Eye of the Needle - Ken Follett [52]
IT WAS a familiar dream, the dream of his arrival in London.
He had crossed from France, carrying a Belgian passport that said he was Jan van Gelder, a representative for Phillips (which would explain his suitcase radio if Customs opened it). His English then was fluent but not colloquial. The Customs had not bothered him; he was an ally. He had caught the train to London. In those days there had been plenty of empty seats in the carriages, and you could get a meal. Faber had dined on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. It amused him. He had talked with a history student from Cardiff about the European political situation. The dream was like the reality until the train stopped at Waterloo. Then it turned into a nightmare.
The trouble started at the ticket barrier. Like all dreams it had its own weird illogicality. The document they queried was not his forged passport but his perfectly legitimate railway ticket. The collector said, “This is an Abwehr ticket.”
“No, it is not,” said Faber, speaking with a ludicrously thick German accent. What had happened to his dainty English consonants? They would not come. “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 trouserless 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. “I had an unpleasant dream,” he said. 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 cowcatcher 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 a 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 High-gate 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