Enigma

by Robert Harris

  Claire, Claire, what have you done? Did you see something you weren’t supposed to in that ‘deadly dull’ job of yours? Did you rescue a few scraps from the confidential waste when nobody was looking and spirit them home? And if you did that, why? And do they know you did it? Is that why Wigram’s after you? Have you learned too much?

  He saw her on her knees in the darkness at the foot of his bed, heard his own voice slurred with sleep – ‘What on earth are you doing?’ – and her ingenuous reply: ‘I’m just going through your things …’

  You were always looking for something, weren’t you? And when I couldn’t provide it, you just went on to someone else. (‘There’s always someone else,’ you said: almost the last words you ever spoke to me, remember?) What is it, then, this thing you want so badly?

  So many questions. He realised he was beginning to freeze. He huddled down into his coat, burying his chin in his scarf, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets. He tried to recall the images of the four cryptograms – LCNNR KDEMS LWAZA – but the letters were blurred. He had found this before. It was impossible mentally to photograph pages of gibberish: there had to be some meaning to them, some structure, to fix them in his mind.

  ‘A mother and a lone star …’

  The thick walls held a silence that seemed as old as the church itself – an oppressive silence, interrupted only occasionally by the rustling of a bird nesting in the rafters. For several minutes neither of them spoke.

  Sitting on the hard bench, Jericho felt as though his bones had turned to ice, and this numbness, combined with the silence and the reliquaries everywhere and the sickly smell of incense, made him morbid. His father’s funeral came to him for the second time in two days – the gaunt face in the coffin, his mother forcing him to kiss it goodbye, the cold skin beneath his lips giving off a sour reek of chemicals, like the school lab, and then the even worse stench at the crematorium.

  ‘I need some air,’ he said.

  She gathered her bag and followed him down the aisle. Outside they pretended to study the tombs. To the north of the churchyard, screened by trees, was Bletchley Park. A motorcycle passed noisily down the lane towards the town. Jericho waited until the crack of its engine had dwindled to a drone in the distance and then said, almost to himself: ‘The question I keep asking myself is why did she steal cryptograms? I mean, given what else she could have taken. If one was a spy –’ Hester opened her mouth to protest and he held up his hand. ‘All right, I’m not saying that she is, but if one was, surely one would want to steal proof that Enigma was being broken? What earthly use is an intercept?’ He lowered himself to his haunches and ran his fingers over an inscription that had almost crumbled away. ‘If only we knew more about them … To whom they were sent, for instance.’

  ‘We’ve been over this. They’ve removed every trace.’

  ‘But someone must know something,’ he mused. ‘For a start, someone must have broken the traffic. And someone else must have translated it.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask one of your cryptanalyst friends? You’re all terrifically good chaps together, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not especially. In any case I’m afraid we’re encouraged to lead quite separate lives. There is a man in Hut 3 who might have seen them …’ But then he remembered Weitzman’s frightened face (‘please don’t ask me, I don’t want to know …’) and he shook his head. ‘No. He wouldn’t help.’

  ‘Then what a pity it is,’ she said, with some asperity, ‘that you burned our only clues.’

  ‘Keeping them was too much of a risk.’ He was still rubbing slowly at the stone. ‘For all I knew, you might have told Wigram I’d asked you about the call sign.’ He looked up at her uneasily. ‘You didn’t, I take it?’

  ‘Credit me with some sense, Mr Jericho. Would I be here talking to you now?’ She stamped off down the row of graves and began furiously studying an epitaph.

  She regretted her sharpness almost at once. (‘He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.’ Proverbs 16.xxxii.) But then, as Jericho pointed out later, when relations between them had improved sufficiently for him to risk the observation, if she hadn’t lost her temper, she might never have thought of the solution.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘we need a little tension to sharpen our wits.’

  She was jealous, that was the truth of it. She had thought she knew Claire as well as anyone but it was fast becoming apparent that she knew her hardly at all, scarcely better even than he did.

  She shivered. There was no warmth in this March sun. It fell on the stone tower of St Mary’s as cold as light from a looking glass.

  Jericho was back on his feet now, moving between the graves. She wondered whether she might have been like him if she’d been allowed to go to university. But her father wouldn’t stand for it and her brother George had gone instead, as if it were God’s law: men go to university, men break codes; women stay at home, women do the filing.

  ‘Hester, Hester, just in time. Will you talk to Chicksands, there’s a good girl, and see what they can do? And while you’re on, the Machine Room reckon they’ve got a corrupt text on the last batch of Kestrel – the operator needs to check her notes and re-send. Then the eleven o’clocks from Beaumanor …’

  She had been standing slack with defeat, gazing at a tombstone, but now she felt her body slowly coming to attention.

  ‘The operator needs to check her notes …’

  ‘Mr Jericho!’

  He turned at the sound of his name to see her stumbling through the graves towards him.

  It was almost ten o’clock and Miles Mermagen was combing his hair in his office, preparatory to returning to his digs, when Hester Wallace appeared at his office door.

  ‘No,’ he said, with his back to her.

  ‘Miles, listen, I’ve been thinking, you were right, I’ve been an utter fool.’

  He squinted suspiciously at her in the mirror.

  ‘My application for a transfer – I want you to withdraw it.’

  ‘Fine. I never submitted it.’

  He returned his attention to himself. The comb slid through the thick black hair like a rake through oil.

  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 attaché case and pul
led 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.’

  3

  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 scal
e 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.