called, he wondered, and had the families of the crews been told?
'We have approximately a further eighty messages from the sixth still to run through the Type-Xs. I shall put two more operators on to it. A couple of hours and we should be finished.'
'And then what?'
'Then, my dear Tom? Then I suppose we shall make a start on back-breaks from February. But that barely qualifies even as history. February? February in the Atlantic? Archaeology!'
'Any progress on the four-wheel bombe?'
Puck shook his head. 'First, it is impossible. It is out of the question. Then there is a design, but the design is theoretical nonsense. Then there is a design that should work, but doesn't. Then there is a shortage of materials. Then there is a shortage of engineers. . .' He made a weary gesture with his hand, as if he were pushing it all out of the way.
'Has anything else changed?'
'Nothing that affects us. According to the direction finders, U-boat HQ has moved from Paris to Berlin. They have some wonderful new transmitter at Magdeburg they say will reach a U-boat forty-five feet under water at a range of two thousand miles.,'
Jericho murmured: 'How very ingenious of them.'
The red-headed girl had finished deciphering the message. She tore off the tape, stuck it on the back of the cryptogram and handed it to another girl, who rushed out of the room. Now it would be turned into recognisable English and teleprintered to the Admiralty.
Puck touched Jericho's arm. 'You must be tired. Why don't you go now and rest?'
But Jericho didn't feel like sleeping. 'I'd like to see all the Shark traffic we haven't been able to break. Everything since midnight on Wednesday.'
Puck gave a puzzled smile. 'Why? There's nothing you can do with it.'
'Maybe so. But I'd like to see it.'
'Why?'
'I don't know.' Jericho shrugged. 'Just to handle it. To get a feel of it. I've been out of the game for a month.'
'You think we may have missed something, perhaps?'
'Not at all. But Logie has asked me.'
'Ah yes. The celebrated Jericho “inspiration” and “intuition”.' Puck couldn't conceal his irritation. 'And so from science and logic we descend to superstition and “feelings”.'
'For heaven's sake, Puck!' Jericho was starting to become annoyed himself. 'Just humour me, if that's how you prefer to look at it.'
Puck glared at him for a moment, and then, as quickly as they had arisen, the clouds seemed to pass. 'Of course.' He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. 'You must see it all. Forgive me. I'm tired. We're all tired.'
Five minutes later, when Jericho walked into the Big Room carrying the folder of Shark cryptograms, he found his old seat had been vacated. Someone had also laid out in his place a new pile of jotting paper and three freshly sharpened pencils. He looked around, but nobody seemed to be paying him any attention.
He laid the intercepts out on the table. He loosened his scarf. He felt the radiator—as ever, it was lukewarm. He blew some warmth on to his hands and sat down.
He was back.
3
Whenever anyone asked Jericho why he was a mathematician—some friend of his mother, perhaps, or an inquisitive colleague with no interest in science—he would shake his head and smile and claim he had no idea. If they persisted, he might, with some diffidence, direct them to the definition offered by G. H. Hardy in his famous Apology: 'a mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns'. If that didn't satisfy them, he would try to explain by quoting the most basic illustration he could think of: pi—3.14—the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Calculate pi to a thousand decimal places, he would say, or a million or more, and you will discover no pattern to its unending sequence of digits. It appears random, chaotic, ugly. Yet Leibnitz and Gregory can take the same number and tease from it a pattern of crystalline elegance:
pi/4=1-1/3+1/5-1/7+1/9--
and so on to infinity. Such a pattern had no
'We have approximately a further eighty messages from the sixth still to run through the Type-Xs. I shall put two more operators on to it. A couple of hours and we should be finished.'
'And then what?'
'Then, my dear Tom? Then I suppose we shall make a start on back-breaks from February. But that barely qualifies even as history. February? February in the Atlantic? Archaeology!'
'Any progress on the four-wheel bombe?'
Puck shook his head. 'First, it is impossible. It is out of the question. Then there is a design, but the design is theoretical nonsense. Then there is a design that should work, but doesn't. Then there is a shortage of materials. Then there is a shortage of engineers. . .' He made a weary gesture with his hand, as if he were pushing it all out of the way.
'Has anything else changed?'
'Nothing that affects us. According to the direction finders, U-boat HQ has moved from Paris to Berlin. They have some wonderful new transmitter at Magdeburg they say will reach a U-boat forty-five feet under water at a range of two thousand miles.,'
Jericho murmured: 'How very ingenious of them.'
The red-headed girl had finished deciphering the message. She tore off the tape, stuck it on the back of the cryptogram and handed it to another girl, who rushed out of the room. Now it would be turned into recognisable English and teleprintered to the Admiralty.
Puck touched Jericho's arm. 'You must be tired. Why don't you go now and rest?'
But Jericho didn't feel like sleeping. 'I'd like to see all the Shark traffic we haven't been able to break. Everything since midnight on Wednesday.'
Puck gave a puzzled smile. 'Why? There's nothing you can do with it.'
'Maybe so. But I'd like to see it.'
'Why?'
'I don't know.' Jericho shrugged. 'Just to handle it. To get a feel of it. I've been out of the game for a month.'
'You think we may have missed something, perhaps?'
'Not at all. But Logie has asked me.'
'Ah yes. The celebrated Jericho “inspiration” and “intuition”.' Puck couldn't conceal his irritation. 'And so from science and logic we descend to superstition and “feelings”.'
'For heaven's sake, Puck!' Jericho was starting to become annoyed himself. 'Just humour me, if that's how you prefer to look at it.'
Puck glared at him for a moment, and then, as quickly as they had arisen, the clouds seemed to pass. 'Of course.' He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. 'You must see it all. Forgive me. I'm tired. We're all tired.'
Five minutes later, when Jericho walked into the Big Room carrying the folder of Shark cryptograms, he found his old seat had been vacated. Someone had also laid out in his place a new pile of jotting paper and three freshly sharpened pencils. He looked around, but nobody seemed to be paying him any attention.
He laid the intercepts out on the table. He loosened his scarf. He felt the radiator—as ever, it was lukewarm. He blew some warmth on to his hands and sat down.
He was back.
3
Whenever anyone asked Jericho why he was a mathematician—some friend of his mother, perhaps, or an inquisitive colleague with no interest in science—he would shake his head and smile and claim he had no idea. If they persisted, he might, with some diffidence, direct them to the definition offered by G. H. Hardy in his famous Apology: 'a mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns'. If that didn't satisfy them, he would try to explain by quoting the most basic illustration he could think of: pi—3.14—the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Calculate pi to a thousand decimal places, he would say, or a million or more, and you will discover no pattern to its unending sequence of digits. It appears random, chaotic, ugly. Yet Leibnitz and Gregory can take the same number and tease from it a pattern of crystalline elegance:
pi/4=1-1/3+1/5-1/7+1/9--
and so on to infinity. Such a pattern had no
Similar Books
