Eye of the Needle(96)
Flying-Officer Longman said, “Sir?”
“Longman?”
“What do we do if we see this U-boat?”
“Strafe it, of course. Drop a few grenades. Cause trouble.”
“But we’re flying fighters, sir—there’s not much we can do to stop a U-boat. That’s a job for battleships, isn’t it?”
Blenkinsop sighed. “As usual, those of you who can think of better ways to win the war are invited to write directly to Mr. Winston Churchill, number 10 Downing Street, London South-West-One. Now, are there any questions, as opposed to stupid criticisms?”
There were no questions.
THE LATER YEARS of the war had produced a different kind of RAF officer, Bloggs thought, as he sat on a soft chair in the scramble room, close to the fire, listening to the rain drumming on the tin roof and intermittently dozing. The Battle of Britain pilots had seemed incorrigibly cheerful, with their undergraduate slang, their perpetual drinking, their tirelessness and their cavalier disregard of the flaming death they faced up to every day. That schoolboy heroism had not been enough to carry them through subsequent years, as the war dragged on in places far from home, and the emphasis shifted from the dashing individuality of aerial dogfighting to the mechanical drudgery of bombing missions. They still drank and talked in jargon but they appeared older, harder, more cynical; there was nothing in them now of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Bloggs recalled what he had done to that poor common-or-garden housebreaker in the police cells at Aberdeen, and he realized, It’s happened to us all.
They were very quiet. They sat all around him: some dozing, like himself; others reading books or playing board games. A bespectacled navigator in a corner was learning Russian.
As Bloggs surveyed the room with half-closed eyes, another pilot came in, and he thought immediately that this one had not been aged by the war. He had an old-fashioned wide grin and fresh face that looked as if it hardly needed shaving more than once a week. He wore his jacket open and carried his helmet. He made a beeline for Bloggs.
“Detective-Inspector Bloggs?”
“That’s me.”
“Jolly good show. I’m your pilot, Charles Calder.”
“Fine.” Bloggs shook hands.
“The kite’s all ready, and the engine’s as sweet as a bird. She’s an amphibian, I suppose you know.”
“Yes.”
“Jolly good show. We’ll land on the sea, taxi in to about ten yards from the shore, and put you off in a dinghy.”
“Then you wait for me to come back.”
“Indeed. Well, all we need now is the weather.”
“Yes. Look, Charles, I’ve been chasing this fellow all over the country for six days and nights, so I’m catching up on my sleep while I’ve got the chance. You won’t mind.”
“Of course not!” The pilot sat down and produced a thick book from under his jacket. “Catching up on my education,” he said. “War and Peace.”
Bloggs said, “Jolly good show,” and closed his eyes.
PERCIVAL GODLIMAN and his uncle, Colonel Terry, sat side by side in the map room, drinking coffee and tapping the ash of their cigarettes into a fire bucket on the floor between them. Godliman was repeating himself.
“I can’t think of anything more we can do,” he said.
“So you said.”
“The corvette is already there, and the fighters are only a few minutes away, so the sub will come under fire as soon as she shows herself above the surface.”
“If she’s seen.”
“The corvette will land a party as soon as possible. Bloggs will be there soon after that, and the Coastguard will bring up the rear.”
“And none of them can be sure to get there in time.”
“I know,” Godliman said wearily. “We’ve done all we can, but is it enough?”
Terry lit another cigarette. “What about the inhabitants of the island?”
“Oh, yes. There are only two houses there. There’s a sheep farmer and his wife in one—they have a young child—and an old shepherd lives in the other. The shepherd’s got a radio—Royal Observer Corps—but we can’t raise him…he probably keeps the set switched to Transmit. He’s old.”
“The farmer sounds promising,” Terry said. “If he’s a bright fellow he might even stop your spy.”
Godliman shook his head. “The poor chap’s in a wheelchair.”
“Dear God, we don’t get much luck, do we?”
“No,” said Godliman. “Die Nadel seems to have cornered the market.”
33
LUCY WAS BECOMING QUITE CALM. THE FEELING CREPT over her gradually, like the icy spread of an anesthetic, deadening her emotions and sharpening her wits. The times when she was momentarily paralyzed by the thought that she was sharing a house with a murderer became fewer, and she was possessed by a cool-headed watchfulness that surprised her.
As she went about the household chores, sweeping around Henry as he sat in the living room reading a novel, she wondered how much he had noticed of the change in her feelings. He was very observant: he didn’t miss much and there had been a definite wariness, if not outright suspicion, in that confrontation over the jeep. He must have known she was shaken by something. On the other hand, she had been upset before he left over Jo discovering them in bed together…he might think that that was all that had been wrong.