Connie Willis - All Clear

“Gerald did,” Eileen said.

“With carefully forged school records and letters of recommendation. That’s probably what his recon trip was about, planting documents that could stand up to Bletchley Park’s background check. My history wouldn’t.”

“You needn’t actually work there,” Polly said. “And by the way, it’s BP or the Park, not Bletchley Park. And not Bletchley—Bletchley’s the town. Bletchley Park is the Victorian manor outside of town where the decoding was done. Only a few codebreakers lived on the estate. Everyone else was billeted in Bletchley or the surrounding villages.”

“Then why do I have to pretend at all? Why can’t I go as a reporter and talk to them in the town, say I’m working on a story?”

“Because they’ve all been forbidden to talk to anyone. They’ve all signed the Official Secrets Act. They can get the death penalty if they talk. Besides, you’d be hauled in by the authorities instantly if they heard you were planning to write about Bletchley Park.”

“I could say I was doing a story on something else,” he said, but Polly was shaking her head.

“No, people will be much more likely to talk to you if they think you’re one of them. If they ask what your job is, which they won’t, you can say you work for the War Office. That was the official cover for intelligence work.”

“How can you be so sure they won’t ask me what my job is?”

“No one was allowed to discuss what they were doing. People who worked in one but didn’t even know the names of the people in the other huts.”

Then how am I supposed to find out if Gerald’s there? he wondered. “What if Gerald’s one of the people living on the estate?” he asked.

“He won’t be. That was mostly the top codebreakers, like Dilly Knox and Alan Turing. Turing was Ultra’s computer genius.” She was looking critically at him.

“You haven’t any other clothes, have you?”

“No, these are the best I’ve got. Aren’t they good enough?”

“They’re too good. If you’re going as a cryptanalyst—that’s what they called the codebreakers—you’ll have to look the part. Don’t worry, we’ll find you something.”

The “something” turned out to be a secondhand tweed jacket with patches at the elbows, a scruffy-looking wool vest, and a tie with a large grease spot on it. “Are you sure this is what they wore, Polly?” Mike asked doubtfully.

“Positive, although the waistcoat may be too nice.”

“Too nice?”

“These are physicists and mathematicians we’re dealing with. Can you play chess?”

“No. Why?”

“There weren’t enough cryptanalysts in England at the beginning of the war, so they recruited anyone they thought might be good at decoding—statisticians and Egyptologists and chess players. If you could play, it would make a good conversational opening.”

“I could teach you,” Eileen said.

“There isn’t time,” he said. “I want to leave tomorrow.”

“No, you need to wait till Sunday,” Polly said. “It’ll be less conspicuous. Lots of BPers will be coming back from the weekend then. And I need to prep you.”

She did, telling him everything she knew about Bletchley Park and Ultra and the principal players in such detail that he wondered if she was still worried about his altering events, too, in spite of his reassurances. She even told him what the various codebreakers looked like.

So I can keep out of their way, he thought. Which wasn’t a bad idea, just in case. He memorized the names she gave him: Menzies, Welchman, Angus Wilson, Alan Turing.

“Turing’s blonde, medium height, and stammers. Dilly Knox—he heads up the main team of cryptanalysts—is tall and thin and smokes a pipe. And he’s absent-minded. He’s been known to fill his pipe with bits of his sandwich. Oh, and he’s usually surrounded by young women. Dilly’s girls.”

“Dilly’s girls?”

“Yes. They played a vital role in the decoding. They searched through millions of lines of code, looking for patterns and anomalies.”

“How do you know all this?” he asked. A horrible thought struck him. “You didn’t do an assignment at Bletchley Park, did you?” If she had, and she had a deadline …

“No,” she said. “I considered it, but after I’d researched it, I decided the Blitz might be more exciting.”

Not if historians can alter the course of the war, he thought.

On Sunday Polly and Eileen went to the station to see him off and to give him last-minute instructions. “The Park’s in walking distance of town,” Polly said, “but I don’t know in which direction, and asking might look suspicious.”

“I won’t ask,” he assured her. “I’ll find a likely prospect and follow him when I get off the train.”

“And I’m not sure the project’s called Ultra at this point. ‘Ultra’ stood for ultra-top-secret, the most classified category of military secrets, and I think in 1940 the

“And I’m not sure the project’s called Ultra at this point. ‘Ultra’ stood for ultra-top-secret, the most classified category of military secrets, and I think in 1940 the project may just have been called Enigma, and not—”

“It doesn’t matter what it’s called. I have no intention of mentioning Enigma or Ultra. I intend to find Gerald and get out.”

“There’s the boarding call,” Eileen said. “Perhaps you’ll be in the same compartment with someone who works there, and you can ask them if they know Gerald and how you can get in touch with him, and you won’t need to go to Bletchley at all.”

Jesus, he hadn’t thought about running into them on the train. “What does Turing look like again?” he asked Polly.

“Blonde hair. Stammer.”

“And Dilly Knox is tall and smokes a pipe.”

“And has a limp like yours. And Alan Ross has a long red beard, and when it’s cold wears a blue snood over it.”

“Over his beard?” Mike said. “And you’re worried about me being conspicuous? They sound crazy.”

“Eccentric,” Polly said. “Oh, and Ross has a little boy, and when he traveled, he doped him with laudanum—”

“Laudanum,” Eileen said wistfully, and when they looked at her, she explained, “Sorry, I was just thinking how useful laudanum would have been on that journey to London with the Hodbins.”

“Yes, well, I don’t know if Ross’s son was a terror or not,” Polly said, “but he gave him laudanum and stowed him in the luggage rack, so if you see a little boy sleeping up in the luggage rack, you’ll know that’s the compartment Alan Ross is in.”

And I can make sure I keep out of it. “Look, I’d better get out to the platform,” he said.

“Wait,” Eileen said, grabbing his sleeve. “What happened?”

“What happened?” he repeated blankly.

“To Ross’s son?” Polly asked.

“No, to Shackleton. When he left his crew on the island and went off to get help. Did he come back?”

“Yes, with a ship, to take them all home. He didn’t lose a single man.”

“Good,” she said, and smiled at him.

“Ring us as soon as you get there,” Polly said.

“I will,” he promised, thinking, If I can get there. Just because he’d gone to one divergence point didn’t mean the continuum would let him near another, especially one where a single person could mess up everything. His train could be blown up en route. Or the train might be too crowded to get on, which looked like it was going to be the case.

It was packed to the gills, but he managed to squeeze on, and on the train from Oxford, he was even able to find a seat—taking care to pick a compartment that didn’t have any blonde stammerers, tall pipe-smokers, or doped-up children in it. He picked one occupied by five soldiers and two elderly ladies. He slung his bag up onto the luggage rack—which only held brown-paper-wrapped packages, no children—and sat down in the single empty seat.