Eye of the Needle (23 page)

Her mind seemed to go blank for a while. She knew vaguely that he still lay between her legs, his bristly cheek against the soft inside of her thigh, his lips moving gently, affectionately.

Eventually she said, “Now I
know
what Lawrence means.”

He lifted his head. “I don’t understand.”

She sighed. “I didn’t realize it could be like that. It was lovely.”

“Was?”

“Oh, God, I’ve no more energy…”

He changed position, kneeling astride her chest, and she realized what he wanted her to do, and for the second time she was frozen by shock; it was just too big…but suddenly she
wanted
to do it, she
needed
to take him into her mouth; she lifted her head, and her lips closed around him, and he gave a soft groan.

He held her head in his hands, moving it to and fro, moaning quietly. She looked at his face. He was staring at her, drinking in the sight of what she was doing. She wondered what she would do when he…came…and she decided she didn’t care, because everything else had been so good with him that she knew she would enjoy even that.

But it didn’t happen. When she thought he was to the point of losing control he stopped, moved away, lay on top of her, and entered her again. This time it was very slow, and relaxed, like the rhythm of the sea on the beach; until he put his hands under her hips and grasped the mounts of her bottom, and she looked at his face and knew that now, now he was ready to shed his self-control and lose himself in her. And that excited her more than anything, so that when he finally arched his back, his face screwed up into a mask of pain, and groaned deep in his chest, she wrapped her legs around his waist and abandoned herself to the ecstasy of it, and then, after so long, she heard the trumpets and cymbals that Lawrence had promised.

They were quiet for a long time. Lucy felt warm, as if she were glowing; she had never felt so warm in all her life. When their breathing subsided she could hear the storm outside. Henry was heavy on top of her but she did not want him to move…she liked his weight, and the faint tang of perspiration from his white skin. From time to time he moved his head to brush his lips against her cheek.

He was the perfect man to have this with. He knew more about her body than she did. His own body was very beautiful…broad and muscular at the shoulders, narrow at the waist and hips with long, strong, hairy legs. She thought he had some scars, she was not sure. Strong, gentle and handsome. Perfect. She also knew she would never fall in love with him, never want to run off with him, marry him. Deep inside him, she sensed, there was also something quite cold and hard—his reaction, and explanation, when she came into his room was extraordinary…she wouldn’t think about it—some part of him that was committed elsewhere…. She would have to hold him at arm’s length and use him cautiously, like an addictive drug.

Not that she would have much time to become addicted, he would, after all, be gone in little more than a day.

She stirred, and he immediately rolled off her and onto his back. She lifted herself on one elbow and looked at his naked body. Yes, he did have scars: a long one on his chest, and a small mark like a star—it might have been a burn—on his hip. She rubbed his chest with the palm of her hand.

“It’s not very ladylike,” she said, “but I want to say thank you.”

He reached out to touch her cheek, and smiled. “You’re very ladylike.”

“You don’t know what you’ve done. You’ve—”

He put a finger over her lips. “I know what I’ve done.”

She bit his finger, then put his hand on her breast. He felt for her nipple. She said, “Please do it again.”

“I don’t think I can,” he said.

But he did.

SHE LEFT HIM
a couple of hours after dawn. There was a small noise from the other bedroom, and she seemed suddenly to remember that she had a husband and a son in the house. Faber wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter, that neither he nor she had the least reason to care what the husband knew or thought; but he held his tongue and let her go. She kissed him once more, very wetly; then she stood up, smoothed her rumpled nightgown over her body and went out.

He watched her fondly. She’s quite something, he thought. He lay on his back and looked at the ceiling. She was quite naïve, and very inexperienced, but all the same she had been very good. I could perhaps fall in love with her, he thought.

He got up and retrieved the film can and the knife in its sheath from under the bed. He wondered whether to keep them on his person. He might want to make love to her in the day…he decided to wear the knife—he would feel undressed without it—and leave the can elsewhere. He put it on top of the chest of drawers and covered it with his papers and his wallet. He knew very well that he was breaking the rule, but this was certain to be his last assignment, and he felt entitled to enjoy a woman. Besides, it would hardly matter if she or her husband saw the pictures—assuming they understood their meaning, which was unlikely, what could they
do
?

