As Alan Turing would soon explain to Tovey, anything with the word encryption attached to it eventually came to his attention, and he soon learned of the unexpected attack on Ascension Island… and a good deal more.
* * *
Something else was in the signal, he was sure of it. The longer he worked with it, the more he became convinced that the intercept teams had picked up two overlapping messages, and they must have been copied into one traffic report. Yet one was quite different from the other. While parts of the signal contained recognizable phrases, they were not normal German radio nomenclature.
He ran his theory by Peter Twinn, and the two men eventually agreed that something had been bundled up in the wrong package. Yet being a very patient and persistent man, Alan Turing would not let the other snippets of the message go. He wanted to know what it was, and curiosity was a most motivating state of mind. He put his labyrinthine brain, and his machines on the problem, and in a week he had a breakthrough, which he shared with Twinn.
“I’m certain of these three characters now—K, D and T. But this other word I’ve sorted out, Charger, I wonder what it could mean.”
“Most likely a code word,” said Twinn, “But there’s no mention of it in the material we already have—nothing in the Kurzsignalheft code book. I’ve checked them all, rendezvous code names, weather states, harbor names, ships, dates and times. Nothing.”
“That’s what’s so disturbing,” said Turing. “The Germans might be switching to a new code.”
“Then why do we still get so much traffic using Funkschlüssel code. I’ve seen three or four M3 coded messages just this morning.”
“Who can say,” said Turing. “But this hybrid signal isn’t Funkschlüssel or M3. It’s something new. And this isn’t the only oddity to come across my desk this week. Have a look in that tray… The Manila envelope.”
Twinn took the envelope in hand, noting the label. “My, this has been a long time in transit. All the way from Saint Helena?”
“Apparently so.”
Twinn opened the envelope, sliding out a photograph and pursing his lips as he took a close look. “A destroyer,” he said. “But not one of ours… Flush deck construction from the look of it… rather large.”
He flipped the photo over to note the location of the sighting as well south of Saint Helena. “Strange,” he said. “but it looks like an American ship.”
“That it is,” said Turing.
“The focus is way off. Damn thing looks like it’s a ghost ship. Look here, you can see the wave sets right through the image of the ship. Are you sure this wasn’t another dodgy mistake in a darkroom somewhere?”
“That thought occurred to me,” said Turing, “but there’s something else amiss with that photo. You see, I’ve identified the ship, or at least I know its class. That’s an American destroyer alright—Fletcher Class.”
“Fletcher? But those ships are still under construction.”
“Correct. This one seems complete, except for that ghostly image you speak of. Yet from all I can determine, the first of this class won’t be commissioned until June of this year in Boston Naval Yard—Hull Number 445.”
“I suppose a little bird told you that,” said Twinn.
“Something like that. Now here’s the rub… I’ve had a good long look at that photo under magnification. The technicians are fairly certain the hull number on this one is 654.”
“Did you mean 4 – 5 – 6?” Twinn asked, thinking Turing had passed a dyslexic moment. “That would make it ship number two in the class.”
“Yes it would, but the number was 6 – 5 – 4.”
“Rather odd,” said Twinn with characteristic understatement. “I suppose you’ve asked the Americans about that hull number.”
“That I have,” said Turing. “It’s on the schedule, to be laid down in July of this year.”
That brought Peter Twinn up short. He inclined his head to one side, giving Turing a long look. “In July of this year? Well, that certainly doesn’t make any sense. How could we have a photograph of the bloody ship if it isn’t even laid down yet?”
“Precisely,” said Turing, and he smiled. “There’s one other odd thing about this photograph. See the mark in the top right corner? It reads ‘T1,’ and that means this was a test shot for the camera. Usually there’s nothing on them. They just run the shutter and all to make sure things are in working order. These photos are normally just shots of the empty sea. All I usually get from them is sea conditions at the time the others in the set were taken… But not this one.”
