The Enigma Game

by Elizabeth Wein

  Whatever his motive, his aircraft was spotted by a British detection station as he approached the north-east coast of England. Spitfire fighter planes were scrambled to go after him, but no one found him in the air. Hess apparently ran out of fuel and parachuted out of his Messerschmitt, which crashed south-east of Glasgow in Scotland (the remains of his plane are on display in the Imperial War Museum in London). He was found on the ground by a local farmer, given a cup of tea, and made a prisoner by the Home Guard. He insisted he wanted to talk to the Duke of Hamilton, saying that he hoped to negotiate a peace treaty between Britain and Germany. That didn’t happen. Hess doesn’t seem to have acted under anyone’s orders but his own; the result of his failed mission was that he spent the rest of his life in prison, successfully taking his own life in 1987 at the age of ninety-three – not his first attempt.

  Obviously Felix Baer is not based on Rudolf Hess himself, although Hess’s flight made me feel that Baer’s was plausible. But the real inspiration for ‘Odysseus’ and his collaboration with British Intelligence came from an ‘Individual History’ report describing a German bomber, a Junkers 88, now in the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, in England. I’ve known about the events leading to the capture of this aircraft for some time – at least ten years – because I used the description of the RAF interception of this Ju-88 as source material for an interception scene in Rose Under Fire. On 9 May 1943, this Luftwaffe plane, with its crew of three, flew from Denmark via Norway and was then escorted by a group of Spitfires into Dyce near Aberdeen (the location of my fictional Deeside). One of the German airmen in the Ju-88 had been brought along at gunpoint, unwillingly; the other two may well have been working for British Intelligence since 1940. Intriguingly, it has been suggested that the pilot, Heinrich (or Herbert) Schmitt, may have landed in the UK twice before, in February and May 1941, both times on clandestine intelligence missions.

  The RAF continued to fly this captured Junkers 88 on experimental operations throughout the war, and it was a gift for the British and the other Allied forces because it contained an up-to-the-minute German radar set which allowed the RAF to make some key adjustments to the existing technology that hid their own bomber aircraft from enemy detection. Despite the importance of this discovery, the details of the tech are so stunningly obscure and complex that I knew I couldn’t possibly use them to create a gripping read. I asked my husband to brainstorm ideas about an alternative secret for my German resistance pilot to sneak into Britain, something which could be considered equally game-changing for the war effort but a bit more exciting. He immediately suggested an Enigma machine.

  I’m grateful to Mark Baldwin for his energetic and enlightening lecture on the use of the Enigma machine, and for the brief opportunity to touch those keys myself and see how the rotors work. The first Enigma machine to come into the possession of British Intelligence in wartime was captured in May 1941, not February 1941 as in this novel. I hope readers will give me a little poetic licence over this slight anachronism. The timing of The Enigma Game was dictated very strictly by some of the less sensational events of Code Name Verity; when I sat down to write, it was already ‘canon’ that Jamie had lost his fingers and toes to frostbite after ditching a Blenheim in the North Sea some time before March 1941. Perhaps Felix Baer’s Enigma machine was kept especially secret, or got snarled in administrative red tape, as Jamie worried it might. British Intelligence did make some shocking blunders; it’s not impossible.

  It’s increasingly the case that my novels feel collaborative rather than an individual effort, and I owe a debt of gratitude to my international team of editors: Hannah Allaman, Emily Meehan, Lynne Missen, Ellen Holgate and Lucy Mackay-Sim, particularly Hannah and Lucy, who whipped this book into shape over three intense drafts. I’m also grateful to the talented writer Catherine Johnson, who graciously made time at short notice to give a careful reading of my manuscript and share her experiences as the daughter of Jamaican and British parents. And of course I would not be the writer I am today without the continued support of my agent and dear friend Ginger Clark. The same is true of my husband, Tim Gatland, who pointed out that I needed to run the Aberdeen rail line inland around my fictional RAF Windyedge, and who accompanied me on more than one reconnaissance flight along the North Sea coast of Aberdeenshire, even indulging me in a landing at ‘Deeside’.

