The code and Harry—Beth didn’t know what she’d do without either. When we win the war, people were beginning to say with increasing optimism, because the war was starting to look winnable: American troops and supplies were coming across the Atlantic despite the U-boat lockout, Hitler’s eastern advance had bogged down in the Soviet Union’s implacable ice, and something unspeakably secret was taking shape to tackle Rommel in the desert. Most people were cautiously jubilant—but when Beth heard the words When we win the war, she had to push down a surge of panic. Without a war she didn’t have this work. Without a war there was no excuse to see Harry. Without a war, would she be an unemployed spinster with a dog, forced back home because she no longer had a billet and a salary?

I feel myself cracking round the edges, Harry sometimes said quietly into her hair when they were alone. But the only thing that made Beth’s mind bend at the edges was the thought of losing all this. She could take the hours, she could take the secrecy, she could take the grueling pace, but she couldn’t take the thought that it would all someday disappear.

“Where’s Jumbo?” someone called out as she let herself back into her section after shift break—they’d moved from the Cottage into a gothic redbrick school building adjacent to BP. Beth missed the whitewashed cottage off the stable yard, but it was too small now with so many new additions to Illicit Services Knox. Not just more new women but men (“Men in my harem,” Dilly sighed on one of his rare visits to the section). It didn’t matter where ISK was housed or how many new people joined; the women who had broken Matapan together were still the heart of the operation. “Where’s Jumbo?” Jean repeated, sounding agitated.

“Here.” Beth plucked a stuffed plush elephant off her seat and handed it over for a ceremonial ear-rub. The elephant had come from Dilly, living in the cupboard until they were in the middle of a jumbo rush, and the rush had been overwhelming all through October and the start of November. Scads of Abwehr traffic about something called Operation Torch (whatever that was) drawing to a head.

“I’ll wager it’s confirmations,” Giles speculated. He’d been moved over to ISK some weeks ago; Beth still found it strange to see him working at the desk next to hers. “If it’s really true we’ve got all the German double agents under our thumbs, we’ll be using them to feed false information back as cover-up for Torch. No good planning a big push without misdirection. Convince the Krauts the Allied convoys are heading one way, when they’re headed another . . . all this Abwehr stuff is just checking to confirm if they’re buying what we’re selling.”

“Maybe.” Beth was rodding for the right-hand wheel position, fast and automatic.

“You aren’t even the tiniest bit inquisitive?”

“No.”

“I can’t decide if you’re monumentally incurious or the purest bloody brain I’ve ever met.” Giles linked his hands behind his head, studying her as if she were a rare scientific specimen. “Hitler’s private telegrams or the Sunday crossword—it’s all the same to you.”

“I crack messages. I don’t interpret them.” Beth swept her hair out of her face. “It doesn’t matter to me what I’m breaking. Why complicate things when there aren’t hardly enough hours in the day as is?”

“Especially at my pace.” Giles made a face. He wasn’t a bad cryptanalyst, but he’d got used to three-wheel work in his old hut, and wading through four-wheel stuff like Abwehr took him ages.

“You’re getting faster,” Beth said charitably.

“Won’t ever be up to your speed.” He said it without resentment, which Beth appreciated. Some of the Hut 6 men were disconcerted by the unconventional working methods of Dilly’s team. That’s not the way this is done, one of the new mathematicians had said his first week, and Giles had bounced a wad of paper off his forehead and said, You crack the Spy key all by yourself, Gerald, and I’ll do it your way. Until then I’m going to do it Beth’s way.

Beth cracked through her whole stack of messages before looking up and stretching her neck. “What else have we got?” Giving Jumbo’s ears a rub.

Peggy brought fresh chicory coffee over. “Night shift’s done, Beth. Go home.”

“This is what calms me down.” Osla and Mab were leaving this morning for Coventry—it would be dull in Aspley Guise without them, and Beth would far rather work the day shift. “Give me the Hut 6 duds if there’s nothing else.”

Peggy pushed a stack over. “More possible bombing sites—Giles has the list of city codes.”

“Loge for London, Paula for Paris . . .” Giles reeled them off. Beth pulled her crib sheets and rods over and began working. Not nearly so many air raids now as earlier in the war, but you never knew when a wave of German bombers would pop up like a nasty surprise out of a jack-in-the-box.

