Invasion (22 page)

“The matter is not impossible,” it read, in a beautifully neat and characterful hand. “What can you offer?”

Exultant, Renzi paced up and down while he considered. In his body-belt he held eight hundred pounds in gold, intended for travel expenses and the like. Would this be enough to tempt Fulton to leave immediately, the form of the contract to be discussed in England?

The thought of quick acceptance followed by rapid departure from this fearful world of danger and deceit was intoxicating. Quickly he penned a reply, emphasising immediate payment and rosily reviewing the prospects he had mentioned earlier.

For the rest of the day he was forced to attend a legal hearing and did not arrive back until late—but there
was
a reply. Renzi scanned it rapidly, and his heart sank. In lordly tones Fulton was demanding no less than ten thousand pounds to leave France. Carefully he composed a reply. It would not be possible to raise such an amount at short notice but the eight hundred would be more than sufficient to ensure a swift passage to England where all things would be possible. His overriding objective was to ensure his freedom to negotiate at the highest level he chose.

When the response came it was long-winded, hectoring, and demanded, as a condition to Fulton's considering any proposal, an undertaking that the British government form a plenary committee within three weeks of his arrival to examine the scope not only of his submarine craft but of other inventions. In return he would be able to offer the plans for an improved
Nautilus
and his torpedoes to the Admiralty for a hundred thousand pounds. Further, written proof of the offer from the British at cabinet level would be necessary before he would contemplate acceptance or leaving France.

It was an impossibility. The annual salary of a senior clerk for a thousand years? The man must be mad—or was he? Whoever stalked the undersea realm would surely command the seas, and it was plain that those who stood to lose the most were the English.

Renzi slumped. His first impulse was to promise anything at all, as long as Fulton left for England. He was living on borrowed time—and the stakes could not have been higher. But he knew he could not compromise his principles still further.

He sighed deeply and reached for his pen. With the utmost regrets he admitted he was not in a position to bind the British government to the amount indicated. However, to keep faith with Fulton he would, with all dispatch, open secret communications with Whitehall to establish a basis for negotiation.

There was little more he could do, now that he was passing the responsibility to a higher authority—and, wearily, he realised that this presented a grave problem in itself. How the devil would he get messages of explosive content safely to England when he had no means to secure them? Trusting the agents to perform some kind of coding was asking too much—and, apart from that, they would then be privy to state secrets of the highest importance.

He had no cipher materials: possession of such in any context was
prima facie
evidence of espionage. Yet if the communications were not enciphered he could not risk divulging vital and necessary details. In any case, to meet Fulton's demands he had to obtain a written undertaking at the highest level, which must be secure. He was going round in circles. There must be a way.

Renzi was by no means ignorant of secret codes after his experiences in Jersey: could he find a method from first principles to encrypt the message? The gravest difficulty of all was that in virtually every case the key had to be known beforehand at the receiving end or it must be sent in clear by other means—with catastrophic consequences if compromised.

Despite everything, Renzi found himself drawn into the logical challenges of the dilemma. After the intense boredom of the prisoner-of-war negotiations, the danger and frustration of dealing with Fulton, this bracing intellectual exercise was congenial, and he bent his mind to the task.

Any cipher whose key could be discovered was by definition unusable. Classical ciphers, such as the famous Caesar Shift, with no key but letter substitution, were unsafe—code-breaking had moved on in modern times. The same applied to the transposition types and, without prior arrangements, more complex techniques would require a key or method-type to be sent on before in clear.

A book cipher? This had the advantage that the key was already in the possession of the receiver—the text of a pre-agreed book held by both. A word in the message was specified as a precise location of that same word in the book. The disadvantage was that not only was it essential for each to have precisely the same edition but it was laborious, and the resulting encipherment could be large in size. The Bible had been used many times, with its exact chapter and verse convenience, but of course it would be the first that code-breakers tried.

There was another method: the running-key cipher. This used a source book too, but at individual character level. From a given point the ongoing text was used as a continuous key-stream to yield coded values against the message contents. This was better—and if the book's title was protected the resulting encipherment was near unbreakable.

So, what volume was to be used, known precisely by both parties? The Admiralty's own King's Regulations? Or the Articles of War? But without them to hand he could not swear to accuracy. And if it was to be some other book, its name and edition had to be divulged first. He was back where he had started.

He lay down and closed his eyes. It was the separate transmission in clear of a key or decoding method that was the sticking point. If he could only—

He sat bolt upright. That was it! The method, the key-text—and a cast-iron secure way of transmitting the key!

Galvanised, he set to work. He would not be disturbed—he had uncovered some time ago that Haslip's concern to be left alone was on account of a certain woman, and the French could not trespass on diplomatic territory.

Snatching up paper and a pencil he began to set up his
tabula recta
, the encoding matrix. Not needing to consult a book, he was able to work swiftly, and at a little after midnight he had the result. Carefully he burned his workings, folded the papers as small as he could and sealed them tightly together.

He hesitated over the forwarding instructions but eventually settled on “Foreign Office, per Smith, Paris.” It would find the right handler easily enough. Underneath, in smaller lettering, was the more important entry: “Refer Cdr Thomas Kydd, HMS
Teazer.
”
It was done.

