The Prime Minister's Secret Agent Read Online Free PDF

of blue naval uniforms, Bratton stood out in his Army-issue brown coat and khakis, and the brown hat he carried under his arm. He was short and stocky, with an earnest face and balding pate. His buttons strained under the bulge of his stomach. The men who worked for him had nicknamed him “Grumpy,” after the dwarf in
Snow White
.
    “Good morning, Colonel Bratton.” Kramer’s secretary looked up from her typewriter. Dorothy Edgars was new, but she’d made it her business to learn the names and faces of the key players inthe office. She was in her late thirties, with dark hair streaked with gray pulled back into a severe bun. She’d landed the job because she’d spent over seven years in Tokyo, and was certified to teach Japanese at the high school level. “Would you like coffee, sir? Or tea?”
    Bratton did his best to smile—but from him it looked more like a grimace. “No, thank you, Mrs. Edgars.” There was just the hint of a South Carolina twang in his voice.
    Dorothy walked to a door marked ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE TO THIS ROOM with a brass letter slot marked CLASSIFIED MATERIAL ONLY and knocked.
    “What?” barked an irritated voice from inside.
    “Colonel Bratton is here to see you, Lieutenant Kramer,” she called, unruffled.
    There was a pause, then the door swung open. “Come in, come in,” Kramer snapped to Bratton. “You’re late.”
    Bratton glanced up at the clocks lining the walls of the inner sanctum. “Not by Japanese time,” he remarked. The men were a study in contrasts—one in blue, one in brown. One tall and one short, one lean and one stout. They were an unlikely pair, but had been forced to work together. For there was no central authority when it came to reading all the Japanese intercepts collected from the Army, Navy, and SIS, no clear-cut point of responsibility.
    The political struggles between the two U.S. military branches had become so divisive that the Navy was charged with handling the decryption of Japanese Purple messages on the odd-numbered days of the month and the Army on the even. They would each then distribute the information on the opposite. And while Kramer and Bratton had been ordered to work together on the decrypts, neither was pleased with his assignment.
    Bratton took off his overcoat and hung it with his hat on a brass hook on the back of the door. The room was small, with maps ofthe Pacific tacked up to the walls, pushpins indicating different battles. In the center was a long wooden table, with a complex, three-part machine.
    “I’ve been working with you for months now,” Bratton said, rubbing his hands together to warm them, “but I still can’t get over how you make your Magic.” Magic was the name that had been given to the decoding and translating project, while Purple was the name of the diplomatic code.
    Kramer allowed himself a pinched, proud smile. “Thank you, Colonel Bratton.” The first machine, which looked like a typewriter, intercepted all diplomatic correspondence between Japanese embassies and Tokyo. The correspondence, in the code named Purple, was typed in, then fed into the next machine, which looked like a wooden box with wires, buttons, and switches, connected by wires to the first. The messages were deciphered in there, and then came out from the third machine, another typewriter, connected by still more wires to the decryptor, decoded and in Japanese. Then skilled personnel had to be found to translate them—which was difficult, since few Americans were proficient at Japanese.
    There was a knock at the door. “The latest intercept, sir,” an intelligence officer said, holding a sheaf of papers.
    “Might as well get on it, even if there’s no one around to translate.”
    “Yes, sir.” The young officer sat at the first typewriter, the coded documents in front of him. He began typing. As he did, lights began to wink and blink on the deciphering machine in the middle. On the far end, the typewriter began typing