Eye Of The Needle

PART THREE

Faber leaned against a tree, shivering, and threw up. Then he considered whether he should bury the five dead men.

It would take between thirty and sixty minutes, he estimated, depending on how well he concealed the bodies. During that time he might be caught.

He had to weigh that risk against the precious hours he might gain by delaying the discovery of the deaths. The five men would be missed very soon; there would be a search under way by around nine o'clock. Assuming they were on a regular patrol, their route would be known. The searchers' first move would be to send a runner to cover the route. If the bodies were left as they were, he would see them and raise the alarm. Otherwise, he would report back and a full-scale search would be mounted, with bloodhounds and policemen beating the bushes. It might take them all day to discover the corpses. By that time Faber could be in London. It was important for him to be out of the area before they knew they were looking for a murderer. He decided to risk the additional hour.

He swam back across the canal with the elderly captain across his shoulder, dumped him unceremoniously behind a bush, then retrieved the two bodies from the well of the boat and piled them on top of the captain. Next he added Watson and the corporal to the heap.

He had no spade and he needed a big grave. He found a patch of loose earth a few yards into the wood. The ground there was slightly hollowed, to give him an advantage. He got a saucepan from the boat's tiny galley and began to dig.

For a couple of feet there was just leaf mould, and the going was easy. Then he got down to clay and digging became extremely difficult. In half an hour he had added only another eighteen inches of depth to the hole. It would have to do.

He carried the bodies to the hole one by one and threw them in. Then he took off his muddy, bloodstained clothes and dropped them on top. He covered the grave with loose earth and a layer of foliage ripped from nearby bushes and trees. It should be good enough to pass that first superficial inspection.

He kicked earth over the patch of ground near the bank where the life-blood of Watson had poured out. There was blood in the boat, too, where the impaled soldier had lain. Faber found a rag and swabbed down the deck. Then he put on clean clothes, made sail, and moved off.

He did not fish or watch birds; this was no time for pleasant embellishments to his cover. Instead he piled on the sail, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the grave. He had to get off the water and into some faster transport as soon as possible. He reflected, as he sailed, on the relative merits of catching a train and stealing a car. A car was faster, if one could be found to steal; but the search for it might start quite soon, regardless of whether the theft was connected with the missing Home Guard patrol. Finding a railway station might take a long time, but it seemed safer; if he were careful he could escape suspicion for most of the day.

He wondered what to do about the boat. Ideally he would scuttle it, but he might be seen doing so. If he left it in a harbour somewhere, or simply moored at the canalside, the police would connect it with the murders that much sooner, and that would tell them in which direction he was moving. He postponed the decision.

Unfortunately, he was not sure where he was. His map of England's waterways gave every bridge, harbour and lock; but it did not show railway lines. He calculated he was within an hour or two's walk of half a dozen villages, but a village did not necessarily mean a station. The two problems were solved at once; the canal went under a railway bridge. He took his compass, the film from the camera, his wallet, and his stiletto.

All his other possessions would go down with the boat.

The towpath on both sides was shaded with trees, and there were no roads nearby. He furled the sails, dismantled the base of the mast, and laid the pole on the deck. Then he removed the bung-hole stopper from the keel and stepped on to the bank, holding the rope.

Gradually filling with water, the boat drifted under the bridge. Faber hauled on the rope to hold the vessel in position directly under the brick arch as it sank. The afterdeck went under first, the prow followed, and finally the water of the canal closed over the roof of the cabin. There were a few bubbles, then nothing. The outline of the boat was hidden from a casual glance by the shadow of the bridge. Faber threw the rope in.

The railway line ran northeast to southwest. Faber climbed the embankment and walked southwest, which was the direction in which London lay. It was a two-line track, probably a rural branch line. There would be a few trains, but they would stop at all stations.

The sun grew stronger as he walked, and the exertion made him hot. When he had buried his bloodstained black clothes he had put on a double-breasted blazer and heavy flannel trousers. Now he took off the blazer and slung it over his shoulder.

After forty minutes he heard a distant chuff-chuff-chuff and hid in a bush beside the line. An old steam engine went slowly by, heading northeast, puffing great clouds of smoke and hauling a train of coal trucks. If one came by in the opposite direction, he could jump it. Should he? It would save him a long walk. On the other hand, he would get conspicuously dirty and he might have trouble disembarking without being seen. No, it was safer to walk.

The line ran straight as an arrow across the flat countryside. Faber passed a farmer, ploughing a field with a tractor. There was no way to avoid being seen. The farmer waved to him without stopping in his work. He was too far away to get a good sight of Faber's face.

He had walked about ten miles when he saw a station ahead. It was half a mile away, and all he could see was the rise of the platforms and a cluster of signals. He left the line and cut across the fields, keeping close to borders of trees, until he met a road.

Within a few minutes he entered the village. There was nothing to tell him its name. Now that the threat of invasion was a memory, sign-posts and place-names were being re-erected, but this village had not got around to it.

There was a Post Office, a Corn Store, and a pub called The Bull. A woman with a pram gave him a friendly "Good morning!" as he passed the War Memorial. The little station basked sleepily in the spring sunshine. Faber went in.

A timetable was pasted to a notice-board. Faber stood in front of it. From behind the little ticket window a voice said: "I shouldn't take any notice of that, if I were you. It's the biggest work of fiction since The Forsyte Saga."

Faber had known the timetable would be out of date, but he had needed to establish whether the trains went to London. They did. He said, "Any idea what time the next train leaves for Liverpool Street?"

The clerk laughed sarcastically. "Sometime today, if you're lucky."

"I'll buy a ticket anyway. Single, please."

"Five-and-fourpence. They say the Italian trains run on time," the clerk said.

"Not anymore," Faber remarked. "Anyway, I'd rather have bad trains and our politics."

The man shot him a nervous look. "You're right, of course. Do you want to wait in The Bull? You'll hear the train or, if not, I'll send for you."

Faber did not want more people to see his face. "No, thanks, I'd only spend money." He took his ticket and went on to the platform.

The clerk followed him a few minutes later, and sat on the bench beside him in the sunshine. He said, "You in a hurry?"

Faber shook his head. "I've written today off. I got up late, I quarrelled with the boss, and the truck that gave me a lift broke down."

"One of those days. Ah, well." The clerk looked at his watch. "She went up on time this morning, and what goes up must come down, they say. You might be lucky." He went back into his office.

Faber was lucky. The train came twenty minutes later. It was crowded with farmers, families, businessmen, and soldiers. Faber found a space on the floor close to a window. As the train lumbered away, he picked up a discarded two-day-old newspaper, borrowed a pencil, and started to do the crossword. He was proud of his ability to do crosswords in English-it was the acid test of fluency in a foreign language. After a while the motion of the train lulled him into a shallow sleep, and he dreamed. It was a familiar dream, the dream of his arrival in London. He had crossed from France, carrying a Belgian passport that said he was Jan van Gelder, a representative for Phillips (which would explain his suitcase radio if Customs opened it). His English then was fluent but not colloquial. The Customs had not bothered him; he was an ally. He had caught the train to London. In those days there had been plenty of empty seats in the carriages, and you could get a meal. Faber had dined on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. It amused him. He had talked with a history student from Cardiff about the European political situation. The dream was like the reality until the train stopped at Waterloo. Then it turned into a nightmare.

The trouble started at the ticket barrier. Like all dreams it had its own weird illogicality. The document they queried was not his forged passport but his perfectly legitimate railway ticket. The collector said, "This is an Abwehr ticket."

"No, it is not," said Faber, speaking with a ludicrously thick German accent. What had happened to his dainty English consonants? They would not come. "I have it in Dover gekauft." Damn, that did it.

But the ticket collector, who had turned into a London policeman complete with helmet, seemed to ignore the sudden lapse into German. He smiled politely and said, "I'd better just check your Klamotte, sir."

The station was crowded with people. Faber thought that if be could get into the crowd he might escape. He dropped the suitcase radio and fled, pushing his way through the crowd. Suddenly he realised he had left his trousers on the train, and there were swastikas on his socks. He would have to buy trousers at the very first shop, before people noticed the trouserless running man with Nazi hose. Then someone in the crowd said, "I've seen your face before," and tripped him, and he fell with a bump and landed on the floor of the railway carriage where he had gone to sleep.

He blinked, yawned and looked around him. He had a headache. For a moment he was filled with relief that it was all a dream, then he was amused by the ridiculousness of the symbolism: swastika socks, for God's sake!

A man in overalls beside him said, "You had a good sleep."

Faber looked up sharply. He was always afraid of talking in his sleep and giving himself away. "I had an unpleasant dream," he said. The man made no comment.

It was getting dark. He had slept for a long time. The carriage light came on suddenly, a single blue bulb, and someone drew the blinds. People's faces turned into pale, featureless ovals. The workman became talkative again. "You missed the excitement," he told Faber.

Faber frowned. "What happened?" It was impossible he should have slept through some kind of police check.

"One of them Yank trains passed us. It was going about ten miles an hour, nigger driving it, ringing its bell, with a bloody great cowcatcher on the front! Talk about the Wild West-'

Faber smiled and thought back to the dream. In fact his arrival in London had been without incident. He had checked into a hotel at first, still using his Belgian cover. Within a week he had visited several country churchyards, taken the names of men his age from the gravestones, and applied for three duplicate birth certificates. Then he took lodgings and found humble work, using forged references from a nonexistent Manchester firm. He had even got on to the electoral register in Highgate before the war. He voted Conservative. When rationing came in, the ration books were issued via householders to every person who had slept in the house on a particular night. Faber contrived to spend part of that night in each of three different houses, and so obtained papers for each of his personae. He burned the Belgian passport; in the unlikely event he should need a passport, he could get three British ones.

The train stopped, and from the noise outside the passengers guessed they had arrived. When Faber got out he realised how hungry and thirsty he was. His last meal had been sausage-meat, dry biscuits and bottled water, twenty-four hours ago. He went through the ticket barrier and found the station buffet. It was full of people, mostly soldiers, sleeping or trying to sleep at the tables. Faber asked for a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea.

"The food is reserved for servicemen," said the woman behind the counter.

"Just the tea, then."

"Got a cup?"

Faber was surprised. "No, I haven't."

"Neither have we, chum."

Faber contemplated going into the Great Eastern Hotel for dinner, but that would take time. He found a pub and drank two pints of weak beer, then bought a bag of chips at a fish-and-chip shop and ate them from the newspaper wrapping, standing on the pavement. They made him feel surprisingly full.

Now he had to find a chemist's shop and break in.

He wanted to develop his film, to make sure the pictures came out. He was not going to risk returning to Germany with a roll of spoiled, useless film. If the pictures were no good he would have to steal more film and go back. The thought was unbearable.

It would have to be a small independent shop, not a branch of a chain that would process film centrally. It must be in an area where the local people could afford cameras (or could have afforded them before the war). The part of East London in which Liverpool Street station stood was no good. He decided to head toward Bloomsbury.

The moonlit streets were quiet. There had been no sirens so far tonight. Two Military Policemen stopped him in Chancery Lane and asked for his identity card. Faber pretended to be slightly drunk, and the MPs did not ask what he was doing out of doors.

He found the shop he was looking for at the north end of Southampton Row. There was a Kodak sign in the window. Surprisingly, the shop was open. He went in.

A stooped, irritable man with thinning hair and glasses stood behind the counter, wearing a white coat. He said, "We're only open for doctor's prescriptions."

"That's all right. I just want to ask whether you develop photographs."

"Yes, if you come back tomorrow."

"Do you do them on the premises?" Faber asked. "I need them quickly, you see."

"Yes, if you come back tomorrow."

