Eye of the Needle: A Novel

PART ONE

ONE

IT 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 Highgate, 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 things—he 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 motorcars on the road, despite petrol rationing; and he read about the new models announced by the motor manufacturers. He knew the significance of night-shift 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 Britain’s 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 Boer 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 view—but 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 Highgate. 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’ entrance—the 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.

Number Six had been owned by Mr. Harold Garden, of Garden’s Tea and Coffee, a small company that went broke in the Depression. Having lived by the principle that insolvency is a mortal sin, the bankrupt Mr. Garden had no option but to die. The house was all he bequeathed to his widow, who was then obliged to take in boarders. She enjoyed being a landlady, although the etiquette of her social circle demanded that she pretend to be a little ashamed of it. Faber had a room on the top floor with a dormer window. He lived there from Monday to Friday, and told Mrs. Garden that he spent weekends with his mother in Erith. In fact, he had another landlady in Blackheath, who called him Mr. Baker and believed he was a traveling salesman for a stationery manufacturer and spent all week on the road.

He wheeled his cycle up the garden path under the disapproving frown of the tall front-room windows. He put it in the shed and padlocked it to the lawn mower—it was against the law to leave a vehicle unlocked. The seed potatoes in boxes all around the shed were sprouting. Mrs. Garden had turned her flower beds over to vegetables for the war effort.

Faber entered the house, hung his hat on the hall-stand, washed his hands and went in to tea.

Three of the other lodgers were already eating: a pimply boy from Yorkshire who was trying to get into the Army; a confectionery salesman with receding sandy hair; and a retired naval officer who, Faber was convinced, was a degenerate. Faber nodded to them and sat down.

The salesman was telling a joke. So the Squadron Leader says, ‘You’re back early!’ and the pilot turns round and says, ‘Yes, I dropped my leaflets in bundles—wasn’t that right?’ So the Squadron Leader says, ‘Good God! You might’ve hurt somebody!’

The naval officer cackled and Faber smiled. Mrs. Garden came in with a teapot. Good evening, Mr. Faber. We started without you—I hope you don’t mind.

Faber spread margarine thinly on a slice of wholemeal bread, and momentarily yearned for a fat sausage. Your seed potatoes are ready to plant, he told her.

Faber hurried through his tea. The others were arguing over whether Chamberlain should be sacked and replaced by Churchill. Mrs. Garden kept voicing opinions, then looking at Faber for a reaction. She was a blowsy woman, a little overweight. About Faber’s age, she wore the clothes of a woman of thirty, and he guessed she wanted another husband. He kept out of the discussion.

Mrs. Garden turned on the radio. It hummed for a while; then an announcer said: "This is the BBC Home Service. It’s That Man Again!"

Faber had heard the show. It regularly featured a German spy called Funf. He excused himself and went up to his room.

*   *   *

Mrs. Garden was left alone after It’s That Man Again; the naval officer went to the pub with the salesman; and the boy from Yorkshire, who was religious, went to a prayer meeting. She sat in the parlor with a small glass of gin, looking at the blackout curtains and thinking about Mr. Faber. She wished he wouldn’t spend so much time in his room. She needed company, and he was the kind of company she needed.

Such thoughts made her feel guilty. To assuage the guilt, she thought of Mr. Garden. Her memories were familiar but blurred, like an old print of a movie with worn sprocket holes and an indistinct sound track; so that, although she could easily remember what it was like to have him here in the room with her, it was difficult to imagine his face or the clothes he might be wearing or the comment he would make on the day’s war news. He had been a small, dapper man, successful in business when he was lucky and unsuccessful when he was not, undemonstrative in public and insatiably affectionate in bed. She had loved him a lot. There would be many women in her position if this war ever got going properly. She poured another drink.

Mr. Faber was a quiet one—that was the trouble. He didn’t seem to have any vices. He didn’t smoke, she had never smelled drink on his breath, and he spent every evening in his room, listening to classical music on his radio. He read a lot of newspapers and went for long walks. She suspected he was quite clever, despite his humble job: his contributions to the conversation in the dining room were always a shade more thoughtful than anyone else’s. He surely could get a better job if he tried. He seemed not to give himself the chance he deserved.

