Eye Of The Needle

PART TWO

The 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 Brith 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 1939. 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 recognise 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 publicised, 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 practising 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 birdwatching, the bicycle, the boarding house 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 neutralise 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 memorised 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 walk 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 dialled 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 realised 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 café.

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 café, then returning on the opposite side, while the agent sat in the warm steamy café 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 seemed 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 semi-detached 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 woollen 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 to He 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 realised 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."

"Damage? More damage?"

"You were watched in Leicester Square, and you let me follow you here, and they are observing this house. Should I trust you to do anything?"

"My God, I'm sorry."

"Why did they send you?"

"The message had to be delivered personally. The orders come from the top. The very top-" The agent stopped.

"Well? What orders?"

"I… have to be sure it's you."

"How can you be sure?"

"I must see your face."

Faber hesitated, then shone the flashlight at himself briefly. "Satisfied?"

"Die Nadel."

"And who are you?"

"Major Friedrich Kaldor, sir."

"I should call you Sir."

"Oh, no, sir. You've been promoted twice in your absence. You are now a lieutenant-colonel."

"Have they really nothing better to do in Hamburg?"

"Aren't you pleased?"

"I should be pleased to go back and put Major von Braun on latrine duty."

"May I get up, sir?"

"Certainly not. What if Major Kaldor is held in Wandsworth Jail and you are a substitute, waiting to give a signal to your watching friends in the house opposite?… Now, what are these orders from the very top?"

"Well, sir, we believe there will be an invasion of France this year."

"Brilliant, brilliant. Go on."

"They believe that General Patton is massing the First United States Army Group in the part of England known as Eeast Anglia. If that army is the invasion force, then it follows that they will attack via the Pas de Calais."

"That makes sense. But I have seen no sign of this army of Patton's."

"There is some doubt in the highest circles in Berlin. The Fuehrer's astrologer-"

"What?"

"Yes, sir, he has an astrologer, who tells him to defend Normandy."

"My God. Are things that bad there?"

"He gets plenty of earthbound advice, too. I personally believe he uses the astrologer as an excuse when he thinks the generals are wrong but he can't fault their arguments."

Faber sighed. He had been afraid of news like this. "Go on."

"Your assignment is to assess the strength of FUSAG: numbers of troops, artillery, air support-"

"I know how to measure armies."

"Of course." He paused. "I am instructed to emphasise the importance of the mission, sir."

"And you have done so. Tell me, are things that bad in Berlin?"

The agent hesitated. "No, sir. Morale is high, output of munitions increases every month, the people spit at the RAF bombers-"

"Never mind, I can get the propaganda from my radio."

The younger man was silent.

Faber said, "Do you have anything else to tell me? Officially, I mean."

"Yes. For the duration of the assignment you have a special bolt-hole."

"They do think it's important," Faber said.

"You rendezvous with a U-boat in the North Sea, ten miles due east of a town called Aberdeen. Just call them in on your normal radio frequency and they will surface. As soon as you or I have told Hamburg that the orders have been passed from me to you, the route will be open. The boat will be there every Friday and Monday at 6 P.M. and will wait until 6 A.M."

"Aberdeen is a big town. Do you have an exact map reference?"

"Yes." The agent recited the numbers, and Faber memorised them. "Is that everything, Major?"

"Yes, sir."

"What do you plan to do about the gentlemen from MI5 in the house across the road?"

The agent shrugged. "I'll have to give them the slip."

Faber thought, It's no good. "What are your orders after you have seen me? Do you have a bolt-hole?"

"No. I am to go to a town called Weymouth and steal a boat to return to France."

That was no plan at all. So, Faber thought, Canaris knew how it would be. Very well.

"And if you are caught by the British and tortured?" he said.

"I have a suicide pill."

"And you will use it?"

"Most certainly."

Faber looked at him. "I think you might," he said. He placed his left hand on the agent's chest and put his weight on it, as if he were about to get off the bed. That way he was able to feel exactly where the rib cage ended and the soft belly began. He thrust the point of the stiletto in just under the ribs and stabbed upward to the heart.

The agent's eyes widened for an instant. A noise came to his throat but did not get out. His body convulsed. Faber pushed the stiletto an inch further in. The eyes closed and the body went limp.

"You saw my face," Faber said.

"I think we've lost control of it," said Percival Godliman.

Frederick Bloggs nodded agreement, and added, "It's my fault."

The man looked weary, Godliman thought. He had had that look for almost a year, ever since the night they had dragged the crushed remains of his wife from underneath the rubble of a bombed house in Hoxton.

"I'm not interested in apportioning blame," Godliman said. "The fact is that something happened in Leicester Square during the few seconds you lost sight of Blondie."

"Do you think the contact was made?"

"Possibly."

"When we picked him up again in Stockwell, I thought he had simply given up for the day."

"If that were the case he would have made the rendezvous again yesterday and today." Godliman was making patterns with matchsticks on his desk, a thinking habit he had developed. "Still no movement at the house?"

"Nothing. He's been in there for forty-eight hours." Bloggs repeated, "It's my fault."

"Don't be a bore, old chap," Godliman said. "It was my decision to let him run so that he would lead us to someone else, and I still think it was the right move."

Bloggs sat motionless, his expression blank, his hands in the pockets of his raincoat. "If the contact has been made, we shouldn't delay picking Blondie up and finding out what his mission was."

"That way we lose whatever chance we have of following Blondie to somebody more important."

"Your decision."

Godliman had made a church with his matches. He stared at it for a moment, then took a halfpenny from his pocket and tossed it. "Tails," he observed. "Give him another twenty-four hours."

The landlord was a middle-aged Irish Republican from Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, who harboured a secret hope that the Germans would win the war and thus free the Emerald Isle from English oppression forever. He limped arthritically around the old house, collecting his weekly rents, thinking how much he would be worth if those rents were allowed to rise to their true market value. He was not a rich man: he owned only two houses, this and the smaller one in which he lived. He was permanently bad-tempered. On the first floor he tapped on the door of the old man. This tenant was always pleased to see him. He was probably pleased to see anybody. He said, "Hello, Mr Riley, would you like a cup of tea?"

"No time today."

"Oh, well." The old man handed over the money. "I expect you've seen the kitchen window."

"No. I didn't go in there."

"Oh! Well. there's a pane of glass out. I patched it over with blackout curtain, but of course there is a draught."

"Who smashed it?" the landlord asked.

"Funny thing, it ain't broke. Just lying there on the grass. I expect the old putty just gave way. I'll mend it myself, if you can get hold of a bit of putty."

You old fool, the landlord thought. Aloud he said, "I don't suppose it occurred to you that you might have been burgled?"

The old man looked astonished. "I never thought of that."

"Nobody's missing any valuables?"

"Nobody's said so to me."

The landlord went to the door. "All right, I'll have a look when I go down."

The old man followed him out. "I don't think the new bloke is in upstairs," he said. "I haven't heard a sound for a couple of days."

The landlord was sniffing. "Has he been cooking in his rooms?"

"I wouldn't know, Mr Riley."

The two of them went up the stairs. The old man said, "He's very quiet, if he is in there."

"Whatever he's cooking, he'll have to stop. It smells bloody awful."

The landlord knocked on the door. There was no answer. He opened it and went in, and the old man followed him.

"Well, well, well," the old sergeant said heartily. "I think you've got a dead one." He stood in the doorway, surveying the room. "You touched anything, Paddy?"

"No," the landlord replied. "And the name's Mr Riley."

The policeman ignored this. "Not long dead, though. I've smelled worse."

His survey took in the old chest of drawers, the suitcase on the low table, the faded square of carpet, the dirty curtains on the dormer window, and the rumpled bed in the corner. There were no signs of a struggle.

He went over to the bed. The young man's face was peaceful, his hands clasped over his chest. "I'd say heart attack, if he wasn't so young." There was no empty sleeping-pill bottle to indicate suicide. He picked up the leather wallet on top of the chest and looked through its contents. There was an identity card and a ration book, and a fairly thick wad of notes. "Papers in order and he ain't been robbed."

"He's only been here a week or so," the landlord said. "I don't know much about him at all. He came from North Wales to work in a factory."

"Well," the sergeant observed, "if he was as healthy as he looked he'd be in the Army." He opened the suitcase on the table. "Bloody hell, what's this lot?"

The landlord and the old man had edged their way into the room now. The landlord said, "It's a radio" at the same time as the old man said, "He's bleeding."

"Don't touch that body!" the sergeant said.

"He's had a knife in the guts," the old man persisted.

The sergeant gingerly lifted one of the dead hands from the chest to reveal a small trickle of dried blood. "He was bleeding," he said. "Where's the nearest phone?"

"Five doors down," the landlord told him.

"Lock this room and stay out until I get back."

The sergeant left the house and knocked at the door of the neighbour with the phone. A woman opened it.

"Good morning, madam. May I use your telephone?"

"Come in." She showed him the phone, on a stand in the hall. "What's happened? Anything exciting?"

"A tenant died in a lodging house just up the road," he told her as he dialled.

"Murdered?" she asked, wide-eyed.

"I leave that to the experts. Hello? Superintendent Jones, please. This is Canter." He looked at the woman. "Might I ask you just to pop in the kitchen while I talk to my governor?" She went, disappointed.

"Hello, Super. This body's got a knife wound and a suitcase radio."

"What's the address again, Sarge?"

Sergeant Canter told him.

