by Ken Follett
"I have it in Dover gekauft." Damn, that did it.
But the ticket collector, who had turned into a London policeman
complete with helmet, seemed to ignore the sudden lapse into German. He
smiled politely and said: "I'd better just check your Klamotte, sir."
The station was crowded with people. Faber thought that if he could
get into the crowd he might escape. He dropped the suitcase radio and
fled, pushing his way through the crowd. Suddenly he realized he had
left his trousers on the train, and there were swastikas on his socks.
He would have to buy trousers at the very first shop, before people
noticed the trouser less running man with Nazi hose then someone in the
crowd said: "I've seen your face before," and tripped him, and he fell
with a bump and landed on the floor of the railway carriage where he
had gone to sleep.
He blinked, yawned, and looked around him. He had a headache. For a
moment he was filled with relief that it was all a dream, then he was
amused by the ridiculousness of the symbolism swastika socks, for God's
sake!
A man in overalls beside him said: "You had a good sleep."
Faber looked up sharply. He was always afraid of talking in his sleep
and giving himself away. He said: "I had an unpleasant dream." The
man made no comment.
It was getting dark. He had slept for a long time. The carriage light
came on suddenly, a single blue bulb, and someone drew the blinds.
People's faces turned into pale, featureless ovals. The workman became
talkative again.
"You missed the excitement," he told Faber.
Faber frowned.
"What happened?" It was impossible he should have slept through some
kind of police check.
"One of them Yank trains passed us. It was going about ten miles an
hour, nigger driving it, ringing its bell, with a bloody great
cow-catcher on the front! Talk about the Wild West."
Faber smiled and thought back to the dream. In fact his arrival in
London had been without incident. He had checked into an hotel at
first, still using his Belgian cover. Within a week he had visited
several country churchyards, taken the names of men his age from the
gravestones, and applied for three duplicate birth certificates. Then
he took lodgings and found humble work, using forged references from a
nonexistent Manchester firm. He had even got on to the electoral
register in Highgate before the war. He voted Conservative.
When rationing came in, the ration books were issued via householders
to every person who had slept in the house on a particular night. Faber
contrived to spend part of that night in each of three different
houses, and so obtained papers for each of his personae. He burned the
Belgian passport in the unlikely event he should need a passport, he
could get three British ones.
The train stopped, and from the noise outside the passengers guessed
they had arrived. When Faber got out he realized how hungry and
thirsty he was. His last meal had been sausage meat dry biscuits and
bottled water, the day before He went through the ticket barrier and
found the station buffet. It was full of people, mostly soldiers,
sleeping or trying to sleep at the tables. Faber asked for a cheese
sandwich and a cup of tea.
"The food is reserved for servicemen," said the woman behind the
counter.
"Just the tea, then."
"Got a cup?"
Faber was suprised. No, I haven't."
"Neither have we, chum."
Faber left in disgust. He contemplated going into the Great Eastern
Hotel for dinner, but that would take time. He found a pub and drank
two pints of weak beer, then bought a bag of chips at a fish-and-chip
shop and ate them from the newspaper wrapping, standing on the
pavement. They made him feel surprisingly full.
Now he had to find a chemist's shop and break in.
He wanted to develop his film, to make sure the pictures came out. He
was not going to risk returning to Germany with a roll of spoiled,
useless film. If the pictures were no good he would have to steal more
film and go back. The thought was unbearable.
It would have to be a small independent shop, not a branch of a chain
which would process film centrally. It must be in an area where the
local people could afford cameras (or could have afforded them before
the war). The part of East London in which Liverpool Street station
stood was no good. He decided to head toward Bloomsbury.
The moonlit streets were quiet. There had been no sirens so far
tonight. Two Military Policemen stopped him in Chancery Lane and asked
for his identity card. Faber pretended to be slightly drunk, and the
MPs did not ask what he was doing out of doors.
He found the shop he was looking for at the north end of Southampton
Row. There was a Kodak sign in the window. Surprisingly, the shop was
open. He went in.
A stooped, irritable man with thinning hair and glasses stood behind
the counter, wearing a white coat. He said: We're only open for
doctors' prescriptions."
