The Unlikely Spy

"Let's hear them."

 

"Number one, Canaris has lost faith in the British networks and has commissioned Vogel to undertake an investigation. A man with Vogel's background and training is the perfect officer to sift through all the files and all the agent reports to look for inconsistencies. We've been damned careful, Harry, but maintaining Double Cross is an enormously complex task. I bet we've made a couple of mistakes along the way. And if the right person were looking for them--an intelligent man like Kurt Vogel, for instance--he might be able to spot them."

 

"Theory two?"

 

"Theory two, Canaris has commissioned Vogel to construct a new network. It's very late in the game for something like that. Agents would have to be discovered, recruited, trained, and inserted into the country. That usually takes months to do the right way. I doubt that's what they're up to, but it can't be totally discounted."

 

"Theory three?"

 

"Theory three is that Kurt Vogel is the control officer of a network we don't know about."

 

"An entire network of agents that we haven't uncovered--is that possible?"

 

"We have to assume it is."

 

"Then all our doubles would be at risk."

 

"It's a house of cards, Harry. All it takes is one good agent, and the entire thing comes crashing down."

 

Vicary lit a cigarette. The tobacco took the aftertaste of the broth out of his mouth.

 

"Canaris must be under enormous pressure to deliver. He'd want the best to handle the operation."

 

"So that means Kurt Vogel is a man operating in a pressure cooker."

 

"Right."

 

"That could make him dangerous."

 

"It could also make him careless. He has to make a move. He has to use his radio or send an agent into the country. And when he does, we'll be on to him."

 

They sat in silence for a moment, Vicary smoking, Harry thumbing his way through Vogel's file. Then Vicary told him about what had happened in Registry.

 

"Lots of files go missing now and again, Alfred."

 

"Yes, but why this file? And more important, why now?"

 

"Good questions, but I suspect the answers are very simple. When you're in the middle of an investigation it's best to stay focused, not get sidetracked."

 

"I know, Harry," Vicary said, frowning. "But it's driving me to distraction."

 

Harry said, "I know one or two of the Registry Queens."

 

Vicary looked up. "I'm sure you do."

 

"I'll poke around, ask a few questions."

 

"Do it quietly."

 

"There's no other way to do it, Alfred."

 

"Jago's lying--he's hiding something."

 

"Why would he lie?"

 

"I don't know," Vicary said, crushing out his cigarette, "but I'm paid to think wicked thoughts."

 

 

 

 

 

10

 

 

BLETCHLEY PARK, ENGLAND

 

 

 

 

 

Officially it was called the Government Code and Cipher School. However, it was not a school at all. It looked as though it might be a school of some kind--a large ugly Victorian mansion surrounded by a high fence--but most people in the narrow-streeted railway town of Bletchley understood that something portentous was going on there. The great lawns were covered with dozens of makeshift huts. The remaining space had been trampled into pathways of frozen mud. The gardens were overgrown and shabby, like tiny jungles. The staff was an odd collection--the country's brightest mathematicians, chess champions, crossword-puzzle wizards--all assembled for one purpose: cracking German codes.

 

Even in the notoriously eccentric world of Bletchley Park, Denholm Saunders was considered an oddball. Before the war he had been a top mathematician at Cambridge. Now he was among the best cryptanalysts in the world. He also lived in a hamlet outside Bletchley with his mother and his Siamese cats, Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas.

 

It was late afternoon. Saunders was seated at his desk in the mansion, working over a pair of messages sent by the Abwehr in Hamburg to German agents inside Britain. The messages had been intercepted by the Radio Security Service, flagged as suspicious, and forwarded to Bletchley Park for decoding.

 

Saunders whistled tunelessly while his pencil scraped across his pad, a habit that irritated his colleagues no end. He worked in the hand cipher section of the park. His work space was crowded and cramped, but it was relatively warm. Better to be here than outside in one of the huts, where cryptanalysts slaved over German army and naval ciphers like Eskimos in an igloo.

 

Two hours later the scraping and the whistling stopped. Saunders was aware only of the sound of melting snow gurgling through the gutters of the old house. The work that afternoon had been far from challenging; the messages had been transmitted in a variation of a code Saunders unbuttoned himself in 1940.

 

"My goodness, but they are getting a bit boring, aren't they?" Saunders said, to no one in particular.

 

His superior was a Scot named Richardson. Saunders knocked, stepped inside, and laid the pair of decodes on the desk. Richardson read them and frowned. An officer at MI5 named Alfred Vicary had put out a red flag for this kind of thing just yesterday.

 

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