Eye of the Needle (7 page)
T
HE MESSAGE ANNOYED FABER BECAUSE IT FORCED
him to face issues that he had been avoiding.
Hamburg had made damn sure the message reached him. He had given his call-sign, and instead of the usual “Acknowledge—proceed” they had sent back “Make rendezvous one.”
He acknowledged the order, transmitted his report and packed the wireless set back into its suitcase. Then he wheeled his bicycle out of Erith Marshes—his cover was a bird-watcher—and got on the road to Blackheath. As he cycled back to his cramped two-room flat, he wondered whether to obey the order.
He had two reasons for disobedience: one professional, one personal.
The professional reason was that “rendezvous one” was an old code, set up by Canaris back in 1937. It meant he was to go to the doorway of a certain shop between Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus to meet another agent. The agents would recognize each other by the fact that they both carried a Bible. Then there was a patter:
“What is today’s chapter?”
“One Kings thirteen.”
Then, if they were certain they were not being followed, they would agree that the chapter was “most inspiring.” Otherwise one would say, “I’m afraid I haven’t read it yet.”
The shop doorway might not be there any more, but it was not that that troubled Faber. He thought Canaris had probably given the code to most of the bumbling amateurs who had crossed the Channel in 1940 and landed in the arms of MI5. Faber knew they had been caught because the hangings had been publicized, no doubt to reassure the public that something was being done about Fifth Columnists. They would certainly have given away secrets before they died, so the British now probably knew the old rendezvous code. If they had picked up the message from Hamburg, that shop doorway must by now be swarming with well-spoken young Englishmen carrying Bibles and practicing saying “Most inspiring” in a German accent.
The Abwehr had thrown professionalism to the wind back in those heady days when the invasion seemed so close. Faber had not trusted Hamburg since. He would not tell them where he lived, he refused to communicate with their other agents in Britain, he varied the frequency he used for transmission without caring whether he stepped all over someone else’s signal.
If he had always obeyed his masters, he would not have survived so long.
At Woolwich, Faber was joined by a mass of other cyclists, many of them women, as the workers came streaming out of the munitions factory at the end of the day shift. Their cheerful weariness reminded Faber of his personal reason for disobedience: he thought his side was losing the war.
They certainly were not winning. The Russians and the Americans had joined in, Africa was lost, the Italians had collapsed; the Allies would surely invade France this year, 1944.
Faber did not want to risk his life to no purpose.
He arrived home and put his bicycle away. While he was washing his face it dawned on him that, against all logic, he
wanted
to make the rendezvous.
It was a foolish risk, taken in a lost cause, but he was itching to get to it. And the simple reason was that he was unspeakably bored. The routine transmissions, the bird-watching, the bicycle, the boardinghouse teas—it was four years since he had experienced anything remotely like action. He seemed to be in no danger whatsoever, and that made him jumpy because he imagined invisible threats. He was happiest when every so often he could identify a threat and take steps to neutralize it.
Yes, he would make the rendezvous. But not in the way they expected.
THERE WERE STILL CROWDS
in the West End of London, despite the war; Faber wondered whether it was the same in Berlin. He bought a Bible at Hatchard’s bookshop in Piccadilly, and stuffed it into his inside coat pocket, out of sight. It was a mild, damp day, with intermittent drizzle, and Faber was carrying an umbrella.
This rendezvous was timed for either between nine and ten o’clock in the morning or between five and six in the afternoon, and the arrangement was that one went there every day until the other party turned up. If no contact was made for five successive days one went there on alternate days for two weeks. After that one gave up.
Faber got to Leicester Square at ten past nine. The contact was there, in the tobacconist’s doorway, with a black-bound Bible under his arm, pretending to shelter from the rain. Faber spotted him out of the corner of his eye and hurried past, head down. The man was youngish, with a blond moustache and a well-fed look. He wore a black double-breasted raincoat, and he was reading the
Daily Express
and chewing gum. He was not familiar.
