Enigma (43 page)

“How many dead?”

“About four hundred. Mostly Americans.”

Jericho grunted. “Any U-boats sunk?”

“Only one. We think.”

“And Shark?”

“Hanging in there, old love.” He patted Jericho’s knee through
the bedclothes. “You see, it was worth it in the end, thanks to
you.”

It had taken the bombes forty hours to solve the settings, from
midnight on Tuesday until late on the Thursday afternoon. But by
the weekend the Crib Room had made a partial recovery of the
Weather Code Book—or enough of it to give them a toehold—and now
they were breaking Shark six days out of seven, although sometimes
the breaks came in quite late. But it would do. It would do until
they got the first of the Cobra bombes in June.

A plane passed low overhead—a Spitfire, to judge by the crack of
its engine.

After a while, Logie said quietly: “Skynner’s had to hand over
the plans for the four-wheel bombes to the Americans.”

“Ah.”

“Well, of course” said Logie, folding his arms, “it’s all
dressed up as cooperation. But nobody’s fooled. Leastways, I’m not.
From now on, we’re to teleprinter a copy of all Atlantic U-boat
traffic to Washington the moment we receive it, then it’s two teams
working in friendly consultation. Blah, blah, blah. What bloody
have you. But it’ll come down to brute force in the end. It always
does. And when they’ve got ten times the bombes we have—which won’t
take very long, I reckon, six months at the outside—what chance do
we stand? We’ll just do the interception and they’ll do all the
breaking.”

“We can hardly complain.”

“No, no. I know we can’t. It’s just…Well, we’ve seen the best
days, you and I.” He sighed and stretched out his legs,
contemplating his vast feet. “Still, there is one bright side, I
suppose.”

“What’s that?” Jericho looked at him, then saw what he meant,
and they both said “Skynner!” simultaneously, and laughed.

“He is bloody upset,” said Logie contentedly. “Sorry about your
girl, by the way.”

“Well…” Jericho made a feeble gesture with his hand and
winced.

There was a difficult silence, mercifully ended by the nurse
coming in and telling Logie his time was up. He got to his feet
with relief and shook Jericho’s hand.

“Now you get well, old love, d’you hear what I’m saying, and
I’ll come and see you again soon.”

“Do that, Guy. Thank you.”

But that was the last time he saw him.

♦

Miss Monk approached the pulpit to give the first reading: “Say
Not the Struggle Naught Availeth” by Arthur Hugh Clough, a poem she
declaimed with great determination, glaring at the congregation
from time to time, as if defying them to contradict her. It was a
good choice, thought Jericho. Defiantly optimistic. Claire would
have enjoyed it:

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light,

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

But westward, look, the land is bright.

“Let us pray,” said the vicar.

Jericho lowered himself carefully to his knees. He covered his
eyes and moved his lips like all the others, but he had no faith in
any of it. Faith in mathematics, yes; faith in logic, of course;
faith in the trajectory of the stars, yes, perhaps. But faith in a
God, Christian or otherwise?

Beside him, Wigram uttered a loud “Amen”.

♦

Wigram’s visits had been frequent and solicitous. He would shake
Jericho’s hand with the same peculiar and tenuous grip. He would
plump his pillows, pour his water, fuss with his sheets. “They
treating you well? You want for nothing?” And Jericho would say
yes, thank you, he was being well looked after, and Wigram would
always smile and say super, how super everything was—how super he
was looking, what a super help he had been, even, once, how super
the view was from the sickroom window, as if Jericho had somehow
created it. Oh yes, Wigram was charming. Wigram dispensed charm
like soup to the poor.

In the beginning it was Jericho who did most of the talking,
answering Wigram’s questions. Why hadn’t he reported the
cryptograms in Claire’s room to the authorities? Why had he gone to
Beaumanor? What had he taken? How? How had he broken the
intercepts? What had Puck said to him as he leaped from the
train?

Wigram would then go away, and the next day, or the day after,
come back and ask him some more. Jericho tried to mix in some
questions of his own, but Wigram always brushed them away. Later,
he would say. Later. All in good time.

