“No, I’m going alone.”

“If it’s her being conspicuous you’re worried about,” Polly said, “there were more women than men working at the Park. They did all the transcribing of the intercepts and ran the computers, and some of them even worked on the decoding. So if you’re worried about Eileen standing out—”

That’s not what I’m worried about, Mike thought. “Two people are more likely to attract attention than one,” he said, “especially if they’re both snooping around and asking questions.”

“Mike’s right,” Polly said. “The people who worked there were under a good deal of surveillance.” Which wasn’t exactly reassuring.

“If only one of us can go, it should be me,” Eileen said. “Gerald knows me. He may spot me even if I don’t spot him.”

Which was true. “He’ll recognize me, too,” Mike said, though he wasn’t at all sure he would. “I need you and Polly here to go meet the retrieval team if they answer our ads. And I’ll have more freedom of movement than you would. A man can go into restaurants and pubs alone without attracting attention.”

“Not if you’re an American,” Polly said. “The Americans didn’t come to Bletchley Park till February of ’42. Do you think you could pass as an Englishman?”

“I am an Englishman. I had an American L-and-A, remember? But how am I supposed to pull off working there? It took clearance to get into Bletchley Park. I’d never be able to pass the background check.”

“Gerald did,” Eileen said.

“With carefully forged school records and letters of recommendation. That’s probably what his recon trip was about, planting documents that could stand up to Bletchley Park’s background check. My history wouldn’t.”

“You needn’t actually work there,” Polly said. “And by the way, it’s BP or the Park, not Bletchley Park. And not Bletchley—Bletchley’s the town. Bletchley Park is the Victorian manor outside of town where the decoding was done. Only a few codebreakers lived on the estate. Everyone else was billeted in Bletchley or the surrounding villages.”

“Then why do I have to pretend at all? Why can’t I go as a reporter and talk to them in the town, say I’m working on a story?”

“Because they’ve all been forbidden to talk to anyone. They’ve all signed the Official Secrets Act. They can get the death penalty if they talk. Besides, you’d be hauled in by the authorities instantly if they heard you were planning to write about Bletchley Park.”

“I could say I was doing a story on something else,” he said, but Polly was shaking her head.

“No, people will be much more likely to talk to you if they think you’re one of them. If they ask what your job is, which they won’t, you can say you work for the War Office. That was the official cover for intelligence work.”

“How can you be so sure they won’t ask me what my job is?”

“No one was allowed to discuss what they were doing. People who worked in one hut didn’t even know the names of the people in the other huts.”