‘Do that, Guy. Thank you.’
But that was the last time he saw him.
Miss Monk approached the pulpit to give the first reading: ‘Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth’ by Arthur Hugh Clough, a poem she declaimed with great determination, glaring at the congregation from time to time, as if defying them to contradict her. It was a good choice, thought Jericho. Defiantly optimistic. Claire would have enjoyed it:
‘And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.’
‘Let us pray,’ said the vicar.
Jericho lowered himself carefully to his knees. He covered his eyes and moved his lips like all the others, but he had no faith in any of it. Faith in mathematics, yes; faith in logic, of course; faith in the trajectory of the stars, yes, perhaps. But faith in a God, Christian or otherwise?
Beside him, Wigram uttered a loud ‘Amen’.
Wigram’s visits had been frequent and solicitous. He would shake Jericho’s hand with the same peculiar and tenuous grip. He would plump his pillows, pour his water, fuss with his sheets. ‘They treating you well? You want for nothing?’ And Jericho would say yes, thank you, he was being well looked after, and Wigram would always smile and say super, how super everything was – how super he was looking, what a super help he had been, even, once, how super the view was from the sickroom window, as if Jericho had somehow created it. Oh yes, Wigram was charming. Wigram dispensed charm like soup to the poor.
In the beginning it was Jericho who did most of the talking, answering Wigram’s questions. Why hadn’t he reported the cryptograms in Claire’s room to the authorities? Why had he gone to Beaumanor? What had he taken? How? How had he broken the intercepts? What had Puck said to him as he leaped from the train?
Wigram would then go away, and the next day, or the day after, come back and ask him some more. Jericho tried to mix in some questions of his own, but Wigram always brushed them away. Later, he would say. Later. All in good time.
And then one afternoon he came in beaming even more broadly than usual to announce that he had completed his enquiries. A little web of wrinkles appeared at the edges of his blue eyes as he smiled down at Jericho. His lashes were thick and sandy, like a cow’s.
‘So, my dear chap, if you’re not too exhausted, I suppose I should tell you the story.’
Once upon a time, said Wigram, settling himself at the bottom of the bed, there was a man called Adam Pukowski, whose mother was English and whose father was Polish, who lived in London until he was ten, and who, when his parents divorced, went away with his father to live in Cracow. The father was a professor of mathematics, the son showed a similar aptitude, and in due course found his way into the Polish Cipher Bureau at Pyry, south of Warsaw. War came. The father was called up with the rank of major to rejoin the Polish Army. Defeat came. Half the country was occupied by the Germans, the other half by the Soviet Union. The father disappeared. The son escaped to France to become one of the fifteen Polish cryptanalysts employed at the French cipher centre at Gretz-Armainvillers. Defeat came again. The son escaped via Vichy France to neutral Portugal, where he made the acquaintance of one Rogerio Raposo, a junior member of the Portuguese diplomatic service and an extremely dodgy character.
‘The man on the train,’ murmured Jericho.
‘Indeed.’ Wigram sounded irritated at being interrupted: this was his moment of glory, after all. ‘The man on the train.’
From Portugal, Pukowski made his way to England.
Nineteen-forty passed with no news of Pukowski’s father or, indeed, of any of the other ten thousand missing Polish officers. In 1941, after Germany invaded Russia, Stalin unexpectedly became our ally. Representations were duly made about the vanished Poles. Assurances were duly given: there were no such prisoners in Soviet hands; any there might have been had been released long ago.
‘Anyway,’ said Wigram, ‘to cut a long story a whole lot shorter, it appears that at the end of last year, rumours began to circulate among the Poles in exile in London that these officers had been shot and then buried in a forest near Smolensk. I say, is it hot in here or is it me?’ He got up and tried to open the window, failed, and returned to his perch on the bed. He smiled. ‘Tell me, was it you who introduced Pukowski to Claire?’
Jericho shook his head.
