Chapter 17: Epilogue: Bletchley, August 2007

The young Fred Clegg was enjoying the outing. It had been a long car journey up through the Buckinghamshire countryside, past Luton and Whipsnade but in the end he'd found the place without trouble. He wasn't much of a one for museums normally but, when he'd learned of the family connection and heard about what his grandfather had been up to during the war, he had felt that he just had to come.

Sitting in the library of the Mansion in Bletchley Park, Fred had been happy to listen to the guide describing the work that had gone on there during the second word war; the story of the code breakers; of Turing, Colossus and the Bombes. The guide had recited the accolade given by Churchill to the those that had worked there - "the geese that laid the golden eggs but never cackled" he'd called them.

Fred knew what the guide meant. According to his father, it had certainly been a long time after the war before his grandfather had said anything about what he knew of what had gone on there.

Fred followed the group of visitors as the guide led the way out of the Mansion and around the outbuildings that had housed the teams that had worked on the Ultra material — the code name given to the Enigma intercepts.

The tour wound its way around the complex, finishing up at the working replica of one of Turing's Bombes. The clatter of the machine's rotors was impressive enough, it was daunting to think what the noise must have been like with ten of the things running.

Eventually they found their way back to the Mansion. "Ladies and Gentlemen," the guide said, "there's one last thing we'd like to show you and, frankly to ask for your help. We know that a lot of the visitors here have family recollections of things that went on at Station X which were never recorded and we're rather baffled by a recent find." He led the way back across the stable yard to one of the cottages that had been used Dilly Knox and Turing. "You see that room up there," he said pointing to the windows in a small turret. "That room we know was used by Alan Turing in the early part of the war. He moved out to work with the others in the huts as they were built. He came back here, according to the archives, in January 1942 for a period of about two months. We don't know what he was working on or why he moved back in.

"All we do know is that there were two important projects going on at that time. One was work that was being done on intercepting the Japanese radio traffic following Pearl Harbour and the invasion of the Phillipines. The other, and perhaps more intriguing, was the so-called "Heydrich Decrpyt". We know that material related to Reinhard Heydrich's rule in Czechosolvakia as Protector of Bohemia and Moravia was being worked on at Station X in late 1941 but apparently without success. It has always been assumed that this in some way related to Heydrich's involvement in the infamous Der Wannsee Conference but that Station X failed to decrypt it before the meeting. Some historians have suggested that Station X continued to work on this material into 1942 with greater success and that it led to the mission that resulted in the assassination of Heydrich in May 1942. The assumption has always been that this work was led by Turing."

Fred sat listening. It all seemed to tie in quite nicely although his Grandfather had never mentioned the Heydrich thing. Fred didn't think Grandpa had ever found out what it was that the girl's tattoos had been used for. That would have been like him. Once he'd finished with something he didn't go back.

Their guide continued. "This year, though, we opened up the loft space in the top of the turret. We were very surprised to discover five sets of what looked like manacles with chains linking them to heavy rings set in the walls. The space was equipped like a small cell but we have no record of it being used before, during or after the war. It may have had something to do with when the building was a stable or it may have had some other function. It just goes to show that Bletchley still has its secrets."

Fred thought back to one of his favourite movies and to the tales that his grandfather had told him about where fiction ended and fact began. He wasn't at all sure that the world was ready for the full story of Major Strasser's Code Book yet. He could imagine what might well have gone on in the loft of the turret and it didn't fit with the stiff upper lip image of the British during the Second World War.

Besides there were his own enterprises to think about and he certainly didn't want to draw attention to them.