The Enigma Game

by Elizabeth Wein

  I didn’t answer. I could do without her laughing at me in front of B-Flight, and she’d been bloody cheeky about questioning them already. God knew what she’d pulled out of Dougie. My sullen silence made her throw me a curious glance. Then she looked away quickly, puffing on her cigarette.

  ‘I’d love to get a chance to chat to the old woman at the inn, though,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Jane Warner, is that her name? I wonder what she thought of the Germans when she spoke to them. It might be useful.’

  ‘Buy her a drink,’ I suggested. ‘She likes whisky and water. It’ll cost you two and six.’

  Louisa:

  Mrs Campbell hated having the Germans around.

  She also hated Elisabeth Lind, who felt like a sort of German. She hated waiting on her and cooking for her, and Mrs Campbell hated having to feed the real Germans, too. She made them corned beef sandwiches and porridge and sent them flasks of tea or pretend coffee. But she wouldn’t take the food to them. She tried to get Morag to do it, but after the first day Morag carried on so much, crying real tears because she was so afraid of Nazis, that Nan asked me to take over. And I was glad to.

  Those limekilns! I couldn’t shake that haunting ‘lion kill’ shiver just at the thought of them, only these ones really did hold brave and terrible people locked inside.

  The limekilns were like honeycomb cells in the hillside, and each German airman was shut in his own cold cavern prison behind a huge oak door like the entrance to a dungeon. When the guards let me through with the tea and sandwiches, the makeshift cells were every bit as chilling in real life as in my head. The walls were mildewed whitewash over bare stone, with old lime ovens bricked up in the back. One electric light bulb hung from the ceiling in each cell, and the only furniture was portable camp beds, wooden folding chairs and paraffin heaters.

  Eberhard Moritz and Dietrich Althammer nodded thanks to me when I came in, but otherwise I might as well have been invisible. I bet they were just as aloof when Morag brought them food the day before, with too many important things on their minds to be curious about timid teenage serving girls. They were perfectly polite, even to their guards, so I don’t know why she was so wet about it. All I had to do was put dishes on a packing crate and move on to the next cell. But Felix Baer …

  When I came in with his porridge and coffee, two days after he got there, he was lying on his back staring up at the whitewashed ceiling. His face was a mess of black bruising, but he turned his head as the door opened.

  He sat up slowly when he saw me, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and got to his feet. He strode to the bricked-up kiln and stood with his back to me and the two soldier boys who were on guard. Then, as if he wanted to show how much he disdained us, he began to whistle.

  My heart fell. What did I expect – a big welcoming smile? For him to hand over more cipher machine settings, with a flourish? For him to kiss my hand, like Eberhard Moritz did to Jane? Felix Baer wasn’t that stupid, anyway. He knew I wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with him.

  Maybe I just wanted to hear another danke. I never imagined he’d turn his back on me on purpose – even the other two German prisoners hadn’t been rude.

  Then I realised he was whistling the opening bars to the Hebrides Overture.

  But no – as he went on I recognised that it wasn’t the beginning. It was a similar eight bars from somewhere in the middle. He didn’t go on – he just repeated those eight bars. And the rhythm was off. It was off in odd places – sometimes it seemed right, other times he seemed to stutter.

  Oh, crumbs, was it Morse code?

  My heart lurched. I balanced the edge of the tray on the packing crate with one hand, and with the other I slowly lifted the coffee flask and put it down on the crate.

  I’d showed him I understood Morse. Was he doing it on purpose – for me?

  My whole body gave a shudder.

  He was. I knew he was.

  But I’d only just learned Morse, and when I practised with Jane I was much slower listening to it – ‘receiving’ – than I was at transmitting. He repeated the same passage three times, and I still didn’t catch most of the letters. I heard As and Ms and an I.

  I wasn’t fast enough. I was going to miss it because I wasn’t fast enough.

  I picked up the china cup Mrs Campbell had sent, and instead of putting it next to the coffee flask, I gave it a whack against the edge of the tray and let it slip from my fingers and smash on the dirt floor.

  ‘Bother!’ I exclaimed loudly.

  Baer stopped whistling. He spun around to look.

