“In what? I can’t hear you. It’s rather noisy here.”

“Crossword puzzles!” he shouted. “I’d done them in the hospital, and I was pretending to work on one while I sat there looking for Phipps. He asked me if I was still interested in doing them, and when I said yes, he asked me how long I’d be in Bletchley, that he had to go to London for a few days but that he wanted to talk to me when he got back.”

“Did he say anything else? About the crossword puzzles?”

“Yeah, he said he remembered I was good at them and that most Americans weren’t able to solve English crosswords. Do you think they could already be looking for spy messages in crosswords, like the D-Day thing you told me about?”

“No. He’s going to offer you a job at Bletchley Park. Remember how I told you BP recruited anyone they thought might be good at decoding—mathematicians and Egyptologists and chess players? Well, they recruited people who were good at crosswords, too. They even had the Daily Herald sponsor a crossword contest, and then offered jobs at the Park to all the winners. But they were still short of decoders, and they were always looking for potential prospects. When did you say he was coming back from London?”

“I’m not sure. Tomorrow or the next day.”

“You need to get out of there tonight, then.”

“Hang on. Maybe I should take the job. If Gerald’s staying at Bletchley Park—”

“No, that’s a dreadful idea. You’d never get out. They couldn’t afford to let people leave because of the secrets they knew, so anyone who worked at BP was there for the duration. You need to get out of there tonight.”

“But I just got a lead on Phipps.”

“Eileen will have to follow it up for you. Is there a train out tonight? You probably won’t be able to get to London—the raids are too bad—but you can at least get out of Bletchley.”

“But I don’t see what all the hurry is. Why can’t I just turn the job down, now that I know what he’s going to ask? I already told him I was having treatments on my foot. I could tell him I have to have surgery—”

“That won’t be enough of an excuse. It’s a desk job, and remember, Dilly Knox has a limp.”

“Well, then, I just tell him I’m not interested.”

“An American reporter who smuggled his way aboard a boat so he could get to Dunkirk isn’t interested in being involved in the most exciting espionage work of the war? He won’t buy it.”

She was right. Someone like Tensing, who’d been so determined to return to action that he’d defied his doctor’s orders, would never understand why Mike was turning down a chance to “get back in the war”—especially since Mike had told him that was why he was seeing Dr. Pritchard. He’d begin to wonder what was behind the refusal and start snooping around. And find out he’d lied about Dr. Pritchard.