It was well past eight o’clock by the time he turned off the footpath into Wilton Avenue and approached the main gate. The shift change was over; the suburban road was almost deserted. The sentry – a giant young corporal, raw-faced from the cold – came stamping out of the guard post and barely glanced at his pass before waving him into the grounds.
Past the mansion he went, keeping his head down to avoid having to speak to anyone, past the lake (which was fringed with ice) and into Hut 8, where the silence emanating from the Decoding Room told him all he needed to know. The Type-X machines had worked their way through the backlog of Shark intercepts and now there was nothing for them to do until Dolphin and Porpoise came on stream, probably around midmorning. He caught a glimpse of Logie’s tall figure at the end of the corridor and darted into the Registration Room. There, to his surprise, was Puck, sitting in a corner, being watched by a pair of love-struck Wrens. His face was grey and lined, his head resting against the wall. Jericho thought he might be asleep but then he opened a piercing blue eye.
‘Logie’s looking for you.’
‘Really?’ Jericho took off his coat and scarf and hung them on the back of the door. ‘He knows where to find me.’
‘There’s a rumour going around that you hit Skynner. For God’s sake tell me it’s true.’
One of the Wrens giggled.
Jericho had forgotten all about Skynner. He passed his hand through his hair. ‘Do me a favour, Puck, will you?’ he said. ‘Pretend you haven’t seen me?’
Puck regarded him closely for a moment, then shut his eyes. ‘What a man of mystery you are,’ he murmured, sleepily.
Back in the corridor Jericho walked straight into Logie.
‘Ah, there you are, old love. I’m afraid we need to have a talk.’
‘Fine, Guy. Fine.’ Jericho patted Logie on the shoulder and squeezed past him. ‘Just give me ten minutes.’
‘No, not in ten minutes,’ Logie shouted after him, ‘now!’
Jericho pretended he hadn’t heard. He trotted out into the fresh air, walked briskly round the corner, past Hut 6, towards the entrance to Hut 3. Only when he was within twenty paces of it did his footsteps slow, then stop.
The truth was, he knew very little about Hut 3, except that it was the place where the decoded messages of the German Army and Luftwaffe were processed. It was about twice the size of the other huts and was arranged in the shape of an L. It had gone up at the same time as the rest of the temporary buildings, in the winter of 1939 – a timber skeleton rising out of the freezing Buckinghamshire clay, clothed in a sheath of asbestos and flimsy wooden boarding – and to heat it, he remembered, they had cannibalised a big cast-iron stove from one of the Victorian greenhouses. Claire used to complain she was always cold. Cold, and that her job was ‘boring’. But where exactly she worked within its warren of rooms, let alone what this ‘boring’ job entailed, was a mystery to him.
A door slammed somewhere behind him and he glanced over his shoulder to see Logie emerging from around the corner of the naval hut. Damn, damn. He dropped to one knee and pretended to fumble with his shoelace but Logie hadn’t seen him. He was marching purposefully towards the mansion. That seemed to settle Jericho’s resolve. Once Logie was out of sight, he counted himself down then launched himself across the path and through the entrance into the hut.
He did his best to look as if he had a right to be there. He pulled out a pen and set off down the central corridor, thrusting past airmen and Army officers, glancing officiously from side to side into the busy rooms. It was much more overcrowded even than Hut 8. The racket of typewriters and telephones was amplified by the membrane of wooden walls to create a bedlam of activity.
He had barely gone halfway down the passage when a colonel with a large moustache stepped smartly out of a doorway and blocked his path. Jericho nodded and tried to edge past him, but the colonel moved deftly to one side.
‘Hold on, stranger. Who are you?’
On impulse Jericho stuck out his hand. ‘Tom Jericho,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’
‘Never mind who the hell I am.’ The colonel had jug ears and thick black hair with a wide, straight parting that stood out like a firebreak. He ignored the proffered hand. ‘What’s your section?’
‘Naval. Hut 8.’
‘Hut 8? State your business here.’
‘I’m looking for Dr Weitzman.’
An inspired lie. He knew Weitzman from the Chess Society: a German Jew, naturalised British, who always played Queen’s Gambit Declined.
