by H. L. Dennis
‘There are no worlds within worlds, Miss Vernan. There’s only what we see around us. What we know to be fact. Chasing after the end of the rainbow is a childish dream. One we should leave behind.’ He stood himself up taller. ‘Our job on Level Five is to clarify tangible, believable truths, not try and catch or bottle shadows.’ He sniffed as if the folder he held was reeking an unbearable smell. ‘They’re all listed here, you know. Newbold and Levitov; that meddling Fabyan woman; even Ingham, Friedman and Bray. Their crazy notions about MS 408 stored for posterity. But that’s where they should remain. Locked away, forgotten, and discredited for the lies they are.’
Kerrith tried to smile.
‘If what you tell me is true and Smithies really has been working on trying to translate the manuscript, then he must be stopped. For centuries we’ve worked to eliminate any study or publication of documents that support belief in fancies and not tangible facts.’ He twisted a silver ring on his finger bearing the mark Kerrith had seen stamped on the copies of MS 408. The same emblem on the carpet. The Director saw her watching. ‘History bears record to the lives of great men and women who’ve done their best to prevent these stories and imaginings being given life,’ he said. ‘I value your commitment to the cause, Miss Vernan. It will not go unacknowledged.’ His hand stilled on the ring and then moved to press once more on the cover of the document he held. ‘If the ideas contained in this folder were given public airing there’d be mass panic. Public order would be at risk. If the theories were proved to be true our understanding of what’s real in our world would change.’
Kerrith felt her heart quicken a little. ‘You’re sure the theories are untrue?’ she asked.
The Director rocked back his head to laugh. Then his eyes darkened, almost pityingly. ‘It doesn’t matter whether they’re true or not,’ he said, and each word was spoken carefully as if he were afraid his words would betray him. ‘What matters is that we on Level Five are in control. We are the keepers of secrets, the guardians of mystery.’ He put the folder back in the confines of the secret cupboard and swung the picture back across the door. ‘As members of Level Five, working for the Ministry of Information, we’re in the business of ensuring belief in what can be seen and tested. We’re not here to chase dreams and myths.’
Kerrith felt her brow furrow into lines.
The Director inclined his head to study her. ‘You were under the impression Level Five had another purpose?’ he asked.
‘I just thought—’
He didn’t let her finish. ‘It’s not important what you thought, Miss Vernan. You are, at the moment, a Level Four employee. What matters is what I think. And I’m here to tell you whatever mysteries are contained in the pages of MS 408 that’s what they are to remain. Mysteries.’ He walked back to his desk and sat down again, spreading his hands across the polished rosewood before looking up. ‘I’m exceptionally grateful to you for bringing this matter to my attention. You shall of course be amply rewarded for your services.’
Kerrith felt her grin widen.
‘But first we must catch those responsible for meddling.’ He hesitated for only a moment. ‘Smithies should’ve known better.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘You should take the pavilion yourself. Catch the team before it can do any public damage. I shall send agents out to the homes of the children to explain the termination of this ridiculous schooling system Smithies has had the audacity to launch. If we work quickly the whole matter can be wrapped up in hours.’ He sighed again. ‘Make sure there are no mistakes,’ he added sharply.
Kerrith lowered her head.
‘I’m not surprised about the pavilion by the way,’ he said. ‘We had our suspicions in the 1970s and there was an incident we hoped would mean the end of the matter. We can’t be entirely sure we dealt with it fully. So, whatever you do, make sure they don’t leave with any documentation that could give them answers. Tell them whatever they’ll believe to make them leave it behind. Use your powers of deception, for if ever there was a time they were needed, it’s now.’
Kerrith’s hand poised on the handle of the door.
‘And one other thing,’ the Director called. ‘Be careful of the girl. Tell her anything that’ll stop her. But be sure never to share the truth. I’m trusting you with a great task, Agent Vernan.’
Kerrith mumbled a thank you, but as she clicked the door behind her she knew she’d barely begun. She was going to bring Smithies down. Smithies and his team of children.
