by Ken Follett
He led them downstairs to the kitchen. They looked at the window-frame
and the unbroken pane of glass lying on the lawn.
Canter said: "Also, the lock on the bedroom door had been picked."
They sat down at the kitchen table, and Canter made tea. Bloggs said:
"It happened the night after I lost him in Leicester Square. I fouled
it all up."
Harris said: "Nobody's perfect."
They drank their tea in silence for a while. Harris said: "How are
things with you, anyway? You don't drop in at the Yard."
"Busy."
"How's Christine?"
"Killed in the bombing."
Harris's eyes widened.
"You poor bastard."
"You all right?"
"Lost my brother in North Africa. Did you ever meet Johnny?"
"No."
"He was a lad. Drink? You've never seen anything like it. Spent so
much on booze, he could never afford to get married which is just as
well, the way things turned out."
"Most people have lost somebody."
"If you're on your own, come round our place for dinner on Sunday."
"Thanks, I work Sundays now."
Harris nodded.
"Well, whenever you feel like it."
A detective-constable poked his head around the door and addressed
Harris.
"Can we start bagging-up the evidence, guy?"
Harris looked at Bloggs.
"I've finished," Bloggs said.
"All right, son, carry on," Harris told him.
Bloggs said: "Suppose he made contact after I lost him, and arranged
for the resident agent to come here. The resident may have suspected a
trap that would explain why he came in through the window and picked
the lock."
"It makes him a devilish suspicious bastard," Harris observed.
"That might be why we've never caught him. Anyway, he gets into
Blondie's room and wakes him up. Now he knows it isn't a trap,
right?"
"Right."
"So why does he kill Blondie?"
"Maybe they quarrelled."
"There were no signs of a struggle."
Harris frowned into his empty cup.
"Perhaps he twigged that Blondie was being watched, and he was afraid
we'd pick the boy up and make him spill the beans."
Bloggs said: "That makes him a ruthless bastard."
"That might be why we've never caught him."
"Come in. Sit down. I've just had a call from MI6. Canaris has been
fired."
Bloggs went in, sat down, and said: "Is that good news or bad?"
"Very bad," said Godliman.
"It's happened at the worst possible moment."
"Do I get told why?"
Godliman looked at him through narrow eyes, then said: "I think you
need to know. At this moment we have forty double-agents broadcasting
to Hamburg false information about Allied plans for the invasion of
France."
Bloggs whistled.
"I didn't know it was quite that big. Isuppose the doubles say we're
going in at Cherbourg, but really it will be Calais, or vice versa."
"Something like that. Apparently I don't need to know the details.
Anyway they haven't told me. However, the whole thing is in danger. We
knew Canaris; we knew we had him fooled; we could have gone on fooling
him. A new broom may mistrust his predecessor's agents. There's more:
we've had some defections from the other side, people who could have
betrayed the Abwehr's people over here if they hadn't been betrayed
already. It's another reason for the Germans to begin to suspect our
doubles.
"Then there's the possibility of a leak. Literally thousands of people
now know about die double-cross system. There are doubles in Iceland,
Canada, and Ceylon. We ran a double-cross in the Middle East.
"And we made a bad mistake last year by repatriating a German called
Erich Carl. We later learned he was an Abwehr agent a real one and
that while he was in internment on the Isle of Man he may have learned
about two doubles called Mutt and Jeff, and possibly a third called
Tate.
"So we're skating on thin ice. If one decent Abwehr agent in Britain
gets to know about Fortitude that's the code-name for the deception
plan the whole strategy will be endangered. Not to mince words, we
could lose the fucking war."
Bloggs suppressed a smile: he could remember a time when Professor
Godliman did not know the meaning of such words.
The professor went on: "The Twenty Committee has made it quite clear
that they expect me to make sure there aren't any decent Abwehr agents
in Britain."
"Last week we would have been quite confident that there weren't,"
Bloggs said.
"Now we know there's at least one."
"And we let him slip through our fingers."
"So now we have to find him again."
"I don't know," Bloggs said gloomily. We don't know what part of the
country he's operating from, we haven't the faintest idea what he
looks like. He's too crafty to be pinpointed by triangulation while
he's transmitting otherwise we would have nabbed him long ago. We
don't even know his code name. So where do we start?"
