by Ken Follett
Bloggs took the photograph of Die Nadel out of his wallet and gave it
to the man.
"Have you ever seen him?"
The lock-keeper put the picture on his lap while he held a fresh match
to his pipe. Then he studied the photograph for a while, and handed it
back.
Well? "Harris said.
"Aye." The lock-keeper nodded slowly.
"He was here about this time yesterday. Came in for a cup of tea. Nice
enough chap. What's he done, shown a light after blackout?"
Bloggs sat down heavily.
"That clinches it," he said.
Harris thought aloud.
"He moors the boat downstream from here, and goes into the restricted
area after dark." He spoke quietly, so that the lock-keeper should not
hear.
"When he comes back, the Home Guard has his boat staked out. He deals
with them, sails a bit farther to the railway, scuttles his boat and...
hops a train ?"
Bloggs said to the lock-keeper: "The railway line that crosses the
canal a few miles downstream where does it go?"
"London."
Bloggs said: "Oh, shit."
Bloggs got back to the War Office in Whitehall at midnight. Godliman
and Parkin were there, waiting for him. Bloggs said: "It's him, all
right," and told them the story.
Parkin was excited, Godliman just looked tense. When Bloggs had
finished, Godliman said: "So now he's back in London and we're looking
for a needle in a haystack again." He was playing with matches,
forming a picture with them on his desk.
"Do you know, every time I look at that photograph I get the feeling
I've actually met the damn fellow."
"Well, think!" Bloggs said.
"Where?"
Godliman shook his head in frustration.
"It must have been only once, and somewhere strange. It's like a face
I've seen in a lecture audience, or in the background at a cocktail
party. A fleeting glimpse, a casual encounter when I remember it
probably won't do us any good."
Parkin said: "What's in that area?"
"I don't know, which means it's probably highly important," Godliman
said.
There was a silence. Parkin lit a cigarette with one of God-liman's
matches. Bloggs looked up. We could print a million copies of his
picture give one to every policeman, ARP warden, member of the Home
Guard, serviceman, railway porter; paste them up on hoardings and
publish them in the papers..."
Godliman shook his head.
"Too risky. What if he's already talked to Hamburg about whatever he's
seen? If we make a public fuss about the man they'll know that his
information is good. We'd only be lending credence to him."
"We've got to do something."
"Surely. We will circulate his picture to police officers. We'll give
his description to the press, and say he's just a straightforward
murderer. We can give the details of the Highgate and Stockwell
murders, without saying that security is involved."
Parkin said: "What you're saying is, we can fight with one hand tied
behind our back."
"For now, anyway."
"I'll start the ball rolling with the Yard," Bloggs said. He picked up
the phone.
Godliman looked at his watch.
"There's not much more we can do tonight, but I don't feel like going
home. I shan't sleep."
Parkin stood up.
"In that case I'm going to find a kettle and make some tea." He went
out.
The matches on Godliman's desk made a picture of a horse and carriage.
He took away one of the horse's legs and lit his pipe with it.
"Have you got a girl, Fred?" he asked conversationally.
"No."
"Not since ?"
"No."
Godliman puffed at his pipe.
"There has to be an end to grief, you know."
Bloggs made no reply.
Godliman said: "Look, perhaps I shouldn't talk to you like a Dutch
uncle. But I know how you feel I've been through it myself. The only
difference was that I didn't have anyone to blame."
"You didn't remarry," Bloggs said, not looking at Godliman.
"No. And I don't want you to make the same mistake. When you reach
middle age, living alone can be very depressing."
"Did I ever tell you, they called her Fearless Bloggs."
"Yes, you did."
Bloggs looked at Godliman at last.
"Tell me, where in the world will I find another girl like that?"
"Does she have to be a hero?"
"After Christine yes."
"England is full of heroes, Fred."
At that moment Colonel Terry walked in.
Godliman said: "Ah, Uncle Andrew ' Terry interrupted: "Don't get up.
This is important. Listen carefully, because I have to give it to you
fast. Bloggs, you need to know this, too. Whoever killed those five
Home Guard has learned our most vital secret.
"Number one: our invasion force for Europe will land at Normandy.
