by Leo Marks
But he was present when the signalmaster at 53a telephoned to report for the second time that Noor’s touch on the keyboard had changed, and he was convinced that the Germans were operating her set. He was watching my face while I took the call but looked away as soon as it was finished and pretended to be immersed in an indecipherable which I knew he’d already broken.
He was also present when Nick hurried in, flushed with excitement, and informed us that the Free French had formally asked SOE to provide them with code books and one-time pads and that SOE had agreed provided that the High Command gave permission for de Gaulle to use his own codes. Nick was convinced that they would since the British had supplied them, and the code book was already on its way to London. Murray nodded his approval.
Noor’s capture made me forget that his time was also up and that tomorrow he’d belong to D/FIN. I told him that as soon as he’d finished all his reports, especially the one about the code department, I’d like him to be my deputy. He would also be in sole charge of administration, at which he excelled and I was hopeless. The post would carry with it a G2 rating (the civilian equivalent of a major), which was certain to be upgraded if he continued breaking indecipherables at his present rate.
Looking away, much as he had when I’d taken the call about Noor, he said my offer both astonished and touched him, and he wished he could accept it because codes fascinated him, and the question of rank didn’t arise. But he was certain that he wouldn’t be released from his other duties, though at moments like this he wished he could be. He then thanked me for all the trouble I’d taken and for giving him an experi-ence he’d never forget.
As soon as he’d left I urged Nick to use his influence to have him transferred to Signals and gave him my reasons, most of which I knew. He listened to them in silence, gave me a very odd look and promised to think the matter over.
He then reminded me that I still hadn’t found time to meet his protégée, Miss Saunders, and he was confident that I’d find her equally compatible. Remembering how wrong I’d been about Murray, I undertook to see her at once.
I disliked her at first sight and loathed her at second.
As the interview progressed I pretended to be taking notes to avoid looking at her, but her appearance drove me to the ditty-box:
A long line of lips
The eyes an eclipse
Arteries hardened
Nobody pardoned
Who holds the key
To that self-locking face
Who stole your grace?
I was obliged to concede that she had one redeeming feature: she wore shoes instead of jackboots.
I discovered that her brother was Colonel Hugh Saunders, who was highly placed in SOE’s admin department and was a close friend of Air Commodore Boyle’s, which might well account for Nick’s benevolent interest in her.
Over the next few days I did everything I could to make her life intolerable, but she was an ardent Christian Scientist and no matter what measures I took to persuade her to resign, she shimmered forgiveness at me and decided to stay. Tired of being regarded as part of the suffering she was put on earth to endure, I tried bribing her to leave by offering her a signed first edition of the works of Mary Baker Eddy (one of 84’s lesser treasures), but she said that she had one already and recommended that I should read it. Desperate to get rid of her, I was on the point of asking Nick which of us he preferred to keep on his strength when deliverance arrived from an unexpected quarter.
Robin Brook telephoned and the edge to his voice consigned Miss Saunders to the temporary oblivion I hoped to make permanent. He’d received a serious complaint about the code department from the Belgian section. An important message had been held up because the agent’s WOK had been sent to the wrong station, and by the time it reached the right one the agent had gone off the air. He’d come up on his emergency sked and the message was transmitted to him twelve hours later.
Robin added that delays of this kind could have disastrous consequences and it was sheer luck that the agent had had time to carry out the vital instructions which the message contained.
I accepted full responsibility for the error, as a department head must, and thanked him for bringing it to my attention.
He would never know why I was so well and truly grateful. Nick in his wisdom had put his protégée in charge of the distribution department, and it was her responsibility to ensure that WOKs and LOPs were sent to the right stations. She was assisted in this by her deputy, Doris Lafosse (excellent), and two capable despatchers.
I instructed Miss Saunders to report to my office immediately. In all our previous meetings I hadn’t once invited her to sit down or called her by her Christian name before launching into the day’s insults, but at least I’d acknowledged her presence with a frown. But on this occasion (my Overlord) I ignored her completely for the best part of a minute while she stood in front of me, preparing to forgive.
‘Good morning, Miss Saunders,’ I said cheerfully. ‘I have a little news for you.’ I then congratulated her on creating havoc in Belgium and spent the next five minutes exaggerating her mistake out of all proportion until we both believed it had cost us an entire circuit of agents and very possibly the war.
‘If you have an explanation to offer, I’d like to hear it,’ I said.
She stared at the floor, then shook her head.
‘No excuses at all?’
She shook it again, this time vehemently.
‘I have to say, Miss Saunders, that I have no confidence in you whatsoever and cannot risk this happening again.’
She took a quick look at me and seemed on the point of making an announcement.
‘Yes, Miss Saunders?’ I said encouragingly.
‘You’ve been waiting for me to make a mistake like this ever since I came because you want me to go, and go I will! But you’re a pig, Mr Marks – an absolute pig.’