And then one afternoon he came in beaming even more broadly than
usual to announce that he had completed his enquiries. A little web
of wrinkles appeared at the edges of his blue eyes as he smiled
down at Jericho. His lashes were thick and sandy, like a cow’s.

“So, my dear chap, if you’re not too exhausted, I suppose I
should tell you the story.”

♦

Once upon a time, said Wigram, settling himself at the bottom of
the bed, there was a man called Adam Pukowski, whose mother was
English and whose father was Polish, who lived in London until he
was ten, and who, when his parents divorced, went away with his
father to live in Cracow. The father was a professor of
mathematics, the son showed a similar aptitude, and in due course
found his way into the Polish Cipher Bureau at Pyry, south of
Warsaw. War came. The father was called up with the rank of major
to rejoin the Polish Army. Defeat came. Half the country was
occupied by the Germans, the other half by the Soviet Union. The
father disappeared. The son escaped to France to become one of the
fifteen Polish cryptanalysts employed at the French cipher centre
at Gretz-Armainvillers. Defeat came again. The son escaped via
Vichy France to neutral Portugal, where he made the acquaintance of
one Rogerio Raposo, a junior member of the Portuguese diplomatic
service and an extremely dodgy character.

“The man on the train,” murmured Jericho.

“Indeed.” Wigram sounded irritated at being interrupted: this
was his moment of glory, after all. “The man on the train.”

From Portugal, Pukowski made his way to England.

Nineteen-forty passed with no news of Pukowski’s father or,
indeed, of any of the other ten thousand missing Polish officers.
In 1941, after Germany invaded Russia, Stalin unexpectedly became
our ally. Representations were duly made about the vanished Poles.
Assurances were duly given: there were no such prisoners in Soviet
hands; any there might have been had been released long ago.

“Anyway,” said Wigram, “to cut a long story a whole lot shorter,
it appears that at the end of last year, rumours began to circulate
among the Poles in exile in London that these officers had been
shot and then buried in a forest near Smolensk. I say, is it hot in
here or is it me?” He got up and tried to open the window, failed,
and returned to his perch on the bed. He smiled. “Tell me, was it
you who introduced Pukowski to Claire?”

Jericho shook his head.

“Ah, well,” sighed Wigram, “I don’t suppose it matters. A lot of
the story is lost to us. Inevitably. We don’t know how they met, or
when, or why she agreed to help him. Or even what she showed him
exactly. But I think we can guess what must have happened. She’d
make a copy of these signals from Smolensk, and sneak them out in
her knickers or whatever. Hide them under her floorboards.
Lover-boy would collect them. This may have gone on for a week or
two. Until the day came when Pukowski saw that one of the dead men
was his own father. And then the next day Claire had nothing to
bring him but the undecoded intercepts, because someone—” Wigram
shook his head in wonder “—someone very, very senior indeed, I have
since discovered, had decided they just didn’t want to know.”

He suddenly reached over and picked up one of Jericho’s
discarded mystery stories, flicked through it, smiled, replaced
it.

“You know, Tom,” he said thoughtfully, “there’s never been
anything like Bletchley Park in the history of the world. There’s
never been a time when one side knew so much about its enemy. In
fact, sometimes, I think, it’s possible to know too much. When
Coventry was bombed, remember? Our beloved Prime Minister
discovered from Enigma what was going to happen about four hours in
advance. Know what he did?”

Again Jericho shook his head.

“Told his staff that London was about to be attacked and that
they should go down to the shelters, but that he was going upstairs
to watch. Then he went out on to the Air Ministry roof and spent an
hour waiting in the freezing cold for a raid he knew was going to
happen somewhere else. Doing his bit, d’you see? To protect the
Enigma secret. Or, another example: take the U-boat tankers. Thanks
to Shark, we know where they’re going to be, and when, and if we
knocked them out we might save hundreds of Allied lives—in the
short term. But we’d jeopardise Enigma, because if we did that,
Donitz would know we must be reading his codes. You see what I’m
driving at? So Stalin has killed ten thousand Poles? I mean,
please, Uncle Joe’s a national hero. He’s winning the frigging war
for us. Third most popular man in the country, after Churchill and
the King. What’s that Hebrew proverb? ‘My enemy’s enemy is my
friend’? Well, Stalin’s the biggest enemy Hitler’s got, so as far
as we’re concerned, for present purposes, he’s a bloody good friend
of ours. Katyn massacre? Katyn frigging massacre? Thanks awfully,
but, really, do shut up.”