Number two: the Germans believe it will land at Calais. Number three:
one of the most vital aspects of the deception is a very large phoney
army, called the First United States Army Group, located in the
restricted area those men were patrolling. That area contains dummy
barracks, cardboard aircraftj rubber tanks a huge toy army which looks
real to the observers in the reconnaissance planes we've been letting
through."
Bloggs said: "How come you're so sure the spy found out?"
Terry went to the door.
"Come in, Rodriguez."
A tall, handsome man with jet-black hair and a long nose entered the
room and nodded politely to Godliman and Bloggs. Terry said: "Senhor
Rodriguez is our man at the Portuguese Embassy. Tell them what
happened, Rodriguez."
The man stood by the door, holding his hat.
"A taxi came to the Embassy at about eleven o'clock. The passenger did
not get out, but the driver came to the door with an envelope addressed
to Francisco. The doorman called me, as he has been instructed to do,
and I took possession of the envelope. I was in time to take the
number of the cab."
"I'm having the cabbie traced," Terry said.
"All right, Rodriguez, you'd better get back. And thank you."
The tall Portuguese left the room. Terry handed to Godliman a large
yellow envelope, addressed to Manuel Francisco. Godliman opened it it
had already been unsealed and withdrew a second envelope marked with a
meaningless series of letters: presumably a code.
Within the inner envelope were several sheets of paper covered with
handwriting and a set of ten-by-eight photographs. Godliman examined
the letter.
"It looks like a very basic code," he said.
"You don't need to read it," Terry said impatiently.
"Look at the photographs."
Godliman did so. There were about thirty of them, and he looked at
each one before speaking. He handed them to Bloggs and said: "This is
a catastrophe."
Bloggs glanced through the pictures then put them down.
Godliman said: "This is only his back-up. He's still got the
negatives, and he's going somewhere with them."
illumination came from a spotlight on Godliman's desk. With the cream
walls, the blacked-out window, the spare furniture and the worn Civil
Service carpet, they might have been anywhere in the world.
Terry said: "I'm going to have to tell Churchill."
The phone rang, and the Colonel picked it up.
"Yes. Good. Bring him here right away, please but before you do, ask
him where he dropped the passenger. What? Really? Thank you, get
here fast." He hung up.
"The taxi dropped our man at University College Hospital."
Bloggs said: "Perhaps he was injured in the fight with the Home
Guard."
Terry said: "Where is that hospital ?"
"About five minutes' walk from Euston Station," Godliman said. Trains
from Euston go to Holyhead, Liverpool, Glas-go ... all places from
which you can catch a ferry to Ireland."
"Liverpool to Belfast," Bloggs said.
"Then a car to the border and across into Eire, and a U-boat on the
Atlantic coast. He wouldn't risk Holyhead-to-Dublin because of the
passport control, and there would be no point in going beyond Liverpool
to Glasgow."
Godliman said: "Fred, you'd better go to the station and show the
picture of Faber around, see if anyone noticed him getting on a train.
I'll phone the station and warn them you're coming, and at the same
time find out which trains have left since about ten-thirty."
Bloggs picked up his hat and coat.
"I'm on my way."
Godliman lifted the phone.
"Yes, we're on our way."
There were still plenty of people at Euston Station. Although in
normal times the station closed around midnight, wartime delays were
such that the last train often had not left before the earliest milk
train of the morning arrived. The station concourse was a mass of kit
bags and sleeping bodies.
Bloggs showed the picture to three railway policemen. None of them
recognized the face. He tried ten women porters: nothing. He went to
every ticket barrier. One of the guards said: We look at tickets, not
faces." He tried half a dozen passengers without result. Finally he
went into the ticket office and showed the picture to each of the
clerks.
A very fat, bald clerk with ill-fitting false teeth recognized the
face.
"I play a game," he told Bloggs.
"I try to spot some133 thing about a passenger that tells me why he's
catching a train. Like, he might have a black tie for a funeral, or
muddy boots means he's a farmer going home, or there might be a college
scarf, or a white mark on a woman's finger where she's took off her
wedding ring ... know what I mean? This is a dull job not that I'm
complaining ' "What did you notice about this chap?" Bloggs
interrupted him.
"Nothing. That was it, see1 couldn't make him out at all. Almost like
he was trying to be inconspicuous, know what I mean?"
