Chapter 13
Tom Green had requested Lizzie fulfil her secondary function in the cipher room that afternoon. She had done several shifts already, and he had trained her on the Foreign Office diplomatic codebook system, which differed from the SOE poem system, and she was growing familiar with the new protocol.
The Legation didn’t need a full-time cipher clerk, so she was called in as and when, and she fitted the demands around her key role as translator for Pemberton.
Her boss was often out of the office attending various functions, lunches, and receptions.
Sometimes he requested she accompany him, but mostly he went alone and left her holding the fort, as he called it.
Lizzie would have thought he would need her more frequently, given his lack of German proficiency, but he seemed to get by somehow.
She had mentioned it to Tom during a training session, and he remarked Pemberton was the type who preferred to keep his contacts and diplomatic efforts behind closed doors.
The admission frustrated Lizzie, as she knew it would make her mission more difficult.
So far, all she had been privy to were standard commercial documents and routine diplomatic traffic as a cipher clerk, which was what prompted her conversation with Pemberton about war-related commercial contracts.
They had not continued the exchange, and she was none the wiser after he politely fobbed her off.
She sighed. This was a slow-moving operation, and she would have to nurture more patience.
Jack always laughed far too loudly when they discussed her patience quota, both knowing it wasn’t her strongest virtue.
Lizzie’s thoughts spun around as she tried to make sense of the Swiss diplomatic scene and how she might make further inroads towards uncovering the intelligence the Allies desperately needed.
She ran through the various components of how the Legation operated.
There must be a way in her official role that she could gain legitimate access to Swiss banks or factories.
If she failed to do so, how could she possibly prove what the Nazis were up to on Swiss soil?
Pemberton was no use at all, so she would have to work around him, whilst carefully avoiding disgruntling him or jeopardising his quiet efforts of diplomacy.
London sent intelligence assessments to Bern because the Minister and senior staff needed regular updates on the war’s progress and to be aware of the strategic picture to assist them in effective diplomacy inside neutral Switzerland.
That made sense, but she was missing some pieces of the puzzle, and she tapped the toe of her shoe on the hard floor.
Lizzie sat at her designated desk in the silent, secure room, turning to decode the first encrypted message from the small pile her fellow SOE agent had left for her.
Tom, whose official role was communications but whose actual undercover work entailed supporting Resistance networks and organising escape routes, which was how she had met him initially, received the incoming traffic and recorded the encrypted data.
The decryption process was painstaking and required great concentration; hence, the silent room tucked away in a rear wing of the substantial Victorian villa, far from the Legation staff.
It was a functional room, and its only charm was the view of the enclosed back garden from the tall sash window.
Lizzie gazed out the window and imagined how beautiful the scene would be in spring when winter released its harsh grip and bright, colourful blooms waved with joyful abandon in the sun.
Now the garden was covered in a heavy winter freeze, frost coating the short grass, shrubs like ice statues, and a couple of evergreens clinging onto their perennial colours, their branches shivering against the snow-laden sky.
Turning back to her immediate task, Lizzie used the codebook and encipherment tables and fell into a rhythm of methodical work, fully absorbed.
She converted the groups of letters into plain text and then stripped the superencipherment layer away.
Her concentration was absolute, and gradually she watched the secret message emerge from the text.
Lizzie had always enjoyed cipher decoding and did plenty of it at Baker Street.
Val made sure her skills were honed, as she might need them again at any time if she were sent back into the field.
Systems developed slowly but surely as the war trundled on.
The message contained nothing interesting and was just more of the same she had come to expect, but she meticulously decrypted it, ready to pass to Pemberton.
Then she set to the next one and the next.
By the time she reached the last sheet, she was growing bored.
The cipher decoding at Baker Street was far more varied and exciting, but then again, that shouldn’t surprise her.
This was, after all, the official British Legation in a neutral country, not a secret organisation like the SOE.
Operations here were supposed to be predictable and boring.
That’s why Val had promised her a safe, purely administrative posting with none of the usual hair-raising operations of being active in enemy territory.
The realisation reminded her how fortunate she was to have such fascinating and important work at Baker Street, and she resolved to appreciate it more when she returned, rather than yearning to be posted on another overseas mission.
Living on the edge as a secret agent was addictive, and sometimes she and Jack talked about what they would do after the war.
What would a normal life look like? Despite wanting to marry and have a family with Jack after they had rid the world of Nazi despots, the thought of post-war life made her heart sink a little.
Jack could have any number of prestigious careers after such a distinguished term in Military Intelligence and the SOE, and it was likely he would continue in another secret role when peacetime arrived.
Spycraft didn’t end just because wars did.
Capable spies and military intelligence officers were in constant demand.
But what about women like her? She’d put the question to Jack one evening when they lay in bed at the flat, relaxed after leisurely post-dinner lovemaking, listening to the rain tapping softly against the windows as he smoked a cigarette.
‘What will I do after the war?’ she said, her hair trailing across his broad chest as she turned her head to look up at him.