"Could I have the prints the same day? My brother's on leave, and he wants to take some back."

"Twenty-four hours is the best we can do. Come back tomorrow."

"Thank you, I will." On his way out he noticed that the shop was due to close in ten minutes. He crossed the road and stood in the shadows, waiting.

Promptly at nine o'clock the chemist came out, locking the shop behind him, and walked off down the road. Faber went in the opposite direction and turned two corners.

There seemed to be no direct access to the back of the shop, and Faber did not want to break in the front way in case the unlocked door was noticed by a patrolling policeman while he was in there. He walked along the parallel street, looking for a way through. Apparently there was none. Still, there had to be a wall of some kind at the back, the two streets were too far apart for the buildings to be joined back-to-back.

Finally he came across a large old house with a nameplate marking it as a residence hall for a nearby college. The front door was unlocked. Faber went in and walked quickly through to a communal kitchen. A lone girl sat at a table, drinking coffee and reading a book. Faber muttered, "College blackout check." She nodded and returned to her text. Faber went out of the back door.

He crossed a yard, bumping into a cluster of dustbins on the way, and found a door to a lane. In seconds he was at the rear of the chemist's shop. This entrance was obviously never used. He clambered over some tyres and a discarded mattress, and threw his shoulder at the door. The rotten wood gave easily, and Faber was inside.

He found the darkroom and shut himself in. The light switch operated a dim red lamp in the ceiling.

The place was quite well equipped, with neatly labelled bottles of developing fluid, an enlarger, and even a dryer for prints.

Faber worked quickly but carefully, getting the temperature of the tanks exactly right, agitating the fluids to develop the film evenly, timing the processes by the hands of a large electric clock on the wall. The negatives were perfect.

He let them dry, then fed them through the enlarger and made one complete set of ten-by-eight prints. He felt a sense of elation as he saw the images gradually appear in the bath of developer. Damn, he had done a good job! There was now a major decision to be made.

The problem had been in his mind all day, and now that the pictures had come out he was forced to confront it. What if he did not make it home?

The journey ahead of him was, to say the least, hazardous. He was more than confident of his own ability to make the rendezvous in spite of travel restrictions and coastal security; but he could not guarantee that the U-boat would be there; or that it would get back across the North Sea. And, of course, he might walk out of here and get run over by a bus.

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

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

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

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

It would do. It would have to do.

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

Faber's mind was clear. The balance of argument indisputably favoured the Portuguese Embassy contact.

He sat down to write a letter.

Frederick Bloggs had spent an unpleasant afternoon in the countryside.

When five worried wives had contacted their local police station to say their husbands had not come home, a rural police-constable had exercised his limited powers of deduction and concluded that a whole patrol of the Home Guard had not gone AWOL. He was fairly sure they had simply got lost. They were all a bit daft, otherwise they would have been in the Army, but all the same he notified his constabulary headquarters just to cover himself. The operations-room sergeant who took the message realised at once that the missing men had been patrolling a particularly sensitive military area, and he notified his inspector, who notified Scotland Yard, who sent a Special Branch man down there and notified MI5, which sent Bloggs.

The Special Branch man was Harris, who had been on the Stockwell murder. He and Bloggs met on the train, which was one of the Wild West locomotives lent to Britain by the Americans because of the shortage of trains. Harris repeated his invitation to Sunday dinner, and Bloggs told him again that he worked most Sundays.

When they got off the train they borrowed bicycles to ride along the canal towpath until they met up with the search party. Harris, ten years older than Bloggs and fifty-five pounds heavier, found the ride a strain.

They met a section of the search party under a railway bridge. Harris welcomed the opportunity to get off the bicycle. "What have you found?" he said. "Bodies?"

"No, a boat," said a policeman. "Who are you?"

They introduced themselves. A constable stripped to his underwear was diving down to examine the vessel. He came up with a bung in his hand. Bloggs looked at Harris. "Deliberately scuttled?"

"Looks like it." Harris turned to the diver. "Notice anything else?"

"She hasn't been down there for long, she's in good condition, and the mast has been taken down, not broken."

Harris said, "That's a lot of information from a minute under water."

"I'm a weekend sailor," the diver said. Harris and Bloggs mounted their cycles and moved on.

When they met up with the main party, the bodies had been found.

"Murdered, all five," said the uniformed inspector in charge. "Captain Langham, Corporal Lee, and Privates Watson, Dayton and Forbes. Dayton's neck was broken, the rest were killed with some kind of a knife. Langham's body had been in the canal. All found together in a shallow grave. Bloody murder." He was quite shaken.

Harris looked closely at the five bodies, laid out in a line. "I've seen wounds like this before, Fred," he said. Bloggs looked closely. "Jesus Christ, it looks like-"

Harris nodded. "Stiletto."

The inspector said in astonishment, "You know who did it?"

"We can guess," Harris said. "We think he's killed twice before. If it's the same man, we know who he is but not where he is."

"What with the restricted area so close," the inspector said, "and Special Branch and M15 arriving on the scene so quick, is there anything else I need to know about this case?"

Harris answered, "Just that you keep very quiet until your chief constable has talked to our people."

"Found anything else, inspector?" Bloggs asked.

"We're still going over the area, and in ever-widening circles; but nothing so far. There were some clothes in the grave." He pointed. Bloggs touched them gingerly; black trousers, a black sweater, a short black leather jacket, RAF-style. "Clothes for night work," Harris said.

"To fit a big man," Bloggs added.

"How tall is your man?"

"Over six foot."

The inspector said, "Did you pass the men who found the sunken boat?"

"Yes," Bloggs frowned. "Wbere's the nearest lock?"

"Four miles upstream."

"If our man was in a boat, the lock-keeper must have seen him, mustn't he?"

"Must have," the inspector agreed.

Bloggs said, "We'd better talk to him." He returned to his bicycle.

"Not another four miles," Harris complained.

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

The four-mile ride took them most of an hour. The towpath was made for horses, not wheels, and it was uneven, muddy, and mined with loose boulders and tree roots. Harris was sweating and cursing by the time they reached the lock.

The lock-keeper was sitting outside his little house, smoking a pipe and enjoying the mild afternoon air. He was a middle-aged man of slow speech and slower movements. He regarded the two cyclists with some amusement.

Bloggs spoke, because Harris was out of breath. "We're police officers," he said.

"Is that so?" said the lock-keeper. "What's the excitement?" He looked as excited as a cat in front of a fire.

Bloggs took the photograph of Die Nadel out of his wallet and gave it to the man. "Have you ever seen him?"

The lock-keeper put the picture on his lap while he held a fresh match to his pipe. Then he studied the photograph for a while, and handed it back. "Well?" Harris said.

"Aye. He was here about this time yesterday. Came in for a cup of tea. Nice enough chap. What's he done, shown a light after blackout?"

Bloggs sat down heavily. "That clinches it," he said.

Harris thought aloud. "He moors the boat downstream from here and goes into the restricted area after dark." He spoke quietly, so that the lock-keeper would not hear. "When he comes back, the Home Guard has his boat staked out. He deals with them, sails a bit further to the railway, scuttles his boat and… hops a train?"

Bloggs said to the lock-keeper: "The railway line that crosses the canal a few miles downstream-where does it go?"

"London."

Bloggs said, "Oh, shit."

Bloggs got back to the War Office in Whitehall at midnight. Godliman and Billy Parkin were there waiting for him. Bloggs said, "It's him, all right," and told them the story.

Parkin was excited, Godliman just looked tense. When Bloggs had finished, Godliman said: "So now he's back in London, and we're looking for, in more ways than one, a needle in a haystack again." He was playing with matches, forming a picture with them on his desk. "Do you know, every time I look at that photograph I get the feeling I've actually met the damn fellow."

"Well, think, for God's sake," Bloggs said. "Where?"

Godliman shook his head in frustration. "It must have been only once, and somewhere strange. It's like a face I've seen in a lecture audience, or in the background at a cocktail party. A fleeting glimpse, a casual encounter. When I remember it probably won't do us any good."

Parkin said, "What's in that area?"

"I don't know, which means it's probably highly important," Godliman said.

There was a silence. Parkin lit a cigarette with one of Godliman's matches. Bloggs looked up. "We could print a million copies of his picture; give one to every policeman, ARP warden, member of the Home Guard, serviceman, railway porter; paste them up on boardings and publish them in the papers…"

Godliman shook his head. "Too risky. What if he's already talked to Hamburg about whatever he's seen? If we make a public fuss about the man they'll know that his information is good. We'd only be lending credence to him."

"We've got to do something."

"We'll circulate his picture to police officers. We'll give his description to the press and say he's just a conventional murderer. We can give the details of the Highgate and Stockwell murders, without saying that security is involved."

Parkin said, "what you're saying is, we have to fight with one hand tied behind our back."

"For now anyway."

"I'll start the ball rolling with the Yard," Bloggs said. He picked up the phone.

Godliman looked at his watch. "There's not much more we can do tonight, but I don't feel like going home. I shan't sleep."

Parkin stood up. "In that case, I'm going to find a kettle and make some tea." He went out.

The matches on Godliman's desk made a picture of a horse and carriage. He took away one of the horse's legs and lit his pipe with it. "Have you got a girl, Fred?" he asked conversationally.

"No."

"Not since?"

"No."

Godliman puffed at his pipe. "There has to be an end to bereavement, you know."

Bloggs made no reply.

Godliman said, "Look, perhaps I shouldn't talk to you like a Dutch uncle. But I know how you feel; I've been through it myself. The only difference was that I didn't have anyone to blame."

"You didn't remarry," Bloggs said, not looking at Godliman.

"No, and I don't want you to make the same mistake. When you reach middle age, living alone can be very depressing."

"Did I ever tell you they called her Fearless Bloggs?"

"Yes, you did."

Bloggs finally looked at Godliman. "Tell me, where in the world will I find another girl like that?"

"Does she have to be a hero?"

"After Christine…"

"England is full of heroes, Fred."

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

Bloggs said: "Excuse me, but why are you so sure their man found out?"

Terry went to the door. "Come in, Rodriguez."

A tall, handsome man with jet-black hair and a long nose entered the room and nodded politely to Godliman and Bloggs. Terry said: "Senhor Rodriguez is our man at the Portuguese Embassy. Tell them what happened, Rodriguez."

The man stood by the door. "As you know, we have been watching Senhor Francisco of the embassy staff for some time. Today he went to meet a man in a taxi, and received an envelope. We relieved him of the envelope shortly after the man in the taxi drove off. We were able to get the licence number of the taxi."

"I'm having the cabbie traced," Terry said. "All right, Rodriguez, you'd better get back. And thank you."

The tall Portuguese left the room. Terry handed Godliman a large yellow envelope, addressed to Manuel Francisco. Godliman opened it- it had already been unsealed-and withdrew a second envelope marked with a meaningless series of letters: presumably a code.

Within the inner envelope were several sheets of paper covered with handwriting and a set of ten-by-eight photographs. Godliman examined the letter. "It looks like a very basic code," he said.

"You don't need to read it," Terry said impatiently. "Look at the photographs."

Godliman did so. There were about thirty of them, and he looked at each one before speaking. He handed them to Bloggs. "This is a catastrophe." Bloggs glanced through the pictures, then put them down.

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

The three men sat still in the little office, like a tableau. The only illumination came from a spotlight on Godliman's desk. With the cream walls, the blacked-out window, the spare furniture and the worn Civil Service carpet, it was a prosaic backdrop for dramatics. Terry said, "I'm going to have to tell Churchill."

