I was surprised and asked Arnold: "Isn't your surname Visco?"
I was putting my hands in my pockets, leaning against the banister on the second floor, waiting impatiently for the kid to finish his math problem. Arnold came over with his afternoon tea and leaned beside me. He turned his head and looked over the long steps covered with thick red carpet, and fell on the cold gilded grandfather clock and china in the hall.
I heard him sigh: "My mother is the only daughter of General Bradley. She married the Marquis of Visco. General Bradley is my grandfather. It is normal for the family to marry."
If you open the "History of the British War", you will find that the Bradley family has produced a large number of famous generals. Old General Bradley graduated from the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, studied at the Camberley Staff College, participated in the World War and the Irish War twenty years ago, and almost died. Arnold told me: "When I decided to accept Andymond's invitation to go to Plimpton Manor, my father and grandpa locked me up in a room upstairs for a week—they wanted me in the Army. You know, family ties..."
"How did you get into Plimpton Manor afterwards?"
Arnold said: "Mr. Garcia came here in person and said that the Intelligence Agency needed a psychoanalyst. He talked with the old man in the hall downstairs for five minutes, and someone came up to open the door for me and let me out."
Arnold's background is very deep, but every time he mentioned Andymond, he always said "Mr. Garcia" in a respectful tone. It was as if Andemon was an existence above some kind of authority, holding some rights that I didn't know about.
He pointed to the study room again: "I still expect you to teach my cousin to be better, otherwise I may be captured by the old man from Plimpton Manor at any time to marry me."
I want to tell him that the little brat got only 15 of the 50 arithmetic problems right yesterday, don't put your hopes up.
Arnold asked me why I was thinking of coming here as a governess. I shrugged. "Inflation, no money to pay rent—I owed two months' rent before I got the job, and almost got kicked out by the landlady."
"Mr. Garcia didn't pay you a breakup fee? He is so rich, you can ask for it casually." Arnold is very innocent: "I paid for it even when I dumped my girlfriend."
I was in a bad mood: "Fuck off, I'll throw money at him."
He suddenly remembered: "Oh, what you asked me to bring to Mr. Garcia last time said that he was just good-looking. He asked me to tell you, thank you."
Over time I found that Arnold often came to Cambridgeshire when he was free. He lived in the general's mansion, far away from the general's grandfather, his father and Andrew in London, and spent the whole vacation in drinking and drinking. The doctor's holiday itinerary is as follows: get up at twelve o'clock, have lunch with grandma (the general's wife), and maintain a polite and scholarly demeanor. Go to the underground bar to drink in the afternoon, maintain the polite and scholarly demeanor, hang out with the girl you like until dawn at night, go home to sleep, and restore the polite and scholarly demeanor.
He also invited me: "Dear Ellen, if you have time this afternoon, how about going to the Cherry Bar with me? You don't like Mr. Garcia anymore anyway."
At that time, Linton had officially obtained the right to spend the night at Andermont Villa. Naturally, I accepted the offer from Dr. Vesper.
It was the same underground bar he took me to last time. I sat in front of the bar and flirted with the pretty bartender, who walked through the crowd with a glass of blue margarita, squinting his eyes to find beautiful women. I leaned on my arms on the bar and drank a bunch of unknown flavors until the bartender got someone to throw me out. Arnold came out to find me with a hot woman in his arms. It was unbelievable: "Is this the same way you pursue Mr. Garcia? Stalking?"
I got up from the ground and raised my eyebrows: "Any opinion?"
"I didn't know Mr. Garcia was so easy to chase." He nodded meaningfully: "Alan, try chasing me? But I bet I won't be tempted."
The next day, I told the little kid with a sullen face during the make-up class that if grandma asks where your cousin went during the day, tell her about Cherry Bar.
In fact, there are many things that Arnold does not know.
For example, I helped Anderson decipher the code S, and took over Linton's undecipherable code. Linton will give me a sum of money from his salary every month. I was dying of want of money, but Linton's account movements were controlled by MI6, and regular transfers were monitored, so the amount he could transfer to me without suspicion was very small.
Let's say Andymond and I were able to decipher part of the "mysterious" telegrams without using equations.
The biggest problem in deciphering the "mystery" is to find the initial position of the three wheels for the day. It has a total of 1058 691 676 442 000 possibilities, and what we need to find is one of those 1058 691 676 442 000.
This is like locating a star in the vast universe, or finding a suitable grain of sand on a three-kilometer-long beach.
