It was two and a half days before our effort was rewarded. Hours of 'backing a bit' over foam-lashed pieces of flotsam and sliding over for a close look at a shoal of fish.
When we made contact the extreme long-wave radio set on Ossie's knees - the one he had stolen from da Cunha's safe - gave a 'beep beep' of response. The pilot held us steady. The wave-crests were inches under us.
'Beep beep': it was emitting a signal to us. Ossie was shouting over the intercom and I grabbed the diver's rubber-clad arm and tried to go through his instructions all over again in thirty seconds flat Edwards patted my hand and said, 'It will be O.K., sir', then like a demon king in a pantomime he was gone. Hands crossed, face lowered, he hit the water with a splash. Only now did I see the target he had dived at The silver metal floating amid the waves shone here and there through the green vegetation. C.P.O. Edwards had the cable lashed around the big metal cylinder within ten minutes. The which operator began to haul it up and brought it splashing and dripping into the cabin of the helicopter.
Dawlish had done his stuff. When the helicopter got back to the ship everything was ready and waiting - even a ration of rum for the still wet C.P.O. Edwards. I was in the captain's day-cabin with the cylinder; a Marine sentry was stationed outside and even the captain knocked before coming in to ask if there was anything more I required.
Two bolts had to be chiselled off, but that was only to be expected after more than a decade under the water. The light alloy panel came free to reveal a large compartment and give access for adjustments to the barometer, thermometer, hygrometer and the motors.
Every twelve hours this metal cylinder had surfaced and its voice had told da Cunha that it was still 'alive and well'. Fernie Tomas had tried to 'home' on the signal, but failed to spot it before it descended to the sea bed again.
Harry Kondit knew that his boat travelled twelve miles on each of da Cunha's trips. 'Down the coast' he had said. because Harry Kondit thought he was the only man who kept rendezvous at sea.
I reached inside to where the instruments had once been, and found a slim metal tin with the Nazi eagle and the bright-red sealing wax. Before I opened it I sent for a jug of coffee and sandwiches. It was going to be a long task.
57 Lost letter in the mail
Christmas 1940
Dear Baron,
What a wonderful surprise to have your letter, it had taken nearly nine weeks to reach us. You may well wonder what the 'state of mind' is here in England. You would never recognize Number 20 now and it is like no other Christmas I care to remember. They have used the gardens for some sort of dump and five of the houses are full of Polish officers who are for ever shouting and singing. Gerald is hi the Cameroons negotiating with the French, and Billy is with the Fleet, goodness knows where. We have only cook and Janet now to look after us and are 'camping' in the study and the gold room that you liked so much. We don't go into London at all, as there is little petrol available and the trains are blacked out and quite filthy, and now they are talking about restricting restaurant meals. That Karl is having a wonderful time in Paris we have little doubt, how we all envy him! You must send him my love when you next write.
How we agree with you about this dreadful war. The government here is completely dominated by these dreadful Labour Party people, and Sir B. is quite sure they are plotting with the Bolsheviks against the poor, gallant little Finns. At least, Daddy says, they are going to have the Daily Worker newspaper 'put down' next month. You say that if only we had an hour's conversation together you are sure that we could help our countries in these days of internecine bitterness. You are right, and I must tell you that it is not as impossible as you seem to think. Lord C. is going to the United States in February and Miriam will be going with him. Surely it is not impossible that you should have to go to Lisbon on some pretence or other? You always were able to 'find excuses to satisfy Nanna at Goodwinds. Is Grand-mama well? You know that Cyril is still at the same address in Zurich; I know I would love to see you again, it seems so long. Of course Helmut can use the house in Nice, the agent in the village has the keys, I only hope it hasn't been damaged, but one never knows, the way the French have been behaving lately is past comprehension. Please write again soon, the news that you are well and still thinking of us has brought a breath of fresh air to our dusty old lives.
Your true friend,
BESS
Sunday, 26th January, 1941
London
Dear Walter,
I shall ask you to bum this the moment that you have read it Tell K.E.F. that he will have to supply anything from the factory in Lyon that you ask. Remind him that it wasn't the French Resistance that have paid his wages for the last ten months. I want the chimneys smoking again at the earliest possible moment or 1 will sell the whole plant. Would your Wehrmacht people be interested hi buying the place? Should you be interested I will appoint you as the agent at the usual rate. Surely a factory in the Vichy Free Zone could be useful hi the light of this 'Trading with the Enemy Statutory List'?
I think these people here are beginning to realize which way the wind has blown and already a little of the bravado has disappeared. You can mark my words that should your fellows actually come into conflict with the Soviets we British will not be long hi understanding what must be done.
Our plant in Latvia has gone down the drain now that they have been subverted by the Bolshies and I can only say how glad I am that the plans for the Bukovina place didn't materialize.
I am forming a 'Brains Trust' (as they say these days i of people who see eye to eye with me on these points so that when the country finally comes to its senses we will be in a position to do something about it.
