“Right-ho, on our way,” Giles said as they all piled into his car in the pitch-black street. “I say, is that our Beth? Save me a dance, gorgeous!”

“I don’t know how to dance,” Beth said. “Even if I did, I’d probably hate it.” And the dance was every bit as noisy and crowded as she’d feared, a big room packed to the ceiling with servicemen and local girls. Beth could barely see the stage where the band was playing “Tuxedo Junction.” Giles and Mab whizzed off to the floor, and when Beth saw how Osla’s feet tapped in their little diamanté-studded pumps, she urged her, “Go dance.” The thought of sitting alone was alarming, but not as cringe-making as forcing her friends to nanny her all night.

As soon as Osla was whisked away, Beth found herself a chair on the side. A towheaded boy leaned over, breathing gin fumes. “Fancy a spin, Veronica Lake?”

“No, thank you.” Beth couldn’t say she enjoyed being in the middle of a crowd, but she found she could sit with the froth of silk petticoat rustling deliciously around her knees and let her eyes follow the dancers as the music swirled. The skirts of the women opening like flowers, the men with buttons and bars on their uniforms flashing . . . she could almost see patterns in it, like the rose-petal spirals, or the patterns of brick in a wall . . .

“Hullo there.” Harry flopped into the chair beside hers, big and cheerful, black hair disheveled. He didn’t look surprised at her change of appearance or seem to notice it at all. Beth smiled, realizing she rather liked that. Giles’s swoony double take had felt a bit insulting—did she ordinarily look such a fright? Obviously I do. But if so, Harry hadn’t noticed that either, and she was glad. “Didn’t think I’d see you here,” he continued, linking an elbow over the back of his chair.

“Why not? Am I such a wet blanket?”

“No, but you hate crowds.”

“Osla and Mab dragged me out.” Beth peered up at Harry through her new wave of hair and wished she could ask how the Italian naval Enigma compared to the German naval Enigma his hut worked on. But you couldn’t talk codebreaking in a crowd full of outsiders, so Beth rummaged for small talk. “Did your wife come along tonight?”

“Sheila’s at home with Christopher. Last night she was off at a concert with a friend, so tonight she shoved me out the door and told me to enjoy myself.”

He spoke with a complete lack of self-pity, but Beth’s tongue still froze with unexpressed sympathy. Having a child so frail he always needed one of you hovering . . . “Um. Do you think America will join the war?” Beth ventured, for something less personal.

“They’d better.” His expression darkened. “The wolf packs are making mincemeat of us.”

Another conversational dead end. Beth could have talked clicks and lobsters all day, but ordinary small talk felt like swimming upstream. I suppose it’s better than the days when all conversation felt like swimming upstream.

The band swung into “In the Mood,” and a bass riff growled out across the floor. “They’re good,” Beth said for lack of anything else to say.

“It’s not bad, but I like music a bit more orderly. Patterns, you know.” Harry grinned as she gave him a startled look. “You too? I had a feeling. I don’t know if it’s the way our brains were already wired or if it’s pure habit after what we do all day. Give me Bach, anytime. There are patterns for days in The Well-Tempered Clavier.”

“I’ve never heard it.”

“In Cambridge I had a job at a music shop—between customers I listened with headphones on. Made me very cross if someone came browsing when I was in the middle of a symphony.”

“I’ve never been to Cambridge.” I’ve never been anywhere.

“In the Mood” ended, and the dancers broke up. Some flooded to the side, some grabbed new partners as “Moonlight Serenade” rippled over the floor. Harry cocked his head. “Care to take a whirl?”

“I don’t really want to dance,” Beth confessed. “I want to be back at work.”

“Me too. People like you and me, we’re more hooked than opium fiends.” They traded rueful, frustrated smiles. She could tell they were both itching to talk about things they shouldn’t. “Come on,” Harry said in a sudden burst.

Tugging Beth out to the dance floor, Harry snugged her in briskly with an arm about her waist, took her hand in his big one, and began to revolve to the slow, dreamy tune. “No one will hear if we talk like this.” He lowered his head to hers, voice mischievous and friendly in her ear. “I’ve got some new tricks for working cribs, nothing too specific to naval section. Want to hear?”