  ‘Oh dear, what a mess—’ I apologised to the guards, and mimed sweeping. ‘Let me run and get the dustpan and another cup.’

  ‘Need a hand?’ one of them asked.

  I put the whole tray down on the packing crate next to the thermos flask. ‘No, I’m fine, but it was clumsy of me! I’ll be back in a jiffy – is that all right?’

  ‘Jerry’s not going anywhere,’ said the guard.

  When I came back five minutes later Baer was pacing. He didn’t look at me. But he kept whistling the whole time I was sweeping up the broken crockery, and eventually I got it – there wasn’t much to get, only twelve letters, over and over, fitted carefully into eight bars of Mendelssohn.

  FA

  LLE

  FA

  LLE

  ENIGM

  ENIGM

  A

  X

  I’d nearly finished clearing up when Wing Commander Cromwell came in, steering Sergeant Elisabeth Lind ahead of him with a big hand on her shoulder. For a moment, Baer didn’t stop pacing, or whistling. But he stopped whistling in Morse. He finished the music naturally, in its proper rhythm. Then he gave a little bow to Cromwell and the translator.

  One of the soldiers pulled up a folding chair next to the portable heater for Miss Lind. She sat down primly with her hands in her lap.

  ‘Sorry, sir, I’ve just finished tidying this,’ I said.

  ‘On you go then,’ Cromwell rumbled. He opened a tin of cigarettes and offered one to Baer.

  Miss Lind sat waiting for her translation duties to begin. I thought she looked angry; her narrow-eyed glare reminded me of something. A cornered rat? Something else, too. It was hard to tell what she really looked like behind the big fake eyelashes.

  I picked up the tray and the broken bits and pieces, leaving a poor cold breakfast for Felix Baer.

  I was bursting to find out what FA LLE ENIGMA meant.

  Jamie:

  The weather got worse as the day wore on. Evening brought a storm of howling sleet, impossible to fly in. I probably couldn’t have stopped anyone from slogging to the Limehouse through the gale if I’d tried, and I didn’t want to test my strength on something so harmless. There was a stack of jazz records, and now there were four females worth dancing with, not counting Nancy, who could probably be persuaded if you were feeling generous. Sergeant Elisabeth Lind was at the bar when we got there, leaning in on her elbows to talk to Mrs Campbell. She wore civilian clothes: a tight-fitting grey skirt and a just-as-tight black pullover with a high neck. She turned when we came in and pressed her shoulder blades against the bar, facing the room. It would be hard for any of the lads to get his arm around her.

  The other lasses, Phyllis and Ellen and Louisa, huddled at the table by the fire with Mrs Warner. They looked as if they were waiting for a show to start.

  That’s exactly what they got as B-Flight sailed in, all eighteen airmen from Pimms and Madeira. Elisabeth Lind smiled at Yorkie, who reached her ahead of the pack, and then at Chip, who was about one second behind him. They whipped their sixpences from the beam above her head, slapped them down on the brass counter at exactly the same time, and chorused, ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

  They couldn’t have been more in unison if they were on stage performing Gilbert and Sullivan. Everybody laughed.

  ‘I need to pull Yorke in line,’ I murmured to Silver.

  ‘Give him something t
o do, maybe.’

  The lads gathered around Sergeant Lind like bees around a blooming rose. They lit pipes and cigarettes and grabbed for their wishing coins to buy drinks.

  ‘I don’t like these thick walls,’ Elisabeth Lind said, ducking out of the way as Harry Morrow reached over her head to pull his sixpence from the ceiling.

  ‘Why?’ asked Chip. ‘Because the house is so old?’

  ‘No, because ghosts live in thick walls. They live in the walls like damp. If you want to get rid of them, you have to light the place up. Then they come out to get warm. They dry up when they get warm enough, also like damp, and then you don’t have to worry about them any more.’ She took a sip of a discreet wee sherry that was all she’d settled on. ‘What this place needs is a good blaze.’

  ‘We can fix that!’ said Gavin Hamilton, the Australian navigator, and stirred the fire.

  ‘That’s a jolly daft theory.’ Adam Stedman laughed. He hailed the landlady. ‘Mrs Campbell!’

