Connie Willis - All Clear

“I’ve got it,” the horsy woman said, looking triumphant. She turned to Ernest. “Very clever, Major, particularly the clue about trains.”

“Well?” Wembley said impatiently to her. “What is it?”

“We should have guessed it at once,” she said to Mrs. Wembley. “It’s one of her best-planned-out books, and one the reader won’t guess till the very last moment.”

And when Mrs. Wembley still looked blank, “It’s set on a train, dear.”

“Oh, of course,” Mrs. Wembley said, “the one where everyone did it.”

“Are you or are you not going to tell us what the title is?” Wembley said.

“I’m not certain we should,” Mrs. Wembley said. “As the Major said, it’s top secret.”

“But since all we’re discussing is mystery novels,” the horsy woman said, “you simply must read Murder in the Ca—”

“Anderson!” Patton’s unmistakable voice bellowed, and everyone looked over at where he stood, riding crop raised, waving at a British officer on his way out.

“Goodbye! See you in Calais!”

Ultra was decisive.

—GENERAL DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

London—November 1940

JESUS, MIKE THOUGHT, BLETCHLEY PARK. I SHOULD HAVE gone to Coventry. “You’re sure Gerald didn’t say Boscombe Down or Broadwell?” he asked Eileen.

“No, it was definitely Bletchley Park,” Eileen said. “Why? Isn’t it an airfield?”

“No,” Polly said grimly.

“What is it then?”

“It’s where they worked on Ultra,” Mike said. And at her blank look he added, “The top-secret facility where they decoded the messages of the German Enigma machine.”

“Oh, but then that’s definitely where he is,” Eileen said eagerly. “Decoding would be much more suited to him than the RAF, with his skill at maths and—”

“Blenheim has a park, too,” Mike interrupted. “You’re sure he didn’t say Blenheim Park?”

“No,” Polly said. “He’s at Bletchley Park.”

He turned on her angrily. “How do you know?”

“Because of the joke Gerald told Eileen about the rain getting her driving authorization wet. Remember? And her not being able to drive?”

“What does that have to do with Bletchley Park?”

“The driving authorization form is printed in red.”

“What?”

“The bigram codebooks the German Navy used on its U-boats were printed in a special red water-soluble ink, so that if the submarine was sunk, the codes couldn’t be captured.”

“And?”

“And those codebooks were what they used to break the Ultra naval code at Bletchley Park.”

“I can’t believe this!” Mike said. “The one person who can get us out of here, and he’s in goddamned Bletchley Park.”

“I don’t understand,” Eileen said, looking upset. “Why don’t you want him to be at Bletchley Park?”

“Because it’s a divergence point,” Polly said.

“But Dunkirk was a divergence point,” Eileen said, bewildered, “and Mike went there.”

“Bletchley Park isn’t just a divergence point,” Polly explained. “It’s the divergence point. Ultra was the most critical secret of the war. It helped us sink the Bismarck and win in North Africa. And Normandy. If the Germans had had so much as an inkling that we’d cracked their codes and had access to their top-secret communications, we’d have lost the advantage that won us the war. If we were to cause that to happen—”

“But how could we? Historians can’t alter events,” Eileen said innocently. “Can they?”

“No,” Mike said. “She just means it’ll be tough to get Phipps out with all the security they’re bound to have.”

But as soon as he got Polly alone for a moment, he asked her, “What’s happened? Did you find a discrepancy while I was gone?”

“I don’t know. Marjorie—the shopgirl I worked with at Townsend Brothers and who Eileen told she worked at Padgett’s—is enlisting in the Royal Army Nursing Service.”

Which made no sense at all. He sat her down and made her explain it to him. When she finished, he said, “But lots of women enlisted.”

“But she said she enlisted because of having been rescued from the rubble, and she wouldn’t have been in the rubble if it hadn’t been for me.”

“You don’t know that,” he said. “She might have eloped even if nothing had happened to you.”

“But that’s not all,” she said, and told him about the UXB at St. Paul’s. “Mr. Dunworthy said it took three days to get it out, which means it should have been removed on Saturday, not Sunday.”

“No, it shouldn’t,” he said, relieved that that was all. “It’s not a discrepancy.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. While I was looking for you, I went to St. Paul’s. I figured any historian of Dunworthy’s would have heard all about the cathedral from him and might show up there, and you did, just not on the same day as me. And anyway, this old guy who worked there—”

“Mr. Humphreys?” Polly said.

“Yeah, Humphreys. He gave me a tour of the whole place—sandbags and all—and told me all about the UXB. And he said it hit the night of the twelfth, which would make it three days if they got it out Sunday afternoon. So there’s no discrepancy there, and lots of women eloped with enlisted men during the war. And the increase in slippage would make it harder for us to alter events, not easier.”

“But if that isn’t what’s going on, and we can affect events—”

“Then Phipps has no business being at Bletchley Park, and the sooner we get him out of there, the better. If he’s still there. If he went through just after his recon and prep, he might already have gone back.”

“I don’t think so,” Polly said. “His joke about the water-soluble ink makes me think he’s probably there to observe the cracking of the naval Enigma code, and they didn’t capture U-boat 110 and get the bigram books until May of 1941.”

Great, Mike thought. Phipps would have six months to louse up the war. If he hadn’t already. Maybe that was why their drops wouldn’t open. It wasn’t something Mike had done—it was Phipps’s fault.

Mike didn’t say that. He just told them he intended to leave for Bletchley right away. “Shouldn’t we both go?” Eileen asked. “I know what Gerald looks like. And with two of us, we’ll be twice as likely to find him. We can split up—”

“No, I’m going alone.”

“If it’s her being conspicuous you’re worried about,” Polly said, “there were more women than men working at the Park. They did all the transcribing of the intercepts and ran the computers, and some of them even worked on the decoding. So if you’re worried about Eileen standing out—”

That’s not what I’m worried about, Mike thought. “Two people are more likely to attract attention than one,” he said, “especially if they’re both snooping around and asking questions.”

“Mike’s right,” Polly said. “The people who worked there were under a good deal of surveillance.” Which wasn’t exactly reassuring.

“If only one of us can go, it should be me,” Eileen said. “Gerald knows me. He may spot me even if I don’t spot him.”

Which was true. “He’ll recognize me, too,” Mike said, though he wasn’t at all sure he would. “I need you and Polly here to go meet the retrieval team if they answer our ads. And I’ll have more freedom of movement than you would. A man can go into restaurants and pubs alone without attracting attention.”

“Not if you’re an American,” Polly said. “The Americans didn’t come to Bletchley Park till February of ’41. Do you think you could pass as an Englishman?”

“I am an Englishman. I had an American L-and-A, remember? But how am I supposed to pull off working there? It took clearance to get into Bletchley Park. I’d never be able to pass the background check.”