* * *
It would begin like that, with a mangled message, an unaccountable photo, little oddities that began to accumulate, growing more substantial, like slowly deepening shadow creeping on the scene of the war in early 1942. It was a shadow of something impending, a harbinger, promising grave consequences. It was a shadow of things to come.
The photograph Turing shared with Peter Twinn would not be the last. There were others, arriving week by week, all in the routine hustle and bustle of normal deliveries to Bletchley Park for analysis. Normally Turing wouldn’t take an interest in such things, being much absorbed with his cryptography, but this time he did. He was in and out of Hut 8, quite often, hobnobbing with the same chaps that had sent him that double signal with the discordant code stuck in the middle. Then he found it…
It was another of those inexplicable discoveries, all strangely gathered into one place—a very special and highly secret place—the same place where he had dragged a similar old box out of those dark recesses of the archive room in Bletchley Park.
With the war heating up, and being much absorbed with the creation and employment of his fabled “Turing Machines,” the noted Cryptologist had been completely preoccupied in recent months. Turing had friends in very high places within the Royal Navy, and it was high time that he took his discovery to one of them instead of bantering it about with associates like Peter Twinn.
In all that time Admiral Tovey had not seen much of the man, being much preoccupied himself, though he always kept Turing in mind. Then, after the wound he suffered in the Battle of Fuerteventura, and as much to call the man on the carpet for the losses taken by the Royal Navy in that engagement, Tovey was ordered back to London. When Turing learned he was in country, he rang the Admiral up and asked for a meeting. It was there that Tovey would learn just what Turing had found, and what it all might mean.
Chapter 17
The Admiral was first summoned to a private meeting with Churchill, where the two men discussed the entire situation at some length. It was perhaps that meeting alone that saved Tovey’s head, for Admiral Pound had been inclined to relieve him after Fuerteventura, sending Admiral Bruce Fraser in his place while Tovey was recalled to London. It was Churchill who finally restrained Pound, for Tovey was “in the know” concerning matters of the deepest possible secrecy, while Pound remained “out of the loop” and increasingly bothered by failing health that would soon take his life.
Perhaps more than anything, it was the key that Tovey now carried to that meeting in his jacket pocket, and the disclosure of all that had happened during the “Rodney incident,” that saved the Admiral’s neck. Churchill emerged from that meeting with renewed confidence in Tovey, saying that he had discussed the recent setbacks and losses at sea with the Admiral at length, and had become convinced that every prudent and seaworthy maneuver had been made by the Admiral to ensure the best possible outcome.
“Without him,” said Churchill, “I can only imagine that our losses might have been far greater, and with him, we have sunk the Graf Zeppelin, Gneisenau, Richelieu, Strasbourg, Bretagne, Provence, Caio Duilio, Andrea Doria and Littorio, great ships the enemy can no longer put against us at sea. Beyond that, while our own forces have sustained damage, we have put more of the same on the enemy, pounding Normandie, Bismarck and Germany’s mightiest ship, the Hindenburg, and sending all three to the dry docks in this latest engagement, where we have every
hope the RAF will keep them good company.”
So Tovey was able to retain his position as Admiral of Home Fleet, though several changes were now to be made in the way that fleet would be handled. Admiral Holland would be designated “Commander in Chief, The Nore.” A command that was principally involved with the operations and safe passage of eastern convoys, its responsibility was widened to include all operations north of the GIUK line, as it was thought that one man could simply not effectively managed that region along with the Med and Atlantic. Holland still remained “in the dark” as to the real nature of Kirov and Kinlan, or “the two Ks” as Churchill called them. This change allowed Tovey to focus his energy on the Atlantic, and the Azores was now being rapidly developed as Britain’s major anchorage south of the Home Islands. Convoys called on the ports daily, bringing fuel, munitions, equipment, engineers and other supplies. While he was in London checking on the disposition of a few of those convoys, Tovey received a call from the enigmatic Turing, his eyes brightening when he heard the other man’s voice.
