Part 14 (1/2)

Sir Peter lit a cigarette, the flame of the lighter illuminating his long white face. ”He was a complex man. In August 1939-you may not know this-he went to Danzig. Just before the German invasion of Poland. I believe he wanted to witness the prelude to war for himself. As part of his so-called peace studies.”

I suddenly remembered the box file, Visit to Danzig and Berlin Visit to Danzig and Berlin, which I had seen in the study and never looked at.

”On the way back, he visited Berlin,” continued Vaward. ”There he met the well-known Quaker Corder Catchpole. Now Catchpole is a conchie, like most of them: he served with Ryman in the Friends Ambulance Unit in the Great War. By 1939 Catchpole was Quaker amba.s.sador in Berlin. He was trying to prevent the onset of war by keeping open some unofficial channel of communication. He was someone our agents followed as a matter of course. When he met up with Ryman, we became aware that n.a.z.i intelligence were also on to him. They already wanted Ryman, you see, they knew about the importance of his work. Most of the great German scientists with an interest in weather, like Theodore von Karman, had fled for America in the thirties, so they were backward in this area. I suspect there was an idea that Ryman could be turned because of his pacifist convictions. And when one of our people heard him bid farewell to his hotelier in Berlin with the words, ”Heil Hitler and King George”-frankly, we began to worry about his allegiances, too. But the fact is, he wouldn't have anything to do with anything military on either side.”

I told Vaward about the box file. ”Yes, we have seen that,” he said. ”Intelligence went through the house. It's just a few newspaper articles about Danzig, including one by Ryman himself, describing the visit. We have also spoken to Mrs Ryman about her husband's sympathies.”

I felt protective towards her. ”I hope you were considerate.”

As I spoke, I felt again, in the very crypt of my soul, that immense longing which found its object in Gill.

He nodded, a forbearing smile pa.s.sing over his moon-like face.

”Do you know what has happened-with the pregnancy?” I asked. ”Is she back in Scotland?” I had a vision of her back up in that bleak house alone.

”I don't know about the baby. Only that she has decided to stay in the Isle of Wight permanently.”

”Do you by any chance have the address, sir? I'm conscious I ought to communicate with her.”

”I am sure you are. But I am afraid I don't.”

He lit another cigarette, the tip of his tongue showing as he put it to his lips.

”Er,” I said, feeling emotionally exhausted, ”may I have one of those, sir?”

”Why yes, of course. Expect you need it.” He leaned across and lit it for me. The manilla folder slid off his lap and fell to the floor, revealing more pages from Whybrow's typewriter. There seemed to be acres of the stuff, fanning out across the carpet.

”d.a.m.n,” said Sir Peter. ”Pick up those, will you?”

He looked down at the papers as if they were things of no importance, and gathering them up I affected a similar disdain, making a show with my eyes of not being interested in their contents.

”Now, tell me, Meadows,” he said, once I'd handed the folder back to him. ”Did you or didn't you manage to find out anything more about applying the Ryman number to an invasion site?” He was looking at me not like the man holding out the lifeline, but the one who was in need of it.

I knew that now was my opportunity. ”I did find out something, sir. Ryman spoke to me at length just before he died.”

A flush of excitement pa.s.sed over Sir Peter's pallid face. ”About how his number might help us find the right date for the landings?”

”Yes, though I think date is the wrong way of thinking about it, at least insofar as planning an invasion goes.”

”Well, what is the right way, then?”

”When I spoke to him about the landings specifically, he said the most important thing was not the date but the data.”

A tone of crossness entered Sir Peter's voice. ”What does that mean?”

”I'm coming to it, sir. He meant that it was our observations that were most likely to wrong-foot us, that we would do better by adopting a retrospective view than a prospective one.”

”The Americans are already doing that with their a.n.a.logue models. Using historical data statistically to extrapolate how current weather will develop.”

”With the greatest respect to our allies, I don't think that is what he was talking about. He would say that you could have hundreds of years of data and still get it wrong. You might pick up some quasi-periodic phenomena but the singularities, the weather frequencies on given calendar days, could be completely against the grain.”

”Meadows, I am so much more aware of that than you can imagine. What exactly are you bringing me here? How does it relate to the range of applicability of the Ryman number for amphibious landings?”

”The connection is not yet fully formed in my mind, but...Well, because turbulence, as measured by the Ryman number, moves between one geographical area and the next, vertically as well as horizontally, the issue of adjacency is key. Ryman kept mentioning transport barriers, the layers which separate turbulent fluxes. He said that, as well as separating areas of turbulence, these barriers could also be corridors conveying it. These throughways and fences between different weather types are very important, he said. Some might be as narrow as a hundred feet.”

Sir Peter was becoming increasingly testy. ”Barriers? Corridors?”

”They're related, sir. It's a matter of perception. Interpretation of the future depends on the medium through which one refracts the past.”

”I have no doubt it does, Meadows. Instinct tells me that probably all the things you are saying are perfectly right. But you try convincing military men of theoretical constructs like those-especially if they look at your personal record and see what a dunce you have been, practically speaking. Stagg has requested you join him on the invasion weather group and I have to say I'm really not sure about that any more. But...tell me again, about the corridor-barriers. What do they mean for a soldier, Meadows, or an airman?”

