The Abwehr put him in touch with two more German agents in England, whom we immediately nabbed. They also gave him a code and detailed wireless procedure, all of which was invaluable.

Snow was followed by Charlie, Rainbow, Summer, Biscuit, and eventually a small army of enemy spies, all in regular contact with Canaris, all apparently trusted by him, and all totally controlled by the British counterintelligence apparatus.

At that point MI5 began dimly to glimpse an awesome and tantalizing prospect: with a bit of luck, they could control and manipulate the entire German espionage network in Britain they could control and manipulate the entire German espionage network in Britain.

"TURNING AGENTS into double agents instead of hanging them has two crucial advantages," Terry wound up. "Since the enemy thinks his spies are still active, he doesn't try to replace them with others who may not get caught. And, since we are supplying the information the spies tell their controllers, we can deceive the enemy and mislead his strategists." into double agents instead of hanging them has two crucial advantages," Terry wound up. "Since the enemy thinks his spies are still active, he doesn't try to replace them with others who may not get caught. And, since we are supplying the information the spies tell their controllers, we can deceive the enemy and mislead his strategists."

"It can't be that easy," said G.o.dliman.

"Certainly not." Terry opened a window to let out the fog of cigarette and pipe smoke. "To work, the system has to be very near total. If there is any substantial number of genuine agents here, their information will contradict that of the double agents and the Abwehr will smell a rat."

"It sounds exciting," G.o.dliman said. His pipe had gone out.

Terry smiled for the first time that morning. "The people here will tell you it's hard work-long hours, high tension, frustration-but yes, of course it's exciting." He looked at his watch. "Now I want you to meet a very bright young member of my staff. Let me walk you to his office."

They went out of the room, up some stairs, and along several corridors. "His name is Frederick Bloggs, and he gets annoyed if you make jokes about it," Terry continued. "We pinched him from Scotland Yard-he was an inspector with Special Branch. If you need arms and legs, use him. You'll rank above him, of course, but I shouldn't make too much of that-we don't, here. I suppose I hardly need to say that to you."

They entered a small, bare room that looked out on to a blank wall. There was no carpet. A photograph of a pretty girl hung on the wall, and there was a pair of handcuffs on the hat-stand.

Terry said, "Frederick Bloggs, Percival G.o.dliman. I'll leave you to it."

The man behind the desk was blond, stocky and short-he must have been only just tall enough to get into the police force, G.o.dliman thought. His tie was an eyesore, but he had a pleasant, open face and an attractive grin. His handshake was firm.

"Tell you what, Percy-I was just going to nip home for lunch," he said. "Why don't you come along? The wife makes a lovely sausage and chips." He had a broad c.o.c.kney accent.

Sausage and chips was not G.o.dliman's favorite meal, but he went along. They walked to Trafalgar Square and caught a bus to Hoxton. Bloggs said, "I married a wonderful girl, but she can't cook for nuts. I have sausage and chips every day."

East London was still smoking from the previous night's air raid. They pa.s.sed groups of firemen and volunteers digging through rubble, playing hoses over dying fires and clearing debris from the streets. They saw an old man carry a precious radio out of a half-ruined house.

G.o.dliman made conversation. "So we're to catch spies together."

"We'll have a go, Perce."

Bloggs's home was a three-bedroom semidetached house in a street of exactly similar houses. The tiny front gardens were all being used to grow vegetables. Mrs. Bloggs was the pretty girl in the photograph on the office wall. She looked tired. "She drives an ambulance during the raids, don't you, love?" Bloggs said. He was proud of her. Her name was Christine.

She said, "Every morning when I come home I wonder if the house will still be here."

"Notice it's the house she's worried about, not me," Bloggs said.

G.o.dliman picked up a medal in a presentation case from the mantelpiece. "How did you get this?"

Christine answered. "He took a shotgun off a villain who was robbing a post office."

"You're quite a pair," G.o.dliman said.

"You married, Percy?" Bloggs asked.

"I'm a widower."

"Sorry."

"My wife died of tuberculosis in 1930. We never had any children."

"We're not having any yet," Bloggs said. "Not while the world's in this state."

Christine said: "Oh, Fred, he's not interested in that!" She went out to the kitchen.

