‘Thank you. So, if it isn’t over in four days, when will it be over? You. You’re the pessimist. What do you think?’
Once again Jericho was conscious of everyone watching him.
He spoke carefully. Poor Logie was peering inside his tobacco pouch as if he wished he could climb in and never come out ‘It’s very hard to say. All we have to measure it by is the last blackout.’
‘And how long did that go on?’
‘Ten months.’
It was as if he had detonated a bomb. Everybody made a noise. The Navy men shouted. The admiral started coughing. Baxter and Atwood said ‘No!’ simultaneously. Logie groaned. Skynner, shaking his head, said: ‘That really is defeatist of you, Tom.’ Even Wigram, the fair-headed man, gave a snort and stared at the rafters, smiling at some private joke.
‘I’m not saying it will definitely take us ten months,’ Jericho resumed when he could make himself heard. ‘But that’s the measure of what we’re up against and I think that four days is unrealistic. I’m sorry. I do.’
There was a pause, and then Wigram said, softly: ‘Why, I wonder …’
‘Mr Wigram?’
‘Sorry, Leonard.’ Wigram bestowed his smile around the table, and Jericho’s immediate thought was how expensive he looked – blue suit, silk tie, Jermyn Street shirt, pomaded hair swept back and scented with some masculine cologne – he might have stepped out of the lobby of the Ritz. A lounge lizard, Baxter had called him, which was Bletchley code for spy.
‘Sorry,’ Wigram said again. ‘Thinking aloud. I was just wondering why Dönitz should have decided to change this particular bit of code and why he should have chosen to do so now.’ He stared at Jericho. ‘From what you were saying, it sounds as though he couldn’t have chosen any one thing more damaging to us.’
Jericho didn’t have to reply; Logie did it for him. ‘Routine. Almost certainly. They change their code books from time to time. Just our bad luck they did it now.’
‘Routine,’ repeated Wigram. ‘Right.’ He smiled once more. ‘Tell me, Leonard, how many people know about this weather code and how important it is to us?’
‘Really, Douglas,’ laughed Skynner, ‘whatever are you suggesting?’
‘How many?’
‘Guy?’
‘A dozen, perhaps.’
‘Couldn’t make me a little list, could you?’
Logie looked to Skynner for approval. ‘I, ah, well, I, ah …’
‘Thanks.’
Wigram resumed his examination of the ceiling.
The silence that followed was broken by a long sigh from the admiral. ‘I think I gather the sense of the meeting.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and reached down beside his chair for his briefcase. He began stuffing his papers into it and his lieutenants followed suit. ‘I can’t pretend it’s the happiest of messages to take back to the First Sea Lord.’
Hammerbeck said: ‘I guess I’d better signal Washington.’
The admiral stood and immediately they all pushed back their chairs and got to their feet.
‘Lieutenant Cave will act as Admiralty liaison.’ He turned to Cave: ‘I’d like a daily report. On second thoughts, perhaps better make that twice a day.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Lieutenant Kramer: you’ll carry on here and keep Commander Hammerbeck informed?’
‘I sure will, sir. Yes, sir.’
‘So.’ He pulled on his gloves. ‘I suggest we reconvene this meeting as and when there are developments to report. Which hopefully will be within four days.’
At the door, the old man turned. ‘It’s not just one million tons of shipping and ten thousand men, you know. It’s one million tons of shipping and ten thousand men every two weeks. And it’s not just the convoys. It’s our obligation to send supplies to Russia. It’s our chances of invading Europe and driving the Nazis out. It’s everything. It’s the whole war.’ He gave another of his wheezing laughs. ‘Not that I want to put any pressure on you, Leonard.’ He nodded. ‘Good morning, gentlemen.’
As they mumbled their ‘good morning sirs’, Jericho heard Wigram say quietly to Skynner: ‘I’ll talk to you later, Leonard.’
They listened to the visitors clatter down the concrete stairs, and then to the crunch of their feet on the path outside, and suddenly the room was quiet. A mist of blue tobacco hung over the table like smoke rising after a battle.