  And I want to acknowledge and remember the Blenheim airmen who inspired me and for whom my heart is eternally sore, in particular the young crew of 21 Squadron’s Blenheim R3914: pilot Harry Collinge, observer Douglas Osborne and wireless operator/air gunner Albert Moore. They were all between twenty and twenty-three years of age when they lost their lives on the night of 26/27 November 1940, crashing into a hillside in the north of England on their way home from an attack on a power station in Cologne, Germany. They were off course and didn’t have a working radio. Their plane was seen in flames before it hit the ground, but since they made it back to Britain they may well have been shot down by British anti-aircraft gunners, mistaking them for the enemy in the dark.

  LEST WE FORGET.

  Elizabeth Wein

  Mt Gretna, Pennsylvania

  July 2019

  Further Reading

  Bourne, Stephen. The Motherland Calls: Britain’s Black Servicemen & Women 1939–45. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2012. It’s difficult to find accessible studies on this subject, but Bourne’s book contains interesting personal accounts as well as a good list of films and television documentaries about black servicemen in Britain (see pages 134–135).

  Chappell, Connery. Island of Barbed Wire: The Remarkable Story of World War Two Internment on the Isle of Man. London: Robert Hale, 1984. This book gives a good overview of the British internment of aliens during the war.

  Nesbit, Roy Conyers and Georges van Acker. The Flight of Rudolf Hess: Myths and Reality. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1999. Hess was an enigmatic character who tried, and failed, to change the course of the war in an attempt to personally broker a peace between Britain and Germany.

  Panton, Alastair and Victoria Panton Bacon. Six Weeks of Blenheim Summer: One Pilot’s Extraordinary Account of the Battle of France. London: Penguin Books, 2018 (2014). This autobiographical account of flying Bristol Blenheims in wartime is fabulously readable and very moving.

  Interesting Links

  ‘Caribbean Aircrew in the RAF during WW2’ contains a record of West Indians who joined the Royal Air Force during World War II, with photographs and lists of documentaries and news stories: www.caribbeanaircrew-ww2.com

  ‘Was the RAF Especially Receptive to Black Servicemen in World War Two?’ is an edited transcript of a podcast on Dan Snow’s History Hit entitled ‘Pilots of the Caribbean with Peter Devitt,’ first broadcast on 24 June 2018: https://www.historyhit.com/was-the-raf-especially-receptive-to-black-servicemen-in-world-war-two/

  Stephen Bourne has written a detailed obituary for Lilian Bader (1918–2015), one of the first black women to serve in Britain’s armed forces: www.voice-online.co.uk/article/obituary-war-hero-lilian-bader-1918-2015

  This web page from the Battle of Britain London Monument is a tribute to Herbert Capstick, the only Jamaican to fly in the Battle of Britain: http://www.bbm.org.uk/airmen/Capstick.htm

  ‘Disaster at Balham Tube Station’ is an account of the bombing raid that flooded the London Underground on 14 October 1940, with iconic photographs of the London bus that fell into the bomb crater: http://ww2today.com/14th-october-1940-disaster-at-balham-tube-station

  The Library and Archive Service on the Isle of Man provides an online guide to their collection concerning the island’s role in the internment of aliens during World War II: https://manxnationalheritage.im/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/WWII-Internment-Sheet-Library-and-Archive-Service-Digital.pdf

  This ‘Individual History’ written by Andrew Simpson is a Royal Air Force Museum document describing the interception of a Luftwaffe Junkers 88 bomber in May 1943. The aircraf
t described has been in the collection of the RAF Museum in Cosford since 2017 (A/C Serial No. W/NR. 360043, Section 2B): https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/documents/collections/78-AF-953-Junkers-Ju88-R1.pdf

  The Aircrew Remembered website contains an account of Heinrich (Herbert) Schmitt’s defection to the UK with his Junkers 88 aircrew: http://www.aircrewremembered.com/schmid-herbert-defection.html

  The only Bristol Blenheim flying today was restored by the Aircraft Restoration Company. The aircraft is currently based at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, England: https://www.aircraftrestorationcompany.com/blenheim

  The Blenheim Society website: http://blenheimsociety.com/

  All links were current in September 2019.

  About the Author

  Elizabeth Wein was born in New York, and grew up in England, Jamaica and Pennsylvania. She is married with two children and lives in Perth, Scotland. Elizabeth is a member of the Ninety-Nines, the International Organization of Women Pilots. She was awarded the Scottish Aero Club’s Watson Cup for best student pilot in 2003 and it was her love of flying that partly inspired the idea for her internationally acclaimed novel Code Name Verity.

