Enigma (29 page)

She forced a smile. “I was thinking about what you said, about
needing to know where one fits into the chain…” He finished his
grooming and turned his profile to the mirror, trying to look at
his reflection sideways on. “If you remember, we talked about my
possibly going to an intercept station.”

“No problem.”

“I thought, well, I’m not due on shift till tomorrow afternoon—I
thought I might go today.”

“Today?” He looked at his watch. “Actually, I’m tied up,
rather.”

“I could go on my own, Miles. And report my finding—” behind her
back she dug her nails into her palm “—one evening.”

He gave her another narrowed look and she thought, No, no,
really this is too obvious, even for him, but then he shrugged.
“Why not? Better call them first.” He waved his hand grandly.

“Invoke my name.” “Thank you, Miles.”

“Lot’s wife, what?” He winked. “Pillar of salt by day, ball of
fire by night…?”

On the way out he patted her bottom.

♦

Thirty yards away, in Hut 8, Jericho was knocking on the door
marked us NAVY LIAISON. A loud voice told him to “come on in”.

Kramer didn’t have a desk—the room wasn’t big enough—just a card
table with a telephone on it and wire baskets filled with papers
stacked on the floor. There wasn’t even a window. On one of the
wooden partitions separating him from the rest of the hut he’d
taped a recent photograph, torn out of Life magazine, showing
Roosevelt and Churchill at the Casablanca conference, sitting side
by side in a sunny garden. He noticed Jericho staring at it.

“When you fellers get me really down I look at it and
think—well, hell, if they can do it, so can I.” He grinned. “Got
something to show you.” He opened his attache case and pulled out a
wad of papers marked MOST SECRET: ULTRA. “Skynner finally got the
order to give them me this morning. I’m supposed to get them off to
Washington tonight.”

Jericho flicked through them. A mass of calculations that were
half familiar, and some complex technical drawings of what looked
like electronic circuitry.

Kramer said: “The plans for the prototype four-wheel
bombes.”

Jericho looked up in surprise. “They’re using valves?”

“Sure are. Gas-filled triode valves. GTIC thyatrons.”

“Good God.”

“They’re calling it Cobra. The first three wheel-settings will
be solved in the usual way on the existing bombes—that is,
electro-mechanically. But the fourth—the fourth—will be solved
purely electronically, using a relay rack and valves, linked to the
bombe by this fat cable form, that looks like a—” Kramer cupped his
hands into a circle “—well, that looks like a cobra, I guess. Using
valves in sequence—that’s a revolution. Never been done before.
Your people say it should make the calculations a hundred times,
maybe a thousand times, as fast.”

Jericho said, almost to himself: “A Turing machine.”

“A what?”

“An electronic computer.”

“Well, whatever you want to call it. It works in theory, that’s
the good news. And from what they’re saying, this may be just the
start. It seems they’re planning some kind of super-bombe, all
electronic, called Colossus.”

Jericho had a sudden vision of Alan Turing, one winter
afternoon, sitting cross-legged in his Cambridge study while the
lamps came on outside, describing his dream of a universal
calculating machine. How long ago had that been? Less than five
years?

“And when will this happen?”

“That’s the bad news. Even Cobra won’t be operational till
June.”

“But that’s appalling.”

“Same old goddamn story. No components, no workshops, not enough
technicians. Guess how many men are working on this thing right
now, as we speak.”

“Not enough, I expect.”

Kramer held up one hand and spread his fingers close to
Jericho’s face. “Five. Five!” He stuffed the papers back into his
case and snapped the lock. “Something’s got to be done about this.”
He was muttering and shaking his head. “Got to get something
moving.”

“You’re going to London?”

“Right now. Embassy first. Then on across Grosvenor Square to
see the admiral.”

Jericho winced with disappointment. “I suppose you’re taking
your car?”

“Are you kidding. With this?” He patted the case. “Skynner’s
making me go with an escort. Why?”

“I was just wondering—I know this is an awful cheek, but you
said if I had a favour to ask—I was wondering if I might possibly
borrow it?”

“Sure.” Kramer pulled on his overcoat. “I’ll probably be gone a
couple of days. I’ll show you where she’s parked.” He collected his
cap from the back of the door and they went out into the
corridor.

