All Clear

Bletchley—December 1940

MIKE STARED AT TENSING, STUNNED. “THIS IS THE CHAP I was telling you about, Ferguson,” Tensing said. “The one who served as lookout for me when I was in hospital.”

“The American?” his companion said.

Christ, if he’d gone ahead with his plan to pose as an Englishman …

“Yes,” Tensing said. “I’d still be lying in that wretched hospital bed in Orpington if it weren’t for his unique talent for deception.”

“It’s a distinct pleasure to meet you, Mr. Davis,” Ferguson said, shaking Mike’s hand and then turning back to Tensing. “I do hate to hurry you, but we really should be going.”

Thank God he can’t stay and ask me what I’m doing here, Mike thought, because he’s obviously connected to Bletchley Park. Mike suddenly remembered Sister Carmody saying that Tensing worked at the War Office. He should have realized he was in Intelligence.

“No, we’ve enough time,” Tensing said. “You go settle the bill while I catch up with Davis. This is lucky, running into you! I’m just on my way to London. I can’t believe you’re here in Bletchley, of all places. When did you get out of hospital?”

“September. Let me get you a chair,” Mike said, to stall.

“That’s all right, I’ll get it,” Tensing said, waving him back down and looking around for a vacant chair. “Hang on.”

Hang is exactly what I’ll do if I don’t come up with a plausible reason for being here, Mike thought. “I’m here on special assignment” was out of the question.

Should I say I’m visiting a friend?

Tensing was back with a chair. “Mavis told me there was an American here,” he said, sitting down, “but I never imagined it was you. I understand you had an unfortunate encounter with a bicycle. I must warn you, this place has some very bad drivers. But you still haven’t told me what brings you here. It’s not an assignment for your newspaper, I hope. Bletchley’s deadly dull, I’m afraid.”

“I’m finding that out. No, actually, I’m here about my foot. I came to see Dr. Pritchard,” he said, calling up the name of the doctor the old ladies on the train had said had a clinic in Newport Pagnell. “He has a clinic in Leighton Buzzard. He’s supposed to be an expert at reattaching tendons. I’m hoping he can fix me up enough to get back in the war.”

“A sentiment with which I can completely sympathize,” Tensing said. “I thought I’d go mad in hospital, listening to the bad news on the wireless day after day and not being able to do a damned thing about it.” He looked down at Mike’s newspaper. “Still interested in crosswords, I see.”

Mike shrugged. “It passes the time. As you say, Bletchley isn’t particularly exciting.”

Tensing nodded. “It’s a good deal like the sunroom. All that’s wanted is a potted palm and Colonel Walton, rattling his Times and harrumphing.” He tapped the crossword. “You were quite good at these, I recall.”

“As I recall, I had help.”

“Still, though, most Americans find our crosswords completely unintelligible.”

His tone had changed. Did I say something to give myself away? Mike wondered. What? He’d purposely said Dr. Pritchard was at Leighton Buzzard instead of Newport Pagnell to make it harder for Tensing to track the doctor down if he checked up on Mike’s story. Had Tensing by some horrible coincidence gone to see Dr.

Pritchard, too?

No, Tensing had hurt his back, not his foot. But something had made him suspicious.

Could it be the crossword puzzle? Mike wondered, remembering the story Polly’d told him about D-Day and the suspicious clues. Could Tensing suspect him of sending messages to the Germans?

But he was solving a crossword, not constructing one. And Tensing had seen him doing the same thing countless times in the hospital.

Ferguson was working his way back toward them between the tables. Good, this conversation couldn’t end too soon. “All set,” Ferguson said.

“In a moment,” Tensing said over his shoulder, and then to Mike, “Were you serious? About wanting to get into the war?”

I’m already in it, Mike thought, and can’t get out. “Yes.”

“How long will you be here seeing this doctor—what was his name?”

“Pritchard,” Mike said. “I’m not certain. It all depends on what he says. He thinks I may have to have surgery.”

“But you’ll be here for a week at the least?”

So you can check and see whether I’ve been to see Dr. Pritchard, or if the Omaha Observer exists? “Yes, I have another full month of treatments.”

“Good. I must go down to London for three or four days, but when I get back, there’s something I want to have a chat with you about. Where are you staying?”

“I haven’t found a room yet. Every place I’ve tried so far is full.”

“So you’re at the Bell?” Tensing said and thankfully didn’t wait for an answer. “Is this pub where you take your meals?”

Not after tonight. “Usually, unless the doctor’s treatments go too long.”

“Good. I’ll see you when I return.” Tensing stood up. “It’s odd your happening to turn up here. Almost as if it was meant.” He turned to Ferguson. “Come on, let’s catch that train,” he said, and they left.

What the hell had just happened? Was Tensing suspicious, or did he just want to reminisce about their time together in the hospital? And if he was suspicious, what had given Mike away?

