Millie sat at her desk and yawned. She never managed quite enough sleep when on the night watch. Even with the blackout curtains pulled, sleep came slowly during the daytime. Mrs. Twill tried to be quiet when Millie and Shirley were sleeping. She lowered the radio to a whisper and didn’t sing along, but the occasional thump in the kitchen or sharp crack of a door blowing shut were regular occurrences. Nor had Millie’s stomach adjusted to waking in the afternoon with supper for breakfast.
But being part of the team at Bletchley Park offered compensation. What they were doing mattered for the war, and Millie was proud to be involved, even if she could discuss it with almost no one. She couldn’t tell her parents anything. Shirley worked in a different hut, so neither of them could share details, only general comments on the canteen’s menu and complaints about the drafty buildings. Uncle Silas visited the park on behalf of the Admiralty from time to time, but even those conversations were hedged. He knew a great deal more about the workings of the station than she did, but she wouldn’t ask him to tell her any of his secrets. Nor would he divulge them.
Millie placed her completed translation in one of the wire baskets and took the next one. She held her breath as she read through the decrypted message in front of her. It was from U-115, reporting the sinking of a merchant ship and her position in the Atlantic. Millie had translated hundreds of messages over the last six months, but she’d never seen a message from a U-boat before—and this one had been sent only two days before.
“They cracked the code.” The words came out in a whisper, but the man and woman sitting next to her stopped.
“What’s that?” Miss Smyth asked.
Millie glanced around. They all had a great deal of work to do, but this was a triumph, a significant one. She held up her paper. “It’s from a U-boat. We’re reading U-boat encryptions.”
“Good,” Mr. Jamison said. “I’ve a brother in the Royal Navy. The more we know about those deadly things, the safer our sailors will be.”
Renewed enthusiasm carried Millie through her translation. Broken ciphers plus frequent reports from U-boats would equal enough information to route convoys around them. It might prevent Karl from being torpedoed again. And something like this was bound to make Uncle Silas smile, not to mention all the chaps and ladies in Hut Eight who had been trying to break into German naval messages for years.
More U-boat messages and replies from U-boat command followed that night. The thrill of a victory, even a secret victory, made the rest of the watch speed by. And when she checked for mail, the day seemed even better when she was told to wait a moment. Her parents and siblings wrote frequently . . . and so did Karl. They sent their letters to the Foreign Office, and a courier brought the mail up from London.
The mail clerk handed her a telegram, and a bit of nervousness worked its way into her stomach. Unexpected telegrams were like the unsolved variables in an algebra equation. They might be positive, or they might be negative, and in this case, the only way to determine the solution was to open the envelope and read what was inside.
IN PORT WITH LEAVE STOP WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOU STOP TELL ME WHEN AND WHERE KARL
Millie felt a smile grow on her face. Karl. She hadn’t seen him since before she’d started at Bletchley Park, but his letters, always arriving in batches from places as far away as Singapore, Halifax, and Kingston, had become treasures, little windows into the mind and heart of a man she admired more and more with each pen stroke.
When Millie met Shirley by the lake so they could ride their bicycles back to their billet, she must have noticed something was different. “I take it you had a good shift?”
Millie nodded. The shift had brought good news, and so had the mail. She handed Shirley the telegram so she could read it.
“Perhaps we should stop by the telegraph office on our way back.” Shirley handed the telegram back with a smile.
“You don’t mind?” After working a night shift, both of them were normally eager to get some sleep.
“No. And I can almost hear Mrs. Twill lamenting about young people these days using Christian names so casually. Though I assume the clerk transmitting it appreciated a four-letter first name instead of a twelve-letter last name.”
Millie’s face grew warm. Had Karl used only his first name because it was shorter or as a way to make the telegram more personal? Either way, she wanted to see him again. After one more night shift and a bit of sleep, she would have most of Thursday and all of Friday before she reported for an 9:00 a.m. watch on Saturday. “Perhaps I’ll use Millie instead of Miss Stevens in my return telegram. I just have to figure out where and when. When is easy enough. Thursday afternoon. Or maybe it’s not so easy. I could probably skip sleeping for a night.”
Shirley laughed as they pedaled away from the park. “Sleep. Even if he catches the first train out of Liverpool on Thursday, he won’t arrive until . . . midafternoon probably. I’d have to check the train schedules.”
“Should I have him come here?” Millie had told Shirley about Karl, but she hadn’t given many details about his past. “I don’t know if I told you, but he’s from Austria. Fled the Nazis. When I last saw him in London, someone in the air-raid shelter thought he was a German spy. And security around here . . . well, you know.”
Shirley was thoughtful for a moment. “I hate to ask this, but could he be a spy? I’ve heard stories of people in work like ours being targeted. And if he’s as handsome and charming as you seem to think he is . . .”
Millie shook her head. “I met him over a year ago, and I wasn’t doing anything that required signing the Official Secrets Act then. I wasn’t even living in England. And a Nazi colonel murdered his father. Mr. Eckerstorfer is as motivated to see the Germans lose this war as you or I.”
“If you don’t want him to come to Bletchley, there’s Liverpool or Birmingham or London.”
Millie considered her options. “If I went to London, I could stay with my parents, but I expect they would be disappointed if I spent all my waking hours with Mr. Eckerstorfer instead of them. But they’d probably be quite shocked if I went to Liverpool or Birmingham to meet a man with no chaperone.”
“Perhaps a compromise. Don’t have him come to Bletchley. Have him come to Fenny Stratford or Woburn. That ought to appease security. And it ought to appease your parents because you can still stay at Mrs. Twill’s home, and that offers the necessary respectability. I suggest you check the hotel for availability. No sense in him traveling here if the hotel is all booked, unless you’re planning not to sleep at all, which I very much do not recommend. I’ll go to the station and check the train schedule, and then we can meet at the telegraph office.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Of course.” Shirley adjusted her stylish red hat. “He said he would like to see you. Have you any idea how wonderful that is? I tried to visit Walter twice when he was in hospital. He refused to see me on both attempts. But maybe . . .”
“Maybe?” Millie prompted.
Shirley kept her eyes on the road ahead. “According to my mother, Squadron Leader Cavendish is now convalescing at home. Maybe I’ll try again. Something tells me my billet mate will be otherwise occupied on our upcoming day off.”