you know that doesn’t bother me? I just want to be loved.”
David shrugged. “That’s your problem.” He went out before she started to cry.
MOTHER DID NOT STAY the second fortnight. Lucy walked with her down the jetty the next day. It was raining hard, and they both wore mackintoshes. They stood in silence waiting for the boat, watching the rain pit the sea with tiny craters. Mother held Jo in her arms.
“Things will change, in time, you know,” she said. “Four years is nothing in a marriage.”
Lucy said, “I don’t know, but there’s not much I can do. There’s Jo, and the war, and David’s condition—how can I leave?”
The boat arrived, and Lucy exchanged her mother for three boxes of groceries and five letters. The water was choppy. Mother sat in the boat’s tiny cabin. They waved her around the headland. Lucy felt very lonely.
Jo began to cry. “I don’t want Gran to go away!”
“Nor do I,” said Lucy.
10
G ODLIMAN AND BLOGGS WALKED SIDE BY SIDE ALONG the pavement of a bomb-damaged London shopping street. They were a mismatched pair: the stooped, birdlike professor, with pebble-lensed spectacles and a pipe, not looking where he was going, taking short, scurrying steps; and the flat-footed youngster, blond and purposeful, in his detective’s raincoat and melodramatic hat; a cartoon looking for a caption.
Godliman was saying, “I think Die Nadel is well-connected.”
“Why?”
“The only way he could be so insubordinate with impunity. It’s this ‘Regards to Willi’ line. It must refer to Canaris.”
“You think he was pals with Canaris.”
“He’s pals with somebody—perhaps someone more powerful than Canaris was.”
“I have the feeling this is leading somewhere.”
“People who are well-connected generally make those connections at school, or university or staff college. Look at that.”
They were outside a shop that had a huge empty space where once there had been a plate-glass window. A rough sign, hand-painted and nailed to the window-frame, said, “Even more open than usual.”
Bloggs laughed, “I saw one outside a bombed police station: ‘Be good, we are still open.’”
“It’s become a minor art form.”
They walked on. Bloggs said, “So, what if Die Nadel did go to school with someone high in the Wehrmacht?”
“People always have their pictures taken at school. Middleton down in the basement at Kensington—that house where MI6 used to be before the war—he’s got a collection of thousands of photographs of German officers: school photos, binges in the Mess, passing-out parades, shaking hands with Adolf, newspaper pictures—everything.”
“I see,” Bloggs said. “So if you’re right, and Die Nadel had been through Germany’s equivalent of Eton and Sandhurst, we’ve probably got a picture of him.”
“Almost certainly. Spies are notoriously camera-shy, but they don’t become spies in school. It will be a youthful Die Nadel that we find in Middleton’s files.”
They skirted a huge crater outside a barber’s. The shop was intact, but the traditional red-and-white-striped pole lay in shards on the pavement. The sign in the window said, “We’ve had a close shave—come and get one yourself.”
“How will we recognize him? No one has ever seen him,” Bloggs said.
“Yes, they have. At Mrs. Garden’s boarding house in High-gate they know him quite well.”
THE VICTORIAN HOUSE stood on a hill overlooking London. It was built of red brick, and Bloggs thought it looked angry at the damage Hitler was doing to its city. It was high up, a good place from which to broadcast. Die Nadel would have lived on the top floor. Bloggs wondered what secrets he had transmitted to Hamburg from this place in the dark days of 1940: map references for aircraft factories and steelworks, details of coastal defenses, political gossip, gas masks and Anderson shelters and sandbags, British morale, bomb damage reports, “Well
David shrugged. “That’s your problem.” He went out before she started to cry.
MOTHER DID NOT STAY the second fortnight. Lucy walked with her down the jetty the next day. It was raining hard, and they both wore mackintoshes. They stood in silence waiting for the boat, watching the rain pit the sea with tiny craters. Mother held Jo in her arms.
“Things will change, in time, you know,” she said. “Four years is nothing in a marriage.”
Lucy said, “I don’t know, but there’s not much I can do. There’s Jo, and the war, and David’s condition—how can I leave?”
The boat arrived, and Lucy exchanged her mother for three boxes of groceries and five letters. The water was choppy. Mother sat in the boat’s tiny cabin. They waved her around the headland. Lucy felt very lonely.
Jo began to cry. “I don’t want Gran to go away!”
“Nor do I,” said Lucy.
10
G ODLIMAN AND BLOGGS WALKED SIDE BY SIDE ALONG the pavement of a bomb-damaged London shopping street. They were a mismatched pair: the stooped, birdlike professor, with pebble-lensed spectacles and a pipe, not looking where he was going, taking short, scurrying steps; and the flat-footed youngster, blond and purposeful, in his detective’s raincoat and melodramatic hat; a cartoon looking for a caption.
Godliman was saying, “I think Die Nadel is well-connected.”
“Why?”
“The only way he could be so insubordinate with impunity. It’s this ‘Regards to Willi’ line. It must refer to Canaris.”
“You think he was pals with Canaris.”
“He’s pals with somebody—perhaps someone more powerful than Canaris was.”
“I have the feeling this is leading somewhere.”
“People who are well-connected generally make those connections at school, or university or staff college. Look at that.”
They were outside a shop that had a huge empty space where once there had been a plate-glass window. A rough sign, hand-painted and nailed to the window-frame, said, “Even more open than usual.”
Bloggs laughed, “I saw one outside a bombed police station: ‘Be good, we are still open.’”
“It’s become a minor art form.”
They walked on. Bloggs said, “So, what if Die Nadel did go to school with someone high in the Wehrmacht?”
“People always have their pictures taken at school. Middleton down in the basement at Kensington—that house where MI6 used to be before the war—he’s got a collection of thousands of photographs of German officers: school photos, binges in the Mess, passing-out parades, shaking hands with Adolf, newspaper pictures—everything.”
“I see,” Bloggs said. “So if you’re right, and Die Nadel had been through Germany’s equivalent of Eton and Sandhurst, we’ve probably got a picture of him.”
“Almost certainly. Spies are notoriously camera-shy, but they don’t become spies in school. It will be a youthful Die Nadel that we find in Middleton’s files.”
They skirted a huge crater outside a barber’s. The shop was intact, but the traditional red-and-white-striped pole lay in shards on the pavement. The sign in the window said, “We’ve had a close shave—come and get one yourself.”
“How will we recognize him? No one has ever seen him,” Bloggs said.
“Yes, they have. At Mrs. Garden’s boarding house in High-gate they know him quite well.”
THE VICTORIAN HOUSE stood on a hill overlooking London. It was built of red brick, and Bloggs thought it looked angry at the damage Hitler was doing to its city. It was high up, a good place from which to broadcast. Die Nadel would have lived on the top floor. Bloggs wondered what secrets he had transmitted to Hamburg from this place in the dark days of 1940: map references for aircraft factories and steelworks, details of coastal defenses, political gossip, gas masks and Anderson shelters and sandbags, British morale, bomb damage reports, “Well
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