2012/5b.plaintext

   1 VERONA had decided to reassign me to a new code-breaking division in London, an outpost of Room Forty within the Admiralty. I was required to report to Commander Denniston who trained me in the elements of my new task and it quickly became apparent that the methods of conditional probabilities developed by Bayes, in which I had become adept during my work on wind forecasting, could give us a crucial advantage in the task of cryptanalysis. Glad as I was to escape the horrors of chemical weapons, I think now that Valentine and Proteus had intended to cloister me in Naval Intelligence in order to avoid any chance that I might uncover their dreadful secret, but the relationship between the Admiralty codebreaking division in Room Forty and the Army division MIIb was closer than the Fabulists had imagined and the interaction between these agencies, together with my field experience on the continent, meant that I was increasingly engaged in the task of breaking battlefield and German High Command communications. Encouraged by the engineers in our increasingly sophisticated signals unit, who were adept at intercepting telegraphic messages from the far fields of Europe, I threw myself into work once more until one wintery Wednesday afternoon I received a message that gripped and horrified me. New as this cipher was I did not have time to enjoy my triumph in decrypting it, as the plaintext revealed a criminal conspiracy at the highest levels in British Intelligence led by the Fabulists. Even as the full horror of my involvement in their scheme was laid out before me I could not take it in. Reporting the conspiracy was impossible since I could not be sure who was involved. Even if I could trust someone outside of VERONA the security in our unit was so tight that I had no chance to take any evidence with me. I realized that I would have to conceal my discovery while I undertook further research of my own into the network of traitors within our intelligence services. Unfortunately I was clumsy in my investigations and my carelessness nearly cost you your life and your reputation, a mistake for which I can never forgive myself. I can only pray that you will be able to forgive me. I received a telegram from VERONA summoning me back to Ypres later that month. As I read it I knew that the Fabulists had somehow become aware of my interest in their secret work, and I fully believed that I was being sent to my death in the trenches I boarded the boat to Flanders and, surrounded by weary soldiers returning to the front line, I turned my thoughts to finding a way to expose the Fabulists plans.