THE SILENT WAR

ONE:

A SIGNIFICANT INTERCEPTION

The corridor of 169 Sheikh Khalid Street, Calcutta, was silent. The early morning sun, high enough - just - to clip the feathery tops of the bamboo swells lining the Hooghly river, slatted obliquely in the windows along its length as sharply defined columns of light, trapping in the beams a myriad of minute dust particles. The brightness of the beams cast the shadowed corners darker yet. The corridor had that Sunday-morning feeling about it.

            Then a door closed noisily and the peaceful silence was abruptly shattered. Footsteps echoed off the high, ornately plastered ceiling as Brigadier Donald Reisman cut snow storm swathes through the beams of sunlight. He reached the door displaying his nameplate and threw it open. He strode in past his open-mouthed adjutant and snatched up the phone.

            “Colonel Tredget!“

            There was a pause during which Reisman’s eyebrows lifted and his forehead creased. “Well, have him come to my office as soon as he gets in!“  He let the receiver drop back onto its cradle, cutting short the muffled reply.

            The adjutant thought that he recognised Reisman’s mood, yet he rose manfully to his feet. “Brigadier…“ he began tentatively.

            Reisman glared threateningly at the man, daring to break his train of thought. The adjutant thought better of it and he slid back down in his seat and made an elaborate pretence of resuming his work. Reisman stabbed at the intercom console. When there was no immediate, response to his call he spat out an oath and jabbed again at the button. This time he kept his finger there. The speaker finally clicked.

“Yes, Brigadier?”

“Platten! Have you all gone on leave down there? I want you and whichever idiot you’ve got on Signal Ops up in my office now. And I do mean now!”

            The adjutant rose silently and sidled from the room, intently studying a sheaf of totally unimportant papers. Reisman watched the door close behind him, a smile pulling at his mouth. Then he threw himself into the  chair behind his own desk and began to crack his finger-joints one by one. The adjutant had misread his mood entirely. Reisman was not angry. He was tense, and he was impatient. He was also worried. He withdrew a slip of paper from his pocket and read it through yet again, probably for the fifth time that morning. He smiled grimly. And as he read his mind unconsciously gave the business a new codename.

            PHOENIX.

            He looked up from the paper as the name soaked through the mental barrier. PHOENIX. It could be no other. “From out of the ashes…“ He shook his head minutely, as if to remind himself that there was more at stake than finding a more apt codename.

            All the same it was hard to believe. The thread had been picked up in - of all places - a Japanese prison camp! And It was not, as Reisman would have found easier to believe, one of the camps the Japs had set up in Singapore where, almost as the final bomb was falling, the trail had come to an abrupt end; but it was a camp in Rangoon. Another siege altogether.

            Then he heard footsteps approaching down the corridor. He slipped the paper back into his pocket. Uncanny or not; true or not, Rangoon was obviously the place where they had to look. And they had to do it not only because of the piece of paper, but also – strangely - despite it.

            There was a rap on the door. Reisman sucked in a lungful of air and exhaled it slowly. He spared an instant to reflect that only Desmond Potter could make a knock on a door sound sarcastic.

            “Come!“

            The door opened and a man in civilian clothes walked in. He closed the door behind him with - it seemed to Reisman - exaggerated care, and turned to face the desk. It was no secret to either of them that the invisible swords were instantly crossed.

            “‘Mornin’, Brigadier.” From the corner of his eye Desmond Potter could see that the adjutant was not at his desk and that the two men were alone in the office. Walters passed it on then?“

            “He passed it on,’ affirmed Reisman acidly, biting back the resentment he felt at Potter’s obvious conclusion that the arrival of the piece of paper in Reisman’s pocket was due solely to Potter’s own man, as opposed to the Signal Ops number downstairs. But that acidity was all the retaliation Reisman was going to allow himself. There were far bigger fish to fry.

            Desmond Potter had only a small amount of military blood running through his veins. If asked, he had none at all. He certainly had no time for normal Intelligence Corps methods and ethics, wartime or otherwise. He was a major, but that was merely a device for keeping the books straight. Espionage, Potter pointed out at every opportunity, was not a game of rules. Yet it was for this very reason that Reisman had placed him in his present position as head of Group-Six, whose activities would have been hamstrung by such conventions. Reisman had also engineered it that his own powers over the Group were limited. Not ineffectual, jus limited. And despite the animosity that had pervaded his relationship with Potter from the very outset, Reisman would have it no other way; and it was one of his standing guidelines that only one thing was more damaging to healthy working relationships than mutual dislike. And that was mutual admiration.

            As Director of Military Intelligence in the Far East theatre, and as a senior officer on the Joint Intelligence Committee, I.S.4, Reisman’s bailiwick stretched from Melbourne in the east, to the Persian Gulf in the west. Anything that came under the heading of Intelligence an Counter-Intelligence, between these two points, had Reisman’s stamp on it; from the everyday workings of the Corps, to the more devious functions of the Special Groups, the numbers of which were rapidly diminishing as the

Japanese Fourteenth Army pushed further and further westward.

