Madeleine's War

by Peter Watson

“And you approve of that?”

  “No, of course I don’t. That’s not what I mean. She’s an adventuress, an opportunist—an opportunist with talent—oh yes. Nazi Germany is hardly a place where women are allowed to shine most of the time, but she does, she breaks all the rules.”

  “How come you know so much about her? You sound as if you want to be like her.” I could quite believe that Madeleine had an ambition to match that of her German counterpart.

  She inched away from the fire.

  “I admire her from a distance. And it’s not hard to find out things, if you know where to look. When I was in London with FANY, I would spend some of my spare time in Fleet Street. All the national newspapers there have libraries or archives, archives of their back copies, and they keep cuttings by category. They all have Leni Riefenstahl files. A little bit of rouge and lipstick gets a girl into places a man could never go.” She smiled.

  “Sounds like you’re an adventuress in your own way.”

  Briefly she placed her hand on my arm. “I can’t wait till you teach us how to kill with our bare hands. Then I can really get on your wrong side.”

  “You’d pick on someone who has only one lung?”

  “You promised to tell me what happened.”

  I looked down. “As you say, the fire’s dying. It’s late and this room will be sub-zero any minute now. Why don’t I tell you another time?”

  She looked at me and drained her whisky. “And in another place, perhaps. The beaches here go on for ever.”

  · 4 ·

  THE MAIN LECTURE ROOM AT ARDLOSSAN—what in pleasanter and plusher days must have been the drawing room—boasted a high ceiling, sculpted into plasterwork lozenges, a stone fireplace with an enormous mantel at head height, a dado where the walls changed colour, from cream to white going up, and a row of French windows giving on to the lawns and the pines, and beyond them the rocks and the sea. When the weather was in the wrong place, as it was the following morning—as Duncan had predicted—the westerly rains hurled themselves against the panes of glass with a ferocious rasping sound. Every so often, I had to raise my voice.

  In front of me the four recruits sat on plywood chairs. Ivan Wilde and Katrine Howard were both smoking. They had all been working since seven, including Madeleine. All recruits did an hour’s training in wireless transmission every day between seven and eight, before breakfast. No one was allowed to be dropped into France until they could transmit forty words a minute by Morse code. So far, Madeleine had reached only thirty.

  “One point of protocol, before we get going this morning. Rank is important in armies, generally speaking, but SC2 is a small outfit and an unconventional one. We live by our wits, our imagination, our cunning. That means we often break out of the strictly military way of doing things. As an example, we tend to be more informal than the more regular army units and that is reflected in the way we use first names. By now, you all know what the pecking order is here at Ardlossan. That doesn’t mean there will be any relaxation of discipline, or professionalism, but it will make the business of day-to-day instruction less starchy. That’s what we have found, anyway.”

  I held up a small booklet. “Now, this is what we call ‘a one-time pad.’ I’ll come to what that means in just a minute but first I want to draw your attention to the fact that it is made not of paper but of silk.”

  I passed it around so they could run their fingers over the material.

  “It may seem ridiculously extravagant of the War Office to sanction silk pads, but there is method in their madness. Can anyone work out what?”

  I looked from one to the other.

  “Easier to burn if we get captured?” said Erich Langres. Tall, lugubrious, and slow-moving, Erich had been a choirmaster in a Belgian cathedral and came to us with a reputation as a brilliant organizer.

  “Nice try, Erich, but paper burns faster than silk.”

  At his interview, I had found Erich to be very religious. I wasn’t religious myself, but I knew that all the evidence we had in SC2 showed that religious people stood up to interrogation—even torture—better than non-religious people. That might be useful at some point. He had no family in Belgium, he had told us, but he was worried for his bishop, who had spoken out against the Nazis.

  “Anyone else?”

  “It doesn’t deteriorate if it gets wet, like paper does.”

  “Absolutely true, Madeleine, and a good answer. But it’s not the answer I want.”

  There were no other suggestions, so I carried on. “The one-time pad is the most secure form of coding there is. When you are dropped into France, these pads, separated into numbered pages, will be sewn into your clothing—around the hems of dresses for women, into the jacket pockets of men. Obviously, it’s difficult to sew paper and in any case paper would crackle if you were searched. Being made of silk, the pages won’t stand out if you are part of a routine body check, and you don’t need to unpick any stitching until you are ready to transmit information. Our work is deception and these silk pads help. You will all be given your one-time pads in London after you leave here, and before you visit the factory where the French clothing is made up.”

  Rain beat insistently on the French windows.

  “Now, what exactly is a one-time pad and why is it so secure? You can see that each page is stamped with a series of letters set out in a grid pattern, five along the top and seven deep. Those thirty-five positions correspond to twenty-five letters of the alphabet—we ignore ‘Z’ and use ‘S’ instead—and the ten digits from nought to nine. When you send a message, you simply write a series of numbers that corresponds to the position of the letters or the digits on the pad—and then you throw that page away, and use the next one, which is completely different, on the following occasion. We shall have an identical pad here in London and so deciphering your message is straightforward. But the code is different every time, and different for every agent. That makes it especially difficult to break. Clear so far?”