"Yes, that's the one they've been watching. This is an MI5 job, Sarge. Go to number 42 and tell the surveillance team there what you've found. I'll get on to their chief. Off you go."

Canter thanked the woman and crossed the road. He was quite thrilled; this was only his second murder in thirty-one years as a Metropolitan Policeman, and it turned out to involve espionage! He might make Inspector yet. He knocked on the door of number 42. It opened and two men stood there. Sergeant Canter said: "Are you the secret agents from MI5?"

Bloggs arrived at the same time as a Special Branch man, Detective-Inspector Harris, whom he had known in his Scotland Yard days. Canter showed them the body.

They stood still for a moment, looking at the peaceful young face with its blond moustache. Harris said, "Who is he?"

"Codename Blondie," Bloggs told him. "We think he came in by parachute a couple of weeks ago. We picked up a radio message to another agent arranging a rendezvous. We knew the code, so we were able to watch the rendezvous. We hoped Blondie would lead us to the resident agent, who would be a much more dangerous specimen."

"So what happened here?"

"Damned if I know."

Harris looked at the wound in the agent's chest. "Stiletto?"

"Something like that. A very neat job. Under the ribs and straight up into the heart. Quick. Would you like to see the method of entry?"

He led them downstairs to the kitchen. They looked at the windowframe and the unbroken pane of glass lying on the lawn.

Canter said, "Also, the lock on the bedroom door had been picked."

They sat down at the kitchen table, and Canter made tea. Bloggs said, "It happened the night after I lost him in Leicester Square. I fouled it all up."

Harris said, "Don't be so hard on yourself."

They drank their tea in silence for a while. Harris said, "How are things with you, anyway? You don't drop in at the Yard."

"Busy."

"How's Christine?"

"Killed in the bombing."

Harris' eyes widened. "You poor bastard."

"You all right?"

"Lost my brother in North Africa. Did you ever meet Johnny?"

"No."

"He was a lad. Drink? You've never seen anything like it. Spent so much on booze, he could never afford to get married-which is just as well, the way things turned out."

"Most have lost somebody, I s'pose."

"If you're on your own, come round our place for dinner on Sunday."

"Thanks, I work Sundays now."

Harris nodded. "Well, whenever you feel like it."

A detective-constable poked his bead around the door and addressed Harris. "Can we start bagging-up the evidence, guv?" Harris looked at Bloggs.

"I've finished," Bloggs said.

"All right, son, carry on," Harris told him.

Bloggs said, "Suppose he made contact after I lost him, and arranged for the resident agent to come here. The resident may have suspected a trap-that would explain why he came in through the window and picked the lock."

"It makes him a devilish suspicious bastard," Harris observed.

"That might be why we've never caught him. Anyway, he gets into Blondie's room and wakes him up. Now he knows it isn't a trap, right?"

"Right."

"So why does he kill Blondie?"

"Maybe they quarrelled."

"There were no signs of a struggle."

Harris frowned into his empty cup. "Perhaps he realised that Blondie was being watched and he was afraid we'd pick the boy up and make him spill the beans."

Bloggs said, "That makes him a ruthless bastard."

"That, too, might be why we've never caught him."

"Come in. Sit down. I've just had a call from MI6. Canaris has been fired."

Bloggs went in, sat down, and said, "Is that good news or bad?"

"Very bad," said Godliman. "It's happened at the worst possible moment."

"Do I get told why?"

Godliman looked at him intently, then said, "I think you need to know. At this moment we have forty double agents broadcasting to Hamburg false information about Allied plans for the invasion of France."

Bloggs whistled. "I didn't know it was quite that big. I suppose the doubles say we're going in at Cherbourg, but really it will be Calais, or vice versa."

"Something like that. Apparently I don't need to know the details. Anyway they haven't told me. However, the whole thing is in danger. We knew Canaris; we knew we had him fooled; we felt we could have gone on fooling him. A new broom may mistrust his predecessor's agents. There's more: we've had some defections from the other side, people who could have betrayed the Abwehr's people over here if they hadn't been betrayed already. It's another reason for the Germans to begin to suspect our doubles. Then there's the possibility of a leak. Literally thousands of people now know about the double-cross system. There are doubles in Iceland, Canada, and Ceylon. We ran a double-cross in the Middle East.

"And we made a bad mistake last year by repatriating a German called Erich Carl. We later learned he was an Abwehr agent-a real one-and that while he was in internment on the Isle of Man he may have learned about two doubles, Mutt and Jeff, and possibly a third called Tate.

"So we're on thin ice. If one decent Abwehr agent in Britain gets to know about Fortitude-that's the code name for the deception plan-the whole strategy will be endangered. Not to mince words, we could lose the fucking war."

Bloggs suppressed a smile; he could remember a time when Professor Godliman did not know the meaning of such words.

The professor went on, "The Twenty Committee has made it quite clear that they expect me to make sure there aren't any decent Abwehr agents in Britain."

"Last week we would have been quite confident that there weren't," Bloggs said.

"Now we know there's at least one."

"And we let him slip through our fingers."

"So now we have to find him again."

"I don't know," Bloggs said gloomily. "We don't know what part of the country he's operating from, we haven't the faintest idea what he looks like. He's too crafty to be pinpointed by triangulation while he's transmitting otherwise we would have nabbed him long ago. We don't even know his code name. So where do we start?"

"Unsolved crimes," said Godliman. "Look, a spy is bound to break the law. He forges papers, he steals petrol and ammunition, he evades checkpoints, he enters restricted areas, he takes photographs, and when people rumble him he kills them. The police are bound to get to know of some of these crimes if the spy has been operating for any length of time. If we go through the unsolved crimes files since the war, we'll find traces."

"Don't you realise that most crimes are unsolved?" Bloggs said incredulously. "The files would fill the Albert Hall!"

Godliman shrugged. "So, we narrow it down to London, and we start with murders."

They found what they were looking for on the very first day of their search. It happened to be Godliman who came across it, and at first he did not realise its significance.

It was the file on the murder of a Mrs Una Garden in Highgate in 1940. Her throat had been cut and she had been sexuallv molested, although not raped. She had been found in the bedroom of her lodger, with considerable alcohol in her bloodstream. The picture was fairly clear: she had had a tryst with the lodger, he had wanted to go further than she was prepared to let him, they had quarrelled, he had killed her, and the murder had neutralised his libido. But the police had never found the lodger.

Godliman had been about to pass over the file-spies did not get involved in sexual assaults. But he was a meticulous man with records, so he read every word, and consequently discovered that the unfortunate Mrs Garden had received stiletto wounds in her back as well as the fatal wound to her throat.

Godliman and Bloggs were on opposite sides of a wooden table in the records room at Old Scotland Yard. Godliman tossed the file across the table and said, "I think this is it." Bloggs glanced through it and said, "The stiletto."

They signed for the file and walked the short distance to the War Office. When they returned to Godliman's room, there was a decoded signal on his desk. He read it casually, then thumped the table in excitement. "It's him!" Bloggs read: "Orders received. Regards to Willi."

"Remember him?" Godliman said. "Die Nadel?"

"Yes," Bloggs said hesitantly. "The Needle. But there's not much information here."

"Think, think! A stiletto is like a needle. It's the same man: the murder of Mrs Garden, all those signals in 1940 that we couldn't trace, the rendezvous with Blondie…"

"Possibly." Bloggs looked thoughtful.

"I can prove it," Godliman said. "Remember the transmission about Finland that you showed me the first day I came here? The one that was interrupted?"

"Yes." Bloggs went to the file to find it.

"If my memory serves me well, the date of that transmission is the same as the date of this murder… and I'll bet the time of death coincides with the interruption."

Bloggs looked at the signal in the file. "Right both times."

"There!"

"He's been operating in London for at least five years, and it's taken us until now to get on to him," Bloggs reflected. "He won't be easy to catch."

Godliman suddenly looked wolfish. "He may be clever, but he's not as clever as me," he said tightly. "I am going to nail him to the fucking wall."

Bloggs laughed out loud. "My God, you've changed, Professor."

Godliman said, "Do you realise that's the first time you've laughed for a year?"

The supply boat rounded the headland and chugged into the bay at Storm Island under a blue sky. There were two women in it: one was the skipper's wife-he had been called up and now she ran the business-and the other was Lucy's mother.

Mother got out of the boat wearing a utility suit, a mannish jacket, and an above-the-knee skirt. Lucy hugged her mightily. "Mother! What a surprise!"

"But I wrote to you."

The letter was with the mail on the boat; Mother had forgotten that the post only came once a fortnight on Storm Island. "Is this my grandson? Isn't he a big boy?"

Little Jo, almost three years old, turned bashful and hid behind Lucy's skirt. He was dark-haired, pretty, and tall for his age. Mother said: "Isn't he like his father!"

"Yes," Lucy said "You must be freezing. Come up to the house. Where did you get that skirt?"

They picked up the groceries and began to walk up the ramp to the cliff top. Mother chattered as they went. "It's the fashion, dear. It saves on material. But it isn't as cold as this on the mainland. Such a wind! I suppose it's all right to leave my case on the jetty-nobody to steal it! Jane is engaged to an American soldier-a white one, thank God. He comes from a place called Milwaukee, and he doesn't chew gum. Isn't that nice? I've only got four more daughters to marry off now. Your father is a Captain in the Home Guard, did I tell you? He's up half the night patrolling the common waiting for German parachutists. Uncle Stephen's warehouse was bombed-I don't know what he'll do, it's an Act of War or something-"

"Don't rush, Mother, you've got fourteen days to tell me the news," Lucy laughed.