Skynner’s lips were compressed. He was humming to himself. He gathered his papers into a pile and squared off the edges with exaggerated care. For what seemed a long time, nobody spoke.
‘Well,’ said Skynner eventually, ‘that was a triumph. Thank you, Tom. Thank you very much indeed. I’d forgotten what a tower of strength you could be. We’ve missed you.’
‘It’s my fault, Leonard,’ said Logie. ‘Bad briefing. Should have put him in the picture better. Sorry. Bit of a rush first thing.’
‘Why don’t you just get back to the Hut, Guy? In fact, why don’t you all go back, and then Tom and I can have a little chat.’
‘Bloody fool,’ said Baxter to Jericho.
Atwood took his arm. ‘Come on, Alec.’
‘Well, he is. Bloody fool.’
They left.
The moment the door closed Skynner said: ‘I never wanted you back.’
‘Logie didn’t mention that.’ Jericho folded his arms to stop his hands shaking. ‘He said I was needed here.’
‘I never wanted you back, not because I think you’re a fool – Alec’s wrong about that. You’re not a fool. But you’re a wreck. You’re ruined. You’ve cracked once before under pressure and you’ll do it again, as your little performance just now showed. You’ve outlived your usefulness to us.’
Skynner was leaning his large bottom casually against the edge of the table. He was speaking in a friendly tone and if you had seen him from a distance you would have thought he was exchanging pleasantries with an old acquaintance.
‘Then why am I here? I never asked to come back.’
‘Logie thinks highly of you. He’s the acting head of the Hut and I listen to him. And, I’ll be honest, after Turing, you probably have – or, rather, had – the best reputation of any cryptanalyst on the Park. You’re a little bit of history, Tom. A little bit of a legend. Bringing you back, letting you attend this morning, was a way of showing our masters how seriously we take this, ah, temporary crisis. It was a risk. But obviously I was wrong. You’ve lost it.’
Jericho was not a violent man. He had never hit another person, not even as a boy, and he knew it was a mercy he had avoided military service: given a rifle he would have been a menace to no one except his own side. But there was a heavy brass ashtray on the table – the sawn-off end of a six-inch shell-case, brimful of cigarette stubs – and Jericho was seriously tempted to ram it into Skynner’s smug face. Skynner seemed to sense this. At any rate, he pulled his bottom off the table and began to pace the floor. This must be one of the benefits of being a madman, thought Jericho, people can never take you entirely for granted.
‘It was so much simpler in the old days, wasn’t it?’ said Skynner. ‘A country house. A handful of eccentrics. Nobody expecting very much. You potter along. And then suddenly you’re sitting on the greatest secret of the war.’
‘And then people like you arrive.’
‘That’s right, people like myself are needed, to make sure this remarkable weapon is used properly.’
‘Oh is that what you do, Leonard? You make sure the weapon is used properly. I’ve often wondered.’
Skynner stopped smiling. He was a big man, nearly a foot taller than Jericho. He came up very close, and Jericho could smell the stale cigarette smoke and the sweat on his clothes.
‘You’ve no conception of this place any more. No idea of the problems. The Americans, for instance. In front of whom you’ve just humiliated me. Us. We’re negotiating a deal with the Americans that –’ He stopped himself. ‘Never mind. Let’s just say that when you – when you indulge yourself as you j
ust did, you can’t even conceive of the seriousness of what’s at stake.’
Skynner had a briefcase with a royal crest stamped on it and ‘G VI R’ in faded gold lettering. He slipped his papers into it and locked it with a key attached to his belt by a long chain.
‘I’m going to arrange for you to be taken off cryptanalytical work and put somewhere you can’t do any damage. In fact, I’m going to have you transferred out of Bletchley altogether.’ He pocketed the key and patted it. ‘You can’t return to civilian life, of course, not until the war’s over, not knowing what you know. Still, I hear the Admiralty’s on the lookout for an extra brain to work in statistics. Dull stuff, but cushy enough for a man of your … delicacy. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll meet a nice girl. Someone more – how shall we say? – more suitable for you than the person I gather you were seeing.’