I need to talk to Polly, he thought, but the only secure phone was at the station, and Tensing and Ferguson were on their way there. If they missed their train, he’d run smack into them.

Besides, Polly and Eileen wouldn’t be home. They’d be at the shelter.

He waited till the pub closed, then walked over to the station and called, hoping the all clear might have gone early, but it apparently hadn’t. They weren’t there.

They weren’t there the next morning either. Were there raids in London this week? He should have asked Polly. If there were, it could take all week to get them.

He went over to the Bell and, after making sure Welchman wasn’t in the lobby, bought a paper, tore out its crossword, wrote “URGENT WILL CALL WED

NITE” in it, mailed it, and then walked out to the Park. He didn’t find Gerald, but on the way back he overheard a conversation between two Wrens. “Do you know anything about the new man in Hut Eight?” one asked.

“Yes,” the other Wren said disgustedly. “His name’s Phillips. He’s billeted in Stoke Hammond, and you can have him. He’s a dreadful stick.”

The “dreadful stick” part definitely sounded like Phipps, and Phillips would be a natural cover name for him. Mike took the bus to Stoke Hammond and spent the rest of the day and half of Wednesday pretending to look for a room there and asking, “You don’t happen to have a lodger named Phillips, do you?”

On the tenth try Wednesday, the landlady said, “No, a young man by that name came looking for a room, Monday it was. I sent him to Mursley.”

Mursley was six miles farther on. By the time Mike had caught the bus there, tried half a dozen places without success before he found a woman who said she remembered someone named Phillips and that she’d sent him over to Little Howard, and Mike had come back to Bletchley, it was nearly seven. He took off immediately for the train station to call Polly.

And ran straight into Dilly’s girls. “Hullo!” Elspeth said happily. “We’d been wondering what happened to you!”

“We’ve looked for you every day at the Park,” Joan said.

“This is the American we were telling you about, Wendy,” Mavis said to the fourth girl. “The one Turing nearly killed.”

“The handsome one,” Wendy—who looked none the worse for sleeping in the larder—said, batting her eyes at him. “I’ve been dying to meet you!”

“I saw him first,” Joan said.

“I picked him up after Turing ran him down,” Elspeth said, linking her arm possessively in his.

“Girls, girls, this is no time to be greedy,” Mavis said, taking his other arm. “In wartime we must share and share alike.” How the hell was he going to get away from them? He couldn’t even get a word in edgewise. “Did the billeting officer find you a place to stay?” Mavis asked him.

“Of course he hasn’t,” Wendy said bitterly. “I’ve been after him for weeks. There hasn’t been a vacancy anywhere for months.”

“We’ve been out looking for a room for Wendy,” Elspeth explained.

“Not only does she have to sleep among the bottled peaches,” Mavis said, “but now the billeting officer’s assigned her two roommates.”

“We heard a rumor there was a vacancy on Albion Street,” Wendy told him, “but when we got there it was already taken.” She sighed. “I should have known it was too good to be true.”

“And now you’ve got to come buy all of us a drink to cheer us up,” Joan said.

“I’d love to, but I can’t. I’m meeting someone—”

“I knew it,” Elspeth said morosely.

“Is she pretty?” Joan asked.

“Not a girl, an old friend,” Mike said.

“Well, then, Friday,” Mavis said.

“Friday,” he said, “and I promise I’ll let you know if I hear of any vacant rooms,” and was finally able to escape, but it was nearly eight. Please, please, let Polly still be there, he thought, hobbling to the station.

Eileen answered. “Have you found Gerald?” she asked eagerly, and there was a terrific crashing sound on her end.

“What was that?” Mike asked.

“An HE. We’re in the middle of a raid.”

Of course. Jesus, could their luck get any worse?

“Did you?” Eileen persisted. “Find Gerald?”

“Not yet. Is Polly there? Put her on.”

There was a loud whistle and another crash, and Polly came on the line. “What’s happened?” she asked.

“I ran into this guy I was in the hospital with. Tensing, his name is.”

“And he knows you’re an American, not an Englishman. Did he blow your cover?”

“No. I mean, I’d decided not to tell people I was an Englishman, after all, which was a good thing. Anyway, I’m pretty sure he works at Bletchley Park. I told him I was here to see a doctor about my foot, and he bought that. Anyway,” he said, shouting over the racket on Polly’s end—the anti-aircraft guns must have started up—“he saw me in a pub, and we talked for a few minutes, and then he asked me if I was still interested in doing crossword puzzles.”

“In what? I can’t hear you. It’s rather noisy here.”

“Crossword puzzles!” he shouted. “I’d done them in the hospital, and I was pretending to work on one while I sat there looking for Phipps. He asked me if I was still interested in doing them, and when I said yes, he asked me how long I’d be in Bletchley, that he had to go to London for a few days but that he wanted to talk to me when he got back.”