It was the same with his appearance. He was a fine figure of a man: tall, quite heavy around the neck and shoulders, not a bit fat, with long legs. And he had a strong face, with a high forehead and a long jaw and bright blue eyes—not pretty like a film star, but the kind of face that appealed to a woman. Except for the mouth—that was small and thin, and she could imagine him being cruel. Mr. Garden had been incapable of cruelty.

And yet at first sight he was not the kind of a man a woman would look at twice. The trousers of his old worn suit were never pressed—she would have done that for him, and gladly, but he never asked—and he always wore a shabby raincoat and a flat docker’s cap. He had no mustache, and his hair was trimmed short every fortnight. It was as if he wanted to look like a nonentity.

He needed a woman; there was no doubt of that. She wondered for a moment whether he might be what people called effeminate, but she dismissed the idea quickly. He needed a wife to smarten him up and give him ambition. She needed a man to keep her company and for—well—love.

Yet he never made a move. Sometimes she could scream with frustration. She was sure she was attractive. She looked in a mirror as she poured another gin. She had a nice face and fair curly hair, and there was something for a man to get hold of. . . . She giggled at that thought. She must be getting tiddly.

She sipped her drink and considered whether she ought to make the first move. Mr. Faber was obviously shy—chronically shy. He wasn’t sexless—she could tell by the look in his eyes on the two occasions he had seen her in her nightdress. Perhaps she could overcome his shyness by being brazen. What did she have to lose? She tried imagining the worst, just to see what it felt like. Suppose he rejected her. Well, it would be embarrassing—even humiliating. It would be a blow to her pride. But nobody else need know it had happened. He would just have to leave.

The thought of rejection had put her off the whole idea. She got to her feet slowly, thinking: I’m just not the brazen type. It was bedtime. If she had one more gin in bed she would be able to sleep. She took the bottle upstairs.

Her bedroom was below Mr. Faber’s, and she could hear violin music from his radio as she undressed. She put on a new nightdress—pink, with an embroidered neckline, and no one to see it!—and made her last drink. She wondered what Mr. Faber looked like undressed. He would have a flat stomach and hairs on his nipples, and you would be able to see his ribs because he was slim. He probably had a small bottom. She giggled again, thinking, I’m a disgrace.

She took her drink to bed and picked up her book, but it was too much effort to focus on the print. Besides, she was bored with vicarious romance. Stories about dangerous love affairs were fine when you yourself had a perfectly safe love affair with your husband, but a woman needed more than Barbara Cartland. She sipped her gin and wished Mr. Faber would turn the radio off. It was like trying to sleep at a tea dance!

She could, of course, ask him to turn it off. She looked at her bedside clock; it was past ten. She could put on her dressing gown, which matched the nightdress, and just comb her hair a little, then step into her slippers—quite dainty, with a pattern of roses—and just pop up the stairs to the next landing, and just, well, tap on his door. He would open it, perhaps wearing his trousers and under- shirt, and then he would look at her the way he had looked when he saw her in her nightdress on the way to the bathroom. . . .

Silly old fool, she said to herself aloud. You’re just making excuses to go up there.

And then she wondered why she needed excuses. She was a grown-up, and it was her house, and in ten years she had not met another man who was just right for her, and what the hell? She needed to feel someone strong and hard and hairy on top of her, squeezing her breasts and panting in her ear and parting her thighs with his broad, flat hands, for tomorrow the gas bombs might come over from Germany and they would all die choking and gasping and poisoned and she would have lost her last chance.

So she drained her glass and got out of bed and put on her dressing gown, and just combed her hair a little and stepped into her slippers, and picked up her bunch of keys in case he had locked the door and couldn’t hear her knock above the sound of the radio.

There was nobody on the landing. She found the stairs in the darkness. She intended to step over the stair that creaked, but she stumbled on the loose carpet and trod on it heavily; but it seemed that nobody heard, so she went on up and tapped on the door at the top. She tried it gently. It was locked.

The radio was turned down and Mr. Faber called out, Yes?

He was well-spoken, not cockney or foreign—not anything, really, just a pleasantly neutral voice.

She said, Can I have a word with you?

He seemed to hesitate; then he said: I’m undressed.

So am I, she giggled, and she opened the door with her duplicate key.

He was standing in front of the radio with some kind of screwdriver in his hand. He wore his trousers and no undershirt. His face was white and he looked scared to death.

