THE LAST GOOD WAR: A Novel Read online

  “But you really work on...?”

  “As I said, I can't say. If I could say, it wouldn't be much of a cover story, would it?”

  Both of them were now struggling, with only limited success, to conceal their irritation.

  “But you were sufficiently senior, that you have important information you can only give to Denniston?” The sub-lieutenant was obviously skeptical; Anna looked much too young to have a senior position.

  “That's correct. Please contact him. He'll know who I am.”

  “I'm sorry. That was Anna...?”

  “JANKOWSKA,” said Anna, spelling her name slowly as the sub-lieutenant wrote it down.

  “One last question. You said you just arrived from Poland. How did you get out? In an Air Force plane?”

  “No. In an old Fokker triplane.”

  The sub-lieutenant half expected her to add, “with the Red Baron.”

  “Would you please wait,” he said, and disappeared.

  Anna waited. And waited. For well over two hours. She was famished. Finally, the sub-lieut. reappeared.

  “I'm sorry, but Denniston says he doesn't know who you are.”

  “Oh damn,” said Anna. “I forgot. I've just gotten married. He would know me by my previous name, Anna Raczynska.”

  “You forgot that you've just been married? I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave.”

  “No. I insist on seeing your superior.”

  The sub-lieutenant left, stopping at the desk to ask the receptionist to call security and have them send up a non-uniformed guard. He should stay just outside the library, in case the visitor became violent. This was, by rough count, the seventh mental case to come walking in off the street in the past month.

  The young officer then went upstairs and knocked on his boss's door. The lieutenant called for him to enter.

  “We've got a real live one down there. Says she wants to see Denniston. Says she worked for a Special Meteorology Project of the Polish Air Force, but didn't do weather. 'I can't say,' is her response to most questions. Says she forgot that she was recently married. Says she arrived on a magic carp..., I mean, in a Fokker triplane. She insists on seeing you. She's apparently sane enough to figure out that I'm not going to be helpful.”

  “Oh, good grief. Should we have security throw her out, or is it serious enough to call the mental hospital?”

  “Hard to say. There's just one thing. I just thought you might actually like to see this one.”

  “What?”

  “She's rather interesting. Might give you an amusing interlude. Even though she's nutty, she seems perfectly rational—even intelligent. And, oh yes, just one other thing. She's remarkably pretty. I might even say, stunning.”

  The lieutenant was on his way downstairs, picking up his hat on the way. The receptionist was astonished to see him, but he ignored her, brushing by her and the newly arrived security guard on his way into the library.

  Anna had been counting to ten, over and over, trying to regain her composure. When the lieutenant entered, she smiled slightly, and he motioned her to sit down.

  “I understand you want to see Mr. Denniston.”

  “Yes.” Then, to smooth things, Anna added, “sir.”

  “Might I ask how you got his name?” That wasn't quite the way the lieutenant wanted it to come out. “I mean, have you ever met him?”

  Anna paused. The meeting in Pyry Forest was supposed to be a deep secret. Finally, she responded simply: “Yes, sir.”

  “When was that?”

  Anna paused again. Damn, thought the lieutenant, that wasn't what I should have asked, either. What's so intriguing about her?

  “I meant,” he corrected himself, “if you could describe him.”

  She could, and did. In considerable detail. He was a short man—perhaps 5'6” or 5'7”, said Anna, translating meters into feet. He spoke with a Scottish bur. His features were sharp, but pleasant. His dark hair was graying not only at the temples, but along the sides of his head. He had an unusual way of walking—not a limp, but an odd gait. She surprised herself, even remembering the color of his eyes. Correct on all counts, thought the lieutenant. And not the sorts of things she would get out of a newspaper or magazine article—even if there were one about Denniston, which he very much doubted. This certainly is a fascinating one.

  “Would you please excuse me,” he said. “I would like to contact Denniston again. What name did you say he might know you by?”

  “Anna Raczynska.”

  The lieutenant got up to go.

