Eye Of The Needle Part 27

"Are you married?" David asked suddenly.

"No."

"Wise man."

"Oh, I don't know."

"I'll wager you do well for yourself in London. Not to mention-"

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

"Oh?"

"Yes."

"Nothing like variety, though, eh?"

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

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

Faber attempted a thin smile.

"And you seem quite fit for a pen-pusher."

"I ride a bicycle."

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

"Thank you."

"You don't look look too old to be in the army either." too old to be in the army either."

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

"We're there," David said.

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

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

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

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

"This is Tom McAvity," David said.

"Pleased to meet you," Tom said formally.

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

"I hope I'm not going to be in the way," Faber said. "I only came along for the ride."

David wheeled himself up to the table. "I don't suppose we'll do much this morning, Tom-just take a look around."

"Aye. We'll have some tay before we go, though."

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

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

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

Tom had been watching too. "Bob's found something," he said.

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

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

"Mutton tonight," he called.

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

"Do you want to rope it up?" David called.

"Aye-unless our visitor here wants to come and give me a hand."

"Surely," Faber said. He picked his way down to where Tom stood. They took a leg each and dragged the dead animal back up the slope. Faber's oilskin caught on a th.o.r.n.y bush and he almost fell before he tugged the material free with a loud ripping sound.

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

"All in a good cause," Tom told him.

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

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

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

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

"Missed," Tom said.

"Missed what?"

"Eagle."

Downstairs, David laughed.

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

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

"Aye," Tom said.

"We'll fence the gully this summer."

"Aye."

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

Eventually David said, "We'll leave you to butcher the ewe, Tom."

"Aye."

David and Faber left. Tom did not get up, but the dog saw them to the door.

Before starting the jeep David took the shotgun from its rack above the windshield, reloaded it, and put it back. On the way home he underwent another change of mood-a surprising one-and became chatty. "I used to fly Spitfires, lovely kites. Four guns in each wing-American Brownings, fired one thousand two hundred and sixty rounds a minute. The Jerries prefer cannon, of course-their Me109s only have two machine guns. A cannon does more damage but our Brownings are faster, and more accurate."

"Really?" Faber said it politely.

"They put cannon in the Hurricanes later, but it was the Spitfire that won the Battle of Britain."

Faber found his boastfulness irritating. "How many enemy aircraft did you shoot down?"

"I lost my legs while I was training."

Faber glanced at his face: expressionless, but it seemed stretched as though the skin would break.

"No, I haven't killed a single German, yet," David said.

Faber became very alert. He had no idea what David might have deduced or discovered, but there now seemed little doubt that the man believed something was up, and not just Faber's night with his wife. Faber turned slightly sideways to face David, braced himself with his foot against the transmission tunnel on the floor, rested his right hand lightly on his left forearm. He waited.

"Are you interested in aircraft?" David asked.

"No."

"It's become a national pastime, I gather-aircraft spotting. Like bird-watching. People buy books on aircraft identification. Spend whole afternoons on their backs, looking at the sky through telescopes. I thought you might be an enthusiast."

"Why?"

"Pardon?"

"What made you think I might be an enthusiast?"

"Oh, I don't know." David stopped the jeep to light a cigarette. They were at the island's midpoint, five miles from Tom's cottage with another five miles to go to Lucy's. David dropped the match on the floor. "Perhaps it was the film I found in your jacket pocket-"

As he spoke, he tossed the lighted cigarette at Faber's face, and reached for the gun above the windshield.

26.

SID CRIPPS LOOKED OUT OF THE WINDOW AND CURSED under his breath. The meadow was full of American tanks-at least eighty of them. He realized there was a war on, and all that, but if only they'd asked him he would have offered them another field, where the gra.s.s was not so lush. By now the caterpillar tracks would have chewed up his best grazing. under his breath. The meadow was full of American tanks-at least eighty of them. He realized there was a war on, and all that, but if only they'd asked him he would have offered them another field, where the gra.s.s was not so lush. By now the caterpillar tracks would have chewed up his best grazing.

He pulled on his boots and went out. There were some Yank soldiers in the field, and he wondered whether they had noticed the bull. When he got to the stile he stopped and scratched his head. There was something funny going on.