They reached the cottage. Mother said, "Isn't this lovely?" They went in. "I think this is just lovely."

Lucy parked Mother at the kitchen table and made tea. "Tom will get your case up. He'll be here for his lunch shortly."

"The shepherd?"

"Yes."

"Does he find things for David to do, then?"

Lucy laughed. "It's the other way round. I'm sure he'll tell you all about it himself. You haven't told me why you're here."

"My dear, it's about time I saw you. I know you're not supposed to make unnecessary journeys, but once in four years isn't extravagant, is it?"

They heard the jeep outside, and a moment later David wheeled himself in. He kissed his mother-in-law and introduced Tom. Lucy said "Tom, you can earn your lunch today by bringing Mother's case up, as she carried your groceries."

David was warming his hands at the stove. "It's raw today."

"You're really taking sheep-farming seriously, then?" Mother said.

"The flock is double what it was three years ago," David told her. "My father never farmed this island seriously. I've fenced miles of the cliff top, improved the grazing, and introduced modern breeding methods. Not only do we have more sheep, but each animal gives us more meat and wool."

Mother said tentatively, "I suppose Tom does the physical work and you give the orders."

David laughed. "Equal partners, Mother."

They had hearts for lunch, and both men ate mountains of potatoes. Mother commented favourably on Jo's table manners. Afterwards David lit a cigarette and Tom stuffed his pipe.

Mother said, "What I really want to know is when you're going to give us more grandchildren." She smiled brightly. There was a long silence. "Well, I think it's wonderful, the way David copes," said Mother.

Lucy said, "Yes."

They were walking along the cliff top. The wind had dropped on the third day of Mother's visit and it was mild enough to go out. They took Jo, dressed in a fisherman's sweater and a fur coat. They had stopped at the top of a rise to watch David, Tom, and the dog herding sheep. Lucy could see in Mother's face an internal struggle between concern and discretion. She decided to save her mother the effort of asking.

"He doesn't love me," she said.

Mother looked quickly to make sure Jo was out of earshot. "I'm sure it's not that bad, dear. Different men show their love in diff-"

"Mother, we haven't been man and wife properly since we were married."

"But?…" She indicated Jo with a nod. "That was a week before the wedding."

"Oh! Oh, dear. Is it, you know, the accident?"

"Yes, but not in the way you mean. It's nothing physical. He just… won't." Lucy was crying quietly, the tears trickling down her wind-browned cheeks.

"Have you talked about it?"

"I've tried."

"Perhaps with time…"

"It's been almost four years!"

There was a pause. They began to walk on across the heather, into the weak afternoon sun. Jo chased gulls.

Mother said, "I almost left your father, once."

It was Lucy's turn to be shocked. "When?"

"It was soon after Jane was born. We weren't so well-off in those days, you know Father was still working for his father, and there was a slump. I was expecting for the third time in three years, and it seemed that a life of having babies and making ends meet stretched out in front of me with nothing to relieve the monotony. Then I discovered he was seeing an old flame of his-Brenda Simmonds. You never knew her, she went to Basingstoke. Suddenly I asked myself what I was doing it for, and I couldn't think of a sensible answer."

Lucy had dim, patchy memories of those days: her grandfather with a white moustache, her father in a more slender edition; extended family meals in the great farmhouse kitchen; a lot of laughter and sunshine and animals. Even then her parents' marriage had seemed to represent solid contentment, happy permanence. She said, "Why didn't you? Leave, I mean."

"Oh, people just didn't, in those days. There wasn't all this divorce, and a woman couldn't get a job."

"Women work at all sorts of things now."

"They did in the last war, but everything changed afterward with a bit of unemployment. I expect it will be the same this time. Men get their way, you know, generally speaking."

"And you're glad you stayed." It was not a question.

"People my age shouldn't make pronouncements about life. But my life has been a matter of making-do, and the same goes for most of the women I know. Steadfastness always looks like a sacrifice, but usually it isn't. Anyway, I'm not going to give you advice. You wouldn't take it, and if you did you'd blame your problems on me, I expect."

"Oh, Mother," Lucy smiled.

Mother said, "Shall we turn around? I think we've gone far enough for one day."

In the kitchen one evening Lucy said to David, "I'd like Mother to stay another two weeks, if she will." Mother was upstairs putting Jo to bed, telling him a story.

"Isn't a fortnight long enough for you to dissect my personality?" David said.

"Don't be silly. David."

He wheeled himself over to her chair. "Are you telling me you don't talk about me?"

"Of course we talk about you-you're my husband."

"What do you say to her?"

"Why are you so worried?" Lucy said, not without malice.

"What are you so ashamed of?"

"Damn you, I've nothing to be ashamed of. No one wants his personal life talked about by a pair of gossiping women.

"We don't gossip about you."

"What do you say?"

"Aren't you touchy!"

"Answer my question."

"I say I want to leave you, and she tries to talk me out of it."

He spun round and wheeled away. "Tell her not to bother for my sake."

She called, "Do you mean that?"

He stopped. "I don't need anybody, do you understand? I can manage alone."

"And what about me?" she said quietly. "Perhaps I need somebody."

"What for?"

"To love me."

Mother came in, and sensed the atmosphere. "He's fast asleep," she said. "Dropped off before Cinderella got to the ball. I think I'll pack a few things, not to leave it all until tomorrow." She went out again.

"Do you think it will ever change, David?" Lucy asked.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Will we ever be… the way we were, before the wedding?"

"My legs won't grow back, if that's what you mean."

"Oh, God, don't you know that doesn't bother me? I just want to be loved."

David shrugged. "That's your problem." He went out before she started to cry.

Mother did not stay the second fortnight. Lucy walked with her down to the jetty the next day. It was raining hard, and they both wore macintoshes.

They stood in silence waiting for the boat, watching the rain pit the sea with tiny craters. Mother held Jo in her arms. "Things will change, in time, you know," she said. "Four years is nothing in a marriage."

Lucy said, "I don't know, but there's not much I can do. There's Jo, and the war, and David's condition. How can I leave?" The boat arrived, and Lucy exchanged her mother for three boxes of groceries and five letters. The water was choppy. Mother sat in the boat's tiny cabin. They waved her around the headland. Lucy felt very lonely.

Jo began to cry. "I don't want Gran to go away!"

"Nor do I," said Lucy.

Godliman and Bloggs walked side by side along the pavement of a bomb-damaged London shopping street. They were a mismatched pair: the stooped, bird-like professor, with pebble-lensed spectacles and a pipe, not looking where he was going, taking short, scurrying steps; and the flat-footed youngster, blond and purposeful, in his detective's raincoat and melodramatic hat; a cartoon looking for a caption.

Godliman was saying, "I think Die Nadel is well-connected."

"Why?"

"The only way he could be so insubordinate with impunity. It's this 'Regards to Willi' line. It must refer to Canaris."

"You think he was pals with Canaris?"

"He's pals with somebody-perhaps someone more powerful than Canaris was."

"I have the feeling this is leading somewhere."

"People who are well-connected generally make those connexions at school, or university, or staff college. Look at that."

They were outside a shop that had a huge empty space where once there had been a plate-glass window. A rough sign, hand-painted and nailed to the window-frame, said, 'Even more open than usual'.

Bloggs laughed, "I saw one outside a bombed police station: 'Be good, we are still open'"

"It's become a minor art form."

They walked on. Bloggs said, "So, what if Die Nadel did go to school with someone high in the Wehrmacht?"

"People always have their pictures taken at school. Middleton, down in the basement at Kensington-that house where MI6 used to be before the war-he's got a collection of thousands of photographs of German officers: school photos, binges in the Mess, passing-out parades, shaking hands with Adolf, newspaper pictures, everything."

"I see," Bloggs said. "So if you're right, and Die Nadel has been through Germany's equivalent of Eton and Sandhurst, we've probably got a picture of him."

"Almost certainly. Spies are notoriously camera-shy, but they don't become spies in school. It will be a youthful Die Nadel that we'll find in Middleton's files."

They skirted a huge crater outside a barber's. The shop was intact, but the traditional red-and-white-striped pole lay in shards on the pavement. The sign in the window said, 'We've had a close shave-come and get one yourself'.

"How will we recognise him? No one has ever seen him," Bloggs said.

"Yes, they have. At Mrs Garden's boarding house in Highgate they know him quite well."

The Victorian house stood on a hill overlooking London. It was built of red brick, and Bloggs thought it looked angry at the damage Hitler was doing to its city. It was high up, a good place from which to broadcast. Die Nadel would have lived on the top floor. Bloggs wondered what secrets he had transmitted to Hamburg from this place in the dark days of 1940: map references for aircraft factories and steelworks, details of coastal defences, political gossip, gas masks and Anderson shelters and sandbags, British morale, bomb damage reports, "Well done, boys, you got Christine Bloggs at last-" Shut up.

The door was opened by an elderly man in a black jacket and striped trousers.

"Good morning. I'm Inspector Bloggs, from Scotland Yard. I'd like a word with the householder, please."

Bloggs saw fear come to the man's eyes, then a young woman appeared in the doorway behind him and said, "Come in, please."

