María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“Very well. If Mrs. Fox thinks they are acceptable, I will, too. Can they sew?”

“I don’t think so, but they can help you to take care of the house and maybe you can teach them some of the basics of sewing. In any case, you have to be clear that these girls shouldn’t know what you’re secretly involved in, so you’ll have to come up with some way for them to help you but without ever letting them see why you’re interested in the things you ask them to translate when you don’t understand. Another cigarette?”

He took the Craven A box out again, and once again I accepted.

“I’ll deal with them, don’t worry about that,” I said after slowly exhaling the smoke.

“Well then, let’s move on. As I’ve said, our main interest is to keep up to date with the social lives of the Nazis in Madrid. But we’re also keen to know about their movements and the contact they have with Germany: if they travel to their country and what for; if they receive visitors, who these visitors are, how they mean to receive them… In short, any sort of extra information that might be of interest to us.”

“And what will I do with this information if I’m able to get hold of it?”

“As to how you are to transmit the information you can get your hands on, we’ve been considering the matter at some length, and we think we’ve come up with a way to start. Perhaps this won’t be the definitive method of communication, but we think it’s worth putting to the test. The SOE uses a number of codes with differing levels of security. Sooner or later, however, the Germans always end up breaking them. It’s very common to use codes based on literary works—poems, especially. Yeats, Milton, Byron, Tennyson. Well, we’re planning to try something different. Something much simpler, and at the same time more befitting the circumstances. Do you know what Morse code is?”

“The one from the telegraphs?”

“Precisely. It’s a code where letters and numbers are represented through intermittent signals—audio signals on the whole. These audio signals also have a very simple graphic representation, however, by means of a system of dots and short horizontal dashes. Look.”

He drew a medium-sized envelope from his briefcase and out of it took a sort of chart on a piece of card. The letters of the alphabet and numbers from zero to nine were listed in two columns. Beside each of them was the corresponding combination of dots and dashes to identify them.

“Now imagine you want to transcribe some word—Tangiers, say. Do it out loud.”

“Dash. Dot dash. Dash dot. Dash dash dot. Dot dot. Dot. Dot dash dot. Dot dot dot.”

“Perfect. Try to visualize what it would look like now. No, better still, write it down on a piece of paper. Here, use this,” he said, taking a silver retractable pencil from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Right here, on this envelope.”

Again following the table, I transcribed the seven letters: —.——.——. .. . .—. . . .

“Excellent. Now look at it closely. Does it remind you of anything? Does it look at all familiar?”

I looked at what I’d written. I smiled. Of course it looked familiar. How was I not going to recognize something I’d spent my whole life doing?

“It’s like stitches,” I said quietly.

“Exactly,” he confirmed. “That’s the point I’m getting at. You see, what we’re planning is for any information you get your hands on to be passed on to us using this system. Obviously you’ll have to refine your skills of summarizing so as to express what you want to say using as few words as possible, otherwise each sequence will go on forever. And I want you to hide it in such a way that it looks like a pattern, a sketch or something along those lines, anything you might associate with a dressmaker without arousing any suspicion. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“Well then, let’s try it out. Imagine that the message is ‘Dinner at the home of the Baroness de Petrino on the fifth of February at eight. The Countess de Ciano will be going with her husband.’ I’ll explain who these people are later, don’t worry about that. First thing you have to do is get rid of any superfluous words—articles, prepositions, et cetera. That way we can shorten the message considerably. Look: ‘Dinner home Baroness Petrino five February eight p.m. Countess Ciano going with husband.’ And now, after stripping away the extra words, we’re going to invert the order. Instead of transcribing the code from left to right as usual, we’re going to do it from right to left. And you’ll always start in the bottom right-hand corner of the surface you’re working on, going upward. Imagine a clock face showing four twenty, now imagine the minute hand starts going backward, do you follow me?”

“Yes—please, let me try.”

He handed me the folder and I put it down on my lap. I took his pencil and drew an apparently amorphous shape that covered most of the sheet. Rounded on one side, sharp at the corners. Impossible to interpret for an inexpert eye.

“What’s that?”

“Wait,” I said, without looking up.

I finished outlining the figure and positioned the pencil at the bottom right-hand corner of the figure, and running parallel to the edge I transcribed the letters in Morse code. Replacing the dots with shorter dashes. Long dash; short dash, long dash; another long dash, then a short dash… When I’d finished, the whole internal perimeter of the outlined shape was edged with what looked like an innocent bit of stitching.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Not yet.” Out of the little sewing case that I always carried in my handbag I took a pair of scissors and with them cut out the shape, leaving a border of just a quarter inch around it.

“You said you wanted something associated with a dressmaker, didn’t you?” I said, handing it over to him. “Well, there you are: the pattern for a puff sleeve. With the message in it.”

The straight line of his pursed lips curved slowly into the faintest of smiles.

“Brilliant,” he murmured.

“I can prepare the patterns for various parts each time I have to communicate with you. Sleeves, fronts, collars, waists, cuffs, sides, depending on how long the message needs to be. I can do as many shapes as I have messages I need to get to you.”

“Brilliant, brilliant,” he repeated in the same tone, still holding the cut-out shape between his fingers.

“And now you have to tell me how I’m to get them to you.”

He spent a few more seconds looking at my handiwork with a slight expression of surprise; finally he put it away inside his briefcase.

“Very well, then, let’s go on. Unless there’s any order to the contrary, we’d like you to send us information twice a week. To begin with, it’ll be Wednesdays in the early afternoon and Saturday mornings. We thought the hand-overs should happen in two different places, both of them public. And in neither case should there be the least possible contact between you and the person collecting.”

“Won’t it be you doing it?”

“No, not whenever I can help it. And especially never in the place we’ve assigned for the Wednesday drop-offs. I’d find it difficult: I’m talking about Rosa Zavala’s beauty salon, next to the Palace Hotel. It’s currently the best establishment of its kind in Madrid, or at least the one most highly thought of among foreigners and the more refined Spanish women. You should become a regular customer and start frequenting the place. In fact, it’s best that you should fill your life with routines so that your movements become highly predictable and seem altogether natural. In this salon there’s a room the moment you go in on the right-hand side, which is where the customers leave their handbags, hats, and outdoor coats. One of the walls is completely covered in little individual lockers where ladies can leave their belongings. You’ll always use the last one of these lockers, the one in the corner at the back of the room. At the entrance there’s usually a young girl, not particularly bright: her job is to help the customers with their things, but a lot of them refuse her help and do it for themselves, so it won’t seem strange that you do the same; just leave her a good tip and she’ll be happy. When you open the door to your locker and are about to leave your things inside, it’ll almost completely obscure your body, so it’ll be possible for people to guess at your movements but no one will ever be able to see what you’re up to. That’s when you’ll take out the thing you need to get to us, rolled into a tube; you should leave it on the top shelf of the locker. Be sure to push it to the back so it’s not visible from the outside.”