Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks Read Free Book Online Page B

office, his mind was made up. 'You're going to have a hell of a fight to get this accepted. I'm with you all the way. Let me know how I can help.'
    I nodded.
    'If it were done,' he said, misquoting a phrase then being used as a code by an F section agent,' 't were well it were done on the bloody double!'
    I agreed.-The pails in the corridor sounded like church bells. He got up to go. Then turned by the door and looked hard at me. He must have had a strong stomach. 'Merde alors with your new codes'
    He then added—almost as an afterthought—'I may soon be needing one myself.'

FOUR
     
     
'Merde Alors!'
     
    Scrambler telephones were in great demand in SOE because they were not only proof against crossed lines and wire-tapping but implied that those who possessed them had something to say which was worth overhearing. It hadn't occurred to me to ask for one of my own but early in September I found that a green telephone with three buttons on it had been installed on my desk, so I must have been doing something right. Pasted across it was a memo from Dansey emphasizing that it was to be used for Top Secret conversations only.
    I pressed the right buttons to tell Tommy that I had a fresh stock of Havanas, and then contacted the Grendon supervisor to ask what progress the girls were making in the task I had set them of writing poems for agents. I'd made the suggestion a fortnight ago but the girls still hadn't produced a single stanza. Their supervisor assured me, with the hint of a chuckle, that I would not have long to wait. I was still pondering the significance of that chuckle when I received an incoming call on the new toy from the commanding officer of Station 53, a benign major named Phillips who presided over his clandestine estate like a country squire.
    Dispensing with the normal courtesies, he broke some bad news in a voice so strained that I considered asking him for proof of identity. 'Gammel's here.'
    Brigadier Gammel was the commanding officer of the FANY Corps and I knew from a five-minute interview with her that she could cause grievous bodily harm with a glance. The whole of SOE was in awe of her. She was the embodiment of her famous pronouncement: 'Members of the FANY Corps must at all times conduct themselves like ladies.'
    I asked the distraught major if Gammel were causing him any problems.
    'Almost as many as you,' he snapped. And told me why.
    The FANY supremo had arrived at Station 53 on a tour of inspection. After examining the remotest corners of Grendon for signs of impropriety, the bellicose brigadier had walked into the FANY mess, which was normally only marginally quieter than the last few minutes of a Cup Final. But today the acute Gammel ear was greeted by absolute silence. Even more unexpected to the piercing Gammel eye was the spectacle of a dozen or so FANYs clustered round a table totally absorbed in the ladylike pursuit of composing poems. She asked Phillips who had thought of this admirable idea. Mr Marks of Baker Street was given due credit. Gammel then advanced to the table to inspect the quality of her charges' writings.
    She was now on the telephone complaining to Ozanne. Those dear girls, who knew damn well that Gammel was visiting them, had produced samples of hard-core pornography which Marks & Co. would have hidden in a glass case on the fourth floor, surrounded by Bibles.
    Phillips read to me the first (and mildest) of the stanzas Gammel had examined:
     
    Is de Gaulle's prick
Twelve inches thick
Can it rise
To the size
Of a proud flagpole
And does the sun shine
From his arse-hole?
     
    He invited my comments.
    I told him that the imagery was unusual, the words easy to memorize and the content not at all what the enemy would be expecting. I asked him to tell the girls that I was absolutely delighted with it and looked forward to receiving the rest.
    He put down the receiver.
    An hour later Ozanne sent for me and accused me of attempting to corrupt the FANY coders. It wasn't the