Beth hesitated, but every other couple around them swayed with eyes closed, and he was murmuring right into her ear—even the most dedicated eavesdropper wasn’t going to hear a thing over the music. “Yes, please,” she whispered back with a smile of her own, relaxing into the arm around her waist.

“So, I’ve been working a four-wheel machine . . .”

Beth listened, the music a bright brassy pattern over the pattern Harry’s words were weaving. She could almost see it if she closed her eyes. “Dilly has me working Vigenère squares.”

“I’ve done those. Can you break them without a key?”

“Easy as pie.”

“Christ, you’re good. What about—”

“Look at you two, whispering away.” Giles tapped Harry on the arm. “May I cut in?”

“No, thank you,” Beth said firmly. She leaned back into Harry’s shoulder, wanting to dissect Vigenère squares and four-wheel Enigmas, barely hearing Giles retreat with a laughing, “All right, keep your secrets . . .”

Eleven Days Until the Royal Wedding

November 9, 1947

Chapter 22

Inside the Clock

One of the orderlies had red hair like Giles. Beth watched him go about his evening rounds, restocking closets, collecting dirty linen, laughing with a friend. Beth remembered Giles’s voice: Keep your secrets . . .

Were you the one with secrets? she wondered for the thousandth time. Giles the ever friendly, the eternal gossip. Giles, who had eventually been transferred from Hut 6 to Knox’s section. Giles, drollest of the Mad Hatters.

She didn’t want it to be him. But she didn’t want it to be any of her friends.

The red-haired orderly left the common room, and Beth slipped after him. “What do you want, Liddell?” he said, low voiced. “Cigarettes? Scent? It’ll cost you.”

Something else Beth had learned in her years here: which of the orderlies and nurses would trade covertly with the patients. Hoarded medicines could buy you drink, cosmetics . . . or knowledge.

“I need information.” Beth swallowed hard, damp palms rubbing down her smock. “What is a lobotomy?”

His brows rose. “Why?”

I’m scheduled for one, and I don’t know what it is. The unease had lingered all evening, since she’d heard that whispered fragment from the matrons. None of the women in the ward had any facts, only speculation. “Tell me.”

“That’s big information.” He leaned in; Beth smelled sweat and Lysol. “What have you got for me?”

She swallowed again, bile this time, as she tugged him toward the nearest linen closet. “Come in here and I’ll show you.”

That was something else she’d learned. Which of the orderlies would grope under your smock if no one was looking; how to avoid them and their grabbing hands; how to bite and kick if they maneuvered you alone . . . and which of the orderlies wouldn’t force you, but wouldn’t say no if you offered. Sometimes, if it got you something you needed, you offered. It wasn’t the first time Beth had gone to her knees in a linen closet, but her stomach roiled with just as much helpless, viscous rage as it had the first time. “What is a lobotomy?” she asked before she got started, voice rasping like a rusty knife.

“A head surgery,” the orderly said, closing his eyes and slipping his hand into her hair. “Just a little tap to the skull, I’ve heard. It’s done all the time in America . . . yes, keep going . . .”

Beth stopped, withdrawing. “What is this surgery for?”

“Just finish me off—”

“No. Not until you tell me what this surgery does.”

“What does anything do here? It’ll make you better, fix you. I wouldn’t worry, Liddell,” he added, sounding sincere. “It’s not too invasive, they say. Nowhere near as bad as them electric treatments you hear about.”

Beth pressed, asking more questions, but he clearly didn’t know anything more. She closed her eyes and finished things, thinking of her Go-playing companion drawing a finger like a scalpel over her skull.

“Good girl.” He fastened up his trousers, ruffling her hair. “Get back to your cell, now.”

Beth sat back on her heels as he slipped out of the closet, red hair a winking gleam in the brief light flash from the door. She tried not to gag, smelling bleach from the folded sheets all around, lungs full of sudden fear. A surgery and a traitor to contend with, and she had no idea what or who they were, or if she would have any help in dealing with either.

Osla, Mab, where are you?

York