‘Are you, by God?’ said the colonel. ‘Haven’t you Navy people ever heard of the telephone?’ He stroked his moustache and looked Jericho up and down. ‘Well, you’d better come with me.’
Jericho followed the colonel’s broad back along the passage and into a large room. Two groups of about a dozen men sat at tables arranged in a pair of semicircles, working their way through wire baskets stacked high with decrypts. Walter Weitzman was perched on a stool in a glass booth behind them.
‘I say, Weitzman, d’you know this chap?’
Weitzman’s large head was bent over a pile of German weapons manuals. He looked up, vague and distracted, but when he recognised Jericho his melancholy face brightened into a smile. ‘Hello, Tom. Yes, of course I know him.’
‘“Kriegsnachrichten Für Seefahrer,”’ said Jericho, a fraction too quickly. ‘You said you might have something by now.’
For a moment, Weitzman didn’t react and Jericho thought he was done for, but then the old man said slowly, ‘Yes. I believe I have that information for you.’ He lowered himself carefully from his stool. ‘You have a problem, colonel?’
The colonel thrust his chin forward. ‘Yes, actually, Weitzman, I do, now you mention it. “Inter-hut communication, unless otherwise authorised, must be conducted by telephone or written memorandum.” Standard procedure.’ He glared at Weitzman and Weitzman stared back, with exquisite politeness. The belligerence seemed to leak out of the colonel. ‘Right,’ he muttered. ‘Yes. Remember that in future.’
‘Arsehole,’ hissed Weitzman, as the colonel moved away. ‘Well, well. You’d better come over here.’
He led Jericho to a rack of card-index files, selected a drawer, pulled it out and began riffling through it. Every time the translators came across a term they couldn’t understand, they consulted Weitzman and his famous index-system. He’d been a philologist at Heidelberg until the Nazis forced him to emigrate. The Foreign Office, in a rare moment of inspiration, had dispatched him to Bletchley in 1940. Very few phrases defeated him.
‘“Kriegsnachrichten Für Seefahrer,” “War notices for Marines.” First intercepted and catalogued, November ninth last year. As you knew perfectly well already.’ He held the card within an inch of his nose and studied it through his thick spectacles. ‘Tell me, is the good colonel still looking at us?’
‘I don’t know. I think so.’ The colonel had bent down to read something one of the translators had written, but his gaze kept returning to Jericho and Weitzman. ‘Is he always like that?’
‘Our Colonel Coker? Yes, but worse today, for some reason.’ Weitzman spoke softly, without looking at Jericho. He tugged open another drawer and pulled out a card, apparently absorbed. ‘I suggest we stay here until he leaves the room. Now here’s a U-boat term we picked up in January: “Fluchttiefe.”’
‘“Evasion depth,”’ replied Jericho. He could play this game for hours. Vorhalt-Rechner was a deflection-angle computer. A cold-soldered joint was a kalte Lötstelle. Cracks in a U-boat’s bulkheads were Stirnwandrisse …
‘“Evasion depth,”’ Weitzman nodded. ‘Quite right.’ Jericho risked another look at the colonel. ‘He’s going out of the door … now. It’s all right. He’s gone.’
Weitzman gazed at the card for a moment, then slipped it back among the rest and closed the drawer. ‘So. Why are you asking me questions to which you already know the answers?’ His hair was white, his small brown eyes overshadowed by a jutting forehead. Wrinkles at
their edges suggested a face that had once creased readily into laughter. But Weitzman didn’t laugh much any more. He was rumoured to have left most of his family behind in Germany.
‘I’m looking for a woman called Claire Romilly. Do you know her?’
‘Of course. The beautiful Claire. Everyone knows her.’
‘Where does she work?’
‘She works here.’
‘I know here. Here where?’
‘“Inter-hut communication, unless otherwise authorised, must be conducted by telephone or written memorandum. Standard procedure.”’ Weitzman clicked his heels. ‘Heil Hitler!’
‘Bugger standard procedure.’
One of the translators turned round, irritably. ‘I say, you two, put a sock in it, will you?’
‘Sorry.’ Weitzman took Jericho by the arm and led him away. ‘Do you know, Tom,’ he whispered, ‘in three years, this is the first time I have heard you swear?’
‘Walter. Please. It’s important.’
