She grinned. ‘Almost.’

His hand rested on her shoulder for a couple of seconds. ‘Not easy, is it?’

‘No,’ she admitted.

‘But we agree?’

Yes, they agreed. And that was something.

Speaking in a low voice, he moved closer. But not too close. ‘We don’t live in a vacuum even in a war, when most things go by the board. Here on the Home Front we also have to think about how we fight and, if we can, square it with our conscience if the methods are not always the obvious ones.’

‘Again, I agree.’

‘Then how can we live with ourselves if we give those agents a coding system which can be tortured so easily out of them? Where is the morality in what we are doing? Why should we ask them to give their lives for nothing? Particularly as we don’t witness the results of our complacency. The broken-up bodies. The blood. We only read about it in some bland report. If that.
Agents will be tortured. We know that and there is no way to prevent that happening. But, if it is to happen, let’s make it impossible for them to give up any information – by not giving it to them. Then, at least, they are … suffering for some purpose. It will have meaning.’

Would it? Did suffering ever have a purpose? Ruby found herself raising her face to look at him and an unfamiliar emotion tugged in her throat, in her chest, deep in her guts. The moonlight falling over their features played its tricks, too.

When Ruby checked in at Norgeby House the following morning, she was allocated a space squeezed into the far end of a corridor alongside Peter Martin’s secretary, a shapely blonde.

‘I’m Gussie,’ the latter informed Ruby as she sorted piles of paper into buff folders with TOP SECRET stamped on them. ‘I expected you earlier.’

‘I got lost.’

‘From Waterloo?’ The idea seemed to astonish Gussie.

Ruby edged into the space between the second desk and the wall and sat down. Gussie’s pile of folders grew.

‘How are the digs? Took me a bit of string-pulling but I got them in the end.’ She looked up and Ruby found herself being assessed by a pair of very green eyes. ‘They’re much sought after.’

The ‘sought after’ bit must be the view of the river, not the grimy sheets and unappetizing breakfast provided by a surly landlady. ‘I’m very grateful.’

Gussie transferred her attention back to the job in hand. ‘I’ve been here since the off, and know the ropes. Anything you need, ask my permission and I’m sure I’ll give it to you. If you need to talk to Major Martin, check with me first.’

Definitely not that friendly.

Gussie continued, ‘I should warn you there’s been some comment about your showing up here. Not everyone likes it.’

‘Normal rules don’t apply in wartime,’ said Ruby.

Gussie took on board the message. Ruby didn’t intend to be intimidated. ‘No, they don’t.’

Ruby
shrugged. She pointed to an in-tray on her desk. It was already overflowing. ‘These are for me, I take it.’

‘They are.’

She glanced through the papers which included one on tightening up security procedures and an indecipherable marked ‘Top Priority’. She hauled a couple of pencils out of her bag, plus her notebook. On the first page she had inscribed: ‘Mathematics knows no races.’

Underneath she had written out a quotation from the great G. H. Hardy:

Three hundred and seventeen is a prime number not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in one way or another, but because it is so, because mathematical reality is built that way.

Yet the point about encryption and decryption was precisely because minds did shape them. They did not float in a mathematical ether. Someone decided on the message, and worked out how its components were connected. The circumstance in which it was composed mattered very much. Mathematical detachment, in the true sense, was not possible.

Questions needed to be asked of each message. Did this man or woman truly understand the system? Did they have a good memory? Were they careless? Did these agents have absolute confidence in the system? If captured, God forbid, had the wireless operator the sort of personality that could outwit and resist the Gestapo?

Ruby picked up her pencil.

As the days wore on, she found it lonely work. She missed the rudeness, the bottomless well of bad language and the humour of the girls. She marshalled the facts – as sparse as hen’s teeth – which she knew about her employer. Not that anyone ever talked but, if asked, she reckoned most of those in its service would be hard pressed to tell you what The Firm was exactly, or what it did. Everyone knew about their little area
within it but had no clue how to piece together the whole. Everyone tiptoed around hugging their secrets. If this behaviour wasn’t vital, it would be funny.

Carry on, Ingram
.

A couple of weeks later Gussie took a phone call. ‘Get your skates on, Ingram. You’re wanted at the Other Place.’

‘Where?’

‘You will be taken,’ said Gussie.

It turned out to be a flat off Portman Square used by The Firm’s French section. It was a top-secret location and, officially, Ruby didn’t know about it.

As part of their induction, and before they moved on to one of the training schools, two French agents had come for a coding lesson. Major Martin wished Ruby to be there as an observer.

