Enigma by Robert Harris Page A

direction.
    It was Claire.
    For a fraction of a second, he thought she must have seen him.
But he was in the shadows and reeling backwards in panic, four or
five steps backwards, and she was dazzled by the light. With what
seemed like infinite slowness she brought her hand up to shield her
eyes. Her blonde hair gleamed white.
    He couldn’t hear what was said but very quickly the torch was
quenched and everything was dark again. And then he heard her
moving off down the path on the other side of the barrier, click
click click, obviously in a rush about something, fading into the
night.
    He had to catch her up. He stumbled quickly to the guard post,
searching for his wallet, searching for his pass, nearly tripping
off the kerbstone, but he couldn’t find the damned thing. The torch
came on, blinding him—“evening sir”, “evening corporal”—and his
fingers were useless, he couldn’t make them work, and the pass
wasn’t in his wallet, wasn’t in his overcoat pockets, wasn’t in his
jacket pockets, breast pocket—he couldn’t hear her footsteps now,
just the sentry’s boot tapping impatiently—and, yes, it was in his
breast pocket, “here you are”, “thank you sir”, “thank you
corporal”, “night sir”, “night corporal”, night, night, night…
    She was gone.
    The sentry’s light had robbed him of what little vision he had.
When he closed his eyes there was only the imprint of the torch and
when he opened them the darkness was absolute. He found the edge of
the road with his foot and followed its curve. It took him once
again past the mansion and brought him out close to the huts. Far
away, on the opposite bank of the lake, someone—perhaps another
sentry—started to whistle “We’ll Gather Lilacs in the Spring
Again”, then stopped.
    It was so quiet, he could hear the wind moving in the trees.
    While he was hesitating, wondering what to do, a dot of light
appeared along the footpath to his right, and then another. For
some reason Jericho drew back into the shadows of Hut 8 as the
torches bobbed towards him. He heard voices he didn’t recognise—a
man’s and a woman’s—whispered but emphatic. When they were almost
level with him, the man threw his cigarette into the water. A
cascade of red points ended in a hiss. The woman said: “It’s just a
week, darling,” and went to embrace him. The fireflies danced and
separated and moved on.
    He stepped out onto the path again. His night vision was coming
back. He looked at his watch. It was 4.30. Another ninety minutes
and it would start to get light.
    On impulse he walked down the side of Hut 8, keeping close to
the blastproof wall. This brought him to the edge of Hut 6, where
the ciphers of the German Army and Luftwaffe were broken. Straight
ahead was a narrow alleyway of rough grass separating Hut 6 from
the end wall of the Naval Section. And at the end of that, crouched
low in the darkness, just about visible, was the side of another
hut—Hut 3—to which the decrypted ciphers from Hut 6 were sent for
translation and dispatch.
    Hut 3 was where Claire worked.
    He glanced around. There was no one in sight.
    He left the path and started to stumble down the passage. The
ground was slippery and uneven and several times something grabbed
at his ankle—ivy, maybe, or a tendril of discarded cable—and almost
sent him sprawling. It took him about a minute to reach Hut 3.
    Here, too, was a concrete wall, designed, optimistically, to
shield the flimsy wooden structure from an exploding bomb. It was
neck-high, but although he was short he was just about able to peer
over the top.
    A row of windows was set into the side of the building. Over
these, from the outside, blackout shutters were fastened every day
at dusk. All that was visible was the ghosts of squares, where the
light seeped around the edges of the frames. The floor of Hut 3,
like Hut 8’s, was made of wood, suspended above a concrete base,
and he could hear the muffled clumps and thuds