The phone rang, and the colonel picked it up. "Yes. Good. Bring him here right away, please, but before you do, ask him where he dropped the passenger. What? Thank you, get here fast." He hung up. "The taxi dropped our man at University College Hospital."

Bloggs said, "Perhaps he was injured in the fight with the Home Guard." Terry said, "Where is the hospital?"

"About five minuses' walk from Euston Station," Godliman said. "Trains from Euston go to Holyhead, Liverpool, Glasgow… all places from which you can catch a ferry to Ireland."

"Liverpool to Belfast," Bloggs said. "Then a car to the border across into Eire, and a U-boat on the Atlantic coast. Somewhere. He wouldn't risk Holyhead-to-Dublin because of the passport control, and there would be no point in going beyond Liverpool to Glasgow."

Godliman said, "Fred, you'd better go to the station and show the picture of Faber around, see if anyone noticed him getting on a train. I'll phone the station and warn them you're coming, and at the same time find out which trains have left since about ten thirty."

Bloggs picked up his hat and coat. "I'm on my way."

Godliman lifted the phone. "Yes, we're on our way."

There were still plenty of people at Euston Station. Although in normal times the station closed around midnight, wartime delays were such that the last train often had not left before the earliest milk train of the morning arrived. The station concourse was a mass of kitbags and sleeping bodies.

Bloggs showed the picture to three railway policemen. None of them recognised the face. He tried ten women porters: nothing. He went to every ticket barrier. One of the guards said, "We look at tickets, not faces." He tried half a dozen passengers without result. Finally he went into the ticket office and showed the picture to each of the clerks.

A very fat, bald clerk with ill-fitting false teeth recognised the face. "I play a game," he told Bloggs. "I try to spot something about a passenger that tells me why he's catching a train. Like, he might have a black tie for a funeral, or muddy boots means he's a farmer going home, or there might be a college scarf, or a white mark on a woman's finger where she's took off her wedding ring… know what I mean? Everybody got something. This is a dull job, not that I'm complaining-"

"What did you notice about this fellow?" Bloggs interrupted him.

"Nothing. That was it, see-I couldn't make him out at all. Almost like he was trying to be inconspicuous, know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean." Bloggs paused. "Now, I want you to think very carefully. Where was he going, can you remember?"

"Yes," said the fat clerk. "Inverness."

"That doesn't mean he's going there," said Godliman. "He's a professional-he knows we can ask questions at railway stations. I expect he automatically buys a ticket for the wrong destination." He looked at his watch. "He must have caught the 11:45. That train is now pulling into Stafford. I checked with the railway; they checked with the signalmen.

"They're going to stop the train this side of Crewe. I've got a plane standing by to fly you two to Stoke-on-Trent.

"Parkin, you'll board the train where it's stopped, outside Crewe. You'll be dressed as a ticket inspector, and you'll look at every ticket and every face on that train. When you've spotted Faber, just stay close to him.

"Bloggs, you'll be waiting at the ticket barrier at Crewe, just in case Faber decides to hop off there. But he won't. You'll get on the train, and be first off at Liverpool, and waiting at the ticket barrier for Parkin and Faber to come off it. Half the local constabulary will be there to back you up."

"That's all very well if he doesn't recognise me," Parkin said. "What if he remembers my face from Highgate?"

Godliman opened a desk drawer, took out a pistol, and gave it to Parkin. "If he recognises you, shoot him." Parkin pocketed the weapon without comment.

Godliman said: "You heard Colonel Terry, but I want to emphasise the importance of all this. If we don't catch this man, the invasion of Europe will have to be postponed possibly for a year. In that year the balance of war could turn against us. The time may never be this right again."

Bloggs said: "Do we get told how long it is to D-Day?"

Godliman decided they were at least as entitled as he; they were going into the field, after all. "All I know is that it's probably a matter of weeks."

Parkin was thinking, "It'll be June, then."

The phone rang and Godliman picked it up.

After a moment he looked up. "Your car's here."

Bloggs and Parkin stood up.

Godliman said, "Wait a minute."

They stood by the door, looking at the professor.

He was saying, "Yes, sir. Certainly. I will. Good-bye, sir."

Bloggs could not think of anyone Godliman called Sir. He said: "Who was that?"

Godliman said, "Churchill."

"what did he have to say?" Parkin asked, awestruck.

Godliman said, "He wishes you both good luck and Godspeed."

The carriage was pitch dark. Faber thought of the jokes people made, "Take your hand off my knee. No, not you, you." The British would make jokes out of anything. Their railways were now worse than ever, but nobody complained any more because it was in a good cause. Faber preferred the dark; it was anonymous.

There had been singing, earlier on. Three soldiers in the corridor had started it, and the whole carriage had joined in. They had been through "Be Like the Kettle and Sing", "There'll Always Be an England" (followed by "Glasgow Belongs to Me" and "Land of My Fathers" for ethnic balance), and, appropriately, "Don't Get Around Much Any More."

There had been an air raid warning, and the train slowed to thirty miles an hour. They were all supposed to lie on the floor, but of course there was no room. An anonymous female voice had said, "Oh, God, I'm frightened," and a male voice, equally anonymous except that it was cockney, had said: "You're in the safest place, girl they can't 'it a moving target." Then everyone laughed and nobody was scared any more. Someone opened a suitcase and passed around a packet of dried-egg sandwiches.

One of the sailors wanted to play cards. "How can we play cards in the dark?"

"Peel the edges. All Harry's cards are marked."

The train stopped unaccountably at about 4 A.M. A cultured voice -the dried-egg-sandwich supplier, Faber thought-said, "My guess is we're outside Crewe."

"Knowing the railways, we could be anywhere from Bolton to Bournemouth," said the cockney.

The train jerked and moved off, and everyone cheered. Where, Faber wondered, was the caricature Englishman with his icy reserve and his stiff upper lip? Not here.

A few minutes later a voice in the corridor said: "Tickets, please." Faber noted the Yorkshire accent; they were in the north now. He fumbled in his pockets for his ticket.

He had the corner seat, near the door, so he could see into the corridor. The inspector was shining a flashlight onto the tickets. Faber saw the man's silhouette in the reflected light. It looked vaguely familiar.

He settled back in his seat to wait. He remembered the nightmare: "This is an Abwehr ticket" and smiled in the dark.

Then he frowned. The train stopped unaccountably; shortly afterward a ticket inspection began; the inspector's face was vaguely familiar… It might be nothing, but Faber stayed alive by worrying about things that might be nothing. He looked into the corridor again, but the man had entered a compartment.

The train stopped briefly-the station was Crewe, according to informed opinion in Faber's compartment-and moved off again.

Faber got another look at the inspector's face, and now he remembered. The boarding house in Highgate! The boy from Yorkshire who wanted to get into the Army!

Faber watched him carefully. His flashlight moved across the face of every passenger. He was not just looking at the tickets.

No, Faber told himself, don't jump to conclusions. How could they possibly have got on to him? They could not have found out which train he was on, got hold of one of the few people in the world who knew what he looked like, and got the man on the train dressed as a ticket inspector in so short a time…

Parkin, that was his name. Billy Parkin. Somehow he looked much older now. He was coming closer.

It must be a look-alike, perhaps an elder brother. This had to be a coincidence. Parkin entered the compartment next to Faber's. There was no time left.

Faber assumed the worst, and prepared to deal with it. He got up, left the compartment, and went along the corridor, picking his way over suitcases and kitbags and bodies, to the lavatory. It was vacant. He went in and locked the door.

He was only buying time: even ticket inspectors did not fail to check the toilets. He sat on the seat and wondered how to get out of this. The train had speeded up and was travelling too fast for him to jump off.

Besides, someone would see him go, and if they were really searching for him they would stop the train. "All tickets, please." Parkin was getting close again.

Faber had an idea. The coupling between the carriages was a tiny space like an air-lock, enclosed by a bellowslike cover between the cars of the train, shut off at both ends by doors because of the noise and draughts. He left the lavatory, fought his way to the end of the carriage, opened the door, and stepped into the connecting passage. He closed the door Behind him.

It was freezing cold, and the noise was terrific. Faber sat on the floor and curled up, pretending to sleep. Only a dead man could sleep here, but people did strange things on trains these days. He tried not to shiver. The door opened behind him. "Tickets, please." He ignored it. He heard the door close. "Wake up, Sleeping Beauty." The voice was unmistakable. Faber pretended to stir, then got to his feet, keeping his back to Parkin.

When he turned the stiletto was in his hand. He pushed Parkin up against the door, held the point of the knife at his throat, and said, "Be still or I'll kill you."

With his left hand he took Parkin's flashlight, and shone it into the young man's face. Parkin did not look as frightened as he ought to be. Faber said, "Well, well, Billy Parkin, who wanted to join the Army, and ended up on the railways. Still, it's a uniform."

Parkin said, "You."

"You know damn well it's me, little Billy Parkin. You were looking for me. Why?" He was doing his best to sound vicious.

"I don't know why I should be looking for you. I'm not a policeman."

Faber jerked the knife melodramatically. "Stop lying to me."

"Honest, Mr Faber. Let me go-I promise I won't tell anyone I've seen you."

Faber began to have doubts. Either Parkin was telling the truth, or he was overacting as much as Faber himself.

Parkin's body shifted, his right arm moving in the darkness. Faber grabbed the wrist in an iron grip. Parkin struggled for an instant, but Faber let the needle point of the stiletto sink a fraction of an inch into Parkin's throat, and the man was still. Faber found the pocket Parkin had bees reaching for, and pulled out a gun.

"Ticket inspectors do not go armed," he said. "Who are you with, Parkin?"

"We all carry guns now… there's a lot of crime on trains because of the dark."

Parkin was at least lying courageously and creatively. Faber decided that threats were not going to be enough to loosen his tongue.

His movement was sudden, swift, and accurate. The blade of the stiletto leaped in his fist. Its point entered a measured half inch into Parkin's left eye and came out again.

Faber's hand covered Parkin's mouth. The muffled scream of agony was drowned by the noise of the train. Parkin's hands went to his ruined eye. "Save yourself the other eye, Parkin. Who are you with?"

"Military Intelligence, oh God, please don't do it again."

"Who? Menzies? Masterman?"

"Oh, God… Godliman, Godliman."

"Godliman?" Faber knew the name, but this was no time to search his memory for details. "What have they got?"

"A picture. I picked you out from the files."

"What picture? What picture?"

"A racing team, running, with a cup, the Army."

Faber remembered. Christ, where had they got hold of that? It was his nightmare: they had a picture. People would know his face. His face.

He moved the knife closer to Parkin's right eye. "How did you know where I was?"

"I don't do it, please… the embassy… took your letter… the cab… Euston… please, not the other eye…" He covered both his eyes with his hands.

Goddamn. That idiot Francisco… Now he said, "What's the plan? Where is the trap?"

"Glasgow. They're waiting for you at Glasgow. The train will be emptied there."

Faber lowered the knife to the level of Parkin's belly. To distract him, he said, "How many men?" Then he pushed hard, inward and upward to the heart.

Parkin's one eye stared in horror, and he did not die. It was the drawback to Faber's favoured method of killing. Normally the shock of the knife was enough to stop the heart. But if the heart was strong it did not always work-after all, surgeons sometimes stuck a hypodermic needle directly into the heart to inject adrenalin. If the heart continued to pump, the motion would work a hole around the blade, from which the blood would leak. It was just as fatal, but longer.

At last Parkin's body went limp. Faber held him against the wall for a moment, thinking. There had been something… a flicker of courage, the ghost of a smile, before the man died. It meant something. Such things always did.

He let the body fall to the floor, then arranged it in a sleeping position, with the wounds hidden from view. He kicked the railway cap into a corner. He cleaned his stiletto on Parkin's trousers, and wiped the ocular liquid from his hands. It had been a messy business.

