Enigma (44 page)

“Mind if I smoke?” He lit up without waiting for a reply, using
his saucer as an ashtray. He examined the tip of his cigarette for
a moment. “Where was I exactly?”

Jericho didn’t look at him. “The night of the convoy
battle.”

Ah, yes. Well, Hester had refused to talk at first, but there’s
nothing like shock to loosen the tongue and eventually she’d told
him everything, at which point Wigram had realised that Jericho
wasn’t a traitor; realised, in fact, that if Jericho had broken the
cryptograms he was probably closer to discovering the traitor than
he was.

So he had deployed his men. And watched.

This would have been about five in the morning.

First, Jericho was seen hurrying down Church Green Road into the
town. Then he was observed going into the house in Alma Terrace.
Then he was identified boarding the train.

Wigram had men on the train.

“After that, the three of you were just flies in a jam jar,
frankly.”

All passengers disembarking at Northampton were stopped and
questioned, and that took care of Raposo. By then, Wigram had
arranged for the train to be diverted into a branch line where he
was waiting to search it at leisure.

His men had orders not to shoot unless they were shot at first.
But no chances were going to be taken. Not with so much at
stake.

And Pukowski had used his pistol. And fire had been
returned.

“You got in the way. I’m sorry about that.” Still, as he was
sure Jericho would agree, preserving the Enigma secret had been the
most important objective. And that had been accomplished. The
U-boat that had been sent to pick up Puck had been intercepted and
sunk off the coast of Donegal, which was a double bonus, as the
Germans probably now thought that the whole business had been a
set-up all along, designed to trap one of their submarines. At any
rate, they hadn’t abandoned Enigma.

“And Claire?” Jericho was still staring at the ceiling. “Have
you found her yet?”

“Give us time, my dear fellow. She lies under at least sixty
feet of water, somewhere in the middle of a lake a quarter of a
mile across. That may take us a while.”

“And Raposo?”

“The Foreign Secretary spoke to the Portuguese ambassador that
morning. Under the circumstances, he agreed to waive diplomatic
immunity. By noon we’d taken Raposo’s flat apart. Dreary place at
the wrong end of Gloucester Road. Poor little sod. He really was
only in it for the money. We found two thousand dollars the Germans
had given him, stuffed in a shoe box on top of his wardrobe. Two
grand! Pathetic.”

“What will happen to him?”

“He’ll hang,” said Wigram pleasantly. “But never mind about him.
He’s history. The question is, what are we going to do with
you?”

After Wigram had gone, Jericho lay awake for a long time, trying
to decide which parts of his story had been true.

♦

“Behold, I show you a mystery,” said Hester.

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be
changed,

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for
the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal
must put on immortality.

So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and
this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to
pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in
victory.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

She closed her Bible slowly and regarded the congregation with a
dry and level eye. In the end pew she could just make out Jericho,
white-faced, staring straight ahead.

“Thanks be to God.”

♦

She found him waiting for her outside the church, the white
blossom raining down on him like confetti. The other mourners had
gone. He had his face raised to the sun and she guessed from the
way he seemed to be drinking in the warmth that he hadn’t seen it
for a long while. As he heard her approach, he turned and smiled
and she hoped her own smile hid her shock. His cheeks were concave,
his skin as waxy as one of the candles in church. The collar of his
shirt hung loosely from his gaunt neck.

“Hello, Hester.”

“Hello, Tom.” She hesitated, then held out her gloved hand.

“Super service,” said Wigram. “Absolutely super. Everybody’s
said so, haven’t they, Tom?”

“Everybody. Yes.” Jericho closed his eyes for a second and she
understood immediately what he was signalling: that he was sorry
Wigram was there, but that he couldn’t do anything about it. He
released her hand. “I didn’t want to leave,” he said, “without
seeing how you were.”

“Oh, well,” she said, with a jollity she didn’t feel, “bearing
up, you know.”

“Back at work?”

“Yes, yes. Still blisting away.”

