Vandam frowned. He opened the book and read the first line: 'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.' The book was called Rebecca, and it was by Daphne du Maurier. The title was vaguely familiar. Vandam thought his wife might have read it. It seemed to be about a young woman living in an English country house.
Vandam scratched his head. it was, to say the least, peculiar reading for the Afrika Korps.
And why was it in English?
It might have been taken from a captured English soldier, but Vandam thought that unlikely: in his experience soldiers read pornography, hard-boiled private eye stories and the Bible. Somehow he could not imagine the Desert Rats getting interested in the problems of the mistress of Manderley.
No, the book was here for a purpose, What purpose? Vandam could think of only one possibility: it was the basis of a code.
A book code was a variation on the one-time pad. A onetime pad had letters and numbers randomly printed in five character groups. Only two copies of each pad were made: one for the sender and one for the recipient of the signals. Each sheet of the pad was used for one message, then torn off and destroyed. Because each sheet was used only once the code could not be broken. A book code used the pages of a printed book in the same way, except that the sheets were not necessarily destroyed after use.
There was one big advantage which a book had over a pad. A pad was unmistakably for the purpose of encipherment, but a book looked quite innocent. In the battlefield this did not matter; but it did matter to an agent behind enemy lines.
This might also explain why the book was in English. German soldiers signaling to one another would use a book in German, if they used a book at all, but a spy in British territory would need to carry a book in English.
Vandam examined the book more closely. The price had been written in pencil on the endpaper, then rubbed out with an eraser. That might mean the book had been bought second-hand. Vandam held it up to the light, trying to read the impression the pencil had made in the paper. He made out the number 50, followed by some letters. Was it eic? It might be erc, or esc. It was esc, he realized-fifty escudos. The book had been bought in Portugal. Portugal was neutral territory, with both German and British embassies, and it was a hive of low-level espionage.
As soon as he got back to Cairo he would send a message to the Secret Intelligence Service station in Lisbon. They could check the English-language bookshops in Portugal there could not be very many-and try to find out where the book had been bought, and if possible by whom. At least two copies would have been bought, and a bookseller might remember such a sale. The interesting question was, where was the other copy? Vandam was pretty sure it was in Cairo, and he thought he knew who was using it. He decided he had better show his find to Lieutenant Colonel Bogge. He picked up the book and stepped out of the truck Bogge was coming to find him.
Vandam stared at him. He was white-faced, and angry to the point of hysteria. He came stomping across the dusty sand, a sheet of paper in his hand.
Vandam thought: What the devil has got into him?
Bogge shouted: 'What do you do all day, anyway?'
Vandam said nothing. Bogge handed him the sheet of paper. Vandam looked at it.
It was a coded radio signal, with the decrypt written between the lines of code. It was timed at midnight on June 3. The sender used the call sign Sphinx. The message, after the usual preliminaries about signal strength, bore the heading OPERATION ABERDEEN.
Vandam was thunderstruck. Operation Aberdeen had taken place on June 5, and the Germans had received a signal about it on June 3.
Vandam said: 'Jesus Christ Almighty, this is a disaster.'
'Of course it's a bloody disaster!' Bogge yelled. 'It means Rommel is getting full details of our attacks before they bloody begin!' Vandam read the rest of the signal. 'Full details' was right. The message named the brigades involved, the timing Of various stages of the attack, and the overall strategy.
'No wonder Rommel's winning,' Vandam muttered.
'Don't make bloody jokes' Bogge screamed.
Jakes appeared at Vandam's side, accompanied by a full colonel from the Australian brigade that had taken the hill, and said to Vandam: 'Excuse me, sir--2' Vandam said abruptly: 'Not now, Jakes.'
'Stay here, Jakes,' Bogge countermanded. 'This concerns you, too.' Vandam handed the sheet of paper to Jakes. Vandam felt as if someone had struck him a physical blow. The information was so good that it bad to have originated in GHQ.
Jakes said softly: 'Bloody hell.'
Bogge said: 'They must be getting this stuff from an English officer, you realize that, do you?'
'Yes,' Vandam said.
'What do you mean, yes? Your job is personnel security this is your bloody responsibility!' 'I realize that, sir.'
'Do you also realize that a leak of this magnitude will have to be reported to the commander in chief?'
The Australian colonel, who did not appreciate the scale of the catastrophe, was embarrassed to see an officer getting a public dressing down. He said: 'Let's save the recriminations for later, Bogge. I doubt the thing is the fault of any one individual. Your first job is to discover the extent of the damage and make a preliminary report to your superiors.'
It was clear that Bogge was not through ranting yet; but he was outranked. He suppressed his wratb with a visible effort, and said:
'Right, get on with it, Vandam' He stumped off, and the colonel went away in the other direction.
Vandam sat -down on the step of the truck. He lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. The news seemed worse as it sunk in. Not only had Alex Wolff penetrated Cairo and evaded Vandam's net, he had gained access to high-level