He put the knife away in his sleeve and opened the door to the car. He made his way back to his compartment in the dark.

As he sat down the cockney said, "You took your time. Is there a queue?" Faber said, "It must have been something I ate."

"Probably a dried-egg sandwich." The cockney laughed.

Faber was thinking about Godliman. He knew the name; he could even put a vague face to it: a middle-aged, bespectacled face, with a pipe and an absent, professional air… That was it: he was a professor.

It was coming back. In his first couple of years in London Faber had had little to do. The war had not yet started, and most people believed it would not come. (Faber was not among the optimists.) He had been able to do a little useful work-mostly checking and revising the Abwehr's out-of-date maps, plus general reports based on his own observations and his reading of the newspapers-but not much. To fill in time, to improve his English, and to flesh out his cover, he had gone sightseeing.

His purpose in visiting Canterbury Cathedral had been innocent, although he did buy an aerial view of the town and the cathedral which he sent back for the Luftwaffe, not that it did much good; they spent most of 1942 missing it. Faber had taken a whole day to see the building: reading the ancient initials carved in walls, distinguishing the different architectural styles, reading the guidebook line by line as he walked slowly around.

He had been in the south ambulatory of the choir, looking at the blind arcading, when he became conscious of another absorbed figure by his side, an older man. "Fascinating, isn't it?" the man said, and Faber asked him what he meant.

"The one pointed arch in an arcade of round ones. No reason for it-that section obviously hasn't been rebuilt. For some reason, somebody just altered that one. I wonder why."

Faber saw what he meant. The choir was Romanesque, the nave Gothic; yet here in the choir was a solitary Gothic arch. "Perhaps," he said, "the monks demanded to see what the pointed arches would look like, and the architect did this to show them."

The older man stared at him. "What a splendid conjecture! Of course that's the reason. Are you an historian?"

Faber laughed. "No, just a clerk and an occasional reader of history books."

"People get doctorates for inspired guesses like that!"

"Are you?-An historian, I mean?"

"Yes, for my sins." He stuck out his hand. "Percy Godliman."

Was it possible, Faber thought as the train rattled on through Lancashire, that that unimpressive figure in a tweed suit could be the man who had discovered his identity? Spies generally claimed they were civil servants or something equally vague; not historians. That lie could be too easily found out. Yet it was rumoured that Military Intelligence had been bolstered by a number of academics. Faber had imagined them to be young, fit, aggressive, and bellicose as well as clever. Godliman was clever, but none of the rest. Unless he had changed.

Faber had seen him once again, although he had not spoken to him on the second occasion. After the brief encounter in the cathedral Faber had seen a notice advertising a public lecture on Henry II to be given by Professor Godliman at his college. He had gone along, out of curiosity. The talk had been erudite, lively and convincing. Godliman was still a faintly comic figure, prancing about behind the lectern, getting enthusiastic about his subject; but it was clear his mind was as sharp as a knife.

So that was the man who had discovered what Die Nadel looked like. An amateur.

Well, he would make amateur mistakes. Sending Billy Parkin had been one: Faber had recognised the boy. Godliman should have sent someone Faber did not know. Parkin had a better chance of recognising Faber, but no chance at all of surviving the encounter. A professional would have known that.

The train shuddered to a halt, and a muffled voice outside announced that this was Liverpool. Faber cursed under his breath; he should have been spending the time working out his next move, not remembering Percival Godliman.

They were waiting at Glasgow, Parkin had said before he died. Why Glasgow? Their inquiries at Euston would have told them he was going to Inverness. And if they suspected Inverness to be a red herring, they would have speculated that he was coming here, to Liverpool. This was the nearest link point for an Irish ferry. Faber hated snap decisions. Whichever, he had to get off the train.

He stood up, opened the door, stepped out, and headed for the ticket barrier.

He thought of something else. What was it that had flashed in Billy Parkin's eyes before he died? Not hatred, not fear, not pain, although all those had been present. It was more like… triumph? Faber looked up, past the ticket collector, and understood. Waiting on the other side, dressed in a hat and raincoat, was the blond young tail from Leicester Square.

Parkin, dying in agony and humiliation, had deceived Faber at the last. The trap was here.

The man in the raincoat had not yet noticed Faber in the crowd. Faber turned and stepped back onto the train. Once inside, he pulled aside the blind and looked out. The tail was searching the faces in the crowd. He had not noticed the man who got back on the train.

Faber watched while the passengers filtered through the gate until the platform was empty. The blond man spoke urgently to the ticket collector, who shook his head. The man seemed to insist. After a moment he waved to someone out of sight. A police officer emerged from the shadows and spoke to the collector. The platform guard joined the group, followed by a man in a civilian suit who was presumably a more senior railway official.

The engine driver and his fireman left the locomotive and went over to the barrier. There was more waving of arms and shaking of heads.

Finally the railwaymen shrugged, turned away, or rolled their eyes upward, all telegraphing surrender. The blond and the police officer summoned other policemen, and they moved on to the platform. They were obviously going to search the train.

All the railway officials, including the engine crew, had disappeared in the opposite direction, no doubt to seek out tea and sandwiches while the lunatic tried to search a jam-packed train. Which gave Faber an idea.

He opened the door and jumped out of the wrong side of the train, the side opposite the platform. Concealed from the police by the cars, he ran along the tracks, stumbling on the ties and slipping on the gravel, toward the engine.

It had to be bad news, of course. From the moment he realised Billy Parkin was not going to saunter off that train, Frederick Bloggs knew that Die Nadel had slipped through their fingers again. As the uniformed police moved onto the train in pairs, two men to search each car, Bloggs thought of several possible explanations of Parkin's non-appearance; and all the explanations were depressing.

He turned up his coat collar and paced the draughty platform. He wanted very badly to catch Die Nadel; and not only for the sake of the invasion although that was reason enough, of course, but for Percy Godliman, and for the five Home Guards, and for Christine, and for himself…

He looked at his watch: four o'clock. Soon it would be day. Bloggs had been up all night, and he had not eaten since breakfast yesterday, but until now he had kept going on adrenalin. The failure of the trap-he was quite sure it had failed-drained him of energy. Hunger and fatigue caught up with him. He had to make a conscious effort not to daydream about hot food and a warm bed.

"Sir!" A policeman was leaning out of a car and waving at him. "Sir!"

Bloggs walked toward him, then broke into a run.

"What is it?"

"It might be your man Parkin."

Bloggs climbed into the car. "What the hell do you mean, might be?"

"You'd better have a look." The policeman opened the communicating door between the cars and shone his flashlight inside.

It was Parkin; Bloggs could tell by the ticket inspector's uniform. He was curled up on the floor. Bloggs took the policeman's light, knelt down beside Parkin, and turned him over.

He saw Parkin's face, looked quickly away. "Oh, dear God."

"I take it this is Parkin?" the policeman said.

Bloggs nodded. He got up, very slowly, without looking again at the body. "We'll interview everybody in this car and the next," he said. "Anyone who saw or heard anything unusual will be detained for further questioning. Not that it will do us any good; the murderer must have jumped off the train before it got here."

Bloggs went back out on the platform. All the searchers had completed their tasks and were gathered in a group. He detailed six of them to help with the interviewing.

The police-inspector said, "Your man's hopped it, then."

"Almost certainly. You've looked in every toilet, and the guard's van?"

"Yes, and on top of the train and under it, and in the engine and the coal tender."

A passenger got off the train and approached Bloggs and the inspector. He was a small man who wheezed badly. "Excuse me," he said.

"Yes, sir," the inspector said. "I was wondering, are you looking for somebody?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, if you are, I was wondering, would he be a tall chap?"

"Why do you ask?"

Bloggs interrupted impatiently. "Yes, a tall man. Come on, spit it out."

"Well, it's just that a tall chap got out the wrong side of the train."

"When?"

"A minute or two after the train pulled into the station. He got on, like, then he got off, on the wrong side. Jumped down onto the track. Only he had no luggage, you see, which was another odd thing, and I just thought-"

The inspector said, "Balls."

"He must have spotted the trap," Bloggs said. "But how? He doesn't know my face, and your men were out of sight."

"Something made him suspicious."

"So he crossed the line to the next platform and went out that way. Wouldn't he have been seen?"

The inspector shrugged. "Not too many people about this late. And if he was seen he could just say he was too impatient to queue at the ticket barrier."

"Didn't you have the other ticket barriers covered?"

"Afraid I didn't think of it… well, we can search the surrounding area, and later on we can check various places in the city, and of course we'll watch the ferry."

"Yes, please do," Bloggs said.

But somehow he knew Faber would not be found.

It was more than an hour before the train started to move. Faber had a cramp in his left calf and dust in his nose. He heard the engineer and fireman climb back into their cab, and caught snatches of conversation about a body being found on the train. There was a metallic rattle as fireman shovelled coal, then the hiss of steam, a clanking of pistons, a jerk, and a sigh of smoke as the train moved off. Gratefully, Faber shifted his position and indulged in a smothered sneeze. He felt better.

He was at the back of the coal tender, buried deep in the coal, where it would take a man with a shovel ten minutes' hard work to expose him. As he had hoped, the police search of the tender had consisted of one good long look and no more.

He wondered whether he could risk emerging now. It must be getting light; would he be visible from a bridge over the line? He thought not. His skin was now quite black, and in a moving train in the pale light of dawn he would just be a dark blur on a dark background. Yes, he would chance it. Slowly and carefully, he dug his way out of his grave of coal.

He breathed deeply of the cool air. The coal was shovelled out of the tender via a small hole in the front end. Later, perhaps, the fireman would have to enter the tender when the pile of coal got lower. But he was safe for now.

As the light strengthened he looked himself over. He was covered from head to toe in coal dust, like a miner coming up from the pit. Somehow he had to wash and change his clothes.

He chanced a look over the side of the tender. The train was still in the suburbs, passing factories and warehouses and rows of grimy little houses.

He had to think about his next move.

His original plan had been to get off the train at Glasgow and there catch another train to Dundee and up the east coast to Aberdeen. It was still possible for him to disembark at Glasgow. He could not get off at the station, of course, but he might jump off either just before or just after. However, there were risks in that. The train was sure to stop at intermediate stations between Liverpool and Glasgow, and at those stops he might be spotted. No, he had to get off the train soon and find another means of transport.

The ideal place would be a lonely stretch of track just outside a city or village. It had to be lonely-he must not be seen leaping from the coal tender-but it had to be fairly near houses so that he could steal clothes and a car. And it needed to be an uphill grade of track so that the train would be travelling slowly enough for him to jump.

Right now its speed was about forty miles an hour. Faber lay back on the coal to wait. He could not keep a permanent watch on the country through which he was passing, for fear of being seen. He decided he would look out whenever the train slowed down. Otherwise he would lie still.

After a few minutes he caught himself dropping off to sleep, despite the discomfort of his position. He shifted and reclined on his elbows so that if he did sleep he would fall and be wakened by the impact.

The train was gathering speed. Between London and Liverpool it had seemed to be stationary more than moving; now it steamed through the country at a fine pace. To complete his discomfort, it started to rain: a cold, steady drizzle that soaked right through his clothes and seemed to turn to ice on his skin. Another reason for getting off the train: he could die of exposure before they reached Glasgow.

After half an hour at high speed he was contemplating killing the engine crew and stopping the train himself. A signal box saved their lives. The train slowed suddenly as brakes were applied. It decelerated in stages; Faber guessed the track was marked with descending speed limits. He looked out. They were in the countryside again. He could see the reason for the slowdown: they were approaching a track junction, and the signals were against them.

