Eye of the Needle(40)
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 could get three British ones.
The train stopped, and from the noise outside the passengers guessed they had arrived. When Faber got out he realized how hungry and thirsty he was. His last meal had been sausage-meat, dry biscuits and bottled water, twenty-four hours ago. He went through the ticket barrier and found the station buffet. It was full of people, mostly soldiers, sleeping or trying to sleep at the tables. Faber asked for a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea.
“The food is reserved for servicemen,” said the woman behind the counter.
“Just the tea, then.”
“Got a cup?”
Faber was surprised. “No, I haven’t.”
“Neither have we, chum.”
Faber contemplated going into the Great Eastern Hotel for dinner, but that would take time. He found a pub and drank two pints of weak beer, then bought a bag of chips at a fish-and-chips shop and ate them from the newspaper wrapping, standing on the pavement. They made him feel surprisingly full.
Now he had to find a chemist’s shop and break in.
He wanted to develop his film, to make sure the pictures came out. He was not going to risk returning to Germany with a roll of spoiled, useless film. If the pictures were no good he would have to steal more film and go back. The thought was unbearable.
It would have to be a small independent shop, not a branch of a chain that would process film centrally. It must be in an area where the local people could afford cameras (or could have afforded them before the war). The part of East London in which Liverpool Street station stood was no good. He decided to head toward Bloomsbury.
The moonlit streets were quiet. There had been no sirens so far tonight. Two Military Policemen stopped him in Chancery Lane and asked for his identity card. Faber pretended to be slightly drunk, and the MPs did not ask what he was doing out of doors.
He found the shop he was looking for at the north end of Southampton Row. There was a Kodak sign in the window. Surprisingly, the shop was open. He went in.
A stooped, irritable man with thinning hair and glasses stood behind the counter, wearing a white coat. He said, “We’re only open for doctor’s prescriptions.”
“That’s all right. I just want to ask whether you develop photographs.”
“Yes, if you come back tomorrow—”
“Do you do them on the premises?” Faber asked. “I need them quickly, you see.”