They sat around a square table in the center of the room to eat. G.o.dliman was touched by this couple and the domestic scene, and found himself thinking of his Eleanor. That was unusual; he had been immune to sentiment for some years. Perhaps the nerves were coming alive again, at last. War did funny things.

Christine's cooking was truly awful. The sausages were burned. Bloggs drowned his meal in tomato ketchup and G.o.dliman cheerfully followed suit.

WHEN THEY GOT BACK to Whitehall Bloggs showed G.o.dliman the file on unidentified enemy agents thought still to be operating in Britain. to Whitehall Bloggs showed G.o.dliman the file on unidentified enemy agents thought still to be operating in Britain.

There were three sources of information about such people. The first was the immigration records of the Home Office. Pa.s.sport control had long been an arm of Military Intelligence, and there was a list-going back to the last war-of aliens who had entered the country but had not left or been accounted for in other ways, such as death or naturalization. At the outbreak of war they had all gone before tribunals that cla.s.sified them in three groups. At first only "A" cla.s.s aliens were interned; but by July of 1940, after some scaremongering by Fleet Service, the "B" and "C" cla.s.ses were taken out of circulation. There was a small number of immigrants who could not be located, and it was a fair a.s.sumption that some of them were spies.

Their papers were in Bloggs's file.

The second source were wireless transmissions. Section C of MI8 patrolled the airwaves nightly, recorded everything they did not know for certain to be theirs, and pa.s.sed it to the Government Code and Cipher School. This outfit, which had recently been moved from London's Berkeley Street to a country house at Bletchley Park, was not a school at all but a collection of chess champions, musicians, mathematicians and crossword puzzle enthusiasts dedicated to the belief that if a man could invent a code a man could crack it. Signals originating in the British Isles that could not be accounted for by any of the Services were a.s.sumed to be messages from spies.

The decoded messages were in Bloggs's file.

Finally there were the double agents, but their value was largely hoped-for rather than actual. Messages to them from the Abwehr had warned of several incoming agents, and had given away one resident spy-Mrs. Matilda Krafft of Bournemouth, who had sent money to Snow by post and was subsequently incarcerated in Holloway prison. But the doubles had not been able to reveal the ident.i.ty or locations of the kind of quietly effective professional spies most valuable to a secret intelligence service. No one doubted that there were such people. There were clues-someone, for example, had brought Snow's transmitter over from Germany and deposited it in the cloakroom at Victoria Station for him to collect. But either the Abwehr or the spies themselves were too cautious to be caught by the doubles.

However the clues were in Bloggs's file.

Other sources were being developed: the experts were working to improve methods of triangulation (the directional pin-pointing of radio transmitters); and MI6 were trying to rebuild the networks of agents in Europe that had sunk beneath the tidal wave of Hitler's armies.

What little information there was was in Bloggs's file.

"It can be infuriating at times," he told G.o.dliman. "Look at this."

He took from the file a long radio intercept about British plans for an expeditionary force for Finland. "This was picked up early in the year. The information is impeccable. They were trying to get a fix on him when he broke off in the middle, for no apparent reason-perhaps he was interrupted. He resumed a few minutes later, but he was off the air again before our people had a chance to plug in."

G.o.dliman said, "What's this-'Regards to Willi'?"

"Now, that's important," said Bloggs. He was getting enthusiastic. "Here's a sc.r.a.p of another message, quite recent. Look-'Regards to Willi.' This time there was a reply. He's addressed as 'Die Nadel.'"

"The Needle."

"This one's a pro. Look at his message: terse, economical, but detailed and completely unambiguous."

G.o.dliman studied the fragment of the second message. "It appears to be about the effects of the bombing."

"He's obviously toured the East End. A pro, a pro."

"What else do we know about Die Nadel?"

Bloggs's expression of youthful eagerness collapsed. "That's it, I'm afraid."

"His code name is Die Nadel, he signs off 'Regards to Willi,' and he has good information-and that's it?"

"'Fraid so."

G.o.dliman sat on the edge of the desk and stared out of the window. On the wall of the opposite building, underneath an ornate window sill, he could see the nest of a house-marten. "On that basis, what chance have we of catching him?"

Bloggs shrugged. "On that basis, none at all."

5.

IT IS FOR PLACES LIKE THIS THAT THE WORD "BLEAK" has been invented. has been invented.