“I don’t suppose Puck would have seen it quite like that.”

“No, old chap, I don’t suppose he would. Shall I tell you
something? I think he rather hated us. After all, if it hadn’t been
for the Poles, we might not even have broken Enigma in the first
place. But the people he really hated were the Russians. And he was
prepared to do anything to get revenge. Even if it meant helping
the Germans.”

“‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend,’ ” murmured Jericho, but Wigram
wasn’t listening.

“And how could he help the Germans? By warning them Enigma
wasn’t safe. And how could he do that?” Wigram smiled and spread
his hands. “Why, with the assistance of his old friend from 1940,
Rogerio Raposo, recently transferred from Lisbon and now employed
as a courier at the Portuguese legation in London. How about some
tea?”

For the dear ones parted from us;

We would raise our hymns of prayer;

By the tender love which watcheth;

Round thy children everywhere…

Senhor Raposo, said Wigram, sipping his tea after the nurse had
gone, Senhor Raposo, presently a resident of His Majesty’s Prison,
Wandsworth, had confessed to everything.

On 6 March, Pukowski had gone to see Raposo in London, handed
him a thin, sealed envelope and told him he could make a great deal
of money if he delivered it to the right people.

The following day, Raposo flew on the scheduled British Imperial
Airways flight to Lisbon carrying said envelope, which he passed to
a contact of his on the staff of the German naval attache.

Two days after that, the U-boat service changed its Short
Weather Code Book, and a general review of cipher security
began—Luftwaffe, Afrika Korps…Oh, the Germans were interested, of
course they were. But they weren’t about to abandon what their
experts still insisted was the most secure enciphering system ever
devised. Not on the basis of one letter. They suspected a trick.
They wanted proof. They wanted this mysterious informant in Berlin,
in person.

“That’s our best guess, anyway.”

On 14 March, two days before the start of the; convoy battle,
Raposo made his next weekly trip to-Lisbon and returned with
specific instructions for Pukowski. A U-boat would be waiting to
pick him up; off the coast of northwest Ireland on the night of the
18
th
.

“And that was what they were discussing on the train,” said
Jericho.

“And that was what they were discussing on the; train. Quite
right. Our man Puck was collecting his; ticket, so to speak. And
shall I tell you the really frightening thing?” Wigram took another
sip of tea, his little finger delicately crooked, and looked at
Jericho over the rim of his cup. “If it hadn’t been for you, he
might just have got away with it.”

“But Claire would never have gone along with this,” protested
Jericho. “Passed on a few intercepts—yes. For? a lark. For love,
even. But she wasn’t a traitor.”

“Lord, no.” Wigram sounded shocked. “No, I’m sure; Pukowski
never even told her for one minute what he: was planning to do.
Consider it from his point of view. She was the weak link. She
could have given him away at any moment. So imagine how he must
have felt when he saw you walk back through the door from Cambridge
on that Friday night.”

Jericho remembered the look of horror on Puck’s face, that
desperate attempt to force a smile. He had already seen what must
have happened: Puck leaving a message at the cottage that he needed
to talk to her, Claire hurrying back into the Park at four in the
morning—click click click on her high heels in the darkness. He
said quietly, almost to himself: “I was her death warrant.”

“I suppose you were. He must’ve known you’d try and get in touch
with her. And then, the next night, when he went round to the
cottage to get rid of the evidence, the stolen cryptograms, and
found you there…Well…”

Jericho lay back and stared at the ceiling as Wigram rattled
through the rest of the story. How, on the night the convoy battle
had started, just before midnight, he’d been called by the police
and told that a sack full of women’s clothing had been found. How
he’d tried to find Jericho, but Jericho had disappeared, so he’d
grabbed Hester Wallace instead and taken her down to the lakeside.
How it had been obvious at once what had happened, that Claire had
been bludgeoned, or maybe bludgeoned and strangled, and her body
rowed out into the lake and dumped.