Enigma (39 page)

He did the plugging first. Short lengths, of corded,
chocolate-coloured flex, tipped at either end by brass plugs
sheathed in bakelite that sank with satisfying precision into the
lettered sockets: C to X, A to Z…

Next he lifted the Enigma’s inner lid, unlocked the spindle, and
slid off the three rotors that were already loaded. From a separate
compartment he withdrew the two spares.

Each rotor was the size and thickness of an ice-hockey puck, but
heavier: a code wheel with twenty-six terminals—pin-shaped and
spring-loaded on one side, flat and circular on the other—with the
letters of the alphabet engraved around the edge. As the rotors
turned against one another, so the shape of the electrical circuit
they completed varied. The right-hand rotor always moved on a
letter each time a key was struck. Once every twenty-six letters, a
notch in its alphabet ring caused the middle rotor also to move on
a place. And when, eventually, the middle rotor reached its
turnover position, the third rotor would move. Two rotors moving
together was known at Bletchley as a crab; three was a lobster.

He sorted the rotors into the order of the day—III, V and IV—and
slipped them on to the spindle. He twirled III and set it at the
letter G, V at A and IV at H, and closed the lid.

The machine was now primed just as its twin had been in Smolensk
on the evening of 4 March.

He touched the keys. He was ready.

♦

The Enigma worked on a simple principle. If, when the machine
was set in a particular way, pressing key A completed a circuit
that illuminated bulb X, then it followed—because electric current
is reciprocal—that, in the same position, pressing key X would
illuminate bulb A. Decoding was designed to be as easy as
encoding.

Jericho realised quite quickly that something was going wrong.
He would type a letter of the cryptogram with his left index finger
and with his right hand make a note of the character illuminated on
the display panel. T gave him H, R gave him Y, X gave him C…This
was no German he recognised. Still, he went on in the increasingly
desperate hope it would start to come right. Only after forty-seven
letters did he give up.

HYCYKWPIOROKDZENAJEWICZJPTAKJHRUTBPYSJMOTYLPCIE

He ran his hands through his hair.

Sometimes an Enigma operator would insert meaningless padding
around proper words to disguise the sense of his message, but never
this much, surely? There were no proper words that he could discern
hidden anywhere in this gibberish.

He groaned, leaned back in his chair and stared at the flaking
plaster ceiling.

Two possibilities, each equally unpleasant.

One: the message had been super-enciphered, its plaintext
scrambled once, and then again to make its meaning doubly obscure.
A time-consuming technique, usually reserved for only the most
secret communications.

Two: Hester had made a mistake in transcription—had got,
perhaps, just one letter wrong—in which case he could sit here,
literally for the rest of his life, and still he would never make
the cryptogram disgorge its secrets.

Of the two explanations, the latter was the more likely.

He paced around his cell for a while, trying to get some
circulation back into his legs and arms. Then he set the rotors
back at GAH and made an attempt to decipher the second message from
4 March. The same result:

SZULCJK UKAH

He didn’t even bother with the third and fourth but instead
played around with the rotor settings—GEH, CAN, CAH—in the hope she
might simply have got one letter wrong, but all the Enigma winked
at him was more gobbledygook.

♦

Four in the car. Hester in the back seat next to Wigram. Two men
in the front. The doors all locked, the heater on, a stench of
cigarette smoke and sweat so strong that Wigram had his paisley
scarf pressed delicately to his nose. He kept his face half-turned
from her all journey and didn’t say a word until they reached the
main road. Then they pulled across the white lines to overtake
another car and their driver switched on a police bell.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Leveret, cut it out.”

The noise stopped. The car swerved left, then right. They jolted
down a rutted track and Hester’s fingers sank deeper into the
leather upholstery as she strained to avoid toppling into Wigram.
She hadn’t spoken, either—it was her single, token gesture of
defiance, this silence. She was damned if she was going to show her
nerves by babbling like a girl.

After a couple of minutes they stopped somewhere and Wigram sat
motionless, a statesman, while his men in the front seats scrambled
out. One of them opened his door. Torches flashed in the darkness.
Shadows appeared. A welcoming committee.

“Got those lights up yet, inspector?” asked Wigram.

