Storm Island

by Ken Follett

  "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 he could

  get into the crowd he might escape. He dropped the suitcase radio and

  fled, pushing his way through the crowd. Suddenly he realized 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 trouser less 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. He said: "I had an unpleasant dream." 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

  cow-catcher 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 an 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 realized how hungry and

  thirsty he was. His last meal had been sausage meat dry biscuits and

  bottled water, the day before 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 suprised. No, I haven't."

  "Neither have we, chum."

  Faber left in disgust. He 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

  which 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

  doctors' 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," Faber lied. 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 pharmacist 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 access to the back of the shop. That was

  something of a blow: 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. Yet there had to be a well of

  some kind at the back, for 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 Hall of Residence 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 garbage cans 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 God, 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

  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.

  Indeed, he might walk out of here and get run over by a bus.

  The possibility that, having discovered the greatest secret of the war,

  he might die and his secret die with him, was too awful to

  contemplate.

  He had to have a fall-back stratagem; a second method of ensuring that

  the evidence of the Allied deception reached the Abwehr. And that

  meant writing to Hamburg.

  There was, of course, no postal service between Fjiglandand Germany.

  Mail had to go via a neutral country. All such mail was sure to be

  censored. He could write in code, but there was no point: he had to

  send the pictures, for it was the evidence that counted.

  There was a route, but it was an old one. At the Portuguese Embassy in

  London there was an official, sympathetic to Germany for political

  reasons and because he was well bribed, who would pass messages via the

  diplomatic bag to the German Embassy in Lisbon. The route had been

  opened early in 1939, and Faber had never used it except for one

  routine test communication Canaris had asked for.

  It would have to do.

  Faber felt irrationally angry. He hated to place his faith in others.

  This route might no longer be open, or it might be insecure; in which

  case the British could discover that he had found out their secret.

  It was a fundamental rule of espionage that the opposition must not

  know which of their secrets you have found out; for if they do, the

  value of your discoveries is nullified. However, in this case that was

  not so; for what could the British do with their knowledge? They still

  had the problem of conquering France.

  Faber's mind was clear. The balance of argument indisputably favoured

  entrusting his secret to the Portuguese Embassy contact.

  Against all his instincts, he sat down to write a letter.

  FOURTEEN

  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 constable had exercised his

  limited powers of deduction and concluded that a whole patrol of the

  Home Guard had gone missing. He was fairly sure they had simply got

  lost they were all deaf, daft or senile, otherwise they would have

  beenin the Army but all the same he notified his Constabulary

  headquarters, just to cover himself. The operations-room sergeant who

  took the message realized 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 Ml5, who 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 four stone 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

  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's him."

  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."

  The inspector's eyes narrowed. What with the restricted area so close,

  and Special Branch and MI5 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."

  "Nuffsaid."

  Bloggs asked.

  "Anything else found, Inspector?"

  We're still combing the area, 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, R.A.F-style.

  Harris said: "Clothes for night work."

  "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.

  "Where'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 cycle.

  "Not another four miles," Harris complained.

  Bloggs said: "Work off some of those Sunday dinners."

  The four-mile ride took them most of an hour, because 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 air of afternoon. He was a middle-aged man of

  slow speech and slower movements. He regarded the two cyclists with

  faint 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.