Cryptonomicon

"U-691, a Type IXD/42 U-boat under the nominal command of Kapitänleutnant Günter Bischoff, and the acting command of Oberleutnant zur See Karl Beck, transmitted an Enigma message to U-boat Command at 2000 hours Greenwich time. The message states that, three hours after sinking a Trinidadian merchantman, U-691 torpedoed and sank a Royal Navy submarine that was picking up survivors. Beck has captured two of our men: Marine Sergeant Robert Shaftoe, an American, and Lieutenant Enoch Root, ANZAC."

"How much do these men know?" demands the don, who is making a stirringly visible effort to sober up.

Chattan fields the question: "If Root and Shaftoe divulged everything that they know, the Germans could infer that we were making strenuous efforts to conceal the existence of an extremely valuable and comprehensive intelligence source."

"Oh, bloody hell," the don mumbles.

An extremely tall, lanky, blond civilian, the crossword puzzle editor of one of the London newspapers currently on loan to Bletchley Park, hustles into the room and apologizes for being late. More than half of the people on the Ultra Mega list are now in this room.

The young naval analyst continues. "At 2110, Wilhelmshaven replied with a message instructing OL Beck to interrogate the prisoners immediately. At 0150, Beck replied with a message stating that in his opinion the prisoners belonged to some sort of special naval intelligence unit."

As he speaks, carbon copies of the fresh message decrypts are being passed round to all the tables. The crossword puzzle editor studies his with a tremendously furrowed brow. "Perhaps you covered this before I arrived, in which case I apologize," he says. "but where does the Trinidadian merchantman come in to all of this?"

Chattan silences Waterhouse with a look, and answers: "I'm not going to tell you." There is appreciative laughter all around, as if he had just uttered a bon motat a dinner party. "But Admiral Dönitz, reading these same messages, must be just as confused as you are. We should like to keep him that way."

"Datum 1: He knows a merchantman was sunk," pipes up Turing, ticking off points on his fingers. "Datum 2: He knows a Royal Navy submarine was on the scene a few hours later, and was also sunk. Datum 3: He knows two of our men were pulled out of the water, and that they are probably in the intelligence business, which is a rather broad categorization as far as I am concerned. But he cannot necessarily draw any inferences, based upon these extremely terse messages, about which vessel--the merchantman or the submarine--our two men came from."

"Well, that's obvious, isn't it?" says Crossword Puzzle. "They came from the submarine."

Chattan responds only with a Cheshire grin.

"Oh!" says Crossword Puzzle. Eyebrows go up all around the room.

"As Beck continues to send messages to Admiral Dönitz, the likelihood increases that Dönitz will learn something we don't want him to know," Chattan says. "That likelihood becomes a virtual certainty when U-691 reaches Wilhelmshaven intact."

"Correction!" hollers the rabbi. Everyone is quite startled and there is a long silence while the man grips the edge of the table with quivering hands, and rises precariously to his feet. "The important thing is not whether Beck transmits messages! It is whether Dönitz believesthose messages!"

"Hear, hear! Very astute!" Turing says.

"Quite right! Thank you for that clarification, Herr Kahn," Chattan says. "Pardon me for just a moment," says the don, "but why on earth wouldn'the believe them?"

This leads to a long silence. The don has scored a telling point, and brought everyone very much back to cold hard reality. The rabbi begins to mumble something that sounds rather defensive, but is interrupted by a thunderous voice from the doorway: "FUNKSPIEL!"

Everyone turns to look at a fellow who has just come in the door. He is a trim man in his fifties with prematurely white hair, extremely thick glasses that magnify his eyes, and a howling blizzard of dandruff covering his navy blue blazer.

"Good morning, Elmer!" Chattan says with the forced cheerfulness of a psychiatrist entering a locked ward.

Elmer comes into the room and turns to face the crowd. "FUNKSPIEL!" he shouts again, in an inappropriately loud voice, and Waterhouse wonders whether the man is drunk or deaf or both. Elmer turns his back to them and stares at a bookcase for a while, then turns round to face them again, a look of astonishment on his face. "Ah was expectin' a chalkboard t'be there," he says in a Texarkana accent. "What kind of a classroom is this?" There is nervous laughter around the room as everyone tries to figure out whether Elmer is cutting loose with some deadpan humor, or completely out of his mind.

"It means 'radio games,' " says Rabbi Kahn.

"Thank, you, sir!" Elmer responds quickly, sounding pissed off. "Radio games. The Germans have been playing them all through the war. Now it's our turn."