“So Fan was more the mathematician of the two of you?”
“Not at all. We both had first-class degrees. To some extent it was luck of the draw where they put you in Bletchley. They wanted clever people everywhere, even oiling the bombe. But Fan was exceptional, a really clever statistician. And she’d had an actual job before the war, teaching math at a school. I’d gone back into London society after Cambridge and was in danger of becoming a flibbertigibbet. Really, Bletchley was the best thing that could have happened to me. You could say I drew the short straw getting the bombe, but mucking in with the Wrens was probably just what I needed.”
“Do you remember the thirtieth of April 1943, when Clan Macpherson went down?”
“I remember it well. It was cold, unseasonably so. Summer wasn’t yet in sight. Fan came back to our digs that evening terribly upset about something, but of course she couldn’t talk about it. I knew that her hut was where the decrypts were put into action, as it were, sent down the line to the Admiralty. Maybe they’d tried but failed to reroute a convoy. There were two battles that night, I remember, one in the mid-Atlantic and one off West Africa. Later I saw on her bedside table that she’d copied down the names of the ships lost in that West African convoy, and had underlined Clan Macpherson. I’d never seen Fan cry before. It was odd. She was usually so tough. I suppose we all have a breaking point. It never happened again.”
Jeremy opened the tablet computer he had brought in with him. “Have you got wireless in this place?”
“Wouldn’t have allowed them to move me here if they hadn’t.”
“Okay. I’ve got the stats here for the two convoys that night. ONS-5, the mid-Atlantic one, Liverpool to Halifax, forty-two ships and sixteen escorts, with a total of forty-three U-boats in two patrol lines arraigned against them. The ensuing week-long battle saw thirteen merchant ships sunk against seven U-boats destroyed and six damaged. The African convoy was TS-37, Takoradi to Sierra Leone, a fairly short hop on the West African route from Cape Town to the UK. Seven merchant ships sunk by U-515, one of the biggest tallies of the war for a solo U-boat attack. No U-boat losses.”
Jack thought for a moment. “The evening of the thirtieth of April, when Fan came back distressed, was before these losses had actually been incurred. Maybe she was upset because she knew a decision had been made not to act on the Ultra decrypts that day. I can see why that decision might have been made for ONS-5. The S designation means that it was a slow convoy, and altering course would have been a long-winded business. Even if Bletchley did have decrypts showing the position of U-boats, with over forty boats out there they might have been redirecting the convoy straight into another line of U-boats.”
“Think about the overall context, too,” Jeremy said. “The escort corvettes by that point had become very proficient at killing U-boats. Dönitz’s fleet was already losing more boats than could be replaced. As the Bletchley intelligence people might have anticipated, the ONS-5 battle was hard-fought, with bad losses, but turned out to be one of the decisive battles of the war.”
“You’re saying they wanted that battle to happen,” Costas interjected. “That the merchant ship losses in ONS-5 were a price worth paying to bring the navy and the U-boats together. If she knew about that, no wonder the girl was upset.”
“It’s harder to explain a decision not to save the other convoy, the one with Clan Macpherson, TS-37,” Jack said. “A single U-boat, a distant route off the main battle area that had rarely been hit. Given that, you might have thought it was safe enough for a decrypt to be acted upon without exciting German suspicion.”
“Maybe they didn’t have an Ultra signal showing the position of U-515 clearly enough,” Jeremy said. “Maybe her captain was on silent patrol, lurking. Sometimes U-boat captains did that when they didn’t want to be reined in by Dönitz. I’ve been reading a lot about it over the past few days.”
Jack pursed his lips. “I’d agree with you, except that the girl appears to have been specifically upset about that West African convoy and Clan Macpherson, suggesting that they could have rerouted that convoy too.”
While they were talking, Louise had been struggling to reach a framed group photo on her windowsill. Jeremy quickly got up to help her, placing it on the table so they could all see. “There,” she said. “That’s the only picture I’ve got from Bletchley. Actually, it’s not at Bletchley, as hardly any photos were taken there, but it shows a group of Bletchley cryptographers just after the war back at Cambridge, members of a chess club. Those were some of our chaps.”