The tiled hall smelled of wax polish. Bloggs hung his hat and coat on a stand. The old man disappeared into the depths of the house, and the woman led Bloggs into a lounge. It was expensively furnished in a rich, old-fashioned way. There were bottles of whisky, gin, and sherry on a trolley; all the bottles were unopened. The woman sat on a floral armchair and crossed her legs.

"Why is the old man frightened of the police?" Bloggs said.

"My father-in-law is a German Jew. He came here in 1935 to escape Hitler, and in 1940 you put him in a concentration camp. His wife killed herself at the prospect. He has just been released from the Isle of Man. He had a letter from the King, apologising for the inconvenience to which he had been put."

Bloggs said, "We don't have concentration camps."

"We invented them. In South Africa. Didn't you know? We go on about our history, but we forget bits. We're so good at blinding ourselves to unpleasant facts."

"Perhaps it's just as well."

"What?"

"In 1939 we blinded ourselves to the unpleasant fact that we alone couldn't win a war with Germany and look what happened."

"That's what my father-in-law says. He's not as cynical as I. What can we do to assist Scotland Yard?"

Bloggs had been enjoying the debate, and now it was with reluctance that he turned his attention to work. "It's about a murder that took place here four years ago."

"So long!"

"Some new evidence may have come to light."

"I know about it, of course. The previous owner was killed by a tenant. My husband bought the house from her executor-she had no heirs."

"I want to trace the other people who were tenants at that time."

"Yes." The woman's hostility had gone now, and her intelligent face showed the effort of recollection. "When we arrived there were three who had been here before the murder: a retired naval officer, a salesman, and a young boy from Yorkshire. The boy joined the Army; he still writes to us. The salesman was called up and he died at sea. I know because two of his five wives got in touch with us! And the Commander is still here."

"Still here?" That was a piece of luck. "I'd like to see him, please."

"Surely." She stood up. "He's aged a lot. I'll take you to his room."

They went up the carpeted stairs to the first floor. She said, "While you're talking to him, I'll look up the last letter from the boy in the Army." She knocked on the door. It was more than Bloggs' landlady would have done, he thought wryly. A voice called, "It's open," and Bloggs went in.

The Commander sat in a chair by the window with a blanket over his knees. He wore a blazer, a collar and a tie, and spectacles. His hair was thin, his moustache grey, his skin loose and wrinkled over a face that might once have been strong. The room was the home of a man living on memories: there were paintings of sailing ships, a sextant and a telescope, and a photograph of himself as a boy aboard HMS Winchester.

"Look at this," he said without turning round. "Tell me why that chap isn't in the Navy."

Bloggs crossed to the window. A horse-drawn baker's van was at the curb outside the house, the elderly horse dipping into its nosebag while the deliveries were made. That "chap" was a woman with short blonde hair, in trousers. She had a magnificent bust. Bloggs laughed. "It's a woman in trousers," he said.

"Bless my soul, so it is!" The Commander turned around. "Can't tell thee days, you know. Women in trousers!"

Bloggs introduced himself. "We've reopened the case of a murder committed here in 1940. I believe you lived here at the same time as the main suspect, one Henry Faber."

"Indeed! What can I do to help?"

"How well do you remember Faber?"

"Perfectly. Tall chap, dark hair, well-spoken, quiet. Rather shabby clothes. If you were the kind who judges by appearances, you might well mistake him. I didn't dislike him. Wouldn't have minded getting to know him better, but he didn't want that. I suppose he was about your age."

Bloggs suppressed a smile-he was used to people assuming he must be older simply because he was a detective.

The Commander added, "I'm sure he didn't do it, you know. I know a bit about character. You can't command a ship without learning and if that man was a sex maniac, I'm Hermann Goering."

Bloggs suddenly connected the blonde in trousers with the mistake about his age, and the conclusion depressed him. He said, "You know, you should always ask to see a policeman's warrant card."

The Commander was slightly taken aback. "All right, then, let's have it."

Bloggs opened his wallet and folded it to display the picture of Christine. "Here."

The Commander studied it for a moment, then said, "A very good likeness." Bloggs sighed. The old man was very nearly blind. He stood up. "That's all, for now," he said. "Thank you."

"Any time. Whatever I can do to help. I'm not much value to England these days. You've got to be pretty useless to get invalided out of the Home Guard, you know."

"Good-bye." Bloggs went out.

The woman was in the hall downstairs. She handed Bloggs a letter. "The boy's address is a Forces box number," she said. "Parkin's his name… no doubt you'll be able to find out where he is."

"You knew the Commander would be no use," Bloggs said.

"I suppose not. But a visitor makes his day." She opened the door. On impulse, Bloggs said, "Will you have dinner with me?"

A shadow crossed her face. "My husband is still on the Isle of Man."

"I'm sorry… I thought-"

"It's all right. I'm flattered."

"I wanted to convince you we're not the Gestapo."

"I know you're not. A woman alone just gets bitter."

Bloggs said, "I lost my wife in the bombing."

"Then you know how it makes you hate."

"Yes," said Bloggs. "It makes you hate." He went down the steps. The door closed behind him. It had started to rain…

It had been raining then too.

Bloggs was late home. He had been going over some new material with Godliman. Now he was hurrying, so that he would have half an hour with Christine before she went out to drive her ambulance. It was dark, and the raid had already started. The things Christine saw at night were so awful she had stopped talking about them.

Bloggs was proud of her, proud. The people she worked with said she was better than two men. She hurtled through blacked-out London, driving like a veteran, taking corners on two wheels, whistling and cracking jokes as the city turned to flame around her. Fearless, they called her. Bloggs knew better; she was terrified, but she would not let it show. He knew because he saw her eyes in the morning when he got up and she went to bed; when her guard was down and it was over for a few hours; he knew it was not fearlessness but courage, and he was proud.

It was raining harder when he got off the bus. He pulled down his hat and put up his collar. In a tobacconist's he bought cigarettes for Christine. She had started smoking recently, like a lot of women. The shopkeeper would let him have only five, because of the shortage. He put them in a Woolworth's bakelite cigarette case.

A policeman stopped him and asked for his identity card; another two minutes wasted. An ambulance passed him, similar to the one Christine drove; a requisitioned fruit truck, painted grey.

He began to get nervous as he approached home. The explosions were sounding closer, and he could hear the aircraft clearly. The East End was in for another bruising tonight; he would sleep in the Morrison shelter. There was a big one, terribly close, and he quickened his step. He would eat his supper in the shelter, too.

He turned into his own street, saw the ambulances and the fire engines, and broke into a run.

The bomb had landed on his side of the street, around the middle. It must be close to his own home. Jesus in heaven, not us, no! There had been a direct hit on the roof, and the house was literally flattened. He raced up to the crowd of people: neighbours and firemen and volunteers. "Is my wife all right? Is she out? Is she in there?"

A fireman looked at him. "Nobody's come out of there, mate."

Rescuers were picking over the rubble. Suddenly one of them shouted, "Over here!" Then he said, "Jesus, it's Fearless Bloggs!"

Frederick dashed to where the man stood. Christine was underneath a huge chunk of brickwork. Her face was visible; the eyes were closed. The rescuer called, "Lifting gear, boys, sharp's the word." Christine moaned and stirred.

"She's alive!" Bloggs said. He knelt down beside her and got his hand under the edge of the lump of rubble. The rescuer said, "You won't shift that, son."

The brickwork lifted.

"God, youll kill yourself," the rescuer said, and bent down to help.

When it was two feet off the ground they got their shoulders under it. The weight was off Christine now. A third man joined in, and a fourth. They all straightened up together. Bloggs said, "I'll lift her out."

He crawled under the sloping roof of brick and cradled his wife in his arms. "Fuck me-it's slipping!" someone shouted.

Bloggs scurried out from under with Christine held tightly to his chest. As soon as he was clear the rescuers let go of the rubble and jumped away. It fell back to earth with a sickening thud, and when Bloggs realised that that had landed on Christine, he knew she was going to die.

He carried her to the ambulance, and it took off immediately. She opened her eyes again once, before she died, and said, "You'll have to win the war without me kiddo."

More than a year later, as he walked downhill from Highgate into the bowl of London, with the rain on his face mingling with the tears again, he thought the woman in the spy's house had said a mighty truth: It makes you hate.

In war boys become men, and men become soldiers and soldiers get promoted; and this is why Bill Parkin, aged eighteen, late of a boarding house in Highgate, who should have been an apprentice in his father's tannery at Scarborough, was believed by the Army to be twenty-one, promoted to sergeant, and given the job of leading his advance squad through a hot, dry forest toward a dusty, whitewashed Italian village.

The Italians had surrendered but the Germans had not, and it was the Germans who were defending Italy against the combined British-American invasion. The Allies were going to Rome, and for Sergeant Parkin's squad it was a long walk.

They came out of the forest at the top of a hill, and lay flat on their bellies to look down on the village. Parkin got out his binoculars and said, "What wouldn't I fookin' give for a fookin' cup of fookin' tea." He had taken to drinking and cigarettes and women, and his language was like that of soldiers everywhere. He no longer went to prayer meetings. Some of these villages were defended and some were not. Parkin recognised that as sound tactics: you didn't know which were undefended, so you approached them all cautiously, and caution cost time. The downside of the hill held little cover -just a few bushes-and the village began at its foot. There were a few white houses, a river with a wooden bridge, then more houses around a little piazza with a town hall and a clock tower. There was a clear line of sight from the tower to the bridge. If the enemy were here at all, they would be in the town hall. A few figures worked in the surrounding fields; God knew who they were. They might be genuine peasants, or any one of a host of factions: fascists, mafia, corsos, partigianos, communisti… or even Germans. You didn't know whose side they would be on until the shooting started.

