Becker gave a hearty chuckle, warm and rich. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Sir,” Krause said, “we received a short radio dispatch from London, telling us our contacts are working out their escape, with the decrypt, as we speak. They’ve asked us to have the money ready.”
Becker made a steeple with his hands, still smiling. “Ah, yes—the money.” He leaned back in his chair. “You know, I have the utmost respect for your operation, I really do. But to suggest that England has broken our codes … a joke, surely.”
Ritter spoke up. “But they say there’s a whole group of British code breakers working on it. And they’ve done it. And they have a stolen decrypt to prove it.”
“If the British have broken it,” Becker objected, “why haven’t they shown their hand? Why haven’t they evacuated their cities when they know that air attacks are coming?”
Krause shrugged. “We’re not sure how fast they can break each message, sir.”
“If they can break them at all.” Claus looked up at the ceiling. “Which I sincerely doubt.”
“But the code can be broken, yes?” Krause insisted.
Becker sighed. “The Enigma machine has a hundred and fifty million million million ways of producing its cipher, according to how you set its three rotors and how you connect its plugs. It is, in a word, impossible to break.”
Ritter and Krause sat very still.
“However,” Becker said, “I will permit you to continue to work on what, I believe, is a wild-goose chase, if only so I will own your souls when it comes to nothing. By the way, there’s a huge air attack coming up soon, payback for the bombing of Berlin. If the British can decrypt our messages, surely they’ll evacuate the city in question. Then we’ll know if, indeed, they’ve broken it.”
Becker opened his desk drawer and took out a dried pig’s ear, passing it down to the dog, who began gnawing on it. “Good boy,” he said to Wolfie, rubbing the velvety fur on his back. “Oh, that’s my good, good darling boy!”
He looked back to the two agents. “In regard to more important matters, everything is in place for Operation Edelweiss. We have our two operatives ready to go. When Commandant Hess gives the word, the plan will commence. It won’t be long now.”
He rose to his feet, gave a delighted smile, and clapped his plump hands together. “That will be all.” Then he raised his right arm. “Heil Hitler!”
Wrapped in a magnificent green silk robe embroidered with red-and-gold dragons, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was lying in his bed at the Annexe to No. 10, working at his Box, which held all of his most important documents. His cheeks were flushed with anger. One memo, from Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Menzies of MI-6, on the topic of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and their many conversations with Walther Schellenberg in Lisbon, had him in a foul temper.
“Where’s Tinsley?” he bellowed to his butler, David Inces.
Inces was used to his employer’s temper. “Sir, she’s—”
Mrs. Tinsley, his head typist, appeared in the doorway. “Right here, Prime Minister,” she said, bringing in her portable noiseless typewriter and setting up at the desk. Inces left.
“Letter to the Duke of Windsor!” the P.M. barked.
Mrs. Tinsley waited, fingers poised over the keys.
He began dictating. “ ‘Sir, may I venture upon a word of serious counsel. Many sharp and unfriendly ears will be pricked up to catch any suggestion that your Royal Highness takes a view about the war, or about the Germans, or about Hitlerism, which is different from that adopted by the British nation and Parliament. Even while you have been staying at Lisbon, conversations have been reported by telegraph through various channels, which might have been used to your Royal Highness’s disadvantage.
“I thought your Royal Highness would not mind these words of caution from your faithful and devoted servant, et cetera, et cetera. Got that, Mrs. Tinsley? Yes? Excellent. Get the letter dispatched as quickly as possible. Go!”
He picked up the telephone receiver on his bedside table. “Nelson at S.O.E.—now!” S.O.E. was short for Special Operations Executive—Churchill’s special team of black ops, who were able to do things even MI-6 couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.
There was a pause, then a man’s voice came on the line: “Yes, Prime Minister?”
“Get the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson out of Portugal immediately. Kidnap them in the middle of the night if you need to, just get them out!”
In the garden of Buckingham Palace, under a cold late-afternoon mother-of-pearl sky that threatened rain, the hedges of the gardens were covered in spiderwebs dotted with beads of dew. There, Queen Elizabeth stood, holding a gun.