Enigma

steaming directly due east, full tilt towards them, at a speed of 10.5 knots. SC-122 was slightly ahead of her, to the north east. HX-229A was well back, heading north up the coast of Newfoundland. 'Nearly light,' he said, 'but the weather's getting worse, poor sods.'
    Jericho left him to it and went in search, first, of Logie, who dismissed him with a wave of his pipe ('Fine, old love, you rest up, curtain rises twenty hundred'), and then of Atwood, who eventually agreed to lend him his pre-war AA touring atlas of the British Isles. ('“Roll up that map,”' he quoted wistfully, as he produced it from beneath his desk, “'it will not be wanted these ten years.'”)
    After that he was ready.
    He sat in the front seat of Kramer's car and ran his hands over the unfamiliar controls and it occurred to him that he'd never quite got round to learning how to drive. He knew the basic principles, of course, but it must have been six or seven years since his last attempt, and that had been in his stepfather's huge and tanklike Humber—a vastly different proposition to this little Austin. Still, at least he wasn't doing anything illegal: in a country where one nowadays practically needed a permit to visit the lavatory, it was for some reason no longer necessary to have a driving licence.
    He took several minutes trying to sort out clutch pedal from accelerator, handbrake from gear lever, then pulled out the choke and switched on the ignition. The car rocked and stalled. He put the gears into neutral and tried again and this time, miraculously, as his left foot lifted off the clutch, the car crawled forwards.
    At the main gate he was waved down and managed to bring the car gliding to a halt. One of the sentries opened his door and he had to climb out while another got in to search the interior.
    Half a minute later the barrier was rising and he was through.
    He drove at a cyclist's pace along the narrow lanes towards Shenley Brook End, and it was this low speed that saved him. The plan he had agreed with Hester Wallace—assuming he could get Kramer's car—was that he would pick her up from the cottage, and he was just rounding the bend a quarter of a mile before the turning when something flashed dark in the field up ahead on the right. Immediately, he swerved up on to the verge and braked. He left the engine running then cautiously opened the door and clambered out on the running board to get a better view.
    Policemen again. One moving stealthily around the edge of the field. Another half hidden in the hedge, apparently watching the road outside the cottage.
    Jericho dropped back into the driver's seat and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He wasn't sure whether he had been seen but the sooner he got out of their range of vision the better. The gear change was stiff and it took both hands to jam the lever into reverse. The engine clanked and whined. First he nearly backed into the ditch, then he overcorrected and the car went weaving drunkenly across the road, mounted the opposite bank and stalled. It was not an elegant piece of parking but at least he was sufficiently far back around the curve for the policemen to be out of sight.
    They had to have heard him, surely? At any moment one of them would come strolling down the lane to investigate, and he tried to think up some excuse for his lunatic behaviour, but the minutes passed and nobody appeared. He switched off the ignition and the only sound was birdsong.
    No wonder Wigram looked so tired, he thought. He appeared to have taken over command of half the police force of the county—probably of the country, for all Jericho knew.
    Suddenly, the scale of the odds stacked against them struck him as so overwhelming, he was seriously tempted to jack in the whole damn fool project. ('We must go to the intercept station, Mr Jericho—go to Beaumanor and get hold of the operator's handwritten notes. They keep them for at least a month and they'll never have dreamed of removing those—I'll take a wager on it. Only we poor drones have anything to do with them.) Indeed, he might well have turned the car round that very minute and driven back to Bletchley if there hadn't been a loud tapping noise at the window to his left. He must have jumped a full inch in his seat.
    It was Hester Wallace, although at first he didn't recognise her. She had exchanged her skirt and blouse for a heavy tweed jacket and a thick sweater. A pair of brown corduroy trousers were tucked into the