Enigma

by Robert Harris

  He hesitated. ‘Occasionally.’

  It was a mistake and she was on to it at once.

  ‘Whereabouts d’you sit? I don’t recall ever seeing you.’

  ‘I try to keep at the back.’

  ‘So do I. Exactly at the back.’ She gave him a second look, her wire-framed round spectacles flashing in the winter sun. ‘Really, Mr Jericho, a sermon you obviously didn’t hear, a pew you never occupy: one might almost suspect you of laying claim to a piety you don’t rightly possess.’

  ‘Ah …’

  ‘I’ll bid you good day.’

  They had reached the gate. She swung herself on to the saddle of her bicycle with surprising grace. This was not how Jericho had planned it. He had to reach out and hold on to the handlebars to stop her pedalling away.

  ‘I wasn’t in church. I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Kindly remove your hand from my machine, Mr Jericho.’ A couple of elderly parishioners turned to stare at them. ‘At once, if you please.’ She twisted the handlebars back and forth but Jericho held on.

  ‘I am so sorry. It really won’t take a moment.’

  She glared at him. For an instant he thought she might be about to reach down for one of her stout and sensible shoes and hammer his fingers loose. But there was curiosity as well as anger in her eyes, and curiosity won. She sighed and dismounted.

  ‘Thank you. There’s a bus shelter over there.’ He nodded to the opposite side of Church Green Road. ‘Just spare me five minutes. Please.’

  ‘Absurd. Quite absurd.’

  The wheels of her bicycle clicked like knitting needles as they crossed the road to the shelter. She refused to sit. She stood with her arms folded, looking down the hill towards the town.

  He tried to think of some way of broaching the subject. ‘Claire tells me you work in Hut 6. That must be interesting.’

  ‘Claire has no business telling you where I work. Or anyone else for that matter. And, no, it is not interesting. Everything interesting seems to be done by men. Women do the rest.’

  She could be pretty, he thought, if she put her mind to it. Her skin was as smooth and white as Parian. Her nose and chin, though sharp, were delicate. But she wore no make-up, and her expression was permanently cross, her lips drawn into a thin, sarcastic line. Behind her spectacles, her small, bright eyes glinted with intelligence.

  ‘Claire and I, we were …’ He fluttered his hands and searched for the word. He was so hopeless at all this. ‘“Seeing one another” I suppose is the phrase. Until about a month ago. Then she refused to have anything more to do with me.’ His resolution was wilted by her hostility. He felt a fool, addressing her narrow back. But he pressed on. ‘To be frank, Miss Wallace, I’m worried about her.’

  ‘How odd.’

  He shrugged. ‘We were an unlikely couple, I agree.’

  ‘No.’ She turned to him. ‘I meant how odd that people always feel obliged to disguise their concern for themselves as concern for other people.’

  The corners of her mouth twitched down in her version of a smile and Jericho realised he was beginning to dislike Miss Hester Wallace, not least because she had a point.

  ‘I don’t deny an element of self-interest,’ he conceded, ‘but the fact is, I am worried about her. I think she’s disappeared.’

  She sniffed. ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘She hasn’t turned up for her shift this morning.’

  ‘An hour late for work hardly constitutes a disappearance. She probably overslept.’

  ‘I don’t think she went home last night. She certainly wasn’t back by two.’

  ‘Then perhaps she overslept somewhere else,’ said Miss Wallace, maliciously. The spectacles flashed gain. ‘Incidentally, might I ask how you know she didn’t come home?’

  He had learned it was better not to lie. ‘Because I let myself in and waited for her.’

  ‘So. A housebreaker as well. I can see why Claire wants nothing more to do with you.’

  To hell with this, thought Jericho.

  ‘There are other things you should know. A man came to the cottage last night while I was there. He ran away when he heard my voice. And I just called Claire’s father. He claims he doesn’t know where she is, but I think he’s lying.’

  That seemed to impress her. She chewed on the inside of her lip and looked away, down the hill. A train, an express by the sound of it, was passing through Bletchley. A curtain of brown smoke, half a mile long, rose in percussive bursts above the town.

  ‘None of this is my concern,’ she said at last.

  ‘She didn’t mention she was going away?’

  ‘She never does. Why should she?’

