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OFFICER, U-BOATS
    TO: 'DRAUFGANGER' WOLF PACK

    TOMORROW AT 1700 BE IN NEW PATROL LINE FROM NAVAL GRID SQUARE AK2564 TO 2994. OPERATIONS AGAINST EASTBOUND CONVOY WHICH AT 1200/7/12 WAS IN NAVAL GRID SQUARE AK4189. COURSE 050 TO 070
    DEGREES. SPEED APPROX 8 KNOTS.

    By midnight they had broken, translated and teleprintered to London ninety-two Shark signals giving the Admiralty the approximate whereabouts and tactics of half the Germans' U-boat fleet.
    Jericho was in the Bombe Hut when Logie found him. He had been chasing about for the best part of nine hours and now he was supervising a changeover on one of the machines, still wearing his pyjamas under his overcoat, to the great amusement of the Wrens who tended the bombe. Logie clasped Jericho's hand in both of his and shook it vigorously.
    'The Prime Minister!' he shouted in Jericho's ear, above the clattering of the bombes.
    'What?'
    'The Prime Minister has just been on the telephone with his congratulations!'
    Logie's voice seemed a long way away. Jericho bent forward to hear better what Churchill had said and then the concrete floor melted beneath his feet and he was pitching forward into darkness.
    'Is,'said Jericho.
    'What, old thing?'
    'Just now, you said Shark was a monster and then you said it w a monster.' He pointed the fork at Logie. 'I know why you've come. You've lost it, haven't you?'
    Logie grunted and stared into the fire and Jericho felt as though someone had laid a stone on his heart. He sat back in his chair, shaking his head, then gave a snort of laughter.
    'Thank you, Tom,' said Logie, quietly. 'I'm glad you find it funny.'
    'And all the time I thought you'd come here to give me the push. That's funny. That's pretty funny, isn't it, old thing?'
    'What day is it today?' asked Logie. 'Friday.'
    'Right, right.' Logie extinguished his pipe with his thumb and stuffed it into his pocket. He sighed. 'Let me see. That means it must have happened on Monday. No, Tuesday. Sorry. We haven't had a lot of sleep lately.'
    He passed a hand through his thinning hair and Jericho noticed for the first time that he'd turned quite grey. So it's not just me, he thought, it's all of us, we're all falling to pieces. No fresh air. No sleep. Not enough fresh food. Six-day weeks and twelve-hour days . . .
    'We were still just about ahead of the game when you left,' said Logie. 'You know the drill. Of course you do. You wrote the bloody book. We'd wait for Hut 10 to break the main naval weather cipher, then, by lunch time, with a bit of luck we'd have enough cribs to tackle the day's short weather codes. That would give us three of the four rotor settings and then we'd get stuck into Shark. The time-lag varied. Sometimes we'd break it in one day, sometimes three or four. Anyway, the stuff was gold-dust and we were Whitehall's blue-eyed boys.'
    'Until Tuesday.'
    'Until Tuesday.' Logie glanced at the door and dropped his voice. 'It's an absolute tragedy, Tom. We'd cut losses in the North Atlantic by 75 per cent. That's about three hundred thousand tons of shipping a month. The intelligence was amazing. We knew where the U-boats were almost as precisely as the Germans did. Of course, looking back, it was too good to last. The Nazis aren't fools. I always said: “Success in this game breeds failure, and the bigger the success, the bigger the failure's likely to be.” You'll remember me saying it. The other side gets suspicious, you see. I said -'
    'What happened on Tuesday, Guy?'
    'Right-ho. Sorry. Tuesday. It was about eight in the evening. We got a call from one of the intercept stations. Flowerdown, I think, but Scarborough heard it too. I was in the canteen. Puck came and fetched me out. They'd started picking up something in the early afternoon. A single word, broadcast on the hour, every hour. It was coming out of Sainte-Assise on both main U-boat radio nets.'
    'This word was enciphered in Shark, I take it?'
    'No, that's just it. That's what they were so excited about. It