Cabinet Operations Office.
"Thought I'd see a boring old man, Alan" The man stood up from behind the hickory desk and shook my hand.
"I thought you would be very serious, sir." I honestly admitted: "You are the immediate boss of the Intelligence Bureau."
C is very different from what I imagined. I expected to see a hook-nosed, bald old man with a serious smile and half-moon spectacles looking through the top of the lenses. C is for the hooked nose, but it's a bit more muscular than I expected. I guess he is less than fifty years old, with dark brown hair, a hooked nose, glasses, sharp eyes, but a hearty laugh.
He was wearing a slightly thick woolen jacket in this weather, and he picked up his coffee cup. It made me think of my uncle drinking stout in the Beckenfordshire pub, not the head of the empire dealing with the shady things in the small room.
"Many people think that." He looked at me seriously: "Alan, you have grown up. You look more like your mother."
I'm a little uncomfortable.
"The last time I saw you, you were a baby, lying in Jane's arms."
"You met my mother?!" I was taken aback.
C gestured for me to sit on the chair in front of his desk, and sat down himself: "Coffee? Tea?"
"No thanks," I said.
"I've seen your mother," he said slowly, "it was I who dealt with Mrs. Custer's order."
I sat in front of him, my mind went blank.
I could understand every word he said, but couldn't put together the exact meaning.
"Alan, I know you are in pain. I was also in pain. The pen that signed the execution order was trembling. It took three times to sign a document... I thought, I will never see Jane and your father again. I still Think so, your mother was a gifted cryptographer, and there was no other of her genius in all of England. Her execution would be a great loss to the Intelligence Service, a loss until Andmond Garcia I will make up for it when I arrive.”
"Your mother has too much stuff. We have evidence of her connections with German spies. Andermond showed you the video, didn't he?"
"Yes."
"You know she works for German intelligence."
I was so painful that I could hardly speak: "Yes."
C shook his head and turned to look out of the window, leaving only a silhouette of me.
"Alan, I suffer as much as you do."
"You don't understand, do you?" He took a sip of coffee and pushed the coffee cup to the farthest point on the table, as if it was something sad, the farther the better: "Let me tell you... you The truth about mother treason."
C's statement was very calm, he kept looking out the window without looking back.
I suddenly thought of Andymond.
Whenever I asked Andremon a question that was difficult to answer, he would turn his face sideways to look out of the window to hide the expression on his face.
I think this may be a habit shared by people in the intelligence system.
It's just that when C was narrating, he suddenly looked old, as if he suddenly realized the heavy time on his shoulders.
"The Intelligence Agency raised the problem of the fastest descent line in the "Mathematician", and publicly challenged that no one could solve it. After that, the six offices received a total of three answers, one from mine, one from your father, and one from Postmarked in Cambridgeshire, it belongs to your mother. Among so many solutions, my solution was judged to be the most beautiful. It is analogous to Fermat's principle and uses optical methods. Looking at it now, your father's solution is the best , which truly embodies the idea of variation, which is very remarkable... "
"But the fastest is your mother. Her solution is very random, and the process is scribbled on a piece of paper-the magazine is sent out in the morning, and she solves it in the afternoon, and throws it in the mailbox just in time for the last postman. The next day The intelligence agency received your mother's answer, mine on the fifth day, and your father's email after another week."
"A month later, we both received an invitation from MI6 to serve our country in a special way. That's when I first met Jane. She had beautiful gray-blue eyes and soft curly hair. I thought of an angel on a church fresco, not a mathematician. I was teaching at Oxford at the time, and your mother had published a few papers at Cambridge, and she was a little famous. I read her papers, and she was very talented."
"Alan, I tell you this in the hope of dispelling your hostility towards me. Your mother and I used to be close colleagues, comrades-in-arms and friends. We have worked together for ten years and were the first cryptographic intelligence experts in the Sixth Division , the founder of Plimpton Manor. Later, I was transferred to the General Intelligence Agency, and your mother was in charge of offices No. 1 and No. 3 in Plimpton Manor... Have you heard of the name Cummings?"
Uncle Cummings
I seem to have an impression that when I was very young, he often came to the house as a guest, holding me up high and spinning in circles.
