Logie. 'No good news I can give our lord and master?'
Puck shook his head.
'Not even a glimmer?'
'Not even that.'
'No. Well, why should there be? Damn bloody admirals! Logie screwed up the message slip, aimed it at his rubbish bin and missed. 'I'd show you round myself, Tom, but the Skynner waits for no man, as you'll recall. All right with you, Puck? Give him the grand tour?'
'Of course, Guy. As you wish.'
Logie ushered them out into the passage and tried to lock the door, then gave up on it. As he turned he opened his mouth and Jericho nerved himself for one of Logie's excruciating housemaster's pep talks -something about innocent lives depending on them, and the need for them to do their best, and the race being not to the swift nor the battle to the strong (he had actually said this once)—but instead his mouth just widened into a yawn.
'Oh, dear. Sorry, old thing. Sorry.'
He shuffled off down the corridor, patting his pockets to make sure he had his pipe and tobacco pouch. They heard him mutter again, something about 'bloody admirals', and he was gone.
Hut 8 was thirty-five yards long by ten wide and Jericho could have toured it in his sleep, probably had toured it in his sleep, for all he knew. The outside walls were thin and the damp from the lake seemed to rise through the floorboards so that at night the rooms were chilly, cast in a sepia glow by bare, low-wattage bulbs. The furniture was mostly trestle tables and folding wooden chairs. It reminded Jericho of a church hall on a winter's night. All that was missing was a badly tuned piano and somebody thumping out 'Land of Hope and Glory'.
It was laid out like an assembly line, the main stage in a process that originated somewhere far out in the darkness, maybe two thousand miles away, when the grey hull of a U-boat rose close to the surface and squirted off a radio message to its controllers. The signals were intercepted at various listening-posts and teleprintered to Bletchley and within ten minutes of transmission, even as the U-boats were preparing to dive, they were emerging via a tunnel into Hut 8's Registration Room. Jericho helped himself to the contents of a wire basket labelled 'Shark' and carried them to the nearest light. The hours immediately after midnight were usually the busiest time. Sure enough, six messages had been intercepted in the last eighteen minutes. Three consisted of just eight letters: he guessed they were weather reports. Even the longest of the other cryptograms was no more than a couple of dozen four-letter groups:
JRLO GOPL DNRZ LOBT -
Puck made a weary face at him, as if to say: What can you do?
Jericho said: 'What's the volume?'
'It varies. One hundred and fifty, perhaps two hundred messages a day. And rising.'
The Registration Room didn't just handle Shark. There was Porpoise and Dolphin and all the other different Enigma keys to log and then pass across the corridor to the Crib Room. Here, the cribsters sifted them for clues—radio station call signs they recognised (Kiel was JDU, for example, Wilhelmshaven KYU), messages whose contents they could guess at, or cryptograms that had already been enciphered in one key and then retransmitted in another (they marked these 'XX' and called them 'kisses'). Atwood was the champion cribster and the Wrens said cattily behind his back that these were the only kisses he had ever had.
It was in the big room next door—which they called, with their solemn humour, the Big Room -that the cryptanalysts used the cribs to construct possible solutions that could be tested on the bombes. Jericho took in the rickety tables, the hard chairs, the weak lighting, the fug of tobacco, the college-library atmosphere, the night chill (most of the cryptanalysts were wearing coats and mittens) and he wondered why—why?—he had been so ready to come back. Kingcome and Proudfoot were there, and Upjohn and Pinker and de Brooke, and maybe half a dozen newcomers whose faces he didn't recognise,
Puck shook his head.
'Not even a glimmer?'
'Not even that.'
'No. Well, why should there be? Damn bloody admirals! Logie screwed up the message slip, aimed it at his rubbish bin and missed. 'I'd show you round myself, Tom, but the Skynner waits for no man, as you'll recall. All right with you, Puck? Give him the grand tour?'
'Of course, Guy. As you wish.'
Logie ushered them out into the passage and tried to lock the door, then gave up on it. As he turned he opened his mouth and Jericho nerved himself for one of Logie's excruciating housemaster's pep talks -something about innocent lives depending on them, and the need for them to do their best, and the race being not to the swift nor the battle to the strong (he had actually said this once)—but instead his mouth just widened into a yawn.
'Oh, dear. Sorry, old thing. Sorry.'
He shuffled off down the corridor, patting his pockets to make sure he had his pipe and tobacco pouch. They heard him mutter again, something about 'bloody admirals', and he was gone.
Hut 8 was thirty-five yards long by ten wide and Jericho could have toured it in his sleep, probably had toured it in his sleep, for all he knew. The outside walls were thin and the damp from the lake seemed to rise through the floorboards so that at night the rooms were chilly, cast in a sepia glow by bare, low-wattage bulbs. The furniture was mostly trestle tables and folding wooden chairs. It reminded Jericho of a church hall on a winter's night. All that was missing was a badly tuned piano and somebody thumping out 'Land of Hope and Glory'.
It was laid out like an assembly line, the main stage in a process that originated somewhere far out in the darkness, maybe two thousand miles away, when the grey hull of a U-boat rose close to the surface and squirted off a radio message to its controllers. The signals were intercepted at various listening-posts and teleprintered to Bletchley and within ten minutes of transmission, even as the U-boats were preparing to dive, they were emerging via a tunnel into Hut 8's Registration Room. Jericho helped himself to the contents of a wire basket labelled 'Shark' and carried them to the nearest light. The hours immediately after midnight were usually the busiest time. Sure enough, six messages had been intercepted in the last eighteen minutes. Three consisted of just eight letters: he guessed they were weather reports. Even the longest of the other cryptograms was no more than a couple of dozen four-letter groups:
JRLO GOPL DNRZ LOBT -
Puck made a weary face at him, as if to say: What can you do?
Jericho said: 'What's the volume?'
'It varies. One hundred and fifty, perhaps two hundred messages a day. And rising.'
The Registration Room didn't just handle Shark. There was Porpoise and Dolphin and all the other different Enigma keys to log and then pass across the corridor to the Crib Room. Here, the cribsters sifted them for clues—radio station call signs they recognised (Kiel was JDU, for example, Wilhelmshaven KYU), messages whose contents they could guess at, or cryptograms that had already been enciphered in one key and then retransmitted in another (they marked these 'XX' and called them 'kisses'). Atwood was the champion cribster and the Wrens said cattily behind his back that these were the only kisses he had ever had.
It was in the big room next door—which they called, with their solemn humour, the Big Room -that the cryptanalysts used the cribs to construct possible solutions that could be tested on the bombes. Jericho took in the rickety tables, the hard chairs, the weak lighting, the fug of tobacco, the college-library atmosphere, the night chill (most of the cryptanalysts were wearing coats and mittens) and he wondered why—why?—he had been so ready to come back. Kingcome and Proudfoot were there, and Upjohn and Pinker and de Brooke, and maybe half a dozen newcomers whose faces he didn't recognise,
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