Enigma

of the big house: cottages, farm sheds, a greenhouse, even a cricket pavilion with a clock tower. All dummy frontages, explained Heaviside, cheerfully, designed to fool German air reconnaissance. This was where the work of interception was done. Was there anything they were especially interested in?
    'How about the eastern front?' said Hester.
    'Eastern front?' said Heaviside. 'Fine.'
    He bounded ahead of them through the puddles, still trying to shake out his broken umbrella. The rain worsened and their fast walk turned into a run as they sprinted for the hut. The door banged shut behind them.
    'We rely on the feminine element, as you can see,' said Heaviside, taking off his spectacles and drying them on the corner of his tunic. 'Army girls and civilian women.' He replaced his glasses and blinked around the hut. 'Good afternoon,' he said to a stout woman with sergeant's stripes. 'The supervisor,' he explained, then added in a whisper: 'Bit of a dragon.'
    Jericho counted twenty-four wireless receivers, arranged in pairs, on either side of a long aisle, each with a woman hunched over it wearing headphones. The room was quiet apart from the hum of the machines and the occasional rustle of intercept forms.
    'We've three types of sets,' Heaviside went on quietly. 'HROs, Hallicrafter 28 Skyriders and American AR-88s. Each girl has her own frequencies to patrol, though we'll double back if things get busy.'
    'How many people d'you have working here?' asked Hester.
    'Couple of thousand.'
    'And you intercept everything?'
    'Absolutely. Unless you tell us not to.'
    'Which we never do.'
    'Right, right.' Heaviside's bald head was glistening with rainwater. He bent forwards and shook himself vigorously, like a dog. 'Except that time the other week, of course.'
    Afterwards, what Jericho would remember most was how coolly she handled it. She didn't even blink. Instead she actually changed the subject and asked Heaviside how fast the girls had to be ('we insist on a speed of ninety Morse characters a minute, that's the absolute minimum') and then the three of them began to stroll down the central aisle.
    'These are sets tuned to the eastern front,' said Heaviside, when they were about halfway down. He stopped and pointed to the elaborate pictures of vultures stuck on the side of several of the receivers.
    'Vulture's not the only German Army key in Russia, of course. There's Kite and Kestrel, Smelt for the Ukraine -'
    'Are the nets particularly active at the moment?' Jericho felt it was time he should say something.
    'Very much so, since Stalingrad. Retreats and counterattacks all along the front. Alarms and excursions. You've got to hand it to these Reds, you know—they can't half fight.'
    Hester said casually: 'It would have been a Vulture station you were told not to intercept?'
    That's right.'
    'And this would have been around the 4th of March?'
    'Bang on. About midnight. I remember because we'd just sent four long signals and were feeling fairly well chuffed when your chap Mermagen comes on the blower in a frightful panic and says: "No more of that, thanks very much, not now, not tomorrow, not for ever more.
    'Any reason?'
    'No reason. Just stop. Thought he was going to have a heart attack. Oddest damned thing I ever heard.'
    'Perhaps,' suggested Jericho, 'knowing you were busy, they wanted to knock out low-priority traffic?'
    'Balls,' said Heaviside, 'pardon me, but really!' His professional pride was wounded. 'You can tell your Mr Mermagen from me that it was nothing we couldn't handle, was it, Kay?' He patted the shoulder of a strikingly pretty ATS operator, who took off her headphones and pushed back her chair. 'No, no, don't get up, didn't mean to interrupt. We were just discussing our mystery station.' He rolled his eyes. 'The one we're not supposed to hear.'
    'Hear?' Jericho looked at Hester sharply. 'You mean it's still broadcasting?'
    'Kay?'
    'Yes, sir.' She had a rather melodious Welsh accent. 'Not so often now, sir, but he was awful busy last week.' She hesitated. 'I don't, like, try to listen, on purpose, sir, but he does have the most beautiful fist. Real old school. Not like some of the kids—she spat out the word '—they're using nowadays. Nearly as bad as the Italians, they are.'
    'A man's style of Morse,' said Heaviside pompously, 'is as distinctive as his signature.'
    'And what is his style?'
    'Very fast but very clear,' said Kay. 'Rippling, I'd say. Fist like a concert pianist, he has.'
    'Think she rather