“Seems a fairly unlikely-looking bunch for a girl like you,” Jeremy said, pushing up his glasses and sweeping back his hair. “I mean, romantically speaking.”
Costas peered at the picture and then inspected him. “You should talk. The only thing missing is a bow tie. Otherwise you’d fit in perfectly.”
“You’d be surprised,” Louise said, pointing at the photo. “That one there could really do the business, once you showed him the ropes. He became my husband.”
“Ah,” Jeremy said.
“You never took his name?” Jack asked.
“Too independent for that. Also, my postwar job. You couldn’t show you were married for risk of being compromised. I can’t really talk about it.”
“Understood. We don’t want you to say more than you’re comfortable with.”
“Jeremy’s right, though,” she went on. “Before the Americans arrived, it was a question of going with what you’d got. The cryptographers could be pretty awkward, but then the alternative was those poor men in uniform who’d been wounded or traumatized, burned-out submariners, that kind of thing. Bermonsey had been one of those.”
“Did you know him personally?” Jack asked.
“I invited him for a drink in the pub near our billets soon after he arrived, in early autumn of ’42, I think. I’d known his sister before the war in London, and she asked me to look out for him. He was very nervy, wouldn’t talk much. By that stage we’d been at war for three years, and there were a lot of men like that. It sounds harsh, but that’s why the arrival of the Americans was such a breath of fresh air for us girls.”
“Did Fan ever talk about him?”
“He had the hots for her, you know. Never did anything about it at Bletchley, far too professional, but I could tell. Of course, they got married after the war.”
“Ah,” Jack said. “Did you keep up contact?”
“I was a witness at their wedding,” she replied. “It was at Southampton registry office the day before they were due to sail, in late 1947. He’d resigned from the navy and they were going to start a new life in Canada. Happened quite a lot with people from Bletchley. Not the marriage, I mean, but getting away. We were all supposed to walk off that last day when Bletchley shut down, to go back to our civilian lives and never talk about it. Oddly, it wasn’t such a problem for the cryptographers like my own future husband, as to them Bletchley was like a kind of special extended research fellowship, and afterward they returned to their universities and carried on doing much the same kind of thing. For the rest of us it was different. It would have been nice for me to tell my children growing up that I’d done something for the war effort.”
“They must know by now,” Costas said.
She nodded. “I told them when the whole Alan Turing story became public. But other than the fact that I worked on the bombe, I haven’t revealed any details. We were sworn to secrecy.”
“Where did Fan and Bermonsey go?” Jack asked.
“To British Columbia. I went to visit her there about twenty years ago, after Ian had died. They’d both been schoolteachers. We had a lovely week together, went whale-watching. I hadn’t realized then that she’d been ill, too. She died soon after I returned.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Costas said.
Jack leaned forward. “Did she ever talk to you about the work that she and Ian did at Bletchley? It might help with the Clan Macpherson mystery.”
She gave h
im a sudden steely look. “As I said, we were sworn to secrecy.”
“Of course.”
She paused, staring at the photos on the table for a moment, her hands shaking slightly. “But the answer is yes. I didn’t tell you about it when we spoke on the phone, as I wanted to size you up in person. But this is the reason why I wanted you to come here.” She looked at Costas. “There’s a little key in a matchbox in the top drawer of that desk beside you. Find it and use it to open the lower drawer.”
Costas did as he was told, taking the key and pulling the drawer open, revealing a few neatly stacked notebooks and a small pile of envelopes.
“I don’t keep many papers, as you can see,” Louise said. “A legacy from Bletchley days. But there’s a brown envelope with my name and address and a Canadian stamp on it. Fan sent it to me just after I returned from my visit to her.”
“Got it,” Costas said. “Do you want me to open it?”
“Pass it over to me, please.”
She took the envelope and pulled out a three-page typescript letter. She paused, and eyed Jack. “What do you know about the Ahnenerbe?”
“Himmler’s Department of Cultural Heritage, based at Wewelsburg Castle in Bavaria. We’ve bumped into them a few times—their legacy, I mean. They were on the hunt for a couple of artifacts that interested us.”
“The menorah,” Costas said.
“Sacred golden candelabra of the Jews,” Jeremy added, looking at Louise. “Stolen by the Romans when they looted the Temple in Jerusalem, and then vanished.”