The island is a J-shaped lump of rock rising sullenly out of the North Sea. It lies on the map like the top half of a broken cane, parallel with the Equator but a long, long way north; its curved handle toward Aberdeen, its broken, jagged stump pointing threateningly at distant Denmark. It is ten miles long.

Around most of its coast the cliffs rise out of the cold sea without the courtesy of a beach. Angered by this rudeness the waves pound on the rock in impotent rage; a ten-thousand-year fit of bad temper that the island ignores with impunity.

In the cup of the J the sea is calmer; there it has provided itself with a more pleasant reception. Its tides have thrown into that cup so much sand and seaweed, driftwood and pebbles and seash.e.l.ls that there is now, between the foot of the cliff and the water's edge, a crescent of something closely resembling dry land, a more-or-less beach.

Each summer the vegetation at the top of the cliff drops a handful of seeds on to the beach, the way a rich man throws loose change to beggars. If the winter is mild and the spring comes early, a few of the seeds take feeble root; but they are never healthy enough to flower themselves and spread their own seeds, so the beach exists from year to year on handouts.

On the land itself, the proper land, held out of the sea's reach by the cliffs, green things do grow and multiply. The vegetation is mostly coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, only just good enough to nourish the few bony sheep, but tough enough to bind the topsoil to the island's bedrock. There are some bushes, all th.o.r.n.y, that provide homes for rabbits; and a brave stand of conifers on the leeward slope of the hill at the eastern end.

The higher land is ruled by heather. Every few years the man-yes, there is a man here-sets fire to the heather, and then the gra.s.s will grow and the sheep can graze here too; but after a couple of years the heather comes back, G.o.d knows from where, and drives the sheep away until the man burns it again.

The rabbits are here because they were born here; the sheep are here because they were brought here; and the man is here to look after the sheep; but the birds are here because they like it. There are hundreds of thousands of them: long-legged rock pipits whistling peep peep peep peep peep peep as they soar and as they soar and pe-pe-pe-pe pe-pe-pe-pe as they dive like a Spitfire coming at a Messerschmidt out of the sun; corncrakes, which the man rarely sees, but he knows they are there because their bark keeps him awake at night; ravens and carrion crows and kittiwakes and as they dive like a Spitfire coming at a Messerschmidt out of the sun; corncrakes, which the man rarely sees, but he knows they are there because their bark keeps him awake at night; ravens and carrion crows and kittiwakes and countless countless gulls; and a pair of golden eagles that the man shoots at when he sees them, for he gulls; and a pair of golden eagles that the man shoots at when he sees them, for he knows knows-regardless of what naturalists and experts from Edinburgh may tell him-that they do do prey on live lambs and not just the carca.s.ses of those already dead. prey on live lambs and not just the carca.s.ses of those already dead.

The island's most constant visitor is the wind. It comes mostly from the northeast, from really really cold places where there are fjords and glaciers and icebergs; often bringing with it unwelcome gifts of snow and driving rain and cold, cold mist; sometimes arriving empty-handed, just to howl and whoop and raise h.e.l.l, tearing up bushes and bending trees and whipping the intemperate ocean into fresh paroxysms of foam-flecked rage. It is tireless, this wind, and that is its mistake. If it came occasionally it could take the island by surprise and do some real damage; but because it is almost always here, the island has learned to live with it. The plants put down deep roots, and the rabbits hide far inside the thickets, and the trees grow up with their backs ready-bent for the flogging, and the birds nest on sheltered ledges, and the man's house is st.u.r.dy and squat, built with a craftsmanship that knows this old wind. cold places where there are fjords and glaciers and icebergs; often bringing with it unwelcome gifts of snow and driving rain and cold, cold mist; sometimes arriving empty-handed, just to howl and whoop and raise h.e.l.l, tearing up bushes and bending trees and whipping the intemperate ocean into fresh paroxysms of foam-flecked rage. It is tireless, this wind, and that is its mistake. If it came occasionally it could take the island by surprise and do some real damage; but because it is almost always here, the island has learned to live with it. The plants put down deep roots, and the rabbits hide far inside the thickets, and the trees grow up with their backs ready-bent for the flogging, and the birds nest on sheltered ledges, and the man's house is st.u.r.dy and squat, built with a craftsmanship that knows this old wind.

