Tovey did not quite know what to say to that. Turing made a telling point. How could all these reports and photographs have been assembled, all about this ship, and in so little time. There were only a very few men that even knew about the meeting he had with the Russian Admiral, though many had seen the ship when it came alongside Invincible.
“Half my squadron had a good long look at this ship, Turing. Word gets out. In any case, I will be meeting this Russian Admiral again in a few days time, that is unless I find myself beheaded by Admiral Pound, or locked away in the Tower of London.”
He stood up, putting his cap back on and straightening his jacket, as if to set all right again, smoothing out the impossible wrinkle this box had introduced. He pointed to the box.
“Let’s keep that material safe, shall we, and just between the two of us for the time being.”
“Of course, Admiral. I’ll see to it. Shall I select a few photographs for you now?”
“Take your time, but send them to my Admiralty office by special courier. Mark it eyes only, and to my attention.”
“Of course, sir.”
Tovey nodded and began to leave, but Turing cleared his throat, needing to say one last thing. “Something else, Mister Turing?”
“Well sir, in considering your assumption, that all these documents and photos were prepared as part of a deception plan, how could anyone predict these events? These photos and reports are all detailing things that have clearly not happened, but in a manner that suggests they did happen, that all the material in that box is history. Why would anyone create material about an engagement in the Pacific that they could never know about in any wise? It would all be a wild guess and a terrible waste of time.”
Tovey looked at him, thinking. “Interesting point,” he said quietly. “Yes, I suppose it would be a waste of time, and I can’t see why anyone would do such a thing.”
“Oh, that question is answered in envelope nine, sir.”
Tovey raised an eyebrow. “Envelope nine?”
“Yes sir. There is one final document there that may be of interest to you. It indicates that the events documented in these files are to be classified top secret, so secret that only a handful of people would ever know about any of it. That code word I telephoned you about- Geronimo — well it was supposedly known to no more than ten men, a group known as ‘the Watch,’ and you may be surprised to learn that the First Sea Lord, most everyone else of note in the Admiralty, and the Prime Minister are not on the list.”
“The Watch?”
“Yes sir, and as to the mystery of who might have wasted their time with all of this, the rascals are clearly identified.”
“Out with it, Turing. Who’s behind all this?”
Turing smiled. “We are sir… You and I-at least according to the report, and the two signatures affixed to it, in envelope nine.”
“You mean to say that someone is trying to use our names and reputations in an attempt to lend credulity to this box of fairy tales?”
That wasn’t exactly what Turing meant to say, but he decided to be very discrete here, and simply smiled. “Apparently so, sir.”
Tovey shook his head, clearly bothered by all of this. As he reached the door he stopped, not knowing why, a rhyme in his head that he could not account for, like something that had just welled up from some deep, unconscious pool in his mind. He looked over his shoulder at Turing, a strange light in his eye.
“Byron,” he said quietly. “Do you read poetry, Mister Turing?”
“Sir? Well, now that you mention it, I do. Yes, I am particularly fond of Lord Byron’s muse.”
Tovey smiled.
“I thought as much,” he said with the nod of his head. “Good day to you.”
Turing watched him go, feeling himself to be the biggest fool in the world. Here was the Admiral of the Home Fleet, and what did I summon him here to see? That box full of parlor tricks and deceit-fairy tales as he called it. Of course his explanation is the only possible answer to all this. It may even be that there is some secret operation on and I’ve gone and stuck my thumb in the pie. There is simply no other way to think about this.
He looked at the box, frowning, feeling the red heat of embarrassment rise on his neck. The Admiral must have thought he was a complete idiot. Yet on another level he could sense something more had transpired here. Tovey was genuinely shocked by the evidence contained in that box. The word Geronimo seemed to jolt him with an almost electric current. Those photographs deeply disturbed him.
What was that bit at the end about Byron’s poetry? Ah, the photos. Well I’ll fish about a bit more and find the best of the lot. As he did so, his hand fell on something cold and hard at the bottom of the box. When he pulled it out he was struck yet again with that same feeling of profound anomaly. It was a watch, and not just any watch. It was his own Gallet Multichron Astronomic! He had been missing it for a month! What in the world was it doing here in this old box?
Then he noted the date and time the watch had stopped. The calendar window read September… In the year 1942. What in God’s name was going on here? Was he being framed? He knew there were men spreading rumors, talking about his strange ways and habits. He knew there were other men keeping a close eye on him-on all of us here at Bletchley Park.
He sighed. Looking again at some notes he had scribbled on the back of a photo. Yes, he clearly recognized his handwriting there. How could anyone mimic it with such uncanny accuracy? Why they would have to fish about in my waste basket and find all my doodles and notes, wouldn’t they? Just like this bit here on this photo.
He read the note: Dilly’s ‘L’ Crib! What was that about? The words meant something to him. Dilly Knox was one of the team members working on Enigma. ‘Cribs’ were little lapses and errors of judgment that the Enigma machine operators might use in the formatting of their messages. They might always start a message with the same word, for example, or make careless and repetitive keystrokes that could become clues as to how the code could be interpreted. But he could not think what Dilly’s L Crib might be. Knox had been active as a cryptologist since 1914 when he worked in the Royal Navy's cryptological effort in Room 40 of the Old Admiralty Building. He was apparently on to something again.
That was another thing that bothered Turing. If this was some elaborate hoax, a planned deception, the perpetrators had seen to the smallest of details, like that errant scribble of a note that was all too typical of his own habits. They might have fished it out of the waste bin, he thought again. It might have been something I wrote days or weeks ago. I can hardly remember half the mumbo jumbo that I run through my own head on any given day.
He finished up, selecting his photos and pocketing his Gallet watch, glad to have it back again, but very suspicious as to how it went missing now, and how it found itself in that hidden box under a patina of dust that looked to have accumulated over long years. It was more than strange. There was an eerie quality to his feeling about all this now, and one that got his hackles up, chilling him with implications he did not wish to even consider.
He sent off his envelope to the Admiralty as Tovey asked, put the box right back where he found it, and went about his business again, a good deal more edgy and ill at ease for all his trouble.
The next time he saw the tall bespectacled Dilly Knox, he remembered the note. In a very casual manner he asked his colleague a brief question. “How goes it, Dilly? Any Cribs this week?”