Ambition to be the very best pulsed in her veins. And children had been trusted with the secrets of MS 408 when Smithies had never trusted her.
It was time for payback. And she was going to enjoy every moment.
‘You’re telling me this isn’t an official Study Group?’ Brodie felt her stomach tighten with fear.
‘Not unofficial, exactly,’ Smithies said, pushing his glasses up on to his forehead in an obviously futile attempt to allow him to focus on the problem. ‘Just not government backed, or government approved, or …’ he hesitated for a moment, ‘to be entirely precise, not government known about.’ He was clearly agitated.
‘So,’ Tusia said, trying to bring Smithies back round to the question in hand. ‘Does that mean what we’re doing, learning about codes, is something we shouldn’t be doing?’
Smithies closed the door of the train carriage and leant against it. There’s lots of interpretations of the word “should”. It’s very easy to make generalisations.’
‘Mr Smithies.’ Hunter was speaking now, his lumpy forehead shining with the deepest of purple bruises. ‘Just tell us please, if the government found out we’re being trained in codes and ciphers and we’re trying to translate the Voynich Manuscript, would that be a bad thing?’
It was Miss Tandari who answered. ‘Yes, it’d be bad. Very bad.’
‘We knew it,’ yelped Brodie. ‘We said you weren’t telling us everything! How can you not have told us? Why’s it so bad?’
Miss Tandari looked over to Smithies as if seeking permission to go on. He nodded. ‘The government has no belief in the old way of code-cracking and they certainly don’t believe children should be involved.’
‘But you did?’
‘We do,’ Miss Tandari added emphasis to her use of the present tense. ‘But there are rules.’
‘What rules?’
‘Any work on MS 408’s been a source of great embarrassment to the government. There was some awful incident in the nineties where a worker in the Black Chamber claimed to come very close to finding a solution. There was a big rumpus, and of course the theory about the manuscript turned out to be completely flawed.’
‘It wasn’t Friedman’s fault,’ Smithies interjected. ‘He made an understandable error and paid dearly for his mistake.’
‘Who’s Friedman?’ asked Brodie. The name seemed familiar. ‘And what do you mean “paid dearly”?’
‘Friedman’s the grandson of the American Friedmans. The ones who set up the First Study Group on MS 408. Interest in the manuscript’s in his blood. Like it’s in all of yours.’ Just for a second a shadow swept across Smithies’ face.
‘And the “paid dearly” bit?’ Brodie pressed again, sensing Smithies had hoped not to answer this part of her question.
The old man continued, his voice a little shaky. ‘He lost his job, was banished from the Chamber.’ He raised his hands in defeat. ‘And then we all paid, as MS 408 became officially “Off Limits”. Slapping a D notice on the document meant no one could go near it. It’s banned. Against the rules to try and read it.’ He paused. ‘So you can see that setting up a school and Study Group to look at the secrets of the manuscript wouldn’t go down well with the powers that be.’
Brodie felt a wave of urgency. A burning sensation in the back of her throat. ‘Do you really think the manuscript has a secret worth breaking all the rules for?’
Smithies’ eyes were the cool, opaque green of agate stone. He looked suddenly incredibly sad. ‘People hav
e searched for centuries to find the meaning of the manuscript,’ he whispered. ‘And some of those searchers have paid with their lives. It seems to me the document must contain some secret those in power are keen to keep undiscovered. And there are those,’ he added, ‘who fought against the very worst that history had to offer to keep the manuscript safe. Van der Essen rescued what he knew from the flames of war. Surely we owe it to him and those who followed him, to find out what secret was worth so much.’ He twisted his hands together and Brodie thought for the first time how old he looked, how frail. ‘But,’ Smithies added with a smile, ‘I never intended you all to be involved in some race against the authorities. It’s why we didn’t tell you. If this is all too much, if we’re expecting more than you can give, then we can go home. It’s up to you.’
Something in the way Smithies said ‘home’ made Brodie believe he wasn’t talking about Bletchley. He was saying it could all be over. Finished. This could be the end.