  ‘And she hasn’t seemed odd to you lately? Under any sort of strain?’

  ‘Mr Jericho, we could probably fill this bus shelter – no, we could probably fill an entire double-decker bus – with young men who are worried about their relationships with Claire Romilly. Now I’m really very tired. Much too tired and inexpert in these matters to be of any help to you. Excuse me.’

  For the second time she mounted her bicycle, and this time Jericho didn’t try to stop her. ‘Do the letters ADU mean anything to you?’

  She shook her head irritably and pushed herself away from the kerb.

  ‘It’s a call sign,’ he shouted after her. ‘Probably German Army or Luftwaffe.’

  She applied the brakes with such force she slid off the saddle, her flat heels skittering in the gutter. She looked up and down the empty road. ‘Have you gone utterly mad?’

  ‘You’ll find me in Hut 8.’

  ‘Wait a moment. What has this to do with Claire?’

  ‘Or, failing that, the Commercial Guesthouse in Albion Street.’ He nodded politely. ‘ADU, Miss Wallace. Angels Dance Upwards. I’ll leave you in peace.’

  ‘Mr Jericho …’

  But he didn’t want to answer any of her questions. He crossed the road and hurried down the hill. As he turned left into Wilton Avenue towards the main gate he glanced back. She was still where he had left her, her thin legs planted either side of the pedals, staring after him in astonishment.

  4

  Logie was waiting for him when he got back to Hut 8. He was prowling around the confined space of the Registration Room, his bony hands clasped behind his back, the bowl of his pipe jerking around as he chomped furiously on its stem.

  ‘This your coat?’ was his only greeting. ‘Better bring it with you.’

  ‘Hello, Guy. Where are we going?’ Jericho unhooked his coat from the back of the door and one of the Wrens gave him a rueful smile.

  ‘We’re going to have a chat, old cock. Then you’re going home.’

  Once inside his office, Logie threw himself into his chair and swung his immense feet up on to his desk. ‘Close the door then, man. Let’s at least try and keep this between ourselves.’

  Jericho did as he was told. There was nowhere for him to sit so he leaned his back against it. He felt surprisingly calm. ‘I don’t know what Skynner’s been telling you,’ he began, ‘but I didn’t actually land a punch.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s fine, then.’ Logie raised his hands in mock relief. ‘I mean to say, as long as there’s no blood, none of your actual broken bones –’

  ‘Come on, Guy. I never touched him. He can’t sack me for that.’

  ‘He can do whatever he sodding well likes.’ The chair creaked as Logie reached across the desk and picked up a brown folder. He flicked it open. ‘Let us see what we have here. “Gross insubordination,” it says. “Attempted physical assault,” it says. “Latest in a long series of incidents which suggest the individual concerned is no longer fit for active duties.”’ He tossed the file back on his desk. ‘Not sure I disagree, as a matter of fact. Been waiting for you to show your face around here ever since yesterday afternoon. Where’ve you been? Admiralty? Taking a swing at the First Sea Lord?’

  ‘You said not to work a full shift. “Just come and go as you please.” Your very wor
ds.’

  ‘Don’t get smart with me, old love.’

  Jericho was silent for a moment. He thought of the print of King’s College Chapel with the intercepts hidden behind it. Of the German Book Room and Weitzman’s frightened face. Of Edward Romilly’s shaken voice. ‘My daughter’s movements are as much a mystery to me as they seem to be to you.’ He was aware that Logie was studying him carefully.

  ‘When does he want me to go?’

  ‘Well, now, you bloody idiot. “Send him back to King’s and this time let the bugger walk” – I seem to recall those were my specific instructions.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t have made him look a fool, Tom. Not in front of his clients.’

  ‘But he is a fool.’ Outrage and self-pity were welling in him. He tried to keep his voice steady. ‘He hasn’t the foggiest idea of what he’s talking about. Come on, Guy. Do you honestly believe, for one minute, that we can break back into Shark within the next three days?’

  ‘No. But there are ways of saying it and there are ways of saying it, if you follow me, especially when our dearly beloved American brethren are in the same room.’

  Someone knocked and Logie shouted: ‘Not now, old thing, thanks all the same!’

  He waited until whoever it was had gone and then said, quietly: ‘I don’t think you quite appreciate how much things have changed round here.’

