couple of deep-cushioned sofas, made his own office look at best perfunctory. And on the low
table sat a plate of roast beef sandwiches, a pot of strong English mustard and two tall bottles of pale ale. Ruthven-Greene was being literal, he had said beer and sandwiches so beer and
sandwiches it was. Cal had learnt that when the British served beer with beef they meant to talk turkey.
Ruthven-Greene flipped the top off a bottle and poured it into two half-pint tankards. Cal helped himself to a sandwich – minus the English mustard. What kind of a nation was it that could
delight in so searing its taste buds?
‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about, Reggie?’
‘Codes, dear boy. Codes.’
Codes? They didn’t share codes. We have ours and they have theirs. Never the twain . . .
Ruthven-Greene took a small leather-bound diary from his inside pocket. A sheet of white paper larger than the book itself was sticking out. He extracted it and handed it to Cal.
‘I’m sure you’re familiar with this,’ he said.
Cal took one look at it and hoped he had not turned white – or worse, blushed red. The note was preceded by several lines of numerical gobbledegook, but in the centre of the page, in
capital letters, it read ‘TIN MAN DEAD’.
‘You’ve broken our code?’
‘Well. Yes and no.’
‘What’s the yes?’
‘We broke it last year. Best part of twelve months ago, in fact. We regularly monitor all your embassy transmissions from the Cape to Cairo, from Timbuktu to Tokyo. Sorry. But there you
are. We’re not allies. Well, not yet at any rate.’
‘And the no?’
‘It isn’t taken from any communiqué of yours. We got it from a German radio transmission. We’ve cracked your code. And I’m rather afraid the Germans have
too.’
‘Again?’ Cal thought, but said nothing. It was only a year since M15 had caught a cypher clerk at the US Embassy in London passing the code to the Germans. The British had tried him
in camera – they weren’t going to make the Americans look like fools – locked him up and thrown away the key, for the duration at least. It was beyond embarrassment. There was
scarcely a word strong enough to describe it. As a result the Americans had tightened up their security, changed all the codes – which, it now seemed, the British had cracked immediately
– and suffered an on/off, hot/cold relationship with their M15 counterparts on the sharing of information. Sometimes it seemed they told you everything, at others as though they trusted you
about as far as you could chuck a buffalo – and always they asked for more. Since the war began, and increasingly since Winston Churchill took over, the British had become a nation of Oliver
Twists. There was nothing they wouldn’t ask for, whilst guarding and rationing anything you might reasonably expect from them. It was, he thought, a bit like being importuned by a beggar in
top hat and tails. And – worse yet – it was only four months since an American magazine had printed the design specifications of the next generation of British warplanes, for no better
reason than that it had not occurred to the War Department in Washington that they might be secret. Cal could readily see why the British might be touchy on the matter of secrets – and it
required but a short leap of imagination to realise that of course they’d spy on the Americans. Why wouldn’t they? And if they spied upon the Germans as they in turn were spying upon
the Americans to retrieve information third hand via two separate codes – well, scratch it if you can.
Ruthven-Greene indulged himself in one of his teeth-sucking, airy pauses. ‘Now – about your man Stahl. They’re onto this bloke, I should think that’s pretty obvious by
now. We must have him. Really we must. Sorry to insist and all that, but we really must.’
Cal was startled, not by the juxtaposition of the names – if they knew his codename why would they not know his real name?
table sat a plate of roast beef sandwiches, a pot of strong English mustard and two tall bottles of pale ale. Ruthven-Greene was being literal, he had said beer and sandwiches so beer and
sandwiches it was. Cal had learnt that when the British served beer with beef they meant to talk turkey.
Ruthven-Greene flipped the top off a bottle and poured it into two half-pint tankards. Cal helped himself to a sandwich – minus the English mustard. What kind of a nation was it that could
delight in so searing its taste buds?
‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about, Reggie?’
‘Codes, dear boy. Codes.’
Codes? They didn’t share codes. We have ours and they have theirs. Never the twain . . .
Ruthven-Greene took a small leather-bound diary from his inside pocket. A sheet of white paper larger than the book itself was sticking out. He extracted it and handed it to Cal.
‘I’m sure you’re familiar with this,’ he said.
Cal took one look at it and hoped he had not turned white – or worse, blushed red. The note was preceded by several lines of numerical gobbledegook, but in the centre of the page, in
capital letters, it read ‘TIN MAN DEAD’.
‘You’ve broken our code?’
‘Well. Yes and no.’
‘What’s the yes?’
‘We broke it last year. Best part of twelve months ago, in fact. We regularly monitor all your embassy transmissions from the Cape to Cairo, from Timbuktu to Tokyo. Sorry. But there you
are. We’re not allies. Well, not yet at any rate.’
‘And the no?’
‘It isn’t taken from any communiqué of yours. We got it from a German radio transmission. We’ve cracked your code. And I’m rather afraid the Germans have
too.’
‘Again?’ Cal thought, but said nothing. It was only a year since M15 had caught a cypher clerk at the US Embassy in London passing the code to the Germans. The British had tried him
in camera – they weren’t going to make the Americans look like fools – locked him up and thrown away the key, for the duration at least. It was beyond embarrassment. There was
scarcely a word strong enough to describe it. As a result the Americans had tightened up their security, changed all the codes – which, it now seemed, the British had cracked immediately
– and suffered an on/off, hot/cold relationship with their M15 counterparts on the sharing of information. Sometimes it seemed they told you everything, at others as though they trusted you
about as far as you could chuck a buffalo – and always they asked for more. Since the war began, and increasingly since Winston Churchill took over, the British had become a nation of Oliver
Twists. There was nothing they wouldn’t ask for, whilst guarding and rationing anything you might reasonably expect from them. It was, he thought, a bit like being importuned by a beggar in
top hat and tails. And – worse yet – it was only four months since an American magazine had printed the design specifications of the next generation of British warplanes, for no better
reason than that it had not occurred to the War Department in Washington that they might be secret. Cal could readily see why the British might be touchy on the matter of secrets – and it
required but a short leap of imagination to realise that of course they’d spy on the Americans. Why wouldn’t they? And if they spied upon the Germans as they in turn were spying upon
the Americans to retrieve information third hand via two separate codes – well, scratch it if you can.
Ruthven-Greene indulged himself in one of his teeth-sucking, airy pauses. ‘Now – about your man Stahl. They’re onto this bloke, I should think that’s pretty obvious by
now. We must have him. Really we must. Sorry to insist and all that, but we really must.’
Cal was startled, not by the juxtaposition of the names – if they knew his codename why would they not know his real name?
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