Jericho did try to hit him then, but not with the ashtray, only with his fist, which in retrospect was a mistake. Skynner stepped to one side with surprising grace and the blow missed and then his right hand shot out and grabbed Jericho’s forearm. Skynner dug his fingers very hard into the soft muscle.
‘You are an ill man, Tom. And I am stronger than you, in every way.’ He increased the pressure for a second or two, then abruptly let go of the arm. ‘Now get out of my sight.’
5
God, but he was tired. Exhaustion stalked him like a living thing, clutching at his legs, squatting on his sagging shoulders. Jericho leaned against the outside wall of A-Block, rested his cheek against the smooth, damp concrete, and waited for his pulse to return to normal.
What had he done?
He needed to lie down. He needed to find some hole to crawl into and get some rest. Like a drunk searching for his keys, he felt first in one pocket and then another and finally pulled out the billeting chit and squinted at it. Albion Street? Where was that? He had a vague memory. He would know it when he saw it.
He pushed himself away from the wall and began to make his way, carefully, away from the lake towards the road that led to the main gate. A small, black car was parked about ten yards ahead and as he came closer the driver’s door opened and a figure in a blue uniform appeared.
‘Mr Jericho!’
Jericho stared with surprise. It was one of the Americans. ‘Lieutenant Kramer?’
‘Hi. Going home? Can I give you a ride?’
‘Thank you. No. Really, it’s only a short walk.’
‘Aw, come on.’ Kramer patted the roof of the car. ‘I just got her. It’d be my pleasure. Come on.’
Jericho was about to decline again, but then he felt his legs begin to crumple.
‘Whoa there, feller.’ Kramer sprang forward and took his arm. ‘You’re all in. Long night, I guess?’
Jericho allowed himself to be guided to the passenger door and pushed into the front seat. The interior of the little car was cold and smelled as if it hadn’t been used in a long while. Jericho guessed it must have been someone’s pride and joy until petrol rationing forced it off the road. The chassis rocked as Kramer clambered in the other side and slammed the door.
‘Not many people around here run their own cars.’ Jericho’s voice sounded oddly in his ears, as if from a distance. ‘You have trouble getting fuel?’
‘No, sir.’ Kramer pressed the starter button and the engine rattled into life. ‘You know us. We can get as much as we want.’
The car was carefully inspected at the main gate. The barrier rose and they headed out, past the canteen and the assembly hall, towards the end of Wilton Avenue.
‘Which way?’
‘Left, I think.’
Kramer flicked out one of the little amber indicators and they turned into the lane that led down to the town. His face was handsome – boyish and square-cut, with a faded tan that suggested service overseas. He was about twenty-five and looked formidably fit.
‘I guess I’d like to thank you for that.’
‘Thank me?’
‘At the conference. You told the truth when the others all talked bull-shit. “Four days” – Jesus!’
‘They were just being loyal.’
‘Loyal? Come on, Tom. D’you mind if I call you Tom? I’m Jimmy, by the way. They’d been fixed.’
‘I don’t think this is a conversation we should be having …’ The dizziness had passed and in the clarity that always followed it occurred to Jericho that the American must have been waiting for him to emerge from the meeting. ‘This will do fine, thank you.’
‘Really? But we’ve hardly gone any distance.’
‘Please, just pull over.’
Kramer swerved into the kerb beside a row of small cottages, braked and turned off the engine.
‘Listen, will you, Tom, just a minute? The Germans brought in Shark three months after Pearl Harbor –’
‘Look –’
‘Relax. Nobody’s listening.’ This was true. The lane was deserted. ‘Three months after Pearl Harbor, and suddenly we’re losing ships like we’re going out of business. But nobody tells us why. After all, we’re the new boys around here – we just route the convoys the way London tells us. Finally, it’s getting so bad, we ask you guys what’s happened to all this great intelligence you used to have.’ He jabbed his finger at Jericho. ‘Only then are we told about Shark.’
‘I can’t listen to this,’ said Jericho. He tried to open the door but Kramer leaned across and seized the handle.
‘I’m not trying to poison your mind against your own people. I’m just trying to tell you what’s going on here. After we were told about Shark last year, we started to do some checking. Fast. And eventually, after one hell of a fight, we began to get some figures. D’you know how many bombes you guys had by the end of last summer? This is after two years of manufacture?’