“I know what the menorah is,” she said. “Anyway, everyone knows it was stolen from its secret hiding place in Constantinople by Harald Hardrada of Norway. He had it with him when he failed to conquer England in 1066, then took it across the Atlantic to the Viking colonies of Vinland and down to the Yucatán in Mexico, where he had a showdown with the Maya. What happened to it then is anyone’s guess. Probably melted down by the Maya and became part of the gold stolen by the Spanish five hundred years later, then lost in one of those shipwrecks off the Spanish Main.” She gave Jack a mischievous look. “Am I right, Dr. Howard?”
Jack pointed at one of his books on the table. “I’ll even sign it for you if you like.”
Costas smiled. “It’s a great story. One of my favorites. And I can vouch for it, as I was there, trapped inside an iceberg looking for a Viking longship.”
“I’ll have your signature too, then.”
Jack smiled, and then looked serious again. “Why do you mention the Ahnenerbe?”
Louise coughed, suddenly looking frail, and reached back toward the table behind her. Jack saw the small water bottle and got up to pass it to her, unscrewing the top first. She took a sip and then put it in the cup-holder on the arm of her wheelchair, her hand shaking badly. “You know,” she said, “we’ll never have the full story of what really went on at Bletchley. As more of us go, the secrets will die with us. But when Fan wrote that letter, she had decided to tell me everything she knew about that particular operation. She’s left the trail open for someone to follow. Perhaps for you to follow.”
“Will you read it to us?”
“One of you read it. My eyesight’s not so good any more. Fan always typed her letters, so it’s clear enough.” She handed the letter to Costas, who was nearest to her, and turned back to Jack, her eyes suddenly gleaming. “You asked about the Ahnenerbe. Prepare to be amazed.”
14
Prince Rupert Island
British Columbia
July 11 1997
My dear Louise,
We had such a lovely time last week, didn’t we? We always talked of traveling together after the war, and finally we’ve done it. So sad that Ian wasn’t here to enjoy it with us, but then we always did want a “girls only” outing and it did mean we could talk a bit more about Bletchley. With Ian that would have been impossible, because he was haunted by the war, especially during his final illness. He had nightmares where he saw the men from one of the ships his submarine had sunk in the Mediterranean swimming toward him desperately, and he was unable to rescue them.
I know it was frustrating for you, but you were lucky to be just working on the bombe (if that’s really all you were doing…). At least you didn’t have to deal as directly as I did in human lives. After being posted to the special operations hut, I had a hand in how the U-boat decrypts were used. Sometimes they saved lives, and sometimes we chose not to act on them if we thought the Germans might become suspicious. I’m able to tell you this because I know you must have guessed it already. You must have seen how upset I was on occasion. I felt that those men in the merchant ships were my responsibility, and I still think about them every day, about those I couldn’t save and the grief of all of those children growing up without having known their fathers, living out their lives forever under that shadow.
I will, though, never reveal to anyone how we reached those decisions. You and I were both sworn to secrecy, and keeping that bond has become part of who we are. Somehow it has helped me to live with it, feeling that what we did at Bletchley, the way we did it, could still save lives in a future war. But after you left last week, I thought about it and have decided to tell you about one operation that no longer has any bearing on national security. It was an operation within an operation, one of those folds of secrecy at Bletchley, and you’ll understand that I still can’t reveal anything about the bigger picture.
The operation was called Ark. That was the code name used for it by B-Dienst. Their naval intelligence division was involved in all German seaborne operations, and this was one of them, albeit a highly unusual one. When the word first appeared in the Ultra decrypts at Bletchley it was thought to be a code name for a new U-boat patrol line, a wolf pack. The patrol lines surrounding convoy OMS-5 in late April 1943, for example, were named after birds: Meise, blue tit, and Specht, woodpecker. But then an army intelligence officer attached to Hut 8 recognized it from one of the Colossus decrypts of German High Command communications from Berlin, and sourced it to the Ahnenerbe. The SS at Wewelsburg Castle had their own signals section, whose communications were channeled through the High Command, and with Colossus having cracked the Lorenz cipher, we were able to decrypt them. The Ark communications were specifically sourced to a Nazi agent established in Durban in South Africa before the war. They concerned an Ahnenerbe operation to smuggle something back to Germany on an Allied merchant ship. The first of these communications was deciphered toward the end of March 1943.
