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Enigma

Enigma

Titel: Enigma Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Robert Harris
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'I could do with a refresher myself. We could go up together.'
    'Together? Yes ... Why not? And find a little pub somewhere we could stop off for lunch?'
    'Excellent. Make a real break of it.'
    'Possibly a pub with rooms, so we could stay overnight if it got late?'
    He laughed nervously. 'I still couldn't guarantee a transfer, you know.'
    'But it would help?'
    'Your words.'
    'Miles?'
    'Mmmm?'
    'I'd rather die.'
    'Frigid little bitch.'
    She filled the basin with cold water and splashed her face furiously. The icy water numbed her hands and stung her face. It trickled down inside the neck of her shirt and up the sleeves. She welcomed the shock and the discomfort. She deserved it as a punishment for her folly and delusion.
    She pressed her flat stomach against the edge of the basin and stared myopically at the chalk-white face in the mirror.
    Useless to complain, of course. It was her word against his. She would never be believed. And even if she was—so what? My dear, it was simply the way of the world. Miles could ram her up against Lake bloody Titicaca if he liked, and put his hand up her skirt, and they'd still never let her go: nobody, once they'd seen as much as she had, was ever allowed to leave.
    She felt a pricking of self-pity in the corners of her eyes and immediately lowered her head back over the basin and drenched her face, scrubbing at her cheeks and mouth with a sliver of carbolic soap until the powder stained the water pink.
    She wished she could talk to Claire.
    'ADU, Miss Wallace. . .'
    Behind her in the cubicle the toilet flushed. Hurriedly, she pulled the plug out of the basin and dried her face and hands.
    Name of intercept station, time of interception, frequency, call sign, letter groups ... Name of intercept station, time of interception, frequency, call sign, letter groups.. .
    Hester's hand moved mechanically across the paper.
    At four o'clock the first half of the night-shift began drifting off to the canteen.
    'Coming, Hetty?'
    'Too much to do, unfortunately. I'll catch you up.'
    'Poor you!'
    'Poor you and bloody Miles,' said Beryl McCann, who had been to bed with Mermagen, once, and wished to God she hadn't.
    Hester bent her head lower over her desk and continued to write in her careful schoolmistress copperplate. She watched the other women putting on their coats and filing out, their shoes clumping on the wooden floor. Ah, but Claire had been so funny about them. It was one of the things Hester loved in her the most, the way she mimicked everyone: Anthea Leigh-Delamere, the huntswoman, who liked to come on shift in jodhpurs; Binnie with the waxy skin who wanted to be a Catholic nun; the girl from Solihull who held the telephone a foot away from her mouth because her mother had told her the receiver was full of germs ... As far as Hester knew, Claire had never even met Miles Mermagen, yet she could impersonate him to perfection. The ghastliness of Bletchley had been their shared and private joke, their conspiracy against the bores.
    The opening of the outside door let in a sudden blast of freezing air. Blists and hankies rustled and fluttered in the chill.
    Bores. Boring. Claire's favourite words. The Park was boring. The war was boring. The town was terrifically boring. And the men were the biggest bores of all. The men—my God, what scent was it she gave off?—there were always two or three of them at least, hanging round her like tomcats on heat. And how she mocked them, on those precious evenings when she and Hester were alone together, sitting companionably by the fireside like an old married couple. She mocked their clumsy fumblings, their corny dialogue, their absurd self-importance. The only man she didn't mock, now Hester came to think of it, was the curious Mr Jericho, whom she had never even mentioned.
    'ADU, Miss Wallace. . .'.
    Now that she had made up her mind to do it—and hadn't she always known, secretly, that she was going to do it?—she was astonished at how calm she felt. It would only be the briefest of glances, she told herself, and where was the harm in that? She even had the perfect excuse to slip across to the Index, for hadn't the beastly Miles, in everybody's hearing, commanded her to ensure the volumes were all arranged in proper order?
    She finished the blist and slotted it into the rack. She forced herself to wait a decent interval, pretending to check the others' work, and then moved as casually as she could towards the Index Room.

2

    Jericho drew back

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