Faber stayed in the tender while the train stood still. After five minutes it started up again. Faber scrambled up the side of the tender, perched on the edge for a moment, and jumped.

He landed on the embankment and lay, face down, in the overgrown weeds. When the train was out of earshot he got to his feet. The only sign of civilisation nearby was the signal box, a two-story wooden structure with large windows in the control room at the top, an outside staircase, and a door at ground-floor level. On the far side was a cinder track leading away. Faber walked in a wide circle to approach the place from the back, where there were no windows. He entered a ground-floor door and found what he had been expecting: a toilet, a washbasin, and, as a bonus, a coat hanging on a peg.

He took off his soaking wet clothes, washed his hands and face and rubbed himself vigorously all over with a grubby towel. The little cylindrical film can containing the negatives was still taped securely to his chest. He put his clothes back on, but substituted the signalman's overcoat for his own sopping wet jacket.

Now all he needed was transport. The signalman must have got here somehow. Faber went outside and found a bicycle padlocked to a rail on the other side of the small building. He snapped the little lock with the blade of his stiletto. Moving in a straight line away from the blank rear wall of the signal box, he wheeled the cycle until he was out of sight of the building. Then he cut across until he reached the cinder track, climbed on the cycle, and pedalled away.

Percival Godliman had brought a small camp bed from his home. He lay on it in his office, dressed in trousers and shirt, trying without success to sleep. He had not suffered insomnia for almost forty years, not since he took his final exams at the university. He would gladly swap the anxieties of those days for the worries that kept him awake now.

He had been a different man then, he knew; not just younger, but also considerably less… abstracted. He had been outgoing, aggressive, ambitious; he planned to go into politics. He was not studious then; he had reason to be anxious about the exams.

His two mismatched enthusiasms in those days had been debating and ballroom dancing. He had spoken with distinction at the Oxford Union and had been pictured in The Tatler waltzing with debutantes. He was no great womaniser; he wanted sex with a woman he loved, not because he believed in any high-minded principles to that effect, but because that was the way he felt about it.

And so he had been a virgin until he met Eleanor, who was not one of the debutantes but a brilliant graduate mathematician with grace and warmth and a father dying of lung disease after forty years as a coal mine worker.

He had taken her to meet his people. His father was Lord Lieutenant of the county, and the house had seemed a mansion to Eleanor, but she had been natural and charming and not in the least awestruck; and when Percy's mother had been disgracefully condescending to her at one point, she had reacted with merciless wit, for which he loved her all the more.

He had taken his master's degree, then after the Great War he taught in a public school and stood in three by-elections. They were both disappointed when they discovered they could not have children; but they loved each other totally and they were happy, and her death was the most appalling tragedy Godliman ever knew. It had ended his interest in the real world, and he had retreated into the Middle Ages.

It had drawn him and Bloggs together, this common bereavement. And the war had brought him back to life; revived in him those characteristics of dash and aggression and fervour that had made him a fine speaker and teacher and the hope of the Liberal Party. He wished very much for something in Bloggs' life to rescue him from an existence of bitterness and introspection.

At the moment he was in Godliman's thoughts, Bloggs phoned from Liverpool to say that Die Nadel had slipped through the net, and Parkin had been killed.

Godliman, sitting on the edge of the camp bed to speak on the phone, closed his eyes. "I should have put you on the train…"

"Thanks!" Bloggs said.

"Only because he doesn't know your face."

"I think he may," Bloggs said. "We suspect he spotted the trap, and mine was the only face visible to him as he got off the train."

"But where could he have seen you… oh, Leicester Square."

"I don't see how, but then… we seem to underestimate him."

Godliman asked impatiently, "Have you got the ferry covered?"

"Yes."

"He won't use it, of course-too obvious. He's more likely to steal a boat. On the other hand, he may still be heading for Inverness."

"I've alerted the police up there."

"Good. But look, I don't think we can make any assumptions about his destination. Let's keep an open mind."

"Yes."

Godliman stood, picked up the phone, and began to pace the carpet. "Also, don't assume it was he who got off the train on the wrong side. Work on the premise that he got off before, at, or after Liverpool." Godliman's brain was in gear again, sorting permutations and possibilities. "Let me talk to the Chief Superintendent."

"He's here."

There was a pause, then a new voice said, "Chief Superintendent Anthony speaking."

Godliman said, "Do you agree with me that our man got off this train somewhere in your area?"

"That seems likely, yes."

"All right. Now the first thing he needs is transport, so I want you to get details of every car, boat, bicycle, or donkey stolen within a hundred miles of Liverpool during the next twenty-four hours. Keep me informed, but give the information to Bloggs and work closely with him following up the leads."

"Yes, sir."

"Keep an eye on other crimes that might be committed by a fugitive: theft of food or clothing, unexplained assaults, identity card irregularities, and so on."

"Right."

"Now, Mr Anthony, you realise this man is more than just a conventional murderer?"

"I assume so, sir, from the fact of your involvement. However, I don't know the details."

"It's a matter of national security, important enough to keep the Prime Minister in hourly contact with this office."

"Yes… uh, Mr Bloggs would like a word, sir."

Bloggs came back on. "Have you remembered how you know his face? You said you thought you did."

"Oh, yes and it's of no value, as I predicted. I met him by chance at Canterbury Cathedral and we had a conversation about the architecture. All it tells us is that he's clever. He made some perceptive remarks, as I recall."

"We knew he was clever."

"As I said, it does us no good."

Chief Superintendent Anthony, a determined member of the middle class with a carefully softened Liverpool accent, did not know whether to be peeved at the way MI5 ordered him about or thrilled at the chance to save England on his own manor.

Bloggs recognised the man's conflict-he'd met with it before when working with local police forces-and he knew how to tip the balance in his own favour. He said, "I'm grateful for your helpfulness, Chief Superintendent. These things don't go unnoticed in Whitehall, you know."

"Only doing our duty…" Anthony was not sure whether he was supposed to call Bloggs "Sir."

"Still, there's a big difference between reluctant assistance and willing help."

"Yes. Well, it'll likely be a few hours before we pick up this man's scent again. Do you want to catch forty winks?"

"Yes," Bloggs said gratefully. "If you've got a chair in a corner somewhere…"

"Stay here," Anthony said, indicating his office. "I'll be down in the operations room. I'll wake you as soon as we've got something. Make yourself comfortable."

Anthony went out, and Bloggs moved to an easy chair and sat back with his eyes closed. Immediately, he saw Godliman's face, as if projected onto the backs of his eyelids like a film, saying, "There has to be an end to bereavement… I don't want you to make the same mistake…" Bloggs rea1ized suddenly that he did not want the war to end. That would make him face issues, like the one Godliman had raised. The war made life simple: he knew why he hated the enemy and he knew what he was supposed to do about it. Afterward… but the thought of another woman seemed disloyal.

He yawned and slumped further into his seat, his thinking becoming woolly as sleep crept up on him. If Christine had died before the war he would have felt very differently about remarrying. He had always been fond of her and respected her, of course; but after she took that ambulance job, respect had turned to near-awestruck admiration, and fondness turned to love. Then they had something special, something they knew other lovers did not share. Now, more than a year later, it would be easy for Bloggs to find another woman he could respect and be fond of, but he knew that would no longer be enough for him. An ordinary marriage, an ordinary woman, would always remind him that once he, a rather ordinary man, had had the most extraordinary of women…

He stirred in his chair, trying to shake off his thoughts so that he could sleep. England was full of heroes, Godliman had said. Well, if Die Nadel got away… First things first…

Someone shook him. He was in a very deep sleep, dreaming that he was in a room with Die Nadel but could not pick him out because Die Nadel had blinded him with a stiletto. When he awoke he still thought he was blind because he could not see who was shaking him, until he realised he simply had his eyes closed. He opened them to see the large uniformed figure of Superintendent Anthony above him.

Bloggs raised himself to a more upright position and rubbed his eyes. "Got something?" he asked.

"Lots of things," Anthony said. "Question is, which of 'em counts? Here's your breakfast." He put a cup of tea and a biscuit on the desk and went to sit on the other side of it. Bloggs left his easy chair and pulled a hard chair up to the desk. He sipped the tea. It was weak and very sweet. "Let's get to it," he said. Anthony handed him a sheaf of five or six slips of paper.

Bloggs said, "Don't tell me these are the only crimes in your area."

"Of course not," Anthony said. "We're not interested in drunkenness, domestic disputes, blackout violations, traffic offences, or crimes for which arrests have already been made."

"Sorry," Bloggs said. "I'm still waking up. Let me read these."

There were three house burglaries. In two of them valuables had been taken: jewellery in one case, furs in another. Bloggs said, "He might steal valuables just to throw us off the scent. Mark these on the map, will you? They may show some pattern." He handed the two slips back to Anthony. The third burglary had only just been reported, and no details were available. Anthony marked the location on the map.

A Food Office in Manchester had been robbed of hundreds of ration books. Bloggs said, "He doesn't need ration books; he needs food." He set that one aside. There was a bicycle theft just outside Preston and a rape in Birkenhead. "I don't think he's a rapist, but mark it anyway," Bloggs told Anthony.

The bicycle theft and the third of the house burglaries were close together. Bloggs said, "The signal box that the bike was stolen from-is that on the main line?"

"Yes, I think so," Anthony said.

"Suppose Faber was hiding on that train and somehow we missed him. Would the signal box be the first place the train stopped at after it left Liverpool?"

"It might be."

Bloggs looked at the sheet of paper. "An overcoat was stolen and a wet jacket left in its place."

Anthony shrugged. "Could mean anything."

"No cars stolen?"

"Nor boats, nor donkeys," Anthony replied. "We don't get many car thefts these days. Cars are easy to come by; it's petrol people steal."

"I felt sure he'd steal a car in Liverpool," Bloggs said. He thumped his knee in frustration. "A bicycle isn't much use to him, surely."

"I think we should follow it up, anyway," Anthony pressed. "It's our best lead."

"All right. But meanwhile, double-check the burglaries to see whether food or clothing was pinched. The victims might not have noticed at first. Show Faber's picture to the rape victim, too. And keep checking all crimes. Can you fix me transport to Preston?"

"I'll get you a car," Anthony said.

"How long will it take to get details of this third burglary?"

"They're probably interviewing at this minute," Anthony said. "By the time you reach the signal box I should have the complete picture."

"Don't let them drag their feet." Bloggs reached for his coat. "I'll check with you the minute I get there."

"Anthony? This is Bloggs. I'm at the signal box."

"Don't waste any time there. The third burglary was your man."

"Sure?'

"Unless there are two buggers running around threatening people with stiletto knives."

"Who?"

"Two old ladies living alone in a little cottage."

"Oh, God. Dead?"

"Not unless they died of excitement."

"Eh?"

"Get over there. You'll see what I mean."

"I'm on my way."

It was the kind of cottage that is always inhabited by two elderly ladies living alone. It was small and square and old, and around the door grew a wild rose bush fertilised by thousands of pots of used tea leaves. Rows of vegetables sprouted tidily in a little front garden with a trimmed hedge. There were pink-and-white curtains at the leaded windows, and the gate creaked. The front door had been painted painstakingly by an amateur, and its knocker was made from a horseshoe.

Bloggs' knock was answered by an octogenarian with a shotgun. He said, "Good morning. I'm from the police."

"No, you're not," she said. "They've been already. Now get going before I blow your head off."

Bloggs regarded her. She was less than five feet tall, with thick white hair in a bun and a pale, wrinkled face. Her hands were matchstick-thin, but her grasp on the shotgun was firm. The pocket of her apron was full of clothes-pegs. Bloggs looked down at her feet, and saw that she was wearing a man's working boots. He said: 'The police you saw this morning were local. I'm from Scotland Yard."