He lay down on the bed, then got up again. Years of training simply would not allow him to take such risks. He put the can with his papers into the pocket of his jacket. Now he could relax better.

He heard the child’s voice, then Lucy’s tread as she went down the stairs, and then David dragging himself to the bathroom. He would have to get up and have breakfast with the household. It was all right. He did not want to sleep now anyway.

He stood at the rain-streaked window watching the weather rage until he heard the bathroom door open. Then he put on his pajama top and went in to shave. He used David’s razor, without permission.

It did not seem to matter now.

24

E
RWIN ROMMEL KNEW FROM THE START THAT HE WAS
going to quarrel with Heinz Guderian.

General Guderian was exactly the kind of aristocratic Prussian officer Rommel hated. He had known him for some time. They had both, in their early days, commanded the Goslar Jaeger Battalion, and they had met again during the Polish campaign. When Rommel left Africa he had recommended Guderian to succeed him, knowing the battle was lost; the maneuver was a failure because at that time Guderian had been out of favor with Hitler and the recommendation was rejected out of hand.

The general was, Rommel felt, the kind of man who put a silk handkerchief on his knee to protect the crease in his trousers while he sat drinking in the
Herrenklub
. He was an officer because his father had been an officer and his grandfather had been rich. Rommel, the schoolteacher’s son who had risen from lieutenant colonel to field marshal in only four years, despised the military caste of which he had never been a member.

Now he stared across the table at the general, who was sipping brandy appropriated from the French Rothschilds. Guderian and his sidekick, General von Geyr, had come to Rommel’s headquarters at La Roche Guyon in northern France to tell him how to deploy his troops. Rommel’s reactions to such visits ranged from impatience to fury. In his view the General Staff were there to provide reliable intelligence and regular supplies, and he knew from his experience in Africa that they were incompetent at both tasks.

Guderian had a cropped, light-colored moustache, and the corners of his eyes were heavily wrinkled so that he always appeared to be grinning at you. He was tall and handsome, which did nothing to endear him to a short, ugly, balding man—as Rommel thought of himself. He seemed relaxed, and any German general who would relax at this stage of the war was surely a fool. The meal they had just finished—local veal and wine from farther south—was no excuse.

Rommel looked out of the window and watched the rain dripping from the lime trees into the courtyard while he waited for Guderian to begin the discussion. When he finally spoke it was clear the general had been thinking about the best way to make his point, and had decided to approach it sideways.

“In Turkey,” he began, “the British Ninth and Tenth armies, with the Turkish army, are grouping at the border with Greece. In Yugoslavia the partisans are also concentrating. The French in Algeria are preparing to invade the Riviera. The Russians appear to be mounting an amphibious invasion of Sweden. In Italy the Allies are ready to march on Rome. There are smaller signals—a general kidnapped in Crete, an intelligence officer murdered at Lyon, a radar post attacked at Rhodes, an aircraft sabotaged with abrasive grease and destroyed at Athens, a commando raid on Sagvaag, an explosion in the oxygen factory at Boulogne-sur-Seine, a train derailed in the Ardennes, a petrol dump fired at Boussens…I could go on. The picture is clear. In occupied territories there is ever-increasing sabotage and treachery; on our borders, we see preparations for invasion everywhere. None of us doubts that there will be a major allied offensive this summer, and we can be equally sure that all this skirmishing is intended to confuse us about where the attack will come.”

The general paused. The lecture, delivered in schoolmaster style, was irritating Rommel, and he took the opportunity to interrupt. “This is why we have a General Staff: to digest such information, evaluate enemy activity, and forecast his future moves.”

Guderian smiled indulgently. “We must also be aware of the limitations of such crystal-gazing. You have your ideas about where the attack will come, I’m sure. We all do. Our strategy must take into account the possibility that our guesses are wrong.”

