Enigma

walk-in cupboard on the right, immediately next to the entrance, now had a nameplate on it: 'Lt. Kramer US Navy Liaison Officer'.
    Familiar faces loomed towards him. Kingcome and Proudfoot were whispering together outside the Catalogue Room and drew back to let him pass. He nodded to them. They nodded in return but didn't speak. Atwood hurried out of the Crib Room, saw Jericho, gawped, then put his head down. He muttered, 'Hello, Tom,' then almost ran towards Research.
    Clearly, nobody had ever expected to see him again. He was an embarrassment. A dead man. A ghost.
    Logie was oblivious, both to the general astonishment and to Jericho's discomfort. 'Hello, everybody.' He waved to Atwood. 'Hello, Frank. Look who's back! The prodigal returns! Give them a smile, Tom, old thing, it's not a ruddy funeral. Not yet, anyway.' He stopped outside his office and fiddled with his key for half a minute, then discovered the door was unlocked. 'Come in, come in.'
    The room was scarcely bigger than a broom store. It had been Turing's cubbyhole until just before the break into Shark, when Turing had been sent to America. Now Logie had it—his tiny perquisite of rank—and he looked absurdly huge as he bent over his desk, like an adult poking around in a child's den. There was a fireproof safe in one corner, leaking intercepts, and a rubbish bin labelled CONFIDENTIAL WASTE. There was a telephone with a red handset. Paper was everywhere—on the floor, on the table, on the top of the radiator where it had baked crisp and yellow, in wire baskets and in box files, in tall stacks and in piles that had subsided into fans.
    'Bugger, bugger, bugger.' Logie had a message slip in his hands and was frowning at it. He took his pipe out of his pocket and chewed on the stem. He seemed to have forgotten Jericho's presence until Jericho coughed to remind him.
    'What? Oh. Sorry, old love.' He traced the words of the message with his pipe. 'The Admiralty's a bit exercised, apparently. Conference in A-Block at eight o'clock with Navy brass up from Whitehall. Want to know the score. Skynner's in a spin and demands to see me forthwith. Bugger, bugger.'
    'Does Skynner know I'm back?' Skynner was the head of Bletchley's Naval Section. He'd never cared for Jericho, probably because Jericho had never concealed his opinion of him: that he was a bombast and a bully whose chief war aim was to greet the peace as Sir Leonard Skynner, OBE, with a seat on the Security Executive and a lease on an Oxford mastership. Jericho had a vague memory of actually telling Skynner some of this, or all of it, or possibly more, shortly before he was sent back to Cambridge to recover his senses.
    'Of course he knows you're back, old thing. I had to clear it with him first.'
    'And he doesn't mind?'
    'Mind? No. 'The man's desperate. He'd do anything to get back into Shark.' Logie added quickly: 'Sorry, I don't mean . . . that's not to say that bringing you back is an act of desperation. Only, well, you know . . .' He sat down heavily and looked again at the message. He rattled his pipe against his worn yellow teeth. 'Bugger, bugger, bugger'
    Looking at him then it occurred to Jericho that he knew almost nothing about Logie. They had worked together for two years, would regard themselves as friends, yet they'd never had a proper conversation. He didn't know if Logie was married, or if he had a girl.
    'I'd better go and see him, I suppose. Excuse me, old love.'
    Logie squeezed past his desk and shouted down the corridor: 'Puck!' Jericho could hear the cry being taken up somewhere in the recesses of the hut by another voice. 'Puck!' And then another: 'Puck! Puck!'
    Logie ducked his head back into the office. 'One analyst per shift co-ordinates the Shark attack. Puck this shift, Baxter next, then Pettifer.' His head disappeared again. 'Ah-ha, here he comes. Come on, old thing. Look alive. I've a surprise for you. See who's in here.'
    'So there you are, my dear Guy,' came a familiar voice from the corridor. 'Nobody knew where to find you.'
    Adam Pukowski slid his lithe frame past Logie, saw Jericho and stopped dead. He was genuinely shocked. Jericho could almost see his mind struggling to regain control of his features, forcing his famous smile back on to his face. At last he managed it. He even threw his arms round Jericho and hugged him. 'Tom, it's ... I had begun to think you were never returning. It's marvellous.'
    'It's good to see you again, Puck.' Jericho patted him politely on