Enigma

second U-boat had just sent a contact signal, he felt himself personally responsible.
    SOUY YTRQ
    At 11.40, a third U-boat began to shadow the convoy, at 12.20, a fourth, and suddenly Jericho had seven signals on his desk. He was conscious of people coming up and looking over his shoulder—Logie with his burning hayrick of a pipe and the meaty smell and heavy breathing of Skynner. He didn't look round. He didn't talk. The outside world had melted for him. Even Claire was just a phantom now. There were only the loops of letters, forming and stretching out towards him from the grey Atlantic, multiplying on his sheets of paper, turning into thin chains of possibility in his mind.
    They didn't stop for breakfast, nor for lunch. Minute by minute, throughout the afternoon, the cryptanalysts followed, at third hand, the progress of the chase two thousand miles away. The commander of the convoy was signalling to the Admiralty, the Admiralty had an open line to Cave, and Cave would shout each time a fresh development looked like affecting the hunt for cribs.
    Two signals came at 13.40—one a short contact report, the other longer, almost certainly originating from the U-boat that had started the hunt. Both were for the first time close enough to be fixed by direction finders on board the convoy's own escorts. Cave listened gravely for a minute, then announced that HMS Mansfield, a destroyer, was being dispatched from the main body of merchantmen to attack the U-boats.
    'The convoy's just made an emergency turn to the southeast. She's going to try to shake off the hearses while Mansfield forces them under.'
    Jericho looked up. 'What course is she steering?'
    'What course is she steering?' repeated Cave into the telephone. 'I said,' he yelled, 'what fucking course is she steering?' He winced at Jericho. The receiver was jammed tight to his scarred ear. 'All right. Yes. Thank you. Convoy steering 118 degrees.' Jericho reached for the Short Signal Code Book.
    'Will they manage to get away?' asked Baxter.
    Cave bent over his chart with a rule and protractor. 'Maybe. It's what I'd do in their place.'
    A quarter of an hour passed and nothing happened.
    'Perhaps they have done it,' said Puck. 'Then what do we do?'
    Cave said: 'How much more material do you need?'
    Jericho counted through the signals. 'We've got nine. We need another twenty. Another twenty-five would be better.'
    'Jesus!' Cave regarded them with disgust. 'It's like sitting with a flock of carrion.'
    Somewhere behind them a telephone managed half a ring before it was snatched out of its cradle. Logie came in a moment later, still writing.
    'That was St Erith reporting an E-bar signal at 49.4 degrees north, 38.1 degrees west.'
    'New location,' said Cave, studying his charts. He made a cross, then threw his pencil down and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his face. 'All she's managed to do is run straight from one hearse into another. Which is what? The fifth? Christ, the sea must be teeming with them.'
    'She isn't going to get away,' said Puck, 'is she?'
    'Not a chance. Not if they're coming in from all around her.'
    A Wren moved among the cryptanalysts, doling out the latest cryptogram: BKEL UUXS.
    Ten signals. Five U-boats in contact.
    'Grid square?'said Jericho.
    Hester Wallace was not a poker player, which was a mistake on her part as she had been blessed with a poker face that could have made her a fortune. Nobody watching her wheel her bicycle into the shed beside the canteen that afternoon, or seeing her flick her pass at the sentry, or squeezing up against the corridor wall in Hut 6 to let her march by, or sitting opposite her in Intercept Control—nobody would have guessed the turmoil in her mind.
    Her complexion was, as ever, pale, her forehead slightly creased by a frown that discouraged conversation. She wore her long, dark hair like a headache, savagely twisted up and speared. Her costume was the usual uniform of the West Country schoolmistress: flat shoes, grey woollen stockings, plain grey skirt, white shirt and an elderly but well-cut tweed jacket which she would shortly take off and hang over the back of the chair, for the afternoon was warm. Her fingers moved across the blist in a short, staccato pecking motion. She had hardly slept all night.
    Name of intercept station, time of interception, frequency, call sign, letter groups.
    Where was the record of settings kept? That was the first matter to determine. Not in Control, obviously. Not in the