Enigma (3 page)

And then, without warning, on Friday 12 March, they came for
him.

♦

The night before it happened he had overheard an elderly don
complaining about a new air base the Americans were building to the
east of the city.

“I said to them, you do realise you’re standing on a fossil site
of the Pleistocene era? That I myself have removed from here the
horncores of Bos primigenius? D’you know, the fellow merely
laughed…”

Good for the Yanks, thought Jericho, and he decided there and
then it would make a suitable destination for his afternoon walk.
Because it would take him at least three miles further than he had
attempted so far, he left earlier than usual, straight after
lunch.

He strode briskly along the Backs, past the Wren Library and the
icing sugar towers of St John’s, past the sports field in which two
dozen little boys in purple shirts were playing football, and then
turned left, trudging beside the Madingley Road. After ten minutes
he was in open country.

Kite had gloomily predicted snow, but although it was still cold
it was sunny and the sky was a glory—a pure blue dome above the
flat landscape of East Anglia, filled for miles with the silver
specks of aircraft and the white scratches of contrails. Before the
war he had cycled through this quiet countryside almost every week
and had barely seen a car. Now an endless succession of big
American trucks lumbered past him, forcing him on to the
verge—brasher, faster, more modern than British Army lorries,
covered over at the back with camouflaged tarpaulins. The white
faces of the US airmen peered out of the shadows. Sometimes the men
shouted and waved and he waved back, feeling absurdly English and
self-conscious.

Eventually he came within sight of the new base and stood beside
the road watching three Flying Fortresses take off in the distance,
one after the other—vast aircraft, almost too heavy, or so it
seemed to Jericho, to escape the ground. They lumbered along the
fresh concrete runway, roaring with frustration, clawing at the air
for liberation until suddenly a crack of daylight appeared beneath
them, and the crack widened, and they were aloft.

He stood there for almost half an hour, feeling the air pulse
with the vibrations of their engines, smelling the faint scent of
aviation spirit carried on the cold air. He had never seen such a
demonstration of power. The fossils of the Pleistocene era, he
reflected with grim delight, must now be so much dust. What was
that line of Cicero that Atwood was so fond of quoting? “Nervos
belli, pecuniam infinitam.” The sinews of war, unlimited money.

He looked at his watch and realised he had better turn back if
he was going to reach the college before dark.

He had gone about a mile when he heard an engine behind him. A
jeep overtook him, swerved and stopped. The driver, wrapped in a
heavy overcoat, stood up and beckoned to him.

“Hey, fella! Wanna lift?”

“That would be kind. Thank you.”

“Jump in.”

The American didn’t want to talk, which suited Jericho. He
gripped the edges of his seat and stared ahead as they bounced and
rattled at speed down the darkening lanes and into the town. The
driver dropped him at the back of the college, waved, gunned the
engine, and was gone. Jericho watched him disappear, then turned
and walked through the gate.

Before the war, this three-hundred-yard walk, at this time of
day, at this time of year, had been Jericho’s favourite: the
footpath running across a carpet of mauve and yellow crocuses, the
worn stones lit by ornate Victorian lamps, the spires of the chapel
to the left, the lights of the college to the right. But the
crocuses were late, the lanterns had not been switched on since
1939, and a static water tank disfigured the famous aspect of the
chapel. Only one light gleamed faintly in the college and as he
walked towards it he gradually realised it was his window.

He stopped, frowning. Had he left his desk light on? He was sure
he hadn’t. As he watched, he saw a shadow, a movement, a figure in
the pale yellow square. Two seconds later the light went on in his
bedroom.

It wasn’t possible, was it?

He started to run. He covered the distance to his staircase in
thirty seconds and took the steps like an athlete. His boots
clattered on the worn stone. “Claire?” he shouted. “Claire?” On the
landing his door stood open.

“Steady on, old thing,” said a male voice from within, “you’ll
do yourself a mischief.”

§

Guy Logie was a tall, cadaverous man, ten years older than
Jericho. He lay on his back on the sofa facing the door, his neck
on one armrest, his bony ankle dangling over the other, long hands
folded neatly on his stomach. A pipe was clamped between his teeth
and he was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. Distended haloes
drifted upwards, twisted, broke and melted into haze. He took his
pipe from his mouth and gave an elaborate yawn which seemed to take
him by surprise.

