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. The shepherd sat by an
old-fashioned wood-burning kitchen range, warming his hands. He stood
up.
David said: "Henry, this is Tom McAvity."
"Pleased to meet you," Tom said formally.
Faber shook his hand. He 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 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 in 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, for he steered confidently across the
open grassland without once getting bogged down in swampy ground. The
sheep looked very sorry for themselves. With their fleeces 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. 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. It held 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 Henry 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 thorny 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 felt very wet,
"I'm afraid I've mined this garment," 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.
Then each went to the outhouse Tom's cottage did not have the modern
plumbing that had been added to Lucy's and Tom made more tea.
"She's the first we've lost this year," David said.
"Aye."
"We'll fence the gully this summer."
"Aye."
Faber sensed a change in the atmosphere: it was not the same as it had
been two or three hours earlier. They sat, drinking and smoking as
before, but David seemed restless. Twice Faber caught the man staring
at him, deep in thought.
Eventually David said: "We'll leave you to butcher the ewe, Tom."
"Aye.5 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
windscreen, reloaded it, and put it back.
On the way home he underwent another change of mood and became
chatty.
"I used to fly Spitfires, you know. Lovely kites. Four guns in each
wing American Brownings, they were, firing one thousand two hundred and
sixty rounds a minute. The Jerries prefer cannon, of course their Me
logs only have two machine guns. A cannon does more damage, but our
Brownings are faster, and more accurate."
"Really?" Faber said politely.
"They put cannon in the Hurricanes later, but it was the Spitfire that
won the Battle of Britain."
Faber found his boastfulness irritating. He said: "How many enemy
aircraft did you shoot down?"
"I lost my legs while I was training," David said.
Faber stole a glance at his face: it was a mask of repressed fury.
David said: "No, I haven't killed a single German, yet."
It was an unmistakable signal. Faber suddenly became very alert. He
had no idea what David might have deduced or discovered, but there
could be no doubt that the man knew something was up. Faber turned
slightly sideways to face David, braced himself with his foot against
the transmission tunnel on the floor, and rested his right hand lightly
on his left forearm. He waited for David's next move.
"Are you interested in aircraft?" David asked.
"No." Faber's voice was flat.
"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 mid-point, 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 photographs that fell out of your jacket pocket '
As he spoke, he tossed the lighted cigarette at Faber's face, and
reached for the gun above the windscreen.
TWENTY-SIX
Sid Cripps looked out of the window and cursed unde
r 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 grass 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 very funny going on.
The tanks had not chewed up his grass. They had left no tracks. But
the American soldiers were making 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 bugger, you'll break your head," Sid muttered.
The soldiers were watching the bull, too. They seemed to think it was
funny.
The bull ran full-tilt into the tank, its horns piercing the
armour-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
about laughing.
Sid Cripps scratched his head again. It was all very strange.
Percival Godliman 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 for it was not every day, come to that it was
not every year, that he had a private audience with 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. Godliman was
not nervous, for a distinguished historian has nothing to fear from
soldiers and politicians, not unless his view of history is a good deal
more radical than Godliman's was. Not nervous, then; but he was
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 phoney
First United States Army Group stationed in East Anglia: the four
hundred landing ships, made of canvas and scaffolding floated on oil
drums, which thronged the harbours 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 phoney 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 solely for the
benefit of the German listening posts, consisting of messages compiled
by professional writers of fiction, and including such gems as 'i/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?"
A lot had been achieved. The signs were that the Germans had fallen
for it. And now the whole elaborate deception had been placed in
jeopardy because of one spy a spy Godliman had failed to catch.
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 pass 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
Godliman entered the map n room a cluster of youngish people with
solemn faces emerged from the conference room beyond. An aide followed
them a r moment later, and spotted Godliman. id "You're very punctual,
sir," the aide said.
"He's ready for you."
Godliman stepped into the small, comfortable conference room. There
were rugs on the floor and a portrait 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 centre of which was a
statuette of a faun the emblem of Churchill's own deception outfit, the
London Controlling Section.
Godliman decided not to salute.
Churchill said: "Sit down, Professor."
Godliman suddenly realized that Churchill was not a big man but he sat
like a big man: shoulders hunched, elbows on the arms of his chair,
chin lowered, legs apart. Instead of the famous siren suit he was
wearing a solicitor's black-and-stripes short black jacket and striped
grey trousers with a spotted blue bow tie and a brilliant-white shirt.
Despite his stocky frame and his paunch, the hand holding the fountain
pen was delicate, thin-fingered. His complexion was baby-pink. The
other hand held a cigar, and on the table beside the papers stood a
glass containing what looked like whisky.
He was making notes in the margin of a typewritten report, and as he
scribbled he muttered occasionally. Godliman was not in the least awed
by the great man. As a peacetime statesman Churchill had been, in
Godliman's view, a disaster. However, the man had the qualities of a
great warrior chieftain, and Godliman respected him for that. (Years
later, Churchill modestly denied having been the British lion, saying
that he had merely been privileged to give the roar: Godliman thought
that assessment was just about right.) He looked up abruptly and said:
"I suppose there's no doubt this damned spy has discovered what we're
up to?"
None whatsoever, sir," Godliman said.
"You think he's got away?"
We chased him to Aberdeen. It's almost certain that he left there two
nights ago in a stolen boat presumably for a rendezvous in the North
Sea. However, he can't have been far out of port when the storm blew
up. He may have met the U-boat before the storm hit, but it's
unlikely. In all probability he drowned. I'm sorry we can't offer
more definite information."
"So am I," Churchill said. Suddenly he seemed angry, though not with
Godliman. He got out of his chair and went over to the clock on the
wall, staring as if mesmerised at the inscription Victoria RI, Ministry
of Works, 1889. Then, as if he had forgotten that Godliman was there,
he began to pace up and down alongside the table, muttering to himself.
Godliman was able to make out the words, and what he heard astonished
him. The great man was mumbling: "This stocky figure, with a slight
&
nbsp; stoop, striding up and down, suddenly un242 conscious of any presence
beyond his own thoughts..." It was as if Churchill were acting out a
Hollywood screenplay which he wrote as he went along.
The performance ended as abruptly as it had begun, and if the man knew
he had been behaving eccentrically, he gave no sign of it. He sat
down, handed Godliman a sheet of paper, and said: "This is the German
order of battle as of last week."
Godliman read:
Russian front: Italy Balkans: Western front: Germany:
122 infantry divisions 25 panzer divisions 17 miscellaneous divisions
37 infantry divisions 9 panzer divisions 4 miscellaneous divisions 64
infantry divisions 12 panzer divisions 12 miscellaneous divisions 3
infantry divisions i panzer division 4 miscellaneous divisions
Churchill said: "Of those twelve panzer divisions in the west, only one
is actually on the Normandy coast. The great SS divisions, Das Reich
and Adolf Hitler, are at Toulouse and Brussels respectively and show no
signs of moving. What does all this tell you, Professor?"
"Our deception and cover plans seem to have been successful," Godliman
answered.
"Totally!" Churchill barked.
"They are confused and uncertain, and their best guesses about our