  Old grudges, buried secrets and rare, glimmering river pearls …

  Another exciting adventure awaits!

  Read on for a glimpse of chapter one

  AVAILABLE NOW

  1

  AN ASSORTMENT OF THINGS GONE MISSING

  ‘You’re a brave lassie.’

  That’s what my grandfather told me as he gave me his shotgun.

  ‘Stand fast and guard me,’ he instructed. ‘If this fellow tries to fight, you give him another dose.’

  Grandad turned back to the moaning man he’d just wounded. The villain was lying half-sunk in the mud on the edge of the riverbank, clutching his leg where a cartridgeful of lead pellets had emptied into his thigh. It was a late summer evening, my last with Grandad before I went off to boarding school for the first time, and we’d not expected to shoot anything bigger than a rabbit. But here I was aiming a shotgun at a living man while Grandad waded into the burn, which is what we called the River Fearn where it flowed through his estate, so he could tie the evildoer’s hands behind his back with the strap of his shotgun.

  ‘Rape a burn, would you!’ Grandad railed at him while he worked. ‘I’ve never seen the like! You’ve destroyed that shell bed completely. Two hundred river mussels round about, piled there like a midden heap! And you’ve not found a single pearl, have you? Because you don’t know a pearl mussel from your own backside! You’re like a bank robber that’s never cracked a safe or seen a banknote!’

  It was true – the man had torn through dozens of river mussels, methodically splitting the shells open one by one in the hope of finding a rare and beautiful Scottish river pearl. The flat rock at the edge of the riverbank was littered with the broken and dying remains.

  Grandad’s shotgun was almost too heavy for me to hold steady. I kept it jammed against my shoulder with increasingly aching arms. I swear by my glorious ancestors, that man was twice Grandad’s size. Of course Grandad was not a very big man – none of us Murrays is very big. And he was in his seventies, even though he wasn’t yet ill. The villain had a pistol – he’d dropped it when he’d been hurt, but it wasn’t out of reach. Without me there to guard Grandad as he bound the other man, they might have ended up in a duel. Brave! I felt like William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland.

  The wounded man was both pathetic and vengeful. ‘I’ll see you in Sheriff Court,’ he told my grandfather, whining and groaning. ‘I’m not after salmon and there’s no law against pearl fishing, but it’s illegal to shoot a man.’

  Grandad wasn’t scared. ‘This is a private river.’

  ‘Those tinker folk take pearls here all the time. They come in their tents and bide a week like gypsies, and go away with their pockets full!’

  ‘No tinker I know would ever rape a burn like this! And they’ve the decency to ask permission on my private land! There’s laws and laws. Respect for a river and its creatures goes unwritten. And the written law says that I can haul you in for poaching on my beat, whether it’s salmon or pearls or anything else.’

  ‘I didn’t – I wasnae –’

  ‘Whisht. Never mind what you were doing in the water: you pointed your own gun at my wee granddaughter.’ Grandad now confiscated the pistol that was lying in the mud, and tucked it into his willow-weave fisherman’s creel. ‘That’s excuse enough for me. I’m the Earl of Strathfearn. Whose word will the law take, laddie, yours or mine?’

  Grandad owned all of Strathfearn then, and the salmon and trout fishing rights that went with it. It was a perfect little Scottish estate, with a ruined castle and a baronial manor, nestled in woodland just where the River Fearn meets the River Tay. It’s true it’s not illegal for anyone to fish for pearls there, but it’s still private land. You can’t just wade in and destroy someone else’s river. I remember how shocking Grandad’s accusation sounded: Rape a burn, would you!

  Was that only three years ago? It feels like Grandad was ill for twice that long. And now he’s been dead for months. And the estate was sold and changed hands even while my poor grandmother was still living in it. Grandad was so alive then. We’d worked together.

  ‘Steady, lass,’ he’d said, seeing my arms trembling. I held on while Grandad dragged the unfortunate mussel-bed destroyer to his feet and helped him out of the burn and on to the riverbank, trailing forget-me-nots and muck and blood. I flinched out of his way in distaste.