“Oh, God. Sorry.” He opened his eyes and swung himself into a
sitting position. “Hello, Tom.”

“Oh please. Please, don’t get up,” said Jericho. “Please, I
insist, make yourself at home. Perhaps I could get you some
tea?”

“Tea. What a grand idea.” Before the war Logie had been head of
mathematics at a vast and ancient public school. He had a Blue in
rugger and another in hockey and irony bounced off him like pebbles
off an advancing rhinoceros. He crossed the room and grasped
Jericho by the shoulders. “Come here. Let me look at you, old
thing,” he said, turning him this way and that towards the light.
“Oh dear oh dear, you do look bloody terrible.”

Jericho shrugged himself free. “I was fine.”

“Sorry. We did knock. Your porter chap let us in.”

“Us?”

There was a noise from the bedroom.

“We came in the car with the flag on it. Greatly impressed your
Mr Kite.” Logie followed Jericho’s gaze to the bedroom door. “Oh,
that? That’s Leveret! Don’t mind him.” He took out his pipe and
called: “Mr Leveret! Come and meet Mr Jericho. The famous Mr
Jericho.”

A small man with a thin face appeared at the entrance to the
bedroom.

“Good afternoon, sir.” Leveret wore a raincoat and trilby. His
voice had a slight northern accent.

“What the hell are you doing in there?”

“He’s just checking you’re alone,” said Logie sweetly.

“Of course I’m bloody well alone!”

“And is the whole staircase empty, sir?” enquired Leveret.
“Nobody in the rooms above or below?”

Jericho threw up his hands in exasperation. “Guy, for God’s
sake!”

“I think it’s all clear,” said Leveret to Logie. “I’ve already
closed the blackout curtain in there.” He turned to Jericho. “Mind
if I do the same here, sir?” He didn’t wait for permission. He
crossed to the small leaded window, opened it, took off his hat and
thrust his head out, peering up and down, left and right. A
freezing mist was off the river and a blast of chill air filled the
room. Satisfied, Leveret ducked back inside, closed the window and
drew the curtains.

There was a quarter of a minute’s silence. Logie broke it by
rubbing his hands and saying: “Any chance of a fire, Tom? I’d
forgotten what this place was like in winter. Worse than school.
And tea? You mentioned tea? Would you like some tea, Mr
Leveret?”

“I would indeed, sir.”

“And what about some toast? I noticed you had some bread, Tom,
in the kitchen over there. Toast in front of a college fire?
Wouldn’t that take us back?”

Jericho looked at him for a moment. He opened his mouth to
protest then changed his mind. He took a box of matches from the
mantelpiece, struck a light and held it to the gas fire. As usual
the pressure was low and the match went out. He lit another and
this time it caught. A worm of flame glowed blue and began to
spread. He went across the landing to the little kitchen, filled
the kettle and lit the gas ring. In the bread bin there was indeed
a loaf—Mrs Saxmundham must have put it there earlier in the
week—and he sawed off three grey slices. In the cupboard he found a
pre-war pot of jam, surprisingly presentable after he had scraped
the white fur of mould from its surface, and a smear of: margarine
on a chipped plate. He arranged his delicacies on a tray and stared
at the kettle.

Perhaps he was having a dream? But when he looked back into his
sitting room, there was Logie stretched out again on the sofa, and
Leveret perched uneasily on the edge of one of the chairs, his hat
in his hands, like an unreliable witness waiting to go into court
with an under-rehearsed story.

Of course they had brought bad news. What else could it be but
bad news? The acting head of Hut 8 wouldn’t travel fifty miles
across country in the deputy director’s precious bloody car just to
pay a social call. They were going to sack him. “Sorry, old thing,
but we can’t carry passengers…” Jericho felt suddenly very tired.
He massaged his forehead with the heel of his hand. The familiar
headache was beginning to return, spreading up from his sinuses to
the back of his eyes.

He had thought it was her. That was the joke. For about half a
minute, running towards the lighted window, he had been happy. It
was pitiful.

The kettle was beginning to boil. He prised open the tea caddy
to find age had reduced the tea leaves to dust.

Nevertheless he spooned them into the pot and tipped in the hot
water.