“And still in the cottage?”,

“For now. But I think I’ll move out, as soon as I can find
myself another billet.”

“Too many ghosts?”

“Something like that.”

She suddenly found herself loathing the banality of the
conversation but she couldn’t think of anything better to say.

“Leveret’s waiting,” said Wigram. “With the car. To run us to
the station.” Through the gate Hester could see the long black
bonnet. The driver was leaning against it, watching them, smoking a
cigarette.

“You’re catching a train, Mr Wigram?” asked Hester.

“I’m not,” he said, as if the notion was offensive. “Tom is.
Aren’t you, Tom?”

“I’m going back to Cambridge,” explained Jericho. “For a few
months’ rest.”

“In fact we really ought to push off,” continued Wigram, looking
at his watch. “You never know—there’s always a chance it may be on
time.”

Jericho said, irritably: “Will you excuse us for just one
minute, Mr Wigram?” Without waiting for a reply, he guided Hester
away from Wigram, back towards the church. “This bloody man won’t
leave me alone for a second,” he whispered. “Listen, if you can
bear it, will you give me a kiss?”

“What?” She wasn’t sure she could have heard him correctly.

“A kiss. Quickly. Please.”

“Very well. It’s no great hardship.”

She took off her hat, reached over and brushed his thin cheek
with her lips. He held her shoulders and said softly in her ear:
“Did you invite Claire’s father to the service?”

“Yes.” He had gone mad, she thought. The shock had affected his
mind. “Of course I did.”

“What happened?”

“He didn’t reply.”

“I knew it,” he whispered. She felt his grip tighten.

“Knew what?”

“She isn’t dead…”

“How touching,” said Wigram loudly, coming up behind them, “and
I hate to break things up, but you’re going to miss your train, Tom
Jericho.”

Jericho released her and took a step back. “Look after
yourself,” he said.

For a moment she couldn’t speak. “And you.”

“I’ll write.”

“Yes. Please. Be sure you do.”

Wigram tugged at his arm. Jericho gave her a final smile and a
shrug, then allowed himself to be led away.

She watched him walk painfully up the path and through the gate.
Leveret opened the car door and as he did so, Jericho turned and
waved. She raised her hand in return, saw him manoeuvre himself
stiffly into the back seat, then the door slammed shut. She let her
hand drop.

She stayed there for several minutes, long after the big car had
pulled away, then she replaced her hat and went back into the
church.

§

“I almost forgot,” said Wigram, as the car turned down the hill.
“I bought you a paper. For the journey.”

He unlocked his briefcase and took out a copy of The Times,
opened it to the third page and handed it to Jericho. The story
consisted of just five paragraphs, flanked by an illustration of a
London bus and an appeal for the Poor Clergy Relief
Corporation:

MISSING POLISH OFFICERS

GERMAN ALLEGATIONS

The Polish Minister of National Defence, Lieutenant-General
Marjan Kukiel, has issued a statement concerning some 8,000 missing
Polish officers who were released from Soviet prison camps in the
spring of 1940. In view of German allegations that the bodies of
many thousands of Polish officers had been found near Smolensk and
that they had been murdered by the Russians, the Polish Government
has decided to ask the International Red Cross to investigate the
matter…

♦

“I particularly like that line,” said Wigram, “don’t you:
‘released from Soviet prison camps’?”

“That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.” Jericho tried to give
him back the paper, but Wigram waved it away.

“Keep it. A souvenir.”

“Thanks.” Jericho folded the paper and slipped it into his
pocket, then stared firmly out of the window to forestall any
further conversation. He’d had enough of Wigram and his lies. As
they passed under the blackened railway bridge for the final time
he surreptitiously touched his cheek and he suddenly wished he
could have brought Hester with him for this last act.

At the station, Wigram insisted on seeing him on to the train,
even though Jericho’s luggage had been sent on ahead at the
beginning of the week and there was nothing for him to carry. And
Jericho consented in return to have Wigram’s hand for support as
they crossed the footbridge and strolled along the length of the
Cambridge train in search of an empty seat. Jericho was careful to
make sure that he, rather than Wigram, chose the compartment.