‘And it can’t wait until the end of the shift?’ He gave Jericho a careful look. ‘Obviously not. Well, well again. Which way did Coker go?’
‘Back towards the entrance.’
‘Good. Follow me.’
Weitzman led Jericho almost to the other end of the hut, past the translators, through two long narrow rooms where scores of women were labouring over a pair of giant card indexes, around a corner and through a room lined with teleprinters. The din here was terrific. Weitzman put his hands to his ears, looked over his shoulder and grinned. The noise pursued them down a short length of passage, at the end of which was a closed door. Next to it was a sign, in a schoolgirl’s best handwriting: GERMAN BOOK ROOM.
Weitzman knocked on the door, opened it and went inside. Jericho followed. His eye registered a large room. Shelves stacked with ledgers and files. Half a dozen trestle tables pushed together to form one big working area. Women, mostly with their backs to him. Six, perhaps, or seven? Two typing, very fast, the others moving back and forth arranging sheaves of papers into piles.
Before he could take in any more, a plump, harassed-looking woman in a tweed jacket and skirt advanced to meet them. Weitzman was beaming now, exuding charm, for all the world as if he were still in the tearoom of Heidelberg’s Europäischer Hof. He took her hand and bowed to kiss it.
‘Guten Morgen, mein liebes Fräulein Monk. Wie geht’s?’
‘Gut, danke, Herr Doktor. Und dir?’
‘Danke, sehr gut.’
It was clearly a familiar routine between them. Her shiny complexion flushed pink with pleasure. ‘And what can I do for you?’
‘My colleague and I, my dear Miss Monk –’ Weitzman patted her hand, then released it and gestured towards Jericho ‘– are looking for the delightful Miss Romilly.’
At the mention of Claire’s name, Miss Monk’s flirtatious smile evaporated. ‘In that case you must join the queue, Dr Weitzman. Join the queue.’
‘I am sorry. The queue?’
‘We are all trying to find Claire Romilly. Perhaps you, or your colleague, have an idea where we might start?’
To say that the world stands still is a solipsism, and Jericho knew it even as it seemed to happen – knew that it isn’t ever the world that slows down, but rather the individual, confronted by an unexpected danger, who receives a charge of adrenaline and speeds up. Nevertheless, for him, for an instant, everything did freeze. Weitzman’s expression became a mask of bafflement, the woman’s of indignation. As his brain tried to compute the implications, he could hear his own voice, far away, begin to babble: ‘But I thought … I was told – assured – yesterday – she was supposed to be on duty at eight this morning …’
‘Quite right,’ Miss Monk was saying. ‘It really is most thoughtless of her. And terribly inconvenient.’
Weitzman gave Jericho a peculiar look, as if to say, What have you got me into? ‘Perhaps she’s ill?’ he suggested.
‘Then surely a note would have been considerate? A message? Before I let the entire night-shift go? We can barely cope when there are eight of us. When we’re down to seven …’
She started to prattle on to Weitzman about ‘3A’ and ‘3M’ and all the staffing memos she’d written and how no one appreciated her difficulties. As if to prove her point, at that moment the door opened and a woman came in with a stack of files so high she had to wedge her chin on top of them to keep control. She let them fall on the table and there was a collective groan from Miss Monk’s girls. A couple of signals fluttered over the edge of the table and on to the floor and Jericho, primed for action, swooped to retrieve them. He got a brief glimpse of one –
ZZZ
BATTLE HEADQUARTERS GERMAN AFRIKA KORPS LOCATED
MORNING THIRTEENTH £ THIRTEENTH ONE FIVE
KILOMETRES WEST OF BEN GARDANE £ BEN GARDANE
– before it was snatched out of his hands by Miss Monk. She seemed for the first time to become aware of his presence. She cradled the secrets to her plump breast and glared at him.
‘I’m sorry, you are – who are you exactly?’ she asked. She edged to one side to block his view of the table. ‘You are – what? – a friend of Claire, I take it?’
‘It’s all right, Daphne,’ said Weitzman, ‘he’s a friend of mine.’
Miss Monk flushed again. ‘I beg your pardon, Walter,’ she said. ‘Of course, I didn’t mean to imply –’
Jericho cut in: ‘I wonder, could I ask you, has she done this before? Failed to turn up, I mean, without telling you?’