She stepped inside and closed the door behind her, not knowing what to say. Suddenly she remembered a line from an American film, and she said, Would you buy a lonely girl a drink? It was silly, really, because she knew he had no drink in his room and she certainly wasn’t dressed to go out; but it sounded vampish.

It seemed to have the desired effect. Without speaking, he came slowly toward her. He did have hair on his nipples. She took a step forward, and then his arms went around her and she closed her eyes and turned up her face, and he kissed her, and she moved slightly in his arms, and then there was a terrible, awful, unbearable sharp pain in her back and she opened her mouth to scream.

*   *   *

He had heard her stumble on the stairs. If she’d waited another minute he would have had the radio transmitter back in its case and the code books in the drawer and there would have been no need for her to die. But before he could conceal the evidence he had heard her key in the lock, and when she opened the door the stiletto had been in his hand.

Because she moved slightly in his arms, Faber missed her heart with the first jab of the weapon, and he had to thrust his fingers down her throat to stop her crying out. He jabbed again, but she moved again and the blade struck a rib and merely slashed her superficially. Then the blood was spurting and he knew it would not be a clean kill; it never was when you missed the first stroke.

She was wriggling too much to be killed with a jab now. Keeping his fingers in her mouth, he gripped her jaw with his thumb and pushed her back against the door. Her head hit the woodwork with a loud bump, and he wished he had not turned the radio down, but how could he have expected this?

He hesitated before killing her because it would be much better if she died on the bed—better for the cover-up that was already taking shape in his mind—but he could not be sure of getting her that far in silence. He tightened his hold on her jaw, kept her head still by jamming it against the door, and brought the stiletto around in a wide, slashing arc that ripped away most of her throat, for the stiletto was not a slashing knife and the throat was not Faber’s favored target.

He jumped back to avoid the first horrible gush of blood, then stepped forward again to catch her before she hit the floor. He dragged her to the bed, trying not to look at her neck, and laid her down.

He had killed before, so he expected the reaction—it always came as soon as he felt safe. He went over to the sink in the corner of the room and waited for it. He could see his face in the little shaving mirror. He was white and his eyes were staring. He looked at himself and thought, Killer. Then he threw up.

When that was over he felt better. He could go to work now. He knew what he had to do; the details had come to him even while he was killing her.

He washed his face, brushed his teeth and cleaned the washbasin. Then he sat down at the table beside his radio. He looked at his notebook, found his place and began tapping the key. It was a long message, about the mustering of an army for Finland, and he had been halfway through when he was interrupted. It was written down in cipher on the pad. When he had completed it he signed off with Regards to Willi.

The transmitter packed away neatly into a specially designed suitcase. Faber put the rest of his possessions into a second case. He took off his trousers and sponged the bloodstains, then washed himself all over.

At last he looked at the corpse.

He was able to be cold about her now. It was wartime; they were enemies; if he had not killed her she would have caused his death. She had been a threat, and all he felt now was relief that the threat had been nullified. She should not have frightened him.

Nevertheless, his last task was distasteful. He opened her robe and lifted her nightdress, pulling it up around her waist. She was wearing knickers. He tore them, so that the hair of her pubis was visible. Poor woman, she had wanted only to seduce him. But he could not have got her out of the room without her seeing the transmitter, and the British propaganda had made these people alert for spies—ridiculously so. If the Abwehr had as many agents as the newspapers made out, the British would have lost the war already.

He stepped back and looked at her with his head on one side. There was something wrong. He tried to think like a sex maniac. If I were crazed with lust for a woman like Una Garden, and I killed just so that I could have my way with her, what would I then do?

Of course, that kind of lunatic would want to look at her breasts. Faber leaned over the body, gripped the neckline of the nightdress, and ripped it to the waist. Her large breasts sagged sideways.

The police doctor would soon discover that she had not been raped, but Faber did not think that mattered. He had taken a criminology course at Heidelberg, and he knew that many sexual assaults were not consummated. Besides, he could not have carried the deception that far, not even for the Fatherland. He was not in the SS. Some of them would queue up to rape the corpse. . . . He put the thought out of his mind.

He washed his hands again and got dressed. It was almost midnight. He would wait an hour before leaving; it would be safer later.

He sat down to think about how he had gone wrong.

There was no question that he had made a mistake. If his cover were perfect, he would be totally secure. If he were totally secure no one could discover his secret. Mrs. Garden had discovered his secret—or rather, she would have if she had lived a few seconds longer—therefore he had not been totally secure, therefore his cover was not perfect, therefore he had made a mistake.