‘Ah, well,’ sighed Wigram, ‘I don’t suppose it matters. A lot of the story is lost to us. Inevitably. We don’t know how they met, or when, or why she agreed to help him. Or even what she showed him exactly. But I think we can guess what must have happened. She’d make a copy of these signals from Smolensk, and sneak them out in her knickers or whatever. Hide them under her floorboards. Lover-boy would collect them. This may have gone on for a week or two. Until the day came when Pukowski saw that one of the dead men was his own father. And then the next day Claire had nothing to bring him but the undecoded intercepts, because someone –’ Wigram shook his head in wonder ‘– someone very, very senior indeed, I have since discovered, had decided they just didn’t want to know.’
He suddenly reached over and picked up one of Jericho’s discarded mystery stories, flicked through it, smiled, replaced it.
‘You know, Tom,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘there’s never been anything like Bletchley Park in the history of the world. There’s never been a time when one side knew so much about its enemy. In fact, sometimes, I think, it’s possible to know too much. When Coventry was bombed, remember? Our beloved Prime Minister discovered from Enigma what was going to happen about four hours in advance. Know what he did?
Again Jericho shook his head.
‘Told his staff that London was about to be attacked and that they should go down to the shelters, but that he was going upstairs to watch. Then he went out on to the Air Ministry roof and spent an hour waiting in the freezing cold for a raid he knew was going to happen somewhere else. Doing his bit, d’you see? To protect the Enigma secret. Or, another example: take the U-boat tankers. Thanks to Shark, we know where they’re going to be, and when, and if we knocked them out we might save hundreds of Allied lives – in the short term. But we’d jeopardise Enigma, because if we did that, Dönitz would know we must be reading his codes. You see what I’m driving at? So Stalin has killed ten thousand Poles? I mean, please, Uncle Joe’s a national hero. He’s winning the frigging war for us. Third most popular man in the country, after Churchill and the King. What’s that Hebrew proverb? “My enemy’s enemy is my friend”? Well, Stalin’s the biggest enemy Hitler’s got, so as far as we’re concerned, for present purposes, he’s a bloody good friend of ours. Katyn massacre? Katyn frigging massacre? Thanks awfully, but, really, do shut up.’
‘I don’t suppose Puck would have seen it quite like that.’
‘No, old chap, I don’t suppose he would. Shall I tell you something? I think he rather hated us. After all, if it hadn’t been for the Poles, we might not even have broken Enigma in the first place. But the people he really hated were the Russians. And he was prepared to do anything to get revenge. Even if it meant helping the Germans.’
‘“My enemy’s enemy is my friend,”’ murmured Jericho, but Wigram wasn’t listening.
‘And how could he help the Germans? By warning them Enigma wasn’t safe. And how could he do that?’ Wigram smiled and spread his hands. ‘Why, with the assistance of his old friend from 1940, Rogerio Raposo, recently transferred from Lisbon and now employed as a courier at the Portuguese legation in London. How about some tea?
For the dear ones parted from us
We would raise our hymns of prayer;
By the tender love which watcheth
Round thy children everywhere …
Senhor Raposo, said Wigram, sipping his tea after the nurse had gone, Senhor Raposo, presently a resident of His Majesty’s Prison, Wandsworth, had confessed to everything.
On 6 March, Pukowski had
gone to see Raposo in London, handed him a thin, sealed envelope and told him he could make a great deal of money if he delivered it to the right people.
The following day, Raposo flew on the scheduled British Imperial Airways flight to Lisbon carrying said envelope, which he passed to a contact of his on the staff of the German naval attaché.
Two days after that, the U-boat service changed its Short Weather Code Book, and a general review of cipher security began – Luftwaffe, Afrika Korps … Oh, the Germans were interested, of course they were. But they weren’t about to abandon what their experts still insisted was the most secure enciphering system ever devised. Not on the basis of one letter. They suspected a trick. They wanted proof. They wanted this mysterious informant in Berlin, in person.