            Group-Six, with its official title of MIT-X, was Reisman’s particular brainchild and its existence was known to no more than a handful of people throughout the world. It was far better, Reisman reasoned, that the right hand be kept in ignorance of what the left was up to. In this case the right hand was the Corps. Whilst the left was Group-Six, who knew everything - or nearly everything - that there was to know about the Corps. And the system worked. The piece of paper in Reisman’s pocket was proof of this. Group-Six was the watchdog. And it was doing the job it was designed to do.

            “What d’you think ?“ asked Potter, easing himself into the adjutant’s recently vacated seat. Reisman’s reluctance to pick up the usual gauntlet had not gone unnoticed.

            Reisman took time to light up a cigarette. Then he said:

            “I’d like to hear your view first, if you don’t mind.” There was no malice in the statement and Potter read none into it. The situation demanded clear thought, and if Reisman wanted to use him as a springboard from which to clarify his own conclusions then that was fine with Potter. The boot was often on the other foot.

            “There are a couple of very good reasons why we have to be very wary of that particular interception.”

            Reisman slipped the paper from his pocket, glanced at the text, then looked back at Potter. “And these are?“

            Potter shifted his seat and brushed a non-existent speck of dust from his sleeve. “Coincidence is one. Though perhaps not the most important.”

            Reisman nodded. “Go on.”

            Potter leant forward over the adjutant’s desk and clasped his hands together firmly. “How long have we been chasing SPEAKER?“

            Reisman pursed his lips but refrained from comment. The question was purely rhetorical, and both men knew it. Potter went on to supply the answer himself.

“Too damned long! And over too many miles! And how many times have we - or anyone else - intercepted an enemy signal that referred to him in any way?“

            Again Reisman said nothing. Besides, he was way ahead of Potter’s line of reasoning. The man - if indeed it was a man - to whom the codename SPEAKER referred had made his existence felt back in ‘39, when it had become obvious that the guts of many Cabinet decisions had leaked beyond the walls of the War Office. This leak had continued, to a varying degree, right up to the declaration of war with Germany. The task of plugging the hole had first gone to M.I. Then the man had transferred his attention to M.I. itself, with the result that the file was passed over to the S.I.S. By this time the man had earned himself the nickname of “The Mole“.

            Disaster had followed disaster, each preceded by a leak of some vital piece of Top Secret information. The big problem was that these leaks seemed to lack direction; they affected every service, at all levels. And the file, now with its SPEAKER codename, had grown larger and larger. But it was a file of “effects” only, there was not a single word in it that even hinted at the “cause “.

            Then came Pearl Harbour. And the Japanese war. And as the Americans were still dusting away the effects of that first attack the leaks in Europe suddenly plugged themselves, only to be transferred to the Far East theatre - Reisman’s domain. The S.I.S. relinquished – gladly - the bulging SPEAKER file to Group-Six. Via Reisman.

            Then, with all five of the Group’s field men picking up the traces, came Singapore.

            “Never!“ Potter was saying, “is the answer to that one! Then Harry Wyler contacts us from Singapore and - how ever the hell he got hold of the information - he tells us that the man we want is working under the codename of FUJI. Right after that the axe falls on Singapore and, we presume, Wyler too. Then we intercept that…“ He indicated the Paper in Reisman’s hand. “A Class-A Military signal, originating from Tokyo and directed at the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Fourteenth Army in Rangoon, informing him that one of their agents, code-named FUJI -surprise surprise! - has got himself snarled up in the front-line campaign and is currently residing in one of his prison camps; and would the commander be good enough to ensure that no harm comes to him whilst he is there. That, Brigadier, coupled with the fact that the message was relayed in the ENIGMA code - something else that has never happened before, to my knowledge - are a set of coincidences that stink! At any distance! They’re laying it all on a plate for us to sop up; codename and all!”

            Reisman looked over at him steadily. “So you would do nothing ?“

            Potter sat up straight. “I didn’t say that!“

            Reisman raised an eyebrow. “Then what are you saying?”

            Potter sighed deeply. “The code, Brigadier. ENIGMA. Up to now it has only been used for diplomatic traffic. Now, suddenly, they use it for something else entirely. Something that they know we are desperately interested in.”

            Reisman ground his cigarette out in the ashtray. Then he said: “The logical conclusion of which - ”

            Potter broke into his sentence. “That they know - or at the very least they suspect - that we have ENIGMA. For my money they are willing to sacrifice SPEAKER to be certain, one way or the other, on that single point!“

            Reisman, despite himself, felt an involuntary shudder pass over him. This, as with Potter, had been his biggest worry. Their possession of the ENIGMA machine was the secret of all secrets. It could almost - no, it could definitely be said - that it was the linchpin of all intelligence activity. Years of painstaking work had gone into its development and eventual construction, starting with the wooden mock up of it, built by a Polish mechanic who had worked on the original German model, to the final, working machine, completed by the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. The Germans, Reisman knew, still considered the cypher completely safe to use. And why not? The machine was a masterpiece of ingenuity - second only to the use of the one-time pad system - with which, without access to a duplicate machine, a message could be turned into an impossibly random set of numbers, utterly undecodable.