Logie pronounced it nectar.

♦

Afterwards they sat in silence in the semi-darkness. The only
illumination was provided by the faint gleam of the desk lamp
behind them and the blue glow of the fire at their feet. The gas
jet hissed. From beyond the blackout curtains came a faint flurry
of splashes and the mournful quacking of a duck. Logie sat on the
floor, his long legs outstretched, fiddling with his pipe. Jericho
slouched in one of the two easy chairs, prodding the carpet
absent-mindedly with the toasting fork. Leveret had been told to
stand guard outside: “Would you mind closing both doors, old thing?
The inner door and the outer door, if you’d be so kind?”

The warm aroma of toast hung over the room. Their plates had
been pushed to one side.

“This really is most companionable,” murmured Logie. He struck a
match and the objects on the mantelpiece threw brief shadows on the
damp wall. “Although one appreciates that one is, in a sense,
fortunate to be in a place like Bletchley, given where else one
might be, one does start to get rather down with the sheer drabness
of it all. Don’t you find?”

“I suppose so.” Oh, do get on with it, thought Jericho, stabbing
at a couple of crumbs. Just sack me and leave. Logie made a
contented sucking noise through his pipe, then said quietly: “You
know, we’ve all been terribly worried about you, Tom. I do hope you
haven’t felt abandoned.”

At this unexpected display of concern, Jericho was surprised and
humiliated to find tears pricking at his eyes. He kept looking down
at the carpet. “I’m afraid I made the most frightful ass of myself,
Guy. The worst of it is, I can’t remember much of what happened.
There’s almost a week that’s pretty well a blank.”

Logie gave a dismissive wave of his pipe. “You’re not the first
to bust his health in that place, old thing. Did you see in The
Times poor Dilly Knox died last week? They gave him a gong at the
end. Nothing too fancy—CMG, I think. Insisted on receiving it at
home, personally, propped up in his chair. Dead two days later.
Cancer. Ghastly. And then there was Jeffreys. Remember him?”

“He was sent back to Cambridge to recover as well.”

“That’s the man. Whatever happened to Jeffreys?”

“He died.”

“Ah. Shame.” Logie performed a bit more pipe smoker’s business,
tamping down the tobacco and striking another match.

Just don’t let them put me in admin, prayed Jericho. Or Welfare.
There was a man in Welfare, Claire had told him, in charge of
billeting, who made the girls sit on his knee if they wanted digs
with a bathroom.

“It was Shark, wasn’t it,” said Logie, giving him a shrewd look
through a cloud of smoke, “that did for you?”

“Yes. Perhaps. You could say that.” Shark nearly did for all of
us, thought Jericho. “But you broke it,” pursued Logie. “You broke
Shark.”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that. We broke it.”

“No. You broke it.” Logie twirled the spent match in his long
finger. “You broke it. And then it broke you.”

Jericho had a sudden memory-flash of himself on a bicycle, under
a starlit sky. A cold night and the cracking of ice.

“Look,” he said, suddenly irritated “d’you think we could get to
the point here, Guy? I mean, tea in front of the college fire
talking about old times? It’s all very pleasant, but come on—”

“This is the point, old thing.” Logie drew his knees up under
his chin and wrapped his hands around his shins. “Shark, Limpet,
Dolphin, Oyster, Porpoise, Winkle. The six little fishes in our
aquarium, the six German naval Enigmas. And the greatest of these
is Shark.” He stared into the fire and for the first time Jericho
was able to have a good look at his face, ghostly in the blue
light, like a skull. The eye sockets were hollows of darkness. He
looked like a man who hadn’t slept for a week. He yawned again.
“You know, I was trying to remember, in the car coming over, who
decided to call it Shark in the first place.”

“I can’t recall,” said Jericho. “I’ve an idea it was Alan. Or
maybe it was me. Anyway, what the devil does it matter? It just
emerged. Nobody argued. Shark was the perfect name for it. We could
tell at once it was going to be a monster.”

“And it was.” Logie puffed on his pipe. He was starting to
disappear in a bank of fumes. The cheap wartime tobacco smelled
like burning hay. “And it is.”

Something in the way he delivered that last word—some slight
hesitation—made Jericho look up sharply.