"How do I know that?" she said.

Bloggs turned and called to his police driver. The constable got out of the car and came to the gate. Bloggs said to the old lady, "Is the uniform enough to convince you?"

"All right," she said, and stood aside for him to enter.

He stepped down into a low-ceilinged room with a tiled floor. The room was crammed with heavy, old furniture, and every surface was decorated with ornaments of china and glass. A small coal fire burned in the grate. The place smelled of lavender and cats.

A second old lady got out of a chair. She was like the first, but about twice as wide. Two cats spilled from her lap as she rose. She said, "Hello, I'm Emma Parton, my sister is Jessie. Don't take any notice of that shotgun-it's not loaded, thank God. Jessie loves drama. Will you sit down? You look so young to be a policeman. I'm surprised Scotland Yard is interested in our little robbery. Have you come from London this morning? Make the boy a cup of tea, Jessie."

Bloggs sat down. "If we're right about the identity of the burglar, he's a fugitive from justice," he said.

"I told you!" Jessie said. "We might have been done in; slaughtered in cold blood!"

"Don't be silly," Emma said. She turned to Bloggs. "He was such a nice man."

"Tell me what happened," Bloggs said.

"Well, I'd gone out the back," Emma began. "I was in the hen coop, hoping for some eggs. Jessie was in the kitchen."

"He surprised me," Jessie interrupted. "I didn't have time to go for me gun."

"You see too many cowboy films," Emma admonished her.

"They're better than your love films, all tears and kisses."

Bloggs took the picture of Faber from his wallet. "Is this the man?"

Jessie scrutinised it. "That's him."

"Aren't you clever?" Emma marvelled.

"If we were so clever we'd have caught him by now," Bloggs said. "What did he do?"

Jessie said, "He held a knife to my throat and said, "One false move and I'll slit your gizzard. I believe he meant it."

"Oh, Jessie, you told me he said 'I won't harm you if you do as I say.'"

"Words to that effect, Emma!"

Bloggs said, "What did he want?"

"Food, a bath, dry clothes, and a car. Well, we gave him the eggs, of course. We found some clothes that belonged to Jessie's late husband, Norman."

"Would you describe them?"

"Yes. A blue donkey jacket, blue overalls, a check shirt. And he took poor Norman's car. I don't know how we'll be able to go to the pictures without it. That's our only vice, you know, the pictures."

"What sort of car?"

"A Morris. Norman bought it in 1924. It's served us well, that little car."

Jessie said, "He didn't get his hot bath, though!"

"Well," Emma said, "I had to explain to him that two ladies living alone can hardly have a man taking a bath in their kitchen…"

Jessie said: "You'd rather have your throat slit than see a man in his combinations, wouldn't you, you silly fool."

Bloggs said, "What did he say when you refused?"

"He laughed," Emma said. "But I think he understood our position."

Bloggs could not help but smile. "I think you're very brave," he said.

"I don't know about that, I'm sure."

"So he left here in a 1924 Morris, wearing overalls and a blue jacket. What time was that?"

"About half-past nine."

Bloggs absently stroked a red tabby cat. It blinked and purred. "Was there much petrol in the car?"

"A couple of gallons but he took our coupons."

"How do you ladies qualify for a petrol rations?"

"Agricultural purposes," Emma said defensively. She blushed.

Jessie snorted. "And we're isolated, and we're elderly. Of course we qualify."

"We always go to the corn stores at the same time as the pictures," Emma added. "We don't waste petrol."

Bloggs smiled and held up a hand. "All right, don't worry. Rationing isn't exactly my department. How fast does the car go?"

Emma said, "We never exceed thirty miles per hour."

Bloggs looked at his watch. "Even at that speed he could be seventy-five miles away by now." He stood up. "I must phone the details to Liverpool. You don't have a telephone, do you?"

"No."

"What kind of Morris is it?"

"A Cowley. Norman used to call it a Bullnose."

"colour?"

"Grey."

"Registration number?"

"MLN 29."

Bloggs wrote it all down.

Emma said, "Will we ever get our car back, do you think?"

"I expect so but it may not be in very good condition. When someone is driving a stolen car he generally doesn't take good care of it." He walked to the door. "I hope you catch him," Emma called.

Jessie saw him out. She was still clutching the shotgun. At the door she caught Bloggs' sleeve and said in a stage whisper, "Tell me, what is he? Escaped convict? Murderer? Rapist?"

Bloggs looked down at her. Her small green eyes were bright with excitement. He bent his head to speak quietly in her ear. "Don't tell a soul," he murmured, "but he's a German spy."

She giggled with delight. Obviously, she thought, he saw the same films she did.

Faber crossed the Sark Bridge and entered Scotland shortly after midday. He passed the Sark Toll Bar House, a low building with a signboard announcing that it was the first house in Scotland and a tablet above the door bearing some legend about marriages which he could not read. A quarter of a mile further on he understood, when he entered the village of Gretna; he knew this was a place runaways came to get married.

The roads were still damp from the early rain, but the sun was drying them rapidly. Signposts and nameboards had been re-erected since the relaxation of invasion precautions, and Faber sped through a series of small lowland villages: Kirkpatrick, Kirtlebridge, Ecclefechan. The open countryside was pleasant, the green moor sparkling in the sunshine.

He had stopped for petrol in Carlisle. The pump attendant, a middle-aged woman in an oily apron, had not asked any awkward questions. Faber had filled the tank and the spare can fixed to the offside running board.

He was very pleased with the little two-seater. It would still do fifty miles an hour, despite its age.

The four-cylinder, 1548 cc side-valve engine worked smoothly and tirelessly as he climbed and descended the Scottish hills. The leather upholstered bench seat was comfortable. He squeezed the bulb horn to warn a straying sheep of his approach.

He went through the little market town of Lockerbie, crossed the River Annan by the picturesque Johnstone Bridge, and began the ascent to Beattock Summit. He found himself using the three-speed gearbox more and more.

He had decided not to take the most direct route to Aberdeen, via Edinburgh and the coast road. Much of Scotland's east coast, either side of the Firth of Forth, was a restricted area. Visitors were prohibited from a ten-mile-wide strip of land. Of course, the authorities could not seriously police such a long border. Nevertheless, Faber was less likely to be stopped and questioned while he stayed outside the security zone. He would have to enter it eventually-later rather than sooner-and he turned his mind to the story he would tell if he were interrogated. Private motoring for pleasure had virtually ceased in the last couple of years because of the ever-stricter petrol rationing, and people who had cars for essential journeys were liable to be prosecuted for going a few yards off their necessary route for personal reasons. Faber had read of a famous impresario jailed for using petrol supplied for agricultural purposes to take several actors from a theatre to the Savoy hotel. Endless propaganda told people that a Lancaster bomber needed 2,000 gallons to get to the Ruhr. Nothing would please Faber more than to waste petrol that might otherwise be used to bomb his homeland in normal circumstances; but to be stopped now, with the information he had taped to his chest, and arrested for a rationing violation, would be an unbearable irony.

It was difficult… Most traffic was military, but he had no military papers. He could not claim to be delivering essential supplies because he had nothing in the car to deliver. He frowned. Who travelled, these days? Sailors on leave, officials, rare holidaymakers, skilled workmen… That was it. He would be an engineer, a specialist in some esoteric field like high-temperature gearbox oils, going to solve a manufacturing problem in a factory at Inverness. If he were asked which factory, he would say it was classified. (His fictitious destination had to be a long way from the real one so that he would never be questioned by someone who knew for certain there was no such factory.) He doubted whether consulting engineers ever wore overalls like the ones he had stolen from the elderly sisters, but anything was possible in wartime. Having figured this out, he felt he was reasonably safe from any random spot checks. The danger of being stopped by someone who was looking specifically for Henry Faber, fugitive spy, was another problem. They had that picture. They knew his face. He feared that before long they would have a description of the car in which he was travelling. He did not think they would set up roadblocks, as they had no way of guessing where he was headed; but he was sure that every policeman in the land would be on the lookout for the grey Morris Cowley Bullnose, registration number MLN 29.

If he were spotted in the open country, he would not be captured immediately; country policemen had bicycles, not cars. But a policeman would telephone his headquarters, and cars would be after Faber within minutes. If he saw a policeman, he decided, he would have to ditch this car, steal another, and divert from his planned route. However, in the sparsely populated Scottish lowlands there was a good chance he could get all the way to Aberdeen without passing a country policeman. The towns would be different. There the danger of being chased by a police car was very great. He would be unlikely to escape; his car was old and relatively slow, and the police were generally good drivers. His best chance would be to get out of the vehicle and hope to lose himself in crowds or backstreets. He contemplated ditching the car and stealing another each time he was forced to enter a major town. The problem there was that he would be leaving a trail a mile wide for MI5 to follow. Perhaps the best solution was a compromise: he would drive into the towns but try to use only the backstreets. He looked at his watch. He would reach Glasgow around dusk, and thereafter he would benefit from the darkness.

Well, it wasn't very satisfactory, but the only way to be totally safe was not to be a spy.

As he topped the thousand-foot-high Beattock Summit, it began to rain. Faber stopped the car and got out to raise the canvas roof. The air was oppressively warm. Faber looked up. The sky had clouded over very quickly. Thunder and lightning were promised.

As he drove on he discovered some of the little car's shortcomings. Wind and rain leaked in through several tears in the canvas roof, and the small wiper sweeping the top half of the horizontally divided windscreen provided only a tunnel-like view of the road ahead. As the terrain became progressively more hilly the engine note began to sound faintly ragged. It was hardly surprising: the twenty-year-old car was being pushed hard.

The shower ended. The threatened storm had not arrived, but the sky remained dark and the atmosphere foreboding.

Faber passed through Crawford, nestling in green hills; Abington, a church and a post office on the west bank of the River Clyde; and Lesmahagow, on the edge of a heathery moor.

Half an hour later he reached the outskirts of Glasgow. As soon as he entered the built-up area he turned north off the main road, hoping to circumvent the city. He followed a succession of minor roads, crossing the major arteries into the city's east side, until he reached Cumbernauld Road where he turned east again and sped out of the city.

It had been quicker than he expected. His luck was holding.

He was on the A80 road, passing factories, mines and farms. More Scots place-names drifted in and out of his consciousness: Millerston, Stepps, Muirhead, Mollinburn, Condorrat. His luck ran out between Cumbernauld and Stirling.

He was accelerating along a straight stretch of road, slightly downhill, with open fields on either side. As the speedometer needle touched forty-five there was a sudden very loud noise from the engine; a heavy rattle, like the sound of a large chain pulling over a cog. He slowed to thirty, but the noise did not get perceptibly quieter. Clearly some large and important piece of the mechanism had failed. Faber listened carefully. It was either a cracked ballbearing in the transmission or a hole in a big end. Certainly it was nothing so simple as a blocked carburetor or a dirty spark plug; nothing that could be repaired outside a workshop. He pulled up and looked under the bonnet. There seemed to be a good deal of oil everywhere, but otherwise he could see no clues. He got back behind the wheel and drove off. There was a definite loss of power, but at least the car would still go.

Three miles further on steam began to billow out of the radiator. Faber realised that the car would soon stop altogether. He looked for a place to dump it and found a mud track leading off the main road, presumably to a farm. One hundred yards from the road the track curved behind a blackberry bush. Faber parked the car close to the bush and killed the engine. The hiss of escaping steam gradually subsided. He got out and locked the door. He felt a twinge of regret for Emma and Jessie, who would find it very difficult to get their car repaired before the end of the war.

