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| Harris, Robert: Enigma
Harris, Robert: Enigma
ENIGMA
by ROBERT
HARRIS
- ENIGMA
is the name of a German decipherig machine, which is until nowadays worth to be
a technical wonder.
- At
BLETCHLEY PARK was the English Cipher Bureau during World War II.
Th book is about Thomas Jericho
who worked as a cryptoanalyst during World War II at Bletchley Park. There he
got into contact with a young and good-looking British undercover spy, Claire
Pomilly. About in the middle of the story she suddenldy disappeared and during
his investigations he got into a German spy syndicate, led by Adam Pukowski, and
destroyed it.
Characters:
Thomas R. G.
Jerico:
After his father´s early
death his mother married another man, whom he disliked, so he found astronomy
and mathematics. He matriculated in 1935, Senior Wrangler, Mathematics Tripos in
1938. At Cambridge University, theth teacher, Frank Atwood sent him to a friend
who led him into the art of deciphering. On December 4th 1939, three
days after Germany has invaded Poland, he begen to work at Bletchley Park. There
he met Claire Romilly with whom he had a short affair. In January 1943 he had a
physical breakdown and was sent back to Cambridge University a short time after
he deciphered the German-naval code „SHARK“. Soon after his
breakdown the German naval-forces surprisingly changed their ENIGMA codebooks
and so he was again called back to Bletchley Park. Back there he met Claire
again and he fell in love with her but she ended their affair
abruptly.
page 63: „a
mathematican, like a painter or a poet is a maker of
patterns.“
page 65: „Jerico
thought the ENIGMA machine was beautiful - a masterpiece of human
ingenuity that created both chaos and a tiny ribbon of
meaing.“
page 287: „I´m a
mathematician, not a moral philosopher.“
Hester Wallace:
She grew up in Dorset, went to
school at an eccentric girls´school at Beamister. Through her gift for
crosswords, she came to Bletchley Park by winning a crossword competition of the
Telegraph. She lived in the same house as Claire, so she got into contact with
Jerico, when he tried to find Claire. She became a very close friend of Jerico
during their search for Claire, as both of them knew, that they needed each
other´s help to solve the mystery of Claire´s
disappearence.
Claire A.Rommily:
She pretended to be born in London
in 1921, educated privatly abroad, after her mather´s decease in 1929. Her
father worked all over Europe in his job as a diplomat, even in Berlin for two
years. She finished her education in Geneva and returned to London on the
outbreak of war, in the age of seventeen. After a few of voluntary jobs at civil
defense she got a job as a translator in 1941 at the Mnistry of Economc Warfare.
Then in 1942 she applied for clerical position at the Foreign Office. Because of
her well knowledge of languages she was recommended for a position at Bletchley
Park. So she started working at the store building in the Park. There she had an
affair with Jerico, but she ended the relationship, because she loved another
man, Adam Pukowski. Later she dissapeared surprisingly.
Adam Pukowski:
His mother was English, his father
Polish. He lived in London till he was ten, when his parents got
divorced he went away with his father to live in Cracow. The father was a
professor of mathematics, the son showed the same aptitude and found his way to
the Polish Cipher Bureau at Pyry. When the war broke out the father was called
up to the rank of a major to rejoin the Polish Army. Defeat came. Half of Poland
was occupied by Germany, the other half by the Soviets. His father disappeared.
Puck escaped to France to become one of the fifteen Polish cryptoanalysts,
employed at the French Cipher Centre at Gretz-Armainvillers. Defeat came again.
Puck escaped to neutral Portugal, where he made the acquaintance of Rogerio
Raposo. From Portugal he found his way to England, where he worked at Bletchley
Park. Two yars passed with no news of Pck´s father or any of the other
ten-thousand missing in action Polish officers. In 1941, afterwards Germany has
invaded Russia, Jossif Stalin unecspectedly became a British ally. Two years
later rumours begen to circulate among the Poles in London, that these missed
officers have been executed and burried in a forest nearby Smolensk. Then the
day came Puck found out that one of the victims was his father.
page 350: „I killed
her, Thomas i´m so terribly sorry!“
page 287: „THe
presumption that the onus is on us to make a moral
choice.“
Guy Logie:
Before the war Logie had been head
of mathematics at a vast and ancient public school. He had a Blue in rugger and
another in hockey and „irony bounced off him life pebbles off advancing
rhinoceros“ (page 21).
Logie is the head of the chief
cryptoanalyst at Bletchley Park, so he was the man who took Jerico back to the
Park after his blackout.
Leonard Skinner:
He was the head of the naval
section at Bletchley Park, and so he wa Jerico´s superior. He didn´t
like the way Jerico behaved and he wanted him out of the Park.
page 91: „Thank you,
Tom. Thank you very much indeed. I´d forgotten what a tower
of strenght you could be.“
page 93: „You are an
ill man, Tom. And I´m stonger than you in every way.
Officer Wilgram:
He was the chief of Blentchley
Park´s secret service, so he was the person who sent under-cover
agent Claire Rommily to Bletchley Park to infiltrate the cryptoanalysts. He knew
everything about Puck´s daed father but he still let Puck run into the trap
and later shot him when he tried to escape to Germany.
page 367: „No
I´m sure Pukowsky never even told Claire for just one minute what he was
planning to do. Consider it from his point of view. She was the weak link. She
could have given him away any moment. So iI imagine how he must have felt when
he saw you walk back through the door from Cambridge on that Friday
night.“
Plot:
On a Friday evening in February
1943 Logie takes Jerico from Cambridge University back to Bletchley Park, where
he is confronted with the problem that German submarines have changed their
comunication codes and that three American convoys, with 117 merchant ships, 9
000 merchant seamen and about 1 000 passangers, have just reached the middle of
the Atlantic. Suddenly his ex-girlfriend Claire doesn´t come to work, and
so he starts to search for her. During that he finds classified documents in her
room. Later he discovers that on these sheets are deciphered radio-transmissions
from a German unit in Poland to the GeStaPo headquartes, which have just
discovered a mass execution of Polish officers in a forest near Smolensk by the
Soviet army. Among the dead also is Adam Pukwskißs father, a decipherer at
Bletchley Park, who hates from then on the Soviets and their Allies. So he
becomes a spy for the Germans and later tries to escape to Germany. But on the
train to his meeting with a German submarine, Jerico finds him and when he tries
to escape he is shot by the police.
Language:
The language used in
„ENIGMA“ is most of the time easy to understand, although I do not
think that the book especially was written easy to understand, because in some
parts their is used a lot of military language, which is really hard to
understand as a civilist.
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