"That's all right. I just want to ask whether you develop
photographs."
"Yes, if you come back tomorrow ' "Do you do them on the premises?"
Faber asked.
"I need them quickly, you see."
"Yes, if you come back tomorrow ' "Could I have the prints the same
day? My brother's on leave, and he wants to take some back '
"Twenty-four hours is the best we can do. Come back tomorrow."
"Thank you, I will," Faber lied. On his way out he noticed that the
shop was due to close in ten minutes. He crossed the road and stood in
the shadows, waiting.
Promptly at nine o'clock the pharmacist came out, locking the shop
behind him, and walked off down the road. Faber went in the opposite
direction and turned two corners.
There seemed to be no access to the back of the shop. That was
something of a blow: Faber did not want to break in the front way, in
case the unlocked door was noticed by a patrolling policeman while he
was in there. He walked along the parallel street, looking for a way
through. Apparently there was none. Yet there had to be a well of
some kind at the back, for the two streets were too far apart for the
buildings to be joined back-to-back.
Finally he came across a large old house with a nameplate marking it as
a Hall of Residence for a nearby college. The front door was unlocked.
Faber went in and walked quickly through to a communal kitchen. A
lone girl sat at a table, drinking coffee and reading a book. Faber
muttered: "College blackout check." She nodded and returned to her
text. Faber went out of the back door.
He crossed a yard, bumping into a cluster of garbage cans on the way,
and found a door to a lane. In seconds he was at the rear of the
chemist's shop. This entrance was obviously never used. He clambered
over some tyres and a discarded mattress, and threw his shoulder at the
door. The rotten wood gave easily, and Faber was inside.
He found the darkroom and shut himself in. The
light switch operated a
dim red lamp in the ceiling. The place was quite well-equipped, with
neatly labelled bottles of developing fluid, an enlarger, and even a
dryer for prints.
Faber worked quickly but carefully, getting the temperature of the
tanks exactly right, agitating the fluids to develop the film evenly,
timing the processes by the hands of a large electric clock on the
wall.
The negatives were perfect.
He let them dry, then fed them through the enlarger and made one
complete set of ten-by-eight prints. He felt a sense of elation as he
saw the images gradually appear in the bath of developer God, he had
done a good job!
There was now a major decision to be made.
The problem had been in his mind all day, and now that the pictures had
come out he was forced to confront it.
What if he did not make it home?
The journey ahead of him was, to say the least, hazardous. He was
confident of his own ability to make the rendezvous in spite of travel
restrictions and coastal security; but he could not guarantee that the
U-boat would be there; or that it would get back across the North Sea.
Indeed, he might walk out of here and get run over by a bus.
The possibility that, having discovered the greatest secret of the war,
he might die and his secret die with him, was too awful to
contemplate.
He had to have a fall-back stratagem; a second method of ensuring that
the evidence of the Allied deception reached the Abwehr. And that
meant writing to Hamburg.
There was, of course, no postal service between Fjiglandand Germany.
Mail had to go via a neutral country. All such mail was sure to be
censored. He could write in code, but there was no point: he had to
send the pictures, for it was the evidence that counted.
There was a route, but it was an old one. At the Portuguese Embassy in
London there was an official, sympathetic to Germany for political
reasons and because he was well bribed, who would pass messages via the
diplomatic bag to the German Embassy in Lisbon. The route had been
opened early in 1939, and Faber had never used it except for one
routine test communication Canaris had asked for.
It would have to do.
Faber felt irrationally angry. He hated to place his faith in others.
This route might no longer be open, or it might be insecure; in which
case the British could discover that he had found out their secret.
It was a fundamental rule of espionage that the opposition must not
know which of their secrets you have found out; for if they do, the
value of your discoveries is nullified. However, in this case that was
not so; for what could the British do with their knowledge? They still
had the problem of conquering France.
Faber's mind was clear. The balance of argument indisputably favoured
entrusting his secret to the Portuguese Embassy contact.
Against all his instincts, he sat down to write a letter.
FOURTEEN
Frederick Bloggs had spent an unpleasant afternoon in the
countryside.