“Ah, Mister Turing,” he said warmly. “I was meaning to have a chat with you myself. Good of you to call.”
“Admiral,” said Turing. “I’m afraid I have yet another little mystery on my hands here. I wonder if you might be able to stop over at Station X for a little talk.”
That was what Tovey did, where he soon learned that yet another unaccountable file box had turned up in the Bletchley Park Archives. “It was right under the first one,” said Turing. “Completely unmarked. When I made that first discovery, I was so riveted by the contents of that box that I never thought to look further. God only knows how long it’s been there, but it looks as though it has been sitting there undisturbed for years. Unfortunately, given the contents of this second box, that would be impossible.”
“How so?”
“Impossible in the same way the contents of the first box could not exist when I found them in 1940. We were both quite perplexed to see our names there on those files, and information dating to 1942.”
“You mean to say this has happened again?” said Tovey. “There’s more of the same?”
“Not exactly,” said Turing. “Oh, there’s certainly more, but the information is quite different than anything we uncovered in that first box. In fact, it has nothing to do with the Russian battlecruiser, and I’m happy to say that neither of us can be called to blame for generating any of this new data. Our names appear nowhere in the material. Here…” He handed Tovey a photograph, which he eyed with some interest.
“An aircraft carrier,” he said, for the photo depicted a frontal view of a large warship, its prominent bow coming right at the photographer, and the high flat edge of the flight deck crowning the top.
“Note that fellow standing there on the flight deck. He’ll give you a good sense of the scale of this ship—and then have a look at these.”
More photos followed, and Turing explained that several had come in through regular delivery channels, posing quiet little mysteries when Turing got hold of one or another part of the elephant. Then he found the mother lode in that box, as if it had been collected by someone for a very long time, though no one at Bletchley Park would confess to the crime. One showed the carrier steaming off the unmistakable silhouette of the Rock of Gibraltar, and then another a close-up, as if taken from the flight deck itself. That third image showed the workings of the carrier’s island superstructure, the weather decks crowded with crewmen. There, on the mainmast and fluttering behind some well developed radar antennae, they had their first clue as to the origins and identity of this ship—the flag.
“An American aircraft carrier?” said Tovey. “Off Gibraltar?”
“Well I can’t make out any colors in that second image off Gibraltar,” said Turing, “but yes, that third photo makes it quite obvious. I’ve compared the island superstructures in both images, and I’m convinced it’s the same ship. Those other flags will be of interest to you.”
“Yes,” said Tovey, studying the photo carefully. “Naval pendants for signaling.”
“American, of course,” said Turing. “They’ve run up three letters at the end, if I am not mistaken, and I’m seldom mistaken Admiral. The letters are K – D – T. The Americans would say it this way: Kilo, Delta, Tango. Individually those letters have assigned meanings. Kilo means: ‘I wish to communicate with you.’ Delta indicates: ‘I am maneuvering with difficulty.’ And Tango means: ‘Do not pass ahead of me—keep clear.’”
“They might mean that when hoisted on the halyards,” said Tovey. “then again, they might simply be a call sign.”
Turing raised an eyebrow. “You mean like a radio call sign?”
“Certainly. Whispers from the fleet, my man. Ships at sea often hoist flags simply to identify themselves, and also to send little messages such as those you just related.”
“Indeed,” said Turing. “A simple identification… And here I was trying to piece together the meaning of those longer messages. Might they serve a dual purpose, to both identify and communicate at the same time?”
“I suppose so,” said Tovey. “But it would be rather clever. I can’t imagine an American aircraft carrier off Gibraltar, and I’d certainly know about it. Nothing comes to mind in recent years. Could that photo have been taken well before the war?”
“Admiral, I’m afraid the opposite might be true….”
That struck Tovey, and he gave Turing a frown. As if to answer his objection, Turing simply handed the Admiral another document.
