Eye Of The Needle

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

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

There it was, the amateurs.

Watson said, "Raise your hands."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hitler said, "Comments?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Von Roenne interrupted: "My Fuehrer."

Hitler glared at him. "Well?"

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

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

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."