‘That’s our best guess, anyway.’
On 14 March, two days before the start of the convoy battle, Raposo made his next weekly trip to Lisbon and returned with specific instructions for Pukowski. A U-boat would be waiting to pick him up off the coast of northwest Ireland on the night of the 18th.
‘And that was what they were discussing on the train,’ said Jericho.
‘And that was what they were discussing on the train. Quite right. Our man Puck was collecting his ticket, so to speak. And shall I tell you the really frightening thing?’ Wigram took another sip of tea, his little finger delicately crooked, and looked at Jericho over the rim of his cup. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, he might just have got away with it.’
‘But Claire would never have gone along with this,’ protested Jericho. ‘Passed on a few intercepts – yes. For a lark. For love, even. But she wasn’t a traitor.’
‘Lord, no.’ Wigram sounded shocked. ‘No, I’m sure Pukowski never even told her for one minute what he was planning to do. Consider it from his point of view. She was the weak link. She could have given him away at any moment. So imagine how he must have felt when he saw you walk back through the door from Cambridge on that Friday night.’
Jericho remembered the look of horror on Puck’s face, that desperate attempt to force a smile. He had already seen what must have happened: Puck leaving a message at the cottage that he needed to talk to her, Claire hurrying back into the Park at four in the morning – click click click on her high heels in the darkness. He said quietly, almost to himself: ‘I was her death warrant.’
‘I suppose you were. He must’ve known you’d try and get in touch with her. And then, the next night, when he went round to the cottage to get rid of the evidence, the stolen cryptograms, and found you there … Well …’
Jericho lay back and stared at the ceiling as Wigram rattled through the rest of the story. How, on the night the convoy battle had started, just before midnight, he’d been called by the police and told that a sack full of women’s clothing had been found. How he’d tried to find Jericho, but Jericho had disappeared, so he’d grabbed Hester Wallace instead and taken her down to the lakeside. How it had been obvious at once what had happened, that Claire had been bludgeoned, or maybe bludgeoned and strangled, and her body rowed out into the lake and dumped.
‘Mind if I smoke?’ He lit up without waiting for a reply, using his saucer as an ashtray. He examined the tip of his cigarette for a moment. ‘Where was I exactly?’
Jericho didn’t look at him. ‘The night of the convoy battle.’
Ah, yes. Well, Hester had refused to talk at first, but there’s nothing like shock to loosen the tongue and eventually she’d told him everything, at which point Wigram had realised that Jericho wasn’t a traitor; realised, in fact, that if Jericho had broken the cryptograms he was probably closer to discovering the traitor than he was.
So he had deployed his men. And watched.
This would have been about five in the morning.
First, Jericho was seen hurrying down Church Green Road into the town. Then he was observed going into the house in Alma Terrace. Then he was identified boarding the train.
Wigram had men on the train.
‘After that, the three of you were just flies in a jam jar, frankly.’
All passengers disembarking at Northampton were stopped and questioned, and that took care of Raposo. By then, Wigram had arranged for the train to be diverted into a branch line where he was waiting to search it at leisure.
His men had orders not to shoot unless they were shot at first. But no chances were going to be taken. Not with so much at stake.
And Pukowski had used his pistol. And fire had been returned.
‘You got in the way. I’m sorry about that.’ Still, as he was sure Jericho would agree, preserving the Enigma secret had been the most important objective. And that had been accomplished. The U-boat that had been sent to pick up Puck had been intercepted and sunk off the coast of Donegal, which was a double bonus, as the Germans probably now thought that the whole business had been a set-up all along, designed to trap one of their submarines. At any rate, they hadn’t abandoned Enigma.
‘And Claire?’ Jericho was still staring at the ceiling. ‘Have you found her yet?’
‘Give us time, my dear fellow. She lies under at least sixty feet of water, somewhere in the middle of a lake a quarter of a mile across. That may take us a while.’
‘And Raposo?’