When Faber walked by the second time on the opposite side of the street, he spotted the tail. A short, stocky man wearing the trenchcoat and trilby hat beloved of English plainclothes policemen was standing just inside the foyer of an office building, looking through the glass doors across the street to the man in the doorway.
There were two possibilities. If the agent did not know he had been followed, Faber had only to get him away from the rendezvous and lose the tail. However, the alternative was that the agent had been captured and the man in the doorway was a substitute, in which case neither he nor the tail must be allowed to see Faber’s face.
Faber assumed the worst, then thought of a way to deal with it.
There was a telephone booth in the Square. Faber went inside and memorized the number. Then he found I Kings 13 in the Bible, tore out the page, and scribbled in the margin, “Go to the phone booth in the Square.”
He walked around the back streets behind the National Gallery until he found a small boy, aged about ten or eleven, sitting on a doorstep throwing stones at puddles.
Faber said, “Do you know the tobacconist in the Square?”
“Yerst.”
“Do you like chewing gum?”
“Yerst.”
Faber gave him a page torn from the Bible. “There’s a man in the doorway of the tobacconist’s. If you give him this he’ll give you some gum.”
“All right,” the boy said. He stood up. “Is this geezer a Yank?”
“Yerst,” Faber said.
The boy ran off. Faber followed him. As the boy approached the agent, Faber ducked into the doorway of the building opposite. The tail was still there, peering through the glass. Faber stood just outside the door, blocking the tail’s view of the scene across the street, and opened his umbrella. He pretended to be struggling with it. He saw the agent give something to the boy and walked off. He ended his charade with the umbrella and walked in the direction opposite to the way the agent had gone. He looked back over his shoulder to see the tail run into the street, looking for the vanished agent.
Faber stopped at the nearest telephone and dialed the number of the booth in the Square. It took a few minutes to get through. At last a deep voice said, “Hello?”
“What is today’s chapter?” Faber said.
“One Kings thirteen.”
“Most inspiring.”
“Yes, isn’t it.”
The fool has no idea of the trouble he’s in, Faber thought. Aloud he said, “Well?”
“I must see you.”
“That is impossible.”
“But I must!” There was a note in the voice that Faber thought edged on despair. “The message comes from the
very
top—do you understand?”
Faber pretended to waver. “All right, then. I will meet you in one week’s time under the arch at Euston Station at 9
A.M
.”
“Can’t you make it sooner?”
Faber hung up and stepped outside. Walking quickly, he rounded two corners and came within sight of the phone booth in the Square. He saw the agent walking in the direction of Piccadilly. There was no sign of the tail. Faber followed the agent.
The man went into Piccadilly Circus underground station, and bought a ticket to Stockwell. Faber immediately realized he could get there by a more direct route. He came out of the station, walked quickly to Leicester Square and got on a Northern Line train. The agent would have to change trains at Waterloo, whereas Faber’s train was direct; so Faber would reach Stockwell first, or at the worst they would arrive on the same train.
In fact Faber had to wait outside the station at Stockwell for twenty-five minutes before the agent emerged. Faber followed him again. He went into a cafe.
There was absolutely nowhere nearby where a man could plausibly stand still for any length of time: no shop windows to gaze into, no benches to sit on or parks to walk around, no bus stops or taxi ranks or public buildings. Faber had to walk up and down the street, always looking as if he were going somewhere, carrying on until he was just out of sight of the cafe then returning on the opposite side, while the agent sat in the warm, steamy cafe drinking tea and eating hot toast.
He came out after half an hour. Faber tailed him through a succession of residential streets. The agent knew where he was going, but was in no hurry. He walked like a man who is going home with nothing to do for the rest of the day. He did not look back, and Faber thought, Another amateur.
At last he went into a house—one of the poor, anonymous, inconspicuous lodging houses used by spies and errant husbands everywhere. It had a dormer window in the roof; that would be the agent’s room, high up for better wireless reception.