Was this going to be a waste of time? Far better that she got on with developing the ideas, the theory, the practice.

Major Martin caught her eye as the two agents filed into the room.
This is the human dimension
, he seemed to be telling Ruby. They were introduced by their current aliases, but not their code names.

On his previous mission, Augustine had been caught and tortured. Having managed to escape, he had been picked up by a Lysander from a field near Poitiers. He was pale, haunted-looking and had a wracking cough. Eloise was slender, with short dark hair and pale skin. Ruby judged her to be not much older than she was. Wearing a buttercup-yellow jersey, she seemed intelligent and spoke fluent, if accented, English.

They settled down to business. ‘Augustine, I want to pick your brains,’ said Major Martin. ‘You’ve been operating in the field for some time. What can we do to make coding and sending messages more secure?’

‘
Tuez tous les Boches
.’ Augustine’s little aside was accompanied by a phlegmy cough.

Eloise
touched him on the arm. ‘
Calme toi
.’

‘Here’s what I think,’ said Augustine when he had his breath back. ‘Having to keep to regular and predictable skeds adds to the danger. The Boches have direction-finding units all over the place. Once they have a sounding and they know the timing of the skeds, they surround the area.
Alors
… they sit and wait for the agent to come on air.
Voilà
.
C’est fini
. The skeds should be varied so they won’t know when we come on air. It will also give us more time to move the sets about.’

‘Agreed,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll speak to Signals.’

Eloise fixed large eyes on Augustine.

She’s sucking in every piece of information, stifling her nerves, Ruby thought, and her own jangled in sympathy.

‘Anything else?’

Augustine shook his head. Then he tossed into the room: ‘Sending messages is a joke. Except instead of laughing, you lose your life.’

There was a short heavy silence.

‘It was bad out there,’ said Major Martin. ‘I know, and I’m sorry.’

Ruby swallowed.

Major Martin produced a set of coding exercises and handed them to Augustine. ‘For you, these are more a matter of brushing up. Don’t worry if you’re rusty. You can relearn quite easily. We can schedule several sessions before you go back in.’ He focused on Eloise. ‘This is the first session for you.’

Eloise plucked at the wrist of her yellow jersey with nervy fingers.

‘First rule: you must never send a message of less than one hundred and forty letters. If you do, it will be to tell us that you are caught.’

How intense these two were … in the way they held themselves and how they spoke. Augustine already knew about cold and hunger, flight, distrust and betrayal. Eloise was anticipating them, and yet was still willing to go in.

Augustine
began his exercise but was promptly poleaxed by a coughing bout. He started over again.

Eloise licked her pencil and got on with it, her jaw set. But her hand was unsteady.

Ruby’s gaze collided with Major Martin’s.
We are the lucky ones
.

Eventually, they were done. Ruby cast an eye over the results and it was obvious that Eloise’s attempt was clumsy and riddled with mistakes.

‘Could you take Eloise outside while I go over security checks?’ Major Martin was asking.

There wasn’t much room. The flat was stuffed with people and a spiral staircase took up a lot of hallway. Agents were presumably coming in and out and, for security reasons, Parks the doorwoman hustled Eloise and Ruby into a room which turned out to be a bathroom with an exotic black marble bath.

‘Don’t you come out of here,’ said Parks, shutting the door on them. In the corridor outside, masculine feet clattered up and down. There was a burst of Polish and a woman asked, ‘
À quelle heure, à quelle heure?
’

Ruby gaped at the bath. She had never in her life seen such a thing.

They perched on its edge. Eloise fiddled with the cuff of her yellow jersey again. ‘
Merde
,’ she said as a piece of wool unravelled.

‘Is there anything I can do to set your mind at rest about the coding?’ Ruby asked her.

Eloise clutched the side of the bath, her knuckles almost bursting through the skin.

‘It’s not natural to me. I worry that if I’m under stress I’ll forget how to operate.’ She looked at Ruby. ‘I
worry
… so much depends …’

‘Practise. Every moment you have spare, practise. But, if you really don’t think you can cope with this side of things you must say so.’ She tapped the marble to emphasize the point. ‘Please. It’s not a failure.’

The
advice seemed to calm Eloise. If you can give an agent an escape route, Ruby realized, coping with a situation was easier.

‘Eloise, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?’

She shook her head.

‘I am trying to understand how the codes we give you work for you. We need to know how you cope under different circumstances. For instance, when you’re in a hurry, or in the dark, or frightened.’

‘Oh that …’ Eloise got to her feet. ‘Forgive me, but I must use the lavatory.’

