THE LAST GOOD WAR: A Novel Page 7

  “So-so. When I was young, I spoke English to my mother. I spoke Polish to my father. When we came to Poland, my father insisted that I speak only Polish. I confess, mom and I cheated from time to time. I can think in English, but still speak it like an eight year old. More or less. I don't know many technical terms.”

  “Can you translate this?”

  Anna took the book—a Polish treatise on the physics of radio—and translated a paragraph, stumbling over a number of technical terms, but otherwise speaking fluently. Marian was satisfied; as far as he could tell, she had a perfect Oxford accent.

  “Our number one priority is a meeting with the French and British. To let you in on a secret,” he lowered his voice, “I met with French and British intelligence officers in Paris in January. Our government instructed me to listen, not pass on information. But, from what I can tell, we're substantially ahead of them. Can't be sure, of course; they may have held back when I said so little. But now the time has come for everybody to get serious.”

  Anna's face must have shown surprise; she had always thought of the British and French as being serious. It seemed ungracious to suggest that they were not, when Rejewski apparently hadn't offered any information in return.

  “I'm particularly eager to work with the French.” Rejewski gave Anna a brief summary of the early codebreaking effort. “I haven't mentioned this before, but I got one of the first big breaks on the Enigma from Bertrand—now the head of French intelligence—way back in 1932, before Hitler came to power. He was just a captain then, but was their specialist in foreign ciphers. He came into contact with a German official who gave him Enigma settings for October and December of the previous year.

  “Bertrand thought they were priceless,” continued Marian, “but the French Intelligence Bureau wasn't interested; they wanted to milk their spy for other information, on German rearmament plans. Then Bertrand went to the British. They weren't interested either; they thought the Enigma simply couldn't be broken. In frustration, he turned to me. I was ecstatic. I already had good relations with him, and they've been even better since.”

  “So the French and British did drop the ball,” Anna conceded. “But what motivated the German? Treason is so hard to understand.”

  “Really? There are three great reasons: divided loyalties, sex, and money, in no particular order.” Marian's tone was slightly patronizing; he was explaining the wicked world to a naive twenty-year old. “In this case, it was sex and money; he needed money to afford his love affairs.

  “But let's get back to the point. If you think your English needs work, you could go back to the University for an hour or two each day, to study English intensively. Concentrate on technical terms. If the meeting with the Brits does work out, I'd like you to take the lead in presentations to them. With a bit of work, I think you'd be up to it. We—the old guard—chose French as our main foreign language.

  “We could get translators from the Foreign Office,” Marian continued. “But we'd rather not. The fewer people present, the smaller the risk of a security breach. Also, things will move much faster if one of us can explain things directly to the English—not go through a tedious translation. Of course, none of the Brits speaks Polish. They don't much believe in learning other languages. The farther East they go, the less interested they seem to be.”

  With her English studies, Anna's next few months were hectic, but she made a point of getting away whenever Kaz had a free day.

  At the first Enigma meeting in June, Anna asked if she might say something. Henryk guessed what it was.

  “Is it related to Enigma?”

  “No,” said Anna softly.

  “To the security of the realm?”

  She realized she was going to be teased; she might as well take it in good humor. She answered in dramatic style:

  “No, no, my liege. I humbly do confess.”

  Henryk played along; they now really were on the same wavelength.

  “And what can claim the time of these great knights?”

  He waved his hand expansively around the table, ignoring the inconvenient fact that there were only two other people present. Anna responded:

  “Great knights? But is the table round, my lord?

  My senses do betray me.”

  Conspicuously placing one hand over a corner of the table and raising the other to her brow, she feigned a half swoon.

  Henryk insisted:

  “The table round, I swear.

  The corner square—'tis but a mere mirage.”

  Anna got to the point:

  “I beg your leave to wed my noble knight.

  The month of Caesar, prime, the full moon's time.”

  Jerzy smiled. “The Seventh Cavalry, no doubt.”

  Anna ignored him. The game was now afoot; she had no wish to end it. She spoke again to Henryk:

  “One boon, my liege, one single boon, I pray.”

  “O what, young wench?”

  “Forsake ius noctis primae, lord, my liege.

  Thereby shalt thou make virtue doubly safe.”

  Marian snickered; not such a naive twenty-year old, after all. Jerzy broke into a belly laugh; Anna feared he might hurt himself. Henryk—the cool, rational Henryk—was he actually blushing?

  As Henryk sat silent, she followed up, pretending to beg:

  “I prithee, lord.”

  He was now trying hard to hold up his end without seeming stiff.

  “I deign to grant the blushing maiden's wish.”

  Turning to Jerzy, Anna continued the game:

  “And thou, bold knight, hast thou a gift for me?”

  Dramatically twisting out his stogie in the ashtray, Jerzy replied:

  “The greatest gift that man can e'er bestow.”

  Anna pressed her luck:

  “Till dread and darkest death between us come?”

  Jerzy responded immediately:

  “Less fast, dear lass, for death t'would be

  The weed, you see, has pow'r of life o're me.”

  Henryk ended the game with a rhyming couplet:

  “Then heart's enigma fast unraveled be,

  With happiness and joy for all to see.”