            The Japanese had purchased an earlier, less complicated version of the ENIGMA machine as far back as 1930 and had since adapted it for their own use. But it had been a relatively simple task for the people at Bletchley to identify, and duplicate, the adaptation. The result of their work, a sister to the Japanese ENIGMA, was housed in Bob Potter’s cellars. And it had been on that machine that Archie Walters had produced the translation that Reisman held in his hand.

            Reisman pulled a taut face and nodded gravely. “Unfortunately that does seem to be…”

            He was interrupted by a knock on the door. He groaned inwardly as he remembered his summons to Major Platten. It did not seem so important now to tear a strip off the man for not recognising that particular set of numbers. But then, on the other hand, he should have done; it was part of his job. So it would have to be done now. Indeed it would have been too far removed from Reisman’s character to have backed away from a dressing-down once the die had been cast.

            Potter rose to his feet. “I’ll come back later.”

            Reisman waved him back into his seat. “This won’t take long.“ Then he barked at the door: “Come in!“

            The door slid open and the adjutant poked his head furtively into the room. He announced the arrival of Major Platten and Captain Wolff.

            Platten was the first to enter. His uniform was immaculately turned out as usual, and not a single strand of his hair was out of place. His face held a newly scrubbed shine. Reisman made the mental note that he must have just got in.

            Wolff was a complete reversal. The knees of his trousers bulged from long hours spent sitting at his desk. His had been hurriedly drawn up and one wing of his collar was pinned under it. His hair was a mess and face was red and flustered. Obviously he had been about to return to his quarters after a night of duty in the Operations Room.

Reisman, despite his impatience to get on with the business, mellowed slightly. How could he really blame these men? After all, all they had to go on was a standing instruction to look out for cyphers containing nothing but four-figured groups of numbers. For this - although it did not aid decoding in any way, shape or form - was a peculiarity of the ENIGMA machine’s output.

            Platten, like the adjutant, recognised the symptoms; Reisman’s face and stance - he had risen and was standing feet apart, hands clasped behind his back - told him that this looked likely to be yet another hard day to add to all the rest. And Potter - that troublesome little man from the Taj Import Agency - was here, too, usually boded not at all well. For Platten knew that, despite the Import Agency front, the name was nothing more a cover. But a cover for what, he did not know. Nor did he care. It was quite enough that Potter seemed privy to Reisman’s ear.

            Platten walked to the centre of the room and saluted easily enough. Wolff, a trifle more jerkily, followed suit. After a suitably long pause for effect Reisman delved into his inside pocket where he had placed the original communication, and he tossed it disgustedly onto the desk in front of him, sweeping up Walters’ translation in the same movement. His voice rasped gratingly.

            “Seen that before ?“

            Platten glanced down at the paper, then back to Reisman. Then he leant forward. As his fingers closed around the paper he was going over in his mind the events of the past few days, trying to recall something that he could have done wrong. Nothing sprang readily to mind.

            He recognised the number groupings right away, they were what Reisman called his own, personal cipher. Then he saw something that Walters had scrawled on the bottom of the page in red. He didn’t know Walters, of course, so he assumed that Reisman himself must have done it. It was the word RANGOON. Walters had jotted it there because, being a place name, it was the first word out of the machine and, as such, it had a bearing on the remainder of the machine’s settings. And it was that word that reminded Platten that he had not given Reisman the latest news coming over the wires.

            “Oh, Brigadier,“ he said, letting the hand holding the paper drop to his side, “We’ve just heard from the Arakan.”

            Reisman jumped to the wrong conclusion. “About that?“ He nodded down at the paper.

“No, sir. They just passed the word that – “

            Reisman exploded. “The paper, man! The paper! I don’t give a tinker’s cuss for anything else!“

            Platten knew that he had done it all wrong. But having made the mistake, he thought that he might just as well carry it through. He held up the paper. “This reminded me, sir. We’ve heard at last from General Torrance. He’s in Maymo. They’ve finally given up on Southern Burma. This came from the pilot of a recce plane who managed to put down in the Arakan. That’ll be the only one we’ve got left in the air, I shouldn’t wonder. As you know, sir, we still can’t raise Burma by radio, because of the jamming down there. And all the land lines are still out. So apart from that piece of news all we are getting is second-hand stuff from the coast, plus a snippet or two from up north. It doesn’t add up to a clear picture, but I think we can be reasonably certain about this one…“

            Platten went on speaking but Reisman was no longer listening. He and Potter had exchanged the first non-hostile glance since their first meeting. Maymo was a very long way from Rangoon and, with the almost total lack of anything airworthy, getting a man back down to Rangoon was going to be the devil of a job. In fact, the more Reisman thought about it, the more impossible a task it became. As his mind calculated the chances his gaze slipped to a point somewhere between Potter’s head and infinity, during which time Platten had finished talking and a hush had descended on the room.