Enigma

following and was flashing its headlights, ordering them to pull over.
    Until this moment, Jericho's encounters with the police had been rare, brief and invariably marked by those exaggerated displays of mutual respect customary between the guardians of the law and the lawful middle classes. But this one would be different, he saw that at once. An unauthorised journey between secret locations, without proof of ownership of the car, without petrol coupons, at a time when the country was being scoured for a missing woman: what would that earn them? A trip to the local police station, for sure. A lot of questions. A telephone call to Bletchley. A body search.
    It didn't bear contemplating.
    And so, to his astonishment, he found himself measuring the road ahead, like a long-jumper at the start of his run. The red roofs and the grey church spire of Stony Stratford had begun to poke above the distant line of trees.
    Hester grabbed the edges of her seat. He jammed his foot down hard to the floor.
    The Austin gathered speed slowly, as in a nightmare, and the police car, responding to the challenge, began to gain on them. The speedometer climbed past forty, to fifty, to fifty-five, to nearly sixty. The countryside seemed to be racing directly at them, only swerving at the last second to flash by narrowly on either side. A main road appeared ahead. They had to stop. And if Jericho had been an experienced driver that is what he would have done, police or no police. But he hesitated until there was nothing he could do but brake as hard as he dared, change down into second gear and yank the steering wheel hard left. The engine screamed. They spun and cornered on two tyres, he and Hester pitched sideways by the force. The clanging bell was drowned by the roar of an engine and suddenly the radiator grille of a tank transporter was rushing to fill the rear-view, mirror. Its bumper touched them. An outraged blast from its hooter, as loud as a foghorn, seemed to blow them forwards. They shot across the bridge over the Grand Union Canal and a swan turned lazily to watch them and then they were doglegging through the market town—right, left, right, shuddering over cobbled alleys, the wheel shaking in Jericho's hands—anything to get off this wretched Roman road. Abruptly the houses receded and they were out in open country again, running alongside the canal. A narrowboat was being towed by a weary carthorse. The bargeman, lying stretched out beside the tiller, raised his hat to them.
    'Left here,' said Hester, and they swung away from the canal into a lane that was not much better than the forest track: just two strips of potholed, tarmaced road, extending ahead like tyre tracks, separated by a mound of grass that scraped the bottom of the car. Hester turned and knelt on her seat, staring out of the back window for any sign of the police, but the countryside had closed behind them like a jungle. Jericho drove on slowly for two miles. They passed through a tiny hamlet. A mile the other side of it a space had been dug out to allow cars—or, more likely, carts—to pass one another. He drove up into it and switched off the engine.
    They did not have much time.
    Jericho kept watch on the lane while she changed in the back seat of the Austin. According to the map, they were only about a mile due west of Shenley Brook End and she was insistent she could make it back to the cottage on foot across open country before dark. He marvelled at her nerve. To him, after the encounter with the police, everything had taken on a sinister aspect: the trees gesticulating at one another in the wind, the patches of dense shadow now gathering at the edges of the fields, the rooks that had erupted, cawing, from their nests and were now circling high above them.
    'Can't we read them?' Hester had asked, after they had parked. He had taken the cryptograms from his pocket so that they could decide what to do with them. 'Come on, Tom. We can't just burn them. If she thought she could read them, why can't we?'
    Oh, a dozen reasons, Hester. A hundred. But here were three to be going on with. First, they would need the Vulture settings that were in use on the days the signals were sent.
    'I can try to get those,' she had said. 'They must be in Hut 6 somewhere.'
    Very well, maybe she could. But even if she managed it, they would still need several hours to themselves on a Type-X machine—and not one of the Type-Xs in Hut 8, either, because naval Enigmas were wired