He should have put a bolt on the door. Better to be thought chronically shy than to have landladies with duplicate keys sneaking in in their nightclothes.

That was the surface error. The deep flaw was that he was too eligible to be a bachelor. He thought this with irritation, not conceit. He knew that he was a pleasant, attractive man and that there was no apparent reason why he should be single. He turned his mind to thinking up a cover that would explain this without inviting advances from the Mrs. Gardens of this world.

He ought to be able to find inspiration in his real personality. Why was he single? He stirred uneasily—he did not like mirrors. The answer was simple. He was single because of his profession. If there were deeper reasons, he did not want to know them.

He would have to spend tonight in the open. Highgate Wood would do. In the morning he would take his suitcases to a railway station checkroom; then tomorrow evening he would go to his room in Blackheath.

He would shift to his second identity. He had little fear of being caught by the police. The commercial traveler who occupied the room at Blackheath on weekends looked rather different from the railway clerk who had killed his landlady. The Blackheath persona was expansive, vulgar and flashy. He wore loud ties, bought rounds of drinks, and combed his hair differently. The police would circulate a description of a shabby little pervert who would not say boo to a goose until he was inflamed with lust, and no one would look twice at the handsome salesman in the striped suit who was obviously the type that was more or less permanently inflamed with lust and did not have to kill women to get them to show him their breasts.

He would have to set up another identity—he always kept at least two. He needed a new job, fresh papers—passport, identity card, ration book, birth certificate. It was all so risky. Damn Mrs. Garden. Why couldn’t she have drunk herself asleep as usual?

It was one o’clock. Faber took a last look around the room. He was not concerned about leaving clues—his fingerprints were obviously all over the house, and there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind about who was the murderer. Nor did he feel any sentiment about leaving the place that had been his home for two years; he had never thought of it as home. He had never thought of anywhere as home.

He would always think of this as the place where he had learned to put a bolt on a door.

He turned out the light, picked up his cases, and went down the stairs and out of the door into the night.

TWO

HENRY II was a remarkable king. In an age when the term flying visit had not yet been coined, he flitted between England and France with such rapidity that he was credited with magical powers—a rumor that, understandably, he did nothing to suppress. In 1173—either the June or the September, depending upon which secondary source one favors—he arrived in England and left for France again so quickly that no contemporary writer ever found out about it. Later historians discovered the record of his expenditure in the Pipe Rolls. At the time his kingdom was under attack by his sons at its northern and southern extremes—the Scottish border and the South of France. But what, precisely, was the purpose of his visit? Whom did he see? Why was it secret, when the myth of his magical speed was worth an army? What did he accomplish?

This was the problem that taxed Percival Godliman in the summer of 1940, when Hitler’s armies swept across the French cornfields like a scythe and the British poured out of the Dunkirk bottleneck in bloody disarray.

Professor Godliman knew more about the Middle Ages than any man alive. His book on the Black Death had upended every convention of medievalism; it had also been a bestseller and published as a Penguin book. With that behind him he had turned to a slightly earlier and even more intractable period.

At 12:30 on a splendid June day in London, a secretary found Godliman hunched over an illuminated manuscript, laboriously translating its medieval Latin, making notes in his own even less legible handwriting. The secretary, who was planning to eat her lunch in the garden of Gordon Square, did not like the manuscript room because it smelled dead. You needed so many keys to get in there, it might as well have been a tomb.

Godliman stood at a lectern, perched on one leg like a bird, his face lit bleakly by a spotlight above—he might have been the ghost of the monk who wrote the book, standing a cold vigil over his precious chronicle. The girl cleared her throat and waited for him to notice her. She saw a short man in his fifties, with round shoulders and weak eyesight, wearing a tweed suit. She knew he could be perfectly sensible once you dragged him out of the Middle Ages. She coughed again and said, Professor Godliman?

He looked up, and when he saw her he smiled, and then he did not look like a ghost, more like someone’s dotty father. Hello! he said, in an astonished tone, as if he had just met his next-door neighbor in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

You asked me to remind you that you have lunch at the Savoy with Colonel Terry.

Oh, yes. He took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and peered at it. If I’m going to walk it, I’d better leave now.

She nodded. I brought your gas mask.

