Enigma

cryptanalyst from the Japanese section who had bathed naked in the lake one lunchtime. By comparison, Jericho was as conventional as an accountant.
    He opened the door to the cellar passage. The bulb must have blown since his last visit and he found himself peering into a darkness as chill and black as a catacomb. Something gleamed very faintly at the foot of the stairs and he groped his way down the steps towards it. It was the keyhole to the Black Museum, traced in luminous paint: a trick they had learned in the Blitz.
    Inside the room the light switch worked. He unlocked the safe and replaced the code book and for a moment he was seized by the crazy notion of hiding the stolen cryptograms inside it as well. Folded into an envelope they might pass unnoticed for months. But when, after tonight, was he likely to pass this way again? And one day they would be discovered. And then all it would take would be a telephone call to Beaumanor and everything would be unravelled—his involvement, Hester's...
    No, no.
    He closed the steel door.
    But still he couldn't quite bring himself to leave. So much of his life was here. He touched the safe and then the rough, dry walls. He drew his finger through the dust on the table. He contemplated the row of Enigmas on the metal shelf. They were all encased in light wood, mostly in their original German boxes, and even in repose they seemed to exude a compelling, almost menacing power. These were far more than mere machines, he thought. These were the synapses of the enemy's brain—mysterious, complex, animate.
    He stared at them for a couple of minutes, then began to turn away.
    He stopped himself.
    'Tom Jericho,' he whispered. 'You bloody fool.'
    The first two Enigmas he lifted down and inspected turned out to be badly damaged and unusable. The third had a luggage label attached to its handle by a bit of string: 'Sidi Bou Zid 14/2/43'. An Afrika Korps Enigma, captured by the Eighth Army during their attack on Rommel last month. He laid it carefully on the table and unfastened the metal clasps. The lid opened easily.
    This one was in perfect condition: a beauty. The letters on the keys were unworn, the black metal casing unscratched, the glass bulbs clear and gleaming. The three rotors—stopped, he saw, at ZDE—glinted silver beneath the naked light. He stroked it tenderly. It must only just have left its makers. 'Chiffreirmaschine Gesellschaft,' read their label. 'Heimsoeth und Rinke, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, Uhlandstrasse 138.'
    He pushed a key. It was stiffer than on a normal typewriter. When he had depressed it far enough, the machine emitted a clunk and the right-hand rotor moved on a notch. At the same time, one of the bulbs lit Up.
    Hallelujah!
    The battery was charged. The Enigma was live.
    He checked the mechanism. He stooped and typed C. The letter J lit up. He typed L and got a U. A, I, R and E yielded, successively, X, P, Q and Q again.
    He lifted the Enigma's inner lid and detached the spindle, set the rotors back at ZDE and locked them into place. He typed the cryptogram JUXPQQ and C-L-A-I-R-E was spelled out letter by letter on the bulbs in little bursts of light.
    He fumbled through his pockets for his watch. Two minutes to twelve.
    He folded the lid back into place and hoisted the Enigma up on its shelf. He made sure to lock the door behind him.
    To the people whom he ran past in the mansion's corridors, who was he? Nothing. Nobody. Just another peculiar cryptanalyst in a flap.
    Hester Wallace, as agreed, was in the telephone box at midnight, the receiver in her hand, feeling more foolish than afraid as she pretended to make a call. Beyond the glass, two currents of pale sparks were flowing quietly in the dark, as one shift streamed in from the main gate and the other ebbed towards it. In her pocket was a sheet of Bletchley's wood-flecked, brownish notepaper on which were jotted six entries.
    Cordingley had swallowed her story whole—indeed, he had been, if anything, a little too eager to help. Unable at first to locate the relevant file, he had called in aid a pimply, jug-eared youth with wispy yellow hair. Could this child, she had wondered, this foetus-face, really be a cryptanalyst? But Donald had whispered yes, he was one of the best: now the professions and the universities had all been picked over, they were turning to boys straight out of school. Unformed. Unquestioning. The new elite.
    The file had been procured, a space cleared in a corner, and never had