Colonel Jack Wilson went down a narrow alley at 82 Baker Street in London, just a few miles from Whitehall itself, one of six men who arrived, one by one, wearing dark business suits and carrying briefcases, and entered the drab brownstone building once owned by the retailer Marks & Spencer. He gave a series of three rings, then two, unlocking the iron-grated side door that only opened for the correct series of rings and led to the home of British intelligence’s most secretive wartime unit, named SOE.
The Special Operations Executive was a little-known and highly independent organization directed by the Ministry of Economic Warfare of the High Command. Its stated purpose was to promote “disaffection and, if possible, revolt in all enemy and occupied territories; to hamper the enemy’s war effort by means of sabotage and partisan warfare.” Their mission was to field and train agents to create as much havoc as possible in their home territories and, ultimately, disrupt the enemy in as many ways as possible.
They were so effective at their craft the Germans even came up with a term for them: “the international school of gangsters.”
Of the five other men who went upstairs and took seats around the third-floor conference table once used for making purchasing decisions on men’s suits and ties, two represented Whitehall: Lord Arthur Brooks, of Combined Operations, and Dr. Brant Kelch, a professor of applied sciences at Cambridge and an adviser to Churchill himself on scientific matters. The rest were military, though not in uniform that day: Major General Colin Gubbins, the ranking officer in SOE; Leif Tronstad, the onetime scientist and now a major in the Free Norwegian Army; and Lieutenant Commander Henneker, an ex–Royal Highlander and an operations planner in SOE. Wilson was in the company of the highly placed men from Whitehall for the first time. Two years ago, when Wilson had put in for this type of work, Gubbins, who he knew from university days, told him, “I think there’s a place for you, Jack. Head of the Norwegian section.”
“Norway?” Wilson replied with palpable disappointment. He was forty-five, cool in judgment but quick to act, but a good ten years past many of the officers who held the plum jobs, and this was his last go of it at something important. And Scandinavia was as close to the front lines of the war then as London was to Edinburgh.
“Be patient, Jack,” Gubbins told him. “You’ll see, the game will come to you.”
And now it had.
“So you’ve had a chance to analyze the film?” Lord Brooks, who had the ear of Mountbatten and the prime minister, looked at Gubbins expectantly.
“We have, sir,” the SOE chief replied. “Major Tronstad, I think you’d be best to describe our response.”
“Thank you, Major General.” The Norwegian stood up. He took a pointer and nodded to an aide, then went to the projector screen as several photos of the Norsk Hydro factory at Vemork appeared on the screen. “What you’re seeing, gentlemen, is the plant where the deuterium oxide is being produced.”
The sight of the building itself produced an audible grunt from those in the room who had not seen it before.
“It looks more like Edinburgh Castle,” Lord Brooks interjected, speaking of the massive seven-story building made of solid concrete, set high above the river valley on a perilous shelf of rock.
“Yes, you can see how it’s tucked into what is basically an impenetrable gorge,” Tronstad said, “in one of the most treacherous and hard-to-access locations in Europe. The cliffs above it are virtually unscalable. Only a single suspension bridge”—the Norwegian chemist tapped an aerial photo with his pointer—“allows access by car or truck, and it’s guarded day and night, of course. The gorge itself is so deep and precipitous that even in the height of summer the sun never fully reaches the valley floor. In fact, workers at the plant are sent up the mountain by tram just to get their minimum doses of daily sunlight.”
“Cheery,” Brant Kelch, the scientific adviser, remarked with a snort of sarcasm.
“My sentiments as well,” Tronstad said. “Though for four years I did have the pleasure of working there. The heavy water electrolysis compressors are located in the basement of the main building. You’ll see that in this next photograph…”
He nodded to the aide and a new image came on the screen: two rows of nine stainless steel compressors with networks of wires, tubes, hoses, and gauges coming from them, and each with a canister underneath to capture the precious drips of fortified water. “The best access to it would be through the basement. There’s a door on the side of the building. Chief Engineer Brun, who we are secretly in touch with at the plant, says the place is regularly defended by a force of twenty to thirty guards. There are gun towers here”—he pointed again, this time to an aerial photo of the surrounding grounds—“and here, by the bridge. There are hourly inspections inside by the guards. As you can see, the entire facility is surrounded by wire fencing. They have also begun to mine the rear of the plant, around the giant water turbines where access from the valley floor is easiest, and where the Germans imagine any attack would have to originate from. Rappelling down these cliffs”—Tronstad dragged the pointer down the steep cliffs above the plant that led from the vidda—“would be virtually impossible at night, even for the most experienced climbers, forgetting the weapons and loads of explosives that would have to be on the backs of any saboteurs. While the defenses at the plant are not overpowering, they believe—and it’s not unreasonable to feel this way—that the isolation of the location, and indeed Nature herself, is the best defense for the facility.”
“Can’t we just bomb the place?” Lord Brooks proposed, looking around the table for support. “We have our Halifaxes and Sterlings that can make the round trip. The Yanks now have their new B-17s. I’m told they’ve been gearing up for pinpoint daytime bombing.”
“I’m afraid that’s not as much of an option as it might first seem,” Major General Gubbins said. “Geographically, the gorge itself is far too narrow for our planes to get in that close. From higher up, the accuracy of such a strike would be highly in doubt—the plant is made of solid concrete and far too well protected by the cliffs. Not to mention the weather, which is a perpetual challenge, and seems to change hourly. And anyway, Major Tronstad here has other objections to such a raid.”
“Any bombing would be completely haphazard, and the damage to the nearby town of Rjukan would be totally unacceptable. Under such conditions stray bombs would likely strike the plant’s liquid ammonia tanks, endangering the entire community. I can promise, not a single Norwegian would knowingly assist you in this endeavor.”
“Even at what we’ve established as the cost of not doing so?” Lord Brooks, the Home Office minister, inquired.
“To Norwegians,” Tronstad said, “you must understand that the mountains and the sea are our nation’s body. But our fellow countrymen are its blood.” He rested his pointer on the stand. “Not a single one, I can say for sure.”
“All right.” Lord Brooks nodded and turned back to Gubbins. “So do I assume you and your men think you can get someone in?”