A Codemaker's War

Code-Breaking School

The school for code-breakers was the only one of its kind in England and its founding father, patron saint and principal customer was Britain's cryptographic supremo, John Tiltman. According to O'Reilly, Tiltman's talent had already received the ultimate Intelligence accolade: it had made him a bargaining counter with the Americans.

The course was due to last for eight weeks, at the end of which the students would be graded and sent to Bletchley Park, which was Tiltman's workshop and the headquarters of the cryptographic department, known in the trade as MI8.

Fifteen new pupils, including, two young women, had been selected for the course and we sat at separate desks in a large, bright room, studying the mating habits of the alphabet, counting the frequency of letters and working our way through exercises which gradually became more difficult until we were ready to tackle codes of military and diplomatic level.

For a short while the whole class seemed to be moving in orderly mental convoy towards the promised land of Bletchley. But amongst those potential problem-masters there was one confirmed problem-pupil. I knew that if I didn't break behaviour patterns as well as codes, I would be lucky to last the term -- a prospect which made me keep peace with my teachers for a personal best, of about a week. The regression started when I felt a code of my own simmering inside me. This unwanted pregnancy was accompanied by morning sickness which took the form of questioning the quality of the exercises which were supposed to extend us. I was convinced that the school's methods of teaching would be better suited to a crash course in accountancy. The decline was irreversible when I tried to find quicker ways of breaking codes than the ones prescribed for us, and began to chase cryptographic mirages of my own making. Having somehow absorbed a few tricks of the trade, I spent hours trying to devise codes which would be proof against them. Although possibly not quite the waste of time it was then pronounced to be, this was still chronic indiscipline masquerading as creative impulse.

The chief instructor was a patient, conscientious lieutenant named Cheadle. He wandered round the classroom once a day, peering hopefully over the students' shoulders -- urging us to "dig out the root problems like a corn." When he came to my desk, he found nothing to excise. He was like a chiropodist treating a wooden leg which insisted on kicking him.

By the time I was halfway through the course, all the others had reached the final exercise. Since I had no hope of closing the gap, I decided I had nothing to lose by vaulting it. It was strictly against the rules for any student to remove work from the premises; there was no law against memorizing it. By scanning the code until it became my favourite face, I was able to take all its key features home with me, slightly blemished by the spots before my eyes.

"Home" in Bedfordshire, a county which deserved its duke, was a boarding house -- one of many in which the students were billeted. I had been instructed to tell the landlady that I was from the Ministry of Information. At supper time that night mine hostess, as usual, placed a piece of spam beside me and the code surrendered at the sight of it. It laid down its arms and said "enough". The rest was just hard work, a matter of gathering it in. Twenty-four hours later I was the proud possessor of a finished exercise.

Nobody had told me that it was intended to be a "team effort" spread across a week. A bemused Lieutenant Cheadle showed my work to a highly suspicious Major Masters, who immediately tightened internal security. However, as so often happens in such matters, what is tightened at one end becomes loosened at the other and I was able to catch a glimpse of my confidential report.

It might have been written by the high master of St Paul's who would have expelled me had he not been a client of 84's: "In his determination to find short cuts, he is apt to be slap-dash and erratic... though his approach shows some signs of originality, he is a very hard man to teach and will, I believe, be an even harder one to place..."

I wondered what arrangements Bedford made to dispose of its waste product.

The friendly sergeant was never friendlier than at mid-evening when he was prepared to reveal whatever he had heard on the grapevine in exchange for a little of the grape.

The rest of my course was going to Bletchley. As for its solitary failure, an interview had been arranged for me with "some potty outfit in Baker Street, an open house for misfits." If even they didn't want me, I would be regarded as unmarketable.

"It's called Inter Services Research Bureau," said the sergeant. He lowered his voice. "It's got another name, too. SOE or SOD or something."

It had many names, Sergeant. One of them was Bedlam.

Copyright © 1998 by Leo Marks. All rights reserved. Converted for the Web with the permission of Simon & Schuster.