Nemo paced as the machine clicked and then stopped and Ruthie dismissed another stop and then another as no good. More than ten minutes had passed when Phoenix, nearing the end of its run through the 17,576 rotor configurations, finally made a good stop. This time Ruthie sat down in front of the checking machine and began whirling drums and making notes.

“What is she doing?” whispered Nemo to Patton, the machine behind them finally silent.

“She has to figure out the plugboard settings,” said Patton. “And even then we won’t have the complete setup. We’ll need to know the ring settings, but a decent codebreaker can work those out by hand pretty quickly.”

Nemo had no idea what Patton was talking about. He was used to being in full control of every situation and ceding authority to a stranger made him nervous. He gazed out the window, down the hill over the sea of “huts,” and began to wonder if he should leave. Maybe if he didn’t have the message or its decryption, whoever had hired him would stop following him and chase Patton and Ruthie instead. And even if they wanted to follow him, alone he could evade detection easily. He’d done it for the past three decades. He had no loyalty to Patton. He had no loyalty to anyone but himself. But as soon as the thought formed in his mind he discarded it. He did have a loyalty to Patton, he thought. If not in so many words, he had promised to see her through this ordeal and to protect her from Fritz and Franz and anyone else who might come after that seventy-year-old message. He was in too deep to back out now, and frankly, he didn’t want to. Though a part of him couldn’t believe it, at the moment he was more interested in knowing the contents of that message than in saving his own skin.

“What time did you say the security guard comes by here?” said Nemo, eyeing a bouncing light disappearing between two rows of huts in the distance.

“I didn’t,” said Ruthie. “But we should shut off that light and get out of here.”

“Don’t you need the Enigma machine?” said Patton. “I mean, once you have all the settings, you can set up the machine and then crack the whole message, right?”

“Two problems there,” said Ruthie, sweeping up her notes and switching off the light. “First, it’ll take me another hour or so to crack the ring settings. I can do that by hand, but we can’t stay here any longer because of the guard.”

“And second?” said Patton.

“I don’t have the key for that case,” she said, pointing to the display cabinet that held the Enigma machine.

“You mean we’re going to have the solution but no way to decipher the code?” said Nemo. “Then this has all been a waste of time.”