You are thoughtful! He smiled again, and she decided he looked quite nice. He took the mask from her and said, Do I need my coat?

You didn’t wear one this morning. It’s quite warm. Shall I lock up after you?

Thank you, thank you. He jammed his notebook into his jacket pocket and went out.

The secretary looked around, shivered, and followed him.

*   *   *

Colonel Andrew Terry was a red-faced Scot, pauper-thin from a lifetime of heavy smoking, with sparse dark blond hair thickly brilliantined. Godliman found him at a corner table in the Savoy Grill, wearing civilian clothes. There were three cigarette stubs in the ashtray. He stood up to shake hands.

Godliman said, Morning, Uncle Andrew. Terry was his mother’s baby brother.

How are you, Percy?

I’m writing a book about the Plantagenets. Godliman sat down.

Are your manuscripts still in London? I’m surprised.

Why?

Terry lit another cigarette. Move them to the country in case of bombing.

Should I?

Half the National Gallery has been shoved into a bloody big hole in the ground somewhere up in Wales. Young Kenneth Clark is quicker off the mark than you. Might be sensible to take yourself off out of it too, while you’re about it. I don’t suppose you’ve many students left.

That’s true. Godliman took a menu from a waiter and said, I don’t want a drink.

Terry did not look at his menu. Seriously, Percy, why are you still in town?

Godliman’s eyes seemed to clear, like the image on a screen when the projector is focused, as if he had to think for the first time since he walked in. It’s all right for children to leave, and national institutions like Bertrand Russell. But for me—well, it’s a bit like running away and letting other people fight for you. I realize that’s not a strictly logical argument. It’s a matter of sentiment, not logic.

Terry smiled the smile of one whose expectations have been fulfilled. But he dropped the subject and looked at the menu. After a moment he said, "Good God. Le Lord Woolton Pie!"

Godliman grinned. I’m sure it’s still just potatoes and vegetables.

When they had ordered, Terry said, What do you think of our new Prime Minister?

The man’s an ass. But then, Hitler’s a fool, and look how well he’s doing. You?

We can live with Winston. At least he’s bellicose.

Godliman raised his eyebrows. ‘We’? Are you back in the game?

I never really left it, you know.

But you said—

Percy. Can’t you think of a department whose staff all say they don’t work for the Army?

Well, I’m damned. All this time . . .

Their first course came, and they started a bottle of white Bordeaux. Godliman ate potted salmon and looked pensive.

Eventually Terry said, Thinking about the last lot?

Godliman nodded. Young days, you know. Terrible time. But his tone was almost wistful.

This war isn’t the same at all. My chaps don’t go behind enemy lines and count bivouacs like you did. Well, they do, but that side of things is much less important this time. Nowadays we just listen to the wireless.

Don’t they broadcast in code?

Terry shrugged. Codes can be broken. Candidly, we get to know just about everything we need these days.

Godliman glanced around, but there was no one within earshot, and it was hardly for him to tell Terry that careless talk costs lives.

Terry went on, "In fact my job is to make sure they don’t have the information they need about us."

They both had chicken pie to follow. There was no beef on the menu. Godliman fell silent, but Terry talked on.

Canaris is a funny chap, you know. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr. I met him before this lot started. Likes England. My guess is he’s none too fond of Hitler. Anyway, we know he’s been told to mount a major intelligence operation against us, in preparation for the invasion—but he’s not doing much. We arrested their best man in England the day after war broke out. He’s in Wandsworth prison now. Useless people, Canaris’s spies. Old ladies in boardinghouses, mad Fascists, petty criminals—

Godliman said, Look here, old boy, this is too much. He trembled slightly with a mixture of anger and incomprehension. All this stuff is secret. I don’t want to know!

Terry was unperturbed. Would you like something else? he offered. I’m having chocolate ice cream.

Godliman stood up. I don’t think so. I’m going to go back to my work, if you don’t mind.

Terry looked up at him coolly. The world can wait for your reappraisal of the Plantagenets, Percy. There’s a war on, dear boy. I want you to work for me.

Godliman stared down at him for a long moment. What on earth would I do?

Terry smiled wolfishly. Catch spies.

Walking back to the college, Godliman felt depressed despite the weather. He would accept Colonel Terry’s offer, no doubt about that. His country was at war; it was a just war; and if he was too old to fight, he