He walked back to the main road. From there, the car could not be seen. It might be a day or even two before the abandoned vehicle aroused suspicion. By then, Faber thought, I may be in Berlin.

He began to walk. Sooner or later he would hit a town where he could steal another vehicle. He was doing well enough: it was less than twenty-four hours since he had left London, and he still had a whole day before the U-boat arrived at the rendezvous at six P.M. tomorrow.

The sun had set long ago, and now darkness fell suddenly. Faber could hardly see. Fortunately there was a painted white line down the middle of the road-a safety innovation made necessary by the blackout-and he was just able to follow it. Because of the night silence he would hear an oncoming car in ample time.

In fact only one car passed him. He heard its deep-throated engine in the distance, and went off the road a few yards to lie out of sight until it had gone. It was a large car, a Vauxhall Ten, Faber guessed, and it was travelling at speed. He let it go by, then got up and resumed walking. Twenty minutes later he saw it again, parked by the roadside. He would have taken a detour across the field if he had noticed the car in time, but its lights were off and its engine silent and he almost bumped into it in the darkness.

Before he could consider what to do, a flashlight shone up toward him from under the car's bonnet, and a voice said: "I say, is anybody there?"

Faber moved into the beam and asked, "Having trouble?"

"I'll say."

The light was pointed down, and as Faber moved closer he could see by the reflected light the moustached face of a middle-aged man in a double-breasted coat. In his other hand the man held, rather uncertainly, a large wrench, seeming unsure of what to do with it. Faber looked at the engine. "What's wrong?"

"Loss of power," the man said, pronouncing it "Lorse of par."

"One moment she was going like a top, the next she started to hobble. I'm afraid I'm not much of a mechanic." He shone the light at Faber again. "Are you?" he finished hopefully.

"Not exactly," Faber said, "but I know a disconnected lead when I see one." He took the flashlight from the man, reached down into the engine and plugged the stray lead back onto the cylinder head. "Try her now." The man got into the car and started the engine. "Perfect!" he shouted over the noise. "You're a genius! Hop in."

It crossed Faber's mind that this might be an elaborate MI5 trap, but he dismissed the thought; in the unlikely event they knew where he was, why should they tread softly? They could as easily send twenty policemen and a couple of armoured cars to pick him up. He got in.

The driver pulled away and moved rapidly up through the gears until the car was travelling at a good speed. Faber made himself comfortable. The driver said, "By the way, I'm Richard Porter."

Faber thought quickly of the identity card in his wallet. "James Baker."

"How do you do. I must have passed you on the road back there. Didn't see you."

Faber realised the man was apologising for not picking him up; everyone picked up hitchhikers since the petrol shortage. "It's okay," Faber said. "I was probably off the road, behind a bush, answering a call of nature. I did hear a car."

"Have you come far?" Porter offered a cigar.

"It's good of you, but I don't smoke," Faber said. "Yes, I've come from London."

"Hitchhiked all the way?"

"No. My car broke down in Edinburgh. Apparently it requires a spare part which isn't in stock, so I had to leave it at the garage."

"Hard luck. Well, I'm going to Aberdeen, so I can drop you anywhere along the way."

This was indeed a piece of good fortune. He closed his eyes and pictured the map of Scotland. "That's marvellous," he said. "I'm going to Banff, so Aberdeen would be a great help. Except I was planning to take the high road… I didn't get myself a pass. Is Aberdeen a restricted area?"

"Only the harbour," Porter said. "Anyway, you needn't worry about that sort of thing while you're in my car-I'm a J.P. and a member of the Watch Committee. How's that?"

Faber smiled in the darkness. "Thank you. Is that a full-time job? Being a magistrate, I mean?"

Porter put a match to his cigar and puffed smoke. "Not really. I'm semi-retired, y'know. Used to be a solicitor, until they discovered my weak heart."

"Ah." Faber tried to put some sympathy into his voice.

"Hope you don't mind the smoke?" Porter waved the fat cigar.

"Not a bit."

"What takes you to Banff?"

"I'm an engineer. There's a problem in a factory… actually, the job is sort of classified."

Porter held up his hand. "Don't say another word. I understand." There was a silence for a while. The car flashed through several towns. Porter obviously knew the road very well to drive so fast in the blackout. The big car gobbled up the miles. Its smooth progress was soporific. Faber smothered a yawn.

"Damn, you must be tired," Porter said. "Silly of me. Don't be too polite to have a nap."

"Thank you," said Faber. "I will." He closed his eyes.

The motion of the car was like the rocking of a train, and Faber had his arrival nightmare again, only this time it was slightly different. Instead of dining on the train and talking politics with the fellow-passenger, he was obliged for some unknown reason to travel in the coal tender, sitting on his suitcase radio with his back against the hard iron side of the truck. When the train arrived at Waterloo, everyone including the disembarking passengers was carrying a little duplicated photograph of Faber in the running team, and they were all looking at each other and comparing the faces they saw with the face in the picture. At the ticket barrier the collector took his shoulder and said: "You're the man in the photo, aren't you?" Faber found himself speechless. All he could do was stare at the photograph and remember the way he had run to win that cup. God, how he had run; he had peaked a shade too early, started his final burst a quarter of a mile sooner than he had planned, and for the last 500 metres he'd wanted to die and now perhaps he would die, because of that photograph in the ticket collector's hand… The collector was saying, "Wake up! Wake up!" and suddenly Faber was back in Richard Porter's Vauxhall Ten, and it was Porter who was telling him to wake up.

His right hand was half way to his left sleeve, where the stiletto was sheathed, in the split-second before he remembered that as far as Porter was concerned James Baker was an innocent hitchhiker. His hand dropped, and he relaxed.

"You wake up like a soldier," Porter said with amusement. "This is Aberdeen."

Faber noted that "soldier" had been pronounced "sol-juh," and recalled that Porter was a magistrate and a member of the police authority. Faber looked at the man in the dull light of early day: Porter had a red face and a waxed moustache; his camel-coloured overcoat looked expensive. He was wealthy and powerful in this town, Faber guessed. If he were to disappear he would be missed almost immediately. Faber decided not to kill him.

Faber said, "Good morning."

He looked out of the window at the granite city. They were moving slowly along a main street with shops on either side. There were several early workers about, all moving purposefully in the same direction: fishermen, Faber reckoned. It seemed a cold, windy place.

Porter said, "Would you like to have a shave and a bit of breakfast before you continue your journey? You're welcome to come to my place."

"You're very kind-"

"Not at all. If it weren't for you I should still be on the A80 at Stirling, waiting for a garage to open."

"-But I won't, thank you. I want to get on with the journey."

Porter did not insist, and Faber suspected that he was relieved not to have his offer taken up. The man said, "In that case, I'll drop you at George Street-that's the start of the A96, and it's a straight road to Banff." A moment later he stopped the car at a corner. "Here you are."

Faber opened the door. "Thanks for the lift."

"A pleasure." Porter offered a handshake. "Good luck!"

Faber got out, closed the door and the car pulled away. He had nothing to fear from Porter, he thought; the man would go home and sleep all day, and by the time he realised he had helped a fugitive it would be too late to do anything about it.

He watched the Vauxhall out of sight, then crossed the road and entered the promisingly named Market Street. Shortly thereafter he found himself at the docks and, following his nose, arrived at the fish market. He felt safely anonymous in the bustling, noisy, smelly market, where everyone was dressed in working clothes as he was. Wet fish and cheerful profanities flew through the air, and Faber found it hard to understand the clipped, guttural accents. At a stall he bought hot, strong tea in a chipped half-pint mug and a large bread roll with a slab of white cheese.

He sat on a barrel to eat and think. This evening would be the time to steal a boat. It was galling, to have to wait all day, and it left him with the problem of concealing himself for the next twelve hours; but he was too close now to take risks, and stealing a boat in broad daylight was much more risky than at the twilight end of the day.

He finished his breakfast and stood up. It would be a couple of hours before the rest of the city came to life. He would use the time to pick out a good hiding place.

He made a circuit of the docks and the tidal harbour. The security was perfunctory, and he noted several places where he could slip past the checkpoints. He worked his way around to the sandy beach and set off along the two-mile esplanade, at the far end of which a couple of pleasure yachts were moored at the mouth of the River Don. They would have suited Faber's purpose very well, but they would have no fuel.

A thick ceiling of cloud hid the sunrise. The air became very warm and thundery again. A few determined holidaymakers emerged from seafront hotels and sat stubbornly on the beach, waiting for sunshine. Faber doubted they would get it today.

The beach might be the best place to hide. The police would check the railway station and the bus depot, but they would not mount a full-scale search of the city. They might check a few hotels and guest houses. It was unlikely they would approach everyone on the beach. He decided to spend the day in a deck chair.

He bought a newspaper from a stall and hired a chair. He removed his shirt and put it back on over his overalls. He left his jacket off.

He would see a policeman, if one came, well before he reached the spot where Faber sat. There would be plenty of time to leave the beach and vanish into the streets.

He began to read the paper. There was a new Allied offensive in Italy, the newspaper headlined. Faber was skeptical. Anzio had been a shambles. The paper was badly printed and there were no photographs. He read that the police were searching for one Henry Faber, who had murdered two people in London with a stiletto…

A woman in a bathing suit walked by, looking hard at Faber. His heart missed a beat. Then he realised she was being flirtatious. For an instant he was tempted to speak to her. It had been so long… He shook himself mentally. Patience, patience. Tomorrow he would be home.

She was a small fishing boat, fifty or sixty feet long and broad in the beam, with an inboard motor. The aerial told of a powerful radio. Most of the deck was taken up with hatches to the small hold below. The cabin was aft, and only large enough to hold two men, standing, plus the dashboard and controls. The hull was clinker-built and newly caulked, and the paintwork looked fresh.

Two other boats in the harbour would have done as well, but Faber had stood on the quay and watched the crew of this one tie her up and refuel before they left for their homes.

He gave them a few minutes to get well away, then walked around the edge of the harbour and jumped onto the boat. She was called Marie II.

He found the wheel chained up. He sat on the floor of the little cabin, out of sight, and spent ten minutes picking the lock. Darkness was coming early because of the cloud layer that still blanketed the sky.

When he had freed the wheel he raised the small anchor, then jumped back onto the quay and untied the ropes. He returned to the cabin, primed the diesel engine, and pulled the starter. The motor coughed and died. He tried again. This time it roared to life. He began to manoeuvre out of the mooring.

He got clear of the other craft at the quayside and found the main channel out of the harbour, marked by buoys. He guessed that only boats of much deeper draught really needed to stick to the channel, but he saw no harm in being overcautious.

Once outside the harbour, he felt a stiff breeze, and hoped it was not a sign that the weather was about to break. The sea was surprisingly rough, and the stout little boat lifted high on the waves. Faber opened the throttle wide, consulted the dashboard compass, and set a course. He found some charts in a locker below the wheel. They looked old and little used; no doubt the boat's skipper knew the local waters too well to need charts. Faber checked the map reference he had memorised that night in Stockwell, set a more exact course, and engaged the wheel-clamp.

The cabin windows were obscured by water. Faber could not tell whether it was rain or spray.

The wind was slicing off the tops of the waves now. He poked his head out of the cabin door for a moment, and got his face thoroughly wet.

He switched on the radio. It hummed for a moment, then crackled. He moved the frequency control, wandering the airwaves, and picked up a few garbled messages. The set was working perfectly. He tuned to the U-boat's frequency, then switched off. It was too soon to make contact.

