Ken Follett - Eye of the Needle

EARLY IN 1944 German Intelligence was piecing together evidence of

IT WAS THE COLDEST WINTER FOR FORTY-FIVE YEARS. Villages in

HENRY II WAS A REMARKABLE KING. IN AN AGE WHEN

FABERGODLIMANTWO-THIRDS OF A TRIANGLE that one day would

FOREIGNERS HAVE SPIES; BRITAIN HAS MILITARY Intelligence. As if that

IT IS FOR PLACES LIKE THIS THAT THE WORD BLEAK

IT LOOKED LIKE A MANSION, AND, UP TO A POINT,

THE MESSAGE ANNOYED FABER BECAUSE IT FORCED him to face

I THINK WEVE LOST CONTROL OF IT, SAID PERCIVAL Godliman.

THE SUPPLY BOAT ROUNDED THE HEADLAND AND chugged into the

GODLIMAN AND BLOGGS WALKED SIDE BY SIDE ALONG the pavement

FABER HAD GONE FISHING.

THE JU-52 TRIMOTOR TRANSPORT PLANE WITH swastikas on the wings

FABER LEANED AGAINST A TREE, SHIVERING, AND THREW up. Then

FREDERICK BLOGGS HAD SPENT AN UNPLEASANT afternoon in the countryside.

THE CARRIAGE WAS PITCH DARK. FABER THOUGHT OF the jokes

PERCIVAL GODLIMAN HAD BROUGHT A SMALL CAMP bed from his

FABER CROSSED THE SARK BRIDGE AND ENTERED Scotland shortly after

THE U-505 WHEELED IN A TEDIOUS CIRCLE, HER powerful diesels

WHEN LUCY WOKE UP, THE STORM THAT HAD BROKEN the

RERCIVAL GODLIMAN HAD BY NOW PULLED OUT ALL the stops.

WHEN FABER WOKE UP IT WAS ALMOST DARK. THROUGH the

BLOGGS DROVE DANGEROUSLY FAST THROUGH THE night in a commandeered

FABER WAS AWAKE. HIS BODY PROBABLY NEEDED sleep despite the

ERWIN ROMMEL KNEW FROM THE START THAT HE WAS going

THE COTTAGE WAS TERRIBLY SMALL, LUCY REALIZED quite suddenly. As

SID CRIPPS LOOKED OUT OF THE WINDOW AND CURSED under

CIGARETTE TOBACCO BURNS AT 800 DEGREES CENTIGRADE. However, the coal

PERCIVAL GODLIMAN FELT REFRESHED, DETERMINED, evenrare for himinspired.

LYING ON ITS SIDE, THE JEEP LOOKED POWERFUL BUT helpless,

THE WIDE WHITE AUTOBAHN SNAKED THROUGH THE Bavarian valley up

LUCY WOKE UP SLOWLY. SHE ROSE GRADUALLY, languidly, from the

THATS THE PLACE, NUMBER ONE, THE CAPTAIN SAID, and lowered

LUCY WAS BECOMING QUITE CALM. THE FEELING CREPT over her

LUCYS DISTRESS CALL WAS HEARD BY THE CORVETTE.

FABER CLOSED THE DOOR OF THE JEEP AND BEGAN walking

PERCIVAL GODLIMAN HAD A HEADACHE FROM TOO many cigarettes and

THE SOUND OF BREAKING GLASS, THEN AN EXPLOSION like an

HITLER STOOD AT THE PANORAMIC WINDOW, LOOKING out at the

WHEN GERMANY DEFEATED ENGLAND IN THE QUARTER-FINAL of the 1970

E ARLY IN 1944 German Intelligence was piecing together evidence of a huge army in southeastern England. Reconnaissance planes brought back photographs of barracks and airfields and fleets of ships in the Wash; General George S. Patton was seen in his unmistakable pink jodhpurs walking his white bulldog; there were bursts of wireless activity, signals between regiments in the area; confirming signs were reported by German spies in Britain.

There was no army, of course. The ships were rubber-and-timber fakes, the barracks no more real than a movie set; Patton did not have a single man under his command; the radio signals were meaningless; the spies were double agents.

The object was to fool the enemy into preparing for an invasion via the Pas de Calais, so that on D-Day the Normandy assault would have the advantage of surprise.

It was a huge, near-impossible deception. Literally thousands of people were involved in perpetrating the trick. It would have been a miracle if none of Hitlers spies ever got to know about it.

Were there any spies? At the time people thought they were surrounded by what were then called Fifth Columnists. After the war a myth grew up that MI5 had rounded up the lot by Christmas 1939. The truth seems to be that there were very few; MI5 did capture nearly all of them.

But it only needs one

It is known that the Germans saw the signs they were meant to see in East Anglia. It is also known that they suspected a trick, and that they tried very hard to discover the truth.

That much is history. What follows is fiction.

Still and all, one suspects something like this must have happened.

Camberley, Surrey, June 1977

I T WAS THE COLDEST WINTER FOR FORTY-FIVE YEARS. Villages in the English countryside were cut off by the snow and the Thames froze over. One day in January the Glasgow-London train arrived at Euston twenty-four hours late. The snow and the blackout combined to make motoring perilous; road accidents doubled, and people told jokes about how it was more risky to drive an Austin Seven along Piccadilly at night than to take a tank across the Siegfried Line.

Then, when the spring came, it was glorious. Barrage balloons floated majestically in bright blue skies, and soldiers on leave flirted with girls in sleeveless dresses on the streets of London.

The city did not look much like the capital of a nation at war. There were signs, of course; and Henry Faber, cycling from Waterloo Station toward High-gate, noted them: piles of sandbags outside important public buildings, Anderson shelters in suburban gardens, propaganda posters about evacuation and Air Raid Precautions. Faber watched such thingshe was considerably more observant than the average railway clerk. He saw crowds of children in the parks, and concluded that evacuation had been a failure. He marked the number of motor cars on the road, despite petrol rationing; and he read about the new models announced by the motor manufacturers. He knew the significance of nightshift workers pouring into factories where, only months previously, there had been hardly enough work for the day shift. Most of all, he monitored the movement of troops around Britains railway network; all the paperwork passed through his office. One could learn a lot from that paperwork. Today, for example, he had rubber-stamped a batch of forms that led him to believe that a new Expeditionary Force was being gathered. He was fairly sure that it would have a complement of about 100,000 men, and that it was for Finland.

There were signs, yes; but there was something jokey about it all. Radio shows satirized the red tape of wartime regulations, there was community singing in the air raid shelters, and fashionable women carried their gas masks in couturier-designed containers. They talked about the Bore War. It was at once larger-than-life and trivial, like a moving picture show. All the air raid warnings, without exception, had been false alarms.

Faber had a different point of viewbut then, he was a different kind of person.

He steered his cycle into Archway Road and leaned forward a little to take the uphill slope, his long legs pumping as tirelessly as the pistons of a railway engine. He was very fit for his age, which was thirty-nine, although he lied about it; he lied about most things, as a safety precaution.

He began to perspire as he climbed the hill into High-gate. The building in which he lived was one of the highest in London, which was why he chose to live there. It was a Victorian brick house at one end of a terrace of six. The houses were high, narrow and dark, like the minds of the men for whom they had been built. Each had three stories plus a basement with a servants entrancethe English middle class of the nineteenth century insisted on a servants entrance, even if they had no servants. Faber was a cynic about the English.