Eye of the Needle - Ken Follett [57]
Bloggs said: “Excuse me, but why are you so sure their man found out?”
Terry went to the door. “Come in, Rodriguez.”
A tall, handsome man with jet-black hair and a long nose entered the room and nodded politely to Godliman and Bloggs. Terry said: “Senhor Rodriguez is our man at the Portuguese Embassy. Tell them what happened, Rodriguez.”
The man stood by the door. “As you know, we have been watching Senhor Francisco of the embassy staff for some time. Today he went to meet a man in a taxi, and received an envelope. We relieved him of the envelope shortly after the man in the taxi drove off. We were able to get the license number of the taxi.”
“I’m having the cabbie traced,” Terry said. “All right, Rodriguez, you’d better get back. And thank you.”
The tall Portuguese left the room. Terry handed to Godliman a large yellow envelope, addressed to Manuel Francisco. Godliman opened it—it had already been unsealed—and withdrew a second envelope marked with a meaningless series of letters: presumably a code.
Within the inner envelope were several sheets of paper covered with handwriting and a set of ten-by-eight photographs. Godliman examined the letter. “It looks like a very basic code,” he said.
“You don’t need to read it,” Terry said impatiently. “Look at the photographs.”
Godliman did so. There were about thirty of them, and he looked at each one before speaking. He handed them to Bloggs. “This is a catastrophe.”
Bloggs glanced through the pictures, then put them down.
Godliman said, “This is only his backup. He’s still got the negatives, and he’s going somewhere with them.”
The three men sat still in the little office, like a tableau. The only illumination came from a spotlight on Godliman’s desk. With the cream walls, the blacked-out window, the spare furniture and the worn Civil Service carpet, it was a prosaic backdrop for dramatics.
Terry said, “I’m going to have to tell Churchill.”
The phone rang, and the colonel picked it up. “Yes. Good. Bring him here right away, please—but before you do, ask him where he dropped the passenger. What? Thank you, get here fast.” He hung up. “The taxi dropped our man at University College Hospital.”
Bloggs said, “Perhaps he was injured in the fight with the Home Guard.”
Terry said, “Where is the hospital?”
“About five minutes’ walk from Euston Station,” Godliman said. “Trains from Euston go to Holyhead, Liverpool, Glasgow…all places from which you can catch a ferry to Ireland.”
“Liverpool to Belfast,” Bloggs said. “Then a car to the border across into Eire, and U-boat on the Atlantic coast. Somewhere. He wouldn’t risk Holyhead-to-Dublin because of the passport control, and there would be no point in going beyond Liverpool to Glasgow.”
Godliman said, “Fred, you’d better go to the station and show the picture of Faber around, see if anyone noticed him getting on a train. I’ll phone the station and warn them you’re coming, and at the same time find out which trains have left since about ten thirty.”
Bloggs picked up his hat and coat. “I’m on my way.”
Godliman lifted the phone. “Yes, we’re on our way.”
THERE WERE still plenty of people at Euston Station. Although in normal times the station closed around midnight, wartime delays were such that the last train often had not left before the earliest milk train of the morning arrived. The station concourse was a mass of kitbags and sleeping bodies.
Bloggs showed the picture to three railway policemen. None of them recognized the face. He tried ten women porters: nothing. He went to every ticket barrier. One of the guards said, “We look at tickets, not faces.” He tried half a dozen passengers without result. Finally he went into the ticket office and showed the picture to each of the clerks.
A very fat, bald clerk with ill-fitting false teeth recognized the face. “I play a game,” he told Bloggs.