Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett Read Free Book Online Page A

this—‘Regards to Willi’?”
    “Now, that’s important,” said Bloggs. He was getting enthusiastic. “Here’s a scrap 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.”
    Godliman 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.”
    Godliman 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

    I T IS FOR PLACES LIKE THIS THAT THE WORD “BLEAK” 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 seashells 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 coarse grass, 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 thorny, 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 grass will grow and the sheep can graze here too; but after a couple of years the heather comes back, God 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 as they soar and 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 countless gulls; and a pair of golden eagles that the man shoots at when he sees them, for he knows —regardless of what naturalists and experts from Edinburgh may tell him—that they do prey on live lambs and not just the carcasses of those already