“Giles,” Beth called over absently, some hours later. “What city is Korn code for?”

“Korn . . . Korn . . .” He dropped his pencil, massaging his fingers. “Coventry. Don’t tell me poor little Coventry is due for another raid?”

“Did they get hit before?”

“Do you live in a box? They were nearly flattened two years back.”

Beth stared at the jumble of German words coming out of the message before her. She still didn’t speak German, but there were words she saw often enough to recognize. She looked at this one and she saw Korn and numbers that might be coordinates . . . and then her eyes caught on the raid’s attack date. 8 November.

“Giles,” Beth said slowly, “what day is it today?”

Chapter 44

Mab was used to the sight of air-raid damage, but gazing at Coventry, she realized how much London’s sprawl lessened the impact of the destruction. There, if you saw a house missing at least there were houses still standing on either side; if you saw bomb craters in a street, you saw automobiles swerving busily around them. Coventry, so much smaller and more compact, had been far more comprehensively wrecked. Mab barely counted one building in three that wasn’t either reduced to rubble or sporting boarded windows. The ancient cathedral stood open to the elements, stone floor dusted with snow, medieval windows with their fire-scarred stone tracery stark against the gray sky. “‘Bare ruined choirs,’” Mab echoed. The Mad Hatters were reading Shakespeare’s sonnets this month.

“The big raid was in November of ’40,” Francis said, also gazing at the cathedral. “More than five hundred killed. I wasn’t in town, but I knew so many who died. There’ve been two more raids since, but nothing like that one.” He ruffled a hand through his chestnut hair. “It’s all in dismal condition, but I hope you can see Coventry for what it will be again, after the war.”

He said it low voiced so Lucy, running ahead through a puddle, wouldn’t hear. “Come back, Luce!” Osla called, sauntering after in her blush-pink coat. She and Mab had said goodbye to Beth at the BP canteen this morning, then collected Lucy, who had been put on the train to Bletchley in care of the conductor, and they’d all headed for Coventry. Francis had greeted them at the station, a flat box under one arm that he hadn’t yet explained. Lucy had hung back behind Mab, regarding him warily through the fringe of her bangs. “Hello, Lucy,” he’d said easily. “What would you say to a walk around the city?”

“No,” Lucy said. “I’d rather look at ponies than take a walk. Are there ponies?”

“We’ll see if we can find you ponies.” Off they went, the four of them bundled in coats and scarves, and Mab was glad for Osla’s easy chatter, which acted like bright paint over Francis’s habitual silence and Lucy’s careful glances. Wait till we see our home-to-be, Mab promised her family silently. When the three of them all lived here together, Lucy would relax and Francis would laugh more and Coventry Cathedral would have a roof again. All it took was peacetime.

“I think it’s a beautiful city,” Mab said as they turned away from the cathedral.

Francis gave a half smile. He was even quieter than usual, his face paler after months under Scotland’s gray skies. Mab wondered what he’d been doing there. Maybe when they were married forty years or so and none of these secrets mattered anymore, they could tell each other.

“So . . .” Francis offered his arm. “Do you want to see the house?”

It was tall, tawny stoned, surrounded by a tangled garden dusted with snow. Mab envisioned roses, no more victory garden vegetables, because when the war was over she would just buy cabbages at the greengrocer’s. The front door creaked invitingly when he unlocked it.

Mab almost tiptoed inside. A flagstone entryway, a grandfather clock ticking at the end . . . Lucy, instantly fascinated, tried to climb in. Mab looked into a parlor with a towering stone hearth—she could see cozy fires dancing in the evening—a dining room for Sunday lunches in a future where roasts and butter were no longer rationed . . .

Francis began throwing blackout curtains open and Mab saw how big the windows were, how the house would look flooded in summer sunshine. “A housekeeper comes weekly to keep things aired and dusted,” he said. “She’s left us a cold lunch. I’ll put things out, you ladies look round.”

“Good for sliding,” Lucy said, running her hand over the polished oak bannister.

“Very good for sliding,” Mab agreed, following her upstairs. A bedroom upstairs with an enormous four-poster; three more bedrooms. She saw Lucy hesitate in the one with a cushioned window seat. “This could be yours,” Mab said, and held her breath.