You are right about Roosevelt's crowd; now that he's safely in for the third time they will foment the spiteful retaliatory attitude of the socialist mob here. However. Roosevelt isn't America you know, and as long as your people don't do anything foolish (like dropping a bomb on New York) only a small number will be willing to pick up a gun if it means putting down a cash register.
Burn this now,
Yours, HENRY
58 To put it together hastily
Perhaps they are not typical of the letters that I took from the cylinder. I spread them all out across the table. Some were written under engraved headings, some on paper torn from exercise books. What did they all have hi common?
I shook the tiny tin of silica gel crystals that had helped keep the documents dry and I flipped through the yellow-paged, rough-printed book of names and addresses. I wondered if I would have reasoned that these things were among the great treasures of the modern world. I decided that I wouldn't have, but then da Cunha was more than a little dotty. Da Cunha who could sit and lecture me about the sanctity of the middle classes.
When Nazi Germany was falling about its creator's ears the bigwigs were busy making a grab for a souvenir of something they had known and loved - like money.
Some liked big pictures and they took old master paintings; some liked little pictures and they took stamp collections; some liked luxury, they took gold; some liked la belle epoque, they took heroin; but one had developed a taste for power. He took these letters.
When the Wehrmacht was straining its eyes to peer through the Channel mist, the order went out to form a British Puppet Government German diplomatic circles were asked to contact likely sympathizers, using the individual approach as far as possible. So it was that earnest, charming, personal letters reached earnest, charming people who might be prepared to be a Member of Parliament hi the Nazi-backed National Socialist Government that was to have its seat in the Channel Islands until London was made ready.
These letters were filed when whiter set in. They were filed again at the end of the next summer, when letters about puppet governments were addressed to earnest, charming Bessarabians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians. They had collected dust until, one day hi 1945, a man realized that these letters from influential people might make life easier hi an unfriendly world.
Fregattenkapitan Knobel, a scientific officer of the German Navy, took his packet of letters and his tin of heroin and went aboard the Type XXI U-boat at Cuxhaven. Da Cunha knew all about the meteorological buoys and he spent an hour sealing his package of blackmail ammunition into the canister and re-fixing the waterproof seal. Off Albufeira he ordered the commander of the U-boat to drop the canister, and then da Cunha went ashore in a rubber dinghy. The U-boat captain lost a dinghy and very soon after he lost his life, for the U-boat foundered with all hands.
What happened will probably never be known. Few Type XXIs ever came into contact with water. Most of them were packed tightly together, half-completed, on the slipways of Northern Germany, when the Allied armies reached them. As far as I know there isn't a whole XXI anywhere in the world, unless we count the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean just off Albufeira.
Tomas realized that a U-boat full of high-ranking Nazis would contain valuable loot - if you don't mind probing around rotting bodies. How much Tomas minded is another thing we shall never know. When he removed the canisters of heroin he needed help in disposing of it. He couldn't have found a more suitable helpmate than H.K., but they both stayed clear of da Cunha's preserves.
Tomas never lost his respect for da Cunha. He stiffened when da Cunha came near and answered him hi the short monosyllabic tones of the German Navy. Like all Germans, da Cunha was able to master accentless Portuguese. How much Tomas knew about the cylinder is difficult to decide, but he guessed enough to blackmail at least one person named therein - Smith. Although Tomas went with da Cunha to check the meteorology cylinder every six months, until our voyage together he had made no attempt to retrieve the cylinder from the ocean bed. Tomas had only a radio receiver; from da Cunha we had stolen a transmitter which would summon the cylinder from the sea bed rather than just receive a signal every twelve hours. Tomas rushed to get the cylinder when he discovered that da Cunha had fled (as H.K. guessed he would).
Why did da Cunha keep the papers on the sea bed? He was a blackmailer. Smith was 'persuaded' to equip a research lab. for him. Smith was 'persuaded' to have me recalled from Albufeira. How many other people were persuaded to do things?
I took the file marked OSTRA. (An 'oyster': lying at the bottom of the sea with a pearl inside, that was da Cunha's cylinder.) I added the letters I had taken from the buoy.
They made a small mountain on Dawlish's bright mahogany desk.
'So this is the lot,' Dawlish said. He sniffed contemplatively.
'Yes,' I said. 'I'd guess that most of these people have donated money to the "Young Europe Movement" at one time or another.'
'Jolly good,' said Dawlish, 'I knew you would manage.'
'Oh sure,' I said, 'especially when you wanted to cancel the whole operation.'
Dawlish looked at me over his spectacles, which can get to be very irritating.
'Furthermore,' I said, 'you knew that that girl was employed by the American Narcotics Bureau, and you didn't tell me.'
'Yes,' said Dawlish blandly, 'but she was a very low-echelon employee and I had no wish to inhibit intercourse among the group.' We looked blankly at each other for two or three minutes.
'Social,' Dawlish amended.
'Of course,' I agreed. Dawlish disembowelled his pipe with a penknife.
'When will Smith be arrested?' I asked.
'Arrested?' said Dawlish. 'What an extraordinary question; why would he be arrested?'