  “Joking aside,” he said in his normal businesslike voice, “we all congratulate you, Anna, and wish you and Kaz the greatest happiness. But it's time to get back to unraveling the real Enigma.

  “With our new sheets, we've been able to decipher some of the messages from last October, November, and early December. But we've hit a stone wall since mid-December. We've been able to decode only a few messages, and only when the German operator did something stupid—like sending part of a message in code and part in the clear. But those few messages have been enough to tell us that the Germans introduced two new wheels in December.”

  The group looked glum. Except Anna, who had been floating on a cloud since Kaz proposed.

  “Marian and I have concluded that the Germans use only three wheels at any one time, even though they now have five available. If we're correct, our problems have multiplied tenfold. Now there are 5 possible wheels in the first position, 4 in the second, and 3 in the third—60 positions altogether. We'll need 60 sets of sheets, not just six, and we'll be able to make the 60 only if we get our hands on those last two wheels.”

  Everybody—again except Anna—looked even glummer.

  “Nevertheless, I do have some good news. We have permission to tell the British and French everything we know, and even give them copies of the Enigma machine. The meeting is scheduled for July 11 and 12. For security reasons, it won't be here. You should all be prepared to travel with your overnight bags on the previous evening, the 10th.”

  When the 10th came, they were taken in several army staff cars, along a circuitous route, to a hunting lodge deep in Pyry Forest. It was a rustic building, surrounded by towering fir trees, swaying and sighing in the gentle breezes. Even in summer, a huge stone fireplace in the middle of the Great Hall provided a coziness to the lodge, taking
the creeping chill off the late-evening air. The high, open ceilings of the hall were supported by roughhewn timbers. Corridors ran off the hall in all directions, some to meeting rooms, some to the bedroom wings.

  The French and British were now very serious indeed; the prospect that they might all be destroyed by the Nazis had marvelously focused their minds. The French were headed by Gustave Bertrand, who was warmly welcomed by Marian Rejewski. The two old friends quickly disappeared into one of the meeting rooms, accompanied by several other French officers and Jerzy.

  As planned, Anna and Henryk retired to another room with Dilly Knox and Alastair Denniston. In spite of Henryk's limited knowledge of English, he would be able to follow Anna's main points, and suggest additional ideas from time to time.

  He was lugging a heavy case, which he placed on the table in front of Denniston. Henryk snapped the cover back.

  “This, Mr. Denniston, is the German Enigma machine,” Anna began dramatically. “More precisely, it is our copy of the machine. Please accept it as a gift of the Polish Government.”

  Denniston mumbled his thanks, and began to examine the machine. “Please call me Alastair,” he added. “I notice that you all call one another by your first names.”

  So he did, apparently, have at least a smattering of Polish, or perhaps Russian.

  Anna explained how they figured out the basic Blue code for the early machine, then went through the complications that had arisen, especially the steckerboard. She emphasized the importance of repeats in the inscrutable six. They might be exploited with Rejewski's machine—details to come this afternoon—and the Zygalski sheets. Henryk appeared slightly embarrassed when she used that term.

  The British seemed duly impressed, but then she got to the disappointing bit. Although they had sporadically deciphered messages for 1938 and earlier, they had run into a major problem. The Germans were now using five wheels, although only three at a time. The codes might still be broken, if they could ever reconstruct or steal the other two wheels and produce a complete set of Zygalski sheets. Marian was working intensely, trying to figure out the internal wiring of the two new wheels.

  Alastair and Dilly followed the presentation intently, asking penetrating questions; it quickly became clear that they were familiar with many of the issues. But apparently, this meeting was to be the reverse of January's. The Poles were the ones providing information; the British were listening.

  During the luncheon break, Anna made a brief, and, she hoped, discrete, visit to the office of the hunting lodge.

  The afternoon was dedicated to Marian's description of his machine; detailed plans would be provided to the British and French, along with ideas for the upcoming Mark II. Through the mishmash of languages, it became clear that that the British were working on a similar decoding machine.

  At the end, Dilly Knox observed that Marian had simply spoken of “Mark I and Mark II.” But Mark I of what? What was the machine called? A “bomba” or bombe, he was told.

  “Why in the world a 'bomba'?” he asked.

  “Because,” replied Marian, “it keeps on ticking until something happens.”

  Thereafter, whenever Anna was asked why it was called a bomba, she repeated Marian's explanation. Even after she discovered the truth. Marian had been too embarrassed to give an honest answer. When he first thought of the machine, he, Henryk, and Jerzy were eating a popular ice cream called bomba. So bomba it was.

  As the meeting broke up, Anna was asked to accompany Denniston and Knox back to the British embassy. As the two visitors settled in the back seat, they began to rehash the events of the previous 24 hours. The meeting was a tremendous success; Denniston was delighted with the Enigma machine and information provided by the Poles.

  “It was bloody-well time,” retorted Knox, apparently forgetting that Anna was in the front seat. “Bertrand is livid.”

  There were a few moments of silence; Anna could feel anger simmering in the back seat. Knox exploded.

