Eye of the Needle(33)
The difficult bit was to come. For assessing the strength of an army was difficult. First, for example, you had to find it.
In peacetime the Army would put up its own road signs to help you. Now they had been taken down, not only the Army’s but everyone else’s road signs.
The simple solution would be to get in a car and follow the first military vehicle you saw until it stopped. However, Faber had no car; it was close to impossible for a civilian to hire one, and even if you got one you couldn’t get petrol for it. Besides, a civilian driving around the countryside following Army vehicles and looking at Army camps was likely to be arrested.
Hence the boat.
Some years ago, before it had become illegal to sell maps, Faber had discovered that Britain had thousands of miles of inland waterways. The original network of rivers had been augmented during the nineteenth century by a spider web of canals. In some areas there was almost as much waterway as there was road. Norfolk was one of these areas.
The boat had many advantages. On a road, a man was going somewhere; on a river he was just sailing. Sleeping in a parked car was conspicuous; sleeping in a moored boat was natural. The waterway was lonely. And who ever heard of a canal-block?
There were disadvantages. Airfields and barracks had to be near roads, but they were located without reference to access by water. Faber had to explore the countryside at night, leaving his moored boat and tramping the hillsides by moonlight, exhausting forty-mile round trips during which he could easily miss what he was looking for because of the darkness or because he simply did not have enough time to check every square mile of land.
When he returned, a couple of hours after dawn, he would sleep until midday, then move on, stopping occasionally to climb a nearby hill and check the outlook. At locks, isolated farmhouses and riverside pubs he would talk to people, hoping for hints of a military presence. So far there had been none.
He was beginning to wonder whether he was in the right area. He had tried to put himself in General Patton’s place, thinking: If I were planning to invade France east of the Seine from a base in eastern England, where would I locate that base? Norfolk was obvious: a vast expanse of lonely countryside, plenty of flat ground for aircraft, close to the sea for rapid departure. And the Wash was a natural place to gather a fleet of ships. However, his guesswork might be wrong for reasons unknown to him. Soon he would have to consider a rapid move across country to a new area—perhaps the Fens.
A lock appeared ahead of him, and he trimmed his sails to slow his pace. He glided gently into the lock and bumped softly against the gates. The lock-keeper’s house was on the bank. Faber cupped hands around his mouth and halloed. Then he settled down to wait. He had learned that lock-keepers were a breed that could not be hurried. Moreover, it was tea time, and at tea time they could hardly be moved at all.
A woman came to the door of the house and beckoned. Faber waved back, then jumped onto the bank, tied up the boat and went into the house. The lock-keeper was in his shirtsleeves at the kitchen table. He said, “Not in a hurry, are you?”
Faber smiled. “Not at all.”
“Pour him a cup of tea, Mavis.”
“No, really,” Faber said politely.
“It’s all right, we’ve just made a pot.”
“Thank you.” Faber sat down. The little kitchen was airy and clean, and his tea came in a pretty china cup.
“Fishing holiday?” the lock-keeper asked.
“Fishing and bird-watching,” Faber answered. “I’m thinking of tying up quite soon and spending a couple of days on land.”
“Oh, aye. Well, best keep to the far side of the canal, then. Restricted area this side.”
“Really? I didn’t know there was Army land hereabouts.”
“Aye, it starts about half a mile from here. As to whether it’s Army, I wouldn’t know. They don’t tell me.”
“Well, I suppose we don’t need to know,” Faber said.
“Aye. Drink up, then, and I’ll see you through the lock. Thanks for letting me finish my tea.”
They left the house, and Faber got into the boat and untied it. The gates behind him closed slowly, and then the keeper opened the sluices. The boat gradually sank with the level of the water in the lock, then the keeper opened the front gates.
Faber made sail and moved out. The lock-keeper waved.
He stopped again about four miles away and moored the boat to a stout tree on the bank. While he waited for night to fall he made a meal of tinned sausage meat, dry biscuits, and bottled water. He dressed in his black clothes, put into a shoulder bag his binoculars, camera, and copy of Rare Birds of East Anglia, pocketed his compass and picked up his flashlight. He was ready.
He doused the hurricane lamp, locked the cabin door and jumped onto the bank. Consulting his compass by flashlight, he entered the belt of woodland along the canal.
He walked due south from his boat for about half a mile until he came to the fence. It was six feet high, chicken wire, with coiled barbed wire on top. He backtracked into the wood and climbed a tall tree.
There was scattered cloud above. The moon showed through fitfully. Beyond the fence was open land, a gentle rise. Faber had done this sort of thing before, at Biggin Hill, Aldershot, and a host of military areas all over southern England. There were two levels of security: a mobile patrol around the perimeter fence, and stationary sentries at the installations.