This house is made of big grey stones and grey slates, the color of the sea. It has small windows and close-fitting doors and a chimney in its pipe end. It stands at the top of the hill at the eastern end of the island, close to the splintered stub of the broken walking-stick. It crowns the hill, defying the wind and the rain, not out of bravado but so that the man can see the sheep.

There is another house, very similar, ten miles away at the opposite end of the island near the more-or-less beach; but n.o.body lives there. There was once another man. He thought he knew better than the island; he thought he could grow oats and potatoes and keep a few cows. He battled for three years with the wind and the cold and the soil before he admitted he was wrong. When he had gone, n.o.body wanted his home.

This is a hard place. Only hard things survive here: hard rock, coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, tough sheep, savage birds, st.u.r.dy houses and strong men.

It is for places like this that the word "bleak" has been invented.

"IT'S CALLED STORM ISLAND," said Alfred Rose. "I think you're going to like it." said Alfred Rose. "I think you're going to like it."

David and Lucy Rose sat in the prow of the fishing boat and looked across the choppy water. It was a fine November day, cold and breezy yet clear and dry. A weak sun sparkled off the wavelets.

"I bought it in 1926," Papa Rose continued, "when we thought there was going to be a revolution and we'd need somewhere to hide from the working cla.s.s. It's just the place for a convalescence."

Lucy thought he was being suspiciously hearty, but she had to admit it looked lovely: all windblown and natural and fresh. And it made sense, this move. They had to get away from their parents and make a new start at being married; and there was no point in moving to a city to be bombed, not when neither of them was really well enough to help; and then David's father had revealed that he owned an island off the coast of Scotland, and it seemed too good to be true.

"I own the sheep, too," Papa Rose said. "Shearers come over from the mainland each spring, and the wool brings in just about enough money to pay Tom McAvity's wages. Old Tom's the shepherd."

"How old is he?" Lucy asked.

"Good Lord, he must be-oh, seventy?"

"I suppose he's eccentric." The boat turned into the bay, and Lucy could see two small figures on the jetty: a man and a dog.

"Eccentric? No more than you'd be if you'd lived alone for twenty years. He talks to his dog."

Lucy turned to the skipper of the small boat. "How often do you call?"

"Once a fortnight, missus. I bring Tom's shopping, which isna much, and his mail, which is even less. You just give me your list, every other Monday, and if it can be bought in Aberdeen I'll bring it."

He cut the motor and threw a rope to Tom. The dog barked and ran around in circles, beside himself with excitement. Lucy put one foot on the gunwale and sprang out on to the jetty.

Tom shook her hand. He had a face of leather and a huge pipe with a lid. He was shorter than she, but wide, and he looked ridiculously healthy. He wore the hairiest tweed jacket she had ever seen, with a knitted sweater that must have been made by an elderly sister somewhere, plus a checked cap and army boots. His nose was huge, red and veined. "Pleased to meet you," he said politely, as if she was his ninth visitor today instead of the first human face he had seen in fourteen days.

"Here y'are, Tom," said the skipper. He handed two cardboard boxes out of the boat. "No eggs this time, but there's a letter from Devon."

"It'll be from ma niece."

Lucy thought, That explains the sweater.

David was still in the boat. The skipper stood behind him and said, "Are you ready?"

Tom and Papa Rose leaned into the boat to a.s.sist, and the three of them lifted David in his wheelchair on to the jetty.

"If I don't go now I'll have to wait a fortnight for the next bus," Papa Rose said with a smile. "The house has been done up quite nicely, you'll see. All your stuff is in there. Tom will show you where everything is." He kissed Lucy, squeezed David's shoulder, and shook Tom's hand. "Have a few months of rest and togetherness, get completely fit, then come back; there are important war jobs for both of you."

They would not be going back, Lucy knew, not before the end of the war. But she had not told anyone about that yet.

Papa got back into the boat. It wheeled away in a tight circle. Lucy waved until it disappeared around the headland.

Tom pushed the wheelchair, so Lucy took his groceries. Between the landward end of the jetty and the cliff top was a long, steep, narrow ramp rising high above the beach like a bridge. Lucy would have had trouble getting the wheelchair to the top, but Tom managed without apparent exertion.