  “The bastards told Bertrand that they would inform him at once if they succeeded in breaking Enigma. It was their solemn promise when Bertrand passed Schmidt's information on to them way back in 1932.”

  So Schmidt, thought Anna, was the German traitor. Not much of a security breach—there must be thousands of people named Schmidt in Germany. But she hoped that the driver didn't understand English.

  She wondered if she should try to defend Rejewski. He had been eager to talk to the British and French, but had been unable, until recently, to get permission. She decided to let it pass.

  Denniston apparently remembered that Anna was in the front seat, and switched the conversation to the recent games at Wimbledon.

  The next day, the British and French headed home with a mixture of gratitude and resentment, the gift machines following in diplomatic pouches.

  For the Poles remaining behind, those troublesome fourth and fifth rotors presented a roadblock. But in a remarkable mathematical feat, Marian succeeded in figuring out their internal wiring from radio intercepts. He was helped by a German blunder. The final piece of his puzzle fell into place when the Poles intercepted a long message, with plain text and coded passages interspersed.

  A month later, as Denniston was working methodically through a sample of Zygalski sheets, his secretary buzzed. A messenger from the Polish embassy was in the outer office. He had come with a package. But they were having trouble with him; he flatly refused to give it to anyone but Denniston himself. Denniston had him sent in. Denniston slit open the plain brown cardboard box and saw a note at the top.

  22 August, 1939

  Dear Alastair,

  Thought that numbers four and five might be of some interest to you.

  Regards,

  Anna.

  Rummaging through the packing material, Denniston extracted two Enigma wheels.

  Anna, he thought, has certainly inherited the British tendency toward understatement.

  7

  Dinner Party

  If Poland is attacked, Anglo-French military plans to come to her aid are ready for immediate operation.

  The Sunday Times (London), August 20, 1939

  ...just for a scrap of paper—Great Britain is going to make war!

  Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, to Sir Edward Goschen, August 4, 1914

  Wednesday, 30 August, 1939. Raczynski Family Estate.

  Anna's parents had invited the newlyweds to the traditional end-of-summer family reunion at their estate 60 kilometers west of Warsaw. Also invited were Anna's two brothers, together with an assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Anna and Kaz quickly accepted; Kaz would have a chance to get to know the family during the long, four-day weekend.

  A few days later, she had been deeply disappointed when Kaz said that his visit would have to be cut short. Poland was mobilizing in the face of German threats; only a few officers would be given time off. Kaz's four-day leave had been cut down to 24 hours, but he couldn't be sure that he would be able to get away at all. He hoped to join the family some time Wednesday evening.

  Zambrowski, the family chauffeur, met her at the station early in the evening in the old black Mercedes. Anna couldn't help but notice that the small dent in the rear fender was still there; it hadn't been fixed yet, but otherwise the car was immaculate. During the leisurely twenty-minute drive to the estate, Zambrowski brought her up to date on the family. Stefan, her half-brother from her father's first marriage, had just arrived from his foreign office post, but, with the crisis atmosphere in Warsaw, he would have to catch the noon train back to the capital the next day. So would Uncle Michal, who likewise worked at the foreign office, although Aunt Maria expected to stay until early the next week. Josef, Anna's younger brother, was on leave from his regiment, but he would have to depart mid-morning on Friday. Sisi, her twelve-year-old sister, would of course be there for the whole weekend and beyond; her school year did not begin until Sept. 12.

  Unfortunately, several of the cousins had sent their last-minute
regrets; they couldn't come because of the tense international situation. Other cousins, aunts, and uncles would be arriving throughout the day on Saturday. Naturally, Anna's parents were disappointed that attendance would be so light, and, for some of the guests, brief. But it couldn't be helped; they would try to make the most of it.

  As the Mercedes turned into the circular drive, Anna heard the familiar crunch of gravel. Her mother was standing in front of the mansion to greet her; her younger sister came bouncing down the marble steps to throw her arms around Anna as she stepped out of the car.

  Dinner was later than normal; they waited an extra hour and a half in the hope that Kaz would arrive. Around the table, the mood was somber and subdued, in keeping with the dark oak paneling of the room. Sisi entertained herself by making faces at the portrait of great grandpapa; she carefully leaned back between Josef and Stefan so her parents couldn't see her. Across the table, Uncle Michal and Aunt Maria looked on with amusement; they had raised children of their own.

  According to an unstated family rule, proper topics at the evening meal included music, the theater, books, or family matters. Politics were not to be mentioned, although exceptions were permitted if anyone wanted to introduce the subject with a discussion of Plato's Republic, Machiavelli's Prince, or Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire. Religion was likewise out of bounds, although, in this case, there was just one exception: C.S. Lewis's forthcoming Screwtape Letters. Anna's mother had recently received a manuscript copy from the author, and was interested in her family's reactions.

  Just nicely into the main course, younger brother Josef broke the rule.

  “All the officers seem to think we're in for it, that the Germans will attack.” He was addressing his comment to Uncle Michal. Michal looked for guidance to his hostess. Anna's mother, the daughter of an English Duke, was the social arbiter of the family. She had married Anna's father when he was with the informal Polish liaison office in London, back during the Great War, when the Poles were hoping to have an independent nation once again.