When five worried wives had contacted their local police station to say
their husbands had not come home, a rural constable had exercised his
limited powers of deduction and concluded that a whole patrol of the
Home Guard had gone missing. He was fairly sure they had simply got
lost they were all deaf, daft or senile, otherwise they would have
beenin the Army but all the same he notified his Constabulary
headquarters, just to cover himself. The operations-room sergeant who
took the message realized at once that the missing men had been
patrolling a particularly sensitive military area, and he notified his
inspector, who notified Scotland Yard, who sent a Special Branch man
down there and notified Ml5, who sent Bloggs.
The Special Branch man was Harris, who had been on the Stockwell
murder. He and Bloggs met on the train, which was one of the Wild West
locomotives lent to Britain by the Americans because of the shortage of
trains. Harris repeated his invitation to Sunday dinner, and Bloggs
told him again that he worked most Sundays.
When they got off the train they borrowed bicycles to ride along the
canal towpath until they met up with the search party. Harris, ten
years older than Bloggs and four stone heavier, found the ride a
strain.
They met a section of the search party under a railway bridge. Harris
welcomed the opportunity to get off the bicycle.
"What have you found?" he said.
"Bodies?"
"No, a boat," said a policeman.
"Who are you?"
They introduced themselves. A constable stripped to his underwear was
diving down to examine the vessel. He came up with a bung in his
hand.
Bloggs looked at Harris.
"Deliberately scuttled?"
"Looks like it." Harris turned to the diver.
"Notice anything else?"
"She hasn't been down there for long, she's in good condition, and the
mast has been taken down, not broken."
Harris said: "That's a lot of information from a minute under water."
"I'm a weekend sailor," the diver said.
Harris and Bloggs mounted their cycles and moved on.
When they met up with the main party, the bodies had been found.
"Murdered, all five," said the uniformed inspector in charge.
"Captain Langham, Corporal Lee, and Privates Watson, Dayton and Forbes.
Dayton's neck was broken, the rest were killed with some kind of
knife. Langham's body had been in the canal. All found together in a
shallow grave. Bloody murder." He was quite shaken.
Harris looked closely at the five bodies, laid out in a line.
"I've seen wounds like this before, Fred," he said.
Bloggs looked closely.
"Jesus Christ, it's him."
Harris nodded.
"Stiletto."
The inspector said in astonishment: "You know who did it?"
"We can guess," Harris said.
"We think he's killed twice before. If it's the same man, we know who
he is but not where he is."
The inspector's eyes narrowed. What with the restricted area so close,
and Special Branch and MI5 arriving on the scene so quick, is there
anything else I need to know about this case?"
Harris answered: "Just that you keep very quiet until your Chief
Constable has talked to our people."
"Nuffsaid."
Bloggs asked.
"Anything else found, Inspector?"
We're still combing the area, in ever-widening circles; but nothing so
far. There were some clothes in the grave." He pointed.
Bloggs touched them gingerly: black trousers, a black sweater, a short
black leather jacket, R.A.F-style.
Harris said: "Clothes for night work."
"To fit a big man," Bloggs added.
"How tall is your man?"
"Over six foot."
The inspector said: "Did you pass the men who found the sunken boat?"
"Yes." Bloggs frowned.
"Where's the nearest lock?"
"Four miles upstream."
"If our man was in a boat, the lock-keeper must have
seen him, mustn't
he?"
"Must have," the inspector agreed.
Bloggs said: "We'd better talk to him." He returned to his cycle.
"Not another four miles," Harris complained.
Bloggs said: "Work off some of those Sunday dinners."
The four-mile ride took them most of an hour, because the towpath was
made for horses, not wheels, and it was uneven, muddy, and mined with
loose boulders and tree roots. Harris was sweating and cursing by the
time they reached the lock.
The lock-keeper was sitting outside his little house, smoking a pipe
and enjoying the mild air of afternoon. He was a middle-aged man of
slow speech and slower movements. He regarded the two cyclists with
faint amusement.
Bloggs spoke, because Harris was out of breath.
"We're police officers," he said.
"Is that so?" said the lock-keeper. What's the excitement?" He
looked as excited as a cat in front of a fire.