I took a deep breath. ”The fact that they can be corridors as well as barriers explains some of the super-fast weather changes that have puzzled forecasters in the past. We have to alter our data gathering and our models accordingly-make sure we realise what we are looking at. Look harder, and be prepared to approximate where we cannot measure.”

His moon-white face suffused with red. ”Look harder! Approximate! That is all you have learned? I send you all the way up to western Scotland and all you come back with is that things can change quickly and we need to improve our instruments and models? And, if that doesn't work, make a guess?”

I was shocked at the sudden disappearance of Sir Peter's customary leisurely tolerance, but I was determined to stand my ground. I knew in my bones that what Ryman had told me was important-even if all it amounted to was, 'Be very careful what you do with your data'.

I knew I had to stand up for myself. ”Sir, this is important. I think it is what you wanted. These barriers can be paths along which pa.s.s significant fluxes of their own-sometimes with ma.s.s and momentum as large or larger than the adjacent flows which they separate.”

”So you say, but what useful truth am I meant to take away from it for forecasting for the invasion?” His voice, challenging when he had previously spoken, then continued in a different tone, half plaintive, half bitter. ”Current discussions between the forecasters on Stagg's team are extremely dynamical, if you'll excuse the pun. The end result is the meteorological equivalent of the Tower of Babel.”

One of the clocks made a whirring noise, as if resetting a spring inside itself. As the sound ended, I suddenly became aware of an altering of positions. I realised Sir Peter was tacitly pleading with me to take away from him the avalanche of anxiety about the landings which was being piled up on him by overbearing military superiors and by weather forecasters mired in deep disagreement.

Certain of the abiding Tightness of Ryman's conception, I felt able to speak with authority, as if I were not Sir Peter's junior but his equal. ”It's more of an approach than discrete knowledge. In music, it would be something like a fugue.”

The director gave a very deep sigh. ”Meadows, have you any idea what Admiral Vian, or General Montgomery, or Air Marshal Tedder, still less Eisenhower himself, would say to me if I presented a fugue as our modus operandi? All they want is reasonable practical a.s.surance of fine weather for a period of three to five days. What I have discovered, and the reason I sent you up to Ryman, is that we don't actually have any methodology for prediction beyond a day or two-apart from the American system of historical statistics, which our people don't think a safe basis. But at least it's a system. You've made some clever theoretical points in the mid-ground between science and philosophy, but I can't see how any of it can be stiffened into practicality.”

”There is one way, sir.”

”What?”

”This. We ma.s.sively increase our instrumentation within a thousand-mile radius of the invasion site, taking special care to look out for the dialogic characteristics of these barrier-corridors. An increase in the volume and flow of positional information is the only way of taking account of the increase in complexity implied by what Ryman says.”

Giving a cry of disillusion, Sir Peter flung himself backward into the depths of the armchair. ”Hah! I have got weather s.h.i.+ps dotted between Reykjavik and New York in predetermined positions in the Atlantic. I have got daily meteorological reconnaissance flights going out under that vulgar appellation met rec from airstrips all over Britain and the Empire. You can see them for yourself on that map up there.”

He pointed at a weather map on the wall, hardly visible behind the array of clocks. ”Not to mention every RAF station across Britain, from Langham in Norfolk to St David's in Wales, from Wick in Scotland to Chivenor in Devon, doing their THUMs. I've got data coming in from submarines in the Mozambique Channel and the Red Sea. I've got daily indications of weather from the resistance fighters in France, steams.h.i.+p captains in the Persian Gulf and Chindits in a.s.sam. I've access to the full weather forecasts of the Red Army and bits and pieces from both Chiang Kai-shek and the communists in China. I have all this and yet you say I am data spa.r.s.e?”

If my security clearance had been higher he might have added what has since become public knowledge-that he also had Enigma's decrypts of German meteorological reports from U-boats and British weather spies in the depths of Poland and Belgium, sending up from clandestine aerials quick-burst radio transmissions which were picked up by our bombers as they pa.s.sed overhead.

Nonetheless, I was still surprised by the freedom with which he bandied about what must have been cla.s.sified information. All over the country posters were asking ”Do You Know One of These?” and showing below cartoon characters such as Mr Know-All, Miss Leaky Mouth, Mr Glumpot, Mr Secrecy Hush Hush and Mr Pride in Prophecy-”He knows what the Germans are going to do and when they are going to do it. He knows where our s.h.i.+ps are and what Bomber Command is going to do”-yet here was a senior official talking without a care, albeit to one who had signed the Official Secrets Act.

Vaward followed up his long, baying speech by saying loudly, almost shouting, ”And do you know what? Scientifically speaking, you are right! Because, scientifically speaking, one can never never have enough data. But these military men have a different culture-bend everything to the task, that's their view. Every piece of data gathered must work actively towards victory. That is the end of their hypothesising, not scientific truth in the abstract.” have enough data. But these military men have a different culture-bend everything to the task, that's their view. Every piece of data gathered must work actively towards victory. That is the end of their hypothesising, not scientific truth in the abstract.”

I spoke softly, feeling like a doctor at the bedside of a patient. ”I don't want to be a pessimist, sir. I simply report to you what Ryman told me. I'm sorry. I wish it were more momentous, but there it is. His main interest was the causes of war. Meteorology, once a pa.s.sion, seemed to have become a distraction.”