The Rose Code

by Kate Quinn

You haven’t seen an Enigma machine yet, have you? Monstrous little things. The air force and naval machines have five possible wheels, which means sixty possible orders depending on which three are picked for the day. Every wheel has twenty-six possible starting positions, and the plugboard behind it has twenty-six jacks. That makes one hundred and fifty million million million starting positions … and then the Jerries change the settings every twenty-four hours, so every midnight we have to start over. That’s what we’re up against.

Bletchley Park had broken German codes, but the asylum broke human souls.