"Unsolved crimes," said Godliman.
"Look: a spy is bound to break the law. He forges papers, he steals
petrol and ammunition, he evades checkpoints, he enters restricted
areas, he takes photographs, and when people rumble him he kills them.
The police are bound to get to know of some of these crimes, if the spy
has been operating for any length of time. If we go through the
unsolved crimes files since the war, we'll find traces."
"Don't you realize that most crimes are unsolved?" Bloggs said
incredulously.
"The files would fill the Albert Hall!"
Godliman shrugged.
"So, we narrow it down to London, and we start with murders."
They found what they were looking for on the very first day of their
search.
It happened to be Godliman who came across it, and at first he did not
realize its significance.
It was the file on the murder of a Mrs. Una Garden in Highgate in
1940. Her throat had been cut and she had been sexually molested,
although not raped. She had been found in the bedroom of her lodger,
with a considerable amount of alcohol in her bloodstream. The picture
was fairly clear: she had had a tryst with the lodger, he had wanted to
go farther than she was prepared to let him, they had quarrelled, he
had killed her, and the murder had neutralized his libido. But the
police had never found the lodger.
Godliman had been about to pass over the file: spies did not get
involved in sexual assaults. But he was a meticulous man with records,
so he read every word, and consequently discovered that the unfortunate
Mrs. Garden had received stiletto wounds in her back, as well as the
fatal wound to her throat.
Godliman and Bloggs were on opposite sides of a wooden table in the
records room at Old Scotland Yard. Godlimantossed the file across the
table and said: "I think this is it."
Bloggs glanced through it and said: "The stiletto."
They signed for the file and walked the short distance t
o the War
Office. When they returned to Godliman's room, there was a decoded
signal on his desk. He read it casually, then thumped the table in
excitement.
"It's him!"
Bloggs read: "Orders received. Regards to Willi."
"Remember him?" Godliman said.
"Die Nadel?"
"Yes," Bloggs said hesitantly.
"The Needle. But there's not much information here."
"Think, think! A stilletto is like a needle. It's the same man: the
murder of Mrs. Garden, all those signals in 1940 that we couldn't
trace, the rendezvous with Blondie ..."
"Possibly." Bloggs looked thoughtful.
"I can prove it," Godliman said.
"Remember the transmission about Finland that you showed me the first
day I came here? The one which was interrupted?"
"Yes." Bloggs went to the file to find it.
"If my memory serves me well, the date of that transmission is the same
as the date of this murder ... and I'll bet the time of death coincides
with the interruption."
Bloggs looked at the signal in the file.
"Right both times."
"There!"
"He's been operating in London for at least five years, and it's taken
us until now to get on to him," Bloggs reflected.
"He won't be easy to catch."
Godliman suddenly looked wolfish.
"He may be clever, but he's not as clever as me," he said tightly.
"I'm going to nail him to the fucking wall."
Bloggs laughed out loud.
"My God, you've changed, Professor."
Godliman said: "Do you realize that's the first time you've laughed for
a year?"
NINE
The supply boat rounded the headland and chugged into the bay at Storm
Island under a blue sky. There were two women in it: one was the
skipper's wife he had been called up and now she ran the business and
the other was Lucy's mother.
Mother got out of the boat, wearing a utility suit a mannish jacket and
an above-the-knee skirt. Lucy hugged her mightily.
"Mother! What a surprise!"
"But I wrote to you."
The letter was with the mail on the boat Mother had forgotten that the
post only came once a fortnight on Storm Island.
"Is this my grandson? Isn't he a big boy?"
Little Jo, almost three years old, turned bashful and hid behind Lucy's
skirt. He was dark-haired, pretty, and tall for his age.
Mother said: "Isn't he like his father!"
"Yes," Lucy said. Her assent held a note of disapproval.
"You must be freezing come up to the house. Where did you get that
skirt?"
They picked up the groceries and began to walk up the ramp to the cliff
top. Mother chattered as they went.