In fact, it was a coincidence. One day, I was bored squatting in front of the library and watching the few girls in Cambridge walking around, and suddenly thought of the "obsessed" keyboard problem. What we found was a commercial encryption machine, which was subtly different from the "mysterious" military encryption machine.
Anderson said that decryptors should always think on the side of encryptors. Think about what the other party does so that you can better hide the information.
I think, maybe the keyboard of the "fan" is not the arrangement order of the first row of QWERTY from the left of the ordinary typewriter keyboard. Maybe the other party knows that we will decrypt it in that order, so it is replaced with the arrangement of ABCDEF.
I just told Linton jokingly, and Linton told Andemont jokingly. Andymond actually tried it. He tried nearly a thousand ciphertexts by himself, and told Linton that the keyboard arrangement of "Mi" is indeed ABCDE, and the arrangement of the alphabet is four rows and six columns.
The arrangement of the keyboard is important, so that the ciphertext is first entered on the keyboard, and then rotated by the rotary and reflective wheels. Knowing how the keyboard is arranged allows us to crack each other's flawed codes.
The beginning of "fan" is a three-character key, which determines the initial position of the wheel. The password sender will encrypt it twice and send it at the beginning of the text. For example, if the key is abc, the result of the first encryption is SCT, and the result of the second encryption is PIY, then the beginning of the ciphertext is SCTPIY. We have no idea that the original text key of SCTPIY is abc.
But there is one exception.
Some password transmitters are lazy, and the passwords sent every day are the first three on the keyboard, and abc is encrypted twice consecutively. After knowing the arrangement of the keyboard, Andremon deciphered some of the passwords with a perverted trial. Some of his geniuses were so sensitive to Morse code that they could hear the different habits of the German telegraphers. Anderson asked them to follow up and record the transmitter who had the habit of sending the first three letters of the keyboard, three letters obliquely, and three letters vertically as keys.
Armed with a three-letter key, Andremon and I were able to decipher some "mysterious" messages.
I lay on the wide oak table in the library and couldn't believe it: "I didn't expect Andrew to try it... He actually checked all the 1,000 ciphertexts..."
Linton sat next to me drinking coffee, wearing a camel hair coat, in a good mood: "Mr. Garcia will generally accept my proposal."
I correct him: "That's my proposal."
Linton's expression suddenly turned ugly, and he paused for a while before saying, "I know."
"If he tries more than a thousand ciphertexts and finds it's wrong, will he get mad?"
Linton shrugged: "No. The equation solution you mentioned last time can be substituted into more than a thousand ciphertexts. Mr. Garcia didn't say anything. He even invited me to dinner and asked me if I was tired."
Andemon was always so gentle to those who could be used.
I think of my mother, Jane. Custer. MI6 had also been gentle with her when she was useful. Our house in London was spacious, and my mother and father relied on their savings before quitting to study mathematics without going out to work. Both father and she were trusted to do what Andermond and I were doing at the Cipher Bureau, using mathematics as a weapon to protect the British people. Before being "processed", the mother did not give up the cryptographic research that could no longer bring her economic benefits. She jotted down the deciphered equations of the former Mystery in her notebook. I don't know what happened, but I know that although my mother is weak, she has been persevering. Her equation thinking should carry on through me.
It doesn't matter whether I came up with the idea of deciphering or Linton's, as long as it can lead to Britain's victory in this code war, as my mother did in the first place. I don't care if I'm the stepping stone under the wheel of history.
Linton had been staying in Cambridgeshire for a long time, and Anderson asked his adjutant Peter to drive him back to Plimpton Manor. One day I happened to see him leaning against a black car waiting for someone outside a hotel, still wearing a straight uniform with shiny epaulets and no expression on his face.
At that time, there was cold snow falling on the street, and I passed by outside, but he stopped me.
He even took the initiative to talk to me: "Alan, I came to Cambridge twice, and you wore the same coat."
"Inflation," I said, "I'm still a student and have no income."
He said: "Mr. Garcia asked me to bring you a message. If you need money, tell him."
As a result, a week later, I went to the bank to withdraw money, and found that there was a large sum of money under my name out of thin air. The bank manager explained carefully that the fee came from a secret government agency and could not be refunded.
It wasn't once or twice that Andemon abused his power.
I complained to Arnold: "Andremon sent me a goddamn breakup fee! What the fuck did I take for?!"
Arnold is using my student, Young Master Bradley, to experiment with his hypnotism. He is very happy: "Great, you really have nothing to do now."