THE LAST GOOD WAR: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

The Inscrutable Six
    Things are seldom as they seem. Skim milk masquerades as cream.
    Gilbert and Sullivan, HMS Pinafore
     
    W hen Anna got around to B8, she knocked, heard a shout inside, and entered. Three men were huddled around a typewriter. She knew Marian Rejewski from the University. Zygalski introduced her to Jerzy Rozycki.
    Rozycki was thirtyish. His solid frame suggested that he might have been athletic in his youth, but his expanding waistline told another story: his main exercise now was raising a fork to his mouth. Rejewski was perhaps five years older, his sharp features accented by a pointed beard, prematurely flecked with gray. He wore a rumpled tweed jacket with elbow patches—the same jacket he had worn every day in class the previous year. Surprising; he should be able to afford better, even on his slim salary. He was something of a legend from his undergraduate days. A professional gambler had spent a weekend hanging around his dormitory, looking for easy pickings. In a marathon encounter, Rejewski relieved him of a stupendous sum, equivalent to $8,000.
    "Here we use only first names: Marian and Jerzy, and I'm Henryk. Of course, I will still be Professor Zygalski when you see me at the university, and Marian will likewise be Professor Rejewski."
    He stepped aside and motioned her to sit down by the machine. It wasn't a standard typewriter: The keyboard was smaller, with only the 26 letters of the alphabet, no numbers or punctuation marks. Behind the keys were three wheels with letters and teeth; apparently the wheels could be rotated. At the top was a panel on which the letters of the keyboard were repeated in a set of recessed glass circles.
    "Let's try an experiment," said Henryk, rotating the three wheels. The teeth clicked slightly as he set them so that the letter "A" was at the top of each. "Why don't you type in a message. Let's make it short, not more than ten or fifteen letters."
    Anna thought of her favorite operetta, The Merry Widow . She pressed the letter "M."
    The right-hand wheel clicked, rotating one notch, from “A” to “B.” On the lampboard at the top, the circle "V" lit up.
    "V," she announced, and Henryk, who was then at the other machine, pressed a key.
    And so it went. As she typed in her short phrase, she announced the letters one by one:
    VSOBP TXVHE.
    "Merry Widow," said Henryk immediately, with a smile.
    "Impressive.” Anna leaned back in her seat. "A cipher machine. And not a simple one. The two R's in merry came out differently—O, then B."
    To check, Anna pressed Z four times. "WHFI" she announced.
    "ZZZZ" came the immediate response.
    Anna decided to cheat. The first two wheels were still at A. The third wheel had by now rotated to Q. As inconspicuously as possible, she rotated this wheel until it was again at its initial setting, A. No one noticed; the slight clicking noise of the wheel was hidden by the banging of the pipes as the heating system warmed up.
    Merry, she typed in again, announcing the results: VSOBP.
    "QIJJC," Henryk replied, with a puzzled look. "Oh, he said," you're testing me. "MERRY. You reset the third wheel back to A."
    "Marvelous," replied Anna. "The letters are scrambled. But if you start with the same wheel setting—in this case AAA—a word, such as merry, always comes out with the same encoded result."
    She thought for a few moments.
    "I think I see how it works. Every time you push a key, a wheel rotates one notch, giving a different encoding. But how can the other machine decode so quickly? It must be a mirror image of the first one. Sounds complicated."
    "Not really. The two aren't mirror images; they're identical. They work on an electric current. Pins on the three wheels stick out and make an electrical connection with the next wheel; the wheels have internal wiring to translate each letter into a different one. If all three wheels are set at A, you won't get an A if you press the A key; you'll get any other letter, say, T. Next to