“Yes, sir.” A deep male voice; a Midlands accent. “A lot of
complaints from the air raid people, though.”

“Well, they can frig off for a start. Jerry wants to bomb this
place, he’s welcome. Got the plans?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good-oh.” Wigram grabbed the roof and hoisted himself out on
the running board. He waited a second or two and when Hester didn’t
move he ducked back inside and flexed his fingers irritably. “Come
on, come on. D’you expect me to carry you?”

She slid across the seat.

Two other cars—no, three other cars with their headlights on,
showing the cut-out patterns of men moving, plus a small Army truck
and an ambulance. It was the ambulance that shook her. Its doors
were open and, as Wigram guided her past it, his hand lightly on
her elbow, she caught the smell of disinfectant, saw the
dun-coloured oxygen cylinders, the stretchers with their coarse
brown blankets, their leather straps, their innocent white sheets.
Two men sat on the rear bumper, legs outstretched, smoking. They
stared at her without interest.

“Been here before?” said Wigram.

“Where are we?”

“Lovers’ lane. Not your scene, I fancy.”

He was holding a flashlight and as he stood aside to usher her
through a gate she saw a sign: DANGER: FLOODED CLAY PIT—VERY DEEP
WATER. She could hear a guttural engine somewhere ahead, and the
cry of sea-birds. She started to shake.

“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the
spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley
which was full of bones.”

“D’you say something?” asked Wigram.

“I don’t believe so.”

Oh, Claire, Claire, Claire…

The engine noise was louder now, and seemed to be coming from
inside a brick building to her left. A faint white light shone up
through the gaps in its roof to reveal a tall, square chimney, its
lower part engulfed by ivy. She was vaguely aware that they were at
the head of a procession. Behind them came the driver, Leveret, and
then the second man from the car wearing a belted gaberdine, and
then the police inspector.

“Mind yourself here,” warned Wigram, and he tried to take her
arm again but she shook him off. She picked her own way between the
clumps of brick and the towering weeds, heard voices, turned a
corner, and was confronted by a dazzling line of arc lights
illuminating a broad path. Six policemen were working their way
along it, in parallel, on their hands and knees among a glitter of
broken glass and rubble. Behind them, one soldier tended a
shuddering generator; another unreeled a drum of cable; a third was
rigging more lights.

Wigram grinned and winked at her, as if to say: See what I can
command. He was pulling on a pair of light brown, calfskin gloves.
“Got something to show you.” In a corner of the building, a police
sergeant stood beside a rumpled heap of sacks. Hester had to will
her legs to move forwards. Please, Lord, don’t let it be her,

“Get your notebook out,” said Wigram to the sergeant. He hoisted
the tails of his overcoat and squatted on his haunches. “I am
showing the witness, first, one lady’s coat, ankle-length by the
look of it, colour grey, trimmed with black velvet.” He drew it
completely out of the sack and turned it over. “Grey satin lining.
Quite badly stained. Probably blood. Need to check it. Collar
label: “Hunters, Burlington Arcade”. And the witness responded?” He
held it up, without looking round.

Remember, I said, “That’s too beautiful to put on every day,”
and you said, “Silly old Hester, that’s the only reason there is to
wear it?”

“And the witness responded?”

“It’s hers.”

“‘It’s hers.’ Got that? Good. OK. Next. One lady’s shoe. Left
foot. Black. High heel. Heel snapped off. Hers, d’you think?”

“How can I tell? One shoe—”

“Largish. Say, size seven. Eight. What size did she take?” A
pause, then Hester, quietly: “Seven.”

“We’ve found the other one outside, sir,” said the inspector.
“Near the water’s edge.”

“And a pair of knickers. White. Silk. Badly bloodstained.” He
held them out at arm’s length between finger and thumb. “Recognise
these, Miss Wallace?” He let them drop and rummaged in the bottom
of the sack. “Final item. One brick.” He shone his flashlight onto
it; something glinted. “Also bloodstained. Blonde hairs
attached.”

♦

“Eleven main buildings,” said the inspector. “Eight of them with
kilns, four with chimneys still standing. Rail spur here with
sidings, linking into the main line, and a branch going off here,
right through the site.”