Rommel now saw where the general’s roundabout argument was leading, and he suppressed the urge to shout his disagreement before the conclusion was stated.

“You have four armored divisions under your command,” Guderian continued. “The 2nd Panzers at Amiens, the 116th at Rouen, the 21st at Caen, and the 2nd SS at Toulouse. General von Geyr has already proposed to you that these should be grouped well back from the coast, all together, ready for fast retaliation at any point. Indeed, this stratagem is a principle of OKW policy. Nevertheless, you have not only resisted von Geyr’s suggestion, but have in fact moved the 21st right up to the Atlantic coast—”

“And the other three must be moved to the coast as soon as possible,” Rommel burst out. “When will you people learn?
The Allies control the air
. Once the invasion is launched there will be no further major movements of armor. Mobile operations are no longer possible. If your precious panzers are in Paris when the Allies land on the coast, they will
stay
in Paris—pinned down by the RAF—until the Allies march along the Boulevard St-Michel. I
know
—they’ve done it to me. Twice.” He paused to draw breath. “To group our armor as a mobile reserve is to make it useless. There will be no counterattack. The invasion must be met on the beaches, when it is most vulnerable, and pushed back into the sea.”

The flush receded from his face as he began to expound his own defensive strategy. “I have created underwater obstacles, strengthened the Atlantic Wall, laid minefields and driven stakes into every meadow that might be used to land aircraft behind our lines. All my troops are engaged in digging defenses whenever they’re not actually training.

“My armored divisions must be moved to the coast. The OKW reserve should be redeployed in France. The Ninth and Tenth SS divisions have to be brought back from the Eastern Front. Our whole strategy must be to prevent the Allies from securing a beachhead, because once they achieve that, the battle is lost…perhaps even the war.”

Guderian leaned forward, his eyes narrowing in that infuriating half-grin. “You want us to defend the European coastline from Tromsö in Norway all around the Iberian peninsula to Rome. Where shall we get the armies from?”

“That question should have been asked in 1938,” Rommel muttered.

There was an embarrassed silence after this remark, which was all the more shocking coming from the notoriously apolitical Rommel.

Von Geyr broke the tension. “Where do
you
believe the attack will come from, Field Marshal?”

Rommel had been waiting for this. “Until recently I was convinced of the Pas de Calais theory. However, last time I was with the Fuehrer I was impressed by his arguments in favor of Normandy. I am also impressed by his instinct, and even more by its record of accuracy. Therefore I believe our panzers should be deployed primarily along the Normandy coast, with perhaps one division at the mouth of the Somme—this last supported by forces outside my group.”

Guderian shook his head, “No, no,
no
. It’s far too risky.”

“I’m prepared to take this argument to Hitler,” Rommel threatened.

“Then that’s what you will have to do,” Guderian said, “because I won’t go along with your plan unless—”

“Well?” Rommel was surprised that the general’s position might be qualified.

Guderian shifted in his seat, reluctant to give a concession to so stubborn an antagonist as Rommel. “You may know that the Fuehrer is waiting for a report from an unusually effective agent in England.”

“I remember.” Rommel nodded. “Die Nadel.”

“Yes. He has been assigned to assess the strength of the First United States Army Group under Patton’s command in the eastern part of England. If he finds—as I am certain he will—that that army is large, strong, and ready to move, then I shall continue to oppose you. However, if he finds that FUSAG is somehow a bluff—a small army masquerading as an invasion force—then I shall concede that you are right, and you shall have your panzers. Will you accept that compromise?”

Rommel nodded his large head in assent. “It depends on Die Nadel, then.”

Part Five

25

T
HE COTTAGE WAS TERRIBLY SMALL, LUCY REALIZED
quite suddenly. As she went about her morning chores—lighting the stove, making porridge, tidying up, dressing Jo—the walls seemed to press in on her. After all, it was only four rooms linked by a little passage with a staircase; you couldn’t move without bumping into someone else. If you stood still and listened you could hear what everyone was doing: Henry was running water into the washbasin, David sliding down the stairs, Jo chastising his teddy bear in the living room. Lucy would have liked some time on her own before meeting people; time to let the events of the night settle into her memory, recede from the forefront of her thoughts so that she could act normally without a conscious effort.