The tanks had not not chewed up his gra.s.s. They had left no tracks. But the American soldiers were chewed up his gra.s.s. They had left no tracks. But the American soldiers were making making tank tracks with a tool something like a harrow. tank tracks with a tool something like a harrow.

While Sid was trying to figure it all out, the bull noticed the tanks. It stared at them for a while, then pawed the ground and lumbered into a run. It was going to charge a tank.

"Daft b.u.g.g.e.r, you'll break your head," Sid muttered.

The soldiers were watching the bull too. They seemed to think it was very funny.

The bull ran full-tilt into the tank, its horns piercing piercing the armor-plated side of the vehicle. Sid hoped fervently that British tanks were stronger than the American ones. the armor-plated side of the vehicle. Sid hoped fervently that British tanks were stronger than the American ones.

There was a loud hissing noise as the bull worked its horns free. The tank collapsed like a deflated balloon. The American soldiers fell all over each other, laughing.

It was all quite strange.

PERCIVAL G.o.dLIMAN walked quickly across Parliament Square, carrying an umbrella. He wore a dark striped suit under his raincoat, and his black shoes were highly polished-at least they had been until he stepped out into the rain. It was not every day, come to that it was not every year, that he had a private audience with Mr. Churchill. walked quickly across Parliament Square, carrying an umbrella. He wore a dark striped suit under his raincoat, and his black shoes were highly polished-at least they had been until he stepped out into the rain. It was not every day, come to that it was not every year, that he had a private audience with Mr. Churchill.

A career soldier would have been nervous at going with such bad news to see the supreme commander of the nation's armed forces. G.o.dliman was not nervous-a distinguished historian had nothing to fear, he told himself, from soldiers and politicians, not unless his view of history was a good deal more radical than G.o.dliman's was. Not nervous, then, but worried. Distinctly worried.

He was thinking about the effort, the forethought, the care, the money and the manpower that had gone into the creation of the totally ersatz First United States Army Group stationed in East Anglia: the four hundred landing ships, made of canvas and scaffolding floated on oil drums, that thronged the harbors and estuaries; the carefully manufactured inflatable dummies of tanks, artillery, trucks, half-tracks and even ammunition dumps; the complaints planted in the correspondence columns of the local newspapers about the decline in moral standards since the arrival of thousands of American troops in the area; the phony oil dock at Dover, designed by Britain's most distinguished architect and built-out of cardboard and old sewage pipes-by craftsmen borrowed from film studios; the carefully faked reports transmitted to Hamburg by German agents who had been "turned" by the XX Committee; and the incessant radio chatter, broadcast for the benefit of the German listening posts, consisting of messages compiled by professional writers of fiction, and including such as "1/5th Queen's Royal Regiment report a number of civilian women, presumably unauthorized, in the baggage train. What are we going to do with them-take them to Calais?"

No question, a good deal had been achieved. The signs indicated that the Germans had bought it. And now the whole elaborate deception had been put in jeopardy because of one d.a.m.ned spy-a spy G.o.dliman had failed to catch. Which, of course, was the reason for his command performance today.

His short birdlike paces measured the Westminster pavement to the small doorway at No. 2, Great George Street. The armed guard standing beside the wall of sandbags examined his pa.s.s and waved him in. He crossed the lobby and went down the stairs to Churchill's underground headquarters.

It was like going below decks on a battleship. Protected from bombs by a four-foot-thick ceiling of reinforced concrete, the command post featured steel bulkhead doors and roof props of ancient timber. As G.o.dliman entered the map room a cl.u.s.ter of youngish people with solemn faces emerged from the conference room beyond. An aide followed them a moment later, and spotted G.o.dliman.

"You're very punctual, sir," the aide said. "He's ready for you."

G.o.dliman stepped into the small, comfortable conference room. There were rugs on the floor and a picture of the king on the wall. An electric fan stirred the tobacco smoke in the air. Churchill sat at the head of an old mirror-smooth table in the center of which was a statuette of a faun-the emblem of Churchill's own deception outfit, the London Controlling Section.

G.o.dliman decided not to salute.