Parkin said, "All right, Corporal."

Corporal Watkins disappeared back into the forest and emerged, five minutes later, on the dirt road into the village, wearing a civilian hat and a filthy old blanket over his uniform. He shambled, rather than walked, and over his shoulder was a bundle that could have been anything from a bag of onions to a dead rabbit. He reached the near edge of the village and vanished into the darkness of a low cottage.

After a moment he came out. Standing close to the wall, where he could not be seen from the village, he looked toward the soldiers on the hilltop and waved: one, two, three.

The squad scrambled down the hillside into the village. "All the houses empty Sarge," Watkins said. Parkin nodded. It meant nothing.

They moved through the houses to the edge of the river. Parkin said. "Your turn, Smiler. Swim the Mississippi here."

Private 'Smiler' Hudson put his equipment in a neat pile, took off his helmet, boots, and tunic, and slid into the narrow stream. He emerged on the far side, climbed the bank, and disappeared among the houses. This time there was a longer wait: more area to check. Finally Hudson walked back across the wooden bridge. "If they're 'ere, they're 'iding." he said.

He retrieved his gear and the squad crossed the bridge into the village. They kept to the sides of the street as they walked toward the piazza. A bird flew off a roof and startled Parkin. Some of the men kicked open a few doors as they passed. There was nobody.

They stood at the edge of the piazza. Parkin nodded at the town hall. "Did you go inside that place, Smiler?"

"Yes, sir."

"Looks like the village is ours, then."

"Yes, sir."

Parkin stepped forward to cross the piazza, and then it broke. There was a crash of rifles, and bullets hailed all around them. Someone screamed. Parkin was running, dodging, ducking. Watkins, in front of him, shouted with pain and clutched his leg. Parkin picked him up bodily. A bullet clanged off his tin hat. He raced for the nearest house, charged the door, and fell inside.

The shooting stopped. Parkin risked a look outside. One man lay wounded in the piazza: Hudson. Hudson moved, and a solitary shot rang out. Then he was still. Parkin said, "Fookin' bastards."

Watkins was doing something to his leg, cursing.

"Bullet still in there?" Parkin said.

Watkins yelled, "Ouch!" then grinned and held something up. "Not any more."

Parkin looked outside again. "They're in the clock tower. You wouldn't think there was room. Can't be many of them."

"They can shoot, though."

"Yes. They've got us pinned." Parkin frowned. "Got any fireworks?"

"Aye."

"Let's have a look." Parkin opened Watkins' pack and took out the dynamite. "Here. Fix me a ten-second fuse."

The others were in the house across the street. Parkin called out "Hey!" A face appeared at the door. "Sarge?"

"I'm going to throw a tomato. When I shout, give me covering fire." Right now Parkin lit a cigarette. Watkins handed him a bundle of dynamite. Parkin shouted, "Fire!" He lit the fuse with the cigarette, stepped into the street, drew back his arm, and threw the bomb at the clock tower. He ducked back into the house, the fire of his own men ringing in his ears. A bullet shaved the woodwork, and he caught a splinter under his chin. He heard the dynamite explode.

Before he could look, someone across the street shouted, "Bullseye!"

Parkin stepped outside. The ancient clock tower had crumbled. A chime sounded incongruously as dust settled over the ruins.

Watkins said, "You ever play cricket? That was a bloody good shot."

Parkin walked to the centre of the piazza. There seemed to be enough human spare parts to make about three Germans. "The tower was pretty unsteady anyway," he said. "It would probably have fallen down if we'd 'ave sneezed at it together." He turned away. "Another day, another dollar." It was a phrase he'd heard the Yanks use.

"Sarge? Radio." It was the R/T operator.

Parkin walked back and took the handset from him. "Sergeant Parkin."

"Major Roberts. You're discharged from active duty as of now, Sergeant."

"Why?" Parkin's first thought was that they had discovered his true age.

"The brass want you in London. Don't ask me why because I don't know. Leave your corporal in charge, and make your way back to base. A car will meet you on the road."

"Yes, sir."

"The orders also say that on no account are you to risk your life. Got that?"

Parkin grinned, thinking of the clock tower and the dynamite. "Got it."

"All right. On your way. You lucky sod."

Everyone had called him a boy, but they had known him before he joined the Army, Bloggs thought. There was no doubt he was a man now. He walked with confidence and grace, looked about him sharply, and was respectful without being ill at ease in the company of superior officers. Bloggs knew that he was lying about his age, not because of his looks or manner, but because of the small signs that appeared whenever age was mentioned-signs that Bloggs, an experienced interrogator, picked up out of habit.

He had been amused when they told him they wanted him to look at pictures. Now, on his third day in Mr Middleton's dusty Kensington vault, the amusement had gone and tedium had set in. What irritated him most was the no-smoking rule.

It was even more boring for Bloggs, who had to sit and watch him.

At one point Parkin said, "You wouldn't call me back from Italy to help in a four-year-old murder case that could wait until after the war. Also, these pictures are mostly of German officers. If this case is something I should keep quiet about, you'd better tell me."

"It's something you should keep quiet about," said Bloggs.

Parkin went back to his pictures.

They were all old, mostly browned and fading. Many were out of books, magazines, and newspapers. Sometimes Parkin picked up a magnifying glass Mr Middleton had thoughtfully provided, to peer more closely at a tiny face in a group: and each time this happened Bloggs' heart raced, only to slow down when Parkin put the glass to one side and picked up the next photograph. They went to a nearby pub for lunch. The ale was weak, like most wartime beer, but Bloggs still thought it wise to restrict young Parkin to two pints. On his own he would have sunk a gallon.

"Mr Faber was the quiet sort," Parkin said. "You wouldn't think he had it in him. Mind you, the landlady wasn't bad looking. And she wanted it. Looking back, I think I could have had her myself if I'd known how to go about it. There, I was only eighteen."

They ate bread and cheese, and Parkin swallowed a dozen pickled onions. When they went back they stopped outside the house while Parkin smoked another cigarette.

"Mind you," he said, "he was a biggish chap, good-looking, well-spoken. We all thought he was nothing much because his clothes were poor and he rode a bike and he'd no money. I suppose it could have been a subtle kind of disguise." His eyebrows were raised in a question.

"It could have been," Bloggs said.

That afternoon Parkin found not one but three pictures of Faber. One of them was only nine years old. And Mr Middleton had the negative.

Heinrich Rudolph Hans von Müller-Güder (also known as Faber) was born on May 26, 1900, at a village called Oln in West Prussia. His father's family had been substantial landowners in the area for generations. His father was the second son; so was Heinrich. All the second sons were Army officers. His mother, the daughter of a senior official of the Second Reich, was born and raised to be an aristocrat's wife, and that was what she was.

At the age of thirteen Heinrich went to the Karlsrühe cadet school in Baden; two years later he was transferred to the more prestigious Gross-Lichterfelde, near Berlin. Both places were hard disciplinarian institutions where the minds of the pupils were improved with canes and cold baths and bad food. However, Heinrich learned to speak English and French and studied history, and passed the final examinations with the highest mark recorded since the turn of the century. There were only three other points of note in his school career: one bitter winter he rebelled against authority to the extent of sneaking out of the school at night and walking 150 miles to his aunt's house; he broke the arm of his wrestling instructor during a practice bout; and he was flogged for insubordination.

He served briefly as an ensign-cadet in the neutral zone of Friedrichsfeld, near Wesel, in 1920: did token officer training at the War School at Metz in 1921, and was commissioned Second Lieutenant in 1922.

("What was the phrase you used?" Godliman asked Bloggs, "German equivalent of Eton and Sandhurst?")

Over the next few years he did short tours of duty in half a dozen places, in the manner of one who is being groomed for the general staff. He continued to distinguish himself as an athlete, specialising in long-distance running. He made no close friendships, never married, and refused to join the National Socialist party. His promotion to lieutenant was somewhat delayed by a vague incident involving the pregnancy of the daughter of a lieutenant colonel in the Defence Ministry, but eventually came about in 1928. His habit of talking to superior officers as if they were equals came to be accepted as pardonable in one who was both a rising young officer and a Prussian aristocrat.

In the late '20s Admiral Wilhelm Canaris became friendly with Heinrich's Uncle Otto, his father's elder brother, and spent several holidays at the family estate at Oln. In 1931 Adolf Hitler, not yet Chancellor of Germany, was a guest there.

In 1933 Heinrich was promoted to captain, and went to Berlin for unspecified duties. This is the date of the last photograph.

About then, according to published information, he seems to have ceased to exist…

"We can conjecture the rest," said Percival Godliman. "The Abwehr trains him in wireless transmission, codes, map-making, burglary, blackmail, sabotage, and silent killing. He comes to London in about 1937 with plenty of time to set himself up with a solid cover, perhaps two. His loner instincts are honed sharp by the spying game. When war breaks out, he considers himself licenced to kill." He looked at the photograph on his desk. "He's a handsome fellow."

It was a picture of the 5,000 metres running team of the 10th Hanoverian Jaeger Battalion. Faber was in the middle, holding a cup. He had a high forehead, with cropped hair, a long chin, and a small mouth decorated with a narrow moustache.