The waves increased in size as he progressed into deeper waters. Now the boat reared up like a bucking horse with each wave, then teetered momentarily at the top before plunging sickeningly down into the next trough. Faber stared blindly out of the cabin windows. Night had fallen, and he could see nothing at all. He felt faintly seasick.

Each time he convinced himself that the waves could not possibly get bigger, a new monster taller than the rest lifted the vessel toward the sky. They started to come closer together, so that the boat was always lying with its stern pointed either up at the sky or down at the sea bed. In a particularly deep trough the little boat was suddenly illuminated, as clearly as if it were day, by a flash of lightning. Faber saw a grey-green mountain of water descend on the prow and wash over the deck and the cabin where he stood. He could not tell whether the terrible crack that sounded a second afterward was the thunderclap or the noise of the timbers of the boat breaking up. Frantically he searched the cabin for a life jacket. There was none.

The lightning came repeatedly then. Faber held the locked wheel and braced his back against the cabin wall to stay upright. There was no point in operating the controls now; the boat would go where the sea threw it.

He kept telling himself that the boat must be built to withstand such sudden summer gales. He could not convince himself. Experienced fishermen probably would have seen the signs of such a storm and refrained from leaving shore, knowing their vessel could not survive such weather.

He had no idea where he was now. He might be almost back in Aberdeen, or he might be at his rendezvous. He sat on the cabin floor and switched on the radio. The wild rocking and shuddering made it difficult to operate the set. When it warmed up he experimented with the dials but could pick up nothing. He turned the volume to maximum; still no sound.

The aerial must have been broken off its fixing on the cabin roof.

He switched to Transmit and repeated the simple message, "Come in, please," several times; then left the set on Receive. He had little hope of his signal getting through.

He killed the engine to conserve fuel. He was going to have to ride out the storm if he could then find a way to repair or replace the aerial. He might need his fuel.

The boat slid terrifyingly sideways down the next big wave, and Faber realised he needed the engine power to ensure that the vessel met the waves head-on. He pulled the starter. Nothing happened. He tried several times, then gave up, cursing himself for switching it off.

The boat now rolled so far onto its side that Faber fell and cracked his head on the wheel. He lay dazed on the cabin floor, expecting the vessel to turn turtle at any minute. Another wave crashed on the cabin, shattering the glass in the windows. And suddenly Faber was under water. Certain the boat was sinking, he struggled to his feet and broke surface. All the windows were out, but the vessel was still floating. He kicked open the cabin door and the water gushed out. He clutched the wheel to prevent himself being washed into the sea.

Incredibly, the storm continued to get worse. One of Faber's last coherent thoughts was that these waters probably did not see such a storm more than once in a century. Then all his concentration and will were focused on the problem of keeping hold of the wheel. He should have tied himself to it, but now he did not dare to let go long enough to find a piece of rope. He lost all sense of up and down as the boat pitched and rolled on waves like cliffs. Gale-force winds and thousands of gallons of water strained to pull him from his place. His feet slipped continually on the wet floor and walls, and the muscles of his arms burned with pain. He sucked air when he found his head above water, but otherwise held his breath. Several times he came close to blacking out, and only vaguely realised that the flat roof of the cabin had disappeared.

He got brief, nightmarish glimpses of the sea whenever the lightning flashed. He was always surprised to see where the wave was: ahead, below, rearing up beside him, or completely out of sight. He also discovered with a shock that he could not feel his hands, and looked down to see that they were still locked to the wheel, frozen in a grip like rigour mortis. There was a continuous roar in his ears, the wind indistinguishable from the thunder and the sea.

The power of intelligent thought slipped slowly away from him. In something that was less than a hallucination but more than a daydream, he saw the girl who had stared at him earlier on the beach. She walked endlessly toward him over the bucking deck of the fishing boat, her swimsuit clinging to her body, always getting closer but never reaching him. He knew that, when she came within touching distance, he would take his dead hands from the wheel and reach for her, but he kept saying "Not yet, not yet," as she walked and smiled and swayed her hips. He was tempted to leave the wheel and close the gap himself but something in the back of his mind told him that if he moved he would never reach her, so he waited and watched and smiled back at her from time to time, and even when he closed his eyes he could see her still.

He was slipping in and out of consciousness now. His mind would drift away, the sea and the boat disappearing first, then the girl fading, until he would jerk awake to find that, incredibly, he was still standing, still holding the wheel, still alive; then for a while he would will himself to stay conscious, but eventually exhaustion would take over again.

In one of his last clear moments he noticed that the waves were moving in one direction, carrying the boat with them. Lightning flashed again, and he saw to one side a huge dark mass, an impossibly high wave… no, it was not a wave, it was a cliff… The realisation that he was close to land was swamped by the fear of being hurled against the cliff and smashed. Stupidly, he pulled the starter, then hastily returned his hand to the wheel; but it would no longer grip.

A new wave lifted the boat and threw it down like a discarded toy. As he fell through the air, still clutching the wheel with one hand, Faber saw a pointed rock like a stiletto sticking up out of the trough of the wave. It seemed certain to impale the boat… but the hull of the craft scraped the edge of the rock and was carried past.

The mountainous waves were breaking now. The next one was too much for the vessel's timbers. The boat hit the trough with a solid impact, and the sound of the hull splitting cracked in his ears like an explosion. Faber knew the boat was finished…

The water had retreated, and Faber realised that the hull had broken because it had hit… land. He stared in dumb astonishment as a new flash of lightning revealed a beach. The sea lifted the ruined boat off the sand as water crashed over the deck again, knocking Faber to the floor. But he had seen everything with daylight clarity in that moment. The beach was narrow, and the waves were breaking right up to the cliff. But there was a jetty, over to his right, and a bridge of some kind leading from the jetty to the cliff top. He knew that if he left the boat for the beach, the next wave would kill him with tons of water or break his head like an egg against the cliff. But if he could reach the jetty in between waves, he might scramble far enough up the bridge to be out of reach of the water.

The next wave split the deck open as if the seasoned wood were no stronger than a banana skin. The boat collapsed under Faber, and he found himself sucked backward by the receding surf. He scrambled upright, his legs like jelly beneath him, and broke into a run, splashing through the shallows toward the jetty. Running those few yards was the hardest physical thing he had ever done. He wanted to stumble, so that he could rest in the water and die, but he stayed upright, just as he had when he won the 5,000-metre race, until he crashed into one of the pillars of the jetty. He reached up and grabbed the boards with his hands, willing them to come back to life for a few seconds, and lifted himself until his chin was over the edge; then swung his legs up and rolled over.

The wave came as he got to his knees. He threw himself forward. The wave carried him a few yards then flung him against the wooden planking. He swallowed water and saw stars. When the weight lifted from his back he summoned the will to move again. It would not come. He felt himself being dragged inexorably back, and a sudden rage took hold of him. He would not allow it… not now, goddamn it. He screamed at the fucking storm and the sea and the British and Percival Godliman, and suddenly he was on his feet and running, running, away from the sea and up the ramp, running with his eyes shut and his mouth open, a crazy man, daring his lungs to burst and his bones to break; running with no sense of a destination, but knowing he would not stop until he lost his mind.

The ramp was long and steep. A strong man might have run all the way to the top if he were in training and rested. An Olympic athlete, if he were tired, might have got half way. The average forty-year old man would have managed a yard or two. Faber made it to the top.

A yard from the end of the ramp he felt a sharp pain, like a slight heart attack, and lost consciousness, but his legs pumped twice more before he hit the sodden turf. He never knew how long he lay there. When he opened his eyes the storm still raged, but day had broken, and he could see, a few yards away from him, a small cottage that looked inhabited.

He got to his knees and began the long, interminable crawl to the front door.

The U-505 wheeled in a tedious circle, her powerful diesels chugging slowly as she nosed through the depths like a grey, toothless shark. Lieutenant Commander Werner Heer, her master, was drinking ersatz coffee and trying not to smoke any more cigarettes. It had been a long day and a long night. He disliked his assignment; he was a combat man and there was no combat to be had here; and he thoroughly disliked the quiet Abwehr officer with storybook-sly blue eyes who was an unwelcome guest aboard his submarine.

The intelligence man, Major Wohl, sat opposite the captain. The man never looked tired, damn him. Those blue eyes looked around, taking things in, but the expression in them never changed. His uniform never got rumpled, despite the rigours of underwater life, and he lit a new cigarette every twenty minutes, on the dot, and smoked it to a quarter-inch stub. Heer would have stopped smoking, just so that he could enforce regulations and prevent Wohl from enjoying tobacco, but he himself was too much of an addict.

Heer had never liked intelligence people; he'd always had the feeling they were gathering intelligence on him. Nor did he like working with the Abwehr. His vessel was made for battle, not for skulking around the British coast waiting to pick up secret agents. It seemed to him plain madness to risk a costly piece of fighting machinery, not to mention its skilled crew, for the sake of one man who might well fail to show up.

He emptied his cup and made a face. "Damn coffee," he said. "Tastes vile."

Wohl's expressionless gaze rested on him for a moment, then moved away. He said nothing.

Forever cryptic. To hell with him. Heer shifted restlessly in his seat. On the bridge of a ship he would have paced up and down, but men on submarines learn to avoid unnecessary movement. He finally said, "Your man won't come in this weather, you know."

Wohl looked at his watch. "We will wait until 6 A.M.," he said easily.

It was not an order-Wohl could not give orders to Heer-but the bald statement of fact was still an insult to a superior officer. Heer told him so.

"We will both follow our orders," Wohl said. "As you know, they originate from a very high authority indeed."

Heer controlled his anger. The young man was right, of course. Heer would follow his orders. But when they returned to port he would report Wohl for insubordination. Not that it would do much good; fifteen years in the Navy had taught Heer that headquarters people were a law unto themselves… "Well, even if your man is fool enough to venture out tonight, he is certainly not seaman enough to survive." Wohl's only reply was the same blank gaze. Heer called to the radio operator. "Weissman?"

"Nothing, sir."

Wohl said, "I have a feeling that the murmurs we heard a few hours ago were from him."

"If they were, he was a long way from the rendezvous, sir," the radio operator said. "To me it sounded more like lightning."

Heer added, "If it was not him, it was not him. If it was him, he is now drowned."

"You don't know this man," Wohl said, and this time there was actually a trace of emotion in his voice.

Heer didn't answer. The engine note altered slightly, and he thought he could distinguish a faint rattle. If it increased on the journey home he would have it looked at in port. He might do that anyway, just to avoid another voyage with the unspeakable Major Wohl. A seaman looked in. "Coffee, sir?"

Heer shook his head. "If I drink any more I'll be pissing coffee." Wohl said, "I will please." He took out a cigarette, which made Heer look at his watch. It was ten past six. The subtle Major Wohl had delayed his six o'clock cigarette to keep the U-boat there a few extra minutes. Heer said, "Set a course for home."

"One moment," Wohl said. "I think we should take a look on the surface before we leave."

"Don't be a fool," Heer said. He knew that he was on safe ground now. "Do you realise what kind of storm is raging up there? We wouldn't he able to open the hatch, and the periscope will show up nothing that is more than a few yards away."

"How can you tell what the storm is like from this depth?"

"Experience."

"Then at least send a signal to base telling them that our man has not made contact. They may order us to stay here."

Heer gave an exasperated sigh. "It's not possible to make radio contact from this depth, not with base."

Wohl's calm finally broke. "Commander Heer, I strongly recommend you surface and radio home before leaving this rendezvous. The man we are to pick up has vital information. The Fuehrer is waiting for his report."

Heer looked at him. "Thank you for letting me have your opinion, Major," he said. He turned away. "Full ahead both," he ordered.

The sound of the twin diesels rose to a roar, and the U-boat began to pick up speed.