  They all nodded.

  “We do introduce a number of refinements. For instance, before you leave London you will be given two numbers to memorise. Let’s say they are three and seven. The first means that, in any message, the first three numbers that you transmit are meaningless—just a random choice by you. It means that your message proper doesn’t start until digit four.

  “The second number—seven in this case—means that you will send your message in groups of seven digits, followed by a space. This is designed to delay decryption should your messages be intercepted—it avoids giving the enemy a clue to the message by the length of words. The words ‘the’ and ‘a,’ for instance, are normally easy to spot from their length, three letters and one letter, which means that four letters in total have been identified—‘t,’ ‘h,’ ‘e,’ and ‘a.’ Any questions?”

  “Yes,” said Erich Langres. “Am I right in assuming that we ignore the space between words?”

  “Yes. Anything else?”

  “What about punctuation?”

  “Ignore that too. If, on very rare occasions, the punctuation makes all the difference in the world, spell it out—C-O-M-M-A—semicolon, and so on.”

  “Do we always have to transmit in English?” said Madeleine. On such a bleak day—dreich, as the Scots said—her hair was the most colourful thing in the room.

  “No, you can use French if you prefer, but, and this is important too, you must always keep your messages as short as possible, and never—but never—stay on air for more than twenty minutes. The Germans have direction finders and if you transmit for more than twenty minutes the chances are better than evens that they will be on to you.”

  I looked from one to the other—Ivan, Erich, Katrine, Madeleine.

  “I want to dwell on this twenty-minute business a little while longer. As I understand it from Major Kennaway, Duncan, you are all doing well, improving your transmission speed up to the required level of forty words a minute. But don’t forget you won’t always have the co
mfort of Ardlossan as your place of transmission. One of the most difficult decisions you will have to make in the field is your choice of a location for sending messages. The transmitters are bulky. Do you leave them in one place, where they are well hidden perhaps, where you know the local routine and where transmission conditions are good? But, at the same time, that raises the risk that the direction finders may seek you out bit by bit, and also risks unreliable locals learning of your whereabouts. The Germans pay for information received.”

  I lit a cigarette of my own.

  “But if you change locations a lot, to prevent the dangers of staying too long in one place, that can be risky too, precisely because the equipment is so bulky. Even though you will be given a transmitter that fits inside a battered French attaché case, if you have to open that case—at a roadblock, say—there is no disguising what it is. You will have to decide these things for yourself.”

  I took a long, satisfying pull on my cigarette. I wasn’t supposed to smoke but…there is nothing like that feeling when the nicotine sinks down and spreads throughout your chest. Smoking, and whisky, had kept me going after the disasters that brought my time in France to an end. Now I couldn’t smoke without thinking back.

  “Also, although you’ll be keeping your messages as short as possible, try to develop your own style, using particular words, or phrases. We call this your ‘fist’ and it’s useful, in that a recognizable style or ‘fist’ is hard for others to copy or emulate. So if you do get captured and someone sends a message pretending to be you, if it doesn’t have your ‘fist’ we’ll know. Understood?”

  One by one they nodded.

  “Now, this is where it gets a bit more complicated. It is possible that one or more of you will be captured. If that is the case, it is—naturally—very bad news for you, but, at the same time, we need to know. The top brass back at SC2 headquarters need to know the exact picture. Therefore, each message that you send must include information by which you tell us that the information contained in your message is either genuine…or not genuine.

  “Let me explain what I mean, by going back to the earlier example, of someone whose crucial numbers are three and seven—the first three letters are meaningless, the codes are sent in batches of seven. In this case, where the numbers are three and seven, we put them together, to arrive at ten.

  “In this case, the agent would single out the tenth word in each of his or her messages for special treatment—misspelling. You make a deliberate spelling error. If the tenth word in your message is ‘canal,’ let’s say, you spell it ‘calan,’ perhaps, or ‘cnaal.’ If the tenth word is ‘explosion,’ you make it ‘epxlosion’ or ‘explosoin.’

  “You will, in the course of your career in the field, probably make several spelling errors but you must always pay particular attention to the crucial word—the tenth in this case—and make sure it is misspelled. This is what we call the ‘true check,’ the check that confirms the message really is by you.”

  I paused, to let the information sink in.

  “This is an important point. Never—but never—overlook it.”

  They were all quiet and very still. They all returned my gaze.

  “Next, there is a second kind of check, what we call the ‘bluff check.’ This is what you use if you are captured and yet are forced to send us a message while the Germans are standing over you. Then you need to send us a signal that your message is phony, that you have been captured and that what you say is being dictated to you by the Germans.”

  I got up and walked about a bit.

  “This has to be subtle, not noticeable to the Germans, something that doesn’t raise their suspicions, that deceives them effortlessly but effectively. What we have found works best is if you simply end your message with the phrase ‘love to…’ whoever it is. You must never add anything personal like that in your true messages, so that we will know, if you do say that, that you have been captured.” I stood perfectly still. “Do you all understand? This, in the jargon, is, as I say, a ‘bluff check.’ ”

  I fixed every one with my stare.