Godliman passed the picture to Billy Parkin. "Has he changed much?"

"He looked a lot older, but that might have been his… bearing." He studied the photograph thoughtfully "His hair was longer, and the moustache was gone." He passed dhe picture back across the desk. "But it's him all right."

"There are two more items in the file, both of them conjectural," Godliman said. "First, they say he may have gone into Intelligence in 1933-that's the routine assumption when an officer's record just stops for no apparent reason. The second item is a rumour, unconfirmed by any reliable source, that he spent some years as a confidential advisor to Stalin, using the name Vasily Zankov."

"That's incredible," Bloggs said. "I don't believe that."

Godliman shrugged. "Somebody persuaded Stalin to execute the cream of his officer corps during the years Hitler rose to power."

Bloggs shook his head, and changed the subject. "Where do we go from here?"

Godliman considered. "Let's have Sergeant Parkin transferred to us. He's the only man we know who has actually seen Die Nadel. Besides, he knows too much for us to risk him in the front line; he could get captured and interrogated. Next, make a first-class print of this photo, and have the hair thickened and the moustache obliterated by a retouch artist. Then we can distribute copies."

"Do we want to start a hue and cry?" Bloggs said doubtfully.

"No. For now, let's tread softly. If we put the thing in the newspapers he'll get to hear of it and vanish. Just send the photo to police forces for the time being."

"Is that all?"

"I think so. Unless you've got other ideas."

Parkin cleared his throat. "Sir?"

"Yes."

"I really would prefer to go back to my unit. I'm not really the administrative type, if you see what I mean."

"You're not being offered a choice, Sergeant. At this stage, one Italian village more or less makes relatively little difference but this man Faber could lose us the war. Truly."

Faber had gone fishing.

He was stretched out on the deck of a thirty-foot boat, enjoying the spring sunshine, moving along the canal at about three knots. One lazy hand held the tiller, the other rested on a rod that trailed its line in the water behind the boat. He hadn't caught a thing all day.

As well as fishing, he was bird-watching, both out of interest (he was actually getting to know quite a lot about the damn birds) and as an excuse for carrying binoculars. Earlier today he had seen a kingfisher's nest.

The people at the boatyard in Norwich had been delighted to rent him the vessel for a fortnight. Business was bad they had only two boats nowadays, and one of them had not been used since Dunkirk. Faber had haggled over the price, just for the sake of form. In the end they had thrown in a locker full of tinned food.

He had bought bait in a shop nearby; the fishing tackle he had brought from London. They had observed that he had nice weather for it, and wished him good fishing. Nobody asked to see his identity card. So far, so good.

The difficult bit was to come. For assessing the strength of an army was difficult. First, for example, you had to find it.

In peacetime the Army would put up its own road signs to help you. Now they had been taken down, not only the Army's but everyone else's road signs.

The simple solution would be to get in a car and follow the first military vehicle you saw until it stopped. However, Faber had no car; it was close to impossible for a civilian to hire one, and even if you got one you couldn't get petrol for it. Besides, a civilian driving around the countryside following Army vehicles and looking at Army camps was likely to be arrested.

Hence the boat.

Some years ago, before it had become illegal to sell maps, Faber had discovered that Britain had thousands of miles of inland waterways. The original network of rivers had been augmented during the nineteenth century by a spider web of canals. In some areas there was almost as much waterway as there was road. Norfolk was one of these areas.

The boat had many advantages. On a road, a man was going somewhere; on a river he was just sailing. Sleeping in a parked car was conspicuous; sleeping in a moored boat was natural. The waterway was lonely. And who ever heard of a canal-block?

There were disadvantages. Airfields and barracks had to be near roads, but they were located without reference to access by water. Faber had to explore the countryside at night, leaving his moored boat and tramping the hillsides by moonlight, exhausting forty-mile round trips during which he could easily miss what he was looking for because of the darkness or because he simply did not have enough time to check every square mile of land.

When he returned, a couple of hours after dawn, he would sleep until midday, then move on, stopping occasionally to climb a nearby hill and check the outlook. At locks, isolated farmhouses, and riverside pubs he would talk to people, hoping for hints of a military presence. So far there had been none.

He was beginning to wonder whether he was in the right area. He had tried to put himself in General Patton's place, thinking: If I were planning to invade France east of the Seine from a base in eastern England, where would I locate that base?

Norfolk was obvious: a vast expanse of lonely countryside, plenty of flat ground for aircraft, close to the sea for rapid departure. And the Wash was a natural place to gather a fleet of ships. However, his guesswork might be wrong for reasons unknown to him. Soon he would have to consider a rapid move across country to a new area-perhaps the Fens.

A lock appeared ahead of him, and he trimmed his sails to slow his pace. He glided gently into the lock and bumped softly against the gates. The lock-keeper's house was on the bank. Faber cupped hands around his mouth and helloed. Then he settled down to wait. He had learned that lock-keepers were a breed that could not be hurried. Moreover, it was tea time, and at tea time they could hardly be moved at all.

A woman came to the door of the house and beckoned. Faber waved back, then jumped onto the bank, tied up the boat and went into the house. The lock-keeper was in his shirtsleeves at the kitchen table. He said, "Not in a hurry, are you?"

Faber smiled. "Not at all."

"Pour him a cup of tea, Mavis."

"No, really," Faber said politely.

"It's all right, we've just made a pot."

"Thank you." Faber sat down. The little kitchen was airy and clean, and his tea came in a pretty china cup. "Fishing holiday?" the lock-keeper asked.

"Fishing and bird-watching." Faber answered. "I'm thinking of tying up quite soon and spending a couple of days on land."

"Oh, aye. Well, best keep to the far side of the canal, then. Restricted area this side."

"Really? I didn't know there was Army land hereabouts."

"Aye, it starts about half a mile from here. As to whether it's Army, I wouldn't know. They don't tell me."

"Well, I suppose we don't need to know," Faber said.

"Aye. Drink up, then, and I'll see you through the lock. Thanks for letting me finish my tea."

They left the house, and Faber got into the boat and untied it. The gates behind him closed slowly, and then the keeper opened the sluices. The boat gradually sank with the level of the water in the lock, then the keeper opened the front gates.

Faber made sail and moved out. The lock-keeper waved.

He stopped again about four miles away and moored the boat to a stout tree on the bank. While he waited for night to fall he made a meal of tinned sausage meat, dry biscuits, and bottled water. He dressed in his black clothes, put into a shoulder bag his binoculars, camera, and copy of Rare Birds of East Anglia, pocketed his compass, and picked up his flashlight. He was ready.

He doused the hurricane lamp, locked the cabin door and jumped onto the bank. Consulting his compass by flashlight, he entered the belt of woodland along the canal.

He walked due south from his boat for about half a mile until he came to the fence. It was six feet high, chicken wire, with coiled barbed wire on top. He backtracked into the wood and climbed a tall tree.

There was scattered cloud above. The moon showed through fitfully. Beyond the fence was open land, a gentle rise. Faber had done this sort of thing before, at Biggin Hill, Aldershot, and a host of military areas all over southern England. There were two levels of security: a mobile patrol around the perimeter fence, and stationary sentries at the installations. Both, he felt, could be evaded by patience and caution.

Faber came down the tree and returned to the fence. He concealed himself behind a bush and settled down to wait.

He had to know when the mobile patrol passed this point. If they did not come until dawn he would simply return the following night. If he was lucky they would pass shortly. From the apparent size of the area under guard he guessed they would only make one complete tour of the fence each night.

He was lucky. Soon after ten o'clock he heard the tramp of feet, and three men marched by on the inside of the fence. Five minutes later Faber crossed the fence.

He walked due south; when all directions are equal, a straight line is best. He did not use his flashlight. He kept close to hedges and trees when he could, and avoided high ground where he might be silhouetted against a sudden flash of moonlight.

The sparse countryside was an abstract in black, grey, and silver. The ground underfoot was a little soggy, as if there might be marshes nearby. A fox ran across a field in front of him, as fast as a greyhound, as graceful as a cat.

It was 11:30 P.M. when he came across the first indications of military activity and very odd indications they were.

The moon came out and he saw, perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead, several rows of one-story buildings laid out with the unmistakable precision of an Army barracks. He dropped to the ground immediately, but he was already doubting the reality of what he apparently saw; for there were no lights and no noise.

He lay still for ten minutes, to give explanations a chance to emerge, but nothing happened except that a badger lumbered into view, saw him, and made off. Faber crawled forward.

As he got closer he realised that the barracks were not just unoccupied, but unfinished. Most of them were little more than a roof supported by cornerposts. Some had one wall.

A sudden sound stopped him: a man's laugh. He lay still and watched. A match flared briefly and died, leaving two glowing red spots in one of the unfinished huts. Guards.

Faber touched the stiletto in his sleeve, then began to crawl again, making for the side of the camp away from the sentries.

The half-built huts had no floors and no foundations. There were no construction vehicles around, no wheel-barrows, concrete mixers, shovels or piles of bricks. A mud track led away from the camp across the fields, but spring grass was growing in the ruts; it had not been used much lately.

It was as if someone had decided to billet 10,000 men here, then changed his mind a few weeks after building started.

Yet there was something about the place that did not quite fit that explanation.

