Enigma

contact signals after 21.40.
    *
    Thus convoy KX-229 at 22.00.
    Thirty-seven merchant vessels, ranging in size from the 12,000-ton British tanker Southern Princess to the 3,500-ton American freighter Margaret Lykes, making slow progress through heavy seas, steering a course of 055 degrees, direct to England, lit up like a regatta by a full moon to a range of ten miles visibility—the first such night in the North Atlantic for weeks. Escort vessels: five, including two slow corvettes and two clapped out, elderly ex-American destroyers donated to Britain in 1940 in exchange for bases, one of which—HMS Mansfield—had lost touch with the convoy after charging down the U-boats because the convoy commander (on his first operational command) had forgotten to signal her with his second change of course. No rescue ship available. No air cover. No reinforcements within a thousand miles.
    'All in all,' said Cave, lighting a cigarette and contemplating his charts, 'what you might fairly call a bit of a cock-up.'
    The first torpedo hit at 22.01.
    At 22.32, Tom Jericho was heard to say, very quietly, 'Yes.'

3

    It was chucking-out time at the Eight Bells Inn on the Buckingham Road and Miss Jobey and Mr Bonnyman had virtually exhausted the main topic of their evening's conversation: what Bonnyman dramatically termed the 'police raid' on Mr Jericho's room.
    They had heard the details at supper from Mrs Armstrong, her face still flushed with outrage at the memory of this violation of her territory. A uniformed officer had stood guard all afternoon on the doorstep ('in full view of the entire street, mind you'), while two plain-clothes men carrying a box of tools and waving a warrant had spent the best part of three hours searching;; the upstairs back bedroom, before leaving at teatime with a pile of books. They had dismantled the bed and the wardrobe, taken up the carpet and the floorboards, and brought down a heap of soot from the chimney. 'That young man is out,' declared Mrs Armstrong, folding her hamlike arms, 'and all rent forfeit.'
    '“All rentforfeit”' repeated Bonnyman into his beer, for the sixth or seventh time. 'I love it.'
    'And such a quiet man,' said Miss Jobey.
    A handbell rang behind the bar and the lights flickered.
    'Time, gentlemen! Time, please!'
    Bonnyman finished his watery bitter, Miss Jobey her; port and lemon, and he escorted her unsteadily, past the dartboard and the hunting prints, towards the door.
    The day that Jericho had missed had given the town its first real taste of spring. Out on the pavement the night air was still mild. Darkness touched the dreary street with romance. As the departing drinkers stumbled away into the blackout, Bonnyman playfully pulled Miss Jobey towards him. They fell back slightly into a doorway. Her mouth opened on his, she pressed herself up against him, and Bonnyman squeezed her waist in return. Whatever she might have lacked in beauty—and in the blackout, who could tell?—she more than made up for in ardour. Her strong and agile tongue, sweet with port, squirmed against his teeth.
    Bonnyman, by profession a Post Office engineer, had been drafted to Bletchley, as Jericho had guessed, to service the bombes. Miss Jobey worked in the upstairs back bedroom of the mansion, filing Abwehr hand-ciphers. Neither, in accordance with regulations, had told the other what they did, a discretion which Bonnyman had extended somewhat to cover in addition the existence of a wife and two children at home in Dorking.
    His hands slipped down her narrow thighs and began to hoist her skirt.
    'Not here,' she said into his mouth, and brushed his fingers away.
    Well (as Bonnyman would afterwards confide with a wink to the unsmiling police inspector who took his statement), the things a grown man has to do in wartime, and all for a simple you-know-what.
    First, a cycle ride, which took them along a track and under a railway bridge. Then, by the thin beam of a torch, over a padlocked gate and through mud and brambles towards the hulk of a broken building. A great expanse of water somewhere close by. You couldn't see it, but you could hear the lapping in the breeze and the occasional cry of a waterfowl, and you could sense a deeper darkness, like a great black pit.
    Complaints from Miss Jobey as she snagged her precious stockings and wrenched her ankle: loud and bitter imprecations against Mr Bonnyman and all his works which did not augur well for the purpose he had in mind. She started