Eye of the Needle (13 page)

A stooped, irritable man with thinning hair and glasses stood behind the counter, wearing a white coat. He said, “We’re only open for doctor’s 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.” 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 direct access to the back of the shop, and 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. Still, there had to be a well of some kind at the back, 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 residence hall 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 tires 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 labeled 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—damn, 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 more than 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. And, of course, he might walk out of here and get run over by a bus.

The possibility that, having discovered the most important secret of the war, he might die and his secret die with him, was too awful to think about.

He had to have a fall-back stratagem; a second method of trying to ensure that the evidence of the Allied deception reached the Abwehr.

There was, of course, no postal service between England and Germany. Mail had to go via a neutral country. And all such mail was sure to be censored. He could write in code, but there was no point; he had to send the pictures—they were the evidence that counted.

There was a route, and a good one, he’d been told. At the Portuguese Embassy in London there was an official, sympathetic to Germany—partly for political reasons and partly, Faber worried, because he was well bribed—who would pass messages via the diplomatic bag to the German Embassy in neutral Lisbon. From there, it was safe. The route had been opened early in 1939, but Faber had used it only once before, when Canaris had asked for a routine test communication.

It would do. It would have to do.

Faber felt angry. He
hated
to place his faith in others. They were all such bumbling—still, he couldn’t take the chance. He had to have a backup for this information. It was a lesser risk than using the radio—and certainly less than the risk if Germany never learned at all.

Faber’s mind was clear. The balance of argument indisputably favored the Portuguese Embassy contact.

He sat down to write a letter.

14

F
REDERICK 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 police-constable had exercised his limited powers of deduction and concluded that a whole patrol of the Home Guard had not gone AWOL. He was fairly sure they had simply got lost—they were all a bit daft, otherwise they would have been in 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 MI5, which 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 fifty-five pounds 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 a 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 looks like—”

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.”

“What with the restricted area so close,” the inspector said, “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.”

“Found anything else, inspector?” Bloggs asked.

“We’re still going over the area, and 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, RAF-style.

“Clothes for night work,” Harris said.

“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 bicycle.

“Not another four miles,” Harris complained.

“Work off some of those Sunday dinners,” Bloggs told him.

The four-mile ride took them most of an hour—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 some 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.

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. 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 would 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 Billy 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, in more ways than one, 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, for God’s sake,” 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 Godliman’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 boardings 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.”

“We’ll circulate his picture to police officers. We’ll give his description to the press and say he’s just a conventional murderer. We can give the details of the High-gate and Stockwell murders, without saying that security is involved.”

Parkin said, “What you’re saying is, we have to 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 bereavement, 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 finally looked at Godliman. “Tell me, where in the world will I find another girl like
that
?”

“Does she have to be a hero?”

“After Christine…”

“England is full of heroes, Fred—”

At that moment Colonel Terry walked in. “Don’t get up, gentlemen. This is important, listen carefully. Whoever killed those five Home Guards has learned a vital secret. There’s an invasion coming. You know that. You don’t know when or where. Needless to say, our objective is to keep the Germans in that same state of ignorance. Most of all, about
where
the invasion will come. We have gone to some extreme lengths to ensure that the enemy be misled in this matter. Now, it seems certain, he will not be if their man gets through. He has, it is definitely established, found out our deception. Unless we stop him from delivering his news, the entire invasion—and therefore, one can safely say, the war—is compromised. I’ve already told you more than I wanted to, but it’s imperative that you understand the urgency and precise consequences of failure to stop the intelligence from getting through.” He did not tell them that Normandy was the invasion site, nor that the Pas de Calais via East Anglia the diversionary one—though he realized Godliman would surely conclude the latter once he had debriefed Bloggs on his efforts to trail the murderer of the Home Guardsmen.

Bloggs said: “Excuse me, but why are you so sure their man 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. “As you know, we have been watching Senhor Francisco of the embassy staff for some time. Today he went to meet a man in a taxi, and received an envelope. We relieved him of the envelope shortly after the man in the taxi drove off. We were able to get the license number of the taxi.”

“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. “This is a catastrophe.”

Bloggs glanced through the pictures, then put them down.

Godliman said, “This is only his backup. He’s still got the negatives,
and he’s going somewhere with them
.”

The three men sat still in the little office, like a tableau. The only 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, it was a prosaic backdrop for dramatics.

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? 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 the hospital?”

“About five minutes’ walk from Euston Station,” Godliman said. “Trains from Euston go to Holyhead, Liverpool, Glasgow…all places from which you can catch a ferry to Ireland.”

“Liverpool to Belfast,” Bloggs said. “Then a car to the border across into Eire, and U-boat on the Atlantic coast. Somewhere. 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 kitbags 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 something 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? Everybody’s got something. This is a dull job—not that I’m complaining—”