Faber walked past, scanning the opposite side of the street. Yes—there. A movement behind an upstairs window, a glimpse of a jacket and tie, a watching face withdrawn—the opposition was here too. The agent must have gone to the rendezvous yesterday and allowed himself to be followed home by MI5—unless, of course, he
was
MI5.
Faber turned the corner and walked down the next parallel street, counting the houses. Almost directly behind the place the agent had entered there was the bomb-damaged shell of what had been a pair of semidetached houses. Good.
As he walked back to the station his step was springier, his heart beat a shade faster and he looked around him with bright-eyed interest. It was good. The game was on.
HE DRESSED IN BLACK
that night—a woolen hat, a turtleneck sweater under a short leather flying jacket, trousers tucked into socks, rubber-soled shoes—all black. He would be almost invisible, for London, too, was blacked out.
He cycled through the quiet streets with dimmed lights, keeping off main roads. It was after midnight, and he saw no one. He left the bike a quarter of a mile away from his destination, padlocking it to the fence in a pub yard.
He went, not to the agent’s house, but to the bombed-out shell in the next street. He picked his way carefully across the rubble in the front garden, entered the gaping doorway, and went through the house to the back. It was very dark. A thick screen of low cloud hid the moon and stars. Faber had to walk slowly with his hands in front of him.
He reached the end of the garden, jumped over the fence, and crossed the next two gardens. In one of the houses a dog barked for a moment.
The garden of the lodging house was unkempt. Faber walked into a blackberry bush and stumbled. The thorns scratched his face. He ducked under a line of washing—there was enough light for him to see that.
He found the kitchen window and took from his pocket a small tool with a scoop-shaped blade. The putty around the glass was old and brittle, and already flaking away in places. After twenty minutes’ silent work he took the pane out of the frame and laid it gently on the grass. He shone a flashlight through the empty hole to make sure there were no noisy obstacles in his way, opened the catch, raised the window and then climbed in.
The darkened house smelled of boiled fish and disinfectant. Faber unlocked the back door—a precaution for fast exit—before entering the hall. He flashed his pencil light on and off quickly, once. In that instant of light he took in a tiled hallway, a kidney table he must circumvent, a row of coats on hooks and a staircase, to the right, carpeted.
He climbed the stairs silently.
He was halfway across the landing to the second flight when he saw the light under the door. A split-second later there was an asthmatic cough and the sound of a toilet flushing. Faber reached the door in two strides and froze against the wall.
Light flooded the landing as the door opened. Faber slipped his stiletto out of his sleeve. The old man came out of the toilet and crossed the landing, leaving the light on. At his bedroom door he grunted, turned and came back.
He must see me, Faber thought. He tightened his grip on the handle of his knife. The old man’s half-open eyes were directed on the floor. He looked up as he reached for the light cord, and Faber almost killed him then—but the man fumbled for the switch and Faber realized he was so sleepy he was practically somnambulating.
The light died, the old man shuffled back to bed, and Faber breathed again.
There was only one door at the top of the second flight of stairs. Faber tried it gently. It was locked.
He took another tool from the pocket of his jacket. The noise of the toilet tank filling covered the sound of Faber picking the lock. He opened the door and listened.
He could hear deep regular breathing. He stepped inside. The sound came from the opposite corner of the room. He could see nothing. He crossed the pitch-dark room very slowly, feeling the air in front of him at each step, until he was beside the bed.
He had the flashlight in his left hand, the stiletto loose in his sleeve and his right hand free. He switched on the flashlight and grabbed the sleeping man’s throat in a strangling grip.
The agent’s eyes snapped open, but he could make no sound. Faber straddled the bed and sat on him. Then he whispered, “One Kings thirteen,” and relaxed his grip.
The agent peered into the flashlight, trying to see Faber’s face. He rubbed his neck where Faber’s hand had squeezed.
“Be still!” Faber shone the light into the agent’s eyes, and with his right hand drew the stiletto.
“Aren’t you going to let me get up?”
“I prefer you in bed where you can do no more damage.”