I didn’t mind being called one, as I had no religious convictions except in emergencies. ‘I’m sure your brother will find you a post for which you’re better suited …’
She walked quickly to the door, but in my moment of triumph a blob of memory spurted up like fat from a frying pan and stung me into recalling her. ‘One moment, please.’
Her hand was already on the doorknob, and she didn’t turn round. ‘We have nothing further to discuss, Mr Marks.’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Saunders, but I believe we have …’ That damn blob had forced me to remember that on the day of the mistake I’d fancied roast Saunders for lunch but Muriel had told me that Nick had given her the whole day off.
She couldn’t be held responsible for what happened in her absence but had accepted the blame for her subordinate’s mistake as a department head must.
Better still, she’d managed to keep silent under duress. What more could I ask of her, other than forgiveness?
I told her I knew she wasn’t responsible and tried to apologise the only way I knew: ‘Sit down, Audrey,’ I said, ‘and have a cream cake.’
Her eyes quivered and then her lips, and seconds later she burst into tears.
I couldn’t understand why because the cakes were fresh.
I knew with the instinct of the lonely that this was the start of a lasting friendship.
But a shock was on its way about my other new friend.
Heffer walked in as grey as the ash on his cigarette and advised me to sit down while I heard what he had to say. He’d just learned from Nick that Murray hadn’t the slightest intention of joining D/FIN.
It was his cover story to extract maximum information from every department head he visited! He was about to be appointed deputy head of SOE.
‘He’ll be closer to Gubbins than anyone,’ said Heffer, ‘and what’s more he knows where all the bodies are buried. And you’ll be lucky if yours isn’t one of them.’
He swore me to secrecy until the announcement was formally made.
Murray’s charade was the only example of SOE-mindedness I’d
yet understood, and I decided to respond to it in kind.
I waited until the symbols list announced that M. P. Murray was appointed D/CD and telephoned his secretary to ask if I could have a quick word with him. I was put through at once.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Michael, but we’ve just received an urgent indecipherable! Can you come over and help us break it?’
To my astonishment, ten minutes later he sat at his old desk with an indecipherable in front of him and without a word began working his way through the long list of keys.
I’d arranged for Muriel to telephone me two minutes later to say that the girls had just broken it. When I told him the good news, he stood up at once and turned to the door.
But we hadn’t quite finished and I suspected that he knew it. ‘Before you go, Michael, there’s something I must ask you.’
He waited in silence.
‘Now that you’ve been demoted, will you be able to spare time to deal with the wing commander?’
‘I’ve already spoken to him … It was the first call I made from my new desk. You’ll have no further problems with him. He’s confirming it in writing to CD.’
‘Thanks a lot, sir.’
He turned back at the door and looked at me severely. ‘If I have further problems with you, I may have to pay you an unexpected visit – but I’ll make sure that my secretary gives you plenty of warning.’
The second most powerful man in SOE closed the door behind him. I said a silent prayer on behalf of the first: Please God, take special care of Colin Gubbins. It takes a good leader to pick a good deputy … and can anything be done to help Noor, who knows you by another name? I can feel her pain from here and know how much worse it must be for you.
The mush out of the way, I returned to work.
FIFTY-FIVE
The Forty-Eight Mistakes
On 2 November the Executive Council wrote formally to Nick praising the code department’s ‘outstanding achievements’, and as their ap-proval was often synonymous with incompetence, I wondered what we were doing wrong.
Three factors may have contributed to our sudden popularity: our output of silk codes had increased by 50 per cent (due entirely to Murray); our briefing officers had learned discipline from Audrey without losing their allure; and our coders were breaking 90 per cent of their indecipherables in under twelve hours, at an average of two thousand attempts per indecipherable. We’d also begun reproducing the Free French code book, which had arrived from Algiers (it was to be used in conjunction with letter one-time pads), but I suspected that the real reason for the council’s plaudits lay elsewhere.
I then learned from Heffer that they weren’t a reward but a down payment for what the council hoped we’d achieve in the most important operation the code department had yet taken part in: we were expected to make a major contribution to the latest battle with C.
The civil war had broken out in a new direction. Both sides were competing for the patronage of some American VIPs who’d arrived in London on a shopping expedition.
They were all senior members of OSS, which had opened a thriving branch in Grosvenor Square halfway between Baker Street and C’s HQ. One reason for their visit was to investigate the relative merits of C and SOE before deciding which contender should have the privilege of sharing their business, and their head (General ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan) had announced his intention of inspecting the whole of our Signals directorate when he had a minute or two to spare.
The OSS had many functions (some of which we understood, a few of which they did) and was divided into three main branches: one specialised in the gathering of secret intelligence and was the equivalent of C; another was known as SO and was the American counterpart of SOE; and the third specialised in research and analysis, though no one seemed sure into what.
