Chapter 43

FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, NOVEMBER 1942

What on earth is the local RAF squadron to do now that it’s too cold for the BP ladies of Woburn Abbey and Aspley Guise to go rooftop sunbathing in their skivvies? Go buzz the Frä uleins in Berlin, boys, and drop a few bombs while you’re at it. . .

One hour’s break for every eight-hour shift. Sometimes Beth and Harry were too exhausted to do anything but bolt sandwiches side by side in the canteen before heading back to their respective blocks, but more often than not they’d trade a wordless glance, make separately for the Park’s abandoned air-raid shelter, and fall on each other. It wasn’t lovemaking in there, when they were inside BP’s clock; it was fast, urgent relief. In Cambridge on days off, they could stretch out on the cot in Scopelli’s, talk, laugh—but coming together in the middle of a shift, they were both too far inside Enigma’s pathways to pull entirely free.

Beth’s mind had been knotted up for weeks in the Spy Enigma; by the time she fell into Harry’s arms on break, all she wanted was a few minutes to stop thinking. Harry was nine months into the U-boat traffic lockout; after four hours of fruitless work he’d slam into the air-raid cellar with every muscle drawn stone-hard, balanced on such a knife edge of frustration and rage that all he wanted was an outlet—an urge Beth understood perfectly. They’d take a few silent minutes to claw it all out on each other’s flesh and then trade soft, wordless kisses and go back to the code.

The code and Harry—Beth didn’t know what she’d do without either. When we win the war, people were beginning to say with increasing optimism, because the war was starting to look winnable: American troops and supplies were coming across the Atlantic despite the U-boat lockout, Hitler’s eastern advance had bogged down in the Soviet Union’s implacable ice, and something unspeakably secret was taking shape to tackle Rommel in the desert. Most people were cautiously jubilant—but when Beth heard the words When we win the war, she had to push down a surge of panic. Without a war she didn’t have this work. Without a war there was no excuse to see Harry. Without a war, would she be an unemployed spinster with a dog, forced back home because she no longer had a billet and a salary?

I feel myself cracking round the edges, Harry sometimes said quietly into her hair when they were alone. But the only thing that made Beth’s mind bend at the edges was the thought of losing all this. She could take the hours, she could take the secrecy, she could take the grueling pace, but she couldn’t take the thought that it would all someday disappear.

“Where’s Jumbo? ” someone called out as she let herself back into her section after shift break—they’d moved from the Cottage into a gothic redbrick school building adjacent to BP. Beth missed the whitewashed cottage off the stable yard, but it was too small now with so many new additions to Illicit Services Knox. Not just more new women but men (“Men in my harem, ” Dilly sighed on one of his rare visits to the section). It didn’t matter where ISK was housed or how many new people joined; the women who had broken Matapan together were still the heart of the operation. “Where’s Jumbo? ” Jean repeated, sounding agitated.

“Here. ” Beth plucked a stuffed plush elephant off her seat and handed it over for a ceremonial ear-rub. The elephant had come from Dilly, living in the cupboard until they were in the middle of a jumbo rush, and the rush had been overwhelming all through October and the start of November. Scads of Abwehr traffic about something called Operation Torch (whatever that was) drawing to a head.

“I’ll wager it’s confirmations, ” Giles speculated. He’d been moved over to ISK some weeks ago; Beth still found it strange to see him working at the desk next to hers. “If it’s really true we’ve got all the German double agents under our thumbs, we’ll be using them to feed false information back as cover-up for Torch. No good planning a big push without misdirection. Convince the Krauts the Allied convoys are heading one way, when they’re headed another. . . all this Abwehr stuff is just checking to confirm if they’re buying what we’re selling. ”

“Maybe. ” Beth was rodding for the right-hand wheel position, fast and automatic.

“You aren’t even the tiniest bit inquisitive? ”

“No. ”

“I can’t decide if you’re monumentally incurious or the purest bloody brain I’ve ever met. ” Giles linked his hands behind his head, studying her as if she were a rare scientific specimen. “Hitler’s private telegrams or the Sunday crossword—it’s all the same to you. ”

“I crack messages. I don’t interpret them. ” Beth swept her hair out of her face. “It doesn’t matter to me what I’m breaking. Why complicate things when there aren’t hardly enough hours in the day as is? ”

“Especially at my pace. ” Giles made a face. He wasn’t a bad cryptanalyst, but he’d got used to three-wheel work in his old hut, and wading through four-wheel stuff like Abwehr took him ages.

“You’re getting faster, ” Beth said charitably.

“Won’t ever be up to your speed. ” He said it without resentment, which Beth appreciated. Some of the Hut 6 men were disconcerted by the unconventional working methods of Dilly’s team. That’s not the way this is done, one of the new mathematicians had said his first week, and Giles had bounced a wad of paper off his forehead and said, You crack the Spy key all by yourself, Gerald, and I’ll do it your way. Until then I’m going to do it Beth’s way.

Beth cracked through her whole stack of messages before looking up and stretching her neck. “What else have we got? ” Giving Jumbo’s ears a rub.

Peggy brought fresh chicory coffee over. “Night shift’s done, Beth. Go home. ”

“This is what calms me down. ” Osla and Mab were leaving this morning for Coventry—it would be dull in Aspley Guise without them, and Beth would far rather work the day shift. “Give me the Hut 6 duds if there’s nothing else. ”

Peggy pushed a stack over. “More possible bombing sites—Giles has the list of city codes. ”

“Loge for London, Paula for Paris. . . ” Giles reeled them off. Beth pulled her crib sheets and rods over and began working. Not nearly so many air raids now as earlier in the war, but you never knew when a wave of German bombers would pop up like a nasty surprise out of a jack-in-the-box.

“Giles, ” Beth called over absently, some hours later. “What city is Korn code for? ”

“Korn. . . Korn. . . ” He dropped his pencil, massaging his fingers. “Coventry. Don’t tell me poor little Coventry is due for another raid? ”

“Did they get hit before? ”

“Do you live in a box? They were nearly flattened two years back. ”

Beth stared at the jumble of German words coming out of the message before her. She still didn’t speak German, but there were words she saw often enough to recognize. She looked at this one and she saw Korn and numbers that might be coordinates. . . and then her eyes caught on the raid’s attack date. 8 November.

“Giles, ” Beth said slowly, “what day is it today? ”

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