She guessed she was not going to be good at deception. It did not come naturally to her. She had no experience at it. She tried to think of another occasion in her life when she had deceived someone close to her, and she could not. It was not that she lived by such lofty principles—the
thought
of lying did not trouble her so much. It was mostly that she had just never had reason for dishonesty.

David and Jo sat down at the kitchen table and began to eat. David was silent, Jo talked nonstop just for the pleasure of making words. Lucy did not want food.

“Aren’t you eating?” David asked casually.

“I’ve had some.” There—her first lie. It wasn’t so bad.

The storm made the claustrophobia worse. The rain was so heavy that Lucy could hardly see the barn from the kitchen window. One felt even more shut in when to open a door or window was a major operation. The low, steel-grey sky and the wisps of mist created a permanent twilight. In the garden the rain ran in rivers between the rows of potato plants, and the herb patch was a shallow pond. The sparrow’s nest under the disused outhouse roof had been washed away and the birds flitted in and out of the eaves, panicking.

Lucy heard Henry coming down the stairs, and she felt better. For some reason, she was quite sure that he was very good at deception.

“Good morning!” Faber said heartily. David, sitting at the table in his wheelchair, looked up and nodded pleasantly. Lucy busied herself at the stove. There was guilt written all over her face, Faber noted, and he groaned inwardly. But David did not seem to notice his wife’s expression. Faber began to think that David was rather obtuse…at least about his wife….

Lucy said, “Sit down and have some breakfast.”

“Thank you very much.”

David said, “Can’t offer to take you to church, I’m afraid. Hymn-singing on the wireless is the best we can do.”

Faber realized it was Sunday. “Are you church-going people?”

“No,” David said. “You?”

“No.”

“Sunday is much the same as any other day for farmers,” David continued. “I’ll be driving over to the other end of the island to see my shepherd. You could come, if you feel up to it.”

“I’d like to,” Faber told him. It would give him a chance to reconnoiter. He would need to know the way to the cottage where the transmitter was. “Would you like me to drive you?”

David looked at him sharply. “I can manage quite well.” There was a strained moment of silence. “In this weather, the road is just a memory. We’ll be a lot safer with me at the wheel.”

“Of course.” Faber began to eat.

“It makes no difference to me,” David persisted. “I don’t want you to come if you think it would be too much—”

“Really, I’d be glad to.”

“Did you sleep all right? It didn’t occur to me you might still be tired. I hope Lucy didn’t keep you up too late.”

Faber willed himself not to look at Lucy, but out of the corner of his eye he could see that she was suddenly flushed. “I slept all day yesterday,” he said, trying to fix David’s eyes with his own.

It was no use. David was looking at his wife. He knew. She turned her back.

David would be hostile now, and antagonism was part way to suspicion. It was not, as he’d decided before, dangerous, but it might be annoying.

David seemed to recover his composure quickly. He pushed his chair away from the table and wheeled himself to the back door. “I’ll get the jeep out of the barn,” he said, mostly to himself. He took an oilskin off a hook and put it over his head, then opened the door and rolled out.

In a few moments the door was open, the storm blew into the little kitchen, leaving the floor wet. When it shut, Lucy shivered and began to mop the water from the tiles.

Faber reached out and touched her arm.

“Don’t,” she said, nodding her head toward Jo.

“You’re being silly,” Faber told her.

“I think he knows,” she said.

“But, if you reflect for a minute, you don’t really care whether he knows or not, do you?”

“I’m supposed to.”

Faber shrugged. The jeep’s horn sounded impatiently outside. Lucy handed him an oilskin and a pair of Wellington boots.

“Don’t talk about me,” she said.