  “Oh yes,” said Anna. “I'm sure he's very busy, and perhaps even a bit absent minded.” Correct again, thought the lieutenant. “Ask him,” she added, “if he liked my little gift.”

  “Your little gift?”

  “Surely you know by now. I can't say.” Again, she smiled slightly.

  “Ah, right,” he said, about to leave the room. He had meant to be clinical and expressionless, but he smiled back.

  This time, she didn't have to wait two hours. Not even fifteen minutes. The lieutenant was back, and full of apologies.

  “Mr. Denniston sends his sincere regrets. He didn't know your married name. He's eager to talk to you. They'll be sending around a car for you in half an hour. Would you like to come up to my office while you wait?”

  Anna paused. She was famished. She looked at her watch: 2:37. The lieutenant looked at his watch too.

  “I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I don't suppose you've had anything to eat. I could have my secretary go to the pub around the corner and pick up something for you.”

  When they got back to his office, the sub-lieut. noticed that his boss carefully closed the door behind him. An unusual case, indeed.

  After the frustrations of the morning, Anna was delighted to be on her way to see Denniston. She was traveling in a small, olive drab staff car with worn seats and threadbare carpets; she guessed it dated from the mid thirties. The side curtains were drawn and there was another curtain behind the driver that blocked her view to the front. She wanted to peek out, to see what she could of London and wherever it was they were headed, but she decided not to. The curtains were drawn for a reason. Someone didn't want her to know where she was going.

  About 5:00 p.m., the car stopped. The driver opened the door and snapped a salute as Anna stepped out. Apparently, anyone who rated a staff car also rated a salute. “I'd better not get used to this,” she thought as she nodded back to the corporal. “On the other hand, I hope I don't have to get used to this morning, either.”

  She was in front of a lovely, large Victorian mansion that apparently had been built in sections. It looked like a set of fashionable London townhouses—partly Tudor and partly Gothic, with a series of bay windows on the second floor, some overhanging and some resting on first-floor bays. Later, Anna would learn that it reflected the eclectic tastes of Sir Herbert Leon, a stockbroker who built it as his country house in the late 19th century.

  When she was ushered in to Denniston's office, he was most apologetic.

  “So sorry about the cock-up in London. They were treating you as something of a joke. Seemed to think that they had a mental case on their hands.” Denniston was trying not to smirk, but felt more relaxed when Anna laughed good-naturedly. “They get quite a few wandering in. When they said Anna Jankowska, they emphasized your last name, and I didn't recognize it. They also seemed to have gotten the amusing idea that you arrived in a World War I triplane.”

  “Actually, that's how I got out of Poland. To Denmark. But let's not get into that.”

  “At any rate, welcome to Bletchley Park. When they mentioned your 'little gift,' I knew at once it was you. We can't thank you too much. We're finding the wheels invaluable, although our success in breaking the basic codes has so far been very limited. What we're picking up are mostly training exercises—full of nursery rhymes and chitchat. The Boche are sharpening their skills, but they're also giving us practice. For example, we found out that they're now changing
their basic settings every night at midnight. So we face a huge task. But they said that you had some information for me?”

  “An idea, really. My mind was going back over the earlier messages. The one I remember most clearly was the first one we decoded—a message telling the army that they would be getting antitank guns in their infantry regiments.”

  “And?”

  “The message itself wasn't important. What is important—it was repeated several times the next day. It occurred to me that this may be a standard practice when they send orders to a large number of divisions. We could get a good idea of when repeats were occurring. They would have the same number of letters in the main message—76, or whatever. If we've deciphered one message, and it's repeated after the basic settings are changed, that would give us an enormous leg up in figuring out the new settings. It might be especially helpful, now that the Germans are changing the settings every 24 hours.”

  “Indeed. We're hard at work, collecting a set of such clues. We're also identifying some individuals by the style of their transmissions; we hope that some will have idiosyncrasies that we can use.

  “But before we get to that, I wonder if you would join Sandra and me for dinner?”

