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194 FIGHTING THE ELECTRONIC WAR
'Kill! Kill!' At one point the whole Embassy staff thought they
were going to be burned with petrol, but in the event they were
merely pulled out of the building and beaten. 'I was swept along
by the mob,' recounts Cradock, 'and beaten mainly about the
shoulders and back.' After they were released the staff were
able to destroy classified papers that had survived in one of the
strong rooms. The Foreign Office security specialists had provided
them with 'a remarkable chemical compound' in the form of a
powder that apparently only needed to be scattered on the files
and left for a period in order to reduce them to ashes. They
followed the instructions on the tin, and retreated to a safe
distance:
*
Unfortunately when we returned we found the files neatly
charred around the edges, rather like funeral stationery,
but still perfectly legible. And there was a side effect of
which we had not been warned: powerful tenacious fumes
had been generated, turning the strong-room into an effective
gas-chamber. ~6
*
The files were eventually taken out and burned by hand.
However, the staff had been unable to protect the Embassy
Communications Centre, which contained cypher machines and
materials. Only the generators survived intact. 37 Mingled in with
the revolutionary mob was a specialist team of Chinese code
experts. An SIS officer stationed in Peking at the time recalls:
'They knew exactly what they were looking for.'38
Communications security experts in London later confirmed the
Chinese success, lamenting that they had acquired a Rockex,
one of Britain's top-grade post-war cypher machines. 39
Following this attack, Britain routed its classified telegram
traffic to Peking through the nearby French Embassy. Although
the French were 'simply splendid', the duty cypher clerks at
the Quai d'Orsay in Paris struggled with the high volume of
daily traffic. The British also recognised that the French were
'scared stiff of a leak', which might trigger Chinese revolutionary