  “We, in the London office, will keep your nearest family members informed of what is happening to you, so long as it doesn’t compromise general security. If you mention your feelings, or your family, or your feelings for your family, it will be taken as a bluff check, evidence that you have been captured. Am I being clear? This is important but I don’t want to say it all over again.”

  “What if things happen to our families while we are in the field? It could happen?”

  “Yes, it could, Ivan,” I said. “It already has happened. If it’s serious—if we judge it’s serious—we shall pull you out, without telling you why until you get home. If we judge it’s not serious, then…Well, I am afraid you won’t be told. There will be no need to disturb you. That may not suit everyone but that’s the rule we shall apply. Security is paramount.”

  I sat down again and leaned forward.

  “Now, as the final thing, for today at least…The one-time pads are made of very fine silk and so they contain a good number of pages. But no one knows how busy they are going to be, so there’s a good chance—about 70–30, I would say—that your pads will be used up. In other cases they may be lost or, if you are stopped at a checkpoint, it may be prudent to throw your one-time pad away. What then?”

  Again, I looked from one eager face to another.

  “We need a fallback, a fail-safe. And we’ve found that poetry is a good one.”

  “What?” said Erich.

  “Poetry?” cried Madeleine.

  “Yes, poetry—verse. Our agents learn three or four lines of poetry off by heart—it’s much easier to remember if it rhymes. You take that with you into the field, in your head, not written down. You tell us what it is before you go, and it becomes the basis for your last-resort coded messages. Obviously, the lines you remember have to include most of the letters of the alphabet. You can spell out numbers. It’s less safe than a one-time pad, of course, but on the other hand some letters will be repeated so, using these codes, certain letters will have different values within any one message. There’s a library of sorts next to the bar, and I’d like all of you to select a poem by the end of the week. Any questions about that?”

  Ivan nodded. “I like the idea of Wordsworth and Keats helping to win the war.”

  “Maybe I’ll use some Goethe,” said Madeleine. “That way a German would be helping us.”

  “Brilliant,” I said, smiling. Then I looked at Erich. “Erich, you look doubtful—what is it?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never been…poetry…I’ve never…Can you help me out?”

  “It doesn’t have to be poetry, Erich. It’s just that most people find it easier to remember poetry because of the rhymes. That’s all.”

  “I’ve memorized some of Churchill’s speeches,” Erich said. “How about them?”

  “If they contain most letters of the alphabet and you really can remember them, then that’s fine. But remember, if you survive in the field for any length of time, one of your messages may be for us to come and collect you, to rescue you from trouble. It would be—what shall I say?—it would be unfortunate if you couldn’t remember your code, to send us that message.”

  Erich nodded. “Oh, I can remember the speeches, word for word. Would you like to hear one now—?”

  “No, Erich, we wouldn’t,” said Katrine firmly. “Not unless you want to hear Madeleine on Faust.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, grinning and doing my best to restore order. “Let me have your choices by Friday. I need them then because, every so often, from now on, I shall be asking you to recite your lines—just to make sure that you really have memorized them.”

  “Look at that,” said Ivan, pointing.

  We all looked across to the lawn where a slate had fallen from the roof.

  “What are we looking at, Ivan?”

  Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,

  Which husba
ndry in honour might uphold,

  Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day?

  He chuckled. “Shakespeare, of course. I do like poetry.”

  —

  “I DON’T THINK I’VE EVER SEEN the sea looking so peaceful.” Madeleine sent a smooth, flattish pebble—one of many on the white sandy expanse—skidding off the tiny waves that fell at our feet. “It’s hard to believe that if you sailed west from here, and kept going, that eventually you’d come to America. If the tide went out any further, you’d be able to walk it.” She picked up another pebble. “We could run away from all this.”

  Today there was little wind, no rain, and precious few clouds. The sea was, for once, more green than grey.

  Madeleine looked glorious, the deep auburn of her hair against the glitter of the sand and the sea. A light wind blew her hair across her cheeks and forehead and she kept pulling it away; she tilted her face up to the sun and closed her eyes. She looked as natural—and as wild—on that beach as the kittiwakes and the gulls.

  I wanted to kiss her. More, I wanted to scoop her up off the sand and to feel the soft warmth of her body.

  But I didn’t know enough about Madeleine just yet to convince myself how much I liked her, and I was her commanding officer while we were in Scotland. That sounds formal, calculating, but Ardlossan was a small outfit. I had to be careful. I didn’t want to be careful, but I knew I had to be.

  I forced myself to be content just to be on the vast expanse of beach, alone, with her.

  “This is the first real afternoon we’ve had off. The four of us, the recruits, I mean.”

  “That’s not so odd, is it? You must have worked out by now that nothing happens by accident here. You’re watched at all times—‘observed’ is perhaps a better word. We gave you absolutely no free time in the first two weeks—because we need to know how you are under pressure, how your judgment is affected, how your temper lasts out, how you behave when you’re exhausted, whether your French accent or syntax or vocabulary slips. That’s why you had everything thrown at you to begin with. As it happens, you all did rather well.”