Free Enigma by Robert Harris Page B

Shark and Jericho could make only
the vaguest guesses at the contents of the cryptograms. There were
eight long messages originating from Berlin. They would be orders,
he supposed, probably directing the U-boats into “wolf packs” and
stationing them in front of the oncoming convoys. The shorter
signals—there were a hundred and twenty-two, which Jericho sorted
into a separate pile—had been sent by the submarines themselves.
These could contain anything: reports of ships sunk and of engine
trouble; details of survivors floating in the water and of crewmen
washed overboard; requests for spare parts and fresh orders.
Shortest of all were the U-boats’ weather messages or, very
occasionally, contact reports: “Convoy in naval grid square BE9533
course 70 degrees speed 9 knots…” But these were encoded, like the
weather bulletins, with one letter of the alphabet substituting for
each piece of information. And then they were enciphered in
Shark.
    He tapped his pencil against the desk. Puck was quite right.
There was not enough material to work with.
    And even if there had been, there was still the wretched fourth
rotor on the Shark Enigma, the innovation that made U-boat messages
twenty-six times more difficult to break than those of surface
ships. One hundred and fifty million million million multiplied by
twenty-six. A phenomenal number. The engineers had been struggling
for a year to develop a four-rotor bombe—but still, apparently,
without success. It seemed to be just that one step beyond their
technical ability.
    No cribs, no bombes. Hopeless.
    Hours passed during which Jericho tried every trick he could
think of to prompt some fresh inspiration. He arranged the
cryptograms chronologically. Then he arranged them by length. Then
he sorted them by frequency. He doodled on the pile of paper. He
prowled around the hut, oblivious now to who was looking at him and
who wasn’t. This was what it had been like for ten interminable
months last year. No wonder he had gone mad. The chorus-lines of
meaningless letters danced before his eyes. But they were not
meaningless. They were loaded with the most vital meaning
imaginable, if only he could find it. But where was the pattern?
Where was the pattern? Where was the pattern?
    ♦
    It was the practice on the night shift at about four o’clock in
the morning for everyone to take a meal-break. The cryptanalysts
went off when they liked, depending on the stage they’d reached in
their work. The Decoding Room girls and the clerks in the
Registration and Catalogue rooms had to leave according to a rota
so that the hut was never caught short-staffed.
    Jericho didn’t notice the drift of people towards the door. He
had both elbows on the table and was leaning over the cryptograms,
his knuckles pressed to his temples. His mind was eidetic—that is
to say, it could hold and retrieve images with photographic
accuracy, be they mid-game positions in chess, crossword puzzles or
enciphered German naval signals—and he was working with his eyes
closed.
    “‘Below the thunders of the upper deep,’ ” intoned a muffled
voice behind him,“ ‘Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,⁄His
ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep…’ ”
    “‘…The Kraken sleepeth.’ ” Jericho finished the quotation and
turned to find Atwood pulling on a purple balaclava.
“Coleridge?”
    “Coleridge?” Atwood’s face abruptly emerged wearing an
expression of outrage. “Coleridge? It’s Tennyson, you barbarian. We
wondered whether you’d care to join us for refreshment.”
    Jericho was about to refuse, but decided that would be rude. In
any case, he was hungry. He’d eaten nothing except toast and jam
for twelve hours.
    “That’s kind. Thank you.”
    He followed Atwood, Pinker and a couple of the others along the
length of the hut and out into the night. At some stage while he’d
been lost in the cryptograms it must have rained and the air was
still moist. Along the road to the right he