‘I’m so sorry but I can’t give you any privacy.’

Eloise shrugged. ‘Do you think we care about privacy any more?’ She raised her skirt and sat down on the lavatory. ‘That is the least of the worries.’ There was a modest rush of liquid into the pan and Eloise had finished. She washed her hands.

‘The five words you chose from your poem when you did the exercise,’ Ruby checked through the file, ‘the ones which indicate your transposition key – can you tell me why you chose them? For instance, why did you choose “book”?’

‘It’s easier to spell than some of the other words in the poem. I know it. I won’t forget it.’

‘And “red”?’

‘It was short. And when there is no time …’

‘And “sunshine”?’

She brushed the feathery fringe away from her forehead. ‘An indulgence. It reminds me of home.’

Ruby took notes.

‘What if …’ Eloise gave a shuddering sigh. ‘What if I can’t – I can’t manage when I’m out there? What if I fail?’ She held out her hands and Ruby dropped her notes and seized them and held them tight.

‘You won’t fail. I promise.’

The words were inadequate, so inadequate, and the promise an empty one.

Soon
afterwards, Major Martin called in Eloise, and Augustine joined Ruby in the bathroom. He lowered himself gingerly onto the edge of the bath.

‘I know you had a bad time,’ she said. ‘Have you recovered?’

He turned a haunted gaze on her. ‘I won’t be forgetting, if that’s what you mean. But, I was lucky. Fine people took care of me and I got away. Others weren’t so lucky.’ Now he looked anywhere but at Ruby. ‘In prison one of ours was brought in with a broken leg. The Gestapo took great delight in twisting it at regular intervals. It was part of the torture …’

‘
Part
of his torture?’

Ruby’s hands clenched.

‘Someone else had their eye taken out by a fork.’

There was nothing to be said.

‘May I ask you something?’ It was too difficult to dwell on the details and Augustine changed the subject. ‘If an agent needs extra help with codes can they ask for it?’

‘In theory, yes.’ She eyed him thoughtfully, wondering if he was thinking about Eloise. ‘Please, you realize you must not involve yourself with other agents?’

He shrugged as if to say:
You know nothing of what it’s like. You know nothing of how it works. We need each other. We need each other to be strong and confident
.

True. How could Ruby know what it was like? All she could say, all she could give in the way of comfort was: ‘If you talk to Major Martin, I am sure something can be done.’

‘
Merci
.’

‘No. We should be thanking you.’

Never in her life had she felt so useless.

She ate and drank encryption. She dreamed it. She breathed it. She struggled with it.

But after the interviews with Eloise and Augustine, she had worked out something. The more they knew about how agents
might work – dived into the recesses of their minds, mapped the nooks and crannies of human emotion – the better they would serve the men and women who went out, regardless, into the field.

A couple of days later Ruby came on shift and found Major Martin in the office. He was holding one of her decrypts.

He turned to Gussie. ‘Would you mind?’

With exaggerated effort, Gussie got to her feet. ‘I’ll give you ten minutes.’

Peter cocked an eyebrow. ‘Gussie is without price. Have you killed each other yet?’

‘She’s a good woman,’ said Ruby.

He pushed the paper towards her. ‘There’s a query on the last grouping but one.’

‘Sure.’ She unlocked the drawer containing her working papers and spread them out on the desk. Together they bent over them and she pointed to a numbered pair. ‘There … that was the departure on this one.’ She took him through the process. ‘See, the agent made a mistake here and I traced it back. I can’t make sense of the word. It’s a foreign one. “Dan … k”. There is one letter missing.’

‘S,’ he said.

‘Dansk?’

‘Danish.’

He did not elaborate and she did not ask.

Major Martin placed his hands on the desk and leaned towards Ruby. ‘Any thoughts, Ingram?’

She was tempted to say that it was impossible to conclude anything useful unless one knew the whole story – but thought better of it.

‘Ingram, don’t waste time.’

Eloise’s words flashed across her mind: ‘What if I fail?’

‘I want to say that I am completely behind the idea that the poem-code system should be dropped and replaced by one which the agents could not possibly remember.’

‘Good.
I agree. Others agree. That’s why we want you to think about it.’

‘If we are in agreement, why can’t we do something?’ She shut and locked her papers in her drawer. ‘Hasn’t The Firm co-opted the most dextrous and flexible minds around? Aren’t we supposed to be unorthodox in our thinking?’

‘That’s the theory.’ He sounded tarter than a slice of lemon. ‘Bear in mind we still have some chiefs whose mind-sets were formed when the Empire thrived. They take persuasion.’