  “I'd be delighted.”

  “And we'd like you to stay with us for at least a few days.”

  “Again, I'd be delighted. But I'm afraid I've left my things in a London Hotel. Perhaps I could ring them and have them move the stuff out of my room—I don't like to sit on an unused room when they're so terribly hard to get.”

  “Of course. It's getting a bit late. But, most days, we have a courier come up from London, either by train or car. He could bring up your suitcases tomorrow. Can you do without for this evening? Sandra might be able to give you a few things you need.”

  “My suitcase,” she corrected. “I've been traveling very light.”

  “Done. I'd also like you to join us here at BP—I mean, Bletchley Park. However, I'm afraid that might be difficult. Our security people are tough—understandably—and they may balk at us hiring a foreign national. And we still have to answer to Naval Intelligence, and, through them, to the Admiralty. That may take some time, but I'll see if I can move things along—if you want.”

  “Of course. I can't imagine any place I'd rather be.”

  At dinner that evening, Anna started to mention something about Pyry Forest, but Alastair quickly changed the subject. He clearly didn't want to talk shop in front of his wife. It wasn't that he didn't trust her, Anna guessed. But, for her sake, he didn't want her to know things she didn't need to know. If she knew secrets, she might be under continuous stress not to let them slip out. She might not know when some detail was important.

  Alastair wanted to know about the flight out of Poland in the old Fokker. Anna obliged. Even with her understatements, the drama and danger of their escape shone through.

  Sandra asked about the wedding. They had been married, Anna said, on the last weekend of July. She described the wedding ceremony, and the general delight of the two families; the darkening international clouds were pushed to the back of everyone's mind. Anna then came back to the subject of Pyry Forest, but in a way to which Alastair could scarcely object.

  “Kaz and I spent our honeymoon night at the hunting lodge in a forest near Warsaw. We'd intended to go to Sweden to visit some of his cousins, but, with the tense international situation, the Army wouldn't let him travel outside the country. Fortunately, I was able to get a reservation at the lodge at the last minute. We thought that we handled the day very calmly; we didn't think we were the least bit nervous. But when we came to open the champagne, we rummaged around, looking for a corkscrew. We couldn't find one. Kaz called the front desk, and a bellhop appeared, corkscrew in hand. Kaz told him what he wanted. The bellhop folded the corkscrew and put it in his pocket. He then crossed the room with an absolutely expressionless face, undid the foil on the bottle, and worked the cork loose with his thumbs. When it popped, he retreated back across the room, but we could tell he was having trouble maintaining his composure. As he disappeared out of the room, we could see his shoulders jiggling with laughter.”

  The evening was capped off by Sandra telling stories of their early years of marriage. How delightful, relaxed, and carefree those days now seemed. Neither of Anna's hosts had the bad taste to ask about Kaz. She obviously didn't want to talk about him; it hurt too much.

  Alastair had trouble getting Anna's security clearance—as predicted, only more so. After two weeks, he got her name past the internal security people at BP. They were finally convinced when he pointed out that, if Anna really were a German spy, they were all wasting their time anyway. The Huns would know about their work in detail, and simply play games with their deciphering operations. It wouldn't take much imagination to make the machine much, much more complicated.

  But that was just the internal people; he then had to go to Naval Intelligence. Anna was becoming embarrassed, staying with the Dennistons for such a long time, but didn't feel she could commit herself to lodgings until she knew if she really had a job.

  In frustration, Alastair finally decided to bypass Naval Intelligence and take the case directly to the office of the First Lord of the Admiralty. The senior officers were equally uncooperative. But then, finally, he announced success. Anna was to report to his office the next morning at 10:00 for work.

  When she got there, Alastair let her know what had happened.

  “I finally got a call from the First Lord himself. Winston's intensely interested in our work; he's almost boyish, the way he delights in the intrigue. He wanted to push us along, to know if there was anything he could do to help us move faster. I took the opportunity to ask about your clearance. When I mentioned your English mother, it turned out that he knows her family. I described how helpful you and your colleagues were at Pyry Forest, and he agreed at once.