"It's the fashion, dear. It saves on material. But it isn't as cold
as this on the mainland. Such a wind! I suppose it's all right to
leave my case on the jetty nobody to steal it! Jane is engaged to an
American soldier a white one, thank God. He comes from a place called
Milwaukee, and he doesn't chew gum. Isn't that nice? I've only got
four more daughters to marry off now. Your father is a Captain in the
Home Guard, did I tell you? He's up half the night patrolling the
common waiting for German parachutists. Uncle Stephen's warehouse was
bombed I don't know what he'll do, it's an Act of War or something '
"Don't rush, Mother, you've got fourteen days to tell me the news,"
Lucy laughed.
They reached the cottage. Mother said: "Isn't this lovely'?" They
went in.
"I think this is just lovely."
Lucy parked Mother at the kitchen table and made tea.
"Tom will get your case up. He'll be here for his lunch shortly."
"The shepherd?"
"Yes."
"Does he find things for David to do, then?"
Lucy laughed.
"It's the other way around. I'm sure he'll tell you all about it
himself. You haven't told me why you're here."
"My dear, it's about time I saw you. I know we're not supposed to make
unnecessary journeys, but once in four years isn't extravagant, is
it?"
They heard the jeep outside, and a moment later David wheeled himself
in. He kissed his mother-in-law and introduced Tom.
Lucy said: "Tom, you can earn your lunch today by bringing Mother's
case up, as she carried your groceries."
David was warming his hands at the stove.
"It's raw today."
Mother said: "You're really taking sheep-farming seriously, then?"
"The flock is double what it was three years ago," David told her.
"My father never farmed this island seriously. I've fenced six miles
of the cliff top, improved the grazing, and introduced modern breeding
methods. Not only do we have more sheep, but each animal gives us more
meat and wool."
Mother said tentatively: "I suppose Tom does the physical work and you
give the orders."
David laughed.
"Equal partners, Mother."
They had hearts for lunch, and both men ate mountains of potatoes.
Mother commented favourably on Jo's table manners. Afterwards David
lit a cigarette and Tom stuffed his pipe.
Mother said: "What I really want to know is when you're going to give
me more grandchildren." She smiled brightly.
There was a long silence.
"Well, I think it's wonderful, the way David copes," said Mother.
Lucy said: "Yes," and again there was that note of disapproval.
They were walking along the cliff top. The wind had dropped on the
third day of Mother's visit, and it was mild enough to go out. They
took Jo, dressed in a fisherman's sweater and a fur coat. They had
stopped at the top of a rise to watch David, Tom and the dog herding
sheep. Lucy could see in Mother's face an internal struggle as concern
vied with discretion. She decided to save her mother the effort of
asking.
"He doesn't love me," she said.
Mother looked quickly to make sure Jo was out of earshot.
"I'm sure it's not that bad, dear. Different men show their love in
diff-" "Mother, we haven't been man and wife properly since we were
married."
"But... ?" She indicated Jo with a nod.
"That was a week before the wedding."
"Oh! Oh, dear." She was shocked.
"Is it, you know, the accident?"
"Yes, but not in the way you mean. It's nothing physical. He just ...
wpn't." Lucy was crying quietly, the tears trickling down her
wind-browned cheeks.
"Have you talked about it ?"
"I've tried. Mother, what shall I do?"
"Perhaps with time ' "It's been almost four years!"
There was a pause. They began to walk on across the heather, into the
weak afternoon sun. Jo chased gulls. Mother said: "I almost left your
father, once."
It was Lucy's turn to be shocked.
"When?"
"It was soon after Jane was born. We weren't so well-off in those
days, you know Father was still working for his father, and there was a
slump. I was expecting for the third time in three years, and it
seemed that a life of having babies and making ends meet stretched out
in front
of me with nothing to relieve the monotony. Then I discovered
he was seeing an old flame of his Brenda Simmonds, you never knew her,
she went to Basingstoke. Suddenly I asked myself what I was doing it
for, and I couldn't think of a sensible answer."
Lucy had dim, patchy memories of those days: her grandfather with a
white moustache; her father, a more slender edition; extended-family
meals in the great farmhouse kitchen; a lot of laughter and sunshine
and animals. Even then her parents' marriage had seemed to represent