“Now have a look at this…”
It was a line drawing of a map that showed the movement of what appeared to be several vessels of the United States Navy. The course tracks were clearly marked and labeled: “USS Albemerle, Task Force 88, USS Norton Sound.” Beneath this there was a single line of typewritten text which read: “Task Force 88 track chart, 1 August to 6 September, 1958, ARGUS.”
“Task Force 88,” said Tovey. “1958? What do you make of this?”
“The dates could be fabricated as a thin security measure, but I doubt it. As to that Task Force designation, again, discrete inquiries with my American contacts lead nowhere. There is a USS Albemerle presently in service, a seaplane tender. It was commissioned December 20, 1940, and when the war started for the Americans it was at Norfolk. They sent it to Argentia, and then on to Iceland where it ran into that nasty storm on January 15—hurricane force winds. It’s back in Norfolk now, fit as a fiddle. As for the other ship, there is no USS Norton Sound in the United States Navy… At least not today.”
“Not today? You mean to say—”
“Yes, I do,” Turing cut in. “There is no such vessel as we speak, but apparently there will be. My sources tell me the Americans have such a ship on the drawing boards, another seaplane tender, Currituck-class, it’s currently scheduled in the US maritime naval buildup program, only here’s the rub. That ship won’t even be laid down until September of this year, at least according to my sources. They tell me commissioning would be expected sometime in 1945.”
“Very curious,” said Tovey.
Now Turing handed the Admiral the image of that destroyer he had shared with Peter Twinn. “A Fletcher Class destroyer. That photo also images a ship that will not be laid down until July of this year. In fact, the lead ship in that class was laid down in June of 1941, and won’t be commissioned until June of this year. That the photo even exists is one little mystery, just like the others; that it was sent to me by our own RAF reconnaissance fellows out of Saint Helena is quite another little mystery. It came in a few weeks ago, before I found this other lot.”
Tovey was flabbergasted. “Our own forces took a photograph of a ship that has yet to be commissioned?”
“That looks to be the case,” said Turing.
“Well,” Tovey folded his arms. “If I hadn’t walked about on such a ship myself, and made the confidence of its lately departed Admiral, I would call all this balderdash. But having the lessons taught to us by that Russ
ian Admiral in mind, this cuts rather near the bone. After all, we still have Argos Fire and that little flotilla of service vessels I’ve been hiding in the Azores, and not one will be commissioned within our lifetimes. What about that aircraft carrier? I’m certain there has been no contemporary American vessel anywhere near Gibraltar, as far as I know, and that goes a good long ways.”
“Correct,” said Turing, “especially since the Germans have the place. Unfortunately, that photograph had no date or time stamp, so we can’t determine when that happened. That said, I’m inclined to think this image is a shadow of things to come. It hasn’t happened yet, but it might, because this is another ship that does not exist, just like that destroyer. Those photographs depict a new class of American aircraft carrier, the Essex class. They’ve a dozen on order as things stand, with the first due for commissioning soon.”
“This ship?”
“I’m afraid not. Note the hull number there, CVS-40. None of the scheduled ships would get that designation. In fact, my American chaps shook their heads at it. What’s a CVS they asked me? No such animal.” Turing handed Tovey yet another photograph. “Birds of the same feather,” he said flatly. “Ever seen aircraft like that?”
The image showed a pair of twin engine planes, each clearly bearing US Navy markings. Tovey squinted. “I’m not familiar with this aircraft type. Have you looked it up?”
“Oh, I tried that bang away when I saw this photo. Have a look there, right beneath the word Navy. That’s the Squadron number, VS-32, yet after making discrete inquiries, the Yanks say they have no such squadron designated. I investigated further and can now confidently say that no such aircraft presently exists in the American inventory.” He let that hang there, then slowly turned the photo over, his finger pointing to the time stamped date label. “You’ll see that reads August, in the year1958.”
Knight's Move (Kirov Series Book 21) Page 15