Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

MASON, A. E. W.• 335

gan-Giles, which was later to operate from Naples as well. Pre-

viously, Eastern Mediterranean naval operations had been centered

at Haifa, the headquarters of the innocent-sounding Levant Fishing

Patrol. As well as a fleet of inshore fishing vessels, SOE also had the

use of fast motor torpedo boats that could race across to the Albanian

coast to collect agents. It was on this route that (Sir) Anthony Quayle,

an actor in later life, distinguished himself. He recalled that ‘‘no-one

at HQ could tell us much about Albania—chiefly because no-one at

HQ knew much about the situation themselves.’’

Initiallymarylandconsisted of a single liaison with the resis-

tance in Rome, codenamedrudder. By November 1943 this had

been transformed into six separate missions, and within a year No. 1

Special Force had dispatched 37 British officers and 17 J Section

missions behind enemy lines in northern half of the country.

In addition to the above, X’sAustriansubsection, run by Miss

Graham-Stamper, operated from Italy under cover of ‘‘No. 6 Special

Force’’ andForce 266concealed the activities of SOE Cairo’s Alba-

nian subsection at Bari, then headed by Captain Watrous and John

Eyre.

MASK. Government Code and Cipher Schoolcode name for de-
cryptedCominternwireless traffic exchanged between Moscow and
numerous Communist parties around the world, including theCom-
munist Party of Great Britain(CPGB).maskwas read successfully
by John Tiltman between 1935 and 1937 and providedMI5with ac-
cess to the party’s most secret communications, including the mes-
sages sent byBob Stewart, the London representative of theNKVD.
The two main CPGB radio operators, Stephen Wheeton andWilliam
Morrison, were placed under surveillance.

MASON, A. E. W.Fifty years old when war broke out and having lost
his Coventry constituency in 1910, A. E. W. Mason lost no time in
volunteering for military service, and he joined up with the Manches-
ter regiment. However, after training at Aldershot and Morecombe,
he was invited to an interview in London, which he described with a
degree of circumspection inThe Summonswhen Martin Hillyard is
taken to a dingy house in a back street near Charing Cross to meet
Commander Graham, the head of the Secret Service whose office is
at the top of ‘‘many little flights of stairs.’’