‘Oh no. Never. I will not tolerate slacking in my section. Dr Weitzman will vouch for that.’
‘Indeed,’ said Weitzman, gravely. ‘No slacking here.’
Miss Monk was of a type that Jericho had come to know well over the past three years: mildly hysterical at moments of crisis; jealous of her precious rank and her extra fifty pounds a year; convinced that the war would be lost if her tiny fiefdom were denied a gross of lead pencils or an extra typist. She would hate Claire, he thought: hate her for her prettiness and her confidence and her refusal to take anything seriously.
‘She hasn’t been behaving at all oddly?’
‘We have important work to do. We’ve no time here for oddness.’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘That would be Friday.’ Miss Monk obviously prided herself on her memory for detail. ‘She came on duty at four, went off at midnight. Yesterday was her rest day.’
‘So I don’t suppose it’s likely she came back into the hut, say, early on Saturday morning?’
‘No. I was here. Anyway, why should she do that? Normally, she couldn’t wait to get away.’
I bet she couldn’t. He glanced again at the girls behind Miss Monk. What on earth were they all doing? Each had a mound of paperclips in front of her, a pot of glue, a pile of brown folders and a tangle of rubber bands. They seemed – could this be right? – to be compiling new files out of old ones. He tried to imagine Claire here, in this drab room, among these sensible drones. It was like picturing some gorgeous parakeet in a cage full of sparrows. He wasn’t sure what to do. He took out his watch and flicked open the lid. Eight thirty-five. She had already been missing more than half an hour.
‘What will you do now?’
‘Obviously – because of the level of classification – there’s a certain procedure we have to follow. I’ve already notified Welfare. They’ll send someone round to her room to turf her out of bed.’
‘And if she isn’t there?’
‘Then they’ll contact her family to see if they know where she is.’
‘And if they don’t?’
‘Well, then it’s serious. But it never gets that far.’ Miss Monk drew her jacket tight across her pigeon chest and folded her arms. ‘I’m sure there’s a man at the bottom of this somewhere.’ She shuddered. ‘There usually is.’
Weitzman was continuing to give Jericho imploring glances. He touched him on the arm. ‘We ought to go now, Tom.’
‘Do you have an address for her family? Or a telephone number?’
‘Yes, I think so, but I’m not sure I should …’ She turned towards Weitzman, who hesitated fractionally, shot another look at Jericho, then forced a smile and a nod.
‘I can vouch for him.’
‘Well,’ said Miss Monk, doubtfully, ‘if you think it’s permissible …’ She went over to a filing cabinet beside her desk and unlocked it.
‘Coker will kill me for this,’ whispered Weitzman, while her back was turned.
‘He’ll never find out. I promise you.’
‘The curious thing is,’ said Miss Monk, almost to herself, ‘that she’d really become much more attentive of late. Anyway, this is her card.’
Next-of-kin: Edward Romilly.
Relation: Father.
Address: 27 Stanhope Gardens, London SW.
Telephone: Kensington 2257.
Jericho glanced at it for a second and handed it back.
‘I don’t think there’s any need to trouble him, do you?’ asked Miss Monk. ‘Certainly not yet. No doubt Claire will arrive at any moment with some silly story about oversleeping –’
‘I’m sure,’ said Jericho.
‘– in which case,’ she added shrewdly, ‘who shall I say was looking for her?’
‘Auf Wiedersehen, Fraulein Monk.’ Weitzman had had enough. He was already half out of the room, pulling Jericho after him with surprising force. Jericho had a last vision of Miss Monk, standing bewildered and suspicious, before the door closed on her schoolroom German.
‘Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Doktor, und Herr …’
Weitzman didn’t lead Jericho back the way they had come. Instead he bundled him out of the rear exit. Now, in the cold daylight, Jericho could see why he had found it so difficult stumbling around out here the other night. They were on the edge of a building site. Trenches had been carved four feet deep into the grass. Pyramids of sand and gravel were covered in a white mould of frost. It was a miracle he hadn’t broken his neck.
Weitzman shook a cigarette out of a crumpled pack of Passing Clouds and lit it. He leaned against the wall of the hut and exhaled a sigh of steam and smoke. ‘Useless for me to ask, I suppose, what in God’s name is going on?’