By the entrance to the hut they ran into Wigram. Jericho was
surprised at how unkempt he looked. He had obviously been up all
night. A dusting of reddish-blond stubble glinted in the
sunlight.

“Ah, the gallant lieutenant and the great cryptanalyst. I heard
you two were friends.” He bowed with mock formality and said to
Jericho: “I’ll need to talk to you again later, old chap.”

“Now there’s a guy who gives me the creeps,” said Kramer, as
they walked up the path towards the mansion. “Had him in my room
for about twenty minutes this morning, asking me questions about
some girl I know.”

Jericho almost trod on his own feet.

“You know Claire Romilly?”

“There she is,” said Kramer, and for an instant Jericho thought
he meant Claire but actually he was pointing to his car. “She’s
still warm. The tank’s full and there’s a can in the back.” He
fished in his pocket for the key and threw it to Jericho. “Sure I
know Claire. Doesn’t everybody? Hell of a girl.” He patted Jericho
on the arm. “Have a nice trip.”

§

It was another half-hour before Jericho was able to get
away.

He climbed the concrete steps to the Operations Room where he
found Cave sitting alone at the end of the long table, telephones
on either side of him, staring up at the Atlantic Plot. Eleven
Shark signals had been intercepted since midnight, he said, none of
them from the anticipated battle zone, which was bad news. Convoy
HX-229 was within 150 miles of the suspected U-boat lines, steaming
directly due east, full tilt towards them, at a speed of 10.5
knots. SC-122 was slightly ahead of her, to the north east. HX-229A
was well back, heading north up the coast of Newfoundland. “Nearly
light,” he said, “but the weather’s getting worse, poor sods.”

Jericho left him to it and went in search, first, of Logie, who
dismissed him with a wave of his pipe (“Fine, old love, you rest
up, curtain rises twenty hundred”), and then of Atwood, who
eventually agreed to lend him his pre-war AA touring atlas of the
British Isles. (“ ‘Roll up that map,’ ” he quoted wistfully, as he
produced it from beneath his desk,“ ‘it will not be wanted these
ten years.’ ”)

After that he was ready.

He sat in the front seat of Kramer’s car and ran his hands over
the unfamiliar controls and it occurred to him that he’d never
quite got round to learning how to drive. He knew the basic
principles, of course, but it must have been six or seven years
since his last attempt, and that had been in his stepfather’s huge
and tanklike Humber—a vastly different proposition to this little
Austin. Still, at least he wasn’t doing anything illegal: in a
country where one nowadays practically needed a permit to visit the
lavatory, it was for some reason no longer necessary to have a
driving licence.

He took several minutes trying to sort out clutch pedal from
accelerator, handbrake from gear lever, then pulled out the choke
and switched on the ignition. The car rocked and stalled. He put
the gears into neutral and tried again and this time, miraculously,
as his left foot lifted off the clutch, the car crawled
forwards.

At the main gate he was waved down and managed to bring the car
gliding to a halt. One of the sentries opened his door and he had
to climb out while another got in to search the interior.

Half a minute later the barrier was rising and he was
through.

He drove at a cyclist’s pace along the narrow lanes towards
Shenley Brook End, and it was this low speed that saved him. The
plan he had agreed with Hester Wallace—assuming he could get
Kramer’s car—was that he would pick her up from the cottage, and he
was just rounding the bend a quarter of a mile before the turning
when something flashed dark in the field up ahead on the right.
Immediately, he swerved up on to the verge and braked. He left the
engine running then cautiously opened the door and clambered out on
the running board to get a better view.

Policemen again. One moving stealthily around the edge of the
field. Another half hidden in the hedge, apparently watching the
road outside the cottage.

Jericho dropped back into the driver’s seat and tapped his
fingers on the steering wheel. He wasn’t sure whether he had been
seen but the sooner he got out of their range of vision the better.
The gear change was stiff and it took both hands to jam the lever
into reverse. The engine clanked and whined. First he nearly backed
into the ditch, then he overcorrected and the car went weaving
drunkenly across the road, mounted the opposite bank and stalled.
It was not an elegant piece of parking but at least he was
sufficiently far back around the curve for the policemen to be out
of sight.