‘You? Hmm.’ Jack entwined her glossy tresses through the fingers of one hand and drew deeply on his cigarette as he considered her question.
‘That’s an ominous silence,’ Lizzie teased when he failed to speak after some time.
His deep voice echoed in the quiet room. ‘The unspoken understanding is that women will resume their normal lives after the war, stepping aside for men returning from active service to resume their jobs and place in society.’
Lizzie let out a loud sigh. ‘You mean, we’re supposed to give up our work and our independence and slink back into quiet domesticity as if the war never happened?
We’ll be expected to stay out of sight in the kitchen with children clinging to our aprons as we stir the day’s broth on the stove and wait for our men to come home as if it’s the entire purpose of our existence? ’
Jack stubbed out his cigarette and captured Lizzie in a tight restraint until she giggled and fought to escape but couldn’t evade his grip.
‘Trust you to put it like that. That’s right, Lizzie King, you will be at my beck and call, waiting at home for the master to return to tell you exactly what to do.
Honestly, I hadn’t thought of it, but now you say it, I can’t wait.
No more parachuting into Nazi territory and me unable to breathe for months at a time whilst I wait to see if you make it out alive. ’
Lizzie grabbed a pillow and walloped him with it, and they fought playfully until they both collapsed in a hysterical heap.
‘You can mock, but I’m serious!’ Lizzie said. ‘And I promise you that’s not how it’s going to go if I have a say in it, so if that’s what they preach in the gentlemen’s clubs, they’re in for a rude shock.’
Jack pulled himself up and, raising one dark eyebrow, said, ‘Actually, I rather think you might be right. Society and the establishment will certainly do their best to return women to their place, just as they did after the Great War, but I suspect many will be unwilling to fit back into the neat box they occupied before this war. The genie is out of the bottle and I’m not sure we can cram it back in even with all the will in the world. ’
Hope surged in Lizzie as she studied his face, but his expression was sombre. ‘Do you really think women may retain some freedom, even with the men coming home?’
‘Well, one thing we know for certain is that too many men will never come home, and many will be scarred beyond redemption after what they have faced on the front, so that will leave a vacuum. How big a one we will only know when this insanity ends. And let’s not forget, many men gave up their work and independence to go to war to defend their country. ’
Lizzie sighed. ‘That’s true. I don’t mean to be insensitive about the sacrifice so many young men have already made. Remind me how many were killed in the Great War?’
‘Nearly a million British military personnel never returned from the Somme and from Passchendaele. The Western Front was a bloodbath. And that’s not including another 200,000 Dominion and Empire soldiers. The human price we paid was horrific.’
She had replied, ‘We studied the Great War at school, but it didn’t seem real then. Just a list of figures I didn’t relate to. I can certainly relate to it now.’
Lizzie’s thoughts flickered away from the memory of her conversation with Jack and back to the cipher sheet.
As she jotted down the words from the last message, she blinked and did a double take as she checked that she had understood it correctly.
She read the text again, slowly, shaking her head as she digested the information.
It shared intelligence that was identified as coming from a Swiss source and contained specific movements of the SS Panzer Corps near Kharkov.
Lizzie could barely believe what she was reading. The message said an attack was predicted for the following week. The last thing she had expected after the usual dull messages she’d decrypted since her arrival was a precise intelligence report on German army movements at the Eastern Front.
What was the meaning of this? Why would London relay a message that originated in Switzerland back to Switzerland? It made no sense.
Tom returned from his meeting. ‘How did you get on?’
Lizzie nodded. ‘All fine. Finished decoding the new messages and they’re ready for you to log.’
Tom scanned the text. ‘Top job, Elizabeth. I must say you are remarkably faster than your predecessor, efficient though she was.’
Lizzie smiled. ‘I’d better go back to Pemberton’s office and see what’s hit my desk whilst we’ve both been gone.’
‘Yes, you do that. I’ll distribute the messages later after he returns.’
Lizzie had contemplated confiding in Tom about what she recognised as the unusual nature of intelligence from a Swiss source, but she decided against it.
Experience had taught her to keep her mouth shut.
You never knew who you could trust, even within your own organisation.
As she crossed from the rear wing and back into her office, she wondered about Tom.
How much did he know about the content of the diplomatic traffic?
Did he realise something strange was going on, or had she stumbled on an anomaly?
She would keep her suspicions secret for now and see if anyone remarked on the message regarding the Panzer movements.
After the startling revelation of a traitor at Baker Street the previous year, Val and Jack had instructed her to report only to them about Bern developments.
The message meant she was keen to get back into the cipher room as soon as possible and see if she could detect a pattern.
That night as she drifted off to sleep, she decided it was time to establish radio connection with Jack, and she would raise the subject with Tom the following day.
Now Jack was at Bletchley Park, she wouldn’t have a direct route to reach him, but they had discussed how she would contact him.
It was a complicated process, and for that reason, they had agreed they would only be in touch when there was something urgent to report.
Lizzie closed her eyes and found herself hoping another strange message would arrive so she could contact Jack more often. Even a few coded words passing between them were better than no words at all.