“Did he say anything else? About the crossword puzzles?”

“Yeah, he said he remembered I was good at them and that most Americans weren’t able to solve English crosswords. Do you think they could already be looking for spy messages in crosswords, like the D-Day thing you told me about?”

“No. He’s going to offer you a job at Bletchley Park. Remember how I told you BP recruited anyone they thought might be good at decoding—mathematicians and Egyptologists and chess players? Well, they recruited people who were good at crosswords, too. They even had the Daily Herald sponsor a crossword contest, and then offered jobs at the Park to all the winners. But they were still short of decoders, and they were always looking for potential prospects. When did you say he was coming back from London?”

“I’m not sure. Tomorrow or the next day.”

“You need to get out of there tonight, then.”

“Hang on. Maybe I should take the job. If Gerald’s staying at Bletchley Park—”

“No, that’s a dreadful idea. You’d never get out. They couldn’t afford to let people leave because of the secrets they knew, so anyone who worked at BP was there for the duration. You need to get out of there tonight.”

“But I just got a lead on Phipps.”

“Eileen will have to follow it up for you. Is there a train out tonight? You probably won’t be able to get to London—the raids are too bad—but you can at least get out of Bletchley.”

“But I don’t see what all the hurry is. Why can’t I just turn the job down, now that I know what he’s going to ask? I already told him I was having treatments on my foot. I could tell him I have to have surgery—”

“That won’t be enough of an excuse. It’s a desk job, and remember, Dilly Knox has a limp.”

“Well, then, I just tell him I’m not interested.”

“An American reporter who smuggled his way aboard a boat so he could get to Dunkirk isn’t interested in being involved in the most exciting espionage work of the war? He won’t buy it.”

She was right. Someone like Tensing, who’d been so determined to return to action that he’d defied his doctor’s orders, would never understand why Mike was turning down a chance to “get back in the war”—especially since Mike had told him that was why he was seeing Dr. Pritchard. He’d begin to wonder what was behind the refusal and start snooping around. And find out he’d lied about Dr. Pritchard.

“You need to get—” A deafening whistle drowned out the end of Polly’s sentence. Another bomb, he thought, and then realized it was a train.

He glanced at his watch: 8:33. The train from Oxford. “Sorry, I didn’t hear what you said. A train’s coming in.”

“I said, get out of there now,” Polly said urgently. “If Tensing’s thinking of offering you a job, he may already be doing a background check and have realized you’re not who you say you are. You can’t take the risk of running into him and—” There was a screech, and the line went dead.

“Polly?” he said. “Polly?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the operator said. “There’s a disruption on the line. I can attempt to reconnect you, if you like.”

But if the disruption was a bomb, the lines might not be repaired for days, and Mike was just as glad. If he talked to Polly again, she’d just insist he get out, and she was right, he had to, but there was no need to do it tonight. Tensing wouldn’t be back before tomorrow at the earliest, and he didn’t know where Mike was living.

And since Mike hadn’t got his room through the billeting office, it would take Tensing a while to find him, and by the time he’d tried the pub and then the hotels, Mike would have found out whether Phipps was in Little Howard. “Thanks, I’ll try later,” he told the operator, hung up, and stepped out of the phone booth.

The train had apparently arrived. Passengers were coming along the platform. An elderly army officer, two WAVEs, a—

Jesus, it was Ferguson, and, just stepping down from the train after him, was Tensing. They hadn’t looked this way yet. Instinctively, Mike ducked back into the phone booth, but it was useless as a hiding place, and there wasn’t enough time for him to hobble across the station and out the door before they saw him. Mike lurched through the other door to the deserted eastbound platform, and all the way down to the end of it, listening for pursuing footsteps and trying to think what to do.

Polly was right—he needed to get out right now. But not on this train. With his luck, Tensing would have left his hat on it or something and come back to catch him in the act of leaving. He’d have to take the next one. It wasn’t till 11:10, but he’d still better stay here. If he tried to go back to Mrs. Jolsom’s for his bag, he was liable to run straight into Tensing. Or Dilly’s girls. He needed to sit right here, out of sight.

But if he didn’t go collect his bag and Tensing did manage to find out where he’d been staying, his suddenly disappearing and leaving his luggage behind would look wildly suspicious, and Mrs. Jolsom was bound to tell him. And if Tensing concluded he was a spy, that would do as much or more damage as his being caught by Tensing and offered a job. And even if Tensing was suspicious of him and that was why he’d come back early, he wouldn’t go to Mrs. Jolsom’s. He’d try the pub first—and the hotels, and by the time he got around to knocking on boardinghouse doors, Mike would be long gone.

