Voices on the Wind - Assault

The pleasantries were quickly completed, the AOC withdrew, leaving Robin in the lion’s den alone.

The temperature in the room seemed to go up immediately, as if a cooling breeze had abruptly dropped, leaving Robin sweltering in the cramped, inadequately ventilated space. He was starting to feel claustrophobic. He was a fighter pilot, used to the open skies. He did not like being buried underground and he sensed hostility — or at least scepticism — emanating from Bancroft.

Looking very cool and controlled in his double-breasted Navy uniform with the white shirt, Captain Bancroft leaned back in his chair and opened with a broadside, “Tell me about yourself, Priestman. Have you worked in intelligence before?”

“No, sir,” Robin admitted, adding mentally that he hadn’t asked to be assigned to it now either. Damn those aptitude tests at the Staff College! He’d always aced ‘intelligence’ sections. Besides, they’d needed an experienced pilot to test fly a Spitfire off a carrier deck…

“A grandson of Admiral Sir Cyril Priestman, I heard.”

“Correct.” The less said about that the better, Robin thought.

“Quite a man, you know. One of the early lights in Room 40.” He paused. “You know what that was, surely?”

“I haven’t a clue, sir,” Robin admitted, feeling foolish.

Yet his answer strangely brought a faint smile to Bancroft’s eyes, if not his lips. He nodded as though satisfied and remarked, “Very good. How about languages? Any good at them? German? Italian?”

“I manage English quite well,” Robin retorted, a bit too flippantly for the situation, perhaps, but since he hadn’t asked for this assignment, he didn’t feel it was his fault if he didn’t meet the Captain’s expectations.

“I see,” Bancroft replied coldly. “Are you musically inclined?”

Robin was on the brink of despair, wondering if he should invent talents he didn’t have, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d only get caught out in the lie sooner or later. “Not a note, sir.”

“Hm. Well, you’re here, and it’s been three weeks since your predecessor was killed, so I guess it’s a matter of sink or swim. Come with me!” he ordered and got to his feet.

Astonished, Robin did as he was bid and followed the Captain out of a door at the back of his office labelled “Special Liaison Unit.”

This, it turned out, was yet another chamber. Robin took deep breaths to fight the sense of suffocation. Four desks crammed the tiny room, three of which were manned by NCOs from the Army, Navy and Air Force respectively. They came to their feet at the arrival of senior officers, but Bancroft waved them back at ease. As they sat down again, Robin nodded automatically to the RAF Sergeant, who smiled and nodded back with a look of tangible relief.

“The team here consists of nine NCOs, three from each service, who work in three, six-hour shifts from six am until midnight. Between midnight and six am the office is locked up.” Captain Bancroft then moved to the fourth desk on which stood a strange-looking typewriter. Indicating the machine, he announced, “Meet Boniface.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t get your meaning, sir.”

“Well, in the Intelligence business, Wing Commander, some intelligence is so valuable that it is handled not merely as ‘Secret’ or ‘Most Secret’ but as ‘Ultra Secret.’ This is because the source of this intelligence is allegedly a spy network operating inside the Third Reich under the control of an agent code-named Boniface.”

“Allegedly?”

“That’s just it. We have no reliable spy network inside the Third Reich, and we certainly don’t have a spy code-named Boniface.” Robin was overheating while he waited for Bancroft to get to the point. “What we have,” Bancroft continued, “is this little gadget. Technically an RAF Type X decoding device capable of breaking the German codes generated by their highly sophisticated Enigma machine.” The Captain paused to see the impact of his words. Robin presumed he looked as stunned as he felt.

“We were able to develop this machine because we captured an intact Enigma machine along with the codebooks and setting procedures from a U-boat in May of last year. A team of mathematicians and linguists working at a secret facility at an unknown location developed our so-called Bombe decoding device and its offspring, the RAF Type X here, known simply as X. At present, this is the only such machine outside of the UK, and it’s here because we cannot afford to lose time sending raw data to the UK for processing and analysis. We do all that right here, in this room.

“Coded signals intercepted by our Y-stations are brought here and put through that machine by the team here. Kriegsmarine signals go to one of my Petty Officers, Heer and SS signals are handled by the army sergeants, and anything originating with the Luftwaffe lands on the desk of your Sergeants. They grind the raw transcripts through X and we get stuff like this.” He handed a sheet of paper covered with columns of five-letter blocks; Robin scanned it, seeing only gibberish.

Bancroft explained, “Your SigInt officer is responsible for turning this into comprehensible English. Your job is to take the intelligence from all sources — Ultra, Y-intercepts in plain language, photo reconnaissance, reports from the police, operational reports from your pilots etc., and put together a comprehensive picture of what the Luftwaffe is planning to do to us here in Malta.”

“I don’t believe I’ve met my SigInt Officer,” Robin pointed out.

“Unfortunately, the previous SigInt was killed in the same car crash that killed your predecessor three weeks ago. There was some kind of cock-up regarding a replacement. In place of a trained SigInt Officer, some genius in London sent a silly girl out instead. I would have put her on the next flight back to Gib, except she’s RAF. Pughe-Lloyd said he would not counter her orders until you arrived and made your own decision.”

“Very well,” Robin answered uneasily. He did not like the sound of this at all. He glanced toward the RAF Sergeant, who gave him a short nod that might have indicated that he and his colleagues were capable of doing the deciphering themselves. They would discuss that when the Navy wasn’t present.

Meanwhile, Bancroft continued, “No one knows what goes on in this chamber, Wing Commander, except the Senior Intelligence Staff of our respective services in London, the Senior Intelligence Officers in Alexandria and Cairo respectively, Governor Dobbie, the SNO, your AOC, and the people who work here. The Maltese do not know about it. The various Army and Navy commands on this island do not know about it. Your squadron and station commanders have never heard of it. The Royal Signal Corps and the Royal Engineers haven’t a clue that it exists. Understood? Now let’s go back to my office.”

They left the “Special Liaison Unit” behind and returned to Captain Bancroft’s office. At least this had a little fan in it. They seated themselves again, and Bancroft resumed his briefing. Leaning on his desk with his hands clasped, he lowered his voice and intoned, “Sometimes — not always — the intercepted Enigma signals deciphered by our X machine are so valuable and precise that they justify major military operations — operations entailing many ships and thousands of men.” Robin nodded understanding.

“In such cases, we run the risk of exposing the fact that we have broken the German codes. If Jerry learns we’re reading his most secret messages, he’ll stop using Enigma, and we will become deaf and blind again.” Robin again nodded his understanding.

“Which means we disguise the source of our intelligence by sending out reconnaissance aircraft to ‘discover’ what we already know. They have orders to make sure the enemy sees them.”

Robin started slightly. Even if he could see the logic behind it, it meant that they were consciously sending men on extremely hazardous flights superfluously — and ordering unarmed aircraft to invite fighter attacks. Men would almost certainly die to get intelligence they already had. He didn’t like that thought. Bancroft on the other hand was smiling smugly as he concluded, “To the outside world, Malta has what you Raf boys call a ‘wizard’ photo-recce unit, when in reality it’s all coming out of our friend X in the room back there.”

Robin nodded. He could not write to Emily about this, but he would tell her the truth: he’d rather be flying Spitfires.