‘The Foreign Secretary spoke to the Portuguese ambassador that morning. Under the circumstances, he agreed to waive diplomatic immunity. By noon we’d taken Raposo’s flat apart. Dreary place at the wrong end of Gloucester Road. Poor little sod. He really was only in it for the money. We found two thousand dollars the Germans had given him, stuffed in a shoe box on top of his wardrobe. Two grand! Pathetic.
‘What will happen to him?’
‘He’ll hang,’ said Wigram pleasantly. ‘But never mind about him. He’s history. The question is, what are we going to do with you?’
After Wigram had gone, Jericho lay awake for a long time, trying to decide which parts of his story had been true.
‘Behold, I show you a mystery,’ said Hester.
‘We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
‘In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
‘For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
‘So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’
She closed her Bible slowly and regarded the congregation with a dry and level eye. In the end pew she could just make out Jericho, white-faced, staring straight ahead.
‘Thanks be to God.’
She found him waiting for her outside the church, the white blossom raining down on him like confetti. The other mourners had gone. He had his face raised to the sun and she guessed from the way he seemed to be drinking in the warmth that he hadn’t seen it for a long while. As he heard her approach, he turned and smiled and she hoped her own smile hid her shock. His cheeks were concave, his skin as waxy as one of the candles in church. The collar of his shirt hung loosely from his gaunt neck.
‘Hello, Hester.’
‘Hello, Tom.’ She hesitated, then held out her gloved hand.
‘Super service,’ said Wigram. ‘Absolutely super. Everybody’s said so, haven’t they, Tom?’
‘Everybody. Yes.’ Jericho closed his eyes for a second and she understood immediately what he was signalling: that he was sorry Wigram was there, but that he couldn’t do anything about it. He released her hand. ‘I didn’t want to leave,’ he said, ‘without seeing how you were.’
‘Oh, well,’ she said, with a jollity she didn’t feel, ‘bearing up, you know.’
‘Back at work?’
‘Yes, yes. Still blisting away.’
‘And still in the cottage?’
‘For no
w. But I think I’ll move out, as soon as I can find myself another billet.’
‘Too many ghosts?’
‘Something like that.’
She suddenly found herself loathing the banality of the conversation but she couldn’t think of anything better to say.
‘Leveret’s waiting,’ said Wigram. ‘With the car. To run us to the station.’ Through the gate Hester could see the long black bonnet. The driver was leaning against it, watching them, smoking a cigarette.
‘You’re catching a train, Mr Wigram?’ asked Hester.
‘I’m not,’ he said, as if the notion was offensive. ‘Tom is. Aren’t you, Tom?’
‘I’m going back to Cambridge,’ explained Jericho. ‘For a few months’ rest.’
‘In fact we really ought to push off,’ continued Wigram, looking at his watch. ‘You never know – there’s always a chance it may be on time.’
Jericho said, irritably: ‘Will you excuse us for just one minute, Mr Wigram?’ Without waiting for a reply, he guided Hester away from Wigram, back towards the church. ‘This bloody man won’t leave me alone for a second,’ he whispered. ‘Listen, if you can bear it, will you give me a kiss?’
‘What?’ She wasn’t sure she could have heard him correctly.
‘A kiss. Quickly. Please.’
‘Very well. It’s no great hardship.’
She took off her hat, reached over and brushed his thin cheek with her lips. He held her shoulders and said softly in her ear: ‘Did you invite Claire’s father to the service?’
‘Yes.’ He had gone mad, she thought. The shock had affected his mind. ‘Of course I did.’
‘What happened?’
‘He didn’t reply.’
‘I knew it,’ he whispered. She felt his grip tighten.
‘Knew what?’
‘She isn’t dead …’
‘How touching,’ said Wigram loudly, coming up behind them, ‘and I hate to break things up, but you’re going to miss your train, Tom Jericho.’
Jericho released her and took a step back. ‘Look after yourself,’ he said.