They were outside now, at the spot where the second shoe had
been found, and the map was spread over a rusting water rank.
Hester stood away from them, Leveret watching her, his hands
hanging loosely by his sides. There were more men moving down by
the water’s edge, torches stabbing the night.

“Local fishing club use a shed here, near the jetty. Three
rowing boats usually stored.”

“Usually?”

“Door’s been kicked in, sir. Season’s over. That’s why nobody
discovered it. A boat’s missing.”

“Since?”

“Well, there was some fishing on Sunday. Deep ledgering for
carp. That was the last day of the season. Everything was all right
then. So any time from Sunday night onwards.”

“Sunday. And we’re now into Wednesday.” Wigram sighed and shook
his head.

The inspector spread his hands. “With respect, sir, I have three
men stationed in Bletchley. Bedford lent us six, Buckingham nine.
We’re two miles from the centre of town. There is a limit.
Sir.”

Wigram didn’t seem to hear him. “And how big’s the lake?”

“About a quarter of a mile across.”

“Deep?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What—twenty, thirty feet?”

“At the edges. Shelving to sixty. Could be seventy. It’s an old
working. They built the town with what they dug out here.”

“Did they really?” Wigram flashed his light across the lake.
“Makes sense, I suppose. Making one hole out of another.” Mist was
rising, swirling in the breeze like steam above a cauldron. He
swung the beam round and pointed it back at the building. “So what
happened here?” he said softly. “Our man lures her out for a shag
on Sunday night. Kills her, probably with that brick. Drags her
down here…” The beam traced the path from the kilns to the water.
“Strong man—must have been, she was a big girl. Then what? Gets a
boat. Stuffs the body in a sack maybe. Weights it with bricks.
That’s obvious. Rows it out. Dumps it. A muffled splash at
midnight, just like in the pictures…He probably meant to come back
for the clothes as well, but something put him off. Perhaps the
next pair of lovebirds had already arrived.” He played the light
over the mist again. “Seventy feet deep. Frigging hell! We’ll need
to put a submarine down there to find her.”

“May I go now?” said Hester. She had kept herself very quiet and
composed so far, but now the tears had started and she was drawing
in great gulps of air.

Wigram aimed the beam at her wet face. “No,” he said sadly. “I’m
rather afraid you can’t.”

♦

Jericho was replugging the cipher machine as quickly as his numb
fingers would permit him.

Enigma settings for German Army key Vulture, 6 February
1943:

I V III DMR EY JL AK NV FZ CT HP MX BQ GS

The final four cryptograms were hopeless, a disaster, mere chaos
out of chaos. He had wasted too much time on them already. He would
begin again, this time with the first signal. E to Y, J to L. And
if this didn’t work? Don’t even think it. A to K, N to V…He lifted
the lid, unfastened the spindle, slid off the rotors. Above his
head, the great house was silent. He was too deeply entombed to
hear a footstep. He wondered what they were doing up there. Looking
for him? Probably. And if they woke up Logie it wouldn’t take them
long to find him. He slid the rotors into place—first, fifth,
third—and clicked them round to DMR.

Almost at once he began to sense success. First C and X, which
were nulls, and then A, N, O, K, H.

An OKH…

To OKH. Oberkommando des Heeres. The High Command of the
Army.

A miracle.

His finger hammered away at the key. The lights flashed.

An OKH⁄BEFEHL To the office of the Commander-in-Chief.

Dringend.

Urgent.

Melde Auffindung zahlreicher menschlicher Uberreste zwolfKm
westlich Smolensk…

Discovered yesterday twelve kilometres west Smolensk human
remains…

♦

Hester was locked in the car with Wigram, Leveret standing guard
outside.

Jericho. He was asking her about Jericho. Where was he? What was
he doing? When did she last see him?

“He’s left the hut. He’s not at his digs. He’s not at the
cottage. I ask you: Where the hell else is there to go in this
frigging town?”

She said nothing.

He tried shouting at her, pounding his fist on the seat in
front, and then, when that didn’t work, he gave her his
handkerchief and tried sympathy, but the scent of cologne on the
silk and the memory of the blonde hair gilding the brick made her
want to be sick and he had to wind his window down and get Leveret
to come round and open her door.