Chapter 5: Underground : London, October 1941

Eight hours later, Clegg was walking along Haymarket in the early evening. He was pondering the problem of the girl that he was planing to pick up later that night.

Added to that, Angela had wanted the two of them to get together again. Their tumble had been fun but he'd got work to do and that came first. The problem with the new girl was going to be transport. He had a buyer but they weren't keen on coming to London.

Freddie couldn't blame them. He side-stepped a small pile of rubble that had been shovelled out of the road. The blitz had eased but it was hardly the healthiest environment. Worse than that, though, it was getting devilish difficult to ship merchandise through conventional channels. No flights from London naturally, the threat from the Luftwaffe was too great unless you could persuade a squadron or two of Hurricanes to provide an escort and Freddie knew that even his persuasive powers wouldn't stretch to that. There were the BOAC Dakota's and Albatrosses from Bristol but they were hardly a substitute for the sort of capability he use to have with the seaplanes. As for transport by sea; well it was hard enough to get space on a freighter and there was the problem of the U-boats too.

That would have been bad enough but his latest client wanted him to take the risk on the shipment. Life was getting too complicated Freddie felt. Maybe he could get the client to take delivery in Morocco or somewhere like that. He'd be able to organise a boat or something to get there.

He was still deep in thought when the black Daimler pulled up alongside him. As the window wound down a familiar but unwelcome face stared out. It was Strangways. Much to Clegg's disappointment he didn't have his Wren officer in tow but then, Clegg thought, I guess Angela's done the job he wanted her to do. A shame that Strangways wasn't getting any benefit from it.

"I wondered if you could spare an hour," he said. "There's someone that wants to see you. A friend of the General."

Clegg sighed. None of this boded well but he got into the car anyway. It pulled away from the curb, drove up to Piccadilly Circus and then doubled back on itself, heading back towards Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.

The Daimler swept by the Admiralty — Clegg had half expected them to stop there - and on, down Whitehall, passing Horse Guards Parade. It turned into Great George Street and stopped outside the heavily sandbagged entrance of a large building. A soldier stepped forward and opened the car door. "After you," said Strangways to Clegg as the two of them left the car and headed inside passing a saluting sentry and a sign saying "Office of Works". They turned down a corridor, threading their way through piles of building materials. There was a strong smell of new paint and freshly sawn wood. Outside the rising and falling wail of air raid sirens announced the start of another night's attacks by the Heinkels, Dorniers and Junkers of Goering's Luftwaffe.

Strangways led the way through a door guarded by another sentry, flashing a pass at him to gain entry. They went down stairs into the basement of the building. Clegg looked in surprise as the stairs led down through a four feet thick slab of solid concrete. As they left the stairway it became obvious that a vast warren of offices, meeting rooms, and communications centres had been built beneath street level.

Strangways stopped outside a door with the sign "65a" and knocked. "Come!" a voice bellowed from within and Clegg found himself being ushered into the presence of the British Prime Minister. "Lieutenant Commander Strangways, sir," Strangways said coming stiffly to attention and saluting. "This is Mr Clegg."

"Ahh, good, good." Churchill was sitting at a small desk; a bed to his right was made up ready in case some crisis that night prevented him from returning to Downing Street. He was exactly as Clegg had imagined from his photographs and the newsreels; the pugilistic expression, spotted bow tie, pinstriped suit, gold chain stretched across his waistcoat, seeming to keep his belly in check. Churchill folded the papers he was working on and slid them into a file.

This boded ill as far as Clegg was concerned. He could imagine that Churchill was less likely to take no for an answer than Stangways had been. On the other hand, if you were going to get suckered in to a project for British Intelligence once that had the direct backing of the PM was probably a better bet than one that didn't.

There was one other in the room, a young intense looking man who was busy polishing his spectacles. Churchill took a long look at Clegg before breaking into a smile. "Right Clegg," he said, "what do you know about GC&CS?"

"Sir!" Strangways exclaimed with a pained expression, "Mr Clegg's not cleared."

"No, I don't suppose he is," Winston responded, "but it will make things a little difficult if he doesn't know what we're asking him to do." Now Clegg knew he was really in trouble.

Freddie was able to reply with honesty. "Absolutely nothing sir."

"I'm very glad to hear it," Churchill chortled, his eyes twinkling. "Very glad to hear it indeed. GC&CS is the Government Code and Cipher School. Very clever chaps. Helping us a lot. Trying to break the German codes. Give us a bit of warning about what the Nazis" — he pronounced it 'Narzees' with an inbuilt sneer - "might be up to and when."

"You're trying to crack their Enigma machines, then?" Clegg asked quietly. Strangways made a choking noise and turned pale.

The other man in the room looked up from polishing his spectacles. "Yes, we are actually," he said quietly.

"Sorry," said Churchill, "should have introduced you. Clegg, this is Turing from GC&CS." Clegg nodded. "Can I ask how you know about Enigma?"

Clegg explained, "I used to own a few." Strangways gave another strangled grunt. "The Germans produced a commercial model. Used by banks and the like. I had quite a large business concern in the '30's. UK, Europe, USA. Our branches needed to exchange information and some of that information was, let's say, commercially sensitive. Fortunately I came across the products of Chiffriermaschinen-AG. Bought some of their early models. Met a chap called Scherbius. Very bright fellow." Turing looked up again. The penetrating way in which he stared at Clegg suggested that he agreed with Freddie's assessment. "We had, oh I suppose, six of their machines in all. Worked very well for what we wanted. Certainly none of our competitors ever managed to get to grips with any of our coded material as far as I know. I can imagine that German coded transmissions must be more or less impregnable."

"Yes. The Germans think that too," said Turing. "They know that it's virtually impossible to read anything that has been encrypted with the machine. As you'll know, you need the rotor setting, the plug board settings, and the starting position. Of course, if you know some of those then it becomes mathematically possible to discover the content of messages."

"Only if you find some way of doing sums extremely quickly," Clegg muttered.

"Yes," said Turing, without elaborating further. "Quite."

Churchill looked at Turing who said no more. The Prime Minister continued, "the Germans use five rotors and select three for any day's transmissions. We have acquired a large quantity of encoded text from a source in Czechoslovakia. We suspect this text may contain information of value to the war effort. We need insights into what the Germans are planning in the East. Mr Stalin may be able to stop their advance, they may of course succumb to the vastness of Russia and the Russian winter just as Napoleon did. But, Herr Hitler and his henchmen will have plans for what they intend to do with all that 'lebensraum' on the plains of Mother Russia." Churchill spoke the German word as though it left an unpleasant taste in his mouth. "We don't know what these documents are and we haven't found a way to break into them yet. We need a way into the code — what Mr Turing's friends call a 'crib'. Some hint about how they were encoded."

Strangways was looking more unhappy by the minute but Turing appeared relaxed and Churchill seemed happy to continue. "One thing we do know is that the documents were produced under the direction of a Gestapo Major while he was in Prague late last year. We also know that this Major had a sense of humour and an eye for the ladies. Had quite a little collection of them by all accounts and lets say found a way of mixing business with pleasure when it came to encrypting his documents."