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Enigma

Enigma

Titel: Enigma Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Robert Harris
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discovered that the metal catch, weakened by rust, had been snapped clean off. Part of the wooden window frame around it was splintered.
    She stood in the cold and considered the implications and quickly concluded there was only one plausible explanation. The dark-haired man who had appeared from behind the cottage on her return from church had obviously been in the process of breaking in.
    They had told her there was nothing to worry about. But if there was nothing to worry about, why had they been prepared to force entry into the house?
    She shivered and drew the shawl around her.
    'Oh Claire,' she said aloud, 'oh, Claire, you silly, stupid, stupid girl, what have you done?'
    She used a piece of blackout tape to try and secure the window. Then, still holding the poker, she went back upstairs and into Claire's room. A silver fox was hanging over the end of the bed, its glass-bead eyes staring, its needle teeth bared. Out of habit, she folded it neatly and placed it on the shelf where it normally lived. The room was such an expression of Claire, such an extravagance of colour and fabric and scent, that it seemed to resonate with her presence, even now, when she was away, to hum with it, like the last vibrations of a tuning fork . . . Claire, holding some ridiculous dress to herself and laughing and asking her what she thought, and Hester pretending to frown with an older sister's disapproval. Claire, as moody as an adolescent, on her stomach on the bed, leafing through a pre-war Tatler. Claire combing Hester's hair (which, when she let it down, fell almost to her waist), running her brush through it with slow and languorous strokes that made Hester's limbs turn weak. Claire insisting on painting Hester in her make-up, dressing her up like a doll and standing back in mock surprise: 'Why, darling, you're beautiful! Claire, in nothing but a pair of white silk knickers and a string of pearls, prancing about the room in search of something, long-legged as an athlete, turning and seeing that Hester was secretly watching her in the mirror, catching the look in her eyes, and standing there for a moment, hip thrust forward, arms outstretched, with a smile that was something between an invitation and a taunt, before sweeping back into motion . . .
    And on that cold, bright Sabbath afternoon, Hester Wallace, the clergyman's daughter, leaned against the wall and closed her eyes and pressed her hand between her legs with shame.
    An instant later the noise from the kitchen started again and she thought her heart might burst with panic. She fled across the landing and into her room, pursued by the dry whine of the vicar of St Mary's—or was it really the voice of her father?—reciting from the Book of Proverbs:
    'For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell ...'

6

    For the first time in more than a month, Tom Jericho found that he was busy.
    He had to supervise the copying of the Short Signal Code Book, six typewritten transcripts of which were duly produced and stamped MOST SECRET. Every line had to be checked, for a single error could spell the difference between a successful break and days of failure. The intercept controllers had to be briefed. Teleprintered orders had to be sent to all the duty officers of every Hut 8 listening post—from Thurso, clinging to the cliffs on the northernmost tip of Scotland, right down to St Erth, near Land's End. Their brief was simple: concentrate everything you have on the known Atlantic U-boat frequencies, cancel all leave, bring in the lame and the sick and the blind if you have to, and pay even greater attention than usual to very short bursts of Morse preceded by E-bar—dot dot dash dot dot—the Germans' priority code which cleared the wavelength for convoy contact reports. Not one such signal was to be missed, understand? Not one.
    From the Registry, Jericho withdrew three months' worth of Shark decrypts to bring himself back up to speed, and, that afternoon, sitting in his old place by the window in the Big Room, proved by slide-rule calculation what he already knew by instinct: that seventeen convoy contact reports, if harvested in the same twenty-four-hour stretch, would yield eighty-five letters of cipher encode which might—might, if the cryptanalysts had the requisite percentage of luck—give them a break into

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