Faber walked around softly, alert lest the sentries should take it into their heads to make a patrol. There was a group of military vehicles in the centre of the camp. They were old and rusting, and had been degutted: none had an engine or any interior components. But if one was going to cannibalise obsolete vehicles, why not take the shells for scrap? Those huts which did have a wall were on the outermost rows, and their walls faced out. It was like a film set, not a building site. Faber decided he had learned all he could from this place. He walked to the east edge of the camp, then dropped to his hands and knees and crawled away until he was out of sight behind a hedge. Half a mile further on, near the top of a rise, he looked back. Now it looked exactly like a barracks again.

The glimmer of an idea formed in his mind. He gave it time.

The land was still relatively flat, relieved only by gentle folds. There were patches of woodland and marshy scrub that Faber took advantage of. Once he had to detour around a lake, its surface a silver mirror under the moon. He heard the hoot of an owl, and looked in that direction to see a tumbledown barn in the distance. Five miles on he saw the airfield.

There were more planes here than he thought were possessed by the entire Royal Air Force. There were Pathfinders to drop flares, Lancasters and American B-17s for softening-up bombing, Hurricanes and Spitfires and Mosquitoes for reconnaissance and strafing; enough planes for an invasion.

Without exception their undercarriages had sunk into the soft earth and they were up to their bellies in mud. Once again there were no lights and no noise.

Faber followed the same procedure, crawling flat toward the planes until he located the guards. In the middle of the airfield was a small tent. The faint glow of a lamp shone through the canvas. Two men, perhaps three.

As Faber approached the planes they seemed to become flatter, as if they had all been squashed.

He reached the nearest and touched it in amazement. It was a piece of half-inch plywood, cut out in the outline of a Spitfire, painted with camouflage, and roped to the ground. Every other plane was the same. There were more than a thousand of them.

Faber got to his feet, watching the tent from the corner of his eye, ready to drop to the ground at the slightest sign of movement. He walked all around the phony airfield, looking at the phony fighters and bombers, connecting them with the movie-set barracks, reeling at the implications of what he had found.

He knew that if he continued to explore he would find more airfields like this, more half-built barracks. If he went to the Wash he would find a fleet of plywood destroyers and troop ships. It was a vast, meticulous, costly, outrageous trick.

Of course it could not possibly fool an onlooker for very long. But it was not designed to deceive observers on the ground. It was meant to be seen from the air.

Even a low-flying reconnaissance plane equipped with the latest cameras and fast film would come back with pictures that indisputably showed an enormous concentration of men and machines.

No wonder the general staff was anticipating an invasion east of the Seine.

There would be other elements to the deception, he guessed. The British would refer to FUSAG in signals, using codes they knew to be broken. There would be phony espionage reports channelled through the Spanish diplomatic bag to Hamburg. The possibilities were endless.

The British had had four years to arm themselves for this invasion. Most of the German army was fighting Russia. Once the Allies got a toehold on French soil they would be unstoppable. The Germans' only chance was to catch them on the beaches and annihilate them as they came off the troop ships.

If they were waiting in the wrong place, they would lose that one chance.

The whole strategy was immediately clear. It was simple, and it was devastating.

Faber had to tell Hamburg. He wondered whether they would believe him.

War strategy was rarely altered on the word of one man. His own standing was high, but was it that high?

That idiot Von Braun would never believe him. He'd hated Faber for years and would grab at the opportunity to discredit him. Canaris, Von Roenne… he had no faith in them.

And there was another thing: the radio. He didn't want to trust this to the radio… he'd had the feeling for weeks now that the radio code wasn't safe anymore. If the British found out that their secret was blown…

There was only one thing to do: he had to get proof, and he had to take it himself to Berlin. He needed photographs.

He would take photographs of this gigantic dummy army, then he would go to Scotland and meet the U-boat, and he would deliver the pictures personally to the Fuehrer. He could do no more. No less.

For photography he needed light. He would have to wait until dawn. There had been a ruined barn a little way back; he could spend the rest of the night there.

He checked his compass and set off. The barn was further than he thought, and the walk took him an hour. It was an old wooden building with holes in the roof. The rats had long ago deserted it for lack of food, but there were bats in the hayloft.

Faber lay down on some planks but he could not sleep. Not with the knowledge that he was now personally capable of altering the course of the war. Dawn was due at 05:21. At 04:20 Faber left the barn.

Although he had not slept, the two hours had rested his body and calmed his mind, and he was now in fine spirits. The cloud was clearing with a west wind, so although the moon had set there was starlight.

His timing was good. The sky was growing perceptibly brighter as he came in sight of the "airfield."

The sentries were still in their tent. With luck, they would be sleeping. Faber knew from his own experience of such duties that it was hardest to stay awake during the last few hours. But if they did come out, he would have to kill them.

He selected his position and loaded the Leica with a 36-frame roll of 35mm fast Agfa film. He hoped the film's light-sensitive chemicals had not spoiled; it had been stored in his suitcase since before the war, and you couldn't buy film in Britain nowadays. It should be all right; he had kept it in a lightproof bag away from any heat.

When the red rim of the sun edged over the horizon he began shooting. He took a series of shots from different vantage points and various distances, finishing with a close-up of one dummy plane; the pictures would show both the illusion and the reality.

As he took the last, he saw movement from the corner of his eye. He dropped flat and crawled under a plywood Mosquito. A soldier emerged from the tent, walked a few paces, and urinated on the ground. The man stretched and yawned, then lit a cigarette. He looked around the airfield, shivered, and returned to the tent. Faber got up and ran.

A quarter of a mile away he looked back. The airfield was out of sight. He headed west, toward the barracks.

This would be more than an ordinary espionage coup. Hitler had had a life of being the only one in step. The man who brought the proof that, yet again, the Fuehrer was right and all the experts were wrong, could look for more than a pat on the back. Faber knew that already Hitler rated him the Abwehr's best agent. This triumph might well get him Canaris' job. If he made it.

He increased his pace, jogging twenty yards, walking the next twenty, and jogging again, so that he reached the barracks by 06:30. It was bright daylight now, and he could not approach close because these sentries were not in a tent but in one of the wall-less huts with a clear view all around them. He lay down by the hedge and took his pictures from a distance. Ordinary prints would just show a barracks, but big enlargements ought to reveal the details of the deception.

When he headed back toward the boat he had exposed thirty frames. Again he hurried, because he was now terribly conspicuous, a black-clad man in the open fields of a restricted area. He reached the fence an hour later, having seen nothing but wild geese. As he climbed over the wire, he felt a great release of tension. Inside the fence the balance of suspicion had been against him; outside it was in his favour. He could revert to his bird-watching, fishing, sailing role. The period of greatest risk was over. He strolled through the belt of woodland, catching his breath and letting the strain of the night's work seep away.

He would sail a few miles on, he decided, before mooring again to catch a few hours' sleep.

He reached the canal. It was over. The boat looked pretty in the morning sunshine. As soon as he was under way he would make some tea.

A man in uniform stepped out of the cabin of the boat and said: "Well, well. And who might you be?"

Faber stood still, letting the icy calm and the old instincts come into play. The intruder wore the uniform of a captain in the Home Guard. He had some kind of handgun in a holster with a buttoned flap. He was tall and rangy, but he looked to be in his late fifties. White hair showed under his cap. He made no move to draw his gun. Faber took all this in as he said, "You are on my boat, so I think it is I who should ask who you are."

"Captain Stephen Langham, Home Guard."

"James Baker." Faber stayed on the bank. A captain did not patrol alone.

"And what are you doing?"

"I'm on holiday."

"Where have you been?"

"Bird-watching."

"Since before dawn? Cover him, Watson."

A youngish man in denim uniform appeared on Faber's left, carrying a shotgun. Faber looked around. There was another man to his right and a fourth behind him.

The captain called, "Which direction did he come from, corporal?"

The reply came from the top of an oak tree. "From the restricted area, sir."

Faber was calculating odds. Four to one until the corporal came down from the tree. They had only two guns: the shotgun and the captain's pistol. And they were basically amateurs. The boat would help too.

He said, "Restricted area? All I saw was a bit of fence. Look, do you mind pointing that blunderbuss away? It might go off."

"Nobody goes bird-watching in the dark," the captain said.

"If you set up your hide under cover of darkness, you're concealed by the time the birds wake up. It's the accepted way to do it. Now look, the Home Guard is jolly patriotic and keen and all that, but let's not take it too far. Don't you just have to check my papers and file a report?"

The captain was looking a shade doubtful. "What's in that canvas bag?"

"Binoculars, a camera, and a reference book." Faber's hand went to the bag.

"No, you don't," the captain said. "Look inside it, Watson."

There it was, the amateurs.

Watson said, "Raise your hands."

Faber raised his hands above his head, his right hand close to the left sleeve of his jacket. Faber choreographed the next few seconds; there must be no gunfire.

Watson came up on Faber's left side, pointing the shotgun at him, and opened the flap of Faber's canvas bag. Faber drew the stiletto from his sleeve, moved inside Watson's guard. and plunged the knife into Watson's neck up to the hilt. Faber's other hand twisted the shotgun out of the young man's grasp.

The other two soldiers on the bank moved toward him, and the corporal began to crash down through the branches of the oak.

Faber tugged the stiletto out of Watson's neck as the man collapsed to the ground. The captain was fumbling at the flap of his holster. Faber leaped into the well of the boat. It rocked, sending the captain staggering. Faber struck at him with the knife, but the man was too far away for an accurate thrust. The point caught in the lapel of his uniform jacket, then jerked up, slashing his chin. His hand came away from the holster to clutch the wound.