Faber put on the waterproof clothes and went to the front door. Lucy followed him, closing the kitchen door on Jo.

With his hand on the latch, Faber turned and kissed her, and she did what she wanted, she kissed him back, hard, then turned and went into the kitchen.

Faber ran through the rain, across a sea of mud, and jumped into the jeep beside David, who pulled away immediately.

The vehicle had been specially adapted for the legless man to drive. It had a hand throttle, automatic gearshift and a handle on the rim of the wheel to enable the driver to steer one-handed. The folded-up wheelchair slid into a special compartment behind the driver’s seat. There was a shotgun in a rack above the windscreen.

David drove competently. He had been right about the road; it was no more than a strip of heath worn bare by the jeep’s tires. The rain pooled in the deep ruts. The car slithered about in the mud. David seemed to enjoy it. There was a cigarette between his lips, and he wore an incongruous air of bravado. Perhaps, Faber thought, this was his substitute for flying.

“What do you do when you’re not fishing?” he said around the cigarette.

“Civil servant,” Faber told him.

“What sort of work?”

“Finance. I’m just a cog in the machine.”

“Treasury?”

“Mainly.”

“Interesting work?” he persisted.

“Fairly.” Faber summoned up the energy to invent a story. “I know a bit about how much a given piece of engineering ought to cost, and I spend most of my time making sure the taxpayer isn’t being overcharged.”

“Any particular sort of engineering?”

“Everything from paper clips to aircraft engines.”

“Ah, well. We all contribute to the war effort in our own way.”

It was, of course, an intentionally snide remark, and David would naturally have no idea why Faber did not resent it. “I’m too old to fight,” Faber said mildly.

“Were you in the first lot?”

“Too young.”

“A lucky escape.”

“Doubtless.”

The track ran quite close to the cliff edge, but David did not slow down. It crossed Faber’s mind that he might want to kill them both. He reached for a grab handle.

“Am I going too fast for you?” David asked.

“You seem to know the road.”

“You look frightened.”

Faber ignored that, and David slowed down a little, apparently satisfied that he had made some kind of point.

The island was fairly flat and bare, Faber observed. The ground rose and fell slightly, but as yet he had seen no hills. The vegetation was mostly grass, with some ferns and bushes but few trees: there was little protection from the weather. David Rose’s sheep must be hardy, Faber thought.

“Are you married?” David asked suddenly.

“No.”

“Wise man.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“I’ll wager you do well for yourself in London. Not to mention—”

Faber had never liked the nudging, contemptuous way some men talked about women. He interrupted sharply, “I should think you’re extremely fortunate to have your wife—”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing like variety, though, eh?”

“I haven’t had the opportunity to discover the merits of monogamy.” Faber decided to say no more, anything he said was fuel to the fire. No question, David was becoming annoying.

“I must say, you don’t
look
like a government accountant. Where’s the rolled umbrella and the bowler hat?”

Faber attempted a thin smile.

“And you seem quite fit for a pen-pusher.”

“I ride a bicycle.”

“You must be quite tough, to have survived that wreck.”

“Thank you.”

“You don’t
look
too old to be in the army either.”

Faber turned to look at David. “What are you driving at?” he asked calmly.

“We’re there,” David said.

Faber looked out of the windshield and saw a cottage very similar to Lucy’s, with stone walls, a slate roof and small windows. It stood at the top of a hill, the only hill Faber had seen on the island, and not much of a hill at that. The house had a squat, resilient look about it. Climbing up to it, the jeep skirted a small stand of pine and fir trees. Faber wondered why the cottage had not been built in the shelter of the trees.

Beside the house was a hawthorn tree in bedraggled blossom. David stopped the car. Faber watched him unfold the wheelchair and ease himself out of the driving seat into the chair; he would have resented an offer of help.

They entered the house by a plank door with no lock. They were greeted in the hall by a black-and-white collie—a small broad-headed dog who wagged his tail but did not bark. The layout of the cottage was identical with that of Lucy’s, but the atmosphere was different: this place was bare, cheerless and none too clean.