“Well, then, my dear Tom,” said Wigram, with mock sadness, “I’ll
bid you goodbye.” That peculiar handshake again, the little finger
somehow tucked up into the palm. Final things: did Jericho have his
travel warrant? Yes. And he knew that Kite would be meeting him at
Cambridge to escort him by taxi to King’s? Yes. And he’d remembered
that a nurse would be coming in from Addenbrooke’s Hospital every
morning to change the dressing on his shoulder? Yes, yes, yes.

“Goodbye, Mr Wigram.”

He settled his aching back into a seat facing away from the
engine. Wigram closed the door. There were three other passengers
in the compartment: a fat man in a dirty fawn raincoat, an elderly
woman in a silver fox, and a dreamy-looking girl reading a copy of
Horizon. They all looked innocent enough, but how could one tell?
Wigram tapped on the window and Jericho struggled to his feet to
lower it. But the time he had it open, the whistle had blown and
the train was beginning to pull away. Wigram trotted alongside.

“We’ll be in touch when you’re fit again, all right? You know
where to get hold of me if anything comes up.”

“I certainly do,” said Jericho, and slid the window up with a
bang. But still Wigram kept pace with the compartment—smiling,
waving, running. It had become a challenge for him, a terrific
joke. He didn’t stop until he reached the end of the platform, and
that was Jericho’s final impression of Bletchley: of Wigram leaning
forwards, his hands on his knees, shaking his head and
laughing.

♦

Thirty-five minutes after boarding the train at Bletchley,
Jericho disembarked at Bedford, bought a one-way ticket to London,
then waited in the sunshine at the end of the platform, filling in
The Times crossword. It was hot, the tracks shimmered; there was a
strong smell of baking coal dust and warm steel. When he’d finished
the final clue he stuffed the newspaper, unread, into a rubbish bin
and walked slowly up and down the platform, getting used to the
feel of his legs. A crowd of passengers was beginning to build up
around him and he scanned each face automatically, even though
logic told him it was unlikely he was being followed: if Wigram had
feared he might abscond, he surely would have arranged for Leveret
to drive him all the way to Cambridge.

The tracks began to whine. The passengers surged forwards. A
military train passed slowly southwards, with armed soldiers on the
engine footplate. From the carriages peered a line of gaunt,
exhausted faces, and a murmur went through the crowd. German
prisoners! German prisoners under guard! Jericho briefly met the
eyes of one of the captives—owlish, bespectacled, unmilitary: more
clerk than warrior—and something passed between them, some flash of
recognition across the gulf of war. A second later the white face
blurred and disappeared, and soon afterwards the London express
pulled in, packed and filthy. “Worse than the bloody Jerries’
train,” complained a man.

Jericho couldn’t find a seat, so he stood, leaning against the
door to the corridor, until his chalk complexion and the sheen of
perspiration on his forehead prompted a young Army officer to give
up his place. Jericho sat down gratefully, dozed, and dreamed of
the German prisoner with his sad owl’s face, and then of Claire on
that first journey, just before Christmas, their bodies
touching.

By 2.30 he was in London, at St Pancras Station, moving
awkwardly through the mass of people towards the entrance to the
Underground. The lift was out of action so he had to take the
stairs, stopping on every landing to recover his strength. His back
was throbbing and something wet was trickling down his spine, but
whether it was sweat or blood he couldn’t tell.

On the eastbound Circle Line platform, a rat scurried through
the rubbish beneath the rails towards the tunnel mouth.

♦

When Jericho failed to emerge from the Bletchley train, Kite was
irritated but unconcerned. The next train was due in within a
couple of hours, there was a good pub just around the corner from
the station, and that was where the college porter chose to do his
waiting, in the amiable company of two halves of Guinness and a
pork pie.

But when the second train terminated at Cambridge, and still
there was no sign of Jericho, Kite went into a sulk that lasted him
throughout the half hour it took him to trudge back to King’s.