He waited another fifteen minutes on the platform to give Tensing and Ferguson time to get well away from the station, then hurried back to Mrs. Jolsom’s, taking a roundabout route so he didn’t have to pass Dilly’s girls’ house or the Bell, and looking carefully in all directions before he crossed each street.

It was after ten by the time he got to Mrs. Jolsom’s. May be she’ll have already gone to bed, and I can leave her a note, he thought hopefully, but she opened the front door before he could put his latchkey in the lock. She was wearing an apron and drying her hands on a tea towel. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Davis,” she said. “I was doing the washing up and heard someone at the door. How are you this evening?”

“Not very well, I’m afraid,” he said, following her into the kitchen. “I don’t know if I told you, but I came here for medical treatment. For my foot. I’ve been seeing Dr. Granholme in Leighton Buzzard, and I was sure he could help me, but he said he couldn’t, and sent me to Dr. Evers in Newton Pagnell, and he says I’ll have to have surgery, so he’s sending me to Dr. Pritchard in Banbury,” he said, giving the wrong villages for all three doctors in the hope that when Tensing couldn’t find him, he’d conclude Mrs. Jolsom had got the names and places mixed up. “The problem is, he wants to do the surgery right away, so I can’t give you the two weeks’

notice you—”

“Oh, you mustn’t worry yourself over that,” Mrs. Jolsom said, drying a cup and saucer and putting them away in the cupboard. “I only asked for that because of the boarders from the Park going off without bothering to notify me.” She folded the tea towel and hung it over the edge of the counter. “Or not coming at all, and me left holding the room for weeks. And do you know what the billeting officer said when I told him? He said he didn’t know anything about it. He even denied sending the letter!”

The letter. That day in the lab, when Phipps had returned from his drop, he’d said he’d sent the letter. Could it have been the letter reserving a place to stay? But he was supposed to have come through in the summer, not the fall.

You don’t know that, Mike thought. July was when the recon and prep was, not necessarily the assignment. Maybe that was why the first drop had been necessary—because of the lodging shortage and the necessity of making arrangements months in advance. And if there’d been increased slippage on his drop, Mrs. Jolsom would have been left holding the room. Which was why she had the only vacancy in Bletchley.

I should have made that connection, Mike thought.

“Do you leave in the morning, Mr. Davis?” Mrs. Jolsom was asking.

No, tonight, he started to say, and then remembered there wasn’t a train to Banbury till morning. “Yes, but I need to go see Dr. Pritchard first, so I’ll probably be leaving before you’re up. Your boarder who didn’t show up, what was his—”

The doorbell rang. Jesus, Mike thought, it’s Tensing. I shouldn’t have underestimated him.

Mrs. Jolsom took off her apron and went to answer it. Mike tiptoed to the kitchen door and opened it a crack. A man’s voice, and Mrs. Jolsom answering him, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

Mike heard the front door shut and moved away from the kitchen door. Mrs. Jolsom came in. “It was a young man looking for a room.”

What if it was Phipps? “Did he leave?” Mike asked, then ran to the door, opened it, and looked out, but he couldn’t see anyone on the blacked-out street. “What did he look like?” he asked Mrs. Jolsom, who’d followed him to the door.

“He was an older gentleman,” Mrs. Jolsom said, clearly taken aback. “Why?”

“I thought it might be a patient I met yesterday at Dr. Pritchard’s,” Mike said, cursing himself. Talk about behaving suspiciously. “I was going to tell him I could get out tonight so he could move in. I can go to a hotel.”

“I wouldn’t think of doing that to you, Mr. Davis,” she said, “and certainly not for someone who would come looking for a room this time of night. You stay as long as you like.” She started for the stairs. “Good night.”

Mike reached across and put his hand on the railing to stop her. “I just didn’t want to leave you stuck with a vacant room like that boarder of yours who didn’t show up—”

“Oh, you mustn’t worry about that, Mr. Davis.” She patted his hand. “I quite understand your needing to leave. Is it quite a serious surgery?”

If he said yes, she’d ask a bunch of worried questions, but if it wasn’t serious, then why was it so urgent? And either answer would get them back to the subject of her boarder who hadn’t showed up, and he had to know his name. Before the 11:10 train.

“I should imagine I’ll come through all right,” he said. “It’s funny the billeting officer making a mistake like that. They’re usually extremely efficient. You said the billeting officer said there’d been a miscommunication. Couldn’t you have got the dates wrong or—”

“I most certainly did not,” she said, bristling. “Miscommunication? The billeting officer wouldn’t even admit he’d sent me the letter, when his signature was right there on it.” She marched into the parlor and came back with a letter. “There’s his name, plain as day, Captain A. R. Eddington.”

She thrust the letter in Mike’s face. It read, “Billeting order for Professor Gerald Phipps, arriving 10 October 1940.”

You lived from day to day in the war … you might suddenly hear that someone you were very fond of had been killed.

—FANY AMBULANCE DRIVER