Enigma

from one patronising male to another, for ever being told what I am and am not allowed to know. Well, that ends here.' She pointed to the flagstone floor.
    'Miss Wallace,' said Jericho, catching the same tone of cool formality, 'I came in answer to your note. I have no interest in alabaster figurework—medieval, Victorian or ancient Chinese, come to that. If you've nothing else to tell me, good morning to you.'
    'Then good morning.'
    'Good morning.'
    If he'd had a hat he would have raised it.
    He turned and began his progress down the aisle towards the door. You fool, said a voice at his inner ear, you bloody conceited fool. By the time he'd gone half way his pace had slowed and by the time he reached the font he stopped. His shoulders sagged.
    'Checkmate, I believe, Mr Jericho,' she called cheerfully from beside the altar.
    'ADU was the call sign on a series of four intercepts our . . . mutual friend . . . stole from Hut 3.' His voice was weary.
    'How do you know she stole them?'
    'They were hidden in her bedroom. Under the floorboards. As far as I know, we're not encouraged to take our work home.'
    'Where are they now?'
    'I burned them.'
    They were sitting in the second row of pews, side by side, facing straight ahead. Anyone coming into the church would have thought it was a confession—she playing the priest and he the sinner.
    'Do you think she's a spy?'
    'I don't know. Her behaviour is suspicious, to put it charitably. Others seem to think she is.'
    'Who?'
    'A man from the Foreign Office called Wigram, for one.'
    'Why?'
    'Obviously because she's disappeared.'
    'Oh, come. There must be more to it than that. All this fuss for one missed shift?'
    He ran his hand nervously through his hair.
    'There are . . . indications—and don't, for God's sake, ask me to tell you what they are—just indications, all right, that the Germans may suspect Enigma is being broken.'
    A long pause.
    'But why would our mutual friend wish to help the Germans?
    'If I knew that, Miss Wallace, I wouldn't be sitting here with you, passing the time of day breaking the Official Secrets Act. Now, really, please, have you heard enough?'
    Another pause. A reluctant nod of the head.
    'Enough.'
    She told it like story, in a low voice, without looking at him. She used her hands a lot, he noticed. She couldn't keep them still. They fluttered like tiny white birds -now pecking at the hem of her coat, pulling it demurely across her knees, now perching on the back of the pew in front, now describing, in rapid, circling motions, how she had gone about her crime.
    She waits until the other girls have gone off on their meal break.
    She leaves the door to the Index Room open a fraction, so as not to look suspicious and to ensure a good warning of anyone's approach.
    She reaches up to the dusty metal shelf and drags down the first volume.
    AAA, AAB, AAC . . .
    She flicks through to the tenth page.
    And there it is. The thirteenth entry.
    ADU.
    She runs her finger along the line to the row and column entries and notes their numbers on a scrap of paper.
    She puts the index volume back. The row ledger is on a higher shelf and she has to fetch a stool to get it.
    She stops off on her way to bob her head around the door and check the corridor.
    Deserted.
    Now she is nervous. Why? she asks herself. What is she doing that's so terribly wrong? She smooths her hands down over her grey skirt to dry her palms, then opens the book. She turns the pages. She finds the number. Again, she follows the line across.
    She checks it once, and then a second time. There's no mistake.
    ADU is the call sign of Nachrichten-Regimenter 537—a motorised German Army signals unit. Its transmissions are on wavelengths monitored by the Beaumanor intercept station in Leicestershire. Direction-finding has established that, since October, Unit number 537 has been based in the Smolensk military district of the Ukraine, presently occupied by Wehrmacht Army Group Centre under the command of Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge.
    Jericho had been leaning forwards in anticipation. Now he drew back in surprise. 'A signals unit?"
    He felt obscurely disappointed. What exactly had he been expecting? He wasn't sure. Just something a little more . . . exotic, he supposed.
    '537,' he said, 'is that a front-line unit?'
    'The line in that sector is shifting every day. But according to the situation map in Hut 6, Smolensk is still about a hundred kilometres inside German territory.'
    'Ah.'
    'Yes. That was my