Confusing


Reading through many of the posts, it seems about everyone got confused somewhere. I wonder why Claire stole the coded messages that included Puck's brother's name. How was he supposed to look at the code and decipher it up in her room? Why did he physically have to see the code sheets, if he was just taking her word for it that his brother's name was there? And then why did Claire hide the messages in the floor before going in to hiding. Wouldn't it have made more sense to take the codes back to her office again before they were missed?

And if Puck only decided to help the Germans after he learned the Soviets had murdered his brother, he certainly got word to the Germans very quickly about his offer to show them how the decoding was being done. How did he manage that just out of the blue? And why would the Germans so quickly trust Puck, and alter their code just on his say-so?

And how did Claire's boss know Puck was the mole/traitor if Claire hadn't told him? Or did she, and that was her last official act before going in to hiding? Which means the call she tried to make to Puck from the hotel was to warn him?

I generally liked the movie, but I think it tried a little too hard to be clever, and lost a lot of us along the way.

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I agree with you. I also found a couple of scenes unbelievable.
1) The scene in the barn where the police/Wigram can't find an Enigma machine hidden in a small sports car; and
2) Tom's physical heroics in the confrontation on the boat with Puck.

I blame the sreenwriters.

The other day I found the book on the bargain table at a newsagency/bookshop.
It explains the Claire Romilly role and the two scenes that I objected to weren't even in it.
There are also "further reading" recommendations; some half dozen histories written about Enigma and Bletchley Park.

The author is Robert Harris.

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***** TOTAL SPOILERS FOLLOW *****

I wonder why Claire stole the coded messages that included Puck's brother's name.
She took them because that's the only way she could keep them. She & her coworkers had been ordered to stop intercepting messages from A.D.U. (the German field unit exhuming the Katyn Forest burial site - the girls at Bletchley used the memory mnemonic "Angels Dance Upwards", remember?). Why stop intercepting? Because the British high command wanted to keep secret the German discovery of the Katyn Massacre.

How was he supposed to look at the code and decipher it up in her room?
He wasn't. The files at Bletchley had the Kestrel codes for the day of those transmissions (17 Apr 1943), so he would use those codes to decipher the messages when he was at a Typex machine or had access to the Enigma machine in the museum. Remember that Kestrel was the German Army equivalent of Shark, which was used by the German Navy.

And then why did Claire hide the messages in the floor before going in to hiding. Wouldn't it have made more sense to take the codes back to her office again before they were missed?
She didn't hide the codes. She hid the intercepts (the German messages). She couldn't take the intercepts back to the office because, by orders, the A.D.U. intercepts were all taken to London, presumably to prevent dissemination of their contents, so if she showed up at the office with A.D.U. intercepts, she wouldn't have had any place to put them.

And if Puck only decided to help the Germans after he learned the Soviets had murdered his brother, he certainly got word to the Germans very quickly about his offer to show them how the decoding was being done. How did he manage that just out of the blue? And why would the Germans so quickly trust Puck, and alter their code just on his say-so?
Good questions. The time from the A.D.U. intercepts with the list of names to the Germans changing the weather code book was only 7 days. How Puck could have contacted the Germans & convinced them that the change was needed in only a week is a big unanswered question. But perhaps the code book change was a coincidence and Puck, rather than telling the Germans about the cracked codes was going to spill the entire beans about the existence of the Bletchley Bombe (the big machine with banks & banks of rows & rows of stepper rotors) and how the Brits, after they came up with their key-pair maps, were using the Bombe to further crack the Enigma codes.

And how did Claire's boss know Puck was the mole/traitor if Claire hadn't told him? Or did she, and that was her last official act before going in to hiding? Which means the call she tried to make to Puck from the hotel was to warn him?
Yes, we must conclude that Claire fingered Puck to Wigram. But she didn't try to phone Puck from a hotel. That "phone" number: Adelphi 4243, was not a phone number. It was her room number. She left a message at Bletchley that said she called from Adelphi 4243 as a means of giving Puck her room number in the guise of a phone number... cleaver.
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I don't have a dog. And furthermore, my dog doesn't bite. And furthermore, you provoked him.

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