She looked around the carriage at Hunter, his face bruised and his eyes narrowed, and at Tusia, her hands folded in her lap as if she was waiting for someone else to decide for them. For someone to tell them what was best to do.
Outside, against the moving window of the train, it’d begun to rain.
The car which pulled up in front of the house had the sort of darkened windows Brodie’s grandfather associated with film stars. The sort that allowed those inside to look out but made it impossible to look in. Mr Bray craned his head around the curtain and watched as a tall willowy-looking man, wearing a suit buttoned high to a mandarin collar at the neck, slid out of the car. The man’s shoes were sharp and pointed at the toe, reminding Mr Bray of the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The woman with him was by all polite forms of measure a large woman. She had a hard-looking face Mr Bray instantly took a dislike to. He welcomed the visitors graciously into his home though, and poured them two glasses of home-made lemonade.
Mr Bray was a very patient man but as the visitors spoke it was as much as he could do not to take the paper parasol he’d placed in his own glass of lemonade and crumple it between his fingers.
When the man in the suit had finished speaking, Mr Bray coughed politely into his hand. ‘It’s very kind of you,’ he said through teeth barely separated, ‘to alert me to the educational needs of my granddaughter. I appreciate the time you’ve taken explaining the home schooling rules to me.’ He coughed again. ‘I have to say though, I’m more than happy with the arrangements at Station X. Brodie’s getting a far more meaningful education than she ever got in the school down the road, what with their obsession with levels and targets. If the government had left them alone and allowed teachers to do their job, it would’ve been a far happier place.’ He put his now empty glass down on the table and the paper parasol rocked gently backwards and forwards beside it. ‘So thank you very much for your time, but Brodie will be staying right where she is.’
As far as Mr Bray was concerned the conversation was at an end. His guests had other ideas. ‘It’s disappointing,’ the man in the sharp suit said. ‘We thought maybe we could reason with you, Mr Bray. After all, I’m surprised after what happened to her mother, you want Brodie having anything to do with MS 408.’ He straightened the cuffs of his sleeves and pushed his lips together into the shape of an unsettling smile. ‘How much of the truth does your granddaughter really know?’ he asked.
Mr Bray sat straighter in the chair. ‘I’ll thank you not to talk of my daughter,’ he said, without lifting his head.
The man in the suit simply nodded. ‘Very well, Mr Bray. Consider the matter closed.’ He got up then and turned as if to make for the door. ‘But I should warn you it’s not the only thing that will remain closed.’ His laugh was thin. He pulled out a folder from a shiny black briefcase, withdrew a single sheet of paper and put it down on the table with the careful precision of a surgeon.
It’d been a while since Mr Bray had had dealings with official documents, but it didn’t take him long to work out what this was. Nor did it take him long to crush the paper parasol in his hand, or reach for his bicycle clips.
‘I’ll go and get some food from the buffet car,’ Smithies said at last. ‘Brodie, will you help me carry things?’
Brodie knew from the way his brow was furrowing this was not a rhetorical question and only for a second did she consider arguing.
‘So?’ he said as they negotiated walking in the moving carriage. ‘Do you want to end it now?’
Brodie shrugged her shoulders. ‘It doesn’t seem right,’ she said, ‘breaking the rules to try and break the code.’
He smiled as if her confusion made sense to him.
‘Brodie,’ he said with a sigh, ‘do you know the story of Plato’s cave?’
Brodie shook her head. The look on Smithies’ face suggested it wouldn’t be a simple story. She waited.
‘The Greek philosopher Plato told a story long ago, about a cave. People were born and raised in the cave and they were held prisoner there all their lives. They were forced to stare at a wall, looking only at shadows that moved across the stone.’
Brodie didn’t think much of the story so far.
‘One day, for a reason we don’t quite understand, one of the prisoners was freed. He was allowed out of the cave and into the world and there he saw things he’d never seen before, the beauty of the sun and the flowers and the trees.’
She had to admit the story was improving.
‘The escaped prisoner returned to the cave to tell others of the brilliant things he’d seen.’
‘And?’