"I know what you mean." Bloggs paused.
"Now, I want you to think very carefully. Where was he going can you
remember?"
"Yes," said the fat clerk.
"Inverness."
"That doesn't mean he's going there," said Godliman.
"He's a professional he knows we can ask questions at railway stations.
I expect he automatically buys a ticket for the wrong destination." He
looked at his watch.
"He must have caught the eleven forty-five. That train is now pulling
into Stafford. I checked with the railway, they checked with the
signalman," he added by way of explanation.
"They're going to stop the train this side of Crewe. I've got a plane
standing by to fly you two to Stoke-on-Trent.
"Parkin, you'll board the train where it's stopped, outside Crewe.
You'll be dressed as a ticket inspector, and you'll look at every
ticket and every face on that train. When you've spotted Faber, just
stay close to him.
"Bloggs, you'll be waiting at the ticket barrier at Crewe, just in case
Faber decides to hop off there. But he won't. You'll get on the
train, and be first off at Liverpool, and waiting at the ticket barrier
for Parkin and Faber to come off. Half the local constabulary will be
there to back you up."
"That's all very well if he doesn't recognize me," Parkin said.
"What if he remembers my face from Highgate?"
Godliman opened a desk drawer, took out a pistol, and gave it to
Parkin.
"If he recognizes you, shoot the bastard."
Parkin pocketed the weapon without comment.
Godliman said: "I want both of you to be quite clear on the importance
of all this. If we don't catch this man, the invasion of Europe will
have to be postponed possibly for a year. In that year the balance of
war could turn against us. The time may never be this right again."
Bloggs said: "Do we get told how long it is to D-Day?s "All I know is
that it's a matter of weeks."
Parkin was thinking.
"It'll be June, then."
Bloggs said: "Shit."
Godliman said: "No comment."
The phone rang and Godliman picked it up. After a moment he looked
up.
"Your car's here."
Bloggs and Parkin stood up.
Godliman said: "Wait a minute."
They stood by the door, looking at the professor. He was saying:
"Yes." sir. Certainly. I will. Goodbye, sir."
Bloggs could not think of anyone Godliman called Sir. He said: "Who
was that?"
Godliman said: "Churchill."
"What did he have to say?" Parkin asked, awestruck.
Godliman said: "He wishes you both good luck and Godspeed."
FIFTEEN
The carriage was pitch dark. Faber thought of the jokes people made:
"Take your hand off my knee. No, not you, you." The British would
make jokes out of anything. Their railways were now worse than ever,
but nobody complained any more because it was in a good cause. Faber
preferred the dark: it was anonymous.
There had been singing, earlier on. Three sailors in the corridor had
started it, and the whole carriage had joined in. They had been
through Be Like The Kettle And Sing, There'll Always Be An England
(followed by Glasgow Belongs To Me and Land Of My Fathers for ethnic
balance) and appropriately, Don't Get Around Much Any More.
There had been an air raid warning, and the train slowed to thirty
miles an hour. They were all supposed to lie on the floor, but of
course there was no room. An anonymous female voice had said: "Oh,
God, I'm frightened," and a male voice, equally anonymous except that
it was Cockney, had said: "You're in the safest place, girl they can't
'it a movin' target." Then everyone laughed and nobody was scared any
more. Someone opened a suitcase and passed around a packet of
dried-egg sandwiches.
One of the sailors wanted to play cards.
"How can we play cards in the dark?"
"Feel the edges. All Harry's cards are marked."
The train stopped unaccountably at about 4 a.m. A cultured voice the
dried-egg sandwich supplier, Faber thoug
ht said: "My guess is we're
outside Crewe."
"Knowing the railways, we could be anywhere from Bolton to
Bournemouth," said the Cockney.
The train jerked and moved off, and everyone cheered. Where, Faber
wondered, was the caricature Englishman, with his icy reserve and his
stiff upper lip? Not here.
A few minutes later a voice in the corridor said: "Tickets, please."
Faber noted the Yorkshire accent: they were in the north now. He
fumbled in his pockets for his ticket.
He had the corner seat, near the door, so he could see into the
corridor. The inspector was shining a torch on to the tickets. Faber