As you will know, many of the Ahnenerbe expeditions were attempts to find evidence for an Aryan precursor civilization, to substantiate the Nazi fantasy of an Aryan master race. Even within the Ahnenerbe there were many who knew this was absurd, but who could see it as a useful cover for the more plausible business of searching for Jewish treasures from antiquity lost or concealed around the world. Prime among their interests was the Ark of the Covenant. To find that, to bring it back to Germany and display it in Berlin, would have been the ultimate symbol of dominance over the Jews. That was what most worried our intelligence people about the Ahnenerbe, and it went to the very top. Churchill had little interest in fantasies of an Aryan master race, but he was deeply concerned about anti-Semitism, about the way Hitler and his cronies used it to stir up and strengthen Nazi belief. Once when he visited us he said that the discovery and parading in Berlin of a single artifact from the Temple in Jerusalem would be the equivalent of losing two or three army divisions to the Nazis, such would be its effect on German military morale. The horrible consequences of Nazi anti-Semitism were also becoming known. By 1943 we were aware of the mass murder of Jews by the SS Einsatzgruppen in the east, and reports of death camps in Poland were beginning to gain credibility.
By then the Americans were of course major players in the war; the American Jewish lobby had been a powerful factor in pushing Roosevelt to commit against Hitler in the way he did. Few people realize how much Churchill worked his will on those people during his early visits t
o America, and how grateful he was to them. For us in Allied intelligence to have failed to prevent an artifact central to Jewish identity from reaching Nazi Germany would have been a terrible blow. Hitler would have presented it as a huge triumph, just like the Roman emperor parading the spoils of the Temple through Rome after the sack of Jerusalem. He would have used it to try to humiliate and degrade the Jewish people. Imagine the scene: goose-stepping SS officers carrying the Ark past the Reichstag just like the legionaries shown with the menorah at the Arch of Titus in Rome, and the Ark then being defaced or destroyed. It would have been ghastly. Churchill by this stage in the war had taken many decisions for the greater good that required our men knowingly or unwittingly to sacrifice their lives, and Operation Ark would be one of those.
Whether or not the Ark had truly been found by Ahnenerbe agents we may never know. But the intelligence was good enough to put our intelligence people in South Africa on it. Nazi agents were often clumsy and obvious, and we’d rumbled the Durban operatives before the war even began. Our people determined that something had been secreted on board the British merchant ship Clan Macpherson during her port stay at Durban in mid-April 1943. After she sailed, only two days before her sinking, one of the Nazi agents was snatched and interrogated. He revealed that the plan had been an elaborate set-up involving another Nazi cell in Bombay, one that we had not previously rumbled. A month earlier, Clan Macpherson had stopped there and picked up a new draft of Lascar seamen, among whom were six former Indian Army sepoys who had gone over to the Japanese in Burma to join the Indian National Army against the British.
We now know that the Nazis, with Japanese assistance, recruited a number of these Indian nationalists for nefarious purposes; this was one of the few plans that came close to fruition. The six men were experienced soldiers trained in unarmed combat who were meant to kill the ship’s gunners, arm themselves, and take over the bridge. This was to happen at the coordinates we had learned from the Enigma decrypt mentioning Ark, when the ship was part of convoy TS-37 halfway between Takoradi and Sierra Leone. The usurpers were to slow the ship to cause her to straggle behind the convoy, and to signal engine trouble to the escorts. That would allow U-515 to distinguish her from the other ships when it attacked the convoy. The captain of U-515 was ordered to hit as many ships as possible, so that the escorts were entirely focused on the threat amidst the main body of the convoy and on picking up survivors. The U-boat was then to slip back, rendezvous with Clan Macpherson and take off her precious cargo and the six men. After standing off, she would torpedo the ship and machine-gun any of the crew who happened still to be alive in the water. She was then to rendezvous in the mid-Atlantic with a supply boat, U-409, that was to take the cargo directly to the U-boat base at Lorient on the French coast, at which point the precious cargo would be flown on to Berlin.
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