  “We're just now getting up to speed. As you've been studying the Enigma for the past few years, I'd like you to take an office next to mine, so I can bounce ideas off you, to see if you've run into them before. I should mention right at the outset that this arrangement will be temporary. Once our people get more experience, I'll want one of them as my right-hand assistant. But I think you can count on a job with us for as long as the war lasts—or as long as you can put up with our peculiar ways.”

  Anna responded that this was more than satisfactory. She was thereupon sent down to the administrative offices for the normal paperwork, and for a very abnormal—even spectacular—security briefing. After she signed the Official Secrets Act, she was informed of the special rules applying at Bletchley Park. Anyone intentionally passing on information about BP could expect a firing squad; even careless breaches of security could lead to the death penalty. It sounded like an operation run by Ghengis Khan. But carelessness could not be tolerated: countless lives might be endangered. It might seem that they were playing an incredibly complicated chess game. But it was deadly serious, with huge stakes.

  Anna's position would be special, with her office next to Mr. Denniston. He would come through the door as he pleased, but Anna was not to use it. If she wanted to see Mr. Denniston, she would go out into the hall and enter through the office of Mr. Denniston's secretary, asking her if Mr. Denniston were free.

  When she got back to the office, Alastair immediately came in.

  “Until further notice, I'd like you to work on clues or cribs that might be useful.” He flopped a large pile of undeciphered messages on her desk, and a much thinner file of decoded ones; at least some of these were the decodings previously given to Denniston by the Poles. “Take your time—don't feel pressured, although I'll probably check by with you once or twice a day. I'd like you to take an independent look, but I might first mention of some of the things we're exploring.

  “First of all, we've broken a few Luftwaffe messages. One of our keys is a variation on the VON theme. The address is a longer string of letters: AN DIE GRUPPE (TO THE GROUP). We're hop
eful that, when our new bombe comes along, we'll be able to break these messages—with that great big, lovely clue—very quickly, even though the Germans throw in as many as ten meaningless, random letters at the beginning, before they get to AN DIE GRUPPE, just to make our job more difficult.

  “Then there's the very interesting idiosyncrasy of the Enigma. When you push in any letter—say G—it can come out any other letter, that is, any letter except G. I don't believe you mentioned this at Pyry Lodge.”

  Anna was surprised. How could they have forgotten to pass on this important detail? The surprise showed on her face. Alastair apparently misinterpreted her expression, thinking she was unaware of this peculiarity of the Enigma.

  “The reason is quite simple. If, at a randomly chosen setting of the wheels, G comes out T, then it's reversible. T will come out G. To make the machine reversible—so it can be used for both coding and decoding—the designers not only used the three rotors, but also a reflector at the end. Without getting into the mechanics, the reflector not only ensures reversibility, but also ensures that a letter must come out as some other letter. This is so even with the steckerboard, which is an integral part of the wiring.”

  Anna thought it would be impolite to interrupt his explanation; she saw no gracious way of saying that she already knew. Also, with Alastair's explanation, she might actually learn something new.

  “This idiosyncrasy turns out to be surprisingly useful. For example, suppose we suspect that a German message is addressed: ANDIEGRUPPE. We line these eleven letters up directly below the beginning of the encoded German message. If any one of the letters corresponds—for example, if the second letter of the encoded message is also N—then we know the encoded message doesn't have ANDIEGRUPPE at the very beginning. We slide ANDIEGRUPPE along one space, to find if we now have possible solution, with the Germans having put one random, dummy letter at the beginning. As long as we find a matching letter in the top and bottom lines, we know we're not in the right place, and can continue to slide ANDIEGRUPPE along, one letter at a time, until we get a possible solution. If we move a dozen spaces to the right, with a matching letter each time, we can be pretty sure the message isn't addressed ANDIEGRUPPE, and can turn to a different message.