Breaking Enigma || The Imitation Game

◈ FORTY-THREE- What Are You Prepared to Sacrifice?

Once again, the Team had worked throughout the night. Dawn was now breaking and it seemed as though the morning sky had been painted: it looked like brushstrokes had coloured the sky pink, blue, yellow, and purple.

There had been a flurry of activity: Decoding messages, translating the decrypts and then reading the information contained within. It all happened so quickly and the enormity of the scale in which the messages came flooding in was barely imaginable.

There was a ginormous map on the wall showing Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. Blue pins (which represented the Allied ships) and red pins (which represented the Axis ships) were scattered around; they showed the boats positions in the sea. It was quite the sight to marvel at.

"You did it," Hugh said, turning to Allany as the six of us stepped back to gaze upon the map. "You just defeated the Nazis with a crossword puzzle. What does it feel like to do the impossible?"

"Quite strange," she replied, although her expression said otherwise. Allany was unsure like something was bothering her and niggling away in the back of her mind. "But it wasn't just me. You five put as much effort in as I did, so I owe it to you all for making it possible."

"Thanks for the recognition," I joked. The feeling was utterly indescribable. Breaking Enigma was revolutionary to us, to Bletchley and to the country.

"There are five people in the world who know the position of every ship in the Atlantic," John commented, smiling proudly. I had noticed that over the time he'd spent with us in Bletchley, John's Edinburgh accent had faded slightly and you almost couldn't tell that he was Scottish. And I'm sure that the Team, like me, was thankful that his aggressive and dark personality vanished with it too. "And they're all in this room."

Then, it hits me; I've finally realised why Allany was so agitated by something. Two pins were closer together than the other pins on the map. Just off the coast of Norway, there was a British passenger convoy and a small fleet of German submarines - an attack was imminent.

"Good God," I accidentally blurted out loud.

"Oh, I don't think even He has the power that we do right now," Hugh smirked.

Before answering, I stepped closer to the map just to make sure I was right. To my deepest horror, I was. "There's going to be an attack on a British passenger convoy. There," pointing to the red pin, I could sense the dismay that my colleagues suddenly felt.

"You're right!" Anthony exclaimed. "Those U-Boats are only twenty or thirty minutes away."

"Civilians. Hundreds of them. We can save their lives," I stated hopefully. Though, I shouldn't have been so hopeful. Glancing to Allany, I saw the worried and bleak expression she had plastered across her pale face. She avoided eye contact with me and simply bit her lip anxiously.

"I'll alert Denniston and have him radio his Admirals immediately," announced Hugh, earning a nod of approval from John. He picked up the phone, beginning to dial and was briefly interrupted by a voice.

"No."

Allany had figured it out. She had always done so, yet we chose to ignore her warning.

"Is there enough time to save them?" Anthony asked.

"There should be if we can get the message to the passenger convoy then-" John was cut off by Allany, whose words were loader than before.