Free Citadel by Stephen Hunter Page A

course the inhabitants are all
very smart, and when they’re not working they get
bored and to amuse themselves conspire, plot, criticize,
repeat, twist, engineer coups and countercoups,
all of which further muddies the water and
makes any sort of objective ‘truth’ impossible to
verify. One of the people in this monstrous human
beehive, we know for sure from the Finland code,
reports to Joseph Stalin. We have no idea who it
is—it could be an Oxbridge genius, a lance corporal
with Enfield standing guard, a lady mathematician
from Australia, a telegraph operator, a
translator from the old country, an American liaison,
a Polish consultant, and on and on. I suppose
it could even be me. All, of course, were vetted beforehand
by our intelligence service, but he or she
slipped by.
    â€œSo now it is important that we find him. It is
in fact mandatory that we find him. A big security
shakeout is no answer at all. Time-consuming,
clumsy, prone to error, gossip, and resentment, as
well as colossally interruptive and destructive to
our actual task, but worst of all a clear indicator to
the NKVD that we know they’ve placed a bug in
our rug. If that is the conclusion they reach, then
Stalin will not trust us, will not fortify Kursk, et
cetera, et cetera.”
    â€œSo breaking the book code is the key.”
    â€œIt is. I will leave it to historians to ponder the
irony that in the most successful and sophisticated
cryptoanalytic operation in history, a simple book
code stands between us and a desperately important
goal. We are too busy for irony.”
    Basil responded, “The problem then refines itself
more acutely: it is that you have no practical
access to the book upon which the code that contains
the name for this chap’s new handler is
based.”
    â€œThat is it, in a nutshell,” said Professor Turing.
    â€œA sticky wicket, I must say. But where on earth
do I fit in? I don’t see that there’s any room for a
boy of my most peculiar expertise. Am I supposed
to—well, I cannot even conjure an end to that sentence.
You have me …”
    He paused.
    â€œI think he’s got it,” said the admiral.
    â€œOf course I have,” said Basil. “There has to be
another book.”
    The Fourth Day
    It had to happen sooner or later, and it happened
sooner. The first man caught up in the Abwehr observe-and-apprehend operation was Maurice
Chevalier.
    The French star was in transit between mistresses
on the Left Bank, and who could possibly
blame Unterscharführer Ganz for blowing the
whistle on him? He was tall and gloriously handsome,
he was exquisitely dressed, and he radiated
such warmth, grace, confidence, and glamour that
to see him was to love him. The sergeant was
merely acting on the guidance given the squad by
Macht: if you want him to be your best friend,
that’s probably the spy. The sergeant had no idea
who Chevalier was; he thought he was doing his
duty.
    Naturally, the star was not amused. He threatened
to call his good friend Herr General von
Choltitz and have them all sent to the Russian
front, and it’s a good thing Macht still had some
diplomatic skills left, for he managed to talk the elegant
man out of that course of action by supplying
endless amounts of unction and flattery. His
dignity ruffled, the star left huffily and went on his
way, at least secure in the knowledge that in twenty
minutes he would be making love to a beautiful
woman and these German peasants would still be
standing around out in the cold, waiting for something
to happen. By eight p.m. he had forgotten
entirely about it, and on his account no German
boy serving in Paris would find himself on that
frozen antitank gun.
    As for SS Hauptsturmführer Otto Boch, that
was another story. He was a man of action. He was
not one for the patience, the persistence, the professionalism
of police work. He preferred more direct
approaches, such as hanging around the Left
Bank hotel