  There wasn’t room for all of us at the bar. I stood by the ladies’ table with my hands in my pockets. ‘All right, Jamie Stuart?’ Ellen asked, grinning.

  ‘Aye, no bother, lass,’ I answered.

  Elisabeth Lind was going after Ignacy now, either because he was safe or because he was more of a challenge, being joined at the hip with Derfel. ‘Where were you when Hitler chopped Poland in half and threw the bones to Stalin?’ she asked him. ‘How did you get out?’

  ‘On foot and by ship, through Istanbul and Casablanca,’ Ignacy answered. I knew for a fact that it had taken him most of a year to get here, and he was proud of it. He threw the question right back at her. ‘You are Swiss,’ he said. ‘Your country is neutral. Why do you put on a British uniform every morning?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘My school chums are all French and English. I came with them, when the war started. Also –’ she laughed – ‘I love to dance.’

  The moment everyone was waiting for! Silver extracted himself from the pile-up around the bar and made for the gramophone. ‘May I, Mrs Warner?’

  ‘Go right ahead!’ said the old woman with a benevolent wave to the local population, like Queen Victoria on her tour of Scotland.

  Silver put on a record. It was a popular song from five or so years ago – about a third of Mrs Warner’s records were banned in Germany. ‘Ah, American jazz!’ Sergeant Lind exclaimed, tugging Ignacy by the hand. ‘Cab Calloway playing “Moonglow”! I couldn’t stay neutral when dance music is at stake. Just by listening to it you’re undermining Hitler. Come along, I know you’re a good dancer.’

  Holding Ignacy’s hand, she coaxed him into a small space between tables, raised her other hand so he could put his arm around her waist, and let him lead. They glided over the flagstone floor in a seamless foxtrot. Ignacy was a good dancer, formal and light-footed. She picked the right bloke to show off with.

  When the record ended, Ignacy thanked her in French. They chattered to each other in French for a minute, nothing of any substance – Ignacy knew I was listening, and thanks to my French grandmother my French is as good as my English. No doubt Mrs Warner knew what was going on, too. The rest of Madeira and Pimms flew into a competition over who would get the next dance, clearing floor space and arguing over records.

  ‘I love a good hop!’ exclaimed Phyllis, jumping to her feet. ‘I’m in!’

  She held out a hand, and Harry Morrow grabbed it first. Silver went for tall Ellen.

  Louisa looked directly at me.

  She gave a quick, bright-eyed nod, pushed back her chair, and stood up.

  In two steps I was by her side with my hand out.

  ‘Like to dance, Louisa?’

  Louisa:

  I knew I only had about three minutes.

  He was taller than me, but he didn’t tower over me like the others. His eyes were the clear green-yellow-brown of sunlight through palm fronds, and his hands holding mine were cool and fine-boned. He bent his head and we were face to face, closer than I’d ever been to any boy. I’d never even danced with a boy before – at school there were only girls, and we danced with each other.

  Silver set the needle on the record. It was another Cab Calloway tune, ‘Jitterbug’, fast and light-hearted. Harry and Phyllis were laughing together. I fixed a smile on my face – it was easy to smile at Jamie, but not so easy to pretend we were making small talk about jazz or Jamaica.

  ‘We can’t use anything we learned from the coding machine any more,’ I told him. ‘Odysseus. He warned me.’

  He didn’t miss a step.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Morse code. No accident.’

  FALLE. ENIGMA.

  ‘The Nazis are on to him, and they’re on to us, too, I think,’ I rushed on. ‘Jane translated. He said “trap, trap; Enigma, Enigma”.’

  ‘Yes, I think they’ve been on to him for a while,’ Jamie breathed. ‘Buckets of blood.’

  We were both a little breathless now. He guided our steps towards Jane, on the edge of the dancers, and spun me to face away so the others couldn’t see me speaking.

  ‘Jane and I talked about it,’ I told him. ‘I haven’t had a chance to tell Ellen. The Germans must know we’re breaking their codes. Now they’re trying to catch us.’

  He nodded in understanding.

  ‘Trying to catch you,’ I corrected, because it wasn’t me flying out over the North Sea hunting for submarines.