'Because he is a corner-stone of an international Fascist movement dedicated to the overthrow of democratic government.' I said it patiently, even though I knew that Dawlish was deliberately leading me on.
Dawlish said, 'You surely don't imagine that they can put everyone who answers that description in jail. Where would we find room for them, and besides, where would the Bonn government get another Civil Service?' He gave a sardonic smile and tapped the pile of documents. 'Our friends here are much more useful where they are - as long as they know that H.M. Government have this little pile hi Kevin Cassel's cellar.'
He opened the drawer of his desk and produced an even more enormous file of documents. Across the front it said 'Young Europe Movement' in Alice's fuse-wire handwriting, and was bulging with months of work that Dawlish had never even told me about.
'You didn't understand your role, my boy,' he said in his smug voice; 'we didn't want you to discover anything. Somehow we knew that you would make them do something indiscreet.'
Last Word
I took all the material down to Kevin Cassel in his Central Register last Tuesday. He signed and embossed the official receipt and wished me merry Christmas.
'Well over the fast,' I said. Why was he always smiling?
As I drove back through Ripley an old lady was sticking tufts of cotton wool into her shop-window to spell 'Merry Xmas'. Outside a man was using a shovel to clear a path to the door.
'Now you see what it's like where the work is done,' said Dawlish, and went on to make provocative remarks about lying around in the sun. Dawlish had convened the training structure sub-committee on my behalf. It was a masterstroke hi his battle with O'Brien for control of the Strutton Committee. Dawlish had put every member of the Strutton Committee on the training structure subcommittee with the exception of O'Brien. In other words it was like holding meetings with O'Brien locked out Dawlish was all knees and elbows. He sat hi his battered leather armchair and puffed clouds of smoke at the Duke of Wellington, and said that being successful was just a state of mind.
Bernhard had spread himself all over my office but had taken care not to do any of my paper work. The thirteen-centimetre lens for the Nikon had apricot jam on it, and my secretary was doing half the typing hi the building.
I kicked Bernhard and his twenty cardboard folders out, and although he protested volubly he set up shop elsewhere. 'And I owe you a two-pound bag of sugar,' he said as he left.
'Stealing sugar is a felony,' I grumbled. 'Didn't you learn any manners at Cambridge?'
'The only thing I learned at Cambridge,' said Bernhard, 'was how to put on a pair of fifteen-inch trousers without first removing my chukka boots.'
Alice brought me some sugar.
*
On Friday I took Charly Christmas shopping in the West End. She bought her father a subscription to Playboy and I sent Baix an Eton tie. I suppose we were each hi our own way fighting the establishment. She tried to make some joke at my expense about the ice-melting theories that I had believed; but I didn't respond.
'Your old man is an admiral, isn't he?' I asked.
'Yes, dream man.'
'Well,' I said, 'I want to speak to him about that diving equipment. Lisbon have lost part of it. It's on my charge, you see. They want me to pay œ250 towards it.'
'Come back to my place,' she said, 'I'll see what can be done.'
'You'll help?' I said.
'Console,' she said, 'console.'
Appendixes
1. Telephone-tapping 'When you talk into a telephone, you shout from the roof,' Ivor Butcher said one day. A tremendous number of phone calls are tapped in the U.K. In the U.S. wiretapping is an industry.
1. To tap (in comfort) get someone in the G.P.O. to alter wires on the frame so that your 'victim's' phone rings yours as well as the number he is calling. All you do is listen in or record. N.B. If you want to know what number he has dialled you will need a Dial Recorder to count the digits.
2. To tap. Take your 'tappers' (box, hand-set and crocodile clips) to the B.T. (box terminal), 'taste' the terminals with a wet finger to get the one you want. Note: a friend inside the G.P.O. who can tell you about the 'pairs' and how far from the 'victim's' phone they can be picked up will make life a little easier.
3. To tap one call only. You can brazenly do it from an outdoor green cabinet, but study the dress characteristics of G.P.O. engineers first.
4. Are you tapped? Do you get cut off in mid-conversation more often when using one particular phone! (N.B. Don't be misled by old-fashioned inef
ficiency, all G.P.O. phones are subject to that.) Do you sometimes find that the clarity and amplification increase after a minute or so? This is all due to the eavesdropper carelessly replacing the handset. Moral: Don't say anything confidential over a phone, but if you really must, discuss trivia for two or three minutes in the hope that the eavesdropper will hang up.
2. Austin Butterworth (Ossie) In November 1938, D.S.T., which is the French M.I.5, wanted to open an English make of safe in a certain embassy in Paris. Special Branch brought Ossie out of Parkhurst and asked him to go there.
'With the Nicks to help you,' said Ossie incredulously, and volunteered like a shot. He got on all right with D.S.T. and they kept him for nearly four months. Ossie's value to them came from his knowledge of British safes, which several of the embassies in Paris then had. Now of course any embassy in its right mind uses only safes made in its own country. However, back before the war Ossie earned himself a quite nice French civil medal, but some bureaucrat in the Home Office prevented its award.
Len Deighton - Harry Palmer 02 - Horse Under Water Page 23