Having already co-operated with both organisations in the invasion of North Africa, the Americans distributed their favours evenly and a new joint venture with SOE was being planned for D-Day. It consisted of dropping three-man teams into France, each consisting of one American, one British and one French member, who’d be wearing uniform (they were fully trained saboteurs and uniform might save them from being shot). They were to be known as ‘Jedburghs’, and their function was to supervise local resistance groups, liaise with the invading forces and maintain wireless contact with London.
But there was one major snag in the Jedburgh concept. The Americans insisted on handling all the traffic themselves at their newly built wireless station at Poundon, which was to be known as 53c. They also insisted that an American signals officer must command the station, which would use only American wireless operators.
As soon as they’d got Nick’s reluctant agreement (he was in no position to argue) they made what seemed to them a sensible request. Since they were ‘kind of new’ to clandestine traffic, as soon as 53c opened early next year they suggested taking over the Norwegian traffic from 53a ‘to help them get their hand in’, and after consulting the council (those well-known experts on signals problems), Nick agreed.
The decision to entrust Norwegian and Jedburgh traffic to a station which hadn’t yet passed a single message scared the Morse out of our signalmasters and the silk out of me. But the Americans were full of surprises (a few of them welcome) and they asked Nick to advise them on the setting up of their code room, which they wanted us to staff with our most experienced coders.
Nick was delighted to agree and instructed me to prepare to transfer ‘the best of our FANYs’ to the American station.
I tried to point out that our teams of coders had been depleted by transfers abroad, but he cut me short in mid-splutter and ordered me to produce a list of suitable candidates within a week at the latest. He stressed that of all the jobs I had in hand, this was ‘by far the most important’.
I didn’t tell him that it was the one I felt least equipped to do.
I’d lost all confidence in my ability to choose reliable coders. I’d also begun to wonder if I’d ever possessed it.
I’d discovered a flaw in the girls’ functioning which I couldn’t account for and which I was determined to keep to myself until I did.
I’d learned that 90 per cent of the girls made major mistakes which were wholly out of character, that experienced coders behaved like beginners when we least expected it and that methodical plodders, the life’s blood of a code room, were just as accident-prone as coders with flair.
I hadn’t realised the extent of the carelessness (consciously, that is) until Noor’s message to London with eighteen letters in her transposition key. I’d left strict instructions with the station that, in the event of this happening, the supervisor was to notify me at once and teleprint the code groups to London.
But the supervisor had taken no such action, and if it hadn’t been for my unease about Noor I wouldn’t have asked to examine the code groups. I then discovered that she’d inserted her distress signal.
The supervisor in question whispered, ‘Oh Christ!’ when I pointed out her mistake, and I left it to the most successful briefing officer in history to take the matter further.
But although I’d let her off lightly in case she lost all her self-confidence, her lapse jolted me into making a complete list of every major mistake the coders had made over the past six months. It was like counting the bullet wounds in a much-loved body. They totalled twenty-three – not half as many as I’d made myself but probably not the true figure, as it took no account of the mistakes I was sure they’d covered up.
I then listed all the errors which the coders in London had made during the same six months. They totalled twenty-five (Londoners had a harder time concealing them as I was their next-door neighbour).
Comparing the two lists, I sensed a pattern to the lapses which I couldn’t define.
I then discovered that the malfunctioning wasn’t confined to the coders and that every branch of the code department appeared to be flawed. Wrong codes had been taken to final briefings, WOKs had been inc
orrectly assembled and LOPs intended for the training schools had been sent to Nick’s office, where they’d languished for a week. Even Muriel had made mistakes when typing agents’ code cards and had failed to correct them.
I again sensed a pattern to the lapses, but it continued to elude me.
Determined to discover the unknown factor, and hoping its name wasn’t Marks, I reread The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. But according to Freud, an expert in off moments, most carelessness was unconsciously motivated and triggered by sexual frustration, and if this were true of the girls I must put my country first and end their deprivation.
In the meantime I had twenty coders to select for 53c and had so far chosen only two, and one of these I had doubts about. With less than forty-eight hours of Nick’s deadline remaining, I decided to pocket my pride with my other loose change and consult Captain Henderson, the personnel officer in charge of the Signals directorate’s FANYs.
I hadn’t seen the attractive Canadian since she visited me with Miss Furze to debate recruitment, but I’d done my homework on her. I’d learned that her several hundred charges called her ‘Mother Hen’ and knew that they could safely confide in her, as she had a liberal interpretation of her CO’s dictum, ‘FANYs shall at all times conduct themselves like ladies.’ When I arrived for my appointment the passage was thronged with FANYs waiting to be counselled, and half of them were coders.
She at once asked for a progress report on two corporals at 53a who’d been promoted sergeants. As both girls were high on my list of gifted ‘unreliables’, her question enabled me to come to the point immediately, the hallmark of a good personnel officer.
I explained the importance of the new code room and said that, much as I wanted both sergeants to be part of it, I was extremely concerned about their unaccountable lapses. She nodded wisely, which encouraged me to disclose the full extent of the problem and admit that it was baffling me.
She suggested that it might have something to do with periods.