  ‘That last message –’ he spoke close to my ear, almost in a whisper, hurrying – ‘the last one you passed to me after the weird “happy wagon” message. U BOAT OPERATIONS UTSIRA XIV II. I wondered if the date was wrong. February fourteenth gives us two weeks’ more lead time than most of the other messages. Utsira’s an island off the coast of Norway. You think that’s a set-up?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It could be. They could lure you there and send in night fighters and you’d all be dead.’

  His hands tightened around mine.

  ‘When did you see Baer?’ he asked.

  ‘I take him his meals. And the others, too.’

  ‘Louisa, you’ll get in trouble.’

  ‘Won’t we all?’ The phoney smile felt like it was going to crack my face. ‘Aren’t we already in trouble?’

  The record was coming to an end.

  ‘Don’t go to Utsira on the fourteenth!’ I begged. ‘You don’t need to go hunting for U-boats.’

  ‘We’ve got to go where they send us,’ he pointed out. ‘Even on Valentine’s Day!’ He laughed, pretending it was nothing. Dancers talking about Valentine’s Day!

  ‘Tell Ellen,’ I said.

  ‘I will.’ His smile was phoney too.

  We were out of time.

  Mrs Campbell cleared everybody out at ten, so it was late when I heard tapping at the door of Room Number Five, where I was already in my nightdress. I opened the door expecting Ellen.

  But it was Elisabeth Lind.

  She looked ready for bed, except her face still glowed with perfect paint. Her fairytale-gold hair was unpinned in one long plait, bound with a black silk ribbon. She wore a quilted grey silk dressing gown that made her look like she was snuggled into a cloud. I couldn’t see much of what was underneath, but black silk printed with silver peonies clung to her ankles.

  Her elegant clothes weren’t new. The dressing gown was fraying, its sleeve ends whipped with thread that didn’t quite match. There was a hole in the quilting somewhere, because now and then she shed a down feather or two, like a moulting chicken. It wasn’t just thrifty wartime mending – her clothes had been made over. I did the same thing to Mummy’s clothes to make them fit me, which is why I noticed. Elisabeth Lind’s expensive dressing gown was hemmed and tucked because it used to belong to a taller woman – to someone else.

  She wasn’t as wealthy as she seemed. I felt like I’d won a round of poker. I knew more about her than she knew about me.

  ‘Ah, Louisa, I’m sorry to disturb you so late! Could you help me? I can’t make m
y gas fire come on.’

  ‘Oh—’ I glanced at Jane, already in bed.

  Jane put her book aside and pulled herself up in curiosity. ‘What’s the matter, darling?’

  ‘I’m going to light the fire for Miss Lind,’ I told her.

  ‘Of course,’ Jane agreed. ‘It’s very cold tonight.’

  I snatched up my own silk dressing gown – Mummy’s, that is, also not new – and followed Miss Lind down the dark passage.

  No one had stayed in Room Number Four since Felix Baer, though Robert Ethan had poked about in it. There was plenty of credit on the meter. Miss Lind watched politely while I showed her how to turn on the gas.

  ‘You’re a keen reader,’ she said irrelevantly.

  I drew in a sharp breath and stared at her, startled. She’d been noticing things about me, too.

  ‘Well, I am,’ I said. ‘How do you know?’

  She laughed at my expression. ‘I saw the books in your room.’

  ‘Jane has books,’ I said warily.

  ‘Swallows and Amazons? National Velvet? Those aren’t hers. She’s over eighty. You’re in your teens.’

  ‘You’re Swiss,’ I said. ‘Those are English books.’

  She shrugged. ‘I went to school with English girls. We swapped. Reading English books is how I learned English. And listening to the BBC, of course!’

  She did sound like she’d learned English by listening to the BBC, posh as posh.

  She knelt beside me on the hearth. ‘Let me try the fire now,’ she said. She turned off the gas tap and the fire went out. She turned it back on, struck a match carefully, and lit it again.

  ‘Have you read any Greek myths?’ she asked. ‘Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable? Or Lamb’s version of Homer’s Odyssey, perhaps?’

  How much did she know about our ‘Odysseus’ – and was she wondering the same thing about me? If so, she was being cautious about it.

  I thought I should be cautious too. She could go straight to Cromwell with anything I said.