  ‘That’s what Skynner said.’

  ‘Well, he’s right. For once. You saw it for yourself at the conference yesterday. It’s not 1940 any more, Tom. It’s not plucky little Britain stands alone. We’ve moved on. We have to take account of what other people think. Just look at the map, man. Read the newspapers. These convoys embark from New York. A quarter of the ships are American. The cargo’s all American. American troops. American crews.’ Logie suddenly covered his face with his hands. ‘My God, I can’t believe you tried to hit Skynner. You really are pretty potty, aren’t you? I’m not at all sure you’re safe to walk the streets.’ He lifted his feet off the desk and picked up the telephone. ‘Look, I don’t care what he says, I’ll see if I can get the car to take you back.’

  ‘No!’ Jericho was surprised at the vehemence in his voice. In his mind he could see, perfectly replicated, the Atlantic plot – the brown landmass of North America, the Rorschach inkblots of the British Isles, the blue of the ocean, the innocent yellow discs, the shark’s teeth, set and loaded like a mantrap. And Claire? Impossible to find her even now, when he had access to the Park. Shipped back to Cambridge, stripped of his security clearance, he might as well be on another planet. ‘No,’ he said, more calmly. ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘It’s not my decision.’

  ‘Give me a couple of days.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell Skynner you want to give me a couple of days. Give me a couple of days to see if I can find a way back into Shark.’

  Logie stared at Jericho for five seconds, then started to laugh. ‘You get madder and madder as the week wears on, old son. Yesterday you’re telling us Shark can’t be broken in three days. Now you’re saying you might be able to do it in two.’

  ‘Please, Guy. I’m begging you.’ And he was. He had his hands on Logie’s desk and was leaning over it. He was pleading for his life. ‘Skynner doesn’t just want me out of the hut, you know. He wants me out of the Park altogether. He wants me locked up in some garret in the Admiralty doing long division.’

  ‘There are worse places to spend the war.’

  ‘Not for me there aren’t. I’d hang myself. I belong here.’

  ‘I have already stuck my neck out so far for you, my lad.’ Logie jabbed his pipe into Jericho’s chest. ‘“Jericho?” they said. “You can’t be serious. We’re in a crisis and you want Jericho?”’ He jabbed his pipe again. ‘So I said: “Yes, I know he’s half bloody cracked and keeps on fainting like a maiden bloody aunt, but he’s got something, got that extra two per cent. Just trust me.”’ Jab, jab. ‘So I beg a bloody car – no joke round here, as you’ve gathered – and instead of getting my kip I come and drink stale tea in King’s and plead with you, bloody plead, and the first thing you do is make us all look idiots and then you slug the head of section – all right, all right, try to slug him. Now, I ask you: who’s going to listen to me now?’

  ‘Skynner.’

  ‘Come off it.’

  ‘Skynner will have to listen, he will if you insist you need me. I know –’ Jericho was inspired. ‘You could threaten to tell that admiral, Trowbridge, that I’ve been removed – at a vital moment in the Battle of the Atlantic – just because I spoke the truth.’

  ‘Oh, I could, could I? Thank you. Thanks very much. Then we’ll both be doing long division in the Admiralty.’

  ‘“There are worse places to spend the war.”’

  ‘Don’t be cheap.’

  There was another knock, much louder this time. ‘For God’s sake,’ yelled Logie, ‘piss off!’ But the handle started to turn anyway. Jericho moved out of the way, the door opened and Puck appeared.

  ‘Sorry, Guy. Good morning, Thomas.’ He gave them each a grim nod. ‘There’s been a development, Guy.’

  ‘Good news?’

  ‘Frankly, no, to be entirely honest. It is probably not good news. You had better come.’

  ‘Hell, hell!’ muttered Logie. He gave Jericho a murderous look, grabbed his pipe and followed Puck out into the corridor.

  Jericho hesitated for a second, then set off after them, down the passage and into the Registration Room. He had never seen it so full. Lieutenant Cave was there, along, it seemed, with almost every cryptanalyst in the hut – Baxter, Atwood, Pinker, Kingcome, Proudfoot, de Brooke – as well as Kramer, like a matinee idol in his American naval uniform. He gave Jericho a friendly nod.