Kydd stalked into his cabin in a foul mood. This was the third man flogged within the month for petty crimes, unavoidably in full view of the shore, and the spirit aboard was stagnating. When would the damned timbers arrive for the repair? He was keenly conscious of the fearful danger under which England lay and it went so much against his grain to lie in useless idleness. And Renzi—heaven knew what he was up to, and would Kydd ever find out?

Restless, he ventured on deck again. A fine sight, so many blue-water ships, particularly the big Indiaman to the south—as massive as a line-of-battle ship with, no doubt, a freighting aboard worth a prince's ransom, and soon to venture out to the open ocean where dangers lurked in wait every day of her six months', or more, voyaging.

Ashore, he could pick out the Deal hovellers. On this fine summer's day there was nothing to occupy them except the taking out of fresh provisions, passengers—

“Telegraph's in a taking,” Hallum offered, behind him, trying to make conversation. The shutter atop a bluff tower in the King's Naval Yard was indeed busy, clacking away furiously. The chain of signal stations stretched all the way to London and the Admiralty in a direct line.

Idly, Kydd wondered what it was signalling. Never used for routine messages it was how the first lord of the Admiralty, through his senior staff, was able to reach out and deploy the chess pieces that were his fleets to counter enemy threats. Incredibly, this signal would be here, in the commander-in-chief's hands, some fifteen minutes or so after it was sent from London.

He resumed pacing. It was no use worrying about his timber, which would come in its own good time. He must contain his impatience and be ready to throw
Teazer
into the fray the instant she was whole once more.

“Boat approaching, sir.”

Oddly, the vessel had been launched from the King's Naval Yard instead of the flagship, and with only a single officer in the stern-sheets. Kydd stayed on deck and watched it hook on.

The officer came on board. “Commander Kydd, sir?” he asked respectfully, with more than a hint of curiosity.

“It is.”

“Then, sir, I have a message from the admiral. You are to hold yourself in readiness at his office immediately for a particular service that he will speak to you about—in person.”

“Er—”

“I know nothing further.” “Very well.”

Admiral Keith was short, almost to the point of rudeness. “Kydd, I have just received a signal from the Admiralty concerning you that greatly disturbs me.”

“Sir?” The Admiralty?

“It asks—no, damn it,
demands
that you be taken out of your ship and made ready to receive a parcel o' rogues from the Aliens Office under circumstances of the utmost secrecy. Now, sir—this is intolerable! I will not be kept in ignorance. You will tell me what is afoot this instant, sir.”

Kydd swallowed. “Sir, I—I cannot. The Aliens Office?”

“Are you asking me to accept that a—a junior commander is to be made privy to matters considered too sensitive for a senior admiral? Have you been politicking, sir? I won't stand for it in a serving captain of mine, Mr. Kydd, no, not for one minute.”

“N-no, sir.”

“And I intend to be present when those jackanapes arrive!”

“Of course, sir.”

“Most irregular!”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“You'll wait here until sent for,” Keith rumbled irritably. “You may not leave on any account.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Sitting alone in the little side office, Kydd waited apprehensively.

Late in the afternoon he heard a commotion in the outer office: raised voices, scraped chairs and hurrying footsteps. Moments later, two travel-dusty men strode in, closely followed by a red-faced Keith.

“This is insupportable! I will not have it! This officer is under my command and—”

“Sir. We take our instructions from the foreign secretary directly, this being as grave a matter as any that has faced this kingdom.” The taller individual sniffed. “You have a telegraph, sir. If you have any doubts . . .”

He waited pointedly until the admiral had left them, then addressed Kydd: “From this point on everything that is said shall be at the highest possible level of secrecy. Do you understand me?”

“I know my duty, sir.”

“Very well.” He opened his dispatch case and extracted a small packet, the seal broken. “What do you understand by this?”

Kydd took it and went cold. “Why, this is from my ship's clerk and good friend. Where is he—”

“That will be of no concern to you. Can you say any more?”

“Er, unless I might read the contents?”

“No, sir, you may not,” he said, taking it back. “Please answer me directly. Was there any arrangement between you touching on the transmission of privileged information?”

“None. He's in a—a difficulty of sorts, is he?” Kydd said uneasily.

The two exchanged looks. “He is performing a mission of the utmost importance that is proving unfortunate in its complexity,” the taller man said carefully. “You may know that what you hold is a form of communication that is strongly ciphered. We do not possess the key, however, and believe that his referring to yourself implies it may be found by reference only to you.”

Kydd was dumbfounded. “We've never discussed anything in the character of spying—nothing! Renzi wholly detests it, you may believe.”

“Then this leaves us in a difficult position indeed,” the man continued heavily. “If you know of nothing he has said, no paper to keep guarded, no locked cabinet . . . ?”

“I do not.”

“Nothing whatsoever that may lead us to a key?”

“Tell me, this key, how would I know it?”

The other man broke in, his dry voice calm. “Mr. Kydd, the practice of privy communications is a black art but has a number of inviolable axioms, one of which is that the receiver must be in possession of the same key that was used to encode the message, without which he is helpless.

“It is the usual practice to establish a key beforehand, else we shall be obliged to transmit the key by other means, a most unsatisfactory and hazardous proceeding. In this particular case we have no prior arrangement and the key not being onpassed therefore must exist here, and be alluded to. The only clue we have is what you see before you. Your name has been invoked and that is all. A masterly stroke, which is its own guarantee of security but, regrettably, leaves us in a quandary.