Enigma

she added shrewdly, 'who shall I say was looking for her?'
    'Auf Wiedersehen, Fraulein Monk.' Weitzman had had enough. He was already half out of the room, pulling Jericho after him with surprising force. Jericho had a last vision of Miss Monk, standing bewildered and suspicious, before the door closed on her schoolroom German.
    'Auf Wiedersehen, HerrDoktor, undHerr. . .'
    Weitzman didn't lead Jericho back the way they had come. Instead he bundled him out of the rear exit. Now, in the cold daylight, Jericho could see why he had found it so difficult stumbling around out here the other night. They were on the edge of a building site. Trenches had been carved four feet deep into the grass. Pyramids of sand and gravel were covered in a white mould of frost. It was a miracle he hadn't broken his neck.
    Weitzman shook a cigarette out of a crumpled pack of Passing Clouds and lit it. He leaned against the wall of the hut and exhaled a sigh of steam and smoke. 'Useless for me to ask, I suppose, what in God's name is going on?'
    'You don't want to know, Walter. Believe me.'
    'Troubles of the heart?'
    'Something like that.'
    Weitzman mumbled a couple of words in Yiddish that might have been a curse and continued to smoke.
    About thirty yards away, a group of workmen were huddled around a brazier, finishing a tea break. They dispersed reluctantly, trailing pickaxes and spades across the hard ground, and Jericho had a sudden memory of himself as a boy, holding hands with his mother, walking along a seaside promenade, his spade clattering on the concrete road behind him. Somewhere beyond the trees, a generator kicked into life sending a scattering of rooks cawing into the sky.
    'Walter, what's the German Book Room?'
    'I'd better get back,' said Weitzman. He licked the ends of his thumb and forefinger and nipped off the glowing tip of his cigarette, slipping the unsmoked portion into his breast pocket. Tobacco was far too precious to waste even a few shreds.
    'Please, Walter . . .'
    'Ach!' Weitzman made a sudden gesture of disgust with his arm, as if sweeping Jericho aside, and began making his way, unsteadily but wonderfully quickly for a man of his age, down the side of the hut towards the path. Jericho had to scramble to keep pace with him.
    'You ask too much, you know—'
    'I know I do.'
    'I mean, my God, Coker already suspects I am a Nazi spy. Can you believe that? I may be a Jew, but for him one German is no different from another. Which, of course, is precisely our argument. I suppose I should be flattered.'
    'I wouldn't—it's just—there's nobody else . . .'
    A pair of sentries with rifles rounded the corner and strolled towards them. Weitzman clamped his jaw shut and abruptly turned right off the path towards the tennis court. Jericho followed him. Weitzman opened the gate and they stepped on to the asphalt. The court had been put in—at Churchill's personal instigation, so it was said—two years earlier. It hadn't been used since the autumn. The white lines were barely visible beneath the frost. Drifts of leaves had collected against the chain-link fence. Weitzman closed the gate after them and walked towards the net post.
    'It's all changed since we started, Tom. Nine-tenths of the people in the hut I don't even know any more.' He kicked moodily at the leaves and Jericho noticed for the first time how small his feet were; dancer's feet. 'I've grown old in this place. I can remember a time when we thought we were geniuses if we read fifty messages a week. Do you know what the rate is now?'
    Jericho shook his head.
    Three thousand a day.'
    'Good God.' That's a hundred and twenty-five an hour, thought Jericho, that's one every thirty seconds . . .
    'Is she in trouble, then, your girl?'
    'I think so. I mean, yes—yes, she is.'
    I'm sorry to hear it. I like her. She laughs at my jokes. Women who laugh at my jokes must be cherished. Especially if they are young. And pretty.'
    'Walter. . .'
    Weitzman turned towards Hut 3. He had chosen his ground well, with the instinct of a man who has been forced at some time, as a matter of personal survival, to learn how to find privacy. Nobody could come up behind them without entering the tennis court. Nobody could approach from the front without being seen. And if anyone was watching from a distance -well, what was there to see but two old colleagues, having a private chat?
    'It's organised like a factory line.' He curled his fingers into the wire netting. His hands were white with