  Logie glanced around the room with surprise. ‘Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.’ Nobody laughed. ‘What’s up, Puck? Holding a rally? Going on strike?’

  Puck inclined his head towards the three young Wrens who made up the Registration Room’s day shift.

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Logie, ‘of course,’ and he flashed his smoker’s teeth at them in an ochre smile. ‘Bit of business to attend to, girls. Hush hush. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind leaving the gentlemen alone for a few minutes.’

  ‘I happened to show this to Lieutenant Cave,’ said Puck, when the Wrens had gone. ‘Traffic analysis.’ He held aloft the familiar yellow log sheet, as if he were about to perform a conjuring trick. ‘Two long signals intercepted in the last twelve hours coming out of the Nazis’ new transmitter near Magdeburg. One just before midnight: one hundred and eight four-letter groups. One just after: two hundred and eleven groups. Rebroadcast twice, over both the Diana and Hubertus radio nets. Four-six-oh-one kilocycles. Twelve-nine-fifty.’

  ‘Oh, do get on with it,’ said Atwood, under his breath.

  Puck affected not to hear. ‘In the same period, the total number of Shark signals intercepted from the North Atlantic U-boats up to oh-nine-hundred this morning: five.’

  ‘Five?’ repeated Logie. ‘Are you sure, old love?’ He took the log sheet and ran his finger down the neatly inked columns of entries.

  ‘What’s the phrase?’ said Puck. ‘“As quiet as the grave”?’

  ‘Our listening posts,’ said Baxter, reading the log sheet over Logie’s shoulder. ‘There must be something wrong with them. They must have fallen asleep.’

  ‘I rang the intercept control room ten minutes ago. After I’d spoken to the lieutenant. They say there’s no mistake.’

  An excited murmur of conversation broke out.

  ‘And what say you, O wise one?’

  It took Jericho a couple of seconds to realise that Atwood was talking to him. He shrugged. ‘It’s very few. Ominously few.’

  Puck said: ‘Lieutenant Cave believes there’s a pattern.’

  ‘We’ve been interrogating captured U-boat crew about tactics.’ Lieutenant Cave leaned forwards and Jericho saw Pinker flinch at the sight of his scarred fa
ce. ‘When Dönitz sniffs a convoy, he draws his hearses up line abreast across the route he expects it to take. Twelve boats, say, maybe twenty miles apart. Possibly two lines, possibly three – nowadays he’s got the hearses to put on a pretty big show. Our estimate, before the blackout, was forty-six operational in that sector of the North Atlantic alone.’ He broke off, apologetically. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘do stop me if I’m telling my grandmothers how to suck eggs.’

  ‘Our work’s rather more – ah – theoretical,’ said Logie. He looked around and several of the crypt-analysts nodded in agreement.

  ‘All right. There are basically two types of line. There’s your picket line, which basically means the U-boats stay stationary on the surface waiting for the convoy to steam into them. And there’s your patrol line, which involves the hearses sweeping forwards in formation to intercept it. Once the lines are established, there’s one golden rule. Absolute radio silence until the convoy’s sighted. My hunch is that that’s what’s happening now. The two long signals coming out of Magdeburg – those are most likely Berlin ordering the U-boats into line. And if the boats are now observing radio silence …’ Cave shrugged: he was sorry to have to state the obvious. ‘That means they must be on battle stations.’

  Nobody said anything. The intellectual abstractions of cryptanalysis had taken solid form: two thousand German U-boat men, ten thousand Allied seamen and passengers, converging to do battle in the North Atlantic winter, a thousand miles from land. Pinker looked as if he might be sick. Suddenly the oddity of their situation struck Jericho. Pinker was probably personally responsible for sending – what? – a thousand German sailors to the bottom of the ocean, yet Cave’s face was the closest he had come to the brutality of the Atlantic war.

  Someone asked what would happen next.

  ‘If one of the U-boats finds the convoy? It’ll shadow it. Send a contact signal every two hours – position, speed, direction. That’ll be picked up by the other hearses and they’ll start to converge on the same location. Same procedure, to try to draw in as many hunters as possible. Usually, they try to get right inside the convoy, in among our ships. They’ll wait until nightfall. They prefer to attack in the dark. Fires from the ships that have been hit illuminate other targets. There’s more panic. Also, night-time makes it harder for our destroyers to catch them.’