  He’d aimed a pistol at me earlier. I’d been ahead of Grandad on the river path and the strange man had snarled at me, ‘One step closer and you’re asking for trouble.’ I’d hesitated, not wanting to turn my back on his gun. But Grandad had taken the law into his own hands and fired first.

  Now, as the bound, bleeding prisoner struggled past me so he could pull himself over to the flat rock and rest amid the broken mussel shells, our eyes met for a moment in mutual hatred. I wondered if he really would have shot at me.

  ‘Now see here,’ Grandad lectured him, getting out his hip flask and allowing the wounded man to take a taste of the Water of Life. ‘See the chimneys rising above the birches at the river’s bend? That’s the County Council’s old library on Inverfearnie Island, and there’s a telephone there. You and I are going to wait here while the lassie goes to ring the police.’ He turned to me. ‘Julie, tell them to send the Water Bailiff out here. He’s the one to deal with a poacher. And then I want you to stay there with the librarian until I come and fetch you. Her name is Mary Kinnaird.’

  I gave an internal sigh of relief – not a visible one, because being called ‘brave’ by my grandad was the highest praise I’d ever aspired to, but relief nevertheless. Ringing the police from the Inverfearnie Library was a mission I felt much more capable of completing than shooting a trespasser. I gave Grandad back his shotgun ceremoniously. Then I sprinted for the library, stung by nettles on the river path and streaking my shins with mud. I skidded over the mossy stones on the humpbacked bridge that connects Inverfearnie Island to the east bank of the Fearn, and came to a breathless halt before the stout oak door of the seventeenth-century library building, churning up the gravel of the drive with my canvas shoes as if I were the messenger at the Battle of Marathon.

  It was past six and the library was closed. I knew that Mary Kinnaird, the new librarian and custodian who lived there all alone, had only just finished university, but I’d never met her, and it certainly never occurred to me that she wouldn’t be able to hear the bell. When nobody came, not even after I gave a series of pounding kicks to the door, I decided the situation was desperate enough to warrant breaking in and climbing through a window. They were casement windows that opened outward – if I broke a pane near a latch it would be easy to get in. I snatched up a handful of stones from the gravel drive and hurled them hard at one of the leaded windowpanes nearest the ground. The glass smashed explosively, and I could hear the rocks hitting the floor i
nside like hailstones.

  That brought the young librarian running with a shotgun of her own. She threw open the door.

  She was bold as a crow. I stared at her openly, not because of the flat, skewed features of her face, but because she was aiming at my head. The library window I’d smashed was public property.

  Nothing for it but to plunge in. ‘Miss Kinnaird?’ I panted, out of breath after my marathon. ‘My grandad has caught a poacher and I – I need to use your telephone – to ring the police.’

  Her smooth, broad brow crinkled into the tiniest of irritated frowns. She’d sensed the importance of what I’d said, but she hadn’t heard all of it. Now she lowered her gun and I could see that around her neck hung two items essential to her work: a gold mechanical pencil on a slender rope of braided silk, and a peculiar curled brass horn, about the size of a fist, on a thick gold chain. She’d lowered the gun so she could hold the beautiful horn to her ear.

  ‘Your grandad needs help?’ she said tartly. ‘Speak up, please.’

  ‘STRATHFEARN HAS CAUGHT A THIEF AND I NEED TO USE YOUR TELEPHONE,’ I bellowed into the ear trumpet.

  The poor astonished young woman gasped. ‘Oh! Strathfearn is your grandfather?’

  ‘Aye, Sandy Murray, Earl of Strathfearn,’ I said with pride.

  ‘Well, you’d better come in,’ she told me briskly. ‘I’ll ring the police for you.’

  I wondered how she managed the telephone if she couldn’t hear, but I didn’t dare to ask.

  ‘Grandad said to send Sergeant Angus Henderson,’ I said. ‘He’s the Water Bailiff for the Strathfearn Estate. He polices the riverbank.’

  ‘Oh, aye, I know Angus Henderson.’

  She shepherded me past the wood and glass display cases on the ground floor and into her study. But I poked my head around the door to watch her sitting at the telephone in its dark little nook of a cupboard under the winding stairs. I listened as she asked the switchboard operator to put her through to the police station in the village at Brig O’Fearn. There was a sort of Bakelite ear trumpet attached to the telephone receiver. So that answered my question.