David led the way into the kitchen, where old Tom, the shepherd, sat by an old-fashioned wood-burning kitchen range, warming his hands. He stood up.

“This is Tom McAvity,” David said.

“Pleased to meet you,” Tom said formally.

Faber shook his hand. Tom was a short man, and broad, with a face like an old tan suitcase. He was wearing a cloth cap and smoking a very large briar pipe with a lid. His grip was firm and the skin of his hand felt like sandpaper. He had a very big nose. Faber had to concentrate hard to understand what he was saying; his Scots accent was very broad.

“I hope I’m not going to be in the way,” Faber said. “I only came along for the ride.”

David wheeled himself up to the table. “I don’t suppose we’ll do much this morning, Tom—just take a look around.”

“Aye. We’ll have some tay before we go, though.”

Tom poured strong tea into three mugs and added a shot of whisky to each. The three men sat and sipped it in silence, David smoking a cigarette and Tom drawing gently at his huge pipe, and Faber felt certain that the other two spent a great deal of time together in this way, smoking and warming their hands and saying nothing.

When they had finished their tea Tom put the mugs in the shallow stone sink and they went out to the jeep. Faber sat in the back. David drove slowly this time, and the dog, which was called Bob, loped alongside, keeping pace without apparent effort. It was obvious that David knew the terrain very well as he steered confidently across the open grassland without once getting bogged down in swampy ground. The sheep looked very sorry for themselves. With their fleece sopping wet, they huddled in hollows, or close to bramble bushes, or on the leeward slopes, too dispirited to graze. Even the lambs were subdued, hiding beneath their mothers.

Faber was watching the dog when it stopped, listened for a moment, and then raced off at a tangent.

Tom had been watching too. “Bob’s found something,” he said.

The jeep followed the dog for a quarter of a mile. When they stopped Faber could hear the sea; they were close to the island’s northern edge. The dog was standing at the brink of a small gully. When the men got out of the car they could hear what the dog had heard, the bleating of a sheep in distress, and they went to the edge of the gully and looked down.

The animal lay on its side about twenty feet down, balanced precariously on the steeply sloping bank, one foreleg at an awkward angle. Tom went down to it, treading cautiously, and examined the leg.

“Mutton tonight,” he called.

David got the gun from the jeep and slid it down to him. Tom put the sheep out of its misery.

“Do you want to rope it up?” David called.

“Aye—unless our visitor here wants to come and give me a hand.”

“Surely,” Faber said. He picked his way down to where Tom stood. They took a leg each and dragged the dead animal back up the slope. Faber’s oilskin caught on a thorny bush and he almost fell before he tugged the material free with a loud ripping sound.

They threw the sheep into the jeep and drove on. Faber’s shoulder felt very wet, and he realized he had torn away most of the back of the oilskin. “I’m afraid I’ve ruined this slicker,” he said.

“All in a good cause,” Tom told him.

Soon they returned to Tom’s cottage. Faber took off the oilskin and his wet donkey jacket, and Tom put the jacket over the stove to dry. Faber sat close to it.

Tom put the kettle on, then went upstairs for a new bottle of whisky. Faber and David warmed their wet hands.

The gunshot made both men jump. Faber ran into the hall and up the stairs. David followed, stopping his wheelchair at the foot of the staircase.

Faber found Tom in a small, bare room, leaning out of the window and shaking his fist at the sky.

“Missed,” Tom said.

“Missed what?”

“Eagle.”

Downstairs, David laughed.

Tom put the shotgun down beside a cardboard box. He took a new bottle of whisky from the box and led the way downstairs.

David was already back in the kitchen, close to the heat. “She was the first animal we’ve lost this year,” he said, his thoughts returning to the dead sheep.

“Aye,” Tom said.

“We’ll fence the gully this summer.”

“Aye.”

Faber sensed a change in the atmosphere: it was not the same as it had been earlier. They sat, drinking and smoking as before, but David seemed restless. Twice Faber caught the man staring at him.