Free Citadel by Stephen Hunter

the troops have been moved down to
the Kursk bulge. Hitler breaks through, envelops,
takes, and razes Moscow, then pivots, heavy with
triumph, to deal with the moribund Kursk salient.
Why, he needn’t even attack. He can do to those
men what was done to Paulus’s Sixth Army at Stalingrad,
simply shell and starve them into submission. At that point the war in the East is over and
Communism is destroyed.”
    â€œI see what where you’re going with this, gentlemen,”
said Basil. “We must convince Stalin that
we are telling the truth. We must verify the authenticity
of Operation Citadel, so that he believes in it
and acts accordingly. If he doesn’t, Operation
Citadel will succeed, those 300,000 men will die,
and the war will continue for another year or two.
The soldiers now say ‘Home alive in ’45,’ but the
bloody reality will be ‘Dead in heaven in ’47.’ Yet
more millions will die. We cannot allow that to
happen.”
    â€œDo you see it yet, Basil?” asked Sir Colin. “It
would be so helpful if you saw it for yourself, if you
realized what has to be done, that no matter how
long the shot, we have to play it. Because yours is
the part that depends on faith. Only faith will get
you through the ordeal that lies ahead.”
    â€œYes, I do see it,” said Basil. “The only way of
verifying the Operation Citadel intercepts is to
have them discovered and transmitted quite innocent
of any other influence by Stalin’s most secret
and trusted spy. That fellow has to come across
them and get them to Moscow. And the route by
which he encounters them must be unimpeachable,
as it will be vigorously counterchecked by the
NKVD. That is why the traitorous librarian at
Cambridge cannot be arrested, and that is why no
tricky subterfuge of cracking into the Cambridge
rare books vault can be employed. The sanctity of
the Cambridge copy of The Path to Jesus must be
protected at all costs.”
    â€œExactly, Basil. Very good.”
    â€œYou have to get these intercepts to this spy.
However—here’s the rub—you have no idea who
or where he is.”
    â€œWe know where he is,” said the admiral. “The
trouble is, it’s not a small place. It’s a good-sized
village, in fact, or an industrial complex.”
    â€œThis Bletchley, whose name I was not supposed
to hear—is that it?”
    â€œProfessor, perhaps you could explain it to Captain
St. Florian.”
    â€œOf course. Captain, as I spilled the beans before,
I’ll now spill some more. We have Jerry solved
to a remarkable degree, via higher mathematical
concepts as guidelines for the construction of electronic
‘thinking machines,’ if you will …”
    â€œTuring engines, they’re called,” said Sir Colin.
“Basil, you are honored by hearing this from the
prime mover himself. It’s like a chat with God.”
    â€œPlease continue, your Supreme Beingness,”
said Basil.
    Embarrassed, the professor seemed to lose his
place, then came back to it. “ … thinking machines
that are able to function at high speed, test possibilities,
and locate patterns which cut down on the
possible combinations. I’ll spare you details, but
it’s quite remarkable. However, one result of this
breakthrough is that our location—Bletchley Park,
about fifty kilometers out of London, an old Victorian estate in perfectly abominable taste—has
grown from a small team operation into a huge
bureaucracy. It now employs over eight hundred
people, gathered from all over the empire for their
specific skills in extremely arcane subject matters.
    â€œAs a consequence, we have many streams of
communication, many units, many subunits,
many sub-subunits, many huts, temporary quarters,
recreational facilities, kitchens, bathrooms, a
complex social life complete with gossip, romance,
scandal, treachery, and remorse, our own slang,
our own customs. Of