Faber whipped around to face the bank. One of the soldiers jumped. Faber stepped forward and held his right arm out rigidly. The leaping soldier impaled himself on the eight-inch stiletto.

The impact knocked Faber off his feet, and he lost his grip on the stiletto. The soldier fell on top of the weapon. Faber got to his knees; there was no time to retrieve the stiletto, the captain was opening his holster. Faber jumped at him, his hands going for the offlcer's face. The gun came out. Faber's thumbs gouged at the eyes of the captain, who screamed in pain and tried to push Faber's arms aside.

There was a thud as the fourth guardsman landed in the well of the boat. Faber turned from the captain, who would now be unable to see to fire his pistol, even if he could get the safety off. The fourth man held a policeman's truncheon; he brought it down hard. Faber shifted to the right so that the blow missed his head and caught his left shoulder. His left arm momentarily went nerveless. He chopped the man's neck with the side of his hand-a powerful accurate blow. Amazingly the man survived it and brought his truncheon up for a second swipe. Faber closed in. The feeling returned to his left arm, and it began to hurt mightily. He took the soldier's face in both his hands, pushed, twisted, and pushed again. There was a sharp crack as the man's neck broke. At the same instant the truncheon landed again, this time on Faber's head. He reeled away, dazed.

The captain bumped into him, still staggering. Faber pushed him. His cap went flying as he stumbled backward over the gunwale and fell into the canal with a huge splash.

The corporal jumped the last six feet from the oak tree onto the ground. Faber retrieved his stiletto from the impaled guard and leaped to the bank. Watson was still alive, but it would not be for long; blood was pumping out of the wound in his neck.

Faber and the corporal faced each other. The corporal had a gun.

He was understandably terrified. In the seconds it had taken him to climb down the oak tree this man had killed three of his mates and thrown the fourth into the canal.

Faber looked at the gun. It was old, almost like a museum piece. If the corporal had any confidence in it, he would already have fired it.

The corporal took a step forward, and Faber noticed that he favoured his right leg perhaps he had hurt it coming out of the tree. Faber stepped sideways, forcing the corporal to put his weight on the weak leg as he swung to keep his gun on the target. Faber got the toe of his shoe under a stone and kicked upward. The corporal's attention flicked to the stone, and Faber moved.

The corporal pulled the trigger; nothing happened. The old gun had jammed.

Even if it had fired, he would have missed Faber; his eyes were on the stone, he stumbled on the weak leg, and Faber had moved. Faber killed him with a neck stab. Only the captain was left.

Faber looked and saw the man clambering out of the water on the far bank. He found a stone and threw it. It hit the captain's head, but the man heaved himself onto dry land and began to run.

Faber ran to the bank, dived in, swam a few strokes, and came up on the far side. The captain was a hundred yards away and running but he was old. Faber gained steadily until he could hear the man's agonised, ragged breathing. The captain slowed, then collapsed into a bush. Faber came up to him and turned him over. The captain said "You're a… devil."

"You saw my face," Faber said, and killed him.

The Ju-S2 trimotor transport plane with swastikas on the wings bumped to a halt on the rain-wet runway at Rastenburg in the East Prussian forest. A small man with big features-a large nose, a wide mouth, big ears-disembarked and walked quickly across the tarmac to a waiting Mercedes car.

As the car drove through the gloomy, damp forest, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel took off his cap and rubbed a nervous hand along his receding hairline. In a few weeks time, he knew, another man would travel this route with a bomb in his briefcase, a bomb destined for the Fuehrer himself. Meanwhile the fight must go on, so that the new leader of Germany-who might even be himself-could negotiate with the Allies from a reasonably strong position.

At the end of a ten-mile drive the car arrived at the Wolfsschanze, the Wolf's Lair, headquarters now for Hitler and the increasingly tight, neurotic circle of generals who surrounded him.

There was a steady drizzle, and raindrops dripped from the tall conifers in the compound. At the gate to Hitler's personal quarters, Rommel put on his cap and got out of the car. Oberfuehrer Rattenhuber, the chief of the SS bodyguard, wordlessly held out his hand to receive Rommel's pistol. The conference was to be held in the underground bunker: a cold, damp, airless shelter lined with concrete. Rommel went down the steps and entered. There were a dozen or so there already waiting for the noon meeting: Himmler, Goering, von Ribbentrop, Keitel. Rommel nodded greetings and sat on a hard chair to wait.

They all stood when Hitler entered. He wore a grey tunic and black trousers, and, Rommel observed, he was becoming increasingly stooped. He walked straight to the far end of the bunker where a large wall map of northwestern Europe was tacked to the concrete. He looked tired and irritable. He spoke without preamble.

"There will be an Allied invasion of Europe. It will come this year. It will be launched from Britain, with English and American troops. They will land in France. We will destroy them at the high-water mark. On this there is no room for discussion."

He looked around, as if daring his staff to contradict him. There was silence. Rommel shivered; the bunker was as cold as death.

"The question is, where will they land? Von Roenne, your report."

Colonel Alexis von Roenne, who had taken over, effectively, from Canaris, got to his feet. A mere captain at the outbreak of war, he had distinguished himself with a superb report on the weaknesses of the French army-a report that had been called a decisive factor in the German victory. He had become chief of the army intelligence bureau in 1942, and that bureau had absorbed the Abwehr on the fall of Canaris. Rommel had heard that he was proud and outspoken, but able.

Von Roenne said, "Our information is extensive, but by no means complete. The Allies' code name for the invasion is Overlord. Troop concentrations in Britain are as follows-" He picked up a pointer and crossed the room to the wall map. "First: along the south coast. Second: here in the district known as East Anglia. Third: in Scotland. The East Anglian concentration is by far the greatest. We conclude that the invasion will be three-pronged. First: a diversionary attack on Normandy. Second: the main thrust, across the Strait of Dover to the Calais coast. Third: a flanking invasion from Scotland across the North Sea to Norway. All intelligence sources support this prognosis." He sat down.

Hitler said, "Comments?"

Rommel, who was Commander of Army Group B which controlled the north coast of France, said, "I can report one confirming sign: the Pas de Calais has received by far the greatest tonnage of bombs."

Goering said, "What intelligence sources support your prognosis, Von Roenne?"

Von Roenne stood up again. "There are three: air reconnaissance, monitoring of enemy wireless signals, and the reports of agents." He sat down.

Hitler crossed his hands protectively in front of his genitals, a nervous habit that was a sign that he was about to make a speech. "I shall now tell you," he began, "how I would be thinking if I were Winston Churchill. Two choices confront me: east of the Seine, or west of the Seine. East has one advantage: it is nearer. But in modern warfare there are only two distances: within fighter range and outside fighter range. Both of these choices are within fighter range. Therefore distance is not a consideration.

"West has a great port-Cherbourg-but east has none. And most important, east is more heavily fortified than west. The enemy too has air reconnaissance.

"So, I would choose west. And what would I do then? I would try to make the Germans think the opposite! I would send two bombers to the Pas de Calais for every one to Normandy. I would try to knock out every bridge over the Seine. I would put out misleading wireless signals, send false intelligence reports, dispose my troops in a misleading fashion. I would deceive fools like Rommel and von Roenne. I would hope to deceive the Fuehrer himself!"

Goering spoke first after a lengthy silence. "My Fuehrer, I believe you flatter Churchill by crediting him with ingenuity equal to your own."

There was a noticeable easing of tension in the uncomfortable bunker. Goering had said exactly the right thing, managing to voice his disagreement in the form of a compliment. The others followed him, each stating the case a little more strongly: the Allies would choose the shorter sea crossing for speed; the closer coast would allow the covering fighter aircraft to refuel and return in shorter time; the southeast was a better launch pad, with more estuaries and harbours; it was unlikely that all the intelligence reports would be wrong.

Hitler listened for half an hour, then held up his hands for silence. He picked up a yellowing sheaf of papers from the table and waved them. "In 1941," he said, "I issued my directive Construction of Coastal Defences, in which I forecast that the decisive landing of the Allies would come at the protruding parts of Normandy and Brittany, where the excellent harbours would make ideal beachheads. That was what my intuition told me then, and that is what it tells me now!" A fleck of foam appeared on the Fuehrer's lower lip.

Von Roenne spoke up. (He has more courage than I, Rommel thought.) "My Puehrer, our investigations continue, quite naturally, and there is one particular line of enquiry that you should know about. I have in recent weeks sent an emissary to England to contact the agent known as Die Nadel."

Hitler's eyes gleamed. "Ah! I know the man. Go on."

"Die Nadel's orders are to assess the strength of the First United States Army Group under General Patton in East Anglia. If he finds that this has been exaggerated, we must surely reconsider our prognosis. If, however, he reports that the army is as strong as we presently believe, there can be little doubt that Calais is the target."

Goering looked at von Roenne. "Who is this Nadel?'

Hitler answered the question. "The only decent agent Canaris ever recruited because he recruited him at my direction. I know his family: strong, loyal, upright Germans. And Die Nadel… a brilliant man, brilliant! I see all his reports. He has been in London since-"

Von Roenne interrupted: "My Fuehrer."

Hitler glared at him. "Well?"

Von Roenne said tentatively, "Then you will accept Die Nadel's report?"

Hitler nodded. "That man will discover the truth."