Enigma

the back.
    Puck was their mascot, their touch of glamour, their link with the adventure of war. He had arrived in the first week to brief them on the Polish bombe, then flown back to Poland. When Poland fell he had fled to France, and when France collapsed he had escaped across the Pyrenees. Romantic stories clustered around him: that he had hidden from the Germans in a goatherd's cottage, that he had smuggled himself aboard a Portuguese steamer and ordered the captain to sail to England at pistol-point. When he had popped up again in Bletchley in the winter of 1940 it was Pinker, the Shakespearian, who had shortened his name to Puck ('that merry wanderer of the night'). His mother was British, which explained his almost perfect English, distinctive only because he pronounced it so carefully.
    'You have come to give us assistance?'
    'So it seems.' He shyly disengaged himself from Puck's embrace. 'For what it's worth.'
    'Splendid, splendid.' Logie regarded them fondly for a moment, then began rummaging among the litter on his desk. 'Now where is that thing? It was here this morning'
    Puck nodded at Logie's back and whispered: 'Do you see, Tom? As organised as ever.'
    'Now, now, Puck, I heard that. Let me see. Is this it? No. Yes. Yes!'
    He turned and handed Jericho a typewritten document, officially stamped and headed 'By Order of the War Office'. It was a billeting notice, served on a Mrs Ethel Armstrong, entitling Jericho to lodgings in the Commercial Guesthouse, Albion Street, Bletchley.
    I'm afraid I don't know what it's like, old thing. Best I could do.'
    'I'm sure it's fine.' Jericho folded the chit and stuffed it into his pocket. Actually, he was quite sure it warn't fine—the last decent rooms in Bletchley had disappeared three years ago, and people now had to travel in from as far away as Bedford, twenty miles distant—but what was the point in complaining? On past experience he wouldn't be using the room much anyway, except to sleep in.
    'Now don't you go exhausting yourself, my boy,' said Logie. 'We don't expect you to work a full shift. Nothing like that. You just come and go as you please. What we want from you is what you gave us last time. Insight. Inspiration. Spotting that something we've all missed. Isn't that so, Puck?'
    'Absolutely.' His handsome face was more haggard than Jericho had ever seen it, more tired even than Logie's. 'God knows, Tom, we are certainly up against it.'
    'I take it then we're no further forward?' said Logie. 'No good news I can give our lord and master?'
    Puck shook his head.
    'Not even a glimmer?'
    'Not even that.'
    'No. Well, why should there be? Damn bloody admirals! Logie screwed up the message slip, aimed it at his rubbish bin and missed. 'I'd show you round myself, Tom, but the Skynner waits for no man, as you'll recall. All right with you, Puck? Give him the grand tour?'
    'Of course, Guy. As you wish.'
    Logie ushered them out into the passage and tried to lock the door, then gave up on it. As he turned he opened his mouth and Jericho nerved himself for one of Logie's excruciating housemaster's pep talks -something about innocent lives depending on them, and the need for them to do their best, and the race being not to the swift nor the battle to the strong (he had actually said this once)—but instead his mouth just widened into a yawn.
    'Oh, dear. Sorry, old thing. Sorry.'
    He shuffled off down the corridor, patting his pockets to make sure he had his pipe and tobacco pouch. They heard him mutter again, something about 'bloody admirals', and he was gone.
    Hut 8 was thirty-five yards long by ten wide and Jericho could have toured it in his sleep, probably had toured it in his sleep, for all he knew. The outside walls were thin and the damp from the lake seemed to rise through the floorboards so that at night the rooms were chilly, cast in a sepia glow by bare, low-wattage bulbs. The furniture was mostly trestle tables and folding wooden chairs. It reminded Jericho of a church hall on a winter's night. All that was missing was a badly tuned piano and somebody thumping out 'Land of Hope and Glory'.
    It was laid out like an assembly line, the main stage in a process that originated somewhere far out in the darkness, maybe two thousand miles away, when the grey hull of a U-boat rose close to the surface and squirted off a radio message to its controllers. The signals were intercepted at various listening-posts and teleprintered to Bletchley and within ten minutes of