Tamar Read Free

committees that awaited them would not be German.
    During the months before their stay at Ashgrove, Tamar, Dart, and the other members of the Rivers group had been put through a training programme that was like a tour of the stately homes of England organized by dangerous psychopaths. At a succession of very grand houses — great echoing places commandeered for the war effort — they had practised concealment, stealth, and sabotage. In splendid drawing rooms, they had been taught to lie and to believe absolutely the lies they told. In deer parks and landscaped gardens, they had practised killing: silently, with knife and wire garrotte; and noisily, with both British and German firearms.
    They’d gone to Manchester for parachute training, dropping — if all went well — into the elegant grounds of Tatton Park. Dart found them exhilarating, those steppings-out into the empty air, and was interested to discover that Tamar was afraid, even though he was already an experienced parachutist. He’d never detected a trace of fear in the man until then.
    Back in London, in an anonymous office building just off Baker Street, the group spent arduous days practising codes and cryptography. Their instructor was a cocky, brilliant, and very young man who usually had an enormous cigar sticking out of his face. He introduced himself as DCY/M. They never discovered his name. He instructed them in the use of one-time pads. These were squares of silk, about three times the size of a handkerchief, printed with preset codes. He pulled them out of his briefcase and displayed them to the class like a salesman showing off a new line in underwear. He spoke of the strength of these silks and the ease with which they could be concealed. As a last resort they could be folded until they were no bigger than a square of chocolate and swallowed. Tamar put his hand up and asked, straight-faced, whether they might emerge intact “at the other end.” Equally straight-faced, DCY/M assured the class that the inks were designed to dissolve in digestive juices.
    During a lunch break Tamar had said, “You know, the best thing about these one-time pads is something our boy with the cigar hasn’t mentioned.”
    Dart looked up from his minced beef and mash. “Which is?”
    “They make torture less likely. For you wireless operators, anyway.”
    Dart placed his knife and fork on the table, keeping his hands steady.
Torture
was a word that threw a shadow across his brain, one that he did not like to look at.
    “Do they?”
    “Sure,” Tamar said. “Because you use a different line of code for each transmission, right, then you cut that line off the silk and burn it, or eat it, or whatever. You don’t memorize anything. So there’s no point in the Gestapo torturing you.”
    “Unless they just happen to enjoy it,” Dart said.
    “Yes, there’s always that.” Tamar looked at his watch. “Come on. Just time for a smoke before the boy wonder starts messing up our brains again.”
    Later the group divided. The WOs, the wireless operators, were sent to yet another stately home for an intensive ten-week course. Tamar and Dart didn’t see each other again until the group reunited at Ashgrove House, six days before the sky filled with aircraft heading for Holland.
    The agents became aware that something was wrong a couple of days before they found out what it was. There was a shift in the atmosphere at Ashgrove, like a change in the weather. Officers who were usually good at smiling seemed to have forgotten how to do it. The busy female clerks flirted less.
    At the breakfast table, Torridge said, “You know what I think? I think something extremely bad has happened at home and they don’t want us to know. There’s been a major cock-up, and they are embarrassed to tell us.”
    “They’ll have to tell us,” Tamar said, “but they’ll wait until they’ve worked out how. You know what the British are like: ‘It’s not what you say; it’s the way that