‘They didn’t believe him. They said he was mad.’
‘Oh.’
‘Not the happy ending you were hoping for?’
Brodie shook her head again.
‘The point is, Brodie, he got to see the trees and the flowers and the sun. And if those he told didn’t believe him then it didn’t make what he saw not true. It just meant they hadn’t seen them too. I expect you’re wondering why I’ve told you this story.’
The thought had crossed her mind.
Smithies leant forward. ‘Because I think, Brodie, that you and I, and the others in Veritas are like the prisoner who escaped from the cave.’
‘You do?’
‘We’ve got a chance to see things how they really are, and perhaps there’ll be those who won’t agree with us taking a look. But it doesn’t make it wrong for us to do so.’ He paused. ‘I don’t want you to do anything you’re not happy with. But we’ve come this close to making an important discovery.’ He held his hands fractions away from each other as if he were about to clap. ‘Do you really want to stop now?’
Brodie didn’t know what to say.
‘You know all the best reformers in the land have opposed laws they haven’t agreed with in an attempt to bring about change. If the government’s wrong we should make a stand.’ He smiled. ‘I believe MS 408 has secrets worth sharing, and I know your mother believed that too. The law says children can’t be taught code-cracking. It’s a bad law. The law says MS 408 need never be translated. It’s a bad law. But if we are to break the code, Brodie, we have to break the rules.’ He waited for a moment before he went on. ‘But I’ll understand your decision if you want to give up.’
‘You will?’
‘Of course. I was foolish to expect you to believe in the project as much as I do. As much as your grandparents and your mother did.’
‘But …’
He raised his hand as if to demonstrate he hadn’t finished speaking. ‘Your granddad, Hunter’s parents, Tusia’s. They all agreed to your involvement, but that’s not enough any more. I suppose I just hoped it’d matter more to you. The truth, I mean.’
‘It does!’
His eyebrow twitched.
Brodie made a study of the train carpet. There was a rather nasty Ribena stain below her toes. ‘But if we carry on, the officials from the government, or whoever, will stop us, won’t they? You’ve said that.’
/> Smithies shook his head. ‘I’ve said they’ll try and stop us. There’s a difference.’
Brodie was getting tired of the way Smithies insisted on precision. She supposed that’s what made him a good code-cracker. She was surprised to find, when she looked up, he’d carried on speaking.
‘Look, Brodie. You’re absolutely right. We should’ve explained “Veritas” was not only a secret from the general public, but from the government itself. We should’ve explained we’d no official backing. That what you were really involved in was a secret inside a secret. But we didn’t. Now you can, as I think you want to, leave the train at the next station and return to the life you left behind, or …’ and here he hesitated for a moment, ‘you can choose to go on and face the consequences. Perhaps we’ll get there first. Perhaps the Ministry officials won’t catch us and we’ll find whatever was hidden by the mark of the Firebird and a truth the government’s scared to let us find. But whatever you decide, know I’m grateful to you.’
‘Grateful?’
‘Before Veritas re-formed, before the work at Station X, I believed the thrill of the code was over. Now I’m in a race to find a manuscript hidden in a palace. I’ve escaped from the cave. The excitement of the code doesn’t get much better than that.’
Brodie looked down at the floor, a lump forming thick in her throat.
Outside the window, trees flashed past in a blur. She closed her eyes and tried to steady herself. There were three more minutes left until the station. Smithies walked slowly back to the carriage.
Friedman sat alone in the Bletchley Park railway station café. Outside it’d just begun to rain. The water ran in rivulets down the windowpane. He looked at his watch. Smithies was late. He slurped a mouthful of tea. The undissolved sugar was gritty on his tongue.
Behind the counter, Gordon reset the telephone receiver on the cradle. He rubbed his head. Working near Bletchley was getting to him. He needed a break. A change of scene. Still, the message had been clear and he knew the man on the end of the telephone line would make good his payment. He was good with tipping too, so it was best to go with the flow. He wiped his hands purposefully down the front of his apron then took an apple cream puff from the chiller cabinet and slipped it on to a plate.