Jericho was staring straight ahead. ‘I wouldn’t be privy to information like that.’
‘Fifty! And d’you know how many our people in Washington said they could build within four months? Three hundred and sixty!’
‘Well, build them, then,’ said Jericho, irritably, ‘if you’re so bloody marvellous.’
‘Oh no,’ said Kramer. ‘You don’t understand. That’s not allowed. Enigma is a British baby. Official. Any change in status has to be negotiated.’
‘Is it being negotiated?’
‘In Washington. Right now. That’s where your Mr Turing is. In the meantime, we just have to take whatever you give us.’
‘But that’s absurd. Why not just build the bombes anyway?’
‘Come on, Tom. Think about it for a minute. You have all the intercept stations over here. You have all the raw material. We’re three thousand miles away. Damn hard to pick up Magdeburg from Florida. And what’s the point in having three hundred and sixty bombes if there’s nothing to put in them?’
Jericho shut his eyes and saw Skynner’s flushed face, heard his rumbling voice: ‘You’ve no conception of this place any more … We’re negotiating a deal with the Americans … You can’t even conceive of the seriousness …’ Now, at least, he understood the reason for Skynner’s anger. His little empire, so painfully put together, brick by bureaucratic brick, was mortally threatened by Shark. But the threat came not from Berlin. It came from Washington.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Kramer was saying, ‘I’ve been here a month and I think what you’ve all achieved is astounding. Brilliant. And nobody on our side is talking about a takeover. But it can’t go on like this. Not enough bombes. Not enough typewriters. Those huts. Christ! “Was it dangerous in the war, Daddy?” “Sure was, I damned near froze to death.” Did you know the whole operation almost stopped one time because you ran out of coloured pencils? I mean, what are we saying here? That men have to die because you don’t have enough pencils?’
Jericho felt too tired to argue. Besides, he knew enough to know it was true: all true. He remembered a night, eighteen months ago, when he’d been asked to keep an eye open for strangers at the Shoulder of Mutton, standing near the door in the
blackout, sipping halves of shandy, while Turing, Welchman and a couple of the other big chiefs met in a room upstairs and wrote a joint letter to Churchill. Exactly the same story: not enough clerks, not enough typists, the factory at Letchworth that made the bombes – it used to make cash registers, of all things – short of parts, short of manpower … There’d been one hell of a row when Churchill got the letter – a tantrum in Downing Street, careers broken, machinery shaken up – and things had improved, for a while. But Bletchley was a greedy child. Its appetite grew with the feeding. ‘Nervos belli, pecuniam infinitam.’ Or, as Baxter had put it, more prosaically, it all comes down to money in the end. The Poles had had to give Enigma to the British. Now the Brits would have to share it with the Yanks.
‘I can’t have anything to do with this. I’ve got to get some sleep. Thanks for the lift.’
He reached for the handle and this time Kramer made no attempt to stop him. He was halfway out of the door when Kramer said: ‘I heard you lost your old man in the last war.’
Jericho froze. ‘Who told you that?’
‘I forget. Does it matter?’
‘No. It’s not a secret.’ Jericho massaged his forehead. He had a filthy headache coming on. ‘It happened before I was born. He was wounded by a shell at Ypres. He lived on for a bit but he wasn’t much use after that. He never came out of hospital. He died when I was six.’
‘What did he do? Before he got hit?’
‘He was a mathematician.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘I’ll see you around,’ said Jericho. He got out of the car.
‘My brother died,’ said Kramer suddenly. ‘One of the first. He was in the Merchant Marine. Liberty ships.’
Of course, thought Jericho.
‘This was during the Shark blackout, I suppose?’
‘You got it.’ Kramer looked bleak, then forced a smile. ‘Let’s keep in touch, Tom. Anything I can do for you – just ask.’
He reached over and pulled the door shut with a bang. Jericho stood alone on the roadside and watched as Kramer executed a rapid U-turn. The car backfired, then headed at speed up the hill towards the Park, leaving a little puff of dirty smoke hanging in the morning air.