They had to have heard him, surely? At any moment one of them
would come strolling down the lane to investigate, and he tried to
think up some excuse for his lunatic behaviour, but the minutes
passed and nobody appeared. He switched off the ignition and the
only sound was birdsong.

No wonder Wigram looked so tired, he thought. He appeared to
have taken over command of half the police force of the
county—probably of the country, for all Jericho knew.

Suddenly, the scale of the odds stacked against them struck him
as so overwhelming, he was seriously tempted to jack in the whole
damn fool project. (“We must go to the intercept station, Mr
Jericho—go to Beaumanor and get hold of the operator’s handwritten
notes. They keep them for at least a month and they’ll never have
dreamed of removing those—I’ll take a wager on it. Only we poor
drones have anything to do with them.”) Indeed, he might well have
turned the car round that very minute and driven back to Bletchley
if there hadn’t been a loud tapping noise at the window to his
left. He must have jumped a full inch in his seat.

It was Hester Wallace, although at first he didn’t recognise
her. She had exchanged her skirt and blouse for a heavy tweed
jacket and a thick sweater. A pair of brown corduroy trousers were
tucked into the tops of grey woollen socks, and her stout boots
were so clogged with mud they seemed the size of a carthorse’s
hooves. She hefted her bulging carpetbag into the back of the
Austin and sank down low in the passenger seat. She gave a long
sigh of relief.

“Thank God. I thought I’d missed you.”

He leaned over and closed the door very quietly.

“How many are there?”

“Six. Two in the fields opposite. Two going from house to house
in the village. Two in the cottage—one upstairs, dusting Claire’s
bedroom for fingerprints, and a policewoman downstairs. I told her
I was going out. She tried to stop me but I said it was my one day
off this week and I’d do as I pleased. I left by the back door and
worked my way round to the road.”

“Did anybody see you?”

“I don’t think so.” She blew warmth on her hands and rubbed
them. “I suggest we drive, Mr Jericho. And don’t go back into
Bletchley, whatever you do. I overheard them talking. They’re
stopping all cars on the main road out of town.”

She slid further down the seat so that she was invisible from
outside the car unless someone came right up to the window. Jericho
turned on the engine and the Austin rolled forwards. If they
couldn’t go back to Bletchley, he thought, then really he had no
choice except to drive straight ahead.

They came round the curve and the road was clear. The turning to
the cottage was on the left, deserted, but as they came level with
it a policeman suddenly stepped out from the hedge opposite and
held up his hand. Jericho hesitated and then pressed his foot down
on the accelerator. The policeman stepped smartly out of the way
and Jericho had a momentary impression of an outraged brick-red
face. Then they were dropping down into the hollow and rising again
and passing through the village. Another policeman was talking to a
woman on the doorstep of her thatched cottage and he turned to
stare at them. Jericho trod on the accelerator again and soon the
village was behind them and the road was corkscrewing down into
another leafy hollow. They rose into Shenley Church End, passed the
White Hart Inn, where Jericho used to live, and then a church, and
almost at once they had to stop at the junction of the A5.

Jericho glanced in his mirror to check there was no one behind
them. It seemed safe enough. He said to Hester: “You can get up
now.” He was in a daze. He couldn’t believe what he was doing. He
waited to let a couple of lorries go by, indicated, and then swung
left on to the old Roman road. It ran straight and true ahead of
them, northwest, for as far as they could see. Jericho changed up a
gear, the Austin gathered speed, and they were clear.

♦

Wartime England opened up before them—still the same but somehow
subtly different: a little bit smudged, a little bit knocked about,
like a prosperous estate going fast to ruin, or a genteel elderly
lady fallen on hard times.

They didn’t encounter any bomb damage until they reached the
outskirts of Rugby, where what looked from a distance to be a
ruined abbey turned out to be the roofless shell of a factory, but
the depredations of war were everywhere. Fences beside the road,
after three years without repairs, were sagging or collapsed. The
gates and railings had gone from the fine country parks to be
melted down for munitions. The houses were shabby. Nothing had been
painted since 1940. Broken windows were boarded over, ironwork was
rusted or coated in tar. Even the inn signs were blistered and
faded. The country was degraded.