Enigma

Three hundred and sixty!'
    'Well, build them, then,' said Jericho, irritably, 'if you're so bloody marvellous.'
    'Oh no,' said Kramer. 'You don't understand. That's not allowed. Enigma is a British baby. Official. Any change in status has to be negotiated.'
    'Is it being negotiated?'
    'In Washington. Right now. That's where your Mr Turing is. In the meantime, we just have to take whatever you give us.'
    'But that's absurd. Why not just build the bombes anyway?'
    'Come on, Tom. Think about it for a minute. You have all the intercept stations over here. You have all the raw material. We're three thousand miles away. Damn hard to pick up Magdeburg from Florida. And what's the point in having three hundred and sixty bombes if there's nothing to put in them?'
    Jericho shut his eye sand saw Skynner's flushed face, heard his rumbling voice: 'You've no conception of this place any more . . . We're negotiating a deal with the Americans . . . You can't even conceive of the seriousness . . .' Now, at least, he understood the reason for Skynner's anger. His little empire, so painfully put together, brick by bureaucratic brick, was mortally threatened by Shark. But the threat came not from Berlin. It came from Washington.
    'Don't get me wrong,' Kramer was saying, 'I've been here a month and I think what you've all achieved is astounding. Brilliant. And nobody on our side is talking about a takeover. But it can't go on like this. Not enough bombes. Not enough typewriters. Those huts. Christ! “Was it dangerous in the war, Daddy?” “Sure was, I damned near froze to death.” Did you know the whole operation almost stopped one time because you ran out of coloured pencils? I mean, what are we saying here? That men have to die because you don't have enough pencils?'
    Jericho felt too tired to argue. Besides, he knew enough to know it was true: all true. He remembered a night, eighteen months ago, when he'd been asked to keep an eye open for strangers at the Shoulder of Mutton, standing near the door in the blackout, sipping halves of shandy, while Turing, Welchman and a couple of the other big chiefs met in a room upstairs and wrote a joint letter to Churchill. Exactly the same story: not enough clerks, not enough typists, the factory at Letchworth that made the bombes—it used to make cash registers, of all things—short of parts, short of manpower . . . There'd been one hell of a row when Churchill got the letter—a tantrum in Downing Street, careers broken, machinery shaken up—and things had improved, for a while. But Bletchley was a greedy child. Its appetite grew with the feeding. 'Nervos belli, pecuniam infinitam.' Or, as Baxter had put it, more prosaically, it all comes down to money in the end. The Poles had had to give Enigma to the British. Now the Brits would have to share it with the Yanks.
    'I can't have anything to do with this. I've got to get some sleep. Thanks for the lift.'
    He reached for the handle and this time Kramer made no attempt to stop him. He was halfway out of the door when Kramer said: 'I heard you lost your old man in the last war.'
    Jericho froze. 'Who told you that?'
    'I forget. Does it matter?'
    'No. It's not a secret.' Jericho massaged his forehead. He had a filthy headache coming on. 'It happened before I was born. He was wounded by a shell at Ypres. He lived on for a bit but he wasn't much use after that.
    He never came out of hospital. He died when I was six.'
    'What did he do? Before he got hit?'
    'He was a mathematician.'
    There was a moment's silence.
    'I'll see you around,' said Jericho. He got out of the car.
    'My brother died,' said Kramer suddenly. 'One of the first. He was in the Merchant Marine. Liberty ships.'
    Of course, thought Jericho.
    'This was during the Shark blackout, I suppose?'
    'You got it.' Kramer looked bleak, then forced a smile. 'Let's keep in touch, Tom. Anything I can do for you—just ask.'
    He reached over and pulled the door shut with a bang. Jericho stood alone on the roadside and watched as Kramer executed a rapid U-turn. The car backfired, then headed at speed up the hill towards the Park, leaving a little puff of dirty smoke hanging in the morning air.

Enigma
    THREE

    PINCH
    PINCH: (1) vb., to steal enemy cryptographic material; (2) n., any object stolen from the enemy that enhances the chances of breaking his codes or ciphers.
    A Lexicon of Cryptography ('Most Secret', Bletchley Park, 1943)

1

    BLETCHLEY WAS A railway town. The great main line from