Enigma

towards them.
    'So there you are. I was just coming to find you. Hello, Guy. Hello, Tom. How are you? Hardly recognised you. Upright.' Baxter had a cigarette in his mouth and didn't bother to remove it, so it bobbed as he spoke and sprayed ash down the front of his pullover. Before the war he had been a lecturer at the London School of Economics.
    'What have we got?' said Logie, nodding towards the closed door.
    'Our American “lee-ay-son officer”, plus another American—some big shot from the Navy. A man in a suit—a lounge lizard from Intelligence by the look of him. Three from our Navy, of course, one of them an admiral. All up from London specially.'
    'An admiral?' Logie's hand went automatically to his tie and Jericho noticed he had changed into a pre-war double-breasted suit. He licked his fingers and tried to plaster down his hair. 'I don't like the sound of an admiral. And how's Skynner?'
    'At the moment? I'd say heavily out-gunned.' Baxter was staring at Jericho. The corners of his mouth twitched down briefly, the nearest Jericho had seen him come to a smile. 'Well, well, I suppose you don't look too bad, Tom.'
    'Now, Alec, don't you go upsetting him.'
    I'm fine, Alec, thank you. How's the revolution?'
    'Coming along, comrade. Coming along.'
    Logie patted Jericho on the arm. 'Don't say anything when we get inside, Tom. You're only here for show, old love.'
    Only here for show, thought Jericho, what the hell does that mean? But before he could ask, Logie had opened the door and all he could hear was Skynner -'we must expect these setbacks from time to time' -and they were on.
    There were eight men in the room. Leonard Skynner, the head of the Naval Section, sat at one end of the table, with Atwood to his right and an empty chair to his left, which Baxter promptly reclaimed. Gathered around the other end were five officers in dark blue naval uniform, two of them American and three British. One of the British officers, a lieutenant, had an eye-patch. They looked grim.
    The eighth man had his back to Jericho. He turned as they came in and Jericho briefly registered a lean face with fair hair.
    Skynner stopped speaking. He stood and held out a meaty hand. 'Come in Guy, come in Tom.' He was a big square-faced man with thick black hair and wide bushy eyebrows that almost met above the bridge of his nose and reminded Jericho of the Morse code symbol for M. He beckoned to the newcomers eagerly, obviously thankful to see Allied reinforcements. 'This is Guy Logie,' he said to the admiral, 'our chief cryptanalyst, and Tom Jericho, of whom you may have heard. Tom was instrumental in getting us into Shark just before Christmas.'
    The admiral's leathery old face was immobile. He was smoking a cigarette—they were all smoking cigarettes except for Skynner—and he regarded Jericho, as did the Americans, blankly, through a fog of tobacco, without the slightest interest. Skynner rattled off the introductions, his arm sweeping round the table like the hand of a clock. 'This is Admiral Trowbridge. Lieutenant Cave. Lieutenant Villiers. Commander Hammerbeck -' the older of the two Americans nodded '—Lieutenant Kramer, US Navy Liaison. Mr Wigram is observing for the cabinet Office.' Skynner gave a little bow to everybody and sat down again. He was sweating.
    Jericho and Logie each collected a folding chair from a stack beside the table and took up positions next to Baxter.
    Almost the whole of the wall behind the admiral was taken up by a map of the North Atlantic. Clusters of coloured discs showed the positions of Allied convoys and their escorts: yellow for the merchantmen, green for the warships. Black triangles marked the suspected whereabouts of German U-boats. Beneath the chart was a red telephone, a direct link to the Submarine Tracking Room in the basement of the Admiralty. The only other decoration on the whitewashed walls was a pair of framed photographs. One was of the King, signed, looking nervous, presented after a recent visit. The other was of Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, commander in chief of the German Navy: Skynner liked to think of himself as locked in a personal battle with the wily Hun.
    Now, though, he seemed to have lost the thread of what he was saying. He sorted through his notes and in the time it took Logie and Jericho to take their places, one of the Royal Navy men—Cave, the one with the eye-patch—received a nod from the admiral and started speaking.
    'Perhaps, if you've finished outlining