Tall, bearded, ruddy.
"It seems to be my father's friend." I said.
C nodded: "Yes, it was your father who introduced him to the intelligence system and served as his guarantor. He was suspected of treason. The high-level intelligence agency decided to conduct a very strict isolation review on him and your parents. You know Andemon This latest quarantine review, huh?… Your mother has been through the same review four times. I barely recognized Jane after the fourth review and she wasted away like a dying daffodil. She looked When you look at you, you can feel the life draining from her gray-blue eyes. I persuaded her to divorce your father and get rid of the relationship. I told her that although the results of these four inspections are all innocent, she will show up again in the future. Evidence against Mr. Custer, she and her future children will suffer. I even proposed... Marry her after divorce. Ellen, don't look at me like this. I admit that I was once deeply attracted to her."
"Jane is no longer trusted by the organization. She believed in your father and that Mr. Cummings, and she also believed in England. Then she begged me to quit Plimpton Manor and work in mathematics research. She was just pregnant with you .”
"I used my authority without telling my superiors to approve her resignation application, and suppressed all the information that was unfavorable to your father—just like how Andremon suppressed the information that was unfavorable to you this time. I saw your mother again at the award ceremony, she was still so sweet and demure, and you were five years old at the time, she looked more like a mother."
He rang for coffee.
"Maybe you drink a cup of coffee first, and then listen to the story behind?"
I heard myself say, "No need."
C sighed and did not object: "Cummins is indeed treasonous. He fled to Germany and took away a lot of highly confidential information. He wrote to your father, saying that he can send someone to pick up your family and go to Berlin Engaged in cryptography research. The letter also said that the empire is conducting a huge cryptography project and needs their strength. The content of this letter was intercepted by the authorities, and your family has completely lost trust since then."
"Many circumstances at the time indicated that they were going to defect to Germany... The information I got was that the Custers were packing up their things and returned the long-term rented apartment. Andermond should have told you what happened later, and the authorities issued an order to deal with it .”
I remembered what Anderson once said to me—people here work for the country. Your life is not your own. There will be foreign agents trying to get close to you. Your private life will be closely monitored if necessary. If you are treasonous, you will be dealt with secretly. If your superiors suspect you of treason without evidence, you may accidentally fall off a coach one day and just break your neck. This is the system of the organization, for the safety of all.
"One month before the fire, my mother sent me back to my uncle's house in the country!" I stood up suddenly: "If they really want to go to Germany, they won't leave me alone in England!"
I don't know how to express it, I can only repeat in a daze and despair: "You don't know, she loves England..."
C hit the nail on the head: "But she is working for the Nazis now."
"She may have been forced!"
"Yes, it's possible..." He nodded: "If you could show more trust in your father and mother at that time, maybe the situation would be very different."
I suddenly thought: "Mother is still alive, what about my father? Where is he?"
"I don't know. Alan, you need to calm down. Your hands are shaking." C pressed my shoulders and made me sit down again: "We never got any information about your father."
He sat there all the time, and waited until my chest was no longer heaving so badly, and then said: "This time I want to tell you, Alan, I trust you."
He went on to say: "At the beginning, the intelligence agency did not trust your mother, but Alan, I trust you. Now I have the right and ability to trust you without any conditions. In order to respect your wishes, I will ask you again: are you willing to do this for me?" Do you work in the UK?"
I forget how I answered it. C laid out the brutal facts in front of me, and they filled my head so much that I could barely think. I've always speculated that my mother's work for Berlin might be due to the instructions of the intelligence agency, but they were all smashed by the language of C. I feel a pain somewhere in my chest, but I can't express it.
"Allen, I know the truth will cause you pain. But I want you to work for me knowing the truth. If possible, I don't want you to suffer." C asked me: "At the end of June, you will be able to decipher the Is the machine designed?"
I remembered that document.
"The Prime Minister has requested that the deciphering machine be produced by the end of June, or an equivalent rate of code-breaking." I heard myself say, "I have a colleague who can produce